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.
"You wanted to speak to me, Nora," I said.
I know I turned red and pale when her eyes met mine; for the moment all
social differences and distinctions ceased to be. I was going to marry
the man Nora loved, the man I loathed. I had a feeling that it was an
intolerable wrong.
"If you please, Miss Bawn," she said.
The servants were passing up and down the staircase. I did not want any
witnesses to our interview, nor any eavesdroppers.
"Come in here, Nora," I said, opening the door of the morning-room which
I usually had to myself for an hour or so after breakfast. "And how is
the child? Better, I hope."
"Little Katty is quite well again, Miss Bawn, and I've come to tell you,
please Miss Bawn, that I'd rather not come back. 'Tisn't that I'm
ungrateful, Miss. No young lady could be kinder and better than you. But
my uncle is going to marry again, and if you please, Miss Bawn, I think
I should like to go to America."
"Don't go to America, Nora," I said; "it's a terrible place. I'll look
after you. I'll speak to Miss Champion, and we'll see what we can do.
Miss Champion has so many friends. She'll easily get you another place,
away from this, in Dublin."
Suddenly the large tears filled Nora's eyes and trickled down her
cheeks. She wept in rivers as a child does, and as painlessly.
"Don't ask me to stay, Miss Bawn," she said brokenly. "I want to put
the ocean between me and him. I've done my best to pull him up out of my
heart, and I've prayed my best, but I go on caring for him still. I'd
better be away, Miss Bawn."
"Very well, Nora," I said, in a miserable perplexity. If she cared for
Richard Dawson so much it was she who ought to marry him, peasant girl
as she was. It was a shame that I should step into her place, loathing
it. "Very well," I said. "I will do what I can to help you. When do you
go, Nora?"
"Not till after Christmas, Miss. There won't be any emigration till the
worst of the winter storms are over. Thank you kindly, Miss Bawn, but I
don't think there's anything you can do for me. The nuns'll find me an
employment while I stay. You're not vexed with me for leaving, Miss
Bawn?"
"No, Nora, I quite understand," I said. And then on an impulse I kissed
her.
I knew she was fond of me, almost as fond as my old dog; and she did not
hate me, although I was going to marry the man she loved. She flushed
when I kissed her, and the tears came again to her eyes.
"You are very good to me, Miss Bawn," she said. "Not many ladies would
be so good to a poor girl. I hope you'll be happy, Miss Bawn. And I hope
you'll make _him_ happy. Don't believe anything the people say about
him. He has a good heart, like his mother. He's been good to me. Sure,
if he wasn't strong for the two of us, I'd have had no stren'th at all,
though I promised you, Miss Bawn. Many a day when I sat by little Katty,
and the other children were at school and the place quiet I thought I'd
have to run out of it to him. Maybe I'd have done it too, only I knew it
was no use, because you had his heart."
She went a little way towards the door. Then she came back again.
"I wouldn't be goin' too much to Araglin, Miss Bawn, if I was you," she
said. "There's a deal of sickness there. You wouldn't know what it might
be going to be."
Somehow this thought of hers for me touched me more than anything else.
"I'll keep away, Nora," I said, "unless it might be that I ought to go.
We weren't afraid of the famine fever in the old times. If there were to
be such a thing again we might have to do what we did then."
"Ye died with the people then," she said, pausing with her hand on the
door-handle. "But sure, why would there be the fever? Isn't there as
fine a crop as ever was seen of potatoes? And Master Richard wouldn't
let you put a hair of your head in danger. I'm not sayin' there's
anything in the sickness. It's a sick time o' year. But if there was
anything you should keep away, Miss Bawn. There's lots to do it without
you. You're not looking too well now. Master Richard should be uneasy
for you."
I spoke to my godmother about Nora later in the day, keeping back her
secret, but only telling her that there were reasons which made her feel
she must go. She knew the girl, was interested in her, and as it
happened, one of her many friends had written to her that she wanted a
young maid to be with two little girls. The situation was in England.
Perhaps Nora would be satisfied if the Irish Sea lay between her and
Richard Dawson.
I was returning home in the afternoon of the next day. My lover was
restive over the loss of so much of my society. But the morning was
bright and cheerful, and I thought I would walk over to Araglin and lay
the matter before Nora.
It was a most delightful autumn day. There had been a hoar-frost in the
night and the dead leaves and twigs had a tracery of silver and
crackled under one's foot as one walked. It was a day for exhilaration
if one were happy, and, despite the load of care which hung heavy upon
me, I found myself walking less languidly than I had done of late. The
boughs were now all bare; and where one had only seen leaves one saw a
network of trees and branches against a blue sky, and beyond the trees
the Purple Hill, which is hidden from one on our tree-hung road so long
as the trees are in leaf. The little robins sang cheerfully in many
trees, and the air was so still that a beech-nut falling from the tree
made quite a great noise.
As I came down the hilly road to where the village smoked in its hollow,
I had an idea that a stillness lay upon it like the blue mists of autumn
that were over all the countryside. Araglin is usually the noisiest of
villages--cocks crowing, hens cackling, dogs barking, children shouting
at their play. But this morning it was silent.
Nora's uncle's house lay almost outside the village, quite at its
beginning. I thought I should find her there alone, but, as it happened,
when I was close to it, she came out carrying a pail, evidently on her
way to fetch water from a stream which flowed by the roadside and here
and there widened into a little well.
She was close to me before she saw me. When she did at last catch sight
of me I was amazed at the swift change in the expression of her face. It
had been moody enough when I had had time to observe it in repose. Now
something of fear, of horror, leaped into it.
"Go back at once, Miss Bawn, for God's sake!" she cried. "Go back, and
don't be coming near me. There's small-pox in the village and I've been
in and out with them. Half the village is sickening for it; the doctor's
distracted. He's sent word up to Dublin to send nurses and doctors.
Thank God, I was able to turn you back. Go home, Miss Bawn, and come
here no more."
"And what are you going to do, Nora?" I asked.
"Is it me, Miss Bawn? Sure, I'll stay where I am. I've been in and out
with them; and if I'm to get it, I'll get it. Ask some one to take the
children away. Then I'll be able to help with the nursing. Maybe 'tis
what God meant for me."
We stood and looked at each other across the space. Why, it was what I
had desired, that my face should be marred, so that Richard Dawson would
turn away from me in disgust. For a moment I had an impulse to cross the
line she had set for me, to go as she had gone into infected places.
Perhaps she read the thought in my face, for she cried out to me to go
away, to remember those who depended on me for happiness and go. She
wrung her hands when I did not go.
"Go away, for God's sake," she cried again, "and don't have the face
_he_ cares about destroyed with the small-pox! See now, Miss Bawn,
darling, what would his Lordship and her Ladyship do without you?"
But while she coaxed me with their names I could see that she dreaded
the small-pox for me lest my face should be spoilt for Richard Dawson,
and I thought it one of the greatest things I had known in the heart of
a woman.