Read Online The Ladies by Doris Grumbach - Free Book Online

was beside her and cried out: ‘My love, coven Alice Kyteler is to be flogged eight times for her cooking. We must save her,’ and fell back unconscious.
    Eleanor was now hysterical. The men held her arms behind her and pinned her to the seat as the coach bore them along the road to Borris.
    Morton Cavanaugh wanted Eleanor to tell him the story of her sudden flight. When she was calm enough to speak, she would only say that their flight had not been sudden. For some time they had planned to go to England, to find a house and, for the rest of their lives, to live together. Cavanaugh made no reply to this madness. A burly, belligerent young man whose sweet, delicate wife Margaret leaned upon him for every need of her life and her person, he was revolted by the sight of his sister-in-law in dirty men’s clothes, a woman grown uncontrollably wild when separated from that young person Sarah Ponsonby. What kind of crossed beast was his wife’s sister? What reversal in the womb of the normal order of things could produce this … this monster, this weeping, violent satyr? He stared ahead as he told her Lord Butler’s instructions: to convey her to Borris, and to hold her there until plans could be completed for her passage to Chambrai.
    At Woodstock, Sarah was dangerously ill. The doctor found quinsy of the throat and a high fever. A vein in her foot was opened to relieve the pressure of hot, inflamed blood.
    Lady Betty sent word to her daughter: ‘I can’t tell you how curious it all is. No man was concerned with either of them. Their plan was, I believe, no more than a scheme of romantic friendship, no more than what was fanciful and eccentric. Miss Eleanor writes three times each day to our Sarah. I cannot in conscience relay such crazed sentiments to her in her state. Sarah asks constantly for word from Miss Eleanor. I tell her only she has written once to inquire of her health and sent to me her thanks. Sarah is in a state of anxiety. Twice she has fainted when I felt obliged to say that no other words than these were contained in Miss Butler’s letters. My dear, write her a letter of comfort and stop the ill-natured tongues of the world.’
    To herself, Sarah talks constantly: ‘Why does she write nothing of her plans for us? I fear she has given me up. She thinks I am too frail for her strenuous life, too little and shallow for her large thoughts. Surely she will give me up. I will die. I am dying. I lie, like the Duke of Ormonde in Kilkenny Church, straight in my bed, an effigy in marble, my black feet on the sleek black back of an otter. Like Eleanor’s ancestor, I will die of the bite to my neck by the oily beast, stretched to eternity atop my tomb, my nose cracked away, my fingers broken off at the joint by grave despoilers. No, not the bite of an otter, but instead the blast of a cannonball that removes my foolish head from my burning body. I will lie with my grandfather under the anonymous furze of the Slievnanon Hill we climbed yesterday on the way to Waterford. Or was it the day before? No, not of otter or of cannonball. I will die of her silence.’
    Lady Betty wrote to Mrs. Harriet Cavanaugh at Borris: ‘I w d be glad if you c d prevent Miss Butler from writing so much to our Sarah. The volumes we receive here distress us. We hear Miss Butler is to be sent to a convent in France. I cann t help but wish she had been safe in one long ago. She w d have made us all happy.’
    Margaret Cavanaugh responded to Lady Betty at once: ‘It is difficult to condone my sister’s actions. We plan for her to go to live in the convent as you have heard. Her family and friends are very angry with her. She will, I fear, feel forever the bad consequences of this rash and unaccountable action.’
    Lady Betty felt constrained to reassure Julia Tighe, who sent again and again to know: ‘Sarah, whose conduct has the appearance of imprudence is, I am sure, void of serious