MARY O'NEILL'S LAST NOTE WRITTEN ON THE FLY-LEAVES OF HER MISSAL

AUGUST 9-10.

It is all over. I have given him my book. My secret is out. He knows now. I almost think he has known all along.

I had dressed even more carefully than usual, with nurse's Irish lace about my neck as a collar, and my black hair brushed smooth in my mother's manner, and when I went downstairs by help of my usual kind crutch (it is wonderful how strong I have been to-day) everybody said how much better I was looking.

Martin was there, and he took me into the garden. It was a little late in the afternoon, but such a sweet and holy time, with its clear air and quiet sunshine--one of those evenings when Nature is like a nun "breathless with adoration."

Although I had a feeling that it was to be our last time together we talked on the usual subjects--the High Bailiff, the special license, "the boys" of the _Scotia_ who were coming over for my wedding, and how some of them would have to start out early in the morning.

But it didn't matter what we talked about. It was only what we felt, and I felt entirely happy--sitting there in my cushions, with my white hand in his brown one, looking into his clear eyes and ruddy face or up to the broad blue of the sky.

The red sun had begun to sink down behind the dark bar of St. Mary's Rock, and the daisies in the garden to close their eyes and drop their heads in sleep, when Martin became afraid of the dew.

Then we went back to the house--I walking firmly, by Martin's side, though I held his arm so close.

The old doctor was in his consulting room, nurse was in my room, and we could hear Christian Ann upstairs putting baby into her darling white cot--she sleeps with grandma now.

The time came for me to go up also, and then I gave him my book, which I had been carrying under my arm, telling him to read the last pages first.

Although we had never spoken of my book before he seemed to know all about it; and it flashed upon me at that moment that, while I thought I had been playing a game of make-believe with him, he had been playing a game of make-believe with me, and had known everything from the first.

There was a certain relief in that, yet there was a certain sting in it, too. What strange creatures we are, we women!

For some moments we stood together at the bottom of the stairs, holding each other's hands. I was dreadfully afraid he was going to break down as he did at Castle Raa, and once again I had that thrilling, swelling feeling (the most heavenly emotion that comes into a woman's life, perhaps) that I, the weak one, had to strengthen the strong.

It was only for a moment, though, and then he put his great gentle arms about me, and kissed me on the lips, and said, _silently_ but oh, so eloquently, "Good-bye darling, and God bless you!"

Then I walked upstairs alone, quite alone, and when I reached the top he was still at the bottom looking up at me. I smiled down to him, then walked firmly into my room and up to my bed, and then ... down, all my strength gone in a moment.

I have had such a wonderful experience during the night. It was like a dream, and yet something more than a dream. I don't want to make too much of it--to say that it was a vision or any supernatural manifestation such as the blessed Margaret Mary speaks about. Perhaps it was only the result of memory operating on my past life, my thoughts and desires. But perhaps it was something higher and more spiritual, and God, for my comforting, has permitted me to look for one moment behind the veil.

I thought it was to-morrow--my wedding day, and the day of Father Dan's thanksgiving celebration--and I was sitting by my French window (which was wide open) to look at the procession.

I seemed to see everything--Father Dan in his surplice, the fishermen in their clean "ganzies," the village people in their Sunday clothes, the Rechabites, the Foresters, and the Odd-fellows with their coloured badges and banners coming round the corner of the road, and the mothers with babies too young to be left looking on from the bridge.

I thought the procession passed under my window and went on to the church, which was soon crowded, leaving numbers of people to kneel on the path in front, as far down as the crumbling gate piers which lean towards each other, their foundations having given way.

Then I thought Benediction began, and when the congregation sang I sang also. I heard myself singing:

"_Mater purissima, Ora pro nobis_."

Down to this moment I thought I had been alone, but now the Reverend Mother entered my room, and she joined me. I heard her deep rich voice under mine:

"_Mater castissima Ora pro nobis_."

Then I thought the _Ora_ ended, and in the silence that followed it I heard Christian Arm talking to baby on the gravel path below. I had closed my eyes, yet I seemed to see them, for I felt as if I were under some strange sweet anaesthetic which had taken away all pain but not all consciousness.

Then I thought I saw Martin come close under my window and lift baby up to me, and say something about her.

I tried to answer him and could not, but I smiled, and then there was darkness, in which I heard voices about me, with somebody sobbing and Father Dan saying, as he did on the morning my mother died:

"Don't call her back. She's on her way to God's beautiful paradise after all her suffering."

After that the darkness became still deeper, and the voices faded away, and then gradually a great light came, a beautiful, marvellous, celestial light, such as Martin describes when he speaks about the aurora, and then ... I was on a broad white snowy plateau, and Martin was walking by my side.

How wonderful! How joyful! How eternally glorious!

It is 4 A.M. Some of "the boys" will be on their way to my wedding.

Though I have been often ashamed of letting them come I am glad now for his sake that I didn't try to keep them back. With his comrades about him he will control himself and be strong.

Such a peaceful morning! There is just light enough to see St. Mary's Rock. It is like a wavering ghost moving in the vapour on the face of the deep. I can hear the far-off murmur of the sea. It is like the humming in a big shell. A bird is singing in the garden and the swallows are twittering in a nest under the thatch. A mist is lying over the meadows, and the tree tops seem to be floating between the earth and the sky.

How beautiful the world is!

Very soon the mist will rise, and the day will break and the sun will come again and ... there will be no more night.

[END OF THE NARRATIVE OF MARY O'NEILL]

MEMORANDUM OF MARTIN CONRAD

My darling was right. I had known all along, but I had been hoping against hope--that the voyage would set her up, and the air of the Antarctic cure her.

Then her cheerfulness never failed her, and when she looked at me with her joyous eyes, and when her soft hand slipped into mine I forgot all my fears, so the blow fell on me as suddenly as if I had never expected it.

With a faint pathetic smile she gave me her book and I went back to my room at the inn and read it. I read all night and far into the next day--all her dear story, straight from her heart, written out in her small delicate, beautiful characters, with scarcely an erasure.

No use saying what I thought or went through. So many things I had never known before! Such love as I had never even dreamt of, and could never repay her for now!

How my whole soul rebelled against the fate that had befallen my dear one! If I have since come to share, however reluctantly, her sweet resignation, to bow my head stubbornly where she bowed hers so meekly (before the Divine Commandment), and to see that marriage, true marriage, is the rock on which God builds His world, it was not then that I thought anything about that.

I only thought with bitter hatred of the accursed hypocrisies of civilised society which, in the names of Law and Religion, had been crushing the life out of the sweetest and purest woman on earth, merely because she wished to be "mistress of herself and sovereign of her soul."

What did I care about the future of the world? Or the movement of divine truths? Or the new relations of man and woman in the good time that was to come? Or the tremendous problems of lost and straying womanhood, or the sufferings of neglected children, or the tragedies of the whole girlhood of the world? What did I care about anything but my poor martyred darling? The woman God gave me was mine and I could not give her up--not now, after all she had gone through.

Sometime in the afternoon (heaven knows when) I went back to Sunny Lodge. The house was very quiet. Baby was babbling on the hearth-rug. My mother was silent and trying not to let me see her swollen eyes. My dear one was sleeping, had been sleeping all day long, the sleep of an angel.

Strange and frightening fact, nobody being able to remember that she had ever been seen to sleep before!

After a while, sick and cold at heart, I went down to the shore where we had played as children. The boat we sailed in was moored on the beach.

The tide was far out, making a noise on the teeth of the Rock, which stood out against the reddening sky, stern, grand, gloomy.