Katharine Tynan - The Story of Bawn

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"You wanted to speak to me, Nora," I said.

I know I turned red and pale when her eyes met mine; for the moment all
social differences and distinctions ceased to be. I was going to marry
the man Nora loved, the man I loathed. I had a feeling that it was an
intolerable wrong.

"If you please, Miss Bawn," she said.

The servants were passing up and down the staircase. I did not want any
witnesses to our interview, nor any eavesdroppers.

"Come in here, Nora," I said, opening the door of the morning-room which
I usually had to myself for an hour or so after breakfast. "And how is
the child? Better, I hope."

"Little Katty is quite well again, Miss Bawn, and I've come to tell you,
please Miss Bawn, that I'd rather not come back. 'Tisn't that I'm
ungrateful, Miss. No young lady could be kinder and better than you. But
my uncle is going to marry again, and if you please, Miss Bawn, I think
I should like to go to America."

"Don't go to America, Nora," I said; "it's a terrible place. I'll look
after you. I'll speak to Miss Champion, and we'll see what we can do.
Miss Champion has so many friends. She'll easily get you another place,
away from this, in Dublin."

Suddenly the large tears filled Nora's eyes and trickled down her
cheeks. She wept in rivers as a child does, and as painlessly.

"Don't ask me to stay, Miss Bawn," she said brokenly. "I want to put
the ocean between me and him. I've done my best to pull him up out of my
heart, and I've prayed my best, but I go on caring for him still. I'd
better be away, Miss Bawn."

"Very well, Nora," I said, in a miserable perplexity. If she cared for
Richard Dawson so much it was she who ought to marry him, peasant girl
as she was. It was a shame that I should step into her place, loathing
it. "Very well," I said. "I will do what I can to help you. When do you
go, Nora?"

"Not till after Christmas, Miss. There won't be any emigration till the
worst of the winter storms are over. Thank you kindly, Miss Bawn, but I
don't think there's anything you can do for me. The nuns'll find me an
employment while I stay. You're not vexed with me for leaving, Miss
Bawn?"

"No, Nora, I quite understand," I said. And then on an impulse I kissed
her.

I knew she was fond of me, almost as fond as my old dog; and she did not
hate me, although I was going to marry the man she loved. She flushed
when I kissed her, and the tears came again to her eyes.

"You are very good to me, Miss Bawn," she said. "Not many ladies would
be so good to a poor girl. I hope you'll be happy, Miss Bawn. And I hope
you'll make _him_ happy. Don't believe anything the people say about
him. He has a good heart, like his mother. He's been good to me. Sure,
if he wasn't strong for the two of us, I'd have had no stren'th at all,
though I promised you, Miss Bawn. Many a day when I sat by little Katty,
and the other children were at school and the place quiet I thought I'd
have to run out of it to him. Maybe I'd have done it too, only I knew it
was no use, because you had his heart."

She went a little way towards the door. Then she came back again.

"I wouldn't be goin' too much to Araglin, Miss Bawn, if I was you," she
said. "There's a deal of sickness there. You wouldn't know what it might
be going to be."

Somehow this thought of hers for me touched me more than anything else.

"I'll keep away, Nora," I said, "unless it might be that I ought to go.
We weren't afraid of the famine fever in the old times. If there were to
be such a thing again we might have to do what we did then."

"Ye died with the people then," she said, pausing with her hand on the
door-handle. "But sure, why would there be the fever? Isn't there as
fine a crop as ever was seen of potatoes? And Master Richard wouldn't
let you put a hair of your head in danger. I'm not sayin' there's
anything in the sickness. It's a sick time o' year. But if there was
anything you should keep away, Miss Bawn. There's lots to do it without
you. You're not looking too well now. Master Richard should be uneasy
for you."

I spoke to my godmother about Nora later in the day, keeping back her
secret, but only telling her that there were reasons which made her feel
she must go. She knew the girl, was interested in her, and as it
happened, one of her many friends had written to her that she wanted a
young maid to be with two little girls. The situation was in England.
Perhaps Nora would be satisfied if the Irish Sea lay between her and
Richard Dawson.

I was returning home in the afternoon of the next day. My lover was
restive over the loss of so much of my society. But the morning was
bright and cheerful, and I thought I would walk over to Araglin and lay
the matter before Nora.

It was a most delightful autumn day. There had been a hoar-frost in the
night and the dead leaves and twigs had a tracery of silver and
crackled under one's foot as one walked. It was a day for exhilaration
if one were happy, and, despite the load of care which hung heavy upon
me, I found myself walking less languidly than I had done of late. The
boughs were now all bare; and where one had only seen leaves one saw a
network of trees and branches against a blue sky, and beyond the trees
the Purple Hill, which is hidden from one on our tree-hung road so long
as the trees are in leaf. The little robins sang cheerfully in many
trees, and the air was so still that a beech-nut falling from the tree
made quite a great noise.

As I came down the hilly road to where the village smoked in its hollow,
I had an idea that a stillness lay upon it like the blue mists of autumn
that were over all the countryside. Araglin is usually the noisiest of
villages--cocks crowing, hens cackling, dogs barking, children shouting
at their play. But this morning it was silent.

Nora's uncle's house lay almost outside the village, quite at its
beginning. I thought I should find her there alone, but, as it happened,
when I was close to it, she came out carrying a pail, evidently on her
way to fetch water from a stream which flowed by the roadside and here
and there widened into a little well.

She was close to me before she saw me. When she did at last catch sight
of me I was amazed at the swift change in the expression of her face. It
had been moody enough when I had had time to observe it in repose. Now
something of fear, of horror, leaped into it.

"Go back at once, Miss Bawn, for God's sake!" she cried. "Go back, and
don't be coming near me. There's small-pox in the village and I've been
in and out with them. Half the village is sickening for it; the doctor's
distracted. He's sent word up to Dublin to send nurses and doctors.
Thank God, I was able to turn you back. Go home, Miss Bawn, and come
here no more."

"And what are you going to do, Nora?" I asked.

"Is it me, Miss Bawn? Sure, I'll stay where I am. I've been in and out
with them; and if I'm to get it, I'll get it. Ask some one to take the
children away. Then I'll be able to help with the nursing. Maybe 'tis
what God meant for me."

We stood and looked at each other across the space. Why, it was what I
had desired, that my face should be marred, so that Richard Dawson would
turn away from me in disgust. For a moment I had an impulse to cross the
line she had set for me, to go as she had gone into infected places.
Perhaps she read the thought in my face, for she cried out to me to go
away, to remember those who depended on me for happiness and go. She
wrung her hands when I did not go.

"Go away, for God's sake," she cried again, "and don't have the face
_he_ cares about destroyed with the small-pox! See now, Miss Bawn,
darling, what would his Lordship and her Ladyship do without you?"

But while she coaxed me with their names I could see that she dreaded
the small-pox for me lest my face should be spoilt for Richard Dawson,
and I thought it one of the greatest things I had known in the heart of
a woman.

CHAPTER XXX

THE DARK DAYS

I remember the weeks after that like a bad dream. The small-pox had
spread from Araglin to other villages and to the isolated cabins. No one
knew where it had come from, or where it would go next, for it spread
like wildfire. And the doctors and nurses had come down from Dublin in a
cheerful little band and were fighting it heroically. For some weeks
there were only new outbreaks to tell of. For some weeks there were
panic and terror everywhere.

My lover wanted to marry me and carry me away out of the danger; but
that I would not hear of. It was enough that to please him I must shut
myself away in a selfish isolation. If I had been a free woman I would
have insisted on going, as my godmother had gone, while yet the help was
wanted. During those weeks I was cut off from the comfort of her
presence, for even when she was no longer needed she was in quarantine
lest she should have taken the infection.

I will say that the Dawsons gave generously of their money for the aid
of the people.

When we knew first of the outbreak and heard that Mary Champion was in
the thick of it, my lover was moody and silent for a while even when he
was with me.

I remember once that he kicked at a coal which had fallen from the fire
and lay on the hearth, and he frowned heavily.

"I ought to have been there, Bawn," he said, "and it isn't that I was
afraid. Good Lord! I should think not. You would like me just as well
with my beauty spoilt in such a cause. But it is that you make a coward
of me, little girl. When I think that anything might happen now to
prevent our marriage it makes me sweat with fear. Else I would have
risked my life over and over again, and not have cared two straws about
it."

"I know you are brave," I said, at which he looked pleased and said that
it was the first kind word I had given him.

In these days he did not force his caresses upon me as much as he did at
first, but used to call me his little nun, and say in his usual
boastful way that he would make me in time eager for that from which I
turned away now. Every day as our marriage came nearer I dreaded it
more, and felt as if I must run away to the ends of the earth rather
than endure it; but when I looked at my grandfather's face I knew there
was no help for me.

The marriage was fixed for the 20th of December, and I could see that he
was nearly as impatient for it as my bridegroom. I could see that on
this side of my wedding-day there lay for him the chance that the
disgrace might come at any moment. On the other side was peace and
safety.

The fear of the secret the Dawsons held possessed him so much that he
had no thought for me, as he had had none for Theobald while he still
believed that there was some sort of engagement between Theobald and me.

I confessed I had dreaded what Theobald would think of my marriage, not
knowing the reason of it. But my anxieties on that score were set at
rest, for, as soon as possible after he had heard of the engagement, he
wrote a most affectionate letter to me. I could read in its effusiveness
that he was so relieved to know of my marriage that he was not disposed
to be critical over my bridegroom. He sent me a present of a rug of
leopard skins and some fine pieces of wrought silver work, and in a
postscript he mentioned that there was some one he wanted us to welcome
presently, a Miss Travers, a beauty--young, good, gifted, an heiress.

"She would be the same to me," he added in his round, schoolboy
handwriting, "if she hadn't a penny; but I am glad for the sake of
Aghadoe that she has money. Dear Bawn, I adore her."

I had guessed it all the time, and remembered that he had mentioned Miss
Travers before, and that the manner of it was significant. Dear
Theobald, it was easy enough to see through his simple guile!

My grandparents, having ascertained that Miss Travers was a quite
unexceptional person, had an access of cheerfulness. I could see that
once I was married and the paper in their hands, whatever it was, they
would begin to look forward to Theobald's return and his marriage. There
would be great days at Aghadoe yet; but I should not be there to see
them.

When I came to be measured for my wedding-dress my grandmother
discovered how thin I had become.

"You will be all right," she said, "when Richard carries you away from
this sad and troubled country to the south and to the sun."

Long before this my lover had taken the alarm and fretted over me with
anxious tenderness, saying that they had not known how to take care of
me, and that once I was his I should be taken care of as no other woman
ever was before.

Fortunately for him he was much at the Cottage in those days,
superintending the last arrangements, else I think, ardent as he was, he
could hardly have borne with me, for I was alternately listless and
bitter, so that I have seen my dear old grandmother look at me in sad
wonder; and that always reduced me to repentance.

As the time of my marriage came nearer I felt the ignominy the more. I
used to think that the very portraits on the walls looked at me askance
because I was going to marry the usurer's son. I was sure the old
servants were not the same, any more than the old friends; but, oddly
enough, Maureen had forgiven me, had held me to her breast and cried
over me. I felt that she knew the marriage would kill me, she only of
them all. Every night now the ghosts cried as they had cried when I was
a child, when Uncle Luke went away.

It might have been a week from my wedding-day when there lay one morning
beside my plate a letter, the handwriting on which made my heart leap
up.

Fortunately I was first at the table and I was able to hide the letter.
I could not have read it under the eyes of my grandparents, and they
must have noticed if I had taken it away unopened, because I had so few
correspondents, apart from the wedding-presents and congratulations.

I had barely hidden it when my grandparents took their places, and Neil
Doherty set the big Crown Derby teapot before my grandmother and then
went round and removed the cover of the silver dish that was in front of
my grandfather. I believe the three of us between us did not eat the
food of one healthy appetite in those days; but the things appeared all
the same, and hot dishes were flanked by cold meats on the side-board
as though we had the appetites of hunters.

I heard Neil say as he stood by my grandfather that, glory be to God,
the sickness was disappearing, that there hadn't been a new case in
Araglin village for more than a fortnight, and the doctors thought that
the worst was over. Our servants were on the usual terms of Irish
servants with their employers--that is to say, they treated us with a
respectful familiarity; and now that owing to the sickness there was
little visiting we had to depend upon Neil mostly for our news.

"It will not be the same at Miss Bawn's wedding, Neil," I heard my
grandfather say, "as though there had not been the sickness. When I
married her Ladyship the whole county came to see it."

"True for you," said Neil. "There's many a one under the sod that looked
to dance at Miss Bawn's wedding, and there's many another that their own
mothers won't know when they see them."

"The great thing is," said my grandmother, "that the sickness is coming
to an end. Please God, we can lift up our hearts towards the New Year."

"And thank God for that," said my grandfather; and I felt that it was
not only for cessation of the sickness he gave thanks.

There were, indeed, many new graves, and many, too, whose living or
dying yet hung in the balance; and if I had been a happy woman I would
have felt it ominous to be married at such a time. But as it was,
nothing mattered.

"You are sure Nora Brady has not taken the sickness, Neil?" I asked.

"No, Miss Bawn; she's safe so far. To be sure, she might be inkybatin'
it"--Neil, like all our people, loves a long word--"and she'll have to
put up a month's quarentine when the last o' the sickness is over. I
hear she's been everywhere it was."

After breakfast I escaped to the summer-house in the shrubbery with my
letter. The first snow lay on the ground and was white on the dark,
shining leaves of the laurels and laurestinus, but my hands trembled and
burned as I opened the letter. Why did he write to me now when I had
become used to my misery? As the sheet rustled in my hands I felt such a
longing and a desire for him that if he called me across the world I
must go.

CHAPTER XXXI

THE WEDDING-DRESS

"My dear," the letter began, "I have your letter. Most happily my
rascal, Terence, forwarded it; most happily, and by the grace of
God, as I think, I thought to leave him the name of a halting-place
where I might pick up letters, yet I expected none. What a dullard
I was, Bawn, not to have known! I compared my years and sorrows and
my white hairs with your youth and beauty, and I thought you must
love that golden lad, your cousin. Heart's delight, it will take
all the years that are left to me to tell you my gratitude. There
will be no sacrifice, child, and I do certainly believe there is no
secret that Lord and Lady St. Leger need fear. I should come to you
on the wings of the wind if there was not a reason that I must stay
a little while, and if it were not that some one is hurrying to
Aghadoe whom I can trust to tear the web of lies to pieces. He will
come in time, and I shall not long delay to follow. And you are
mine and I am yours for ever and ever.

"Your devoted
"Anthony Cardew."

The letter at once delighted and bewildered me. For a while I gave
myself up to the delight, kissing it and crying over it like a mad
creature. Then I came back to the cold light of facts. Just four days
now to elapse before my wedding-day. What could happen in those four
days to save me? Anthony's messenger, nay, Anthony himself, could do
nothing. There was always my grandfather's face of suspense, by which I
knew he counted the hours, always my grandmother's piteous air of asking
for forgiveness. Not even Anthony Cardew could absolve me from what they
bound me to.

I tried to be sorry for having written him that letter. Nothing, indeed,
had been farther from my thoughts than that it should be forwarded to
him. He wrote from Assumption, an island in the South Seas. If he was by
my side he could hardly save me, unless he could prove that Uncle Luke
was innocent of the things Garret Dawson attributed to him and could
prove it to the world. And how could he do that?

I had never asked what the secret was, feeling that it must be something
very terrible indeed when my grandfather would not tell it to Miss
Champion. I never meant to ask. Let the proof of it be given up and
forgotten. There was even a certain dreary pleasure in feeling that I
was going to save the Lord and Lady St. Leger from that disgrace. It was
not right the old should suffer and be afraid.

At last I put the letter inside my bodice and returned to the house. I
got upstairs unobserved and put it away in the tall, spindle-legged
Sheraton desk which has held all my girlish treasures. I was going to
destroy the two letters from Anthony Cardew presently. Then the old life
would be done with indeed.

"Bless me, child," said my grandmother, coming in on me as I closed the
desk, "what a colour you have! I have not seen you look so well this
many a day. What have you been doing to yourself?"

"Not rouging, Gran, I assure you," I said lightly. "I have been out in
the frosty air and it has made my cheeks tingle."

"Your wedding-dress has come home," she said, "and Richard is here. He
wants to see you in it, Bawn."

I remembered the superstition and wondered that she should have
suggested such a thing. If I had been going to marry Anthony Cardew I
should have refused, but since I was going to marry Richard Dawson I was
not fearful of omens.

"Very well," I said; "I shall put it on and come downstairs."

I had a young maid from Dublin, newly come to me, and she had not our
superstitions, or she was too respectful to oppose her will to mine.
Anyhow, she dressed me in my wedding-dress, the fine thing of white
silk, veiled with my grandmother's old Limerick lace and hung with
pearls. She had dressed my hair high, quickly and deftly, and when I had
on my wedding-dress she threw my wedding-veil over my head and fastened
it with the diamond stars which were among my lover's gifts to me. When
she had dressed me she wheeled the long mirror in front of me that I
might look at myself.

I was not the same girl to look on that I had been. There was a bright
colour in my cheeks and my eyes were bright; but I had a swimming in my
head and I felt hot and cold by turns. I saw that I was splendid, for
Margaret had put on me as many as she could of the jewels with which my
lover loaded me, which used to lie about so carelessly that my
grandmother had rebuked me saying I should be robbed of them one of
these days. I hated them as though they had been my purchase-money; and
I had scandalized Margaret only the night before by letting my necklace
of emeralds and diamonds fall to the floor and lie there.

As I went down the stairs I met one or two of the servants, who drew to
one side to let me pass and lifted their hands in admiration. Margaret
walked behind me, being fearful, I think, that in my present mood I
might let the long train sweep the stairs and corridors instead of
carrying it demurely over my arm.

I paused for a moment outside the drawing-room door which stood ajar,
and I could hear my lover's deep voice within. Margaret let down my
train for me and I went in, up the long drawing-room to where my
grandmother sat in her easy-chair by the fire and Richard Dawson stood
on the hearthrug with his back to it.

As I came up the room I felt again the swimming of my head and things
swayed about me for an instant. Then I recovered myself.

Between the painted panels of the drawing-room at Aghadoe there are long
mirrors, in the taste of the time which could imagine nothing so
decorative as a mirror. In every one of them I saw myself repeated, a
slight, white figure scintillating with gems.

I had thrown back my veil and I saw the proud delight in my lover's
face. He advanced a step or two to meet me and I heard my grandmother
say--

"What a colour you have, child, and how bright your eyes are!"

He took up my hands and lifted them to his lips. Then he cried out, and
I heard his voice as though it was at a great distance.

"She is not well, Lady St. Leger," he said, and there was a sharp note
of anxiety in his tone. "Her hands were icy cold and now they are hot."

At the same moment some one came into the room and to my side. It was
Maureen, and I saw that she was very angry.

"I didn't believe it when that fool of a Katty told me," she said.
"Whoever heard of luck comin' to a bride who wore her wedding-dress
before the day? It only needs now for Miss Bawn to go runnin' back for
something after she leaves the house a bride. Sure, isn't there
misfortune enough without bringin' it on us? Come along with me, my
darlin' lamb, and let me get it off you. 'Tis in a fever you are this
minute."

Then suddenly I lost consciousness of everything, and would have fallen
on the floor in a faint if my lover had not caught me in his arms.

The next thing I knew was that the window-panes were showing themselves
as lighted squares in a grey, misty world, and I could hear that
somebody was speaking and what was said, even before I was awake.

"I've seen it comin' this long time," said a bitter, querulous voice
that was Maureen's. "She'll go through with it, but it'll be the death
of her, my darling jewel. If she's married before Master Luke comes,
then he'll come too late, after all."

"Haven't I suffered enough, Maureen?" my grandmother asked
pitifully--"having lost my one boy, and now to see this child slipping
away from me! And there's a change in Lord St. Leger; there is, indeed,
Maureen. Am I to lose them all, all?"

"Whisht, honey, whisht!" Maureen said, with sudden relenting in her
voice. "God's good. Sure, He wouldn't be so hard on you as to take his
Lordship, not at least till Master Luke comes home."

"And that will never be," my grandmother went on. "I've given up hope,
Maureen. Luke is dead and gone, and my husband is slipping out of life,
and this child is breaking her heart."

And then I opened my eyes, and they saw I was awake.

CHAPTER XXXII

THE NEW HOME

I had frightened them all by my fainting-fit, but after all it was
nothing. The doctor who had been fetched hastily by my frightened lover
reassured them.

"Did you think she was sickening for the small-pox?" he asked, looking
from one face to the other with bright intelligence. He was a young
doctor not long settled in our neighbourhood, and we used to say among
ourselves that he was too clever to stay long with us. "Well, then, she
isn't doing anything of the sort. I expect she's been taking the
troubles too much to heart. A bit run down and nervous. The honeymoon
journey will be the best prescription for that. I should like to see
more flesh on her bones."

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