In her different way Christian Ann had arrived at the same conclusion.  Long before the thought came to me she had conceived the idea that Father Dan and the Reverend Mother were conspiring to carry me off, and in her dear sweet womanly jealousy (not to speak of higher and nobler instincts) she had resented this intensely.

For four days she had smothered her wrath, only revealing it to baby in half-articulate interviews over the cradle ("We’re no women for these nun bodies, going about the house like ghosts, are we, villish?"), but on the fifth day it burst into the fiercest flame and the gentle old thing flung out at everybody.

That was the morning of the departure of the Reverend Mother, who, after saying good-bye to me in my bedroom, had just returned to the parlour-kitchen, where Father Dan was waiting to take her to the railway station.

What provoked Christian Ann’s outburst I never rightly knew, for though the door to the staircase was open, and I could generally catch anything that was said in the room below (through the open timbers of the unceiled floor), the soft voice of the Reverend Mother never reached me, and the Irish roll of Father Dan’s vowels only rumbled up like the sound of a drum.

But Christian Ann’s words came sharp and clear as the crack of a breaker, sometimes trembling with indignation, sometimes quivering with emotion, and at last thickening into sobs.

“Begging your pardon, ma’am, may I ask what is that you’re saying to the Father about Mary O’Neill? . . .  Going back to Rome is she?  To the convent, eh? . . .  No, ma’am, that she never will!  Not if I know her, ma’am.  Not for any purpose in the world, ma’am. . . .  Temptation, you say?  You know best, ma’am, but I don’t call it overcoming temptation ­going into hidlands to get out of the way of it. . . .  Yes, I’m a Christian woman and a good Catholic too, please the Saints, but asking your pardon, ma’am, I’m not thinking too much of your convents, or believing the women inside of them are living such very unselfish lives either, ma’am.”

Another soft rumble as of a drum, and then ­

“No, ma’am, no, that’s truth enough, ma’am.  I’ve never been a nun myself, having had better work to do in the world, ma’am.  But it’s all as one ­I know what’s going on in the convents, I’m thinking. . . .  Harmony and peace, you say?  Yes, and jealousy and envy sometimes, too, or you wouldn’t be women like the rest of us, ma’am. . . .  As for Mary O’Neill, she has something better to do too, I’m thinking. . . .  After doing wrong, is she?  Maybe she is, the boght millish, maybe we all are, ma’am, and have need of God’s mercy and forgiveness.  But I never heard that praying is the only kind of penance He asks of us, ma’am.  And if it is, I wouldn’t trust but there are poor women who are praying as well when they’re working over their wash-tubs as some ones when they’re saying their rosaries and singing their Tantum Ergos. . . .”

Another interruption and then ­“There’s Bella Kinnish herself who keeps the corner shop, ma’am.  Her husband was lost at the ‘mackerel’ two years for Easter.  He left her with three little children and a baby unborn, and Bella’s finding it middling hard to get a taste of butcher’s meat, or even a bit of loaf-bread itself for them, ma’am.  And when she’s sitting late at night, as the doctor’s telling me, and all the rest of the village dark, darning little Liza’s stockings, and patching little Willie’s coat, or maybe nursing the baby when it’s down with the measles, the Lord is as pleased with her, I’m thinking, as with some of your nun bodies in their grand blue cloaks taking turn and turn to kneel before the tabernacle.”

There was another rumble of apologetic voices after that (both Father Dan’s and the Reverend Mother’s), and then came Christian Ann’s clear notes again, breaking fast, though, and sometimes threatening to stop.

“What’s that you’re saying, ma’am? . . .  Motherhood a sacred and holy state also?  ’Deed it is, ma’am!  That’s truth enough too, though some ones who shut themselves up in convents don’t seem to think so. . . .  A mother’s a mother, and what’s more, her child is her child, wedlock or no wedlock.  And if she’s doing right by her little one, and bringing it up well, and teaching it true, I don’t know that when her time comes the Lord will be asking her which side of her wedding-day it was born on. . . .

“As for Mary O’Neill, ma’am, when you’re talking and talking about her saving her soul, you’re forgetting she has her child to save too, ma’am.  God gave her the boght villish, and is she to run away from it?  It’s a fine blessing would be on her for that, isn’t it? . . .  Father Dan, I’m surprised at you ­such a terrible, cruel, shocking, unnatural thing as you’re thinking.  I thought you were a better man than that ­I really did. . . .  And as for some ones that call themselves Mothers, they’re no mothers at all and never will be ­tempting a poor woman in her trouble to leave her child to be a charge on other people. . . .”

Still another rumble of soft voices and then ­

“Not that I’m thinking of myself, ma’am.  Dear heart, no!  It’s only too eager I’d be to have the lil angel to myself.  There she is on the hearthrug, ma’am, and if anything happens to Mary O’Neill, it’s there she’ll be for the rest of my life, and it’s sorry I am for the darling’s sake that my time cannot be longer. . . .

“But Mary O’Neill isn’t for leaving her little one to go into any convent.  ’Deed no, ma’am!  There would be no rest on her if she did.  I’m a mother myself and I know what she’d be feeling.  You might put the black hood on her head, but Nature’s a wonderful powerful thing, and she’d never go to bed at night or get up in the morning without thinking of her baby.  ‘Where’s she now?’ she’d be asking herself.  ’What’s happening to my motherless child?’ she’d be saying.  And as the years went on she’d be thinking, ’Is she well, and has she taken her first communion, and is she growing up a good woman, and what’s the world doing on her?’ . . .

“No, ma’am, no!  Mary O’Neill will go into no convent while her child is here to be cared for!  ’Deed she won’t!  Not Mary O’Neill!  I’ll never believe it of her!  Never in this world!”

I heard nothing more for a long time after that ­nothing but a noise in my own head which drowned all other noises.  And when I recovered my composure the Reverend Mother and Father Dan must have gone, for there was no sound in the room below except that of the rocking-chair (which was going rapidly) and Christian Ann’s voice, fierce but broken as if baby had cried and she was comforting her.

Then a great new spirit came to me.  It was Motherhood again!  The mighty passion of motherhood ­which another mighty passion had temporarily overlaid ­sweeping down on me once more out of the big, simple, child-like heart of my Martin’s mother.

In the fever of body and brain at that moment it seemed to solve all the problems of life for me.

If the Commandment of God forbade me to marry again because I had already taken vows before the altar (no matter how innocently or under what constraint), and if I had committed a sin, a great sin, and baby was the living sign of it, there was only one thing left me to do ­to remain as I was and consecrate the rest of my life to my child.

That would be the real expiation, not burying myself in a convent.  To live for my child!  Alone with her!  Here, where my sin had been, to work out my atonement!

This pleased and stirred and uplifted me very much when I first thought of it.  And even when I remembered Martin, and thought how hard it would be to tear myself away from the love which waited with open arms for me (So near, so sweet, so precious), there seemed to be something majestic, almost sublime, in the sacrifice I was about to make ­the sacrifice of everything in the world (except one thing) that was dearer to me than life itself.

A sort of spiritual pride came with the thought of this sacrifice.  I saw myself as a woman who, having pledged herself to God in her marriage and sinned against the law in breaking her marriage vows, was now going to accept her fate and to humble herself before the bar of Eternal Justice.

But oh, what a weak, vain thing I was, just when I thought I was so strong and noble!

After a long day in which I had been fighting back the pains of my poor torn heart and almost persuading myself that I had won a victory, a letter came by the evening post which turned all my great plans to dust and ashes.

The letter was from Martin.  Only four little pages, written in my darling’s rugged hand, half serious and half playful, yet they made the earth rock and reel beneath me.

“MY DEAR LITTLE WOMAN, ­Just back from Windsor.  Stunning ‘do.’  Tell you all about it when I get back home.  Meantime up to my eyes in work.  Arrangements for next Expedition going ahead splendidly.  Had a meeting of the committee yesterday and settled to sail by the ‘Orient’ third week in August, so as to get down to Winter Quarters in time to start south in October.

     “Our own little affair has got to come off first, though, so I’ll
     see the High Bailiff as soon as I return.

“And what do you think, my ‘chree’?  The boys of the ‘Scotia’ are all coming over to Ellan for the great event.  ’Deed, yes, though, every man-jack of them!  Scientific staff included, not to speak of O’Sullivan and old Treacle ­who swears you blew a kiss to him.  They remember you coming down to Tilbury.  Aw, God bless me soul, gel, the way they’re talking of you!  There’s no holding them at all at all!

“Seriously, darling, you have no time to lose in making your preparations.  My plan is to take you to New Zealand and leave you at Wellington (good little town, good people, too) while I make my bit of a trip to the Pole.

     “We’ll arrange about Girlie when I reach home, which will be next
     week, I hope ­or rather fear ­for every day is like a month when
     I’m away from you.

“But never mind, little woman!  Once I get this big Expedition over we are not going to be separated any more.  Not for a single day as long as we live, dearest!  No, by the Lord God ­life’s too short for it._

     “MART.”