THE NURSE

It was a few days later that, coming in one afternoon, I found Miss Champion with my grandmother and noticed that there was something odd in the manner of both of them.  Nor was I kept long in suspense about it, for Miss Champion, who was the most candid person alive, could not long keep a secret.

“Would you like to go to Dublin, Bawn?” she asked.

To Dublin!  I could hardly have been more bewildered if she had asked me would I like to go to the North Pole.  Indeed, I had never contemplated going so far.  It would have been a great adventure to have gone even so far as Quinn, our fair and market town, which lies on the other side of the Purple Hill, seven miles away.

I stammered out that I should like to go to Dublin, looking from Mary Champion’s face to my grandmother’s, for I could hardly believe that the latter would consent to so tremendous an adventure.

“It is time for her to see and be seen,” my godmother went on.  “You are twenty years old, are you not, Bawn?  Why, at twenty I had seen a deal of the world, had travelled far away from Castle Clody and the valley of the Moy.  Next season she ought to be presented, Lady St. Leger.  I shall take her up and do it myself, if you will not.  She ought not to be hidden away.”

At this my grandmother looked alarmed, and said something under her breath of which I caught but a name or two, my Uncle Luke’s and Theobald’s.

From whatever my grandmother had said Miss Champion seemed to dissent even violently.

“It is all forgotten,” she said, “and if any remembered it they would take my view of it and not yours.  He should have stayed and faced it out.  No jury would have brought in a worse verdict than manslaughter, and if it had been tried outside Dublin, in Irish Ireland, no jury would have convicted at all.  I know the people adore Luke’s memory because he struck that blow in defence of a woman.  Why will you behave as though you held him guilty, Lady St. Leger?”

She gained heat as she proceeded, and although she spoke hastily, and hardly above her breath I heard every word.

It was not the first indication I had had that my Uncle Luke’s disappearance was connected somehow with a deed of violence, although the details had never been told to me.  Now I spoke up.

“I am sure that Uncle Luke did nothing we need be ashamed of, Gran,” I said.  “I remember him well, and he was very kind.  I can see him now putting my canary’s little leg in splints when it had broken it, and the dogs adored him.  Old Dido yet listens for his return.”

My grandmother began to weep softly.

“I did not want Bawn to know anything about those dreadful happenings, Mary,” she said.  “And whatever I believe or feel about Luke would not stand in the eyes of the law, since I am only his mother and why should I not believe in my son?”

“It is my quarrel with you and Lord St. Leger that you will act as though you believed him guilty,” my godmother said.  “As for Bawn, Lady St. Leger, you must let me tell her the story.  It is time that she should know it.  Not now, but another time when it will not grieve you.  And you will let her come with me to Dublin?”