Генри Хаггард - Mary of Marion Isle

"For his sake!" she kept murmuring to herself. "For his sake, I must, I must. Never shall that woman say that I ruined him and brought shame upon his head. And if I do not leave him he will never leave me."

At length the dawn came, a strange and ominous dawn. The sun did not show in the east, yet a red light glowed throughout the sky. As yet there was no wind, still the air seemed to be full of unnatural sounds. Moreover, as she knew long before she reached its shore, the Race between the islands was running with unusual violence, the result, perhaps, of disturbances further south which pressed the weight of water before them as a herald of their coming.

Now Mary was on the shore and that which was to be done must be done quickly. Once more she knelt down and prayed, but all she could remember was the Lord's Prayer and much in the same broken language that Andrew had heard her use when first his eyes fell upon her. Twice or thrice she repeated it, dwelling upon the words, "Forgive us our trespasses."

Then she rose, threw off her sealskin robe so that she was only clad in the short skirt about her middle, and waded out into the deep water.

For this was her terrible object—to swim to the heart of the Race, and there die fighting against the furious tide, for so she thought the end would come more easily.

Now the sky was light above, for suddenly the wind had begun to blow in fierce gusts that tore up from the south, but as yet the murk lay on the face of the water, since these gusts seemed to fly high in an abnormal fashion. So deep was that murk that she could not see the ship anchored on the edge of the Race, half a mile or more to the south of her, and still less a boat putting off rapidly from its side. As she reached the deep water, of a sudden the gale began to blow in earnest, driving waves in front of it which foamed and curved as they met the rush of the Race tearing from north to south.

Andrew slept till the first light that morning, and then it was the child who awakened him, saying:

"Where Mummy? Where Mummy? Janet want Mummy give her milk."

"Outside, dearie, I expect," he said sleepily. "Go and look for her." Then as he moved in the bed the pieces of slate rattled together, and by the light that crept up the cave he saw them. Taking them up he perceived that they were written on in Mary's large and rather childish hand. He leapt from the bed, threw on his thick sealskin robe and drew his skin buskins on to his feet. Then he ran to the mouth of the cave where there was more light, and read the writing. It ran:

"Andrew, dearest Andrew,

"Your wife has told me that if we go on living together it will bring you, who are a great lord, to shame and ruin. But while we both live it must be together, since nothing could keep us apart. Therefore, that you may be saved I must die. This, I know, will shock and grieve your heart, but I am sure it is best for both of us, since if I hid away from you I should still die, if more slowly. Our darling I know that you will care for, and you need not tell her that you are her father. Give to her the necklace that I always wore, and let her also always wear it. If I have done wrong, I hope that God in heaven, Who made us men and women as we are, will forgive me. If I go on living anywhere outside the world and can do so, I will be near you till you die, and then I will be with you always, for like you I believe that nothing can keep those who love each other apart, and I know that you will always go on loving me. And now I go to swim into the Race and make an end, and you can say that I have fallen by accident into the sea, and go on to the great ship and sail to England, or to rule the country of which your wife spoke to me. But you will often think of our life upon the island, will you not? Also, you will care for and love our little Janet who will grow into a beautiful woman of whom you need not be ashamed, and who will soon forget all about her poor mother. Good–bye, dearest Andrew. You will never find anyone to love you better than this wild Mary who, you see, never loved anyone else except Old Tom, whom she will see presently, and our child, though both of them in another way. I will try to die bravely, swimming, as a wild woman should.

"I wish to tell you now that when first we met I knew you at once, since often I had looked at your face in the water in which I used to see things, also in dreams. So although I did not know it, I loved you, oh! much, much, long before you loved me.

"Your Mary."

Andrew finished this terrible epistle and put it down. Then, choking the horror in his heart, he began to think swiftly as a man does in an emergency.

"Baby," he said to Janet, for so he still called her, "Dad go to find Mum. There Baby's milk, she sit here by fire and drink it and not move. If Baby move, fire go out. She promise?"

"Yes, Dad, Baby talk to big penguin and pussy. Daddy come back soon."

He nodded, walked till he passed a rock which hid him, and then ran as he never ran before. In writing of the Race, Mary had given him a clue, since he knew that there was but one spot near by whence she could swim into it, and for that he headed. What passed through his tortured heart as he ran cannot be told, since it is beyond the power of language to describe. It was an agony unutterable. He feared that he must be too late, and if so, what then? To swim out after her into the Race and find her dead if not living, the divine creature who was sacrificing herself for him—that seemed the only way. But then there was the child. Well, they would come from the ship and discover her and in common mercy she would be looked after. And yet—oh! God help him! he knew not what to do. No hell could have torments equal to those that he suffered.

He became aware that a great gale had risen all at once, as though at the waving of a magician's wand. It blew from the south–east right into his face and was so fierce that once or twice it almost stopped him in his stride. In great leaps he reached the shore at the point he sought, certain rocks which stretched out into the bay, lying between low cliffs. He was right in his guess, for there on a stone lay Mary's skin robe.

He looked about him for one short moment. Yonder was the cruiser. She was blowing her steam–whistle as though signalling, and appeared to be getting up her anchors, perhaps because she feared that the gale would drive her ashore. Nor was this all, for on the sea was a boat; he could see it from time to time as the rising waves tossed it aloft. Apparently it headed for the beach. No, it turned, or tried to turn, and a man stood up in it, waving his arms and pointing. Something had happened on that boat, but what it was he could not see because of the spume of the waves and the flying spindrift.

Oh Heaven! it was overturned, the seas had caught it broadside on and it had overturned. Men were climbing on to its bottom, and it drove in shore before the gale.

A ray of red light which appeared between the torn clouds caught the crest of a great sea, and on it he saw something that glinted as did nothing else but Mary's hair. Three hundred yards away or more that hair glinted. He rushed into the water and began to swim. Again a great wave far away and on it the glinting hair, and near it another form tossed up suddenly. The two seemed to come together and grow confused. From time to time he saw them both as the seas threw them up. Then he saw only one swimming shoreward with the gale and the waves behind, but on that one was the glint as of Mary's hair.

He swam outwards and onwards, breasting the waters as best he might. Again a great wave, and not thirty yards away from him the glinting hair, and underneath it seen in the clear water another shape. Now through a thin veil of water he saw the face beneath the hair. It was that of Mary, white and strained and set, swimming doggedly shorewards with one hand—the other seemed to be gripping that which was beneath the water.