Katharine Tynan - The Story of Bawn
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Katharine Tynan >> The Story of Bawn
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There were slices of thin bread and butter and sandwiches and toast
under a silver cover, all of which I could have eaten myself, for I had
an excellent appetite. But I denied myself again, and was rewarded by
hearing Miss Henrietta declare, on her second scrap of bread and butter,
that she had a most indelicate appetite, and she hoped her dear young
friend, meaning me, would not be shocked at her.
I could always spend an hour or two happily in the little low-browed
cottage drawing-room, with even the strong May light coming in greenly,
having been filtered through the new leaves. It was a room that always
pleased my imagination, for it was so full of bits of china and
pictures, of old silver and ivory curios and nicknacks, that you could
spend a day looking at them. On the low walls were several portraits of
pretty ladies, to whom the Misses Chenevix bore the strongest
resemblance. Because there had been rain earlier in the day there was a
fire in the grate and the firelight sparkled prettily on the glass of
the pictures, on the china and silver, and in the brooches and rings of
the ladies.
A half-glass door led from the drawing-room into an old-fashioned garden
which was now nearing the last of its bloom, and presently would show a
most wonderful profusion of fruit; giant strawberries, currants like
strings of carbuncles and rubies, raspberries larger and juicier than
mulberries, with a great quantity of apples and pears and plums and
apricots to follow.
The sun had come out after the rain, and I could see from where I sat
the garden sparkling; and the box borders smelt very sweet.
Both the ladies were eager to know what clothes I was to have and to
learn what friends I was going to see and what festivities I should
attend; and Miss Bride took care to impress upon me that my visit was to
be paid at a hopelessly unfashionable time of year.
"There'll be nothing doing at the Castle," she said. "I wouldn't be
bothered going to Dublin unless I was to dine at the Castle."
"I dare say Bawn will find plenty of other entertainment, sister, even
though she does not visit at the Castle," Miss Henrietta put in; she was
always the conciliatory one. "There will be plenty of people in Dublin,"
she went on, "who will be very glad to see Bawn--old friends of Lady St.
Leger and of Mary Champion."
"Did I say it was quite empty?" Miss Bride asked, with some asperity.
"To be sure, there are always people. But she'll miss the best of it.
She ought to be there for the Patrick's Ball and the command nights at
the theatre. The last time I was at the Theatre Royal I was in the
Viceregal box. She was a sweet, pretty creature, and His Excellency had
a beautifully turned leg. We drove to Punchestown with them the
following day. I remember the hundreds and hundreds of jaunting-cars
tearing like mad along the road. To be sure we had outriders, but it was
nearly as much as your life was worth, and coming out at the Gap
afterwards we had a horse's hind legs in our carriage, and every one
screaming like mad, and the dust fit to choke you. Even motors couldn't
rival that."
She spoke with an air of grave exhilaration. They knew everybody and
everything that was fine and gay in the social life of their day.
Perhaps they would know about my fine gentleman. I only hesitated to ask
because in her latter years Miss Bride had adopted a manner of hostility
towards the male sex generally, and was apt to snap at any one who
showed an interest in it even of the slightest. However, I screwed up my
courage.
"Miss Chenevix," I began, "I met a gentleman the other day in our wood
and I wondered who he might be. I can't imagine where he was staying.
And I thought I would ask you if you knew who he was."
"We could do very well without men," Miss Bride said sharply. "In fact,
the world could have got on very well without them. There is nothing a
man can do that a woman can not do better. What was your gentleman like,
Bawn?"
Despite her hostility to the male sex Miss Bride was very curious.
"He was very slim and elegant," I began--"not very young."
"Now what do you mean by not very young, Bawn? Be precise in your
statements," Miss Bride said, with some asperity.
"I should say he was quite forty," I said, blushing, and wishing I had
not mentioned the matter of age.
"Fiddlesticks, child! Forty is young. And so you met this young
gentleman in the wood. And what happened?"
"He took Dido's paw out of a trap. He was very kind about it," I
returned, conscious of Miss Bride's severe eye.
"There was no philandering, child, now was there? You're not long out of
short frocks. I can't imagine how the young gentleman came to be in your
woods. You'd better forget all about him, but first tell me what he was
like and all that happened."
"Bride! The poor child!" said Miss Henrietta, compassionately.
"There was no philandering," I said composedly. I am used to Miss
Chenevix's ways. "How could there be? He rendered me such a service as
any gentleman might have done, and went on his way. It was only seeing
that we have so few strangers--"
"He might be staying at Damerstown. They have a houseful."
"I am sure he was not."
"Hoity-toity! how can you know if you know nothing about him? Tell me
again what he was like. I know every one who goes in and out of every
house in the county except Damerstown, and there are too many of them
for me, besides which old Dawson ruined my uncle Hercules. Was he tall?
You say he was tall."
"Tall and slight."
"Regular features?"
"A straight nose; his face clean shaven except for a small dark
moustache; a good deal of colour in his face and great vivacity."
"And his eyes? There, you needn't tell me. I ought to know. The eyes are
grey with dark lashes. You might take them for black. It is Anthony
Cardew to the life."
"Snow-white hair," I added.
"Snow-white hair," Miss Bride repeated. "No, no. It can't be Anthony
Cardew, unless there are white blackbirds. Hair black as jet."
"Perhaps Captain Cardew may have become white, sister," Miss Henrietta
put in humbly.
"White! What would make him white?" Miss Bride asked angrily. "He can't
be forty. I remember him the very day his sister was run away with--"
She pulled herself up suddenly, and turned to me with an air of great
kindness.
"'Tis my tongue is running away with me," she said. "Excuse me, Bawn, my
dear. Your stranger sounds like Anthony Cardew, but I don't see that it
can be he. He was raven-black. Better think no more of him. I wouldn't
waste a thought on any man. I wonder why the Lord made them."
I had stood up to go. I think I had known all the time that my fine
gentleman and Anthony Cardew were one and the same, had understood all
the time why he was so certain that his presence in our woods would be
unwelcome to my grandparents.
"You never know where he might be, Anthony Cardew," Miss Bride went on,
holding my hand. "One day at one end of Europe, the next at the other.
Don't think of him, child. He is better worth thinking of than most men,
but none of them are worth it. Good-bye, Bawn; be sure and write us
word of all your fine doings."
Miss Henrietta came with me to the phaeton to whisper in my ear that I
was not to mind her sister's odd views about gentlemen, because poor
Bride lived in perpetual fear that she, Miss Henrietta, might marry and
leave her.
CHAPTER XIV
THE MINIATURE
As we jogged along in the evening coolness and sweetness, we came upon
Sir Arthur Ardaragh with little Robin on his shoulder. The boy shouted
with joy when he saw me; and when I had stopped the phaeton he called
down from his height about the picnic tea father and he had had in the
fields, his little fat hand upon his father's neck while he told it.
"Robin often won't eat a good tea in the nursery," his father explained.
"I think he wants other little boys to make him eat; he eats a famous
tea when we have it together out-of-doors and travel a distance before
we have it."
"I never want other boys, dada," Robin said, "when I have you. You are
better than a brother even."
"Have you been to see Sybil?" Sir Arthur asked, recapturing the young
gentleman and lifting him again to his shoulder.
To my annoyance, I felt my cheeks grow red, but his kind, serious eyes
showed no knowledge of it. I wished they were not so far away, those
eyes, so absorbed with books and dead and gone people and dead
languages. I wished they were nearer home, took more obvious thought for
the pretty young wife whom I had sometimes imagined to be jealous of her
husband's absorption in his studies.
"I called, but I did not see Lady Ardaragh," I said.
"Ah, I suppose she had gone out. Well, good-bye, Miss Devereux. Remember
me kindly to Lord and Lady St. Leger."
A day or two later I heard my godmother mention to Lady St. Leger, when
I was not supposed to be listening, that some one had seen Anthony
Cardew. He had passed a night at Brosna, and he was off somewhere to the
South Seas--on some romantic, treasure-hunting expedition which he had
been asked to join.
"Will he never settle down?" my grandmother asked in a whisper. I
noticed that they always whispered when they mentioned the name of
Cardew, on account of my grandfather, no doubt, for he would always have
it that Irene Cardew had been the cause of the tragedy which had
resulted in Jasper Tuite's death and Uncle Luke's exile, and he hated
her and Brosna and all the Cardews on her account.
"He shows no sign of it," my godmother answered. "I have little cause to
love the Cardews, but Anthony is a fine fellow. It is a thousand pities
that his life must be sacrificed to the memory of a woman who was always
beyond his reach, even while she lived."
Perhaps if they had talked more openly I should have been less
interested in the Cardews; but the mystery which hung about Brosna and
its owners for me had had the effect as I grew up of stimulating my
curiosity about them. And now that I knew I did not feel called upon to
hate them. Even if Irene Cardew had played fast and loose between Jasper
Tuite and Uncle Luke there was no reason for hating her brother, who
must have been but a boy at the time. I wondered if Irene had been like
her brother Anthony, had worn in her delicacy the look of a rapier, a
flame, of something bright and upstanding and alive with energy.
Since I might meet Richard Dawson and had no hope of meeting Anthony
Cardew, I walked much those days within our own walls, which gave me
space enough for Aghadoe park-walls are four miles in length.
But most often I found myself taking the path that led to the postern
gate as though the place had some pleasant, dreamy association for me.
One day I had the whim to creep again within the little glade where
Anthony Cardew had come to my help. It was now all hung about with wild
roses and woodbine and was very sweet, and far overhead the trees met in
a light, springing roof of green, more beautiful than any cathedral.
It had grown dark, and as I stood in the glade the rain pattered on the
leaves overhead, but not a drop reached me. There were harebells and
saxifrage in the moss, and underneath the bushes there was scented
woodruff, and there was also sweet wild thyme. I thought I would make a
summer drawing-room of the place, which none should know of beside
myself, and should bring my books there and my needlework and
embroidery, and spend long hours there alone or with a dog's
companionship which is better than solitude.
The shower passed away over the hills, and the sun shone out. It
sparkled here and there where a raindrop hung on a leaf and it suffused
the glade with a warm, golden glow.
Suddenly something sparkled that was not a raindrop, something in the
moss and undergrowth at the entrance to the glade. I wondered I had not
seen it before, but it was the first time I had entered the glade since
Anthony Cardew had been there.
I picked up the shining thing with great eagerness and found it to be a
miniature set about with brilliants. My foot struck against something
which proved to be a leather case in which the miniature, no doubt, had
lain. As it fell the case must have opened, and that was a lucky thing,
for if the miniature had remained in the case it might have lain there
till the day of judgment. It was the mere accident of the stones
sparkling that had caught my eye.
I stood with the miniature in my hand and stared at it, and it began to
dawn upon me why Anthony Cardew had thought me a ghost. The face was
far, far more beautiful than mine could ever be, yet it was strangely
like the face that looked at me from the glass every morning when I did
my hair.
To be sure, mine, I thought, was a poor simple, common face beside the
face in the miniature with its wonderful expression. I have heard my
grandmother say that the fair beauties of the South are the most
beautiful of all, as beautiful as they are rare; and the original of the
miniature had an opulent, golden beauty which we of the cold North
could never attain. Perhaps the beauty might even have been over-opulent
if sorrow and sadness had not given the face an air like a crowned
martyr in heaven. So sweet it was, so gentle, so full of spiritual
light, that I felt I could worship the owner of such a face.
Then I noticed the grand-ducal crown in diamonds at the top of the
miniature, and it came to me that this was the portrait of the lady
Anthony Cardew had served with a passionate devotion. No wonder I felt
aflame for her, although I was only a girl; and I thought that so Mary
Stuart must have looked to have left love of her alive in the world to
this day.
I thought of how much the loss must have meant to Anthony Cardew, and
cast wildly about in my mind for any means of letting him know that it
was safe. But I could find none; and I could only hope that presently I
should learn his whereabouts. I put the miniature into my breast for
greater safety, and felt it warm there, as though a heart had been alive
in it.
CHAPTER XV
THE EMPTY HOUSE
We had rooms on the sunny side of St. Stephen's Green, not far from the
Shelbourne Hotel and the Clubs, and, what interested me more, the
Grafton Street shops. I was nineteen years old, and I had never seen any
shops but those of Quinn, our country town, and these very seldom; so it
may be imagined what wonderful places the Dublin shops appeared to me,
although my godmother assured me they were not a patch on those of
London and Paris. In fact, the town seemed quite strange and wonderful
altogether, with the people hurrying hither and thither and the traffic
in the streets and the fine stir of life. I thought I never could be
tired of it all; and I was quite sure I should never be tired of the
shops.
My godmother was well pleased at my delight, while she laughed at me,
assuring me that Dublin was a dead city as compared with others.
"It is a Sleeping Beauty which wakes once a year," she said, "and that
is in Horse-Show Week. Time was when I came up every year for the show.
Now I think I shall revive the custom for your sake, Bawn. We can
bespeak these rooms if they are not already bespoken. I assure you, in
Horse-Show Week, Bawn, people are glad to sleep anywhere. Even the
bathrooms of houses and hotels are turned into bedrooms."
"I could not imagine a greater crowd than this," said I, for which she
laughed at me, again calling me a country mouse.
Although the Castle season was over there was still a good deal going
on, dinners and dances and many outdoor amusements, such as races and
regattas and flower-shows, to many of which we went. And it was only
when I saw how she enjoyed it all and how glad her old friends were to
see her that I realized what a dull life she spent with us, always
looking after that selfish invalid, her cousin, when she was not with
old people like Lord and Lady St. Leger.
Also I realized, when I saw her in her fine gowns, what a stately,
handsome woman she was still, and with an air of youth, although she had
put away the things of youth from her.
Indeed, after the first, our lives seemed to me a whirl of gaiety, and
although I went to no big balls, not having been presented, there were
a good many young girls' dances and garden-parties and such things open
to me, all of which I enjoyed greatly.
But one day, as it happened, my godmother was not very well, and our
engagement for the afternoon had to be abandoned.
I remembered then that half our visit was over and I had not yet been to
see Bridget Kelly, Maureen's sister, nor our old house which was in a
sad and forsaken part of the city that hitherto we had not visited. I
had had a great desire to see the old house all the time, but we had so
many engagements. Now, when my godmother wanted sleep and darkness but
was loth to leave me alone seemed to me an excellent moment.
"I shall go and see Bridget Kelly," I said, "while you rest. And when I
come back you will be better."
"Not alone, Bawn?"
"You seem to forget I am twenty."
"But--a country mouse--and other things. I went about freely when I was
your age, though the time was far more strict. But I could not let you
walk about the city alone, child. Your grandmother would have a fit if
she heard of such a thing."
At last I prevailed on her to let me go, on the understanding that I
should take a cab which should wait to bring me back. I had a thousand
times rather have had one of the outside cars, but I knew she would not
hear of it unless she was with me, so I resigned myself to the
stuffiness and rattling of a Dublin cab.
We crossed the city and climbed a steep hill and came presently to a
region of darkness and desolation as it seemed to me, in which the
houses were intolerably dreary--high, black houses that shut out the
sky, fallen on evil days, since they were all sooty and grimy, with
windows which had not been cleaned for years, many of them broken, and
twisted and rusty railings guarding the areas.
I shuddered at the thought of the people who lived in such places.
I could see that they had once been places of consideration but now they
were slums. Here and there a mean shop stood out, or the old house had
been turned into a pawn office, or a builder's or baker's. Dirty
children sat on the pavements or played in the gutters, while their
dirty mothers gossiped in groups; and the men lounged to and from the
public-houses, which were, indeed, the only bright spots in those
dreadful streets.
I was relieved, when at last the cab stopped, that I had come to the end
of my journey.
The last street down which we had driven was drearier than the rest, in
a sense, but more respectable. There were wire blinds to all the lower
windows, and there was no sign of life in the short street from end to
end.
Our house crossed the end of the street, which was in a way an approach
to it. It stood within stone walls, and was a great square building with
wings thrown out, the style of it the pseudo-classical which was so much
in favour in Ireland in the eighteenth century.
There was a great gate in the middle of the long wall; at one side of it
a postern, which I pushed and found to be open. Bidding the driver wait
for me I passed within.
I went up a flight of steps, under Ionic pillars, to the double hall
door. I found that that, too, stood open, and I went into the hall,
which was very dark despite the June sunshine without. It was an
imposing hall paved with black and white marble, and the stairs
ascending from it were of the same material. I was struck by the
beautiful stucco work of the walls and ceiling. But dust and grime lay
on everything and the air of the place struck cold.
I went back to the hall door and rang the bell, which echoed somewhere
down in the lower regions of the house; but there was not a sound except
that.
I rang again, and still no result, and the influence of the shut-up and
abandoned house with all its shadows and memories began to chill me. I
set the hall door open wide, and then I found the door at the back of
the hall that led to the servants' quarters and opened that.
A rush of cold, damp air came up in my face with a mouldering smell.
"Bridget Kelly!" I called. "Bridget Kelly!"
The sound echoed as though through many vaults of stone and there was no
answer.
The place and the silence began to get on my nerves. I remembered its
forty-six rooms, all shut up and the furniture swathed in holland where
the rooms were not empty. I have always had a dread of an empty house,
and now it seized upon me. I could have run away out into the sunshine
to the cabman whom I had left feeding his horse. When I had looked back
before entering he and his horse had been the only living things in the
black street.
But I would not run away. It would be a pretty thing to go home to my
grandmother and tell her that I was afraid of the house because I could
not make Bridget Kelly hear me and had run away in the full sunshine of
a June day.
Probably Bridget was upstairs in some one of the forty-six rooms.
From the hall itself four doors of very fine wine-red mahogany opened. I
looked into one after the other. They were reception-rooms of great
size, so far as I could judge; but the sun was the other side of the
house, and only an eastern light came in through the chinks of the
window shutters. The rooms were full of sheeted shapes in the dimness. I
don't think I could have brought myself to go into them. I know I closed
each door with a hasty bang, as though it had been a Blue Beard's
Chamber.
As I went upstairs my heels made a great noise on the marble steps. At
the head of the stairs I came upon a door which had once been of red
baize, although now the baize was in tatters. Beyond it was a long
corridor, shuttered like the rest of the house.
I left the baize door open behind me while I peeped fearfully into one
room after another whose doors led off from the corridor. These were
bedrooms, and it was worse than downstairs. I could see the great
four-posters glimmering in the darkness. The smell of mildew was
everywhere.
Suddenly my courage gave out. I had an idea. Supposing that Bridget
Kelly was lying dead in one of these rooms or the great stone kitchens
below!
I turned about hastily, dreading what lay behind me. I would come
another time with my godmother. How could one tell who was skulking in
the house? The door had been open when I came to it.
And then--I heard the hall door shut with a great bang. There was no
wind to shut it. It was the last straw. I fled precipitately through the
baize door and on to the staircase, which was lit by a skylight
overhead. Even though I met the person who had shut the door I must make
towards the sunlight and the world outside.
CHAPTER XVI
THE PORTRAIT
As I came out on to the great landing which had a recess supported by
pillars, I saw that a baize door on the other side, corresponding to the
one by which I had come was slowly opening. To my excited fancy it
opened stealthily, and I stood staring at it, not knowing what might
issue from it.
Imagine, then, my joy and surprise when I saw for the second time
Anthony Cardew's face. At first I could hardly believe it; and he, on
his part, looked equally amazed, and very pleasurably so, I must say.
"Why, where have you dropped from, Miss Bawn?" he asked. "A minute ago I
could have sworn I was alone in the house, unless, perhaps, the good old
creature who looks after it had come back from her marketing."
"And where have you dropped from?" I asked, suddenly light-hearted. "I
thought you were on your way to the South Seas."
"Why so I should have been," he answered, "only for sudden happenings.
And how do you come here? To be sure, it is your own house, and I am a
trespasser. I little thought when I came who I should find."
"I am in town for a short visit," I said, "with Miss Champion. She was
not well to-day so I came to see the house alone."
"And, as luck would have it, I had a fancy on the same day to see a
portrait in the picture-gallery here. It is something better than
chance, Miss Bawn."
We stood looking at each other with a happy intimacy. And then his
mention of the portrait recalled the miniature I had found in the wood.
I had had a foolish girl's fancy to hang it about my neck under my
dress, and it lay there now, suspended by a slender gold chain which was
one of my godmother's gifts to me. I had a shy reluctance to let him
know I carried it there.
"By the way," I said, "I believe I have a jewel of yours. I found it in
the wood."
His eyes lightened and darkened in a way that was peculiar to him and
his cheek flushed.
"You have found the miniature?" he said, in great excitement. "I was
heartbroken for the loss of it. Have you got it with you?"
He had stretched out his hand as though he expected his recovered
treasure to be handed to him at once, and I could not deny that I had
it, so I took it from about my neck, murmuring something about having
carried it for safety and that the case was at Aghadoe and should be
returned to him.
"I thought you were gone to the ends of the earth," I said lamely; "and
I was so afraid that I might lose it before I should have a chance of
returning it."
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