Katharine Tynan - The Story of Bawn
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Katharine Tynan >> The Story of Bawn
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"Don't you see that I am not ready? I am not used to lovers," I cried,
bursting into a paroxysm of tears, when he went on urging a speedy
marriage.
At the sight of my tears he seemed dismayed and tried to comfort me,
saying that I should have my own time and that I was the more desirable
to him because I was not ready to fall into his arms.
CHAPTER XXVI
THE TRIBUNAL
After that day there was not a day but rich presents were showered on me
by the Dawsons, which reminded me of the decking of a victim led to the
sacrifice.
What did I care about the jewels and furs and laces that my bridegroom
brought me? About his promise of what he should give me when I was his?
Garret Dawson used to eye me with a grim approval: and I heard him say
to my grandfather once that he could have had rank and wealth and beauty
for his son, and that I would bring him nothing; but that he and Rick
knew a unique thing when they saw it and were prepared to pay any price
for it. At which speech my poor grandfather bowed with a look as though
he felt it hard to endure.
Mrs. Dawson took me in her kind, old, motherly arms when she came to see
me, and said humbly that she could never be grateful enough to me for
consenting to marry her son; and what she said afterwards had something
significant in it if I had not been too miserable to notice it.
"He'll make you a good husband, dear," she said. "He's a good boy at
heart, although he has been a bit wild. And, listen, dear, you may have
your feelings about the way Dawson made his money and I'm not saying you
wouldn't be right. But, my dear, there's many a thing Dawson did--hard
and cruel things, you understand, dear--that Rick never knew of. The
love of money's not in him any more than it's in me; and he has done
many a kind thing."
I was able to return the poor soul's kiss because I liked her, and
always shall, and was sorry for her.
Indeed, I wanted new friends, for the old were angry with me or held
aloof from me.
When my engagement was announced my godmother had come in hot haste from
her cousin's dying bed, which now she hardly left, to remonstrate with
my grandfather and grandmother. She had urged and pleaded with them, had
done all she could, seeing that she was, as she said to me, desperately
sorry for them, and had finally left them in a coldness.
"You poor child!" she said to me when I met her in the avenue, she
driving her fast mare in the smart dog-cart which was her favourite
equipage, I on foot. She jumped down and held the reins over her arm
while she talked. "What a face for a bride! Why, Bawn, you are older by
ten years than the child I used to know. They are mad, mad, poor dear
souls, to let Garret Dawson frighten them; and I am helpless, because
they will tell me nothing. Couldn't you stand out, Bawn?"
I shook my head.
"If only Theobald were here!" she said, in a helpless passion. "If only
Theobald were here! To think that they should rob him of his sweetheart
because they are caught in Dawson's spider's web. Their own grandchild!
It seems unnatural. And you two lovers from your cradles!"
I don't know what impelled me to tell her the truth, but the words came
to my lips and I spoke them.
"I never loved Theobald and he never loved me," I said. "They have not
that at their doors. I should not have married Theobald."
"Why, God bless me, child!" she said, staring at me. "You will be
telling me next that you are in love with Richard Dawson. But I shall
not believe it, not with that face."
She went away with a look of hopeless bewilderment.
I fared less well with Maureen, who was bitterly angry with me and said
things to me that I could not have borne if she had been always
responsible for what she said.
"A fine husband you'll be getting, Miss Bawn," she said. "There's no
accounting for ladies' tastes, and by all accounts there are a good many
ladies who are fond of Master Richard. Ask Lady Ardaragh. There isn't
much she wouldn't give him, they say. If half the stories are true,
there are many that have a better right to him than you, Miss Bawn. And
to think you've thrown over my darling boy for Garret Dawson's son!"
I must have looked frightened, for she became suddenly contrite, and,
throwing her arms about me, rated herself for the things she had said,
saying that she knew I wasn't to blame, and that it was only her love
for me and Theobald which made her so bitter.
Then her mood changed; and snatching up my hand with Richard Dawson's
ring on it she burst into a harsh laugh.
"What was over him at all," she said, "to give you the like o' that?
Didn't he know the green was unlucky? Sure, 'tis unlucky for him it'll
be, and you'll never marry him. My dream'll come true, and you'll be
saved in time, Miss Bawn. The ill luck is for him, not for you."
Indeed, I found it hard in those days to meet the eyes of the
neighbours, gentle and simple, who could not know why I had consented to
marry Richard Dawson. I felt that the county buzzed with it, castle and
cabin alike, and it made me shrink away from those who had always been
kind to me. I was ashamed to go down the village street, for I knew the
people would come to their doors and look after me, and say, "Isn't it a
wonder for Miss Bawn that she'd marry a Dawson? and the family always so
proud, too."
I noticed that none of the people who came to call were effusive in
their congratulations except Lady Ardaragh, and she congratulated me
with a high colour and an exaggeration of speech which did not ring
true.
The Misses Chenevix called one day, and, while Miss Henrietta sat
unhappily looking down at her lap, Miss Bride congratulated me in a
voice which had no congratulation in it.
"I wish you happiness, Bawn," she said. "Not that I ever think marriage
a subject for congratulation, but rather for condolence."
A somewhat dreary sense of the humour of the speech made me answer that
I thought I agreed with her, whereupon she snapped me up and said that,
to be sure, some people must be married, though she for her part thought
the world would get on very well without marriage; but then, of course,
she was old-fashioned.
"And if you had to marry, Bawn," she went on, "why didn't you wait for
your cousin? The county always expected you to marry your cousin; and,
if you must be married, Theobald would have suited you better than Mr.
Dawson. You're not the girl I thought you, Bawn."
I wondered what Theobald would think of me. I had left it to my
grandparents to explain to Theobald, and his letters to me had gone
unanswered now for three weeks or more.
But, after all, it was not Theobald who was my tribunal; it was not from
Theobald's judgment I shrank.
It was Anthony Cardew I feared most. When I endured the ignominy of
Richard Dawson's kisses, when he would hold me in his arms with his
face against mine and I felt that nothing worse could happen to me, I
used to keep wondering all the time what Anthony Cardew would think of
me when he knew.
The thought made me desperate. I could have slit my nose and chin,
defaced myself like St. Ursula and her maidens, so that I should cease
to be desirable to Richard Dawson. But there were my grandparents, and
the disgrace which I must buy back for them by giving myself.
Then one day, being in great misery, it occurred to me that I would
write a letter to Anthony Cardew. I was quite sure that I should be dead
before he received it, for I knew I should not live long with Richard
Dawson as his wife, if indeed I were not saved before that. I was glad
to think that I was growing thin; that I was languid on the least
exertion, and had no appetite for my food. I hoped that God would be
merciful to me, and that I should just save them and die. And presently
Theobald would come home to them and they would be happy.
And so I thought that I would write a letter to Anthony Cardew, so that
when I was dead he would understand and be sorry for me. And I sat down
and wrote it. For I could not bear that he should think me unworthy and
shameful, seeing that I loved him with all my heart and soul.
CHAPTER XXVII
BROSNA
I made several attempts at the letter, and discarded them all. And at
last, lest I should be interrupted and the letter never be written, I
wrote in a great hurry.
"Dear Captain Cardew,
"I hope this letter will reach you safely, so that in the days to
come you will not misjudge me. You wrote to me that you were giving
me up to my cousin. That you could not do, for I loved only you,
and did from the hour I first laid eyes on you, and shall for ever.
But, loving you, I am going to marry Richard Dawson, the
money-lender's son. And I must tell you, lest you should misjudge
me, and all women for my sake, that I shall marry him most
unwillingly. I do it because Garret Dawson holds a secret of ours
which only the sacrifice of myself can buy back. I owe so much to
the kind love which has never let me miss the love of father and
mother. But I am sure I shall not live long. You should not have
gone away and left me.
"Yours always,
"BAWN."
When I had written it I did not read it over, lest I should destroy it
with the others, but, having found a very strong envelope, I put it
within it and sealed it with the impression of my father's ring.
The only way I could hope for it to reach him was by leaving it at his
old home, which I knew he loved despite its state of ruin--or perhaps
the more because of that--and he was sure to return there some time. So
I addressed it to Captain Cardew, Brosna; and then, because I could
trust no one but myself to deliver it I stole out of the house.
I was free for a few hours, for my lover was gone to Dublin. He had
taken a cottage in the neighbourhood, because he had once heard me
express a liking for it. It was a pretty little place, enclosed by high
walls which held within them many beauties. It would have been an
exquisite place for a pair of happy lovers; and he was making it very
fine and dainty for me. It had been unoccupied for some years; and he
was having it newly decorated and furnishing it with the prettiest
things money could buy. He had said that I was not to see it till it was
ready for me; and it occupied as much of his time as he could spare from
me. In Dublin he was picking up all manner of pretty things in the way
of antique furniture and china and glass and silver and pictures. We
were to stay at the cottage a few days after our marriage, before we
went abroad; and afterwards it was to be our home till such time as I
desired a finer one.
He was so generous that at times I felt ashamed that he should do so
much for an unwilling bride; and if I could have felt less aversion for
him I would gladly have done so. I used to feel that if I could watch
him lavishing everything on another woman--for he squandered his love as
well as his money on me--I could have liked and admired him.
The woods were full of the yellow leaves of autumn and the wind sighed
mournfully in the bare branches as I went on my way to the postern in
the wall. Outside it I turned to the left, and walked for half a mile or
so along a grassy road, overhung with trees, till I came to the entrance
gates of Brosna.
The lodge was empty, and the gate yielded to a push. There was an air of
neglect about everything that was very sad. Part of one of the pillars
which supported the entrance gate was down. In the avenue some trees
that had fallen last winter lay across the way; no one had troubled to
remove them.
I knew there was no one in the house but Captain Cardew's
soldier-servant, Terence Murphy, whose old mother lived in Araglin
village. I did not want to meet Terence; and I had an idea, having heard
of the great extent of Brosna--indeed, it was easy to judge of it from
the aspect of the place outside--that I might slip in somewhere and
leave my letter without meeting with him.
So, without going near the hall door, I passed through a little iron
gate in the wall at one end of the house, which I found led to an
overgrown garden.
The grass in the garden was as high as my waist, and here and there a
rose tree, standing up above the tangle, showed a pale autumn rose; and
little old-fashioned chrysanthemum bushes bore their clusters of tawny
and lilac flowers. Beyond, I could see a kitchen garden with the apples
in the boughs, and, standing up in the midst of it, a projecting part
of the house which, to my amazement, was covered with thatch.
I was reassured at the moment by hearing Terence Murphy's voice shouting
at a distance. It must have been at the other side of the house, in the
stable-yard, I judged, and I thought I should be able to deliver my
letter before he could by any possibility reach where I was.
There was a glass door leading from the thatched room into the garden,
and I found that it stood open. I noticed that in front of it the grass
plot had been cleared and there were flowers in the borders. Within I
found a very pretty and comfortable room arranged with unexpected
tidiness. As I looked about me I remembered having heard that Terence
always kept a place in readiness for the return of his master. All the
rest of the place might be in ruin, but this room was pleasant and
home-like.
It had once been a woman's room, I thought, from certain prettinesses,
the blue, rose-wreathed carpet on the floor, the ceiling groined under
its thatch and painted in blue with a crescent moon and stars in gold,
the walls covered with silk set in panels.
But now it was a man's room, with the pleasant litter of a man's
belongings. There was a square writing-table in the window, with a
wooden chair drawn up in front of it. There were many pipes, old and
new, and whips and hunting-crops; and a gun-case standing by the wall
and some crossed weapons on the wall. I saw a pair of spurs in one
corner, and, flung carelessly on the writing-table, as though the owner
might return at any moment, there was a glove.
I took up the glove and kissed it furtively. I wished I might have taken
it to comfort me, for a sense of the hand it had held seemed to linger
about it. As I stood pressing it to my breast my eye fell on a picture
that stood on the writing-table--a picture that was like yet unlike
myself. It was a reproduction of the miniature I remembered.
There were other pictures and photographs about--men in uniform, women
of many ages, horses and dogs: one of Anthony Cardew himself, which made
my heart beat to look at it. I wished I might have taken it also, and
had the will to do it but I dared not. Besides, what right had I to such
things? Already I was trying to steel myself to destroy the one letter
he had written me. I should have no right to it when I was Richard
Dawson's wife.
A shout somewhere near at hand alarmed me. I slipped my letter under the
glove on the writing-table and fled out precipitately. Only in time, as
it proved, for Terence Murphy came round the house chasing a refractory
hen, which, as luck would have it, flew through the door I had left open
behind me.
"I could have sworn I shut that door," I heard Terence shout at the top
of his voice. "Bad luck to ye, ye divil"--to the hen--"God forgive me
for swearing. Will nothin' contint ye but the master's own room?"
While he dived within the room I got out through the little gate and
back into the avenue, where the briars and undergrowth had made hedges
behind which one could easily find cover.
Once in safety I stopped to gaze back at the long front of Brosna,
looking so sad. It is one of the white stuccoed houses so common in
Ireland in the eighteenth century, although much finer and more
magnificent than most. At the roof there was a balustrading, and below
were long lines of windows of a uniform oblong shape, each with an
architrave above it. The rains of our moist climate had wept upon it and
there were long green streaks extending down the walls. I saw now that
there was a sunken storey with a sort of area that ran all round the
house, so that Brosna, except for its thatched summer-room, was a house
of three storeys, not of two, as it appeared at first.
While I looked at it the evening shadows crept down upon it and seemed
to enfold it in a greater loneliness. But it was dearer to me than the
great houses of the neighbourhood which were comfortable and well kept
and inhabited. And I was glad to think of the ordered room, with its
grass plot before the window, and the fire set in the grate, ready to be
lit when the master should come home.
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE QUICK AND THE DEAD
When I reached home I found that my grandmother had been looking for me,
and Neil Doherty told me the reason. Word had come from Castle Clody
that Miss Champion's cousin was dead.
"You must go to her, Bawn," said my grandmother, sadly. "We must not
leave her alone, and she will not want me. You will spend the night with
her?"
Yes, I would do that, although I shrank from the prospect of death like
any other sensitive girl. It was not likely I would refuse to go to my
dear godmother in her hour of need; and I had an unacknowledged hope
that she might keep me with her, perhaps, so that I would be free of my
lover for a few days.
When she heard that I had come she came down to me where I was standing
by the fire in the morning-room warming my hands, for the first frost
of the season had come and the night was cold.
"Ah, good child," she said, "to come so quickly! Everything is done,
Bawn, and she is at rest. I shall miss her dreadfully. I don't know what
I shall do with my empty hands. I am too old to begin to love again."
Every one knew that Miss Joan had been querulous and bitter with her,
and it made me love and reverence her more than ever to hear the way she
spoke.
"Sit down, Bawn," she said, "sit down. You are going to stay with me,
kind child. I shall have the little room off my own prepared for you;
and we shall have our dinner here. It will be more cheerful than in the
dining-room."
I could not help noticing that though her eyes showed traces of much
weeping she yet wore a singularly tranquil and even radiant look, as
though good news had come to her. Indeed, the whole atmosphere of the
house seemed strangely peaceful.
A servant came in to set the table, and we went upstairs to the little
room within her own room where I was to sleep. A bright fire already
blazed in the grate, and Louise was busy putting out my things. The room
looked so cheerful with its chintz--a green trellis hung with roses on
a white ground--that one could not be gloomy and fearful in it, even if
I did not know that my dear godmother would leave the door between our
rooms open at night and would wake if I but stirred.
Louise helped me to put on the one black gown I possessed, which, as it
happened, was patterned with roses, a crepe de Chine fichu about the
neck, and I asked Louise to take it off and find me something more
becoming; but my godmother would have it so, saying that poor Joan would
not grudge me a few roses, having herself found the roses of Paradise.
That quiet radiancy of my godmother seemed to diffuse itself over
everything. I know I felt happier than I had felt for a long time, and I
tried to put all the trouble, and the thought that I was to marry
Richard Dawson the week before Christmas, out of my mind.
Everything about the dinner-table was so pretty. I could not help
feeling that my godmother had told them it was to be so; and the wax
candles shone on the scarlet berries and russet and orange and crimson
leaves, on the delicate napery and glass and silver; and the fire leaped
and sparkled in the grate. I had a feeling that I and my godmother were
shut in together from the world's trouble, although it waited for us
outside the gate.
After dinner we sat by the fire and talked in a low voice, and I could
not help commenting on the new serene happiness of my godmother's face.
I had always thought it a cheerful face before, although the face of one
who had suffered; but now I wondered that I had thought it anything but
sad.
"You look happy!" I said.
"And I am happy, Bawn, although I shall miss Joan. But she is at rest
with God, and before she died she told me something which set my heart
at rest."
"Ah, I am glad of that," I said.
She leant forward and took my hands in hers, making me turn round so as
to face her.
"Bawn," she said, "there is nothing worth having in the world but love,
nothing but love, nothing but love. I tell it to you, although some
people would think that love had wrecked my life. But I have loved
greatly, and I have been loved greatly, and I would not change places
with any of your wives and mothers of families."
"Yes, I know," I said.
"And if you do, Bawn, why don't you save yourself from this marriage?
The money doesn't tempt you, nor Richard Dawson's coarse comeliness. Why
don't you save yourself, child?"
I shook my head helplessly.
"If it were anything in which money could help I would sell all I have
rather than see you marry without love."
"Money has nothing to do with it. And--it is too late to do anything."
"It would never be too late so long as you were not his wife. They are
deceived. Luke L'Estrange was the truest and most candid soul alive. Yet
what a web of lies has grown up about him. Shall I tell you, Bawn, what
Joan told me before she died?"
"If it eases you."
"I have to share it with some one, and I can trust you not to think
hardly of my poor Joan."
I wondered what was coming, but I had not long to wait. My godmother
looked at me again, straight into my eyes, as though she would see to
the depths of my soul.
"I have forgiven her, poor dear soul, with all my heart," she said. "If
I thought you could judge her hardly I would not tell you; but I think
you will not judge her hardly. You see, she loved Luke. He had a way
with women. She was always delicate and sickly, and he was sorry for
her. He used to sit by her and talk to her. She loved him and she
thought that he loved her, or would love her if I were out of the way. I
had everything, she thought--health and wealth and the world before me,
and Luke's love. She thought it unfair that I should have so much. No
wonder she wanted Luke for herself."
Again her eyes looked into mine, asking a question. Whatever she saw
satisfied her, for she went on again with dreamy tenderness--
"I see you can pity her, Bawn. Child, how do you know it if you never
loved? He came to this house when he was flying from justice, as he
thought, expecting to find me and found her instead. He gave her such
messages for me as might make any woman proud. He would release me, but
he knew I was too great-hearted to accept the release; he had killed
Jasper Tuite in the struggle when he tried to save Irene Cardew from
him. He had seen Jasper Tuite strike poor Irene when he was trying to
drag her from her carriage to ride with him on his horse. She was
screaming, poor girl, and Jasper Tuite struck her on the mouth. And what
would my Luke do save spring on to Jasper Tuite and close with him? And
Jasper Tuite would have shot him if Luke had not fired in self-defence.
No jury would have convicted Luke, for Jasper Tuite died from
heart-failure, not from the flesh-wound of Luke's pistol. But if I had
only been here when he stole here under cover of the darkness I would
have made him hold his ground."
"And he saw Miss Standish instead?"
"Yes, he saw Joan. And she kept his messages all these years. There was
more than that. I was to send him a message to where he was in hiding,
waiting for a passage to America. I sent him none, but Joan sent him one
instead. She was jealous, terribly jealous, or she could not have done
it, poor girl. She sent him word that he was not to return, that Jasper
Tuite was dead of his wound. Also she sent him word from me that I
wanted no more of him. How could he have believed it? Well, the remorse
of it has gone far to kill her. If she was ever trying, it was because
she had to take benefits from the woman she had wronged. Poor unhappy
Joan! She died in great love and peace with me."
Fortunately, this time she did not look me in the eyes. Such magnanimity
was beyond me.
"It is very sweet to know," she went on dreamily, "that poor Luke came
to me in his need. He knew he could trust my love. But he ought to have
known me better than to believe I could send that message. He ought to
have known me better."
"Yes," I said, "he ought to have known you better."
CHAPTER XXIX
THE SICKNESS
It was while I was still at Castle Clody that a message came to me one
morning saying that some one desired to speak with me; and when I went
out into the hall I found it was Nora Brady. She had a little crimson
shawl over her head, and as she lifted her eyes to me her beauty came to
me like a new thing. There was dry snow in the wind, and a few flakes of
it showed on her dark curls, which lay ring on ring under the shawl. Her
face was round and soft as a child's, and the innocence of her blue,
black-lashed eyes as she lifted them to me was as unsullied as though
she were three years old. She had lost her pretty colour, but the
gentleness which made her beauty appealing was, if possible, greater
than of old.
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