The Story of Bawn | Page 2

by the library
fire, within the hooded settle that made the fireside like a little room;
and they had forgotten my presence, if indeed they had known of it.
"Bawn is the very moral of what I was at her age," my grandmother
said. "Have you noticed, Toby"--my grandfather also was a
Theobald--"how tall she grows? And how she sways in walking like a
poplar tree? She has my complexion before it ran in streaks, and my
hair before it faded, and my eyes before they were dim. She has the
carriage of the head which made them call me the Swan of Dunclody.
She will be fifteen come Michaelmas, and she shall have my pearls for
her neck."
I heard her in an excessive surprise. My grandmother had been
esteemed a great beauty in her day and had been sung by the
ballad-singers. Was it possible that my looks could be like hers? I had
not thought about them hitherto any more than my cousin had about his.
It was with almost a sense of relief that I heard my grandfather's reply.
"The child is well enough," he said, "but as for being so like you, that
she is not, nor ever will have your share of beauty. As for your spoilt
roses I do not see them, nor the dimmed eyes, nor the faded hair. You
were lovely when I saw you first, and you are no less lovely in my sight
to-day."

"In your sight--at seventy!" my grandmother said; and I could picture to
myself the well-pleased expression of her dear face.
As for my Uncle Luke, of him I have but a dim memory, yet it is of
something bonny. To be sure I have his picture in my grandmother's
boudoir to remind me of him, a fair, full-lipped, smiling and merry face,
with dark brown hair which would have curled if it were permitted. His
comeliness survived even the hideous fashion of men's dress of his day,
and my memory of him is of one in riding-breeches and a scarlet coat,
for I think that must have been how I saw him oftenest.
He used to lift me to his shoulders and let me climb upon his head, and
I remember that it seemed very fine to me to survey the world from that
eminence.
I could have been no more than six years of age when my Uncle Luke
vanished out of my surroundings.
At that time Theobald had not come to be an inmate of Aghadoe, and I
noticed things as an over-wise child, accustomed to the society of its
elders, will.
I often wondered about it in later years. I had no memory of a wake and
a funeral, and I think if these things had been I should have known. But
there was a period of trouble in which I was packed away to my
nursery and the companionship of Maureen Kelly, our old nurse.
When I emerged from that it was to find my grandfather stern and sad,
and my grandmother with a scared look and the roses of her cheeks
faded.
And for long the shadow lay over Aghadoe. But in course of time
people grew used to it as they will to all things, and my grandfather
took snuff and played whist with his cronies, and drank his French
claret, and rode to hounds, as he had been used; and my grandmother
played on the harp to him of evenings when we were alone, and walked
with him and talked to him, and saw to the affairs of her household, as
though the machinery of life had not for a period run slow and heavy.

CHAPTER II
THE GHOSTS
We were very old-fashioned at Aghadoe Abbey and satisfied with
old-fashioned ways. There was a great deal of talk about opening up the
country, and even the gentry were full of it, but my grandfather would
take snuff and look scornful.
"And when you have opened it up," he said, "you will let in the devil
and all his angels."
It was certainly true that the people had hitherto been kind and innocent,
so that any change might be for the worse, yet I was a little curious
about what lay out in the world beyond our hills. And now it was no
great journey to see, for they had opened a light railway, and from the
front of the house we could see beyond the lake and the park, through
the opening where the Purple Hill rises, that weird thing which rushes
round the base of the hill half a dozen times a day before it climbs with
no effort to the gorge between the hills and makes its way into the
world. It does not even go by steam,