The Woman Thou Gavest Me; Being the Story of Mary O'Neill

Before I speak of what happened at school, I must say how and when I first became known to the doctor's boy.

It was during the previous Christmastide. On Christmas Eve I awoke in the dead of night with the sense of awakening in another world. The church-bells were ringing, and there was singing outside our house, under the window of my mother's room. After listening for a little while I made my voice as soft as I could and said:

"Mamma, what is it'?"

"Hush, dear! It is the Waits. Lie still and listen," said my mother.

I lay as long as my patience would permit, and then creeping over to the window I saw a circle of men and women, with lanterns, and the frosty air smoking about their red faces. After a while they stopped singing, and then the chain of our front door rattled, and I heard my father's loud voice asking the singers into the house.

They came in, and when I was back in bed, I heard them talking and then laughing in the room below, with Aunt Bridget louder than all the rest, and when I asked what she was doing my mother told me she was serving out bunloaf and sherry-wine.

I fell asleep before the incident was over, but as soon as I awoke in the morning I conceived the idea of singing the Waits myself. Being an artful little thing I knew that my plan would be opposed, so I said nothing about it, but I got my mother to play and sing the carol I had heard overnight, until my quick ear had mastered both tune and words, and when darkness fell on Christmas night I proceeded to carry out my intention.

In the heat of my impatience I forgot to put on cloak or hat, and stealing out of the house I found myself in the carriage drive with nothing on but a pair of thin slippers and the velvet frock that left my neck and arms so bare. It was snowing, and the snow-flakes were whirling round me and making me dizzy, for in the light from my mother's window they seemed to come up from the ground as well as down from the sky.

When I got out of the light of the window, it was very dark, and I could only see that the chestnuts in the drive seemed to have white blankets on them which looked as if they had been hung out to dry. It was a long time before I got to the gate, and then I had begun to be nervous and to have half a mind to turn back. But the thought of the bunloaf and the sherry-wine buoyed me up, and presently I found myself on the high road, crossing a bridge and turning down a lane that led to the sea, whose moaning a mile away was the only sound I could hear.

I knew quite well where I was going to. I was going to the doctor's house. It was called Sunny Lodge, and it was on the edge of Yellow Gorse Farm. I had seen it more than once when I had driven out in the carriage with my mother, and had thought how sweet it looked with its whitewashed walls and brown thatched roof and the red and white roses which grew over the porch.

I was fearfully cold before I got there. The snow was in my slippers and down my neck and among the thickening masses of my hair. At one moment I came upon some sheep and lambs that were sheltering under a hedge, and they bleated in the silence of the night.

But at last I saw the warm red windows of the doctor's cottage, and coming to the wicket gate, I pushed it open though it was clogged with snow, and stepped up to the porch. My teeth were now chattering with cold, but as well as I could I began to sing, and in my thin and creachy voice I had got as far as—

"Ch'ist was born in Bef-lem,
Ch'ist was born in Bef-lem,
Ch'ist was born in Bef-lem,
An' in a manger laid. . . ."

when I heard a rumbling noise inside the house.

Immediately afterwards the door was opened upon me, and a woman whom I knew to be the doctor's wife looked down into my face with an expression of bewilderment, and then cried:

"Goodness gracious me, doctor—if it isn't little Mary O'Neill, God bless her!"

"Bring her in at once, then," said the voice of Doctor Conrad from within, and at the next moment I found myself in a sort of kitchen-parlour which was warm with a glowing turf fire that had a kettle singing over it, and cosy and bright with a ragwork hearth-rug, a dresser full of blue pottery and a sofa settle covered with red cloth.

I suppose the sudden change to a warm room must have caused me to faint, for I have no recollection of what happened next, except that I was sitting on somebody's lap and that she was calling me boght millish (little sweet) and veg-veen (little dear) while she rubbed my half-frozen limbs and did other things that were, I am sure, all womanly and good.

When I came to myself Doctor Conrad was saying I would have to sleep there that night, and he must go over to the Big House and tell my mother what had happened. He went, and by the time he came back, I had been bathed in a dolly-tub placed in front of the fire, and was being carried upstairs (in a nightdress many sizes too large for me) to a little dimity-white bedroom, where the sweet smelling "scraas" under the sloping thatch of the roof came down almost to my face.

I know nothing of what happened during the night, except that I was feeling very hot, and that as often as I opened my eyes the doctor's wife was leaning over me and speaking in a soft voice that seemed far away. But next day I felt cooler and then Aunt Bridget came in her satin mantle and big black hat, and said something, while standing at the end of my bed, about people paying the penalty when they did things that were sly and underhand.

Towards evening I was much easier, and when the doctor came in to see me at night he said:

"How are we this evening? Ah, better, I see. Distinctly better!"

And then turning to his wife he said:

"No need to stay up with her to-night, Christian Ann."

"But won't the boght millish be afraid to be left alone?" she asked.

I said I shouldn't, and she kissed me and told me to knock at the wall if I wanted anything. And then, with her husband's arm about her waist, the good soul left me to myself.

I don't know how I knew, but I did know that that house was a home of love. I don't know how I knew, but I did know, that that sweet woman, who had been the daughter of a well-to-do man, had chosen the doctor out of all the men in the world when he was only a medical student fresh from Germany or Switzerland. I don't know how I knew, but I did know, that leaving father and mother and a sheltered home she had followed her young husband when he first came to Ellan without friends or connections, and though poor then and poor still, she had never regretted it. I don't know how I knew, but I did know, that all this was the opposite of what had happened to my own dear mother, who having everything yet had nothing, while this good creature having nothing yet had all.

When I awoke next morning the sun was shining, and, after my hair had been brushed smooth over my forehead, I was sitting up in bed, eating for breakfast the smallest of bantam eggs with the smallest of silver spoons, when the door opened with a bang and a small figure tumbled into my room.

It was a boy, two years older than myself. He wore a grey Norfolk jacket and knickerbockers, but the peculiarity of his dress was a white felt hat of enormous size, which, being soiled and turned down in the brim, and having a hole in the crown with a crop of his brown hair sticking through it, gave him the appearance of a damaged mushroom.

Except that on entering he tipped up his head so that I saw his face, which was far from beautiful and yet had two big blue eyes—as blue as the bluest sea—he took no notice of my presence, but tossed a somersault in the middle of the floor, screwed his legs over the back of a chair, vaulted over a table and finally stood on his hands with his legs against the wall opposite to my bed, and his inverted countenance close to the carpet.

In this position, in which he was clearly making a point of remaining as long as possible, while his face grew very red, we held our first conversation. I had hitherto sat propped up as quiet as a mouse, but now I said:

"Little boy, what's your name?"

"Mart," was the answer.

"Where do you come from?"

"Spitzbergen."

I cannot remember that this intelligence astonished me, for when the inverted face had become scarlet, and the legs went down and the head came up, and my visitor tossed several somersaults over the end of my bed, to the danger of my breakfast tray, and then, without a word more, tumbled out of the room, I was still watching in astonishment.

I did not know at that time that these were the ways which since the beginning of the world have always been employed by savages and boys when they desire to commend themselves to the female of their kind, so that when the doctor's wife came smiling upstairs I asked her if the little boy who had been to see me was not quite well.

"Bless you, yes, dear, but that's his way," she said, and then she told me all about him.

His name was Martin Conrad and he was her only child. His hat, which had awakened my interest, was an old one of his father's, and it was the last thing he took off when he undressed for bed at night and the first thing he put on in the morning. When the hole came into its crown his mother had tried to hide it away but he had always found it, and when she threw it into the river he had fished it out again.

He was the strangest boy, full of the funniest fancies. He used to say that before he was born he lived in a tree and was the fellow who turned on the rain. It was with difficulty that he could be educated, and every morning on being awakened, he said he was "sorry he ever started this going to school." As a consequence he could not read or write as well as other boys of his age, and his grammar was still that of the peasant people with whom he loved to associate.

Chief among these was our gardener, old Tommy the Mate, who lived in a mud cabin on the shore and passed the doctor's house on his way to work. Long ago Tommy had told the boy a tremendous story. It was about Arctic exploration and an expedition he had joined in search of Franklin. This had made an overpowering impression on Martin, who for mouths afterwards would stand waiting at the gate until Tommy was going by, and then say:

"Been to the North Pole to-day, Tommy?"

Whereupon Tommy's "starboard eye" would blink and he would answer:

"Not to-day boy. I don't go to the North Pole more nor twice a day now."

"Don't you, though?" the boy would say, and this would happen every morning.

But later on Martin conceived the idea that the North Pole was the locality immediately surrounding his father's house, and every day he would set out on voyages of exploration over the garden, the road and the shore, finding, by his own account, a vast world of mysterious things and undiscovered places. By some means—nobody knew how—the boy who could not learn his lessons studied his father's German atlas, and there was not a name in it north of Spitzbergen which he had not got by heart. He transferred them all to Ellan, so that the Sky Hill became Greenland, and the Black Head became Franz Josef Land, and the Nun's Well became Behring Strait, and Martha's Gullet became New Siberia, and St. Mary's Rock, with the bell anchored on it, became the pivot of the earth itself.

He could swim like a fish and climb a rock like a lizard, and he kept a log-book, on the back pages of the Doctor's book of visits, which he called his "diarrhea." And now if you lost him you had only to look up to the ridge of the roof, or perhaps on to the chimney stack, which he called his crow's nest, and there you found him, spying through his father's telescope and crying out:

"Look-out ahead! Ice floes from eighty-six latitude fourteen point north, five knots to the starboard bow."

His mother laughed until she cried when she told me all this, but there is no solemnity like that of a child, and to me it was a marvellous story. I conceived a deep admiration for the doctor's boy, and saw myself with eyes of worship walking reverently by his side. I suppose my poor lonely heart was hungering after comradeship, for being a sentimental little ninny I decided to offer myself to the doctor's boy as his sister.

The opportunity was dreadfully long in coming. It did not come until the next morning, when the door of my room flew open with a yet louder bang than before, and the boy entered in a soap-box on wheels, supposed to be a sledge, and drawn by a dog, an Irish terrier, which being red had been called William Rufus. His hat was tied over his ears with a tape from his mother's apron, and he wore a long pair of his father's knitted stockings which covered his boots and came up to his thighs.

He did not at first take any more notice of me than on the previous day, but steering his sledge round the room he shouted to his dog that the chair by the side of my bed was a glacier and the sheep-skin rug was floating ice.

After a while we began to talk, and then, thinking my time had come, I tried to approach my subject. Being such a clever little woman I went artfully to work, speaking first about my father, my mother, my cousin, Nessy MacLeod, and even Aunt Bridget, with the intention of showing how rich I was in relations, so that he might see how poor he was himself.

I felt myself a bit of a hypocrite in all this, but the doctor's boy did not know that, and I noticed that as I passed my people in review he only said "Is she any good?" or "Is he a stunner?"

At length my great moment came and with a fluttering heart I took it.

"Haven't you got a sister?" I said.

"Not me!" said the doctor's boy, with a dig of emphasis on the last word which cut me to the quick.

"Wouldn't you like to have one?"

"Sisters isn't no good," said the doctor's boy, and he instanced "chaps" at school—Jimmy Christopher and others—whose sisters were afraid of everything—lobsters and crabs and even the sea.

I knew I was as timid as a hare myself, but my lonely little heart was beginning to bleed, and as well as I could for my throat which was choking me, I said:

"I'm not afraid of the sea—not crabs neither."

In a moment the big mushroom hat was tipped aside and the sea-blue eyes looked aslant at me.

"Isn't you, though?"

"No."

That did it. I could see it did. And when a minute afterwards, I invited the doctor's boy into bed, he came in, stockings and all, and sat by my right side, while William Rufus, who had formed an instant attachment for me, lay on my left with his muzzle on my lap.

Later the same day, my bedroom door being open, so that I might call downstairs to the kitchen, I heard the doctor's boy telling his mother what I was. I was a "stunner."

From that day forward the doctor's boy considered that I belonged to him, but not until I was sent to school, with my cousin and her stepsister, did he feel called upon to claim his property.

It was a mixed day-school in the village, and it was controlled by a Board which had the village butcher as its chairman. The only teacher was a tall woman of thirty, who plaited her hair, which was of the colour of flax, into a ridiculous-looking crown on the top of her head. But her expression, I remember, was one of perpetual severity, and when she spoke through her thin lips she clipped her words with great rapidity, as if they had been rolls of bread which were being chopped in a charity school.

Afterwards I heard that she owed her position to Aunt Bridget, who had exercised her influence through the chairman, by means of his account with the Big House. Perhaps she thought it her duty to display her gratitude. Certainly she lost no time in showing me that my character had gone to school before me, for in order that I might be directly under her eye, she placed me in the last seat in the lowest class, although my mother's daily teaching would have entitled me to go higher.

I dare say I was, as Father Dan used to say, as full of mischief as a goat, and I know I was a chatterbox, but I do not think I deserved the fate that followed.

One day, not more than a week after we had been sent to school. I held my slate in front of my face while I whispered something to the girl beside and the girl behind me. Both began to titter.

"Silence!" cried the schoolmistress, who was sitting at her desk, but I went on whispering and the girls began to choke with laughter.

I think the schoolmistress must have thought I was saying something about herself—making game, perhaps, of her personal appearance—for after a moment she said, in her rapid accents:

"Mary O'Neill, please repeat what you have just been saying."

I held my slate yet closer to my face and made no answer.

"Don't you hear, miss? Speak! You've a tongue in your head, haven't you?"

But still I did not answer, and then the schoolmistress said:

"Mary O'Neill, come forward."

She had commanded me like a dog, and like a dog I was about to obey when I caught sight of Betsy Beauty's face, which, beaming with satisfaction, seemed to be saying: "Now, we shall see."

I would not stir after that, and the schoolmistress, leaving her desk, came towards me, and looking darkly into my face, said:

"You wilful little vixen, do you think you can trifle with me? Come out, miss, this very moment."

I knew where that language came from, so I made no movement.

"Don't you hear? Or do you suppose that because you are pampered and spoiled by a foolish person at home, you can defy me?"

That reflection on my mother settled everything. I sat as rigid as a rock.

Then pale as a whitewashed wall, and with her thin lips tightly compressed, the schoolmistress took hold of me to drag me out of my seat, but with my little nervous fingers I clung to the desk in front of me, and as often as she tore one of my hands open the other fixed itself afresh.

"You minx! We'll see who's mistress here. . . . Will none of you big girls come and help me?"

With the utmost alacrity one big girl from a back bench came rushing to the schoolmistress' assistance. It was Nessy MacLeod, and together, after a fierce struggle, they tore me from my desk, like an ivy branch from a tree, and dragged me into the open space in front of the classes. By this time the schoolmistress' hands, and I think her neck were scratched, and from that cause also she was quivering with passion.

"Stand there, miss," she said, "and move from that spot at your peril."

My own fury was now spent, and in the dead silence which had fallen on the entire school, I was beginning to feel the shame of my ignominious position.

"Children," cried the schoolmistress, addressing the whole of the scholars, "put down your slates and listen."

Then, as soon as she had recovered her breath she said, standing by my side and pointing down to me:

"This child came to school with the character of a wilful, wicked little vixen, and she has not belied her character. By gross disobedience she has brought herself to where you see her. 'Spare the rod, spoil the child,' is a scriptural maxim, and the foolish parents who ruin their children by overindulgence deserve all that comes to them. But there is no reason why other people should suffer, and, small as this child is she has made the life of her excellent aunt intolerable by her unlovable, unsociable, and unchildlike disposition. Children, she was sent to school to be corrected of her faults, and I order you to stop your lessons while she is publicly punished. . . ."

With this parade of the spirit of justice, the schoolmistress stepped back and left me. I knew what she was doing—she was taking her cane out of her desk which stood by the wall. I heard the desk opened with an impatient clash and then closed with an angry bang. I was as sure as if I had had eyes in the back of my head, that the schoolmistress was holding the cane in both hands and bending it to see if it was lithe and limber.

I felt utterly humiliated. Standing there with all eyes upon me I was conscious of the worst pain that enters into a child's experience—the pain of knowing that other children are looking upon her degradation. I thought of Aunt Bridget and my little heart choked with anger. Then I thought of my mother and my throat throbbed with shame. I remembered what my mother had said, of her little Mary being always a little lady, and I felt crushed at the thought that I was about to be whipped before all the village children.

At home I had been protected if only by my mother's tears, but here I was alone, and felt myself to be so little and helpless. But just as my lip was beginning to drop, at the thought of what my mother would suffer if she saw me in this position of infamy, and I was about to cry out to the schoolmistress: "Don't beat me! Oh! please don't beat me!" a strange thing happened, which turned my shame into surprise and triumph.

Through the mist which had gathered before my eyes I saw a boy coming out of the boys' class at the end of the long room. It was Martin Conrad, and I remember that he rolled as he walked like old Tommy the gardener. Everybody saw him, and the schoolmistress said in her sharp voice:

"Martin Conrad, what right have you to leave your place without permission? Go back, sir, this very moment."

Instead of going back Martin came on, and as he did so he dragged his big soft hat out of the belt of his Norfolk jacket and with both hands pulled it down hard on his head.

"Go back, sir!" cried the schoolmistress, and I saw her step towards him with the cane poised and switching in the air, as if about to strike.

The boy said nothing, but just shaking himself like a big dog he dropped his head and butted at the schoolmistress as she approached him, struck her somewhere in the waist and sent her staggering and gasping against the wall.

Then, without a word, he took my hand, as something that belonged to him, and before the schoolmistress could recover her breath, or the scholars awake from their astonishment, he marched me, as if his little stocky figure had been sixteen feet tall, in stately silence out of the school.

I was never sent back to school, and I heard that Martin, by order of the butcher, was publicly expelled. This was a cause of distress to our mothers, who thought the future of our lives had been permanently darkened, but I cannot say that it ever stood between us and our sunshine. On the contrary it occurred that—Aunt Bridget having washed her hands of me, and Martin's father being unable to make up his mind what to do with him—we found ourselves for some time at large and were nothing loth to take advantage of our liberty, until a day came which brought a great disaster.

One morning I found Martin with old Tommy the Mate in his potting-shed, deep in the discussion of their usual subject—the perils and pains of Arctic exploration, when you have little food in your wallet and not too much in your stomach.

"But you has lots of things when you gets there—hams and flitches and oranges and things—hasn't you?" said Martin.

"Never a ha'p'orth," said Tommy. "Nothing but glory. You just takes your Alping stock and your sleeping sack and your bit o' biscuit and away you go over crevaxes deeper nor Martha's gullet and mountains higher nor Mount Blank and never think o' nothing but doing something that nobody's never done before. My goodness, yes, boy, that's the way of it when you're out asploring. 'Glory's waiting for me' says you, and on you go."

At that great word I saw Martin's blue eyes glisten like the sea when the sun is shining on it; and then, seeing me for the first time, he turned back to old Tommy and said:

"I s'pose you lets women go with you when you're out asploring—women and girls?"

"Never a woman," said Tommy.

"Not never—not if they're stunners?" said Martin.

"Well," says Tommy, glancing down at me, while his starboard eye twinkled, "I won't say never—not if they're stunners."

Next day Martin, attended by William Rufus, arrived at our house with a big corn sack on his shoulder, a long broom-handle in his hand, a lemonade bottle half filled with milk, a large sea biscuit and a small Union Jack which came from the confectioner's on the occasion of his last birthday.

"Glory's waiting for me—come along, shipmate," he said in a mysterious whisper, and without a word of inquiry, I obeyed.

He gave me the biscuit and I put it in the pocket of my frock, and the bottle of milk, and I tied it to my belt, and then off we went, with the dog bounding before us.

I knew he was going to the sea, and my heart was in my mouth, for of all the things I was afraid of I feared the sea most—a terror born with me, perhaps, on the fearful night of my birth. But I had to live up to the character I had given myself when Martin became my brother, and the one dread of my life was that, finding me as timid as other girls, he might want me no more.

We reached the sea by a little bay, called Murphy's Mouth, which had a mud cabin that stood back to the cliff and a small boat that was moored to a post on the shore. Both belonged to Tommy the Mate, who was a "widow man" living alone, and therefore there were none to see us when we launched the boat and set out on our voyage. It was then two o'clock in the afternoon, the sun was shining, and the tide, which was at the turn, was beginning to flow.

I had never been in a boat before, but I dared not say anything about that, and after Martin had fixed the bow oar for me and taken the stroke himself, I spluttered and plunged and made many blunders. I had never been on the sea either, and almost as soon as we shot clear of the shore and were lifted on to the big waves, I began to feel dizzy, and dropped my oar, with the result that it slipped through the rollocks and was washed away. Martin saw what had happened as we swung round to his rowing, but when I expected him to scold me, he only said:

"Never mind, shipmate! I was just thinking we would do better with one," and, shipping his own oar in the stern of the boat, he began to scull.

My throat was hurting me, and partly from shame and partly from fear, I now sat forward, with William Rufus on my lap, and said as little as possible. But Martin was in high spirits, and while his stout little body rolled to the rocking of the boat he whistled and sang and shouted messages to me over his shoulder.

"My gracious! Isn't this what you call ripping?" he cried, and though my teeth were chattering, I answered that it was.

"Some girls—Jimmy Christopher's sister and Nessy MacLeod and Betsy Beauty—would be frightened to come asploring, wouldn't they?"

"Wouldn't they?" I said, and I laughed, though I was trembling down to the soles of my shoes.

We must have been half an hour out, and the shore seemed so far away that Murphy's Mouth and Tommy's cabin and even the trees of the Big House looked like something I had seen through the wrong end of a telescope, when he turned his head, with a wild light in his eyes, and said:

"See the North Pole out yonder?"

"Don't I?" I answered, though I was such a practical little person, and had not an ounce of "dream" in me.

I knew quite well where he was going to. He was going to St. Mary's Rock, and of all the places on land or sea, it was the place I was most afraid of, being so big and frowning, an ugly black mass, standing twenty to thirty feet out of the water, draped like a coffin in a pall, with long fronds of sea-weed, and covered, save at high water, by a multitude of hungry sea-fowl.

A white cloud of the birds rose from their sleep as we approached, and wheeled and whistled and screamed and beat their wings over our heads. I wanted to scream too, but Martin said:

"My gracious, isn't this splendiferous?"

"Isn't it?" I answered, and, little hypocrite that I was, I began to sing.

I remember that I sang one of Tommy's sailor-songs, "Sally," because its jolly doggerel was set to such a jaunty tune—

"Oh Sally's the gel for me,
Our Sally's the gel for me,
I'll marry the gel that I love best
When I come back from sea."

My pretence of happiness was shortlived, for at the next moment I made another mistake. Drawing up his boat to a ledge of the rock, and laying hold of our painter, Martin leapt ashore, and then held out his hand to me to follow him, but in fear of a big wave I held back when I ought to have jumped, and he was drenched from head to foot. I was ashamed, and thought he would have scolded me, but he only shook himself and said:

"That's nothing! We don't mind a bit of wet when we're out asploring."

My throat was hurting me again and I could not speak, but without waiting for me to answer he coiled the rope about my right arm, and told me to stay where I was, and hold fast to the boat, while he climbed the rock and took possession of it in the name of the king.

"Do or die we allus does that when we're out asploring," he said, and with his sack over his shoulder, his broom-handle in his hand and his little Union Jack sticking out of the hole in the crown of his hat, he clambered up the crag and disappeared over the top of it.

Being left alone, for the dog had followed him, my nervousness increased tenfold, and thinking at last that the rising tide was about to submerge the ledge on which I stood, I tried in my fright to climb the cliff. But hardly had I taken three steps when my foot slipped and I clutched the seaweed to save myself from falling, with the result that the boat's rope slid from my arm, and went rip-rip-ripping down the rock until it fell with a splash into the sea.

I saw what I had done, and I screamed, and then Martin's head appeared after a moment on the ledge above me. But it was too late for him to do anything, for the boat had already drifted six yards away, and just when I thought he would have shrieked at me for cutting off our only connection with the shore, he said:

"Never mind, shipmate! We allus expecs to lose a boat or two when we're out asploring."

I was silent from shame, but Martin, having hauled me up the rock by help of the broom handle, rattled away as if nothing had happened—pointing proudly to a rust-eaten triangle with a bell suspended inside of it and his little flag floating on top.

"But, oh dear, what are we to do now?" I whimpered.

"Don't you worrit about that," he said. "We'll just signal back to the next base—we call them bases when we're out asploring."

I understood from this that he was going to ring the bell which, being heard on the land, would bring somebody to our relief. But the bell was big, only meant to be put in motion on stormy nights by the shock and surging of an angry sea, and when Martin had tied a string to its tongue it was a feeble sound he struck from it.

Half an hour passed, an hour, two hours, and still I saw nothing on the water but our own empty boat rocking its way back to the shore.

"Will they ever come?" I faltered.

"Ra—ther! Just you wait and you'll see them coming. And when they take us ashore there'll be crowds and crowds with bugles and bands and things to take us home. My goodness, yes," he said, with the same wild look, "hundreds and tons of them!"

But the sun set over the sea behind us, the land in front grew dim, the moaning tide rose around the quaking rock and even the screaming sea-fowl deserted us, and still there was no sign of relief. My heart was quivering through my clothes by this time, but Martin, who had whistled and sung, began to talk about being hungry.

"My goodness yes, I'm that hungry I could eat. . . . I could eat a dog—we allus eats our dogs when we're out asploring."

This reminded me of the biscuit, but putting my hand to the pocket of my frock I found to my dismay that it was gone, having fallen out, perhaps, when I slipped in my climbing. My lip fell and I looked up at him with eyes of fear, but he only said:

"No matter! We never minds a bit of hungry when we're out asploring."

I did not know then, what now I know, that my little boy who could not learn his lessons and had always been in disgrace, was a born gentleman, but my throat was thick and my eyes were swimming and to hide my emotion I pretended to be ill.

"I know," said Martin. "Dizzingtory! [dysentery]. We allus has dizzingtory when we're out asploring."

There was one infallible cure for that, though—milk!

"I allus drinks a drink of milk, and away goes the dizzingtory in a jiffy."

This recalled the bottle, but when I twisted it round on my belt, hoping to make amends for the lost biscuit, I found to my confusion that it had suffered from the same misadventure, being cracked in the bottom, and every drop of the contents gone.

That was the last straw, and the tears leapt to my eyes, but Martin went on whistling and singing and ringing the big bell as if nothing had happened.

The darkness deepened, the breath of night came sweeping over the sea, the boom of the billows on the rock became still more terrible, and I began to shiver.

"The sack!" cried Martin. "We allus sleeps in sacks when we're out asploring."

I let him do what he liked with me now, but when he had packed me up in the sack, and put me to lie at the foot of the triangle, telling me I was as right as ninepence, I began to think of something I had read in a storybook, and half choking with sobs I said:

"Martin!"

"What now, shipmate?"

"It's all my fault . . . and I'm just as frightened as Jimmy Christopher's sister and Nessy MacLeod and Betsy Beauty . . . and I'm not a stunner . . . and you'll have to give me up . . . and leave me here and save yourself and . . ."

But Martin stopped me with a shout and a crack of laughter.

"Not me! Not much! We never leaves a pal when we're out asploring. Long as we lives we never does it. Not never!"

That finished me. I blubbered like a baby, and William Rufus, who was sitting by my side, lifted his nose and joined in my howling.

What happened next I never rightly knew. I was only aware, though my back was to him, that Martin, impatient of his string, had leapt up to the bell and was swinging his little body from the tongue to make a louder clamour. One loud clang I heard, and then came a crash and a crack, and then silence.

"What is it?" I cried, but at first there was no answer.

"Have you hurt yourself?"

And then through the thunderous boom of the rising sea on the rock, came the breaking voice of my boy (he had broken his right arm) mingled with the sobs which his unconquered and unconquerable little soul was struggling to suppress—

"We never minds a bit of hurt . . . we never minds nothing when we're out asploring!"

Meantime on shore there was a great commotion. My father was railing at Aunt Bridget, who was upbraiding my mother, who was crying for Father Dan, who was flying off for Doctor Conrad, who was putting his horse into his gig and scouring the parish in search of the two lost children.

But Tommy the Mate, who remembered the conversation in the potting-shed and thought he heard the tinkle of a bell at sea, hurried off to the shore, where he found his boat bobbing on the beach, and thereby came to his own conclusions.

By the light of a lantern he pulled out to St. Mary's Rock, and there, guided by the howling of the dog, he came upon the great little explorers, hardly more than three feet above high water, lying together in the corn sack, locked in each other's arms and fast asleep.

There were no crowds and bands of music waiting for us when Tommy brought us ashore, and after leaving Martin with his broken limb in his mother's arms at the gate of Sunny Lodge, he took me over to the Presbytery in order that Father Dan might carry me home and so stand between me and my father's wrath and Aunt Bridget's birch.

Unhappily there was no need for this precaution. The Big House, when we reached it, was in great confusion. My mother had broken a blood vessel.

During the fortnight in which my mother was confined to bed I was her constant companion and attendant. With the mighty eagerness of a child who knew nothing of what the solemn time foreboded I flew about the house on tiptoe, fetching my mother's medicine and her milk and the ice to cool it, and always praising myself for my industry and thinking I was quite indispensable.

"You couldn't do without your little Mally, could you, mammy?" I would say, and my mother would smooth my hair lovingly with her thin white hand and answer:

"No, indeed, I couldn't do without my little Mally." And then my little bird-like beak would rise proudly in the air.

All this time I saw nothing of Martin, and only heard through Doctor Conrad in his conversations with my mother, that the boy's broken arm had been set, and that as soon as it was better, he was to be sent to King George's College, which was at the other end of Ellan. What was to be done with myself I never inquired, being so satisfied that my mother could not get on without me.

I was partly aware that big letters, bearing foreign postage-stamps and seals and coats of arms, with pictures of crosses and hearts, were coming to our house. I was also aware that at intervals, while my mother was in bed, there was the sound of voices, as if in eager and sometimes heated conference, in the room below, and that my mother would raise her pale face from her pillow and stop my chattering with "Hush!" when my father's voice was louder and sterner than usual. But it never occurred to me to connect these incidents with myself, until the afternoon of the day on which my mother got up for the first time.

She was sitting before the fire, for autumn was stealing on, and I was bustling about her, fixing the rug about her knees and telling her if she wanted anything she was to be sure and call her little Mally, when a timid knock came to the door and Father Dan entered the room. I can see his fair head and short figure still, and hear his soft Irish voice, as he stepped forward and said:

"Now don't worry, my daughter. Above all, don't worry."

By long experience my mother knew this for a sign of the dear Father's own perturbation, and I saw her lower lip tremble as she asked:

"Hadn't Mary better run down to the garden?"

"No! Oh no!" said Father Dan. "It is about Mary I come to speak, so our little pet may as well remain."

Then at a signal from my mother I went over to her and stood by her side, and she embraced my waist with a trembling arm, while the Father took a seat by her side, and, fumbling the little silver cross on his chain, delivered his message.

After long and anxious thought—and he might say prayer—it had been decided that I should be sent away to a Convent. It was to be a Convent of the Sacred Heart in Rome. He was to take me to Rome himself and see me safely settled there. And they (meaning my father and Aunt Bridget) had promised him—faithfully promised him—that when the holidays came round he should be sent to bring me home again. So there was nothing to fear, nothing to worry about, nothing to . . . to . . .

My mother listened as long as she could, and then—her beautiful white face distorted by pain—she broke in on the Father's message with a cry of protest.

"But she is so young! Such a child! Only seven years old! How can any one think of sending such a little one away from home?"

Father Dan tried to pacify her. It was true I was very young, but then the Reverend Mother was such a good woman. She would love me and care for me as if I were her own child. And then the good nuns, God bless their holy souls. . . .

"But Mary is all I have," cried my mother, "and if they take her away from me I shall be broken-hearted. At such a time too! How cruel they are! They know quite well what the doctor says. Can't they wait a little longer?"

I could see that Father Dan was arguing against himself, for his eyes filled as he said:

"It's hard, I know it's hard for you, my daughter. But perhaps it's best for the child that she should go away from home—perhaps it's all God's blessed and holy will. Remember there's a certain person here who isn't kind to our little innocent, and is making her a cause of trouble. Not that I think she is actuated by evil intentions. . . ."

"But she is, she is," cried my mother, who was growing more and more excited.

"Then all the more reason why Mary should go to the convent—for a time at all events."

My mother began to waver, and she said:

"Let her be sent to a Convent in the island then."

"I thought of that, but there isn't one," said Father Dan.

"Then . . . then . . . then take her to the Presbytery," said my mother. "Dear, dear Father," she pleaded, "let her live with you, and have somebody to teach her, and then she can come to see me every day, or twice a week, or even once a week—I am not unreasonable."

"It would be beautiful," said Father Dan, reaching over to touch my arm. "To have our little Mary in my dull old house would be like having the sun there always. But there are reasons why a young girl should not be brought up in the home of a priest, so it is better that our little precious should go to Rome."

My mother was breaking down and Father Dan followed up his advantage.

"Then wisha, my daughter, think what a good thing it will be for the child. She will be one of the children of the Infant Jesus first, then a child of Mary, and then of the Sacred heart itself. And then remember, Rome! The holy city! The city of the Holy Father! Why, who knows, she may even see himself some day!"

"Yes, yes, I know," said my mother, and then turning with her melting eyes to me she said:

"Would my Mary like to go—leaving her mamma but coming home in the holidays—would she?"

I was going to say I would not, because mamma could not possibly get on without me, but before I could reply Aunt Bridget, with her bunch of keys at her waist, came jingling into the room, and catching my mother's last words, said, in her harsh, high-pitched voice.

"Isabel! You astonish me! To defer to the will of a child! Such a child too! So stubborn and spoiled and self-willed! If we say it is good for her to go she must go!"

I could feel through my mother's arm, which was still about my waist, that she was trembling from head to foot, but at first she did not speak and Aunt Bridget, in her peremptory way, went on:

"We say it is good for you, too, Isabel, if she is not to hasten your death by preying on your nerves and causing you to break more blood vessels. So we are consulting your welfare as well as the girl's in sending her away."

My mother's timid soul could bear no more. I think it must have been the only moment of anger her gentle spirit ever knew, but, gathering all her strength, she turned upon Aunt Bridget in ungovernable excitement.

"Bridget," she said, "you are doing nothing of the kind. You know you are not. You are only trying to separate me from my child and my child from me. When you came to my house I thought you would be kinder to my child than a anybody else, but you have not been, you have been cruel to her, and shut your heart against her, and while I have been helpless here, and in bed, you have never shown her one moment of love and kindness. No, you have no feeling except for your own, and it never occurs to you that having brought your own child into my house you are trying to turn my child out of it."

"So that's how you look at it, is it?" said Aunt Bridget, with a flash of her cold grey eyes. "I thought I came to this house—your house as you call it—only out of the best intentions, just to spare you trouble when you were ill and unable, to attend to your duties as a wife. But because I correct your child when she is wilful and sly and wicked. . . ."

"Correct your own child, Bridget O'Neill!" cried my mother, "and leave mine to me. She's all I have and it isn't long I shall have her. You know quite well how much she has cost me, and that I haven't had a very happy married life, but instead of helping me with her father. . . ."

"Say no more," said Aunt Bridget, "we don't want you to hurt yourself again, and to allow this ill-conditioned child to be the cause of another hemorrhage."

"Bridget O'Neill," cried my mother, rising up from her chair, "you are a hard-hearted woman with a bad disposition. You know as well as I do that it wasn't Mary who made me ill, but you—you, who reproached me and taunted me about my child until my heart itself had to bleed. For seven years you have been doing that, and now you are disposing of my darling over my head without consulting me. Has a mother no rights in her own child—the child she has suffered for, and loved and lived for—that other people who care nothing for it should take it away from her and send it into a foreign country where she may never see it again? But you shall not do that! No, you shall not'! As long as there's breath in my body you shall not do it, and if you attempt. . . ."

In her wild excitement my mother had lifted one of her trembling hands into Aunt Bridget's face while the other was still clasped about me, when suddenly, with a look of fear on her face, she stopped speaking. She had heard a heavy step on the stairs. It was my father. He entered the room with his knotty forehead more compressed than usual and said:

"What's this she shall not do?"

My mother dropped back into her seat in silence, and Aunt Bridget, wiping' her eyes on her black apron—she only wept when my father was present—proceeded to explain.

It seems I am a hard-hearted woman with a bad disposition and though, I've been up early and late and made myself a servant for seven years I'm only in this house to turn my sister's child out of it. It seems too, that we have no business—none of us have—to say what ought to be done for this girl—her mother being the only person who has any rights in the child, and if we attempt . . ."

"What's that?"

In his anger and impatience my father could listen no longer and in his loud voice he said:

"Since when has a father lost control of his own daughter? He has to provide for her, hasn't he? If she wants anything it's to him she has to look for it, isn't it? That's the law I guess, eh? Always has been, all the world over. Then what's all this hustling about?"

My mother made a feeble effort to answer him.

"I was only saying, Daniel . . ."

"You were saying something foolish and stupid. I reckon a man can do what he likes with his own, can't he? If this girl is my child and I say she is to go somewhere, she is to go." And saying this my father brought down his thick hand with a thump on to a table.

It was the first time he had laid claim to me, and perhaps that acted on my mother, as she said, submissively:

"Very well, dear. You know best what is best for Mary, and if you say—you and Bridget and . . . and Father Dan. . . ."

"I do say, and that's enough. So just go to work and fix up this Convent scheme without future notice. And hark here, let me see for the future if a man can't have peace from these two-cent trifles for his important business."

My mother was crushed. Her lips moved again, but she said nothing aloud, and my father turned on his heel, and left the room, shaking the floor at every step under the weight of his sixteen stone. At the next moment, Aunt Bridget, jingling her keys, went tripping after him.

Hardly had they gone when my mother broke into a long fit of coughing, and when it was over she lay back exhausted, with her white face and her tired eyes turned upwards. Then I clasped her about the neck, and Father Dan, whose cheeks were wet with tears patted her drooping hand.

My darling mother! Never once have I thought of her without the greatest affection, but now that I know for myself what she must have suffered I love best to think of her as she was that day—my sweet, beautiful, timid angel—standing up for one brief moment, not only against Aunt Bridget, but against the cruelty of all the ages, in the divine right of her outraged motherhood.

My mother's submission was complete. Within twenty-four hours she was busy preparing clothes for my journey to Rome. The old coloured pattern book was brought out again, material was sent for, a sewing-maid was engaged from the village, and above all, in my view, an order was dispatched to Blackwater for a small squirrel-skin scarf, a large squirrel-skin muff, and a close-fitting squirrel-skin hat with a feather on the side of it.

A child's heart is a running brook, and it would wrong the truth to say that I grieved much in the midst of these busy preparations. On the contrary I felt a sort of pride in them, poor innocent that I was, as in something that gave me a certain high superiority over Betsy Beauty and Nessy MacLeod, and entitled me to treat them with condescension.

Father Dan, who came more frequently than ever, fostered this feeling without intending to do so, by telling me, whenever we were alone, that I must be a good girl to everybody now, and especially to my mother.

"My little woman would be sorry to worry mamma, wouldn't she?" he would whisper, and when I answered that I would be sorrier than sorry, he would say:

"Wisha then, she must be brave. She must keep up. She must not grieve about going away or cry when the time comes for parting."

I said "yes" and "yes" to all this, feeling very confidential and courageous, but I dare say the good Father gave the same counsel to my mother also, for she and I had many games of make-believe, I remember, in which we laughed and chattered and sang, though I do not think I ever suspected that the part we played was easier to me than to her.

It dawned on me at last, though, when in the middle of the night, near to the time of my going away, I was awakened by a bad fit of my mother's coughing, and heard her say to herself in the deep breathing that followed:

"My poor child! What is to become of her?"

Nevertheless all went well down to the day of my departure. It had been arranged that I was to sail to Liverpool by the first of the two daily steamers, and without any awakening I leapt out of bed at the first sign of daylight. So great was my delight that I began to dance in my nightdress to an invisible skipping rope, forgetting my father, who always rose at dawn and was at breakfast in the room below.

My mother and I breakfasted in bed, and then there was great commotion. It chiefly consisted for me in putting on my new clothes, including my furs, and then turning round and round on tiptoe and smiling at myself in a mirror. I was doing this while my mother was telling me to write to her as often as I was allowed, and while she knelt at her prayer stool, which she used as a desk, to make a copy of the address for my letters.

Then I noticed that the first line of her superscription "Mrs. Daniel O'Neill" was blurred by the tears that were dropping from her eyes, and my throat began to hurt me dreadfully. But I remembered what Father Dan had told me to do, so I said:

"Never mind, mammy. Don't worry—I'll be home for the holidays."

Soon afterwards we heard the carriage wheels passing under the window, and then Father Dan came up in a white knitted muffler, and with a funny bag which he used for his surplice at funerals, and said, through a little cloud of white breath, that everything was ready.

I saw that my mother was turning round and taking out her pocket-handkerchief, and I was snuffling a little myself, but at a sign from Father Dan, who was standing at the threshold. I squeezed back the water in my eyes and cried:

"Good-bye mammy. I'll be back for Christmas," and then darted across to the door.

I was just passing through it when I heard my mother say "Mary" in a strange low voice, and I turned and saw her—I can see her still—with her beautiful pale face all broken up, and her arms held out to me.

Then I rushed back to her, and she clasped me to her breast crying, "Mally veen! My Mally veen!" and I could feel her heart beating through her dress and hear the husky rattle in her throat, and then all our poor little game of make-believe broke down utterly.

At the next moment my father was calling upstairs that I should be late for the steamer, so my mother dried her own eyes and then mine, and let me go.

Father Dan was gone when I reached the head of the stairs but seeing Nessy MacLeod and Betsy Beauty at the bottom of them I soon recovered my composure, and sailing down in my finery I passed them in stately silence with my little bird-like head in the air.

I intended to do the same with Aunt Bridget, who was standing with a shawl over her shoulders by the open door, but she touched me and said:

"Aren't you going to kiss me good-bye, then?"

"No," I answered, drawing my little body to its utmost height.

"And why not?"

"Because you've been unkind to mamma and cruel to me, and because you think there's nobody but Betsy Beauty. And I'll tell them at the Convent that you are making mamma ill, and you're as bad as . . . as bad as the bad women in the Bible!"

"My gracious!" said Aunt Bridget, and she tried to laugh, but I could see that her face became as white as a whitewashed wall. This did not trouble me in the least until I reached the carriage, when Father Dan, who was sitting inside, said:

"My little Mary won't leave home like that—without kissing her aunt and saying good-bye to her cousins."

So I returned and shook hands with Nessy MacLeod and Betsy Beauty, and lifted my little face to my Aunt Bridget.

"That's better," she said, after she had kissed me, but when I had passed her my quick little ear caught the words:

"Good thing she's going, though."

During this time my father, with the morning mist playing like hoar-frost about his iron-grey hair, had been tramping the gravel and saying the horses were getting cold, so without more ado he bundled me into the carriage and banged the door on me.

But hardly had we started when Father Dan, who was blinking his little eyes and pretending to blow his nose on his coloured print handkerchief, said, "Look!" and pointed up to my mother's room.

There she was again, waving and kissing her hand to me through her open window, and she continued to do so until we swirled round some trees and I lost the sight of her.

What happened in my mother's room when her window was closed I do not know, but I well remember that, creeping into a corner of the carriage. I forgot all about the glory and grandeur of going away, and that it did not help me to remember when half way down the drive a boy with a dog darted from under the chestnuts and raced alongside of us.

It was Martin, and though his right arm was in a sling, he leapt up to the step and held on to the open window by his left hand while he pushed his head into the carriage and made signs to me to take out of his mouth a big red apple which he held in his teeth by the stalk. I took it, and then he dropped to the ground, without uttering a word, and I could laugh now to think of the gruesome expression of his face with its lagging lower lip and bloodshot eyes. I had no temptation to do so then, however, and least of all when I looked back and saw his little one-armed figure in the big mushroom hat, standing on the top of the high wall of the bridge, with William Rufus beside him.

We reached Blackwater in good tithe for the boat, and when the funnels had ceased trumpeting and we were well away, I saw that we were sitting in one of two private cabins on the upper deck; and then Father Dan told me that the other was occupied by the young Lord Raa, and his guardian, and that they were going up together for the first time to Oxford.

I am sure this did not interest me in the least at that moment, so false is it that fate forewarns us when momentous events are about to occur. And now that I had time to think, a dreadful truth was beginning to dawn on me, so that when Father Dan, who was much excited, went off to pay his respects to the great people, I crudled up in the corner of the cabin that was nearest to the door and told myself that after all I had been turned out of my father's house, and would never see my mother and Martin any more.

I was sitting so, with my hands in my big muff and my face to the stern, making the tiniest occasional sniff as the mountains of my home faded away in the sunlight, which was now tipping the hilltops with a feathery crest, when my cabin was darkened by somebody who stood in the doorway.

It was a tail boy, almost a man, and I knew in a moment who he was. He was the young Lord Raa. And at first I thought how handsome and well dressed he was as he looked down at me and smiled. After a moment he stepped into the cabin and sat in front of me and said:

"So you are little Mary O'Neill, are you?"

I did not speak. I was thinking he was not so very handsome after all, having two big front teeth like Betsy Beauty.

"The girl who ought to have been a boy and put my nose out, eh?"

Still I did not speak. I was thinking his voice was like Nessy MacLeod's—shrill and harsh and grating.

"Poor little mite! Going all the way to Rome to a Convent, isn't she?"

Even yet I did not speak. I was thinking his eyes were like Aunt Bridget's—cold and grey and piercing.

"So silent and demure, though! Quite a little nun already. A deuced pretty one, too, if anybody asks me."

I was beginning to have a great contempt for him.

"Where did you get those big angel eyes from? Stole them from some picture of the Madonna, I'll swear."

By this time I had concluded that he was not worth speaking to, so I turned my head and I was looking back at the sea, when I heard him say:

"I suppose you are going to give me a kiss, you nice little woman, aren't you?"

"No."

"Oh, but you must—we are relations, you know."

"I won't."

He laughed at that, and rising from his seat, he reached over to kiss me, whereupon I drew one of my hands out of my muff and doubling my little mittened fist, I struck him in the face.

Being, as I afterwards learned, a young autocrat, much indulged by servants and generally tyrannising over them, he was surprised and angry.

"The spitfire!" he said. "Who would have believed it? The face of a nun and the temper of a devil! But you'll have to make amends for this, my lady."

With that he went away and I saw no more of him until the steamer was drawing up at the landing stage at Liverpool, and then, while the passengers were gathering up their luggage, he came back with Father Dan, and the tall sallow man who was his guardian, and said:

"Going to give me that kiss to make amends, or are you to owe me a grudge for the rest of your life, my lady?"

"My little Mary couldn't owe a grudge to anybody," said Father Dan. "She'll kiss his lordship and make amends; I'm certain."

And then I did to the young Lord Raa what I had done to Aunt Bridget—I held up my face and he kissed me.

It was a little, simple, trivial incident, but it led with other things to the most lamentable fact of my life, and when I think of it I sometimes wonder how it comes to pass that He who numbers the flowers of the field and counts the sparrows as they fall has no handwriting with which to warn His children that their footsteps may not fail.