Mary of Marion Isle

Chapter XXI Flight

The winter came, a terrible winter with dark and rushing clouds, and gales and snow, with little sun. Still, this pair took little account of it. The main difference to them was that they sat by the fire inside the cave instead of by the fire outside, with a curtain they had made of the sailcloth from Andrew's boat, eked out with skins, drawn across the entrance to the recess in which this inner fire burned. Out of doors in that weather there was little to be done, though on fine days certain great penguins which Mary had reared, that never seemed to leave the island, flew out to sea to fish. Moreover, they did not always fish for themselves, since Mary tied bands of sinew round their throats so that they could not swallow their prey. Therefore they brought it home to her, knowing that they would be rewarded with the heads and offal. Thus fresh fish was seldom lacking to them, and with their porridge, oatcake, preserved eggs, etc., and a certain amount of milk, they got on very well indeed and kept in splendid health.

Still, the season with so much ice about, for the sea was full of floes and great bergs floated down the Race between the islands, was long, cold and dreary. What then, reflected Andrew, must it have been during past years for this girl in her utter loneliness? No wonder that she saw ghosts and thought that she conversed with spirits. The marvel was that she had not gone mad.

Mary, however, was anything but mad, as Andrew soon discovered when, taking advantage of their ample leisure, he began her education in earnest. Never was there so apt a pupil. With the help of the old Whitaker's Almanack and the Church–service that had belonged to Jacks, soon he taught her to read perfectly; also to write. Then with the Whitaker for a text–book, he lectured to her upon all the countries of the earth, so far as his information went, especially upon the few that he had visited, such as Egypt and South Africa, which interested her very much indeed, particularly Egypt, with its history of ancient things.

There she would sit by the fire, wrapped in her skin cloak down which her long hair fell in glittering streaks, her arms about her knees and her great intelligent eyes fixed earnestly upon his face, while he talked and talked, and occasionally she interrupted with her shrewd questions. There was scarcely a subject in the sky above or the earth beneath or the waters under the earth of which he did not discourse during those long months, nor did Mary ever grow tired of listening to him as he sat there upon a stone, his back resting against the wall of the cave and a pipe, generally out, in his hand, and held forth to his class of one with Josky curled up asleep between them.

On medicine he was particularly eloquent, since that and scientific research were his trade, although his remarks induced her to ask at length why people were ill.

"Mary," she exclaimed, "never ill!"

"Nor would the rest of the world be if they lived like Mary," answered Andrew, "and their ancestors before them had done the same. I have never been ill since I came to this island although the climate is so horrid."

"Why does God make people ill?" asked Mary, a question to which he could return no satisfactory answer.

Thus they drifted off to the matter of religion, also into social questions. The subject of matrimony attracted Mary's attention, and proved difficult to deal with.

Why did people marry? Why did men have only one wife now when in the Bible they had so many, and why did the Turks have more than one wife, were some of the posers she put to him with which he fenced as best he could, drawing analogies from the wild life about them.

So the winter months wore away and before they were gone Mary could talk perfectly well, although she still used queer idioms and abbreviations, and for a long while retained the habit of speaking of herself and Andrew by name in the third person. It was always "Mary will do so and so." Further, she had learned a great deal and was now quite as well–informed as are the majority of young women, except, of course, on current topics which did not exist for them who lived in a little world of their own. History repeated itself, too, for like Eve before her, with the advent of knowledge she became dissatisfied with her garments and tried to manufacture herself some underclothing, a matter on which, to his intense embarrassment, she insisted upon consulting Andrew. These articles she put together out of the softest skins; also she cut down some sailors' trousers that Andrew found among the stores, to wear beneath her sealskin robe. The results were not satisfactory, since these new vestments irritated her skin and in the end she gave them up.

"Mary is a wild girl and Mary must stop wild," she said with decision, pointing to a little heap of discarded apparel.

"All right," answered Andrew, "you are very nice as you are."

"Is Mary nice?" she asked.

"Yes, beautiful."

"Is Mary beautiful?"

"If you want to know—yes, the most beautiful woman I ever saw."

She laughed happily and exclaimed:

"Mary so glad, because Andrew like her better."

"Who told you that I should like you better because you are beautiful?"

"No one," she answered, "Andrew not say so and no one else to tell." Then she reflected and added, "Perhaps God tell Mary; perhaps her heart tell her."

"That's about it, I expect," said Andrew, and laughed the matter off.

Although the underclothing proved such a failure, from that time forward Mary took to adorning herself in various ways. She made bracelets of beautiful iridescent sea–shells, which with infinite pains she bored and strung together on sinews. She found feathers from the wings of a kind of sea–eagle, white feathers tipped with black, and fashioned of them a sort of crown with imitations of wings on each side, something like a Norse helmet, which she set upon her head and appeared in suddenly, for all this she had done in secret.

The effect was really magnificent since this glossy crown, shaped with wondrous natural taste, added to her considerable height and made her look very stately, so much so that Andrew gasped when he saw her standing thus arrayed in the blue light of the burning seaweed fire.

"You look like a queen of men," he said.

She was very pleased and replied:

"Mary does not want to be a queen of men; Mary only wants to be queen of Andrew."

"Well, you are that already," he answered, "and of all this island, too, and of the beasts and birds and of everything you can see. Now let us get on with our work."

Encouraged by this experiment Mary made others. She tried new ways of dressing her hair which, for the most part, hitherto had flowed loose about her, only combed with the spiny shell of a sort of sea–urchin, and brushed with a kind of sponge. She arranged its abundance in massive plaits and looped these up round her ears, or gathered it in coils upon her head. Moreover, on the island flourished a certain bulbous plant which when the year began to turn, produced little waxy flowers, in colour of the most brilliant blue, which flowers appeared in sheltered places among the melting snows. As soon as their season came, she went out to collect them. Then she wove them into garlands or coronals which she set about her neck or on her brow.

Thus did Mary try to make herself attractive by such means as lay to her hand, with a success that would have startled her had she known all the truth. Lastly, that she might learn the effect, she took to examining her reflection after the fashion of Narcissus, in a certain still and limpid pool of water which served her as a looking–glass, for twice Andrew came on her thus engaged.

The inner meaning of these developments was not hard to divine. The full tide of Nature was swelling in her young heart, and it set straight and strong towards a single object. Utterly innocent though she was, instinct showed her the path and led her feet to a goal that she did not see or understand. She adored the man whom Fate had brought to her with all the intensity of a deep heart that had never found anything upon which to lavish its affections, neither mother nor father, nor sister nor brother, nothing except Old Tom, who now had been dead for years.

Her passion went through the usual course. Thus, although this would seem impossible under the circumstances, she even managed to become jealous of Andrew. By degrees she wormed out of him the story of his relationships with other women of whom he had been fond. About his mother she did not mind. Of Mrs. Josky and her child Laurie she disapproved but let them pass. Rose Watson, however, was another matter. By slow but certain steps she possessed herself of every detail concerning this young lady and hated her with remarkable vigour, as she said because she had deceived Andrew, but really because Andrew had put himself in a position to be deceived by her.

"Mary would like to kill Rose," she said one evening with a fierce directness that was amazing in one of such a gentle nature.

"Good gracious! Why?" he asked.

"Because she cheat Andrew, and he think too much about her."

He burst out laughing and answered:

"You little savage! Well, there's no need to kill her, for to me she is dead already, dead as that," and he pointed to a fish which had been washed up by the waves, for they were walking on the seashore.

She searched his face to learn whether he were speaking the truth, and coming to the conclusion that he was, said:

"Yes, but the fish still smell. Well, Mary glad; Mary think no more of Rose, like Andrew."

Of Clara, however, she was not jealous. She accepted her existence, if she still existed, that was all, thus unconsciously reflecting Andrew's own mind in the matter. Nor was she jealous of his dead child, Janet. Indeed, of this departed little one she grew intensely fond. Oddly enough, Andrew, who since the death of his beloved had seldom mentioned her name to anyone else, would talk of her freely to Mary, recalling her every word and trait and describing all that he had suffered on her account, and still suffered. Mary would listen intently, remembering every word and, as it were, rebuilding the child in her own mind.

"Don't be sad, Andrew," she said to him once, "perhaps Janet come back one day. Mary think Janet come back."

"What on earth do you mean?" he asked, but she would give no answer.

Only she would borrow the miniature of the child painted on ivory which Andrew wore in a gold locket, and study it intently until she knew her every feature.

Here in the island itself there was nothing of which Mary could be jealous except the cat Josky. This animal was greatly attached to Andrew, as he was to it, but for Mary it did not particularly care. Perhaps Josky also suffered from the passion of jealousy. At any rate, the relations between them were strained, so much so that unless it were very hungry Josky would not take its food from her, while Mary thought Andrew's attachment to the creature much exaggerated, and would tell him so when she considered that she had been neglected that he might attend upon the wants, or whims, of Josky.

Yet all this while Mary was quite ignorant of the cause of these emotions. She did not know that she was in love with Andrew in the general acceptance of the phrase, nor whither that love was leading her. But her inner consciousness, or instinct, knew well enough, and soon her body knew also, since for the first time in her life she began to pine and fall sick. Andrew's medical eye noted the change at once and, with a man's desire to avoid the real issue which concerned himself, set to work to find some physical cause.

Finally, he concluded Mary needed a change of diet after the long winter, and that if she could be taught to eat meat she would soon be well again. So one day he took his gun and went on to that part of the moor where he knew the wild goats fed in a sheltered spot. Here, after some stalking, he shot a young goat, scarcely more than a kid, which he thought would be tender to eat and make good soup. Having opened and cleaned this animal, he carried and dragged it down the cliffside to the caves where he proposed that it should be cooked. As he passed round the point of rock he met Mary who in fact had heard the shot, to her a new sound, and as he did not return, fearing that it meant some evil to Andrew, was setting out to search for him. She uttered an exclamation of delight at seeing him safe, and was beginning to ask the cause of the noise when she caught sight of the carcase of the goat that naturally was disagreeable to look on.

She seemed to freeze and her eyes filled with horror.

"What that?" she asked.

"A kid that I shot for you to eat," replied Andrew, "as I think you live too much on fish."

"You murder that poor goat which I know well, for Mary to eat?" she said slowly in grieving accents. "You wicked and cruel and Mary hate you."

Then she uttered a loud scream, went into hysterics or something very like them, and turning, fled into the cave.

Andrew, deeply distressed at this unexpected result of his well–meant efforts, did not know what to do. Collecting his wits he dragged the goat back behind the point and left it in a place where he knew the gulls and sea–eagles would soon devour it, since he was certain that Mary would never partake of soup made from its flesh. Then he washed himself very carefully and even changed his outer garment lest the blood or perhaps the small of the creature should cling to it, and went back to the cave, for by now it was time for their evening meal.

There was no Mary to be seen. He peeped into the cave, and after a pause and calling without result, even went up it and glanced at her bed. It was unoccupied. She had gone. Andrew grew terrified, for what might not an hysterical woman do? To such in his medical career he had known strange things happen. He cursed the goat, he cursed himself and his own stupidity, he cursed female susceptibilities, and then he went out to look for her.

Fortunately the full moon was rising which made the place like day, and in its light he ran up and down those desolate shores, shouting "Mary" till he was hoarse. At length he made up his mind that she must have taken to the moorland above, if indeed she had not gone into the sea from the cliff–edge, a thought at which he shuddered and turned sick. So to the moor he must make his way.

As, in order to do so, Andrew, who now was quite as distracted as Mary could be, passed for the third time that little bay in the cliff where was the pool into which they had cast the bones of Old Tom, he thought that in the silence he heard a faint sound of sobbing. Following this sound he went along the narrow gut at the bottom of which the sea–water flowed into the pool, and there, by the edge of the pool, seated on a stone with her hair flowing all about her and weeping, he perceived Mary. Now, in his intense relief, he flew into a rage as nine out of ten men would have done, and scolded her soundly.

"You must have heard me calling," he said.

"Yes," she replied between her sobs, "Mary hear; all island hear, and other island, too, I think. Birds fly away and not come back any more if Andrew make such ugly noise."

"Then why in Heaven's name didn't you answer when you knew I was so frightened about you?"

"Because Andrew wicked murderer, like Cain, and Mary no want to speak to him. Andrew frighten poor goat much worse than Mary frighten Andrew, and p'raps he want kill Mary next."

Now the unfortunate Andrew became almost inarticulate with indignation. He argued, he explained, he demonstrated that there was no difference between killing a kid and killing fish. At this point Mary intervened:

"The Lord He catch fish and eat them too; He no shoot goat. Mary not like murderers and come sit here with Old Tom."

"Damn Old Tom," said Andrew. "I understand that he killed seals."

"He did not shoot them," said Mary.

Before such argument as this Andrew collapsed. Then suddenly he became aware of the overmastering beauty of this woman seated there upright and still upon that stone by the silent pool, with the moonlight glinting on her hair and on her snowy arms and breast, and filling with mystery her big blue eyes from which the slow tears trickled. His anger left him, everything left him except this sense of beauty that had smitten him like a magic wand. In an instant she felt the change and looked at him with a dreamy smile.

"Andrew sorry," she said, "and commit no more murder?" As he made no answer, taking silence for consent, she went on, "Then Mary sorry too. Andrew come kiss Mary and make friend."

He tried to say No; he tried to go away, but he could not. On the contrary he came and kneeling down before her, kissed her uplifted cheek. Nor this time did he stop there, because he could not. Throwing his arms about her he drew her to his breast, he kissed her everywhere; hair and eyes and lips, he kissed them all. And she, catching his fire, kissed him back, then lay in his arms crooning happily.

"Mary forget all about goat now," she said at length, "and not angry any more. Time for Andrew come to supper."

So they went to supper, but of it Andrew could not eat much because of the flame that burned within him, though Mary seemed to be quite happy and for the while satisfied. Only her eyes looked larger than before and in them was a new light.

Saying that he was tired Andrew went to bed early and without any further demonstration of affection. When he reached his cave he lit his rude lamp and sat down to think. What was to be done? The position had become impossible, as in a dim way he had always foreseen that it must. He could not go on living with this lovely, loving creature on their present footing. Human nature has its breaking strain and this he had reached, or rather they both had reached it, although one of them did not know that it was so. Therefore he was face to face with an alternative. Either he must stay and take the natural consequences, to do which the temptation was almost overwhelming, or he must go. Now he knew well that were Mary in his sight he could never find the strength to leave her. Therefore if he went at all, it must be when she was absent, which meant immediately. Yet why should he go when there was so much against such a course? For one reason only—from a sense of duty.

Andrew was a man of upright and indeed rather puritanical mind, not one who would ever set out deliberately to gratify an impulse however human. If he did so it would be when his reason was overborne by the primary forces of nature—when he was no longer master of himself. Now, sitting alone, he knew that he loved Mary devotedly, and that there was nothing that he desired more, or indeed one–tenth so much in the whole world, as that they should belong to each other. What was there against it? Just this one thing—that he did not know whether his wife were alive or dead. If she were dead a marriage ceremony could be dispensed with, since under the circumstances it was impossible. But if she were alive, to say nothing of the consequences to himself, what would such a course make of this innocent Mary, who did not know what she was doing?

The risk seemed too great to take. Therefore he must face the alternative and go away. It would grieve Mary, of course, but that was better than bringing her to ruin. And he must go at once, before he saw her any more. He loved her so well that he must leave her.

In his cave Andrew had some of the slates which they manufactured, that he used to make notes upon and to keep a kind of diary. Taking one of these, with pain and grief he wrote the following letter:

"Dear, dear Mary,

"I must leave you for your own sake" (had he but known it this was the worst possible argument he could have used to her. If he had said that he must leave her for his own sake, the remark would have had more weight). "You do not understand what I mean and it is quite impossible for me to explain it to you. The only hint I can give to you is to remind you that perhaps I am still a married man. But the truth is that I have grown too fond of you and perhaps you have grown too fond of me, as may be natural since you have seen no other men. At any rate, we cannot go on living side by side as we have done for nearly a year and not be more to each other than we are. Even if you do not understand, you must accept what I say as the truth, since I say it for your sake. Do not seek for me. I shall be able to get on quite well alone, as I know you can, especially as you have plenty of everything you need. Therefore, unless you should fall really ill, do not seek for me. Indeed, it would be useless for you to do so for I am going to hide away. Best love and good–bye. Thanks, too, for all your goodness. God bless you, dearest Mary.

"Andrew."

When he had finished this epistle, of which on re–reading it he felt rather proud, Andrew collected a few articles almost at hazard, and left the cave with more pangs of regret than he had felt on departing from the finest home he had ever inhabited, or even from his lodgings in Justice Street to be married. Taking the cat Josky with him he crept to the mouth of Mary's cave. There he tied Josky to a stone, wishing to leave it to be a companion to Mary, and set the slate with the letter in a position where she could not fail to see it.

After this he fled away, like a fugitive running from justice, and by the bright moonlight soon gained the moor.