“I never thought of that. But——”
“No. It doesn’t mean that the other people are right. Of that I’m sure.”
“Are we in mortal sin? I can’t feel that way. I feel it’s the best thing that ever has been. With Muriel, now—I feel that was sin. Even though it had God’s blessing on it.”
“Had it, Luke?”
“I wonder. No. I believe you’re right.”
“I don’t know much about your faith,” she said. She was a Protestant. “But I don’t believe that they consider it’s a sacrament when one person doesn’t know what he’s doing.”
“They’d say I knew.”
“You didn’t, Luke. One shouldn’t marry unless——”
“Unless one feels like this. But thousands of people do, Mary. This doesn’t happen often.”
“How do you know?” She smiled at me.
“The world would be a very different place if it did. Why—all the time we’ve been together, not only have we not had a disagreement, or an argument, we’ve never once had to explain a thing. Each of us has it before the other brings it out. I told you, Mary, I didn’t know such a thing was possible between human beings.”
“Neither did I, Luke.”
“You must have, Mary. You know everything.”
“I don’t,” she said with energy. “I know nothing at all.”
We were meeting regularly now, and writing to each other almost every day. It was all right for me to send my letters direct, for no one else saw them but Lucy, and Lucy approved. I had seen her once or twice, a fair, snub-nosed girl with a good skin. She said very little, but from time to time she gave me a very attractive grin. It was an ideal position, because, if Lucy wasn’t naturally out—the girls worked different hours at the library, turn and turn about—she went out by arrangement. Mary’s letters to me she sent to a post office I could easily visit on my way to work. It was arranged that she should write to me at home only in the case of something really important. She did on two or three occasions, once when her uncle had come to Dublin, and another time when her Professor sent her to Belfast at short notice. Muriel pounced on the letter at once, and asked a number of questions. I put it in my pocket, and would neither satisfy her curiosity nor get angry when she persisted. In the end she sulked, and reproached me with tearful eyes. I did not care. My feelings towards her had turned to complete indifference. One thing I did for which there is no excuse, and of which I am heartily ashamed. When she made demands on me, I reminded her of her father’s prohibition. It was true she showed no signs of having a child, but by this very unfair and dishonourable means I kept things to a minimum. At the time, I had no scruple whatever. One thing came first, in every department of my life, and everything else was subordinated to it automatically, without thought.
So throughout that winter and early spring Mary and I met and were together regularly. I was in heaven. Everywhere in my life, I had the perfect companion. Indeed, as I never tired of telling Mary, if I had been able to choose and create a girl for myself, I should have been grossly cheated, so far ahead was the reality of everything I could have imagined. We talked, we read, we made love, we were together: and no one way of being together was better than the rest. Our only anguish was that we were together, sometimes only, instead of all the time. I was deeper in love than all the oceans, I only valued the air when she breathed it, I loved her far far more than my own life, but I was not infatuated. There was nothing uneasy or morbid in our love, no grabbing, no violent excess. She saw to that; not deliberately, but by the quality of her nature. She showed me always a perfect tenderness and a perfect strength. And she knew how to laugh in love, and to make me laugh. She teased me, she played with my mind and tumbled out all its nonsense, all its silly prejudices, and we laughed together. And I did things for her too. Every now and then it seemed that small things accumulated, like twigs and leaves where a stream is blocked, and she would lose her serenity and become feverish and fretted, half blind with headache, and shaken by sudden panics. She drove herself hard, had no pity on herself, and these storms, when they came, were too much for her.
The first time I found her that way, my heart almost melted away with tenderness, to find that my perfect Mary had a weakness and could be scared like a child. I took her in my arms, and stroked her face, and in less than half an hour a soft sweat came on her forehead, the fear left her, and she lay all relaxed and breathing easily. Inside an hour and a half, her headache was gone, and she insisted gaily on getting up to make tea for us.
I loved her every way. I loved her till there was nothing for me but to grow bigger and better, to hold the love that grew from day to day.
I told her everything, and she entered into everything. She was especially interested in my older friends, and lamented often that she had never known Uncle John.
“He sounds a darling,” she said. “I’m sure I should have loved him.”
“He’d certainly have loved you.”
The Doctor excited her interest too. She never tired of hearing about him and his room, and presently demanded to be taken to see him. I warned her against the plan, but she was unshaken, so I waited till I had a free time when I could not see her, and went on a reconnaissance. We were too late. The Doctor had had two more attacks, and the local authorities had finally certified him and put him away.
I found out where he was, from Mrs. Kinahan. Apparently he was still compos mentis, for he was paying her his rent. I glanced into his room. It was in chaos, the electric light cords all knotted up, coal still on the floor, and dust and filth everywhere. Evidently they had not touched it since he left.
I suggested to Mrs. Kinahan that it could do with a spring clean, to which she replied with a sniff and the cryptic expression “Much about it”.
I felt a coolness in her manner, and sought to propitiate her. I might need her good offices to keep in touch with the Doctor.
“Where’s Mary Kate?” I asked. “Is it her afternoon off?”
Mrs. Kinahan was not to be mollified.
“Maybe it is,” she replied, “and maybe it isn’t.”
And, as I went down the steps, she watched me away with a malignant gleam in her eye, and slammed the door.
I reported all this to Mary, and wrote to the Doctor, as cheerfully as I could, saying that I hoped he would soon be back. I also told him, in guarded terms, about Mary, and felt afterwards that I had been a fool. I didn’t expect an answer, but quite soon a letter arrived for me in the Doctor’s queer, square handwriting.
“Dear MANGAN,
“Thanks for your letter. Send me a fishing rod.
“Yours
“MARCUS GEOGHEGAN.
“P.S. The people who run this place are bloody fools.”
I grinned as I showed this to Mary.
“He put that P.S. on purpose, because he knew they’d read it.”
“Poor things. Are all their letters read?”
“Surely.” I considered the Doctor’s screed. “What on earth does he want a fishing rod for?”
“To catch fish, I suppose.”
“There’s no river there, that I know of. Perhaps they’re allowed to go about, with someone to look after them. After all, he isn’t mad in the ordinary sense.”
So I sent the Doctor off a neat little trout rod, together with a supply of flies, and a float, in case he wanted to use it for the other sort of fishing. A few days later, I was mortified to get the whole lot back.
“Idiot,” said the accompanying note. “Not like this. A good strong sea rod.”
Mary and I shook our heads sadly, and agreed that the poor man must be mad after all. He was miles from the sea. However, I couldn’t fail him, so I sent him off a fine sea rod, as strong as a young curtain pole, with a reel of tough line and an assortment of powerful hooks. Mary was afraid about these, and said I ought to saw the barbs off them, but I imagined the Doctor’s language when he made the discovery, and left them as they were.
A note cam
e back, expressing unqualified satisfaction.
“Grand,” it said. “A.I. and most satisfactory.”
I scratched my head, and left things at that. Not till I was allowed to go down and visit him did I find out why he wanted the rod. He used to go on certain days and sit on the wall and fish for bottles of whiskey, with wire loops tied on them, which a sane pal of his hid in the bushes outside. I wouldn’t believe him at first, but it was a fact. Two or three of his fellow boozers swore to it. He got some drink in via the barber—barbers always seem to be bearers of contraband—and the rest this way. His confederate was a friend of Uncle John, a commercial traveller whose duties took him often to the town. He had met the Doctor once in Uncle John’s company, and conceived a warm admiration for him, so that now he was happy to be of assistance. The Doctor paid him punctiliously, he told me, when I met him some time afterwards.
The Doctor had put on weight, and looked unnaturally clean and well. His cheeks had the colour of health in them. He cursed vigorously about the place, but more as a matter of form than anything else. There was a real change in him, and I saw that he would be afraid now of the responsibilities of living outside.
“Where did you get the idea of the fishing rod?” I asked him, when the conversation flagged.
“From a book in the library. There was a drawing in it of a lunatic looking over the wall at a fellow fishing, and telling him to come in. That put it into my head. I go two or three days a week, whether there’s a bottle there or not, the way they won’t suspect me.”
“It must want great skill, to fish up the bottle.”
“Skill? It’s a bloody work of art. Sometimes it takes me all of an hour to hook the thing. You can imagine what I felt when you sent me that little hatpin of a rod, that wouldn’t lift a thimble.”
“You should have told me what it was for,” I said, forgetting that his letters were read. He pounced on me at once, and abused me for the next ten minutes. Then, quite suddenly, he calmed down and began to laugh about one of his fellow patients.
“I get a good deal of amusement here,” he said. “You see, I’m in a very different case from the others. I have insight.”
He seemed so reasonable and relaxed that I reminded him of my letter, and told him something about Mary. I could not make out how much notice he was taking, but when I said that I would bring her down to see him, he seemed pleased, and said “Aye, do.”
I took her down three weeks later, but he was morose and would hardly speak to either of us, so that the visit was not a success. Mary was silent on the way back in the train, and I thought she was chagrined at his conduct: but it was one or two of the other inmates that had worried her, particularly a young man, little more than a boy, who had beautiful features and hair, and was a joy to look at, until you saw his eyes. We had to be very circumspect on this visit, as the sight of a girl would be altogether too much for some of the inmates: but this young man was gentle and harmless. He gazed at Mary with a smile that was heartbreaking in its imbecility, and followed us about and stood where he could see and hear her.
She looked up at me across the jolting carriage. There were other people. We could not hold hands.
“Oh, Luke, I saw something so sad in his eyes.”
“You’re fancying it,” I said. “They were quite vacant.”
“No. Just before we went, I saw the real person imprisoned there, trying to make signals to me.”
For some reason I could not understand, my spine crept with foreboding.
“Did you signal back?”
“I tried my best.” She looked at me. “I wish we could have been there longer.”
“I’m very sorry about the Doctor. He can be charming when the fit takes him.”
“Oh, that didn’t matter at all.”
She lifted her head, and I saw that her eyes were bright with tears.
And that quickness of compassion in her—and it was compassion, not that facile emotion so many can feel and as quickly turn away and forget it—that compassion was joined to a perfect tact. She could not hurt a fellow creature’s feelings, because she was there before him, knowing what he would feel before he felt it. She could talk of anything, however delicate. She didn’t need delicacy with me, God knows. She could have said anything to me. But the antennae of her understanding were always there, sensitively alert, protective: and, for all that, she let me alone.
Once I remember asking her about the way I spoke. We were having tea together in a teashop. The waitress repeated the order wrong, and hurried away. I called a correction after her, and heard my own voice, as it were for the first time.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“What for?”
“Disgracing you like that. Bawling broad Dublin.”
She laughed at me. I leaned forward, dropping my voice.
“Mary—do I speak very badly? Would you be ashamed of me, in front of your other friends?”
She coloured. “If you say that sort of thing to me, you’ll get what’s what. Ashamed of you! I know what you’re doing. You’re fishing.”
“Honest, I’m not. I do truly want to know.”
So she told me, quite frankly, that my accent was rather on the broad side. We talked a lot then, about social distinctions, so called, and I learned by degrees—she was very gentle and hesitant—and with immense surprise, that the refinements of the Travers seemed as vulgar to her as my ways had seemed to them. She wasn’t any sort of a snob, she didn’t care a rap about any of those things: but, since we were talking about them, she told me how those who did care about them would regard the whole business. But she didn’t like talking about it. It was part of a convention which she hated.
I have had a full life, and known a great number of good people, men and women who were the salt of the earth: but Mary was the aristocrat of them all. She was the best human being I have ever known, and the loveliest. She transfigured me, she saved my soul alive, she made the world a different place for me. I know what could be said of her, and of me. I know our love could be called a clandestine intrigue, an adulterous liaison, I know it could be dragged in the mud. I know that, on paper, it ran against the laws of God and man. But it was the summit of my whole life: and, since it was given me to my soul’s and my body’s health, I have never used any of those labels about others, lest it mean as little as it would have meant tied to us. I have never judged.
“What do you think God thinks of this?” I asked her once.
She sighed.
“I don’t know, Luke. I don’t know what God thinks of anything. I can only go by results, and what I feel.” She raised her face to me, with eyes that looked through and past me. “If it is wrong, I will face the punishment gladly, in this world or any other.”
My eyes filled with tears. I stepped over and took her in my arms, unable to speak.
But the moralists can take comfort. We were punished.
One evening, early in May, when I came in, I noticed something odd and apprehensive about Muriel’s behaviour, and remembered that she had seemed queer for the last day or two. I paid so little attention to her nowadays, not caring what she thought or how she felt, that I had not bothered my head about it. Now, watching her, I saw her glance covertly towards the mantelpiece. The second time she did this, my eyes followed hers. I looked hard, got up from the table, and walked over.
On the mantelpiece, beside the desk, was a brass contraption like a toast rack, in which we stuck any letters we wanted to keep or to answer. The Travers had one, so, of course, we had had to get one too. In the middle of the wedge of letters in this thing, one stuck out far enough to show the size and colour of the envelope. I pulled it out. It was from Mary, and unopened.
I stared at it unbelievingly, then flashed round on Muriel.
“What is this doing here. When did it come?”
She had gone very red. Her lower lip stuck out, and she looked as if she were going to cry. She muttered something indistinct. I looked at the postmark, and my
heart gave a leap of terror. The letter had been posted four days earlier. And Mary never wrote to me at home unless it were urgent!
“When did this come, I say! Why did you hide it here?”
Her face was blurred and mulish.
“I didn’t hide it. It’s none of my business to give you letters from other women.”
I looked at her with hatred.
“I see. You haven’t even the guts to hide it outright, or tear it up. You just stick it among the old letters, where you hope I won’t see it.” She jumped up, her face distorted.
“Hadn’t you better read your—your love letter! I’ll go and leave you to enjoy it.”
And she ran out of the room, weeping noisily.
The thought leaped into my mind that she had steamed it open, and one or two others, maybe. The letter did not look as if it had been tampered with. I tore it open.
“Luke DARLING,
“Please come to see me as soon as you can. I feel ill, and am rather frightened.
“Your
“MARY.”
I felt in that moment such a desolation of pity that I groaned aloud. Four whole days ago she had written that—four whole days, waiting for me, wondering why I did not come. I rushed out to the hall and seized my hat.
Muriel came out from the front parlour and stood in my way. I snarled at her, and thrust her to one side, but she caught my arm, clinging to me with a furious strength.
“Where are you going?” she cried. “Where is it? I have a right to know.”
I brandished the letter in her face.
“This is from someone who is ill, and asked me to go—four days ago.”
“Ill!” Red, smeared with weeping, she was piteously ugly. “She was well enough to come here looking for you.”
“When?”
“Luke! let go. You’re hurting me.”
“When, damn you! When did she come?”
“Yesterday afternoon.”
“What did she say?”
“I don’t know. I hid behind the curtain, and let her knock.”
I shoved her away, and pulled open the door. As I rushed out of it, I heard her head hit against the wall, and the little hiccuping cry it jerked out of her. Then I was away, and down the street, running like a madman.
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