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.