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.
But the red sun glinting down the long arcades, promising another fine
day to-morrow, gave my thoughts a welcome turn. I remembered how it had
shone yesterday in the long line of windows at Brosna; and that led me
to think of Anthony Cardew.
He had the most romantic stories attaching to him, such stories as were
sure to please a young girl's fancy. It was to be sure not a name we
mentioned at Aghadoe. Indeed, even before I knew about Uncle Luke there
was something that forbade my talking of the Cardews before Lord and
Lady St. Leger or before my godmother.
Only old Maureen, who so often mixed up the present and the past, would
talk of the Cardews as though their name had never been banned, as
though they still came and went as friends and intimates at Aghadoe
Abbey as in the days before the trouble came about Uncle Luke.
I knew that Captain Cardew had long since retired from the army, and
that one never knew in what corner of the world he might not be, since
wherever adventures were to be found he was.
I knew that he had spent many years of his life--he must be now nearly
forty, which was a great age to me--in the service of an unhappy great
lady whose little kingdom had been unjustly taken from her, and in her
cause he had spent his patrimony which had once been great. And now
since she no longer lived, having given up her gentle soul some two
years after she had sought the shelter of the convent against a rough
world, he was free once more to devote his sword of Don Quixote to some
other lost cause.
I knew, furthermore, that he was reported to have raised money from Mr.
Dawson of Damerstown at ruinous interest to spend it in the service of
the Princess Pauline, and that he was now very poor, too poor to keep
his old home from going to pieces and being consumed by the damp and by
rats and mice and general decay.
People used to wonder he did not try to sell it. Indeed, it was common
talk that before Mr. Dawson had bought Damerstown he had tried to obtain
possession of Brosna, and that his offer had been refused by Anthony
Cardew with contempt. The common talk even found words for the refusal.
"What?" Captain Cardew was reported to have said. "You have plucked me
clean enough, God knows, but I keep my honour intact, and that forbids
that I should see Dawsons in the house where Cardews lived honourably
and wronged none but themselves."
The low sun going down in a blaze behind the trees brought these things
into my mind. I remember that the wood was as sweet from the scent of
the white-thorn and the lilacs and a thousand other sweet and fresh
things as though some heavenly censer swung there. The thrushes and the
blackbirds were singing their wildest as is their custom about sunset;
and below their triumphant songs you could hear the whole chorus of the
little birds' voices as well as the fiddling and harping of the myriad
field-crickets and grasshoppers. Then from the field beyond the wood I
could hear the corncrakes sawing away in the yet unmown grass, and there
were a great many wood-doves uttering their soft laments.
I have always loved the things of nature; but on this evening they had
less power than usual to soothe me. The shame of my recent encounter
with Richard Dawson kept sending the colour to my cheeks and the little
shocks of repulsion through my blood. I felt that if he had really
kissed me I must have killed him or myself. My fingers twitched as I
thought on a certain dagger, little but deadly, which lay in a glass
case in the picture-gallery, and I resolved that I would carry it in my
breast for the future on my country rambles lest I should meet again
with such rudeness as I had met to-day and have nothing with which to
defend myself.
I was so engaged in my thoughts as I walked along that I had not noticed
how far ahead of me Dido had run. But suddenly she was brought to my
mind by the most horrible yelping which made me run as fast as ever I
ran in my life.
I came up with her in a little glade away from the main path, a mere
gamekeepers' passage, now much overgrown and choked up, for it was long
since we had kept gamekeepers. I had to creep on my hands and knees
through the briars and undergrowth to reach the place where she was,
which was a clear space in the midst of the tangle.
As soon as she saw me she left off yelping and waited for me with an air
of expectancy, as though she knew that I would soon put an end to her
discomfort.
But alas for the poor thing's faith in me, I saw when I came up to her
that her foot was caught in a trap, a horrible iron-toothed thing, the
like of which I had never seen before. It must have rusted there from
the old days till my poor dog by some accident had released it. I saw
that there were bones by it--the bones of some poor wild creature,
doubtless, who had perished in it, and the bones had no doubt acted as
a warning to the others.
As I knelt down Dido licked my face frantically, being quite sure I was
going to release her. But that was not so easy. Pull as I would I could
not bring the teeth of the trap apart.
"I shall have to go for help, Dido," I said, after a few minutes,
trusting to her sense to understand. But as I rose to go and she saw
that I was leaving her, she began immediately a loud, almost hysterical
barking, interspersed with little piteous moans and whimpers which were
most painful to hear.
I did not know what to do, so I began to cry myself, and then I knelt
down beside her and began again my useless effort to release her.
The sun by now was sinking low, although there would be light for an
hour or two yet. I guessed that it must be seven o'clock, and I knew
that my grandmother would be uneasy about me, and that presently my
grandfather would have to be told, and the whole household would be
anxious. What was I to do? I could not even think that they would come
this way looking for me, since they had not known of my intention of
coming home by Daly's Wood and the postern.
I was in the greatest perplexity and distress, and I never was so glad
in my life as when I heard a shout close at hand. I believe that if it
had been Richard Dawson himself I should have welcomed him at that
moment.
"Come this way, please," I called out. "My dog is caught in a trap and I
cannot leave her."
I heard some one come as I had come, on hands and knees, through the
undergrowth; then he emerged into the little glade and stood upright,
the grass and the leaves about his clothing.
He did not look at me at first, but came, with that clucking of the
tongue against the palate which we use in Ireland as a sound of pity and
concern, to the rescue of the dog. His hands, fine and long and slender,
tore the trap apart as though it had been paper.
"Poor beast!" he said, "she is very little the worse. The teeth of the
trap had grown blunt, although they were strong enough to hold her."
I thought him the very finest gentleman I had ever seen or ever hoped to
see, and that is to say a good deal, since it would not be easy to find
a finer gentleman than my grandfather. And I had the portrait of Uncle
Luke and my childish memory of him. And Theobald is as fine and gallant
a young gentleman as you would wish to see.
But this stranger was finer than any of them.
Suddenly he looked at me for the first time, and I saw his face change.
Some wave of emotion passed over it, troubling its gay serenity. His
lips trembled. And then he was himself again.
"Pardon me," he said. "For the moment I thought I had seen a ghost--as
though ghosts apparelled themselves like the rose! You are very like
some one I once knew who is now dead. I am so glad I have been able to
help your poor dog."
I stammered like the rustic Richard Dawson had taken me for. Who could
this finest of fine gentlemen be?