The Ladies by Doris Grumbach Page A

been hanging about her,’ he said, more to himself than to Sir William. ‘It must be him. They’ve run off together. That bastard cur …’
    â€˜But …’
    â€˜There is nothing to do but send to Dublin and to Waterford.’ Lord Butler was in his carriage before Sir William could say anything more.
    To the families it was inconceivable that Sarah and Eleanor had absconded—Sir William’s word for Sarah’s act. How? Why? Where to? The answers to questions about the extraordinary event awaited the results of the chase. While men rode about the countryside, searching everywhere for the runaways, Eleanor and Sarah slept on in the windowless, freezing barn, Eleanor sunk in dreamless content, Sarah engulfed by dreams of riderless horses, soft-breasted flower beds, nights of mud and blackness, great bellies encased in brocade, tea-stained spittle. She roamed the paths of Woodstock pursued by furred black and white owls that dove at her head and grabbed at her hair with yellow claws. The women woke in the afternoon in each other’s arms, at first exultant at the extraordinary fortune that had brought them so far to this unlikely union.
    Sarah was breathing heavily. She was feverish and still weary after their long sleep. Eleanor decided they must remain in the barn another day and night to allow Sarah’s illness to subside. Sarah felt too sick to protest. While she slept, Eleanor watched and worried about their future. How would they live on the little they had brought with them? Would their families relent and send them support once they had removed themselves from Irish scandal? Would society in England, or Wales, or Scotland, or wherever they could find lodgings, have them, accept them as they wished to be: two loving women married in each other’s eyes, determined without the shadow of a doubt to live with no one except each other for the rest of their lives.
    In the morning Sarah was still sluggish and hot. Eleanor sent her horse back along the road to Kilkenny, trusting his instinct to find his master. They moved on, walking quickly through the market towns of Kilmacow and Mullinavat. They climbed over the mountain into Inistiogue, where they paused only to rent a hackney carriage to take them on to Waterford. Settled into it, they talked gently of money, destination, the often stormy passage to Milford Haven, the hope of baths and clean clothes in Waterford. Frisk slept beside them in his basket.
    Lady Betty wrote to her daughter Julia: ‘I am in utmost distress. My dear Sarah has leapt out of the window and is gone off. We surmise that Miss Butler of the castle is with her. Mr Butler had been to inquire for his daughter. He tells that Miss Butler left the castle just as the family went into supper and was not missed for three hours.’
    They might have succeeded, had not Sarah, out of her head with fever, dropped her shirt ruffle as they left the barn. A searcher from the castle found it, thought it to be Lady Eleanor’s, and surmised from it the runaways’ direction. Still it might have worked, they might have reached the harbour town of Waterford as they had planned, and made their escape by boat, had they not missed the English packet that travelled between Waterford and Milford Haven and been forced to wait for the next day in a room they rented for the night in an inn near the quai.
    Eleanor ate her dinner alone in the back of the pub and brought up soup and fresh baker’s bread to Sarah, who dozed, woke to drink a few mouthfuls of the broth, and slept again at once. Eleanor sat listening to her difficult breathing for some time, and then resolved: ‘I must take her back. She is too sick for a journey over water. I am defeated, she is defeated, but not by the damnable Fownes and Butlers. We are defeated by this sickness. God help us now.’
    A neighbour who had heard news of Sarah’s disappearance (as who in the countryside had not by