Complete works of hall c.., p.514
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 514
But then came a moment of unexpected pleasure. A cheerful voice on the other side of the car said:
“Good morning, Lady Raa.”
It was the young Irish doctor from the steamer. His ship had put into Naples for two days, and, like Martin Conrad before my marriage, he had run up to look at Rome.
“But have you heard the news?” he cried.
“What news?”
“About the South Pole Expedition — they’re on their way home.”
“So soon?”
“Yes, they reached New Zealand on Saturday was a week.”
“And . . . and . . . and Martin Conrad?”
“He’s well, and what’s better, he has distinguished himself.”
“I . . . I . . . I knew he would.”
“So did I! The way I was never fearing that if they gave Mart half a chance he would come out top! Do or die — that was his watch-word.”
“I know! I know!”
His eyes were sparkling and so I suppose were mine, while with a joyous rush of racy words, (punctuated by me with “Yes,” “Yes,” “Yes”) he told of a long despatch from the Lieutenant published by one of the London papers, in which Martin had been specially mentioned — how he had been put in command of some difficult and perilous expedition, and had worked wonders.
“How splendid! How glorious! How perfectly magnificent!” I said.
“Isn’t it?” said the doctor, and for a few moments more we bandied quick questions and replies like children playing at battledore and shuttlecock. Then he said:
“But I’m after thinking it’s mortal strange I never heard him mention you. There was only one chum at home he used to talk about and that was a man — a boy, I mean. Mally he was calling him — that’s short for Maloney, I suppose.”
“For Mary,” I said.
“Mary, is it? Why, by the saints, so it is! Where in the name of St. Patrick has been the Irish head at me that I never thought of that before? And you were . . . Yes? Well, by the powers, ye’ve a right to be proud of him, for he was thinking pearls and diamonds of you. I was mortal jealous of Mally, I remember. ‘Mally’s a stunner,’ he used to say. ‘Follow you anywhere, if you wanted it, in spite of the devil and hell.’”
The sparkling eyes were growing misty by this time but the woman in me made me say — I couldn’t help it —
“I dare say he’s had many girl friends since my time, though?”
“Narra a one. The girls used to be putting a glime on him in Dublin — they’re the queens of the world too, those Dublin girls — but never a skute of the eye was he giving to the one of them. I used to think it was work, but maybe it wasn’t . . . maybe it was. . . .”
I dare not let him finish what I saw he was going to say — I didn’t know what would happen to me if he did — so I jumped in by telling him that, if he would step into the car, I would drive him back to Rome.
He did so, and all the way he talked of Martin, his courage and resource and the hardships he had gone through, until (with backward thoughts of Alma and my husband riding away over the Campagna) my heart, which had been leaping like a lamb, began to ache and ache.
We returned by the Old Appian Way, where the birds were building their nests among the crumbling tombs, through the Porta San Paolo, and past the grave of the “young English poet” of whom I have always thought it was not so sad that he died of consumption as in the bitterness of a broken heart.
All this time I was so much at home with the young Irish doctor, who was Martin’s friend, that it was not until I was putting him down at his hotel that I remembered I did not even know his name.
It was O’Sullivan.
FORTY-EIGHTH CHAPTER
Every day during our visit to Rome I had reminded myself of the Reverend Mother’s invitation to call on her, and a sense of moral taint had prevented me, but now I determined to see her at least by going to Benediction at her Convent church the very next day.
It happened, however, that this was the time when the Artists’ Club of Rome were giving a Veglione (a kind of fancy-dress ball), and as Alma and my husband desired to go to it, and were still in the way of using me to keep themselves in countenance, I consented to accompany them on condition that I did not dress or dance, and that they would go with me to Benediction the following day.
“Dear sweet girl!” said Alma. “We’ll do whatever you like. Of course we will.”
I wore my soft satin without any ornaments, and my husband merely put scarlet facings on the lapels of his evening coat, but Alma was clad in a gorgeous dress of old gold, with Oriental skirts which showed her limbs in front but had a long train behind, and made her look like a great vampire bat.
It was eleven o’clock before we reached the theatre, but already the auditorium was full, and so well had the artists done their work of decoration, making the air alive with floating specks of many-coloured lights, like the fire-flies at Nemi, that the scene was one of enchantment.
It was difficult to believe that on the other side of the walls was the street, with the clanging electric bells and people hurrying by with their collars up, for the night was cold, and it had begun to rain as we came in, and one poor woman, with a child under her shawl, was standing by the entrance trying to sell evening papers.
I sat alone in a box on the ground tier while Alma and my husband and their friends were below on the level of the poltroni (the stalls) that had been arranged for the dancing, which began immediately after we arrived and went on without a break until long after midnight.
Then there was supper on the stage, and those who did not eat drank a good deal until nearly everybody seemed to be under the influence of alcohol. As a consequence many of the people, especially some of the women (not good women I fear), seemed to lose all control of themselves, singing snatches of noisy songs, sipping out of the men’s glasses, taking the smoke of cigarettes out of the men’s mouths, sitting on the men’s knees, and even riding astride on the men’s arms and shoulders.
I bore these sights as long as I could, making many fruitless appeals to my husband to take me home; and I was just about to leave of myself, being sick of the degradation of my sex, when a kind of rostrum, with an empty chair on top of it, was carried in on the shoulders of a number of men.
This was for the enthronement of the Queen of Beauty, and as it passed round the arena, with the mock judges in paper coronets, walking ahead to make their choice, some of the women, lost to all sense of modesty, were shouting “Take me! Take me!”
I felt sure they would take Alma, so I reached forward to get a better view of her, where she stood below my box; but as they approached her, with the chair still empty, I saw her make a movement in my direction and say something to the judges about “the little nun,” which made my husband nod his head and then laugh uproariously.
At the next moment, before I knew what they were doing, six or seven men jumped into my box, lifted me on to the rostrum and placed me in the chair, whereupon the whole noisy company in the theatre broke into wild shouts of salutation and pelted me with flowers and confetti.
If there was any pride there was more mortification in the position to which Alma and my husband had exposed me, for as I was being carried round the arena, with the sea of foaming faces below me, all screaming out of their hot and open mouths, I heard the men cry:
“Smile, Signorina!”
“Not so serious, Mademoiselle!”
It would do no good to say what memories of other scenes flashed back on my mind as I was being borne along in the mad procession. I felt as if it would last for ever. But it came to an end at length, and as soon as I was released, I begged my husband again to take me home, and when he said, “Not yet; we’ll all be going by-and-by,” I stole away by myself, found a cab, and drove back to the hotel.
The day was dawning as I passed through the stony streets, and when I reached my room, and pulled down my dark green blinds, the bell of the Capuchin monastery in the Via Veneto was ringing and the monks were saying the first of their offices.
I must have been some time in bed, hiding my hot face in the bed-clothes, when Price, my maid, came in to apologise for not having seen me come back alone. The pain of the woman’s scrutiny was more than I could bear at that moment, so I tried to dismiss her, but I could not get her to go, and at last she said:
“If you please, my lady, I want to say something.”
I gave her no encouragement, yet she continued.
“I daresay it’s as much as my place is worth, but I’m bound to say it.”
Still I said nothing, yet she went on:
“His Lordship and Madame have also arrived. . . . They came back half an hour ago. And just now . . . I saw his lordship . . . coming out of Madame’s room.”
“Go away, woman, go away,” I cried in the fierce agony of my shame, and she went out at last, closing the door noisily behind her.
We did not go next day to Benediction at the Reverend Mother’s church. But late the same night, when it was quite dark, I crept out of my room into the noisy streets, hardly knowing where my footsteps were leading me, until I found myself in the piazza of the Convent of the Sacred Heart.
It was quiet enough there. Only the Carabinieri were walking on the paved way with measured steps, and the bell of the Dominican monastery was slowly ringing under the silent stars. I could see the light on the Pope’s loggia at the Vatican and hear the clock of St. Peter’s striking nine.
There were lights in the windows of some of the dormitories also, and by that I knew that the younger children, the children of the Infant Jesus, were going to bed. There was a light too, in the large window of the church, and that told me that the bigger girls were saying their night prayers.
Creeping close to the convent wall I heard the girls’ voices rising and falling, and then through the closed door of the church came the muffled sound of their evening hymn —
“Ave maris stella
Dei Mater Alma—”
I did not know why I was putting myself wilfully to this bitter pain — the pain of remembering the happy years in which I myself was a girl singing so, and then telling myself that other girls were there now who knew nothing of me.
I thought of the Reverend Mother, and then of my own mother, my saint, my angel, who had told me to think of her when I sang that hymn; and then I remembered where I was and what had happened to me.
“Virgin of all virgins,
To thy shelter take me.”
I felt like an outcast. A stifling sensation came into my throat and I dropped to my knees in the darkness. I thought I was broken-hearted.
FORTY-NINTH CHAPTER
Not long after that we left Italy on our return to England. We were to reach home by easy stages so as to see some of the great capitals of Europe, but I had no interest in the journey.
Our first stay was at Monte Carlo, that sweet garden of the Mediterranean which God seems to smile upon and man to curse.
If I had been allowed to contemplate the beautiful spectacle of nature I think I could have been content, but Alma, with her honeyed and insincere words, took me to the Casino on the usual plea of keeping her in countenance.
I hated the place from the first, with its stale air, its chink of louis d’or, its cry of the croupiers, its strained faces about the tables, and its general atmosphere of wasted hopes and fears and needless misery and despair.
As often as I could I crept out to look at the flower fêtes in the streets, or to climb the hill of La Turbie and think I was on my native rocks with Martin Conrad, or even to sit in my room and watch the poor wounded pigeons from the pigeon-traps as they tumbled and ducked into the sea after the shots fired, by cruel and unsportsmanlike sportsmen, from the rifle-range below.
In Monte Carlo my husband’s vices seemed to me to grow rank and fast. The gambling fever took complete possession of him. At first he won and then he drank heavily, but afterwards he lost and then his nature became still more ugly and repulsive.
One evening towards eight o’clock, I was in my room, trying to comfort a broken-winged pigeon which had come floundering through the open window, when my husband entered with wild eyes.
“The red’s coming up at all the tables,” he cried breathlessly. “Give me some money, quick!”
I told him I had no money except the few gold pieces in my purse.
“You’ve a cheque book — give me a cheque, then.”
I told him that even if I gave him a cheque he could not cash it that night, the banks being closed.
“The jewellers are open though, and you have jewels, haven’t you? Stop fooling with that creature, and let me have some of them to pawn.”
The situation was too abject for discussion, so I pointed to the drawer in which my jewels were kept, and he tore it open, took what he wanted and went out hurriedly without more words.
After that I saw no more of him for two days, when with black rings about his eyes he came in to say he must leave “this accursed place” immediately or we should all be ruined.
Our last stopping-place was Paris, and in my ignorance of the great French capital which has done so much for the world, I thought it must be the sink of every kind of corruption.
We put up at a well-known hotel in the Champs Elysées, and there (as well as in the cafés in the Bois and at the races at Longchamps on Sundays) we met the same people again, most of them English and Americans on their way home after the winter. It seemed to me strange that there should be so many men and women in the world with nothing to do, merely loafing round it like tramps — the richest being the idlest, and the idlest the most immoral.
My husband knew many Frenchmen of the upper classes, and I think he spent several hours every day at their clubs, but (perhaps at Alma’s instigation) he made us wallow through the filth of Paris by night.
“It will be lots of fun,” said Alma. “And then who is to know us in places like those?”
I tolerated this for a little while, and then refused to be dragged around any longer as a cloak for Alma’s pleasures. Telling myself that if I continued to share my husband’s habits of life, for any reason or under any pretext, I should become like him, and my soul would rot inch by inch, I resolved to be clean in my own eyes and to resist the contaminations of his company.
As a consequence, he became more and more reckless, and Alma made no efforts to restrain him, so that it came to pass at last that they went together to a scandalous entertainment which was for a while the talk of the society papers throughout Europe.
I know no more of this entertainment than I afterwards learned from those sources — that it was given by a notorious woman, who was not shut out of society because she was “the good friend” of a King; that she did the honours with clever imitative elegance; that her salon that night was crowded with such male guests as one might see at the court of a queen — princes, dukes, marquises, counts, English noblemen and members of parliament, as well as some reputable women of my own and other countries; that the tables were laid for supper at four o’clock with every delicacy of the season and wines of the rarest vintage; that after supper dancing was resumed with increased animation; and that the dazzling and improper spectacle terminated with a Chaîne diabolique at seven in the morning, when the sun was streaming through the windows and the bells of the surrounding churches were ringing for early mass.
I had myself risen early that morning to go to communion at the Madeleine, and never shall I forget the effect of cleansing produced upon me by the sacred sacrament. From the moment when — the priest standing at the foot of the altar — the choir sang the Kyrie eleison, down to the solemn silence of the elevation, I had a sense of being washed from all the taint of the contaminating days since my marriage.
The music was Perosi’s, I remember, and the voices in the Gloria in excelsis, which I used to sing myself, seemed to carry up the cry of my sorrowful heart to the very feet of the Virgin whose gracious figure hung above me.
“Cleanse me and intercede for me, O Mother of my God.”
It was as though our Blessed Lady did so, for as I walked out of the church and down the broad steps in front of it, I had a feeling of purity and lightness that I had never known since my time at the Sacred Heart.
It was a beautiful day, with all the freshness and fragrance of early morning in summer, when the white stone houses of Paris seem to blush in the sunrise; and as I walked up the Champs Elysées on my way back to the hotel, I met under the chestnut trees, which were then in bloom, a little company of young girls returning to school after their first communion.
How sweet they looked! In their white muslin frocks, white shoes and stockings and gloves, white veils and coronets of white flowers, they were twittering away as merrily as the little birds that were singing unseen in the leaves above them.
It made me feel like a child myself to look at their sweet faces; but turning into the hotel I felt like a woman too, for I thought the great and holy mystery, the sacrament of union and love, had given me such strength that I could meet any further wrong I might have to endure in my walk through the world with charity and forgiveness.
But how little a woman knows of her heart until it is tried in the fires of passion!
As I entered the salon which (as usual) divided my husband’s bedroom from mine, I came upon my maid, Price, listening intently at my husband’s closed door. This seemed to me so improper that I was beginning to reprove her, when she put her finger to her lip and coming over to me with her black eyes ablaze she said:
“I know you will pack me off for what I’m going to say, yet I can’t help that. You’ve stood too much already, my lady, but if you are a woman and have any pride in yourself as a wife, go and listen at that door and see if you can stand any more.”
With that she went out of the salon, and I tried to go to my own room, but I could not stir. Something held me to the spot on which I stood, and I found myself listening to the voices which I could distinctly hear in my husband’s bedroom.
