Complete works of hall c.., p.533
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 533
With this offer of a reward came a description of my personal appearance.
“Age 20, a little under medium height; slight; very black hair; lustrous dark eyes; regular features; pale face; grave expression; unusually sunny smile.”
It would be impossible for me to say with what perturbation I heard these reports read out by the old colonel and the old clergyman. Even the nervous stirring of my spoon and the agitated clatter of my knife and fork made me wonder that my house-mates did not realise the truth, which must I thought, be plainly evident to all eyes.
They never did, being so utterly immersed in their own theories. But all the same I sometimes felt as if my fellow guests in that dingy house in Bloomsbury were my judges and jury, and more than once, in my great agitation, when the reports came near to the truth, I wanted to cry. “Stop, stop, don’t you see it is I?”
That I never did so was due to the fact that, not knowing what legal powers my father might have to compel my return to Ellan, the terror that sat on me like a nightmare was that of being made the subject of a public quarrel between my father and my husband, concerning the legitimacy of my unborn child, with the shame and disgrace which that would bring not only upon me but upon Martin.
I had some reason for this fear.
After my father’s offer of a reward there came various spiteful paragraphs (inspired, as I thought, by Alma and written by the clumsier hand of my husband) saying it was reported in Ellan that, if my disappearance was to be accounted for on the basis of flight, the only “shock” I could have experienced must be a shock of conscience, rumour having for some time associated my name with that of a person who was not unknown in connection with Antarctic exploration.
It was terrible.
Day by day the motive of my disappearance became the sole topic of conversation in our boarding-house. I think the landlady must have provided an evening as well as a morning paper, for at tea in the drawing-room upstairs the most recent reports were always being discussed.
After a while I realised that not only my house-mates but all London was discussing my disappearance.
It was a rule of our boarding-house that during certain hours of the day everybody should go out as if he had business to go to, and having nothing else to do I used to walk up and down the streets. In doing so I was compelled to pass certain newsvendors’ stalls, and I saw for several days that nearly every placard had something about “the missing peeress.”
When this occurred I would walk quickly along the thoroughfare with a sense of being pursued and the feeling which a nervous woman has when she is going down a dark corridor at night — that noiseless footsteps are coming behind, and a hand may at any moment be laid on her shoulder.
But nobody troubled me in the streets and the only person in our boarding-house who seemed to suspect me was our landlady. She said nothing, but when my lip was quivering while the old colonel read that cruel word about Martin I caught her little grey eyes looking aslant at me.
One afternoon, her sister, the milliner, came to see me according to her promise, and though she, too, said nothing, I saw that, while the old colonel and the old clergyman were disputing on the hearthrug about some disappearance which occurred thousands of years ago, she was looking fixedly at the fingers with which, in my nervousness, I was ruckling up the discoloured chintz of my chair.
Then in a moment — I don’t know why — it flashed upon me that my travelling companion was in correspondence with my father.
That idea became so insistent towards dinner-time that I made pretence of being ill (which was not very difficult) to retire to my room, where the cockney chambermaid wrung handkerchiefs out of vinegar and laid them on my forehead to relieve my headache — though she increased it, poor thing, by talking perpetually.
Next morning the landlady came up to say that if, as she assumed from my name, I was Irish and a Catholic, I might like to receive a visit from a Sister of Mercy who called at the house at intervals to attend to the sick.
I thought I saw in a moment that this was a subterfuge, but feeling that my identity was suspected I dared not give cause for further suspicion, so I compelled myself to agree.
A few minutes later, having got up and dressed, I was standing with my back to the window, feeling like one who would soon have to face an attack, when a soft footstep came up my corridor and a gentle hand knocked at my door.
“Come in,” I cried, trembling like the last leaf at the end of a swinging bough.
And then an astonishing thing happened.
A young woman stepped quietly into the room and closed the door behind her. She was wearing the black and white habit of the Little Sisters of the Poor, but I knew her long, pale, plain-featured face in an instant.
A flood of shame, and at the same time a flood of joy swept over me at the sight of her.
It was Mildred Bankes.
EIGHTY-FIRST CHAPTER
“Mary,” said Mildred, “speak low and tell me everything.”
She sat in my chair, I knelt by her side, took one of her hands in both of mine, and told her.
I told her that I had fled from my husband’s house because I could not bear to remain there any longer.
I told her that my father had married me against my will, in spite of my protests, when I was a child, and did not know that I had any right to resist him.
I told her that my father — God forgive me if I did him a wrong — did not love me, that he had sacrificed my happiness to his lust of power, and that if he were searching for me now it was only because my absence disturbed his plans and hurt his pride.
I told her that my husband did not love me either, and that he had married me from the basest motives, merely to pay his debts and secure an income.
I told her, too, that not only did my husband not love me, but he loved somebody else, that he had been cruel and brutal to me, and therefore (for these and other reasons) I could not return to him under any circumstances.
While I was speaking I felt Mildred’s hand twitching between mine, and when I had finished she said:
“But, my dear child, they told me your friends were broken-hearted about you; that you had lost your memory and perhaps your reason, and therefore it would be a good act to help them to send you home.”
“It’s not true, it’s not true,” I said.
And then in a low voice, as if afraid of being overheard, she told me how she came to be there — that the woman who had travelled with me in the train from Liverpool, seeing my father’s offer of a reward, had written to him to say that she knew where I was and only needed somebody to establish my identity; that my father wished to come to London for this purpose, but had been forbidden by his doctor; that our parish priest, Father Donovan, had volunteered to come instead, but had been prohibited by his Bishop; and finally that my father had written to his lawyers in London, and Father Dan to her, knowing that she and I had been together at the Sacred Heart in Rome, and that it was her work now to look after lost ones and send them safely back to their people.
“And now the lawyer and the doctors are downstairs,” she said in a whisper, “and they are only waiting for me to say who you are that they may apply for an order to send you home.”
This terrified me so much that I made a fervent appeal to Mildred to save me.
“Oh, Mildred, save me, save me,” I cried.
“But how can I? how can I?” she asked.
I saw what she meant, and thinking to touch her still more deeply I told her the rest of my story.
I told her that if I had fled from my husband’s house it was not merely because he had been cruel and brutal to me, but because I, too, loved somebody else — somebody who was far away but was coming back, and there was nothing I could not bear for him in the meantime, no pain or suffering or loneliness, and when he returned he would protect me from every danger, and we should love each other eternally.
If I had not been so wildly agitated I should have known that this was the wrong way with Mildred, and it was not until I had said it all in a rush of whispered words that I saw her eyes fixed on me as if they were about to start from their sockets.
“But, my dear, dear child,” she said, “this is worse and worse. Your father and your husband may have done wrong, but you have done wrong too. Don’t you see you have?”
I did not tell her that I had thought of all that before, and did not believe any longer that God would punish me for breaking a bond I had been forced to make. But when she was about to rise, saying that after all it would be a good thing to send me home before I had time to join my life to his — whoever he was — who had led me to forget my duty as a wife, I held her trembling hands and whispered:
“Wait, Mildred. There is something I have not told you even yet.”
“What is it?” she asked, but already I could see that she knew what I was going to say.
“Mildred,” I said, “if I ran away from my husband it was not merely because I loved somebody else, but because. . . .”
I could not say it. Do what I would I could not. But holy women like Mildred, who spend their lives among the lost ones, have a way of reading a woman’s heart when it is in trouble, and Mildred read mine.
“Do you mean that . . . that there are consequences . . . going to be?” she whispered.
“Yes.”
“Does your husband know?”
“Yes.”
“And your father?”
“No.”
Mildred drew her hand away from me and crossed herself, saying beneath her breath:
“Oh Mother of my God!”
I felt more humbled than I had ever been before, but after a while I said:
“Now you see why I can never go back. And you will save me, will you not?”
There was silence for some moments. Mildred had drawn back in her chair as if an evil spirit had passed between us But at length she said:
“It is not for me to judge you, Mary. But the gentlemen will come up soon to know if you are the Mary O’Neill whom I knew at the Sacred Heart, and what am I to say to them?”
“Say no,” I cried. “Why shouldn’t you? They’ll never know anything to the contrary. Nobody will know.”
“Nobody?”
I knew what Mildred meant, and in my shame and confusion I tried to excuse myself by telling her who the other woman was.
“It is Alma,” I said.
“Alma? Alma Lier?”
“Yes.”
And then I told her how Alma had come back into my life, how she had tortured and tempted me, and was now trying to persuade my husband, who was a Protestant, to divorce me that she might take my place.
And then I spoke of Martin again — I could not help it — saying that the shame which Alma would bring on him would be a greater grief to me than anything else that could befall me in this world.
“If you only knew who he is,” I said, “and the honour he is held in, you would know that I would rather die a thousand deaths than that any disgrace should fall on him through me.”
I could see that Mildred was deeply moved at this, and though I did not intend to play upon her feelings, yet in the selfishness of my great love I could not help doing so.
“You were the first of my girl friends, Mildred — the very first. Don’t you remember the morning after I arrived at school? They had torn me away from my mother, and I was so little and lonely, but you were so sweet and kind. You took me into church for my first visitation, and then into the garden for my first rosary — don’t you remember it?”
Mildred had closed her eyes. Her face was becoming very white.
“And then don’t you remember the day the news came that my mother was very ill, and I was to go home? You came to see me off at the station, and don’t you remember what you said when we were sitting in the train? You said we might never meet again, because our circumstances would be so different. You didn’t think we should meet like this, did you?”
Mildred’s face was growing deadly white.
“My darling mother died. She was all I had in the world and I was all she had, and when she was gone there was no place for me in my father’s house, so I was sent back to school. But the Reverend Mother was very kind to me, and the end of it was that I wished to become a nun. Yes indeed, and never so much as on the day you took your vows.”
Mildred’s eyes were still closed, but her eyelids were fluttering and she was breathing audibly.
“How well I remember it! The sweet summer morning and the snow-white sunshine, and the white flowers and the white chapel of the Little Sisters, and then you dressed as a bride in your white gown and long white veil. I cried all through the ceremony. And if my father had not come for me then, perhaps I should have been a nun like you now.”
Mildred’s lips were moving. I was sure she was praying to our Lady for strength to resist my pleading, yet that only made me plead the harder.
“But God knows best what our hearts are made for,” I said. “He knows that mine was made for love. And though you may not think it I know God knows that he who is away is my real husband — not the one they married me to. You will not separate us, will you? All our happiness — his and mine — is in your hands. You will save us, will you not?”
Some time passed before Mildred spoke. It may have been only a few moments, but to me it seemed like an eternity. I did not know then that Mildred was reluctant to extinguish the last spark of hope in me. At length she said:
“Mary, you don’t know what you are asking me to do. When I took my vows I promised to speak the truth under all circumstances, no matter what the consequences, as surely as I should answer to God at the great Day of Judgment. Yet you wish me to lie. How can I? How can I? Remember my vows, my duty.”
I think the next few minutes must have been the most evil of all my life. When I saw, or thought I saw, that, though one word would save me, one little word, Mildred intended to give me away to the men downstairs, I leapt to my feet and burst out on her with the bitterest reproaches.
“You religious women are always talking about your duty,” I cried. “You never think about love. Love is kind and merciful; but no, duty, always duty! Love indeed! What do you cold creatures out of the convent, with your crosses and rosaries, know about love — real love — the blazing fire in a woman’s heart when she loves somebody so much that she would give her heart’s blood for him — yes, and her soul itself if need be.”
What else I said I cannot remember, for I did not know what I was doing until I found myself looking out of the window and panting for breath.
Then I became aware that Mildred was making no reply to my reproaches, and looking over my shoulder I saw that she was still sitting in my chair with both her hands covering her face and the tears trickling through her fingers on to the linen of her habit.
That conquered me in a moment.
I was seized with such remorse that I wished to throw my arms about her neck and kiss her. I dared not do that, now, but I knelt by her side again and asked her to forgive me.
“Forgive me, sister,” I said. “I see now that God has brought us to this pass and there is no way out of it. You must do what you think is right. I shall always know you couldn’t have done otherwise. He will know too. And if it must be that disgrace is to fall on him through me . . . and that when he comes home he will find. . . .”
But I could not bear to speak about that, so I dropped my head on Mildred’s lap.
During the silence that followed we heard the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs.
“Listen! They’re here,” said Mildred. “Get up. Say nothing. Leave everything to me.”
I rose quickly and returned to the window. Mildred dried her eyes, got up from the chair and stood with her back to the fire-place.
There was a knock at my door. I do not know which of us answered it, but my landlady came into the room, followed by three men in tall silk hats.
“Excuse us, my dear,” she said, in an insincere voice. “These gentlemen are making an examination of the house, and they wish to see your room. May they?”
I do not think I made any reply. I was holding my breath and watching intently. The men made a pretence of glancing round, but I could see they were looking at Mildred. Their looks seemed to say as plainly as words could speak:
“Is it she?”
Mildred hesitated for a moment, there was a dreadful silence and then — may the holy Virgin bless her! — she shook her head.
I could bear no more. I turned back to the window. The men, who had looked at each other with expressions of surprise, tried to talk together in ordinary tones as if on common place subjects.
“So there’s nothing to do here, apparently.”
“Apparently not.”
“Let’s go, then. Good day, Sister. Sorry to have troubled you.”
I heard the door close behind them. I heard their low voices as they passed along the corridor. I heard their slow footsteps as they went down the stairs. And then, feeling as if my heart would burst, I turned to throw myself at Sister Mildred’s feet.
But Sister Mildred was on her knees, with her face buried in my bed, praying fervently.
EIGHTY-SECOND CHAPTER
I did not know then, and it seems unnecessary to say now, why my father gave up the search for me in London. He did so, and from the day the milliner’s clue failed him I moved about freely.
Then from the sense of being watched I passed into that of being lost.
Sister Mildred was my only friend in London, but she was practically cut off from me. The Little Sisters had fixed her up (in the interests of her work among the lost ones) in a tiny flat at the top of a lofty building near Piccadilly, where her lighted window always reminded me of a lighthouse on the edge of a dangerous reef. But in giving me her address she warned me not to come to her except in case of urgent need partly because further intercourse might discredit her denial, and partly because it would not be good for me to be called “one of Sister Veronica’s girls” — that being Mildred’s name as a nun.
