CONFESSION
Christmas passed and the dark days turned round to New Year, and New
Year came and there were great clumps of snowdrops pushing up their
delicate, drooping heads in all the shrubberies, neighbouring the
patches of snow, for we had had a white Christmas and a white New Year.
We had settled down to the new ways of life as though the old had not
been. There was perfect peace and happiness at Aghadoe. In the spring
the workmen were to set to work at the task of renovating the Abbey.
Uncle Luke and my godmother were to be married before Lent, quietly. As
for me, I waited, till my whole life had become one expectation.
After the funeral at Damerstown was over I had gone to see Mrs. Dawson,
having ascertained first that her son was absent for a few days. The
poor woman had wept over me and forgiven me.
"Rick told me all," she said. "Sure, I wish you could have cared for him
for himself. Only his mother knows how much good there is in him. And,
dear, you must try to forgive him that's gone."
"We have forgiven him," I said, "as we hope for forgiveness."
Then she wept again softly, and poured out to me her hopes and fears for
her boy.
"It's gone deep with him, dear," she said: "it's gone very deep with
him. But, sure, we must trust to God to bring good out of the trouble.
He'd never have done you that wrong to marry you and you fond of some
one else. You don't mind my knowing, dear? My boy tells me everything.
Sure, I'd have known it, for if there was no one else you must have
cared for Rick."
"Some one else will care for him," I said.
"Indeed, I wouldn't mind who he married if she was good and fond of him
and would keep him at home. He won't leave me now, not for a bit--till
I'm happier; but he says it's best he should go, that he has a reason
for going. Ah, well; he'll settle down some time, when he's got over
this."
It might have been three weeks later when we heard that Richard Dawson
had taken the small-pox and was lying ill at the Cottage. The illness
was complicated, it was feared, by his having driven in the night to the
small-pox hospital and asked to be taken in there, but there had been a
recrudescence of the plague, and the place was crowded to the doors. Dr.
Molyneux was working there like ten men, and it was his idea to have
Richard Dawson taken to the Cottage, which was much nearer than
Damerstown. We heard that the night journey, which was like to cost him
his life, had been undertaken when he found the illness coming on, to
prevent as much as might be the danger of infection to the large
household at Damerstown. He was very ill indeed, and the doctors hardly
thought he could live.
I was so sorry for him that I felt that if he died even the happiness of
my meeting with my lover would be clouded over. I longed for news of
him, but it was not very easy to obtain it, since the infection kept
every one away.
But one day I was walking when I met Lady Ardaragh driving in her little
phaeton. I had not seen her for some time and I was amazed at the change
in her appearance. She looked terribly ill. All her butterfly
prettiness was gone, and there was something to make the heart ache to
see such evident suffering in one who had had the round softness of a
child.
She pulled up her ponies as soon as she saw me.
"Bawn, Bawn," she said, "there is nothing but trouble in the world--at
least in my world. Stay where you are, child; don't come too near me. Do
you know that he is dying over there?"
She pointed with her whip in the direction of the Cottage.
"I think I am mad to-day, Bawn," she went on: "and if I do not speak to
some one I shall surely go mad. I wish I were a Roman Catholic and could
confess to a priest. How much wiser they are than those who deny the
necessity of confession! I have always been fond of you, Bawn. I believe
you are as true as steel. Let me confess to you and save my reason."
"No, no," I said; "you are not yourself to-day. You will be sorry
afterwards. There is Sir Arthur."
"If you will not listen to me I shall go to him, and there will be an
end to everything. Perhaps I am mad. It's enough to drive any woman mad.
Richard Dawson is dying; and my little Robin is sickening. They will
not let me be with him till they know if it is the small-pox. Isn't it
enough to drive a woman mad?"
"Tell me, you poor soul," I said--"tell me everything. Afterwards it
will be buried at the bottom of the sea."
She turned to me with a sick look of gratitude.
"You don't know how it will ease me," she said. "I had a thought of
going to Quinn by the light railway and going into the Catholic Chapel
there and finding a priest who would listen to me and absolve me. But I
was afraid I should be seen and recognized. When they told me Robin was
sickening I knew it was a judgment of God."
"God doesn't judge in that way," I said. "Perhaps it is in that way He
calls you back. I have no belief in an angry God!"
"You have not, Bawn? I was brought up on it. It turned me away from
religion. You think God will not take the child away from me because of
my sin?"
The anguished soul in her eyes implored me. God forgive me if it was
presumptuous, but I said--
"I am so sure of His mercy that I am sure He will not."
"If He will spare me Robin, I will be a good woman for the future.
Arthur has been very tender to me over the child. It was he who banished
me from Robin's room, although he is there himself. He says that I am so
precious to him that the world would fall in ruins without me. Why
didn't he say it to me before, and not live always in a world which I
could not enter? Bawn, I have never really loved any one but my
husband."
"I am sure of it," I said, "as he never loved any one but you."
"Oh, the folly of it all!" she moaned, sitting huddled up in her little
phaeton, with her eyes looking miserably before her.
Then she turned her gaze on me, and I felt as though her unhappy eyes
scorched and burned me.
"Yet I very nearly ran away with Richard Dawson," she said. "In fact, I
did run away with him that night after you had broken with him. He
concealed nothing from me. He did not even pretend to love me. And I
went with him on those terms. As the mercy of God would have it, we
found that poor wretch in the road not twenty yards from my own gates.
It seemed to sober us. We were both mad. He would not let me touch him.
He told me to go back; that it was all over. I crept back. By the mercy
of God I had left a door ajar. I crept back to my room, and none knows
that I ever left it except he and I and you. Bawn, am I not mad to tell
you such a story? You, an innocent girl! I must be mad to tell my shame
to any one when it might die with him and be buried with me."
"The mercy of God met you at every step and saved you," I said, feeling
how little equal I was to the task of comforting her.
"Of course you despise me," she said: and the hard misery was gone out
of her eyes and voice; "but I have confessed. You will never look at me
again, but you have taken the weight off my life that was crushing it."
I could only answer her in one way. I crossed the distance she had set
between us, and took her in my arms and kissed her.
"I shall be your loving friend for ever," I said, while she pushed me
away and cried out that I must not touch her, lest she should have the
infection about her.
"Although I never touched him, Bawn, I never touched him," she kept on
assuring me. "_He_ would not permit it. Bawn, if he is to die, don't you
think God will forgive him his sins because of that great act of
charity? The poor creature was horrible, horrible. I ran away from him
when the lamps were turned on his face. But Richard Dawson was not
afraid."
"It was splendid of him," I said. "I am sure God has forgiven him."
"And I need not tell my husband? I have felt ever since that I must
confess to him. If I did he might forgive me, but it would never be the
same again. Now I have slaked my thirst for confession by telling you.
Bawn, do you think I must tell him?"
I felt as though I answered her with a voice and an authority not my
own.
"You must never tell him," I said. "You owe it to him not to destroy his
happiness. If you have ever the need for confession again, come to me."
"I will, Bawn dear, and God bless you," she said, her face lighting.
"You have helped me so much. Perhaps, after all, Robin may not be
sickening for the small-pox. What a thing that would be!"
"If he is he will still be in the hands of God," I said.
For many days after that I waited for news of Richard Dawson so eagerly
that it seemed to break in upon my expectation.
One thing I knew at least, and that was that love was nursing him. The
information came to me through Maureen, in a characteristic manner. Even
the happiness of these days did not make Maureen gentle.
"You've heard about Nora Brady, Miss Bawn?" she said.
"No?"
My heart sank, apprehending some new calamity; while Maureen went on in
bitter tones--
"I never thought well of her and now I'm proved right. The minute she
heard that Master Richard was took with the small-pox she ran off to him
like a mad thing. And there she is ever since. Not a womankind in the
house but herself. Her mother was a decent woman; I'm glad she didn't
live to see it."
"And if she did, Maureen," I said sternly, "she might be proud of her
girl. It isn't possible that you are making scandal out of Nora's mercy
to the sick? I think it most noble, most Christian of her. I honour her
for it."
"Whisht, child!" said Maureen, scornfully. I shall never inspire respect
in Maureen's breast. "I know what I know. To be sure, you'd be the last
to know of it, of the walks and the talks with Master Richard. Every one
knew except yourself."
"Be silent, Maureen," I said, asserting myself for once. "I know
everything, everything. And I know that Nora is a good, innocent girl.
Don't dare to speak to others as you have spoken to me."
And then I was contrite, seeing my old nurse quail before me, for I had
never shown her that I could be angry.