We had to go at a walking pace the rest of the way, and while Martin saluted old friends (he remembered everybody by name) Father Dan talked in my ear about the "domestic earthquake" that had been going on at Sunny Lodge, everything topsy-turvy until to-day, the little room being made ready for me, and the best bedroom (the doctor's and Christian Ann's) for Martin, and the "loft" over the dairy for the old people themselves--as if their beloved son had been good in not forgetting them, and had condescended in coming home.

"Is it true?" they had asked each other. "Is he really, really coming?"

"What does he like to eat, mother?" "What does he drink?" "What does he smoke?"

I had to close my eyes as I came near the gate of my father's house, and, except for the rumbling of the river under the bridge and the cawing of the rooks in the elms, I should not have known when we were there.

The old doctor (his face overflowing with happiness, and his close-cropped white head bare, as if he had torn out of the house at the toot of our horn) met us as we turned into the lane, and for the little that was left of our journey he walked blithely as a boy by the car, at the side on which Martin sat.

I reached forward to catch the first sight of Sunny Lodge, and there it was behind its fuchsia hedge, which was just breaking into bloom.

There was Christian Ann, too, at the gate in her sunbonnet; and before the automobile had come to a stand Martin was out of it and had her in his arms.

I knew what that meant to the dear sweet woman, and for a moment my spirits failed me, because it flashed upon my mind that perhaps her heart had only warmed to me for the sake of her son.

But just as I was stepping out of the car, feeling physically weak and slipping a little, though Father Dan and Sister Mildred were helping me to alight, my Martin's mother rushed at me and gathered me in her arms, crying:

"Goodness gracious me, doctor--if it isn't little Mary O'Neill, God bless her!"--just as she did in the old, old days when I came as a child "singing carvals to her door."

ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTH CHAPTER

When I awoke next morning in "Mary O'Neill's little room," with its odour of clean white linen and sweet-smelling scraas, the sun was shining in at the half-open window, birds were singing, cattle were lowing, young lambs were bleating, a crow was cawing its way across the sky, and under the sounds of the land there was a far-off murmur of the sea.

Through the floor (unceiled beneath) I could hear the Doctor and Christian Ann chortling away in low tones like two cheerful old love-birds; and when I got up and looked out I saw the pink and white blossom of the apple and plum trees, and smelt the smoke of burning peat from the chimney, as well as the salt of the sea-weed from the shore.

Sister Mildred came to help me to dress, and when I went downstairs to the sweet kitchen-parlour, feeling so strong and fresh, Christian Ann, who was tossing an oat-cake she was baking on the griddle, cried to me, as to a child:

"Come your ways, _villish_; you know the house."

And when I stepped over the rag-work hearthrug and sat in the "elbow-chair" in the _chiollagh_, under the silver bowls that stood on the high mantelpiece, she cried again, as if addressing the universe in general, for there was nobody else in the room:

"Look at that now! She's been out in the big world, and seen great wonders, and a power of people I'll go bail, but there she is, as nice and comfortable as if she had never been away!"

Sister Mildred came down next; and then the old doctor, who had been watching the road for Martin (he had refused to occupy the old people's bedroom after all and had put up at the "Plough"), came in, saying:

"The boy's late, mother--what's doing on him, I wonder?"

We waited awhile longer, and then sat down to breakfast. Oh, the homely beauty of that morning meal, with its porridge, its milk, its honey and cakes, its butter like gold, and its eggs like cream!

In spite of Sister Mildred's protests Christian Ann stood and served, and I will not say that for me there was not a startling delight in being waited upon once more, being asked what I would like, and getting it, giving orders and being obeyed--me, me, me!

At length in the exercise of my authority I insisted on Christian Ann sitting down too, which she did, though she didn't eat, but went on talking in her dear, simple, delicious way.

It was always about Martin, and the best of it was about her beautiful faith that he was still alive when the report came that he had been lost at sea.

What? Her son dying like that, and she old and the sun going down on her? Never! Newspapers? Chut, who cared what people put in the papers?

If Martin had really been lost, wouldn't _she_ have known it--having borne him on her bosom ("a middling hard birth, too"), and being the first to hear his living voice in the world?

So while people thought she was growing "weak in her intellects," she had clung to the belief that her beloved son would come back to her. And behold! one dark night in winter, when she was sitting in the _chiollagh_ alone, and the wind was loud in the trees, and the doctor upstairs was calling on her to come to bed ("you're wearing yourself away, woman"), she heard a sneck of the garden gate and a step on the gravel path, and it was old Tommy the Mate, who without waiting for her to open the door let a great yell out of him through the window that a "talegraf" had come to say her boy was safe.

Father Dan looked in after mass, in his biretta and faded cassock (the same, I do declare, that he had worn when I was a child), and then Martin himself came swinging up, with his big voice, like a shout from the quarter-deck.

"Helloa! Stunning morning, isn't it?"

It was perfectly delightful to see the way he treated his mother, though there was not too much reverence in his teasing, and hardly more love than license.

When she told him to sit down if he had not forgotten the house, and said she hoped he had finished looking for South Poles and was ready to settle quietly at home, and he answered No, he would have to go back to London presently, she cried:

"There now, doctor? What was I telling you? Once they've been away, it's witched they are--longing and longing to go back again. What's there in London that's wanting him?"

Whereupon the doctor (thinking of the knighthood), with a proud lift of his old head and a wink at Father Dan, said:

"Who knows? Perhaps it's the King that's wanting him, woman."

"The King?" cried Christian Ann. "He's got a bonny son of his own, they're telling me, so what for should he be wanting mine?"

"Mary," said. Martin, as soon as he could speak for laughing, "do you want a mother? I've got one to sell, and I wouldn't trust but I might give her away."

"Cuff him, Mrs. Conrad," cried Father Dan. "Cuff him, the young rascal!

He may be a big man in the great world over the water, but he mustn't come here expecting his mother and his old priest to worship him."

How we laughed! I laughed until I cried, not knowing which I was doing most, but feeling as if I had never had an ache or a care in all my life before.

Breakfast being over, the men going into the garden to smoke, and Sister Mildred insisting on clearing the table, Christian Ann took up her knitting, sat by my side, and told me the "newses" of home--sad news, most of it, about my father, God pity him, and how his great schemes for "galvanising the old island into life" had gone down to failure and fatuity, sending some to the asylum and some to the graveyard, and certain of the managers of corporations and banks to gaol.

My father himself had escaped prosecution; but he was supposed to be a ruined man, dying of cancer, and had gone to live in his mother's old cottage on the curragh, with only Nessy MacLeod to care for him--having left the Big House to Aunt Bridget and cousin Betsy, who declared (so I gathered or guessed) that I had disgraced their name and should never look on their faces again.

"But dear heart alive, that won't cut much ice, will it?" said Christian Ann, catching a word of Martin's.

Later in the day, being alone with the old doctor. I heard something of my husband also--that he had applied (according to the laws of Ellan) for an Act of Divorce, and that our insular legislature was likely to grant it.

Still later, having walked out into the garden, where the bluebells were in bloom, I, too, heard the sneck of the gate, and it was old Tommy again, who (having been up to the "Plough" to "put a sight on himself") had come round to welcome me as well--a little older, a little feebler, "tacking a bit," as he said, with "romps in his fetlock joints," but feeling "well tremenjus."

He had brought the "full of his coat-pockets" of lobsters and crabs for me ("wonderful good for invalids, missie") and the "full of his mouth"

of the doings at Castle Raa, which he had left immediately after myself--Price also, neither of them being willing to stay with a master who had "the rough word" for everybody, and a "misthress" who had "the black curse on her" that would "carry her naked sowl to hell."

"I wouldn't be gardener there, after the lil missie had gone ... no, not for the Bank of Ellan and it full of goold."

What a happy, happy day that was! There was many another day like it, too, during the sweet time following, when spring was smiling once more upon earth and man, and body and soul in myself were undergoing a resurrection no less marvellous.

After three or four weeks I had so far recovered as to be able to take walks with Martin--through the leafy lanes with the golden gorse on the high turf hedges and its nutty odour in the air, as far, sometimes, as to the shore, where we talked about "asploring" or perhaps (without speaking at all) looked into each other's eyes and laughed.

There was really only one limitation to my happiness, separation from my child, and though I was conscious of something anomalous in my own position which the presence of my baby would make acute (setting all the evil tongues awag), I could not help it if, as I grew stronger, I yearned for my little treasure.

The end of it was that, after many timid efforts, I took courage and asked Martin if I might have my precious darling back.