Katharine Tynan - The Story of Bawn
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Katharine Tynan >> The Story of Bawn
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"I always thought more of a boy than a girl," she answered. "You're
bonny enough, Miss Bawn, but you're not to be compared with Master
Theobald, let alone them I nursed at my breast--Master Luke and your
mother and your Aunt Eleanor."
"Mary Cashel thinks the world of me," I said, with enjoyment. Mary
Cashel is my foster-mother, and lives at the head of the Glen.
"She's a poor, foolish, talkative creature," Maureen said. "If her
Ladyship had listened to me she'd never have had Mary Cashel in the
house."
Just then the setting sun glinted on the windows of Brosna, the great
house that neighbours ours, which belongs to the Cardews, and has been
empty, as its owner, Anthony Cardew, has been away from it many years.
The sun was going down in a great glory, and window after window in the
long house-front took fire and flamed like a torch.
"You would think," said I, "that they were lighting fires over there
against Captain Cardew's return."
Maureen rose from her place and peered curiously in the direction of my
gaze.
"I wonder he doesn't be selling it," she said, "and not be letting it go
to rack and ruin and him never comin' home. 'Tis an unlucky country so
it is where the houses of the gentry must be all stannin' empty or
tumblin' to ruins, or bein' turned into asylums or the like."
"I should like to see the inside of Brosna," I said. "Is it as fine as
they say?"
"It is the finest house in this country, Miss Bawn--finer even than the
Abbey. But all goin' to rack and ruin for want of an owner to look after
it. But as for seein' it, I wouldn't be talkin' about such a thing. It
is a long time since his Lordship and her Ladyship could bear to hear
the name of Cardew."
"I have heard you say, Maureen," I went on, "that Anthony Cardew was the
handsomest young man ever seen in this country, that he had a leg and
foot as elegant even as Uncle Luke's, and that to see him dance was the
finest sight you could wish for, and that all the ladies were in love
with him."
"I never put him before Master Luke. No, no, Miss Bawn, I never put him
before my own boy. There, don't be talkin' about the Cardews, child.
What are they to you?"
I got up and went out; and while my thoughts were busy with my visit to
Dublin there would flash through them like warp and woof the thought of
Anthony Cardew, who had gone away before I was born and of whom so many
romantic stories were told. I felt that I must hear some of them, even
though the name of Cardew was not to be mentioned in our hearing.
CHAPTER VII
OLD, UNHAPPY, FAR-OFF THINGS
I found my godmother watering her rose trees on the eastward side of the
house from which the sun had now departed. The grassy terraces before
the house smelt deliciously, for a water-sprinkler in the grass sent out
fine spray like a fountain. It was very hot weather, and I had walked
across; it had been cool enough in the shelter of the wood but the roads
had been blinding hot.
"Sit down, Bawn," she said, coming towards me, having left her hose to
run at the foot of a rose tree. "See how busy I am! Of course, a
gardener's boy would do it but I love to give drink to the thirsty."
She was wearing a cool muslin dress transparent at the neck. Round her
throat she had a slender chain with a locket to it. She was brown as a
berry, but she looked as though the hot weather dealt gently with her.
As she sat down by me and took Dido's head into her lap, to the great
discomfort of a rabble of jealous dogs who sat round watching her and
whining, it struck me that her eyes were the very colour of the dog's
and as faithful.
"You look cool," I said.
"And you; you have no idea how pink print becomes you. But first we will
have tea. Joan has a sick headache and will have none of me to-day. So
we shall be just our two selves."
As she said it I noticed a line of pain and weariness deepen in her
forehead, and her lips droop ever so slightly. It was something I had
noticed before when Miss Standish had been more than commonly trying. I
looked at my godmother with new interest, having learnt what had
befallen Uncle Luke. She wore her hair in an old-fashioned way which
became her. It was in loops each side of her forehead, displaying her
ears, and was then taken up and plaited at the back of her head. The
fashion was a quarter of a century old but nothing could have been
prettier.
She took Dido's head between her hands and looked down into her eyes.
"She is growing very old, Bawn," she said sadly.
It reminded me of something Maureen had said and had not explained.
"Who gave Dido to Uncle Luke?" I asked.
She turned red and pale.
"What have you been hearing, Bawn?" she asked.
"Maureen has been talking to me about Uncle Luke. I did not think it
wrong to listen to her, since I knew that I was to hear the story from
you."
"Maureen did not spare me," she said in a low voice.
"For the matter of that she said nothing. She hinted that you had been
hard on Uncle Luke, but she bid me ask yourself."
"Do you think it likely I was hard to him, Bawn?"
She was looking into the dog's eyes now and the dog into hers. The two
hearts that were always faithful to Uncle Luke understood each other.
Deep answered deep.
"I am sure you were not," I said.
"Maureen did not know," she went on gently.
"Sure your dog for you could die
With no truer heart than I,"
she murmured, with a fervour that startled me. Then her eyes grew misty.
"Dido and I are always listening for the same foot," she said. "If Luke
L'Estrange were to come back now, perhaps we should both die of joy.
What was it you were asking me, Bawn? Who was it gave Luke the dog. It
was Irene Cardew, poor girl. All the tragedy is over and done. I don't
mind telling you, Bawn--Irene is beyond being hurt by it--that she was
fond of Luke. Perhaps it was my fault. Luke had hurt me and I was angry,
saying to myself that I did well to be angry. We never do well to be
angry, little Bawn, with those we love. I thought there was plenty of
time for Luke to come back and be forgiven. But there is never plenty of
time in this world. I am sure of one thing, that he loved only me."
"And that is a great thing to be sure of," I said.
A servant brought out the tea-table and set it before us. We were silent
while he went to and fro bringing us the tea equipage, the bread and
butter and sandwiches and hot tea-cakes. When we were again alone my
godmother poured out the tea, smiling at me across the cups.
"We must not talk any more of the old, unhappy, far-off things," she
said. "You have heard enough, little Bawn; only take warning by the sins
and follies of your elders. Do not quarrel with Theobald, thinking
there is time to make up."
"For the matter of that," I said, "I never feel inclined to quarrel with
Theobald. And, dear godmother, I am sure you were not hard with Uncle
Luke."
"Thank you, Bawn. He was foolish like other young men of his class. I
had better tell you, lest you should wrong Luke in your thoughts. He
came to me when he had drunk too much. I thought I did well for his own
sake to be angry and I sent him away unforgiven. There were many ready
to comfort him, and it was not in him to rebuff a woman, especially a
woman who let him see that she was in love with him. He was often with
Irene Cardew while I was angry with him. It gave colour to the stories
afterwards."
"I know; Maureen told me."
"No one that knew him could believe it. It was like Jasper Tuite that he
could not even die without wronging another."
CHAPTER VIII
THE STILE IN THE WOOD
After that she changed the conversation to other things; and when I had
drunk my tea and eaten with an appetite I went upstairs with her to see
things she had promised to show me.
I had had no idea that they were for me. I knew that she had a great
many old and beautiful things, and from my childhood I had delighted in
them. I could remember her calling for me in her pony phaeton before
Uncle Luke had left us, and she would carry me all over Castle Clody for
she was a tall, strong young woman; and while she changed her dress I
used to sit in the middle of her bed with the curtains of blue and
silver damask falling to either side of me, and she would give me boxes
of pretty things to play with. To this day I like better than any of her
valuable jewels her pretty trinkets of garnet and amethyst and topaz, of
which she has a great many. They lay in trays in glass-lidded boxes and
I delighted to look at them. Many of them have come to me as Christmas
and birthday gifts since then, and Miss Standish had many of them, for
although she was an invalid she delighted in pretty things and was
greedy for them. My dear godmother is one to give with both hands;
indeed, to value things chiefly for the pleasure of giving them.
Lying on her bed now were a number of garments so pretty that I cried
out in delight. They were all white, yellowed a little with age, and in
some instances with a pattern in colours.
There was a scarf of China crepe, powdered as thickly as possible with
roses and golden bees. There was an opera cloak made of a beautiful old
Indian shawl. There were several frocks of silk and lace and muslin and
fine woollen. There were finely laced and frilled petticoats and silk
stockings and shoes with paste buckles and a feather fan. Also there
were fichus and lace-edged handkerchiefs and such things, to strike a
young girl dumb with delight.
"They are all for you, Bawn," she said, smiling at me. "They were my
wedding clothes, and they have lain packed away in silver paper all
these years. I have brought them into the light of day for you. They
ought to have been kept for your wedding perhaps, but as there is
nothing definite----"
"Theobald and I shall be quite old before we need think of marriage, if
we ever do," I said. "I don't want to be married. It is nicer when
people will be satisfied with being just dear brothers. And are they
really for me, god-mamma? Why should you not wear them yourself? They
are so beautiful!"
"Let me have the pleasure of seeing you wear them, Bawn. We shall depend
less on the Dublin shops during our visit. Louise will fit the things on
you. They will have to be taken in for you. They will not look
old-fashioned. The fashion has come back to them."
I stood an hour or more while Louise pinned the things on me, kneeling
by my side and turning me this way and that way to look at myself in the
long glass of the wardrobe.
She kept up a running conversation on the things while she fitted me;
ecstatic little cries of admiration; deep sighs of satisfaction; with
all the animation of the Frenchwoman.
"I believe you get at least as much pleasure out of them as I do,
Louise," I said.
"Ah, heaven, more!" she answered. "Mademoiselle is but a child; she does
not know the delight of the feel, the soft lovely feel, of this that
drapes so perfectly. Fortunately Mademoiselle lends herself to the
lovely things. They become her. They cling to her figure as though they
loved it. The result will be charming. M. le Capitaine Theobald he
should be here to see the result. How his eyes would sparkle!"
"M. le Capitaine Theobald, as you call him, Louise," I said, "would not
know one stuff from another. It is quite possible that he would like me
better in the pink print yonder. The beautiful things will be quite
wasted on him. He thinks a white muslin frock with a blue sash the
finest thing a girl can wear."
"It is not bad, for an _ingenue_," said Louise, thoughtfully. "But I do
not agree with you, Mademoiselle, that he would not admire these lovely
things. He might not know, but he would admire all the same."
"Possibly," I said, with patience. I was not greatly interested in
Theobald's point of view. I might have altered in my cousin's eyes; but
he had hardly altered to me from the boy with whom I went climbing and
skating in the old days. I could not imagine myself having any
sentimentality about Theobald.
"Mademoiselle is too sensible for her years," said Louise; and I was
conscious of a subtle disparagement in the speech.
"I am not sensible at all, Louise," I answered, with some indignation.
"I am not sensible where grandpapa is concerned, nor grandmamma, I
tremble if grandpapa is a little later on a hunting day than we expect
him, or on Wednesday when the petty sessions are on at Quinn. I am
terrified about grandmamma if her finger aches; and I lie awake at night
imagining all the terrible things that could befall them."
"Ah, that is affectionateness. I never said you were not affectionate,
Mademoiselle."
But there was some meaning in Louise's accusation, although she would
say no more, pretending that she was always one to let her tongue run
away with her. Louise had been with Miss Champion these twenty years,
and was a privileged person as old servants are amongst us.
When she had finished I went to look for my godmother, and found her
with Miss Standish, bathing her forehead with eau-de-Cologne.
"Poor little Bawn," she said, "you look tired. Louise has kept you
standing too long. Once set Louise to fitting clothes and she forgets
everything. Could you not sit down here and rest a while before starting
for home?"
"Yes, why not sit with me for a while?" Miss Standish put in eagerly. "I
always find your voice restful, Bawn."
But I would not stay. I had promised my grandmother to be home by
half-past six at latest, and I was not going to have her fretting about
my absence. It was six o'clock now and the shadows were growing longer;
the coolness of evening was coming. The birds were singing their
even-song. As I went down the marble steps in the grassy terraces from
the house I saw the peacock and his lady already at roost in a low tree,
although the darkness would not come for some hours yet, and indeed
would be then only a green twilight.
There was never anything to be afraid of on our roads. Our valley was in
such a quiet isolation, so far away from the main roads, that even a
tramp or an importunate beggar were not to be feared. The labourers
going home from the fields touched their caps with a friendly "God save
you kindly, Miss Bawn." The children by the cottage doors smiled at me
shyly. Even the dogs knew me. It was the road I had taken to the
Creamery and back every day; and I had been familiar with it from my
childhood.
The sun was yet so hot on the exposed road that Dido and I were glad to
get within the shelter of Daly's Wood. Though the sun poured upon the
wood it was cool within it and steeped in a golden haze. The pale stems
of the springing trees looked like so many great candles in a golden
house; there was a sweet sound of falling waters, for a little mountain
stream ran through the wood, and in its neighbourhood the air was damp
and deliciously sweet. Where the water tumbled over broken boulders and
formed a little pool Dido stood to drink, and I stood, too, a minute
listening to the bird-songs of which the wood was full.
When we had turned round and gone on our way I observed that there was
some one sitting on the stile which led out on the road nearly opposite
the postern gate in our park wall and supposed it to be some one resting
there who would rise up to let me pass.
I could not imagine myself being afraid of these quiet places, where, no
matter what happened elsewhere, the people were always friendly and
respectful. But as I came close up to the man who sat on the stile and
who had not turned his head at the sound of my foot on the path, all of
a sudden I became filled with a nameless terror.
The wide shoulders, the rather massive head with the closely curling red
hair; I seemed to recognize them all at once for Richard Dawson's, and I
was as frightened as ever was a hare of the dogs; nay, more frightened,
for the hare has at least her speed. My feet seemed clogged by leaden
weights as they might be in the terror of a dream. Then the man turned
about with a smile which showed all his white teeth and I was sick with
fear.
"It is the third day I have been waiting for you, you pretty creature,"
he said. "I am going to lift you over the stile, and then you shall give
me a kiss for it."
He flung his arms about me and I closed my eyes while I tried to push
him away. I felt his breath on my face, and my loathing of him was so
great that it made me physically incapable of resistance. I uttered one
cry, but I felt that there was no body of sound in it to carry it even
if anybody had been near. But suddenly I heard a furious growl, and I
felt myself released.
"Damn the brute! She has bitten me," he said furiously.
And there he was with the blood running down his hand, while my brave
old dog stood by ready to defend me against all the world.
CHAPTER IX
A ROUGH LOVER
For a second or two we stood staring at each other while Richard Dawson
mopped the blood from his hand.
"Don't you see that your damned dog has bitten me?" he shouted, as
though my silence infuriated him.
"I see," I said with my hand on Dido's collar to restrain her. "You
shouldn't have been rude to me, sir."
He stopped staunching his wound and burst into a great roar of laughter
which had no good humour in it.
"Lord, lord!" he said. "That's the best thing I've heard of this many a
day. Why a little country hussy like you ought to be honoured by
receiving a gentleman's kisses. There, my dear, get rid of your dog. I
don't want to kick her brains out as I could easily do, and as she
deserves to have done for having bitten me. Send her home with a stone
at her heels and come and sit by me on the stile. You shall see how
prettily a gentleman makes love."
I suppose I must have looked at him with the horror I felt for him, for
he laughed again.
"What," he said, "am I so ugly as all that? I can tell you, my dear,
that a good many of your sex, both small and great, regard me as a very
pretty fellow. In fact, I'm pestered with the women. I assure you I
really am, my dear. And so you won't give me a kiss of your own free
will? Why, I could take it if I liked; but I'm not sure that I want to
take it till you come and offer it to me of your own free will."
"That I shall never do," I said.
"I'm not so sure of that," he replied. "There aren't many ladies in this
county wouldn't give me a kiss if I wanted it, much less a little
dairymaid like you."
I thought at the time that it was his egregious vanity and conceit, but
in this I was wrong, as events afterwards proved. Indeed, it was a very
strange thing how women, both gentle and simple, were in many cases
attracted by the coarse good looks and insolent, swaggering way of
Richard Dawson--an inconceivable thing to me in the case of a lady,
although more easily understood in the case of a poor peasant girl like
Nora Brady.
His mood had apparently changed, and I was less afraid of him, although
my detestation of him had been deepened by his conduct to me.
He still sat on the stile so that I could not pass him; but all the
anger had gone out of his face, although the blood still trickled a
little from the back of his hand where Dido had planted her teeth.
"Will you let me pass, please?" said I.
"Presently, my dear." How I hated him for his easy insolence! "I want to
hear first what it is you dislike in me."
"Everything," I answered.
"Why," he said mockingly, "it is a thing of spirit, and it will be the
more pleasure to tame it. I am tired of birds that come fluttering into
my hands and cling to me when I no longer desire them. Upon my word, I
like you the better for it. Come, I'm sorry I frightened you. I can say
no more than that; it is the fault of your sex, which is so
complaisant."
He put his hand into his pocket and drew out a handful of coins.
"Here's a sovereign," he said, "to buy a ribbon. It can't make you
prettier, but may it make you kinder when next we meet!"
He flung the coin as though he expected me to catch it, but, of course,
I made no effort to do so and it fell on the ground and rolled away into
a heap of dead leaves. No matter what happened I could not have kept
myself from kicking at it contemptuously with my foot where it lay.
"Not enough, eh?" he asked, his eyebrows raised in amusement. "Would
five do?"
I stared at him and the colour flamed in my cheeks.
"Why, you are prettier than ever," he said. "If you look at me like that
much longer I shall be obliged to kiss you, although I would rather wait
till you came offering me a kiss. Pretty spitfire! Where have they been
hiding you? I had no idea, till I saw you the other day at the Creamery,
that there was anything so pretty hereabouts. I generally find out what
there is delectable in the way of femininity before I am forty-eight
hours in a place. You have no idea of what an adorable little modesty
you looked with your white arms plunged in the milk. You took the shine
out of the ladies, my dear."
I could only look at him with steady animosity, while my hand on her
collar kept poor Dido in check. I saw that he took me for a peasant girl
and I was not minded to enlighten him. I was going away; and perhaps
before I came back he would be gone again on his travels, for I had
always heard that he was wild and a rover and could not be persuaded to
settle down and live at Damerstown although his father and mother were
most anxious that he should. My heartfelt desire at the moment was that
I should never again see Richard Dawson's face, with its insolent and
coarse good looks, as long as I lived.
"Yes, you took the shine out of the fine ladies that were with me that
day," he went on, "fine a conceit as they have of themselves. They were
fine London ladies, my dear, the sort that play cards all night, and
motor all day, and have no time to be God-fearing and loving like the
women that went before them. You didn't look at them?"
The speech struck me as oddly incongruous in parts of it, yet we had
heard--about the one thing we had heard in his favour--that he was fond
of his old mother, a good-natured, homely, kindly body, people said, who
was rather unhappy among the Dawson riches, rather afraid of her
granite-faced, beetling-browed husband.
"No, I didn't look at them," I said.
"And why not, pray?"
"I took no interest in them. I did not like their way of speaking. They
seemed vulgar to me."
I hardly knew why I answered him. Perhaps he compelled me. When I had
answered he turned round and looked at me with an uproarious delight in
his face.
"If Lady Meg could only hear you! Lord! lord!" he said, with infinite
gusto. "The daughter of a hundred earls! And Miss Moxon, just as high
born and just as fast! How amazed they would be. They would box your
pretty ears, my dear; at least Lady Meg would."
"That they would not," I answered him. "And now, please let me pass."
"Without a kiss?" he said mockingly. "Very well, then, I shall let you
go. But I feel myself a poor-spirited fellow for it. Do you know that
your eyes are like wet violets? And when do we meet again, my dear?"
However, though he mocked he stood aside to let me pass, which at first
I hesitated to do, fearing that he might perhaps seize me in his arms as
I passed him.
To my great vexation he seemed to guess at this feeling of mine, for he
laughed again and said--
"Don't be afraid, pretty one. I promised to let you pass and I shall.
No one shall say that Dick Dawson's word isn't as good as his bond; and
his bond is worth a good deal. He ought to know something of bonds too,
seeing the way the money was made."
So he mocked at himself when he was not mocking at me. I did not
altogether trust him, but I made up my mind that if he was rude to me
again my poor dog should protect me as she had done before. But after
all there was no necessity, for with a sudden movement my enemy lifted
his hat, turned away and walked down the road, smiling at me, as he
went, over his shoulder.
Never was any one so glad of a place of refuge as I was when I went in
at the postern gate in the wall and was within our own woods. I tried to
shoot the rusty bolt into its place, but it had been unused for years
and I could not move it, so I let it be. And now it was twilight in the
dark woods but I felt at home, and letting Dido go, she bounded on
before me as though she were young again, and I followed more sedately,
with an occasional glance back to see I was not followed.
CHAPTER X
THE TRAP
The sight of the red sun sinking down a long, green avenue turned my
thoughts for a moment from the painful memory of Richard Dawson's
rudeness, which, now that I had escaped from him, made me feel sick and
ashamed.
It was something I could never tell to anybody, and I felt as though I
must carry some shameful secret all my days and that it must appear in
my face, and I was glad that I need not meet the eyes of my grandparents
by daylight, but could deceive their dear, dim sight in the shaded
candle-light and afterwards have the night to recover myself.
With a young girl's extremity of virginal pride and modesty, I hated
even myself because he had touched me and could have disfigured the face
he had praised.
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