KING COPHETUA
All that is long ago, and I am Bawn Cardew, who was Bawn Devereux. We
have a boy, dark and fine, like Anthony, and a girl who resembles me. I
am still in a bewilderment as to why Anthony should have chosen me. I
believe there is no woman, gentle or simple, who comes in contact with
him, from my grandmother down to Katty McCann, the beggar-woman, who is
not in love with him. His way with women is always beautiful. I have
seen him carry a tramp's squalling child up a steep hill and hand it to
the mother at the top with the courtesy he would show to a duchess.
Elderly and plain women love him especially, because he is not aware
that they are elderly and plain. And men look up to him and admire him
just as much after their fashion.
As I write I am in my own little morning-room at Brosna, which love has
made beautiful for me. Outside I see velvet lawns and bright
flower-beds, and beyond the lawns and the ha-ha I can see in the park a
herd of deer feeding. At the moment it is quiet. Then I hear the
thud-thud of hoofs. Our boy comes riding by on a little rough mountain
pony. Terence Murphy is giving him his riding lesson. He sits in the
saddle as straight as his father, although he is little more than a
baby. He will have Anthony's straight, strenuous, clean look, like a
blade or a flame.
And there comes Anthony himself with little Bawn on his shoulder. Her
golden hair falls about his white head. There is not a grey hair in his
black moustache, nor in his fine, even, black eyebrows. They go on after
the pony. Presently they will come shouting for me. They are my world;
but I have room for affections outside.
Brosna is now what it was meant to be, a stately, beautiful, well-kept
house. We are rich: the treasure made us all rich; and that is a strange
thing enough in our country, where there is no money to spare among the
gentle-folk.
And talking of wealth reminds me of Richard Dawson.
It was the week before my marriage--that was Holy Week, and I was
married on the Easter Tuesday--when I received a letter from Mrs. Dawson
of Damerstown, asking me to come and see her. The letter accompanied a
gift so beautiful and costly that if I had liked her less I should have
been inclined to return it.
As it was, I let Anthony do without me for once. To be sure, he was
tremendously busy getting Brosna in order for me. I had Zoe brought
round, the beautiful mare who was his latest gift to me, and rode over
to Damerstown.
Mrs. Dawson received me in the drawing-room, affectionate as of old, but
with the air which asked forgiveness for the wrong her husband had done
us. It was an air that grieved me, and as I kissed her I passed my hand
over her forehead as though I would brush it away like a palpable thing.
"I thought, dearie," she said, "being what you are, that you'd be
happier in your own happiness if you knew things were well with my poor
Rick. He never did you any harm except to love you too much."
"No, indeed," I said hastily, "and I should be so glad to know that he
has forgiven and forgotten me. I've heard, of course, that he has quite
recovered and is going abroad. I shall always feel very kindly towards
him and very sorry because of any wrong I did him."
"You never did him any," the mother said.
It was on the tip of my tongue to ask her where Nora Brady was, for
that was a trouble to me, too, despite my happiness. The poor people
round about had, I was told, taken the same view of poor Nora's devotion
to her sick man as Maureen. She had slipped away from those who, like
myself, would have stood her friends. But before I could ask the
question Richard Dawson himself came into the room.
I was startled and a little embarrassed at first sight of him. I had had
no idea that he was at Damerstown. And his face was sadly marked and
pitted with the small-pox.
"Miss Devereux, you must forgive my presenting myself before you with
this hideous face, but there are some things I want to tell you. There,
don't look at me! Take this."
He picked up a Japanese fan and handed it to me and the action hurt me.
I compelled myself to look at him without flinching.
"You are not at all hideous," I said. "No one who cared for you would
think you hideous."
"Why, no," he said. "My mother looks at me as though I had the skin of a
young child--and there is another---- Miss Bawn, I wish you happiness. I
am very glad the better man has won."
"You are very generous."
While we talked Mrs. Dawson got up and left us. She was one of those
people who are always forgetting things and going in search of them, so
the action had no special significance.
"You are very generous," I said. And then I asked him the question which
was in my mind. "Mr. Dawson," I said, "can you tell me where Nora is? I
want to write to her, to bring her back."
"I know," he answered, "but she will not come back yet awhile. She has,
by her own wish and desire, gone to school, to a convent. She had
schooling enough for me, God knows, in her tender and faithful heart;
but she is as obstinate as any creature ever was when she thinks a thing
is right. So I have to wait, very much against my will, while the nuns
make a lady of Nora. It is her own phrase. I have assured her that she
is a better lady than most ladies I have known, and that I am not a
gentleman. But she would banish me and try my patience."
"Meaning----?"
"Meaning--that she will marry me when she has acquired the thing she
desires. Meaning--I would have married her, Bawn, without love, because
they blackened her, the innocent soul, for her mercy to me. But I have
learned to love her. She holds my heart against all women. I am not
hideous to her."
"And your mother?"
"Is enchanted. We are going to sell Damerstown and live in England. It
will give us all a better chance. Good-bye, Miss Bawn, for we shall not
meet again."
It made a nine days' wonder when the people heard that Richard Dawson
had married Nora Brady; but that was a year later, and Damerstown was
shut up and to be let.
Lord and Lady St. Leger still rule at the Abbey, and seem likely to rule
for many years, to the joy of their children.
Theobald's wife is keen about her husband's profession, and will not let
him leave the army yet, so that we see them only at intervals.
But the old couple are not lonely. My godmother and Uncle Luke have
their full measure of happiness. They have, what my dear godmother
confessed to me she had not dared to hope for--a child, a boy--brave and
beautiful, worthy to succeed his father in time as the Lord St. Leger.
There is no bonnier boy in all the countryside except my own, and he is
the image of his father, so it is not likely that any child could be
just like him. But the young heir fills Aghadoe Abbey with joy and
peace. My grandmother told me the other day that the ghosts have not
been heard since the child came to banish them.
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Transcriber's Notes:
Punctuation normalized.
Page 225, "that" changed to "than" (rather than endure)
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