Complete works of hall c.., p.516
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 516
“Holloa!” they cried.
“Excuse us, won’t you? We thought something had happened and perhaps you were not coming,” said the commander, and then he put me to sit between himself and Martin.
The strange thing was that I was at home in that company in a moment, and if anybody imagines that I must have been embarrassed because I was the only member of my sex among so many men he does not know the heart of a woman.
They were such big, bronzed manly fellows with the note of health and the sense of space about them — large space — as if they had come out of the heroic youth of the world, that they set my blood a-tingling to look at them.
They were very nice to me too, though I knew that I only stood for the womankind that each had got at home and was soon to go back to, but none the less it was delightful to feel as if I were taking the first fruits of their love for them.
So it came to pass that within a few minutes I, who had been called insipid and was supposed to have no conversation, was chattering away softly and happily, making remarks about the things around me and asking all sorts of questions.
Of course I asked many foolish ones, which made the men laugh very much; but their laughter did not hurt me the least bit in the world, because everybody laughed on that ship, even the sailors who served the dishes, and especially one grizzly old salt, a cockney from Wapping, who for some unexplained reason was called Treacle.
It made me happy to see how they all deferred to Martin, saying: “Isn’t that so, Doctor?” or “Don’t you agree, Doctor?” and though it was strange and new to hear Martin (my “Mart of Spitzbergen”) called “Doctor,” it was also very charming.
After luncheon was over, and while coffee was being served, the commander sent Treacle to his cabin for a photograph of all hands which had been taken when they were at the foot of Mount Erebus; and when it came I was called upon to identify one by one, the shaggy, tousled, unkempt, bearded, middle-aged men in the picture with the smart, clean-shaven young officers who sat round me at the table.
Naturally I made shockingly bad shots, and the worst of them was when I associated Treacle with the commander, which made the latter rock in his seat and the former shake and shout so much that he spilled the coffee.
“But what about the fourth man in the front row from the left?” asked the commander.
“Oh, I should recognise him if I were blindfolded,” I answered.
“By what?”
“By his eyes,” I said, and after this truly Irish and feminine answer the men shrieked with laughter.
“She’s got you there, doc,” cried somebody.
“She has sure,” said Martin, who had said very little down to that moment, but was looking supremely happy.
At length the time came for the men to go, and I went up on deck to see them off by the launch, and then nobody was left on the ship except Martin and myself, with the cook, the cabin-boy and a few of the crew, including Treacle.
I knew that that was the right time to speak, but I was too greedy of every moment of happiness to break in on it with the story of my troubles, so when Martin proposed to show me over the ship, away I went with him to look at the theodolites and chronometers and sextants, and sledges and skis, and the aeronautic outfit and the captive balloon, and the double-barrelled guns, and the place where they kept the petroleum and the gun cotton for blasting the ice, and the hold forward for the men’s provisions in hermetically-sealed tins, and the hold aft for the dried fish and biscuit that were the food for the Siberian dogs, and the empty cage for the dogs themselves, which had just been sent up to the Zoo to be taken care of.
Last of all he showed me his own cabin, which interested me more than anything else, being such a snug little place (though I thought I should like to tidy it up a bit), with his medical outfit, his books, his bed like a shelf, and one pretty photograph of his mother’s cottage with the roses growing over it, that I almost felt as if I would not mind going to the Antarctic myself if I could live in such comfortable quarters.
Two hours passed in this way, though they had flown like five minutes, when the cabin-boy came to say that tea was served in the saloon, and then I skipped down to it as if the ship belonged to me. And no sooner had I screwed myself into the commander’s chair, which was fixed to the floor at the head of the narrow table, and found the tea-tray almost on my lap, than a wave of memory from our childhood came sweeping back on me, and I could not help giving way to the coquetry which lies hidden in every girl’s heart so as to find out how much Martin had been thinking of me.
“I’ll bet you anything,” I said, (I had caught Martin’s style) “you can’t remember where you and I first saw each other.”
He could — it was in the little dimity-white room in his mother’s house with its sweet-smelling “scraas” under the sloping thatch.
“Well, you don’t remember what you were doing when we held our first conversation?”
He did — he was standing on his hands with his feet against the wall and his inverted head close to the carpet.
“But you’ve forgotten what happened next?”
He hadn’t — I had invited William Rufus and himself into bed, and they had sat up on either side of me.
Poor William Rufus! I heard at last what had become of him. He had died of distemper soon after I was sent to school. His master had buried him in the back-garden, and, thinking I should be as sorry as he was for the loss of our comrade, he had set up a stone with an inscription in our joint names — all of his own inditing. It ran — he spelled it out to me —
“HERE LICE WILYAM ROOFUS WRECKTED
BY IZ OLE FRENS MARTIN CONRAD
AND MARY O’NEILL.”
Two big blinding beads came into my eyes at that story, but they were soon dashed away by Martin who saw them coming and broke into the vernacular. I broke into it, too, (hardly knowing that the well of my native speech was still there until I began to tap it), and we talked of Tommy the Mate and his “starboard eye,” called each other “bogh mulish,” said things were “middling,” spoke of the “threes” (trees) and the “tunder” (thunder), and remembered that “our Big Woman was a wicked devil and we wouldn’t trust but she’d burn in hell.”
How we laughed! We laughed at everything; we laughed at nothing; we laughed until we cried; but I have often thought since that this was partly because we knew in our secret hearts that we were always hovering on the edge of tragic things.
Martin never once mentioned my husband or my marriage, or his letters to my father, the Bishop and Father Dan, which had turned out so terribly true; but we had our serious moments for all that, and one of them was when we were bending over a large chart which he had spread out on the table to show me the course of the ship through the Great Unknown, leaning shoulder to shoulder, so close that our heads almost touched, and I could see myself in his eyes as he turned to speak to me.
“You were a little under the weather yesterday, shipmate — what was the cause of it?” he asked.
“Oh, we . . . we can talk of that another time, can’t we?” I answered, and then we both laughed again, goodness knows why, unless it was because we felt we were on the verge of unlocking the doors of each other’s souls.
Oh that joyful, wonderful, heart-swelling day! But no day ever passed so quickly. At half-past six Martin said we must be going back, or I should be late for dinner, and a few minutes afterwards we were in the launch, which had returned to fetch us.
I had had such a happy time on the ship that as we were steaming off I kissed my hand to her, whereupon Treacle, who was standing at the top of the companion, taking the compliment to himself, returned the salute with affectionate interest, which sent Martin and me into our last wild shriek of laughter.
The return trip was just as delightful as the coming out had been, everything looking different the other way round, for the sunset was like a great celestial fire which had been lighted in the western sky, and the big darkening city seemed to have turned its face to it.
Martin talked all the way back about a scheme he had afoot for going down to the region of the Pole again in order to set up some machinery that was to save life and otherwise serve humanity, and while I sat close up to him, looking into his flashing eyes — they were still as blue as the bluest sea — I said, again and again: “How splendid! How glorious! What a great, great thing it will be for the world.”
“Won’t it?” he said, and his eyes sparkled like a boy’s.
Thus the time passed without our being aware how it was going, and we were back at Westminster Pier before I bethought me that of the sad and serious subject I had intended to speak about I had said nothing at all.
But all London seemed to have been taking holiday that day, for as we drove in a taxi up Parliament Street streams of vehicles full of happy people were returning from the Derby, including costers’ donkey carts in which the girls were carrying huge boughs of May blossom, and the boys were wearing the girls’ feathery hats, and at the top of their lusty lungs they were waking the echoes of the stately avenue with the “Honeysuckle and the Bee.”
“Yew aw the enny, Oi em ther bee,
Oi’d like ter sip ther enny from those red lips, yew see.”
As we came near our hotel we saw a rather showy four-in-hand coach, called the “Phoebus,” drawing up at the covered way in front of it, and a lady on top, in a motor veil, waving her hand to us.
It was Alma, with my husband’s and Mr. Eastcliff’s party back from the races, and as soon as we met on the pavement she began to pay me high compliments on my improved appearance.
“Didn’t I say the river air would do you good, dearest?” she said, and then she added something else, which would have been very sweet if it had been meant sweetly, about there being no surer way to make a girl beautiful than to make her happy.
There was some talk of our dining together that night, but I excused myself, and taking leave of Martin, who gave my hand a gentle pressure, I ran upstairs without waiting for the lift, being anxious to get to my own room that I might be alone and go over everything in my mind.
I did so, ever so many times, recalling all that had been said and done by the commander and his comrades, and even by Treacle, but above all by Martin, and laughing softly to myself as I lived my day over again in a world of dream.
My maid came in once or twice, with accounts of the gorgeous Derby dinner that was going on downstairs, but that did not matter to me in the least, and as soon as I had swallowed a little food I went to bed early — partly in order to get rid of Price that I might go over everything again and yet again.
I must have done so far into the night, and even when the wings of my memory were weary of their fluttering and I was dropping off at last, I thought I heard Martin calling “shipmate,” and I said “Yes,” quite loud, as if he had been with me still in that vague and beautiful shadow-land which lies on the frontier of sleep.
How mysterious, how magical, how wonderful!
Looking back I cannot but think it strange that even down to that moment I did not really know what was happening to me, being only conscious of a great flood of joy. I cannot but think it strange that, though Nature had been whispering to me for months, I did not know what it had been saying. I cannot but think it strange that, though I had been looking for love so long without finding it, I did not recognise it immediately when it had come to me of itself.
But when I awoke early in the morning, very early, while the sunrise was filling my bedroom with a rosy flush, and the thought of Martin was the first that was springing from the mists of sleep to my conscious mind, and I was asking myself how it happened that I was feeling so glad, while I had so many causes for grief, then suddenly — suddenly as the sun streams through the cloud-scud over the sea — I knew that what had long been predestined had happened, that the wondrous new birth, the great revelation, the joyous mystery which comes to every happy woman in the world had come at last to me.
I was in love.
I was in love with Martin Conrad.
FIFTY-SECOND CHAPTER
My joy was short-lived. No sooner had I become aware that I loved Martin Conrad, than my conscience told me I had no right to do so. I was married, and to love another than my husband was sin.
It would be impossible to say with what terror this thought possessed me. It took all the sunlight out of my sky, which a moment before had seemed so bright. It came on me like a storm of thunder and lightning, sweeping my happiness into the abyss.
All my religion, everything I had been taught about the sanctity of the sacrament of marriage seemed to rise up and accuse me. It was not that I was conscious of any sin against my husband. I was thinking only of my sin against God.
The first effect was to make me realise that it was no longer possible for me to speak to Martin about my husband and Alma. To do this now that I knew I loved him would be deceitful, mean, almost treacherous.
The next effect was to make me see that all thought of a separation must now be given up. How could I accuse my husband when I was myself in the same position? If he loved another woman, I loved another man.
In my distress and fright I saw only one means of escape either from the filthy burden to which I was bound or the consciousness of a sinful heart, and that was to cure myself of my passion. I determined to do so. I determined to fight against my love for Martin Conrad, to conquer it and to crush it.
My first attempt to do this was feeble enough. It was an effort to keep myself out of the reach of temptation by refusing to see Martin alone.
For three or four days I did my best to carry out this purpose, making one poor excuse after another, when (as happened several times a day) he came down to see me — that I was just going out or had just come in, or was tired or unwell.
It was tearing my heart out to deny myself so, but I think I could have borne the pain if I had not realised that I was causing pain to him also.
My maid, whose head was always running on Martin, would come hack to my room, after delivering one of my lying excuses, and say:
“You should have seen his face, when I told him you were ill. It was just as if I’d driven a knife into him.”
Everybody seemed to be in a conspiracy to push me into Martin’s arms — Alma above all others. Being a woman she read my secret, and I could see from the first that she wished to justify her own conduct in relation to my husband by putting me into the same position with Martin.
“Seen Mr. Conrad to-day?” she would ask.
“Not to-day,” I would answer.
“Really? And you such old friends! And staying in the same hotel, too!”
When she saw that I was struggling hard she reminded my husband of his intention of asking Martin to dinner, and thereupon a night was fixed and a party invited.
Martin came, and I was only too happy to meet him in company, though the pain and humiliation of the contrast between him and my husband and his friends, and the difference of the atmosphere in which he lived from that to which I thought I was doomed for ever, was almost more than I could bear.
I think they must have felt it themselves, for though their usual conversation was of horses and dogs and race-meetings, I noticed they were silent while Martin in his rugged, racy poetic way (for all explorers are poets) talked of the beauty of the great Polar night, the cloudless Polar day, the midnight calm and the moonlight on the glaciers, which was the loveliest, weirdest, most desolate, yet most entrancing light the world could show.
“I wonder you don’t think of going back to the Antarctic, if it’s so fascinating,” said Alma.
“I do. Bet your life I do,” said Martin, and then he told them what he had told me on the launch, but more fully and even more rapturously — the story of his great scheme for saving life and otherwise benefiting humanity.
For hundreds of years man, prompted merely by the love of adventure, the praise of achievement, and the desire to know the globe he lived on, had been shouldering his way to the hitherto inviolable regions of the Poles; but now the time had come to turn his knowledge to account.
“How?” said my husband.
“By putting himself into such a position,” said Martin, “that he will be able to predict, six, eight, ten days ahead, the weather of a vast part of the navigable and habitable world — by establishing installations of wireless telegraphy as near as possible to the long ice-barrier about the Pole from which ice-floes and icebergs and blizzards come, so that we can say in ten minutes from the side of Mount Erebus to half the southern hemisphere, ‘Look out. It’s coming down,’ and thus save millions of lives from shipwreck, and hundreds of millions of money.”
“Splendid, by Jove!” said Mr. Eastcliff.
“Yes, ripping, by jingo!” said Mr. Vivian.
“A ridiculous dream!” muttered my husband, but not until Martin had gone, and then Alma, seeing that I was all aglow, said:
“What a lovely man! I wonder you don’t see more of him, Mary, my love. He’ll be going to the ends of the earth soon, and then you’ll be sorry you missed the chance.”
Her words hurt me like the sting of a wasp, but I could not resist them, and when some days later Martin called to take me to the Geographical Society, where his commander, Lieutenant —— was to give an account of their expedition, I could not find it in my heart to refuse to go.
Oh, the difference of this world from that in which I had been living for the past six months! All that was best in England seemed to be there, the men who were doing the work of the world, and the women who were their wives and partners.
The theatre was like the inside of a dish, and I sat by Martin’s side on the bottom row of seats, just in front of the platform and face to face with the commander.
His lecture, which was illustrated by many photographic lantern slides of the exploring party, (including the one that had been shown to me on the ship) was very interesting, but terribly pathetic; and when he described the hardships they had gone through in a prolonged blizzard on a high plateau, with food and fuel running low, and no certainty that they would ever see home again, I found myself feeling for Martin’s hand to make sure that he was there.
