"Well, it's over," he said with some satisfaction. "Meggie's got a long road ahead of her, but she'll be all right, God willing. And the baby is a skinny, cranky, five-pound girl with a whopping great head and a temper to match the most poisonous red hair I've ever seen on a newborn baby. You couldn't kill that little mite with an axe, and I know, because I nearly tried."
Jubilant, Luddie broke out the bottle of champagne he had been saving, and the five of them stood with their glasses brimming; priest, doctor, midwife, farmer and cripple toasted the health and well-being of the mother and her screaming, crotchety baby. It was the first of June, the first day of the Australian winter.
A nurse had arrived to take over from the midwife, and would stay until Meggie was pronounced out of all danger. The doctor and the midwife left, while Anne, Luddie and the Archbishop went to see Meggie. She looked so tiny and wasted in the double bed that Archbishop Ralph was obliged to store away another, separate pain in the back of his mind, to be taken out later, inspected and endured. Meggie, my torn and beaten Meggie . . . I shall love you always, but I cannot give you what Luke O'neill did, however grudgingly.
The grizzling scrap of humanity responsible for all this lay in a wicker bassinet by the far wall, not a bit appreciative of their attention as they stood around her and peered down. She yelled her resentment, and kept on yelling. In the end the nurse lifted her, bassinet and all; and put her in the room designated as her nursery.
"There's certainly nothing wrong with her lungs." Archbishop Ralph smiled, sitting on the edge of the bed and taking Meggie's pale hand. "I don't think she likes life much," Meggie said with an answering smile. How much older he looked! As fit and supple as ever, but immeasurably older. She turned her head to Anne and Luddie, and held out her other hand. "My dear good friends! Whatever would I have done without you? Have we heard from Luke?"
"I got a telegram saying he was too busy to come, but wishing you good luck."
"Big of him," said Meggie.
Anne bent quickly to kiss her check. "We'll leave you to talk with the Archbishop, dear. I'm sure you've got a lot of catching up to do." Leaning on Luddie, she crooked her finger at the nurse, who was gaping at the priest as if she couldn't believe her eyes. "Come on, Nettie, have a cup of tea with us. His Grace will let you know if Meggie needs you."
"What are you going to call your noisy daughter?" he asked as the door closed and they were alone.
"Justine."
"It's a very good name, but why did you choose it?" "I read it somewhere, and I liked it."
"Don't you want her, Meggie?"
Her face had shrunk, and seemed all eyes; they were soft and filled with a misty light, no hate but no love either. "I suppose I want her. Yes, I do want her. I schemed enough to get her. But while I was carrying her I couldn't feel anything for her, except that she didn't want me. I don't think Justine will ever be mine, or Luke's, or anyone's. I think she's always going to belong to herself."
"I must go, Meggie," he said gently.
Now the eyes grew harder, brighter: her mouth twisted into an unpleasant shape. "I expected that! Funny how the men in my life all scuttle off into the woodwork, isn't it?"
He winced. "Don't be bitter, Meggie. I can't bear to leave thinking of you like this. No matter what's happened to you in the past, you've always retained your sweetness and it's the thing about you I find most endearing. Don't change, don't become hard because of this. I know it must be terrible to think that Luke didn't care enough to come, but don't change. You wouldn't be my Meggie anymore." But still she looked at him half as if she hated him. "Oh, come off it, Ralph! I'm not your Meggie, I never was! You didn't want me, you sent me to him, to Luke. What do you think I am, some sort of saint, or a nun? Well, I'm not! I'm an ordinary human being, and you've spoiled my life! All the years I've loved you, and wanted to forget you, but then I married a man I thought looked a little bit like you, and he doesn't want me or need me either. Is it so much to ask of a man, to be needed and wanted by him?" She began to sob, mastered it; there were fine lines of pain on her face that he had never seen before, and he knew they weren't the kind that rest and returning health would smooth away.
"Luke's not a bad man, or even an unlikable one," she went on. "Just a man. You're all the same, great big hairy moths bashing yourselves to pieces after a silly flame behind a glass so clear your eyes don't see it. And if you do manage to blunder your way inside the glass to fly into the flame, you fall down burned and dead. While all the time out there in the cool night there's food, and love, and baby moths to get. But do you see it, do you want it? No! It's back after the flame again, beating yourselves senseless until you burn yourselves dead!"
He didn't know what to say to her, for this was a side of her he had never seen. Had it always been there, or had she grown it out of her terrible trouble and abandonment? Meggie, saying things like this? He hardly heard what she said, he was so upset that she should say it, and so didn't understand that it came from her loneliness, and her guilt. "Do you remember the rose you gave me the night I left Drogheda?" he asked tenderly.
"Yes, I remember." The life had gone out of her voice, the hard light out of her eyes. They stared at him now like a soul without hope, as expressionless and glassy as her mother's.
"I have it still, in my missal. And every time I see a rose that color, I think of you. Meggie, I love you. You're my rose, the most beautiful human image and thought in my life."
