Katharine Tynan - The Story of Bawn

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THE STORY OF BAWN

BY

KATHARINE TYNAN

AUTHOR OF "THE DEAR IRISH GIRL," "JULIA," "DICK PENTREATH," ETC.

CHICAGO
A.C. McCLURG & CO.
1907

Published March 2, 1907

Printed in Great Britain

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE
I. Myself 1
II. The Ghosts 7
III. The Creamery 16
IV. Richard Dawson 24
V. The Nurse 33
VI. One Side of a Story 42
VII. Old, Unhappy, Far-off Things 50
VIII. The Stile in the Wood 55
IX. A Rough Lover 63
X. The Trap 70
XI. The Friend 78
XII. The Enemy 86
XIII. Enlightenment 93
XIV. The Miniature 102
XV. The Empty House 108
XVI. The Portrait 116
XVII. The Will of Others 122
XVIII. Flight 129
XIX. The Crying in the Night 137
XX. An Eavesdropper 144
XXI. The New Maid 152
XXII. The Dinner-party 160
XXIII. The Bargain 167
XXIV. The Blow Falls 175
XXV. The Lover 183
XXVI. The Tribunal 191
XXVII. Brosna 199
XXVIII. The Quick and the Dead 207
XXIX. The Sickness 215
XXX. The Dark Days 223
XXXI. The Wedding-dress 231
XXXII. The New Home 239
XXXIII. The End of It 249
XXXIV. The Knocking at the Door 257
XXXV. The Messenger 266
XXXVI. The Old Lovers 275
XXXVII. The Judgment of God 283
XXXVIII. Confession 289
XXXIX. The Bridegroom Comes 299
XL. King Cophetua 307

=THE STORY OF BAWN=

CHAPTER I

MYSELF

I am Bawn Devereux, and I have lived as long as I remember at Aghadoe
Abbey with my grandfather and grandmother, the Lord and Lady St. Leger.

At one time we were a family of five. There was my Uncle Luke, and there
was my cousin Theobald.

Theobald was my boy cousin, and we played together up and down the long
corridors in winter, and in the darkness of the underground passage, in
summer in the woods and shrubberies and gardens, and we were happy
together.

I was eager to please Theobald, and I put away from me my natural
shrinkings from things he did not mind, lest he should despise me and be
dissatisfied with me, longing for a boy's company. I would do all he
did, and I must have been a famous tomboy. But my reward was that he
never seemed to desire other company than mine.

Once, indeed, I remember that when he handed me live bait to put upon
the hook I turned suddenly pale and burst into tears.

When I had done it I looked at him apprehensively, dreading to see his
contempt written in his face, but there was no such thing. There was
instead the dawn of a new feeling. My cousin's face wore such an
expression as I had never seen in it before. He was at this time a tall
boy of fifteen, and Bridget Connor, my grandmother's maid, was making me
my first long frock.

He looked at me with that strange expression, and he said, "Poor little
Bawn!"

It was the beginning of the new order of things in which I fagged for
him no more, but was spared the labours and fatigues I had endured
cheerfully during our early years. Indeed, I often wonder now at the
things I did for him, such things as the feminine nature turns from with
horror, although they seem to come naturally enough to a boy.

That day I heard my grandfather and grandmother discussing me.

Theobald was playing in a cricket match in the neighbourhood, and I was
at home, reading in one of the recesses of the library. The book was
Thackeray's "Henry Esmond," and I was so lost in the romance and
tenderness of it--I was at that chapter where Harry returns bringing his
sheaves with him--that I did not notice what they were saying till my
own name caught my ears.

I remember that the afternoon had come on wet, and that while I read the
wet branches of the lilac beat against the leaded window. I could see
the flowers through an open pane, and smell their delightful perfume.
There was an apple tree in view, too, with all its blossoms hanging in
pink limpness.

I had forgotten my grandfather and grandmother sitting by the library
fire, within the hooded settle that made the fireside like a little
room; and they had forgotten my presence, if indeed they had known of
it.

"Bawn is the very moral of what I was at her age," my grandmother said.
"Have you noticed, Toby"--my grandfather also was a Theobald--"how tall
she grows? And how she sways in walking like a poplar tree? She has my
complexion before it ran in streaks, and my hair before it faded, and
my eyes before they were dim. She has the carriage of the head which
made them call me the Swan of Dunclody. She will be fifteen come
Michaelmas, and she shall have my pearls for her neck."

I heard her in an excessive surprise. My grandmother had been esteemed a
great beauty in her day and had been sung by the ballad-singers. Was it
possible that my looks could be like hers? I had not thought about them
hitherto any more than my cousin had about his. It was with almost a
sense of relief that I heard my grandfather's reply.

"The child is well enough," he said, "but as for being so like you, that
she is not, nor ever will have your share of beauty. As for your spoilt
roses I do not see them, nor the dimmed eyes, nor the faded hair. You
were lovely when I saw you first, and you are no less lovely in my sight
to-day."

"In your sight--at seventy!" my grandmother said; and I could picture to
myself the well-pleased expression of her dear face.

As for my Uncle Luke, of him I have but a dim memory, yet it is of
something bonny. To be sure I have his picture in my grandmother's
boudoir to remind me of him, a fair, full-lipped, smiling and merry
face, with dark brown hair which would have curled if it were permitted.
His comeliness survived even the hideous fashion of men's dress of his
day, and my memory of him is of one in riding-breeches and a scarlet
coat, for I think that must have been how I saw him oftenest.

He used to lift me to his shoulders and let me climb upon his head, and
I remember that it seemed very fine to me to survey the world from that
eminence.

I could have been no more than six years of age when my Uncle Luke
vanished out of my surroundings.

At that time Theobald had not come to be an inmate of Aghadoe, and I
noticed things as an over-wise child, accustomed to the society of its
elders, will.

I often wondered about it in later years. I had no memory of a wake and
a funeral, and I think if these things had been I should have known. But
there was a period of trouble in which I was packed away to my nursery
and the companionship of Maureen Kelly, our old nurse.

When I emerged from that it was to find my grandfather stern and sad,
and my grandmother with a scared look and the roses of her cheeks
faded.

And for long the shadow lay over Aghadoe. But in course of time people
grew used to it as they will to all things, and my grandfather took
snuff and played whist with his cronies, and drank his French claret,
and rode to hounds, as he had been used; and my grandmother played on
the harp to him of evenings when we were alone, and walked with him and
talked to him, and saw to the affairs of her household, as though the
machinery of life had not for a period run slow and heavy.

CHAPTER II

THE GHOSTS

We were very old-fashioned at Aghadoe Abbey and satisfied with
old-fashioned ways. There was a great deal of talk about opening up the
country, and even the gentry were full of it, but my grandfather would
take snuff and look scornful.

"And when you have opened it up," he said, "you will let in the devil
and all his angels."

It was certainly true that the people had hitherto been kind and
innocent, so that any change might be for the worse, yet I was a little
curious about what lay out in the world beyond our hills. And now it was
no great journey to see, for they had opened a light railway, and from
the front of the house we could see beyond the lake and the park,
through the opening where the Purple Hill rises, that weird thing which
rushes round the base of the hill half a dozen times a day before it
climbs with no effort to the gorge between the hills and makes its way
into the world. It does not even go by steam, so the thing was a great
marvel to us and our people, to whom steam was quite marvel enough.

My grandfather at first would not even look on it. I have seen him turn
away sharply from the window to avoid seeing it. When we went out to
drive we turned our backs upon it, my grandfather saying that he would
not insult his horses by letting them look at it, and indeed I think
that, old as they were, yet having blood in them they would curvet a bit
if they saw anything so strange to them.

There is one thing the light railway has done, and that is to give the
people a market for their goods. We were all much poorer than we once
were, except Mr. Dawson, who made his money by money-lending in Dublin
and London; but even with Mr. Dawson's big house we did not make a
market for the countryside.

Besides, there was a stir among the people there used not to be. They
were spinning and weaving in their cottages, and they were rearing fowl
and growing fruit and flowers.

The things which before the peasant children did for sport they now did
for profit as well. It caused the greatest surprise in the minds of the
people when they discovered that anybody could want their blackberries
and their mushrooms; that money was to be made out of even the gathering
of shamrocks. They thought that people out in the world who were ready
to pay money for such things must be very queer people indeed. But since
there were "such quare ould oddities," it was just as well, since they
made life easier for the poor.

Another thing was that a creamery had been started at Araglin, only a
mile or two from us, and the girls went there from the farms to learn
the trade of dairying.

If it were not for the light railway none of these things would have
been possible, and so I forgave it that it flew with a shriek round the
base of the Purple Hill, setting all the mountains rattling with echoes,
and disturbing the water fowl on the lakes and the song-birds in the
woods, the eagle in his eyrie, and the wild red deer, to say nothing of
the innumerable grouse and partridges and black cock and plover and
hares and rabbits on the mountain-side.

My grandmother was not as angry against the light railway as my
grandfather; she used to say that we must go with the times, and she was
glad the people were stirring since it kept their thoughts from turning
to America. She had been talked over by Miss Champion, my godmother and
the greatest friend we have. And Miss Champion was always on the side of
the people, and had even persuaded my grandmother to let her have some
of her famous recipes, such as those for elder and blackberry wine, and
for various preserves, and for fine soaps and washes for the skin, so
that the people might know them and make more money.

"Every one makes money except the gentry," my grandfather grumbled, "and
we grow poorer year by year."

My grandfather talked freely in my presence; and I knew that Aghadoe
Abbey was mortgaged to the doors and that the mortgages would be
foreclosed at my grandfather's death. They kept nothing from me, and my
grandmother has said to me with a watery smile: "If I survive your
grandfather, Bawn, my dear, you and I will have to find genteel lodgings
in Dublin. It would be a strange thing for a Lady St. Leger to come down
from Aghadoe Abbey to that. To be sure there was once a Countess went
ballad-singing in the streets of Cork."

"That day is far away," I answered. "And when it comes there will be no
genteel lodgings, but Theobald and I will take care of you somewhere.
In a little house it may be, but one with a garden where you can walk in
the sun in winter mornings as you do now, and prod at the weeds in the
path as you do now with your silver-headed cane."

"If I could survive your grandfather," she said, turning away her head,
"my heart would break to leave Aghadoe. I ask nothing of you and
Theobald, Bawn, but that you should take care of each other when we are
gone. It is not right that the old should burden the young."

I have always known, or at least since I was capable of entertaining
such things, that our grandparents destined Theobald and me for each
other. I have no love for Theobald such as I find in my books, but I
have a great affection for him as the dearest of brothers.

I have not said before that he is a soldier. What else should he be but
a soldier? Since there have always been soldiers in the family, and my
grandfather could not have borne him to be anything else.

Dear Theobald, how brave and simple and kind he was!

I have said nothing about the ghosts of Aghadoe Abbey, but it has many
ghosts, or it had.

First and foremost there is the Lord St. Leger, who was killed in a
Dublin street brawl a hundred years ago, who will come driving home at
midnight headless in his coach, and the coachman driving him also
headless, carrying his head under his arm. That is not a very pleasant
thing to see enter as the gates swing open of themselves to let the
ghost through.

Then there is the ghost of the woman who cries outside in the shrubbery.
I have seen her myself in a glint of the moonlight, her black hair
covering her face as she bends to the earth, incessantly seeking
something among the dead leaves, which she cannot discover, and for
which she cries.

And again, there is the lady who goes down the stairs, down, down,
through the underground passage, and yet lower to the well that lies
under the house, and is seen no more. A new maid once saw her in broad
daylight--or at least in the grey of the morning--and followed her down
the stairs, thinking that it was one of the family ill perhaps, who
needed some attention. She could tell afterwards the very pattern of the
lace on the fine nightgown, and describe how the fair curls clustered on
the lady's neck. It was only when the lady disappeared before her, a
white shimmer down the darkness of the underground corridor, that the
poor thing realized she had seen a ghost, and fell fainting, with a
clatter of her dustpan and brush which brought her help.

I could make a long list of the ghosts, for they are many, but I will
not, lest I should be tedious. Only Aghadoe Abbey was eerie at night,
especially in winter storms, since my cousin Theobald went away. I have
often thought that the curious formation of the house, which has as many
rooms beneath the ground as above it, helped to give it an eerie
feeling, for one could not but imagine those downstair rooms filled with
ghosts. I had seen the rooms lit dimly once or twice, but for a long
time we had not used them, the expense of lighting them with a thousand
wax candles glimmering in glittering chandeliers being too great.

But in the days before Cousin Theobald left us I was not afraid. He
slept across the corridor from my room, and I had only to cry out and I
knew he would fly to my assistance.

His sword was new at that time, and he was very proud of it. He turned
it about, making it flash in the sunlight, and, said he, "Cousin Bawn,
fear nothing; for if anything were to frighten you, either ghost or
mortal, I would run it through with my sword. At your least cry I
should wake, and I have always the sword close to my hand. Very often I
lie awake when you do not think it to watch over you."

It gave me great comfort at the time, though looking back on it now I
think my cousin, being so healthy and in the air all day, must have
slept very soundly. Yet I am sure he thought he woke.

And, indeed, after he left the ghosts were worse than ever. I used to
take my little dog into my arms for company, and, hiding my head under
the bedclothes, I used to lie quaking because of the crying of the
ghosts. It was a wild winter when Theobald left us, and they cried every
night. It is a sound I have never grown used to, though I have heard it
every winter I can remember. And also the swish of the satin as it went
by my door, and the tap of high-heeled shoes. They cried more that
winter than I ever heard them, except in the winter after Uncle Luke
went away (but then I was little, and had the company of Maureen Kelly,
my nurse); and in a winter which was yet to be.

But at that time I was happy despite the ghosts, and had no idea that
the world held any fate for me other than to be always among such
gentle, high-minded people as were my grandfather and grandmother, my
cousin Theobald, and my dear godmother. For ghosts, especially of one's
own blood, are gentle and little likely to harm one, and must be
permitted by the good God to come back for some good reason.

It is another matter when it is some one of flesh and blood, who wants
to take you in his arms and kiss you while your flesh creeps, and your
whole soul cries out against it. And it is the worst matter of all when
those to whom you have fled all your days for help and protection, to
whom you would have looked to save you from such a thing, look on, with
pale faces indeed, yet never interfere.

Often, often in the days that were to come I had rather be of the
company of the ghosts than to endure the things I had to endure.

CHAPTER III

THE CREAMERY

It was through my godmother that I went to learn the butter-making at
the Creamery, and since it was strange that my grandparents should have
permitted me to go, I must explain how it was that Miss Champion came to
have so much influence with them and over our affairs generally, and who
the lady was.

She was our nearest neighbour, at Castle Clody, the beautiful old house
which stands on the side of the river Clody, overlooking the falls. She
had been an orphan almost from her birth, and had grown up as
independent and able to manage her affairs as any man.

She was a great sportswoman even in our country of such, and being
exposed to all manner of wind and weathers, her face had come to have a
weather-beaten look. She had very beautiful grey eyes and a deal of
black, silken hair, and she was unusually tall. Even the weather, when
it had roughened and tanned her complexion, had but given her a new
charm to my mind, for she looked as wholesome and sweet and out-of-doors
as the weather itself. Yet people said she was plain. I could not see
it, but then she was too good to me and I loved her.

I remember that usually she wore grey tweed tailor-made gowns, in which
her beautiful figure showed to advantage, unless she happened to be
riding when she wore a dark grey habit. But I have seen her very
splendid when she went out in the evening; and I have never seen a woman
better fitted to grace splendid garments.

She had taken to herself at Castle Clody, because it was her nature to
foster and protect something, a cousin of hers, a peevish, exacting
invalid whom we always called Miss Joan, her name being Joan Standish.

If you spent only ten minutes by Miss Joan's bedside you were sure to
hear her grumble at her cousin Mary. Since everything was done for her
that could possibly be done for an invalid her lot had great
alleviations, but she seemed to take it as an offence that my godmother
should be so strong and free, should walk with such a swinging stride,
and always enjoy her food, and bring that smell of the open air with her
wherever she came.

She had an unpleasant flattering way with her at times.

"Come, my dear," she would say, "sit down and talk to me. I live in so
dreary an isolation, and my nerves get into that state that I could
scream when a harsh voice falls on my ear. Your voice is soft and sweet,
but have you ever noticed Mary's? It is as harsh as a crow's, and when
she comes in with those strong boots of hers creaking she destroys my
peace of mind for an hour."

"She has a beautiful voice," I answered her once, "and there is such
assurance in her tread. I should think it would be more trying to the
nerves to live where every one went tiptoe."

But no manner of coldness could check Miss Joan's propensity for
belittling her benefactress. And I remember that once she had been
tittle-tattling as usual, and had said something more indefensible than
usual of her benefactress, when looking up suddenly we found Miss
Champion in the room.

"Let the child love me, Joan," she said, with the nearest approach to
sharpness I ever heard in her speech; but when Miss Joan burst into
tears she stooped and shook up her pillows and soothed her in a way that
was tender without being attached, and afterwards she said something to
me which was a dark saying since I did not know the secret between her
and Miss Joan.

"One must needs be good to anything that has hurt one so much," she
said.

I had always known vaguely that there was something between Mary
Champion and my Uncle Luke, and that explained to some extent her
influence with my grandparents. She brought into their shut-up lives,
indeed, the open air and the ways of other folk, without which I think
we should have all grown too strange and odd and a century at least
behind our time. Indeed, even with her, I think we were so much out of
date.

"The child grows more and more like a plant which has lived without the
light," she said one day of me to my grandmother.

"It is Bawn's nature to look pale," my grandmother said, looking at me
in an alarmed way.

"It is her nature to look pale perhaps," my godmother said, while I
fidgeted at hearing myself discussed, "but she ought to look no paler
than this apple-blossom I am wearing, which at all events dreams of
rose-colour. You keep her too much penned. I shall have to carry her
off to Dublin for some gaiety. If the season were not nearly over----"

"We couldn't do without Bawn," said my grandmother hastily. "We are too
old to live without something young beside us. Besides, she is very
happy--aren't you, Bawn?"

"Very happy." I answered the appeal in her dear voice and eyes. And to
be sure I was happy, if it were not for the loneliness and the ghosts at
night.

"She is always reading," my godmother went on. "Young girls should not
be always reading. It bends their backs and dims their eyes and makes
them forget their walks and rides. I'll tell you what, Lady St. Leger,
you had better let Bawn come and learn butter-making with me at the
Creamery. I am going to take a course of lessons and then I can make my
own butter. I think Margaret Dwyer is getting past her work. Joan says
the butter is rancid, and for once I believe Joan has cause. Every lady
ought to at least superintend her own dairy."

"I used to visit mine often," said my grandmother, "before Lord St.
Leger needed so much of my time. It was a pretty place, with white walls
and a fountain bubbling. It is a long time since I have visited it."

"Let Bawn do it. I went to visit Lady Ardaragh the other day, and she
gave me tea in her dairy. It is coming into fashion to be housekeepers
and dairymaids once more."

"Would you like to go to the Creamery, Bawn?" asked my grandmother.

"I should love to," said I. "And to have a herd of little Kerries like
Lady Ardaragh. The dairy is as pretty as ever, but it wants washing, and
the fountain is broken. I believe Michael Friely could mend it."

My grandfather made no objection when he heard of the plan, only saying
something with a laugh about fine ladies liking to play dairymaids. So
it was settled I should go to the Creamery; and Bridget Connor made
gowns of cotton for me to wear at the Creamery, and white aprons to go
with them.

I think my grandmother looked on it as a child's play for my diversion,
and she would have Bridget make me as pretty as she could. I dare say I
did look as though I played at work, for I caught sight of myself in the
Venetian mirror on the wall of my grandmother's boudoir as she turned me
round about, her maid, Bridget Connor, who learnt dressmaking in Paris,
pinching here and letting loose there.

The walls of my grandmother's boudoir are covered with mother-of-pearl
which glows splendidly when the lamps are lit.

I glanced at the Venetian mirror and saw myself like a rose in my rosy
frock, with the apron of spotless muslin and the mushroom hat with a
wreath of pink roses. My grandmother said something about dairying at
the Petit Trianon, but indeed my intentions were of the most
business-like.

I remember that it was the month of May, and all the pastures were
richest gold and snowiest white, drifts of gold and white. The
thorn-trees were all in bloom, and the banks were covered with the white
stitchwort and blue speedwell. The birds were in full song, and the
mornings and evenings were especially delicious.

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