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THE STORY OF BAWN
BY
KATHARINE TYNAN
AUTHOR OF "THE DEAR IRISH GIRL," "JULIA," "DICK PENTREATH," ETC.
CHICAGO
A.C. McCLURG & CO.
1907
Published March 2, 1907
Printed in Great Britain
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Myself 1
II. The Ghosts 7
III. The Creamery 16
IV. Richard Dawson 24
V. The Nurse 33
VI. One Side of a Story 42
VII. Old, Unhappy, Far-off Things 50
VIII. The Stile in the Wood 55
IX. A Rough Lover 63
X. The Trap 70
XI. The Friend 78
XII. The Enemy 86
XIII. Enlightenment 93
XIV. The Miniature 102
XV. The Empty House 108
XVI. The Portrait 116
XVII. The Will of Others 122
XVIII. Flight 129
XIX. The Crying in the Night 137
XX. An Eavesdropper 144
XXI. The New Maid 152
XXII. The Dinner-party 160
XXIII. The Bargain 167
XXIV. The Blow Falls 175
XXV. The Lover 183
XXVI. The Tribunal 191
XXVII. Brosna 199
XXVIII. The Quick and the Dead 207
XXIX. The Sickness 215
XXX. The Dark Days 223
XXXI. The Wedding-dress 231
XXXII. The New Home 239
XXXIII. The End of It 249
XXXIV. The Knocking at the Door 257
XXXV. The Messenger 266
XXXVI. The Old Lovers 275
XXXVII. The Judgment of God 283
XXXVIII. Confession 289
XXXIX. The Bridegroom Comes 299
XL. King Cophetua 307
=THE STORY OF BAWN=
CHAPTER I
MYSELF
I am Bawn Devereux, and I have lived as long as I remember at Aghadoe
Abbey with my grandfather and grandmother, the Lord and Lady St. Leger.
At one time we were a family of five. There was my Uncle Luke, and there
was my cousin Theobald.
Theobald was my boy cousin, and we played together up and down the long
corridors in winter, and in the darkness of the underground passage, in
summer in the woods and shrubberies and gardens, and we were happy
together.
I was eager to please Theobald, and I put away from me my natural
shrinkings from things he did not mind, lest he should despise me and be
dissatisfied with me, longing for a boy's company. I would do all he
did, and I must have been a famous tomboy. But my reward was that he
never seemed to desire other company than mine.
Once, indeed, I remember that when he handed me live bait to put upon
the hook I turned suddenly pale and burst into tears.
When I had done it I looked at him apprehensively, dreading to see his
contempt written in his face, but there was no such thing. There was
instead the dawn of a new feeling. My cousin's face wore such an
expression as I had never seen in it before. He was at this time a tall
boy of fifteen, and Bridget Connor, my grandmother's maid, was making me
my first long frock.
He looked at me with that strange expression, and he said, "Poor little
Bawn!"
It was the beginning of the new order of things in which I fagged for
him no more, but was spared the labours and fatigues I had endured
cheerfully during our early years. Indeed, I often wonder now at the
things I did for him, such things as the feminine nature turns from with
horror, although they seem to come naturally enough to a boy.
That day I heard my grandfather and grandmother discussing me.
Theobald was playing in a cricket match in the neighbourhood, and I was
at home, reading in one of the recesses of the library. The book was
Thackeray's "Henry Esmond," and I was so lost in the romance and
tenderness of it--I was at that chapter where Harry returns bringing his
sheaves with him--that I did not notice what they were saying till my
own name caught my ears.
I remember that the afternoon had come on wet, and that while I read the
wet branches of the lilac beat against the leaded window. I could see
the flowers through an open pane, and smell their delightful perfume.
There was an apple tree in view, too, with all its blossoms hanging in
pink limpness.
I had forgotten my grandfather and grandmother sitting by the library
fire, within the hooded settle that made the fireside like a little
room; and they had forgotten my presence, if indeed they had known of
it.
"Bawn is the very moral of what I was at her age," my grandmother said.
"Have you noticed, Toby"--my grandfather also was a Theobald--"how tall
she grows? And how she sways in walking like a poplar tree? She has my
complexion before it ran in streaks, and my hair before it faded, and
my eyes before they were dim. She has the carriage of the head which
made them call me the Swan of Dunclody. She will be fifteen come
Michaelmas, and she shall have my pearls for her neck."
I heard her in an excessive surprise. My grandmother had been esteemed a
great beauty in her day and had been sung by the ballad-singers. Was it
possible that my looks could be like hers? I had not thought about them
hitherto any more than my cousin had about his. It was with almost a
sense of relief that I heard my grandfather's reply.
"The child is well enough," he said, "but as for being so like you, that
she is not, nor ever will have your share of beauty. As for your spoilt
roses I do not see them, nor the dimmed eyes, nor the faded hair. You
were lovely when I saw you first, and you are no less lovely in my sight
to-day."
"In your sight--at seventy!" my grandmother said; and I could picture to
myself the well-pleased expression of her dear face.
As for my Uncle Luke, of him I have but a dim memory, yet it is of
something bonny. To be sure I have his picture in my grandmother's
boudoir to remind me of him, a fair, full-lipped, smiling and merry
face, with dark brown hair which would have curled if it were permitted.
His comeliness survived even the hideous fashion of men's dress of his
day, and my memory of him is of one in riding-breeches and a scarlet
coat, for I think that must have been how I saw him oftenest.
He used to lift me to his shoulders and let me climb upon his head, and
I remember that it seemed very fine to me to survey the world from that
eminence.
I could have been no more than six years of age when my Uncle Luke
vanished out of my surroundings.
At that time Theobald had not come to be an inmate of Aghadoe, and I
noticed things as an over-wise child, accustomed to the society of its
elders, will.
I often wondered about it in later years. I had no memory of a wake and
a funeral, and I think if these things had been I should have known. But
there was a period of trouble in which I was packed away to my nursery
and the companionship of Maureen Kelly, our old nurse.
When I emerged from that it was to find my grandfather stern and sad,
and my grandmother with a scared look and the roses of her cheeks
faded.
And for long the shadow lay over Aghadoe. But in course of time people
grew used to it as they will to all things, and my grandfather took
snuff and played whist with his cronies, and drank his French claret,
and rode to hounds, as he had been used; and my grandmother played on
the harp to him of evenings when we were alone, and walked with him and
talked to him, and saw to the affairs of her household, as though the
machinery of life had not for a period run slow and heavy.