Eithne
Fantasy & Science Fiction – July 1957
(1957)*
Margaret St. Clair
(by Idris Seabright)

	When Eithne's carrying a child began to be noticeable, Herbert sent her away from Corstophine, their villa, to Wracksand, a little hamlet on the North coast. He said he did it because the air at Corstophine was too heavy for a female in her condition, and it was true, the air at Corstophine was always dark with smoke and sharp with sulphur from the mills. But Eithne thought he was sending her away because he was ashamed of her.

	She did not much mind. Her maid was traveling with her, and Herbert, parting from her at the station, had put a generous number of ten pound notes in her reticule. Besides, though the obsessive grip of his dark, shamefaced feeling for her had begun to relax a little in the last month, she was still easier away from him. She was supposed to return to Corstophine for her confinement. Herbert had engaged a medical man in the neighborhood to attend her. Dr. Trevin was a modern practitioner, well thought of, up-to-date in his methods. He would give her chloroform when her pains got bad. The Queen had had chloroform in 1853 when Prince Leopold was born.

	When Eithne and her companion got to Wracksand, there turned out to be no suitable place for Dawkins, the maid, to stay. Eithne bore her complaints patiently for perhaps fifteen minutes. Then—her temper was uncertain these days; sometimes she was happy at her condition, sometimes fiercely resentful of it—she told the woman abruptly to go back to Corstophine. Eithne could get along quite well with nobody but Mrs. Neville, her landlady, to attend her. She had liked Mrs. Neville on sight.

	Dawkins left, sulky and hysterical When Eithne had had time to rest a little from her journey, Mrs. Neville suggested that she might like to walk down to the sea and sit in the sun. Though it was October, it was a fine warm day, and a little exercise was good for a woman who was carrying.

	Eithne was pleased. She got Matthew Arnold's latest volume of poems from her valise—she liked poetry, though Herbert didn't—and started toward the water. The coast at Wracksand was rocky, but Mrs. Neville's directions had been careful. Eithne had no difficulty in finding the little sandy beach, enclosed between two jutting spits of rock.

	The sun was warm. Eithne did not open her book. She sat with her hands loosely about her knees, thinking languidly of Herbert ... Corstophine ... Dawkins ... Herbert again. Herbert talked so much of duty. It was, she supposed, her duty to have the baby. At any rate, she was having it.

	How warm the sun was! Suddenly Eithne felt like a prisoner within the heavy black serge of her dress. She stood up. Mrs. Neville had said that nobody ever came to the beach, not even fishermen. With eager, guilty fingers Eithne began to unbutton the buttons—the dozens of buttons—on her bodice. She pulled the dress off over her shoulders, thinking: how heavy, heavier even than the child I'm carrying. And her underclothing, stiff with handmade lace and much embroidery, was heavy too.

	She stood naked at last. She looked about herself anxiously, but, no, nobody ever came here. The waves that broke on the little beach were white with foam, but the water itself was a tender dark gray-blue. Her eyes half-shut against the shameful sight of her own body, she waded hesitantly out until she stood in water over her knees.

	She had never been in the sea before without a bathing-dress. The water was cold, but there was something delicious in its very iciness. Hastily she knelt, and sluiced the next waves over her shoulders and her breasts. Oh! Oh! How cold, how sweet! Then she hurried back to the pile of clothing she had left on the sand.

	She had nothing to dry on. The air dried her, and left a prickle of salt on her skin. She got into her clothing again, finding that she resented its weight less now that she had been out of it.

	She was almost done with the buttons on the heavy black bodice when she saw, far out beyond the jutting rocks, forty yards or so from the shore, a cluster of bobbing heads. For a moment shame froze her. Then she laughed. Seals, only seals. It didn't matter if they had been watching her.

	When she got back to the cottage Mrs. Neville was preparing a meal, something between an early supper and a late tea. "Was it pleasant by the water, ma'am?" she asked as she scalded out the teapot.

	"Very pleasant," Eithne answered. "The sun was nicely warm. Oh, and I saw some seals."

	"Seals!" Mrs. Neville set the brown-glazed teapot down with a thump. "Fancy that! Excuse me for asking, ma'am, but are you quite sure? There haven't been seals at Wracksand since my grandmother's day, thirty or forty years ago."

	"Quite sure," Eithne answered. "I saw their heads, you know. Round, dark heads."

	"Yes ... Well, I'm glad to hear they are back. The people of the sea—that's what folk in these parts call them, ma'am—are lucky. Fancy their coming back, after all these years!"

	"I suppose it was the seal fishers drove them away?" Eithne asked, sinking down in the chair Mrs. Neville had pulled out for her.

	"So some say. My grandmother always' held it was the wickedness of folk nowadays that made them leave. She said it wasn't natural to dig the earth for iron and coal. And oh, she thought it dreadful to make the little ones work so hard beside the looms in the cruel cotton factories. The dogs, she used to say, were better off than many an English child,"

	"That's progress," Eithne said, echoing Herbert. "We have to have progress."

	"Progress!" Mrs. Neville's dark eyes flashed. "Nay, but it's wickedness! ... Excuse me, ma'am. Eat your supper, do. There's a fresh hearth-baked loaf for you, and sweet butter from Mrs. May's churning. A bit of lettuce from the garden. And I boiled two of the speckled eggs. They're the tasty ones."

	Eithne buttered a slice of the crumbly warm bread and began to pour herself a cup of tea. "Put lots of milk to your tea, ma'am," Mrs. Neville advised her. "Milk's the staff of life to a childing woman."

	When she undressed for bed that night, Eithne touched her tongue to her wrist. She laughed to find she could still taste salt on it.

-

	The weather held on fine, and Eithne went every day to the little beach. She took her lunch with her—eggs or cheese, slices of brown loaf, and milk in a flask—in a little wicker basket, and stayed until the sun was low and it began to grow chill. She sat with her hands in her lap, not thinking, watching the waves eternally washing against the sand. She often saw the heads of seals, sometimes far out, sometimes so near that she could have tossed a pebble out to them.

	She wrote to Herbert weekly, and got letters as often from him. Business was good, he wrote, he missed her. There had been an accident at the mills; two workingmen had been badly scalded when one of the vats that held the molten steel broke. Nothing serious. The firm had two new contracts. He would send Dawkins to fetch her back to Corstophine at the middle of January. He had told the maid to use her time in making dresses for Eithne's child.

	Eithne crumpled up the letters from Herbert as soon as she read them, and tossed them in the fireplace. She disliked thinking about Corstophine, Herbert, the mills. She was impatient to get back to the beach and forget them.

	She longed to undress again and let the wonderful cold sea water caress her. No, it might be bad for the child. But the nagging backache that had troubled her so at Corstophine had left her. Her body felt relaxed and sound.

	Toward the end of November the long spell of fine weather broke. It rained hard; day after day there was driving wind or choking fog. Eithne had to stay in the house by the fire. She tried crocheting, but she had never cared for fancy work. She was always laying the hook down and yawning. She preferred to help Mrs. Neville with the household tasks, or to listen to the older woman talk.

	At first Mrs. Neville talked of the people of the village: of Parson, who was a good man, and so learned that he could read books in those old hard languages; of Mrs. May, who kept two cows and had been midwife to Mrs. Neville when she had had her own children; of Billy Atkins, who had run away to sea, and of Norah Pollock, who had run off to London and come to no good end, and of a host of others who had lived in the village, fished or farmed there, and died where they had been born.

	Then, when she grew more at ease with Eithne, she began to tell her the stories her own mother had told her. Fairy stories, Eithne supposed one would call them. She told of brownies and sea fairies, of the Good Neighbors, who Eithne gathered were land spirits, of hags and demons, of the people of the sea, and of the paths that lead to fairyland. Eithne listened with drowsy pleasure. Sometimes Mrs. Neville would interrupt herself to say with a laugh that Parson liked her to tell the old stories, and she supposed she had got into the way of telling them to the quality.

	At last, after nearly three weeks of bad weather, the sky cleared. Mrs. Neville bundled Eithne up in layer on layer of woolen shawls, and sent her out to take the air. Eithne walked down to the beach.

	The sun's rays were weak, but he rode in a sky of pale, unclouded blue. The water today was choppy, vexed by cross-currents, but from every broken pale blue surface there was reflected a dazzle of light. Eithne sat down in the sun, out of the wind. The light on the water hurt her eyes. She dozed.

	She woke with a start. What had she been dreaming? Some nonsense, out of the stories Mrs. Neville had been telling her—something about the two paths that human beings took, the hard road to heaven and the broad pleasant road to hell, and the third path, the pretty winding path that leads to fairyland.

	Nonsense. But suppose it were true. Suppose that, besides the two known ways, there were a third one, the road to fairyland? Nonsense. Nonsense. There was only one path to be taken, the path of duty—Herbert spoke so much of duty—and Eithne's next duty was returning to Corstophine to have her child.

	Eithne felt a throb of hatred toward Corstophine. The rooms were too large, always cold, dank with the raw smell of new 'plaster. The servants were obsequious and attentive, but they had spiteful eyes. Even the garden, that might have given her pleasure, had been frozen by topiary work and formal parterres into a rigid, distasteful lesson in geometry. And Dr. Trevin—how could she expose her travailing body to his cold scrutiny? He was a formal, dry little man with sharp manners. For all his modernity and his neat pince-nez, she disliked him and was afraid of him.

	Oh, but she had to. It was her duty.—Why shouldn't she stay in Wracksand and have her baby here?

	Eithne knotted her fingers together. She felt giddy with excitement. Was it really so foolish? Mrs. May was a clever midwife; Mrs. Neville said that she had saved the life of a woman in Pawlish that two doctors had given up. And Mrs. Neville herself was so kind. She treated Eithne like a daughter. Eithne felt safe and happy with her. It would be easy to have a baby here.

	Herbert would be furious. He was a choleric man; Eithne had seen him, in moments of exasperation, actually gnashing his teeth. But though he might send Dawkins to fetch her back to Corstophine, Dawkins was only a servant. Dawkins could not compel her. And Herbert himself was much too fond of his dignity to make himself ridiculous by attempting to coerce a woman in the last stages of pregnancy. There were some advantages in being a woman, after all. No. She would stay here. She would write to Herbert tonight.

	When she got back to the cottage, she told Mrs. Neville what she had decided. *Tm so glad," the older woman said. Her eyes glowed. "Just fancy, a baby in the house again! It will be like old times.

	"I'm sure you won't regret it, my dear. There never was a better midwife than Mrs. May. Folk in the village say she's kin to the Good Neighbors, she's so wise. And I can help you get things ready for the little one. I've still got baby clothes put away in my old dresser. After you drink your tea, we'll have a look"

	Herbert's answer, when it came, was even angrier than Eithne had feared. She was, he wrote, making him look like a fool. And she was a fool herself, to trust herself to ignorant old women at such a dangerous moment of her life. Had she no conception of the trouble he had gone to on her account? He had put himself out to make suitable arrangements for her; for a momentary whim, a wild, unregulated fancy, she was willing to upset everything. She had never had the proper views of what duty in a wife meant. And so on for three pages.

	His letter, however, ended on a note of acquiescence, as Eithne had foreseen it would. She fancied he might be secretly relieved at being spared the discomfort and inconvenience of having her confined at Corstophine. She only hoped he would not make her pay for the affront to his dignity when she did go back.

	Eithne's child was due at the end of January. Just before bedtime on the night of the twenty-eighth she called Mrs. Neville, saying she thought her pains had begun.

	Mrs. Neville went for Mrs. May at once. Eithne, left alone in the little cottage with only the oil lamp for company, gave way to a moment of terrible fear. Herbert was right, she was a fool. Women died in childbed, even when they had good doctors. She had put her life into the hands of two ignorant old women. Mrs. Neville could not even read. What a fool she had been! She was almost groaning with fear when Mrs. Neville and the midwife came back.

	Mrs. May gave her a long, searching look. Then she smiled. "Take off your things, my dear," she said. "We want to wash you. And then, if you have a short, loose nightdress, put it on. Better no nightdress at all, if you're warm enough."

	Clumsily Eithne stood up. She was shaking with fear. A contraction bent her almost double. Mrs. May put her arms around her shoulders to support her.

	"Nay, you're doing it wrong," she said. "You mustn't try to help it yet, my dear. And don't be afraid. It's natural. You must just open to it, like a door."

	Eithne was undressed and washed. Mrs. May sat beside her, holding her hand and talking quietly. Gradually Eithne's fear abated. Herbert had been wrong, after all, and she right. Mrs. May might be ignorant of more than her ABC's. But she was wise.

	About ten o'clock Mrs. May said, "Draw a deep breath and hold it, my dear. There. Do you feel like bearing down a bit?"

	Eithne tried. "Why, that's better," she said, surprised.

	"Yes, now you can help." Mrs. May smiled. "And scream if you've a mind to, dear. Some women do."

	The contractions were coming faster. Eithne shook her head. She couldn't spare breath to tell Mrs. May the surprising thing she had just discovered. But the truth was that it was not really pain.

	The baby was born a little after one o'clock. Eithne, looking up into Mrs. May's face, saw a strange expression, like wind blowing over water, pass across it. "Is it all right?" she asked anxiously.

	"Yes. It's a girl. A perfect, beautiful little girl."

	The afterbirth had come. Eithne held out her tired arms. "Give her to me," she said.

-

	She was astonished at how much she enjoyed motherhood. The baby's tininess and physical perfection enchanted her. She never wanted to let the little thing out of her arms. She had been afraid she would not be able to suckle her daughter, since her breasts were small, but Mrs. Neville encouraged her, saying size went for naught in a matter like that. Eithne tried, and was filled with delicious pride when the baby throve. The only cloud on her happiness was the knowledge that she would soon have to return to Corstophine.

	She had written to Herbert a few days after her confinement, telling him the news. He waited almost two weeks to answer, and his letter, when it came, was short and cold, expressing regret for the child's sex. He said nothing about Eithne's returning to the villa. Yet Eithne knew that she would have to return.

	The weather stayed bad until early in March. Then it cleared. There was a feel of spring in the air. Eithne went down to the beach with the baby.

	She had her lunch and then, since little Una seemed hungry, gave her the breast. She leaned against a rock, drowsy with the relaxation of suckling, thinking of the story Mrs. Neville had told her last night—of how some seals are nothing but seals, and how others are the true People of the Sea, powerful beings who can doff their furry skins at will and go among land people in the human shape. Their number is always the same, and if one of them dies his skin must be given to another. The seals are their loved flocks, and they care for them tenderly.

	The baby sank back from the breast, satisfied. Eithne buttoned up her bodice. She looked out over the water. There were no seals at all today. Wait, though. Far out, almost farther than she could see, there was one head.

	There was a crunch of footsteps over the sand. Eithne turned, startled. A man was coming toward her around one of the points of rock.

	He wore corduroy trousers and a jersey, and there was a fishnet over his shoulders. He must be a fisher, though Eithne, who thought she knew every face in the village by now, didn't recognize him.

	"Good day, missis," he said when he got nearer.

	"Good day," Eithne replied sedately. She wasn't alarmed, though Mrs. Neville had said nobody ever came to the beach. He had a gentle look.

	When he got up to them, the baby murmured and crowed. He smiled. "So you've a little one!" he said, as if pleased. "Missis, could I have a look at her?"

	Eithne frowned a little. There was a strong, sharp smell of the sea about him. But she was so proud of her baby, she couldn't resist the temptation. "Yes, if you like," she said.

	He sank down beside them on his heels in the sand. Very gently he put out a finger and touched the baby's flushed cheek. Her blue eyes opened at the contact. She began to gurgle and smile.

	"A beautiful baby," he said. He was looking at little Una intently. "Yes, missis, a beautiful child."

	"Thank you," Eithne answered. She was hoping he would not ask to hold the baby. She did not want to entrust her child to a strange man.

	He got to his feet. "I am glad you let me see her," he said. "Good day, missis." He walked off around the other point of rock.

	Eithne gazed after him. She knew she had never seen him before, and yet she was troubled by a haunting sense of familiarity in his bearing. After a moment she placed it. It was Mrs. May he resembled. He looked enough like her to be, not her brother, but her cousin. Perhaps he was. In a small village, it was likely enough.

	Three days later Herbert, quite unexpectedly, came to Wracksand.

	Eithne was just finishing her breakfast when he knocked at the cottage door. When she saw who it was, she felt the blood leaving her face. Had he come to take her ... home, back to Corstophine?

	He embraced her, saying, "Good morning, my dear," and then looked around the little cottage disparagingly. "I wish to talk to you," he said. "Is there not some spot where we can be by ourselves?"

	Mrs. Neville was peering at them. Eithne was loath to take him to the little beach, where she had spent so many peaceful hours, but she knew of nowhere else. She picked up little Una and unwillingly led him down to the shore.

	They sat down in the sand. He fumbled in his pocket and brought out a book. "It is a gift I purchased for you," he said.

	Eithne unwrapped the parcel. It was a book of poetry, the same book of Matthew Arnold's, in fact, that she already had. Still, he had meant it kindly. "Thank you, Herbert," she said.

	"Yes ... When I saw it, I thought of you." He turned over the pages. When he came to "Dover Beach" he began to read the poem aloud haltingly. "'... Ah, love, let us be true/ To one another!'" he read. " For the world, which seems/ To lie before us like a land of dreams,/ So various, so beautiful, so new,/ Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,/ Nor certitude ... /"

	He closed the book. Eithne waited. "I am beginning to think," he said slowly, "that I have not given enough ... heed to love. There are other things in life besides duty. Yes."

	Eithne listened in cold surprise. She had been gone from Corstophine a long time—more than five months, in fact. Was Herbert trying to tell her that he had become interested in another woman? Or was this but the prelude to more of the dark, obsessive desire with which he had always regarded her person?

	What did it matter? What did she care? Now that she was face to face with him again, she realized that the spark of feeling she had had toward him at the time of their marriage had died utterly. She was sorry. He had brought her the poetry book. But he was less to her than the seals out yonder in the water were.

	The baby stirred and woke. She gave a hungry wail. Eithne undid her dress and began to nurse her.

	Herbert looked on. His lips had parted and a shine had come into his eyes. Eithne, meeting his glance, felt the blood rising hotly in her cheeks. No. No. She would not. But he was her husband. In the end, she would.

	When the feeding was finished, he said, "You spoil the child. Must you put her to the breast the moment she cries? Even a baby must learn to recognize duty and discipline."

	"She was hungry," Eithne defended feebly.

	"She can learn to wait." He cleared his throat. "There is another thing. She must be baptized. I have always thought, Eithne, that perhaps your own lack of proper awareness of a wife's duties comes from your not having been baptized until so late in life. I have already selected her godparents. And I have chosen her name too. She will be called Mary Gertrude."

	"I call her Una," Eithne said sullenly.

	"It is not a suitable name.—Eithne, you must return to Corstophine."

	Eithne's eyes moved. "I ... I am not yet well enough"

	"Perhaps. But I have consulted Dr. Trevin. He informs me that you will be quite well enough to resume your duties at the end of another week."

	What did he know about it? Eithne thought passionately. Duties! Duties I And Herbert's cold, abrupt lust in the dark. He talked of love. How she hated ... But when he got up from the beach with an air of finality, brushing the sand from his knees, she rose obediently and followed him.

-

	She told her landlady she would be leaving on Wednesday week. Mrs. Neville nodded, but said nothing. Eithne was grateful that she made no comment. She couldn't have borne to talk about her going back.

	For the next few days Eithne rose early and went down to the beach as soon as she had eaten. She sat all day looking out expectantly over the water. She seemed to be waiting for something—she didn't know what—that became more unlikely with the passing of every hour. Sometimes she would become conscious of how tensely she was waiting, and force herself to relax. But always in the next moment she would be sitting ^upright again, looking out eagerly at the seals' heads and the light on the waves.

	Except for her tense waiting, she felt perfectly calm. Now that her return to Corstophine was so near, it aroused no emotion in her.

	Tuesday came. Dawkins would be at Wracksand tomorrow. Eithne went to the beach early, but about three in the afternoon she felt a sudden impatience. She would wait no longer. It was silly to wait when she didn't even know what she was waiting for.

	She packed the things back in the lunch basket and picked up her baby. Una—Mary Gertrude—gave a sudden wail. Her small face was puckered with rage. She had been fretful and fractious, crying at everything, for the last few days, though she had been such a good baby before.

	Eithne sat down again and tried to comfort her. She was still rocking the child and singing when she heard a step on the sand.

	It was the fisherman. He was carrying something dark, that looked like fur, over his shoulders. The net he had carried before was gone.

	Eithne got to her feet. The baby had hushed its crying. She said, "It was you I was waiting for. But I didn't think you'd come."

	"Oh, yes. You were right, you see, when you thought there was another path."

	"Besides the two human ones? What's it like, underwave?"

	"Cool, green and sliding," he answered her with a smile. "Better than words."

	"Better than Mrs. Neville told me?"

	"Yes, better than her words."

	She let out a long breath. Little Una stirred. "I can't leave my baby," Eithne said.

	"Give her to me. Mrs. May said she had the signs."

	He took the child from Eithne's arms and walked out into the water with her. Eithne, looking on, felt a moment of the same terrible fear she had experienced on the baby's birth-night. Una would drown, she had been mad to trust her to a stranger, she—Then her mind steadied and she knew, as she had known on the night of her confinement, that it was all right. When the fisherman came back to her, she was sitting quietly in the sand.

	He gave her the baby and sat down beside her. Salt water was dripping from little Una's clothes and hair. But her cheeks were pink, and when Eithne cuddled her to her, she gave a crow of delight.

	"She can live underwave, then, and be happy," Eithne said.

	"Live, and be very happy," he answered in his deep, gentle voice.

	The tide was coming in. Eithne looked slantwise at the fisherman. She scooped up a handful of sand and let it trickle through her fingers. Now that so much was opening before her, she wanted to delay, to prolong anticipation on the very edge of bliss. But at last she got to her feet. "I ... we ... I am ready now. We'll come with you," she said. She began to fumble with the buttons of her dress.

	He had risen too and stood facing her. "Eithne—poor Eithne—don't you understand? You have to choose. You cannot both go. There is only one skin."

	She stared at him. She felt a sense of ruin so complete that it seemed to her the beach was heaving under her feet. Her mind was a kaleidoscope of ideas. Herbert—her duties—Corstophine—the baby's christening—discipline—the two paths. Then she held the child out to him. She knew she would never be able to do it if she delayed another moment. "Take her," she said.

	"Goodby, Eithne," he said gently. "She will be happy underwave." For the second time he walked out into the sea with Eithne's child.

	When the water closed over his head Eithne realized what she had done. She ran wildly out, waist-deep, shoulder-deep, pushing against the water's increasing resistance. She shrieked Una's name over and over.

	There was no answer. A little wave bobbed lightly into her open mouth. Far out on the water, just at the edge of the horizon, there was a black dot that might have been a seal's head.

	She ran back to the village. Sobbing, exhausted, her hair trailing over her shoulders, she told them her story. She had fallen asleep, the tide had come in, when she woke the baby had been gone. Mrs. Neville held her close and tried to comfort her.

	She went on weeping.

	She wept when she gave her evidence at the inquest, she wept when Herbert reviled her. (He would get a separation, he said, she was no better than a murderess, he would live no longer with a female who was so irresponsible.) She wept until her eyes were almost swollen shut with weeping.

	But later, when her tear-blinded eyes met Mrs. May's wise ones, she realized that under her bitter grief there was a spark of something better. She had, after all, been brave enough to choose rightly. It was Eithne, not Una, she was weeping for.

The End