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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Castle Richmond, by Anthony Trollope
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Castle Richmond
+
+
+Author: Anthony Trollope
+
+
+
+Release Date: September 18, 2002  [eBook #5897]
+Most recently updated: June 19, 2010
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CASTLE RICHMOND***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Charles Aldarondo, Charles Franks, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) and
+revised by Rita Bailey and Joseph E. Loewenstein, M.D.
+
+
+
+CASTLE RICHMOND
+
+by
+
+ANTHONY TROLLOPE
+
+With an Introduction by Algar Thorold
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+London & New York: MCMVI
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+"Castle Richmond" was written in 1861, long after Trollope had left
+Ireland. The characterization is weak, and the plot, although the
+author himself thought well of it, mechanical.
+
+The value of the story is rather documentary than literary. It
+contains several graphic scenes descriptive of the great Irish
+famine. Trollope observed carefully, and on the whole impartially,
+though his powers of discrimination were not quite fine enough to
+make him an ideal annalist.
+
+Still, such as they were, he has used them here with no
+inconsiderable effect. His desire to be fair has led him to lay
+stress in an inverse ratio to his prepossessions, and his Priest is a
+better man than his parson.
+
+The best, indeed the only piece of real characterization in the book
+is the delineation of Abe Mollett. This unscrupulous blackmailer
+is put before us with real art, with something of the loving
+preoccupation of the hunter for his quarry. Trollope loved a rogue,
+and in his long portrait gallery there are several really charming
+ones. He did not, indeed, perceive the aesthetic value of sin--he did
+not perceive the esthetic value of anything,--and his analysis of
+human nature was not profound enough to reach the conception of sin,
+crime being to him the nadir of downward possibility--but he had a
+professional, a sort of half Scotland Yard, half master of hounds
+interest in a criminal. "See," he would muse, "how cunningly the
+creature works, now back to his earth, anon stealing an unsuspected
+run across country, the clever rascal;" and his ethical disapproval
+ever, as usual, with English critics of life, in the foreground,
+clearly enhanced a primitive predatory instinct not obscurely
+akin, a cynic might say, to those dark impulses he holds up to
+our reprobation. This self-realization in his fiction is one of
+Trollope's principal charms. Never was there a more subjective
+writer. Unlike Flaubert, who laid down the canon that the author
+should exist in his work as God in creation, to be, here or there,
+dimly divined but never recognized, though everywhere latent,
+Trollope was never weary of writing himself large in every man,
+woman, or child he described.
+
+The illusion of objectivity which he so successfully achieves is
+due to the fact that his mind was so perfectly contented with its
+hereditary and circumstantial conditions, was itself so perfectly
+the mental equivalent of those conditions. Thus the perfection of
+his egotism, tight as a drum, saved him. Had it been a little less
+complete, he would have faltered and bungled; as it was, he had the
+naive certainty of a child, to whose innocent apprehension the world
+and self are one, and who therefore cannot err.
+
+ALGAR THOROLD.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+         I. THE BARONY OF DESMOND.
+        II. OWEN FITZGERALD.
+       III. CLARA DESMOND.
+        IV. THE COUNTESS.
+         V. THE FITZGERALDS OF CASTLE RICHMOND.
+        VI. THE KANTURK HOTEL, SOUTH MAIN STREET, CORK.
+       VII. THE FAMINE YEAR.
+      VIII. GORTNACLOUGH AND BERRYHILL.
+        IX. FAMILY COUNCILS.
+         X. THE RECTOR OF DRUMBARROW AND HIS WIFE.
+        XI. SECOND LOVE.
+       XII. DOUBTS.
+      XIII. MR. MOLLETT RETURNS TO SOUTH MAIN STREET.
+       XIV. THE REJECTED SUITOR.
+        XV. DIPLOMACY.
+       XVI. THE PATH BENEATH THE ELMS.
+      XVII. FATHER BARNEY.
+     XVIII. THE RELIEF COMMITTEE.
+       XIX. THE FRIEND OF THE FAMILY.
+        XX. TWO WITNESSES.
+       XXI. FAIR ARGUMENTS.
+      XXII. THE TELLING OF THE TALE.
+     XXIII. BEFORE BREAKFAST AT HAP HOUSE.
+      XXIV. AFTER BREAKFAST AT HAP HOUSE.
+       XXV. A MUDDY WALK ON A WET MORNING.
+      XXVI. COMFORTLESS.
+     XXVII. COMFORTED.
+    XXVIII. FOR A' THAT AND A' THAT.
+      XXIX. ILL NEWS FLIES FAST.
+       XXX. PALLIDA MORS.
+      XXXI. THE FIRST MONTH.
+     XXXII. PREPARATIONS FOR GOING.
+    XXXIII. THE LAST STAGE.
+     XXXIV. FAREWELL.
+      XXXV. HERBERT FITZGERALD IN LONDON.
+     XXXVI. HOW THE EARL WAS WON.
+    XXXVII. A TALE OF A TURBOT.
+   XXXVIII. CONDEMNED.
+     XXXIX. FOX-HUNTING IN SPINNY LANE.
+        XL. THE FOX IN HIS EARTH.
+       XLI. THE LOBBY OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.
+      XLII. ANOTHER JOURNEY.
+     XLIII. PLAYING ROUNDERS.
+      XLIV. CONCLUSION.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+THE BARONY OF DESMOND.
+
+
+I wonder whether the novel-reading world--that part of it, at least,
+which may honour my pages--will be offended if I lay the plot of
+this story in Ireland! That there is a strong feeling against things
+Irish it is impossible to deny. Irish servants need not apply; Irish
+acquaintances are treated with limited confidence; Irish cousins are
+regarded as being decidedly dangerous; and Irish stories are not
+popular with the booksellers.
+
+For myself, I may say that if I ought to know anything about any
+place, I ought to know something about Ireland; and I do strongly
+protest against the injustice of the above conclusions. Irish cousins
+I have none. Irish acquaintances I have by dozens; and Irish friends,
+also, by twos and threes, whom I can love and cherish--almost as
+well, perhaps, as though they had been born in Middlesex. Irish
+servants I have had some in my house for years, and never had one
+that was faithless, dishonest, or intemperate. I have travelled all
+over Ireland, closely as few other men can have done, and have never
+had my portmanteau robbed or my pocket picked. At hotels I have
+seldom locked up my belongings, and my carelessness has never been
+punished. I doubt whether as much can be said for English inns.
+
+Irish novels were once popular enough. But there is a fashion in
+novels, as there is in colours and petticoats; and now I fear they
+are drugs in the market. It is hard to say why a good story should
+not have a fair chance of success whatever may be its bent; why it
+should not be reckoned to be good by its own intrinsic merits alone;
+but such is by no means the case. I was waiting once, when I was
+young at the work, in the back parlour of an eminent publisher,
+hoping to see his eminence on a small matter of business touching
+a three-volumed manuscript which I held in my hand. The eminent
+publisher, having probably larger fish to fry, could not see me, but
+sent his clerk or foreman to arrange the business.
+
+"A novel, is it, sir?" said the foreman.
+
+"Yes," I answered; "a novel."
+
+"It depends very much on the subject," said the foreman, with
+a thoughtful and judicious frown--"upon the name, sir, and the
+subject;--daily life, sir; that's what suits us; daily English life.
+Now your historical novel, sir, is not worth the paper it's written
+on."
+
+I fear that Irish character is in these days considered almost as
+unattractive as historical incident; but, nevertheless, I will make
+the attempt. I am now leaving the Green Isle and my old friends, and
+would fain say a word of them as I do so. If I do not say that word
+now it will never be said.
+
+The readability of a story should depend, one would say, on its
+intrinsic merit rather than on the site of its adventures. No
+one will think that Hampshire is better for such a purpose than
+Cumberland, or Essex than Leicestershire. What abstract objection can
+there then be to the county Cork?
+
+Perhaps the most interesting, and certainly the most beautiful part
+of Ireland is that which lies down in the extreme south-west, with
+fingers stretching far out into the Atlantic Ocean. This consists of
+the counties Cork and Kerry, or a portion, rather, of those counties.
+It contains Killarney, Glengarriffe, Bantry, and Inchigeela; and
+is watered by the Lee, the Blackwater, and the Flesk. I know not
+where is to be found a land more rich in all that constitutes the
+loveliness of scenery.
+
+Within this district, but hardly within that portion of it which is
+most attractive to tourists, is situated the house and domain of
+Castle Richmond. The river Blackwater rises in the county Kerry, and
+running from west to east through the northern part of the county
+Cork, enters the county Waterford beyond Fermoy. In its course it
+passes near the little town of Kanturk, and through the town of
+Mallow: Castle Richmond stands close upon its banks, within the
+barony of Desmond, and in that Kanturk region through which the
+Mallow and Killarney railway now passes, but which some thirteen
+years since knew nothing of the navvy's spade, or even of the
+engineer's theodolite.
+
+Castle Richmond was at this period the abode of Sir Thomas
+Fitzgerald, who resided there, ever and always, with his wife, Lady
+Fitzgerald, his two daughters, Mary and Emmeline Fitzgerald, and,
+as often as purposes of education and pleasure suited, with his son
+Herbert Fitzgerald. Neither Sir Thomas nor Sir Thomas's house had
+about them any of those interesting picturesque faults which are so
+generally attributed to Irish landlords and Irish castles. He was
+not out of elbows, nor was he an absentee. Castle Richmond had no
+appearance of having been thrown out of its own windows. It was a
+good, substantial, modern family residence, built not more than
+thirty years since by the late baronet, with a lawn sloping down
+to the river, with kitchen gardens and walls for fruit, with ample
+stables, and a clock over the entrance to the stable yard. It stood
+in a well-timbered park duly stocked with deer,--and with foxes also,
+which are agricultural animals much more valuable in an Irish county
+than deer. So that as regards its appearance Castle Richmond might
+have been in Hampshire or Essex; and as regards his property, Sir
+Thomas Fitzgerald might have been a Leicestershire baronet.
+
+Here, at Castle Richmond, lived Sir Thomas with his wife and
+daughters; and here, taking the period of our story as being exactly
+thirteen years since, his son Herbert was staying also in those hard
+winter months; his Oxford degree having been taken, and his English
+pursuits admitting of a temporary sojourn in Ireland.
+
+But Sir Thomas Fitzgerald was not the great man of that part of the
+country--at least, not the greatest man; nor was Lady Fitzgerald by
+any means the greatest lady. As this greatest lady, and the greatest
+man also, will, with their belongings, be among the most prominent
+of our dramatis personae, it may be well that I should not even say a
+word of them.
+
+All the world must have heard of Desmond Court. It is the largest
+inhabited residence known in that part of the world, where rumours
+are afloat of how it covers ten acres of ground; how in hewing the
+stones for it a whole mountain was cut away; how it should have cost
+hundreds of thousands of pounds, only that the money was never paid
+by the rapacious, wicked, bloodthirsty old earl who caused it to be
+erected;--and how the cement was thickened with human blood. So goes
+rumour with the more romantic of the Celtic tale-bearers.
+
+It is a huge place--huge, ungainly, and uselessly extensive; built at
+a time when, at any rate in Ireland, men considered neither beauty,
+aptitude, nor economy. It is three stories high, and stands round a
+quadrangle, in which there are two entrances opposite to each other.
+Nothing can be well uglier than that great paved court, in which
+there is not a spot of anything green, except where the damp has
+produced an unwholesome growth upon the stones; nothing can well
+be more desolate. And on the outside of the building matters are
+not much better. There are no gardens close up to the house, no
+flower-beds in the nooks and corners, no sweet shrubs peeping in at
+the square windows. Gardens there are, but they are away, half a mile
+off; and the great hall door opens out upon a flat, bleak park, with
+hardly a scrap around it which courtesy can call a lawn.
+
+Here, at this period of ours, lived Clara, Countess of Desmond, widow
+of Patrick, once Earl of Desmond, and father of Patrick, now Earl of
+Desmond. These Desmonds had once been mighty men in their country,
+ruling the people around them as serfs, and ruling them with hot iron
+rods. But those days were now long gone, and tradition told little of
+them that was true. How it had truly fared either with the earl, or
+with their serfs, men did not well know; but stories were ever being
+told of walls built with human blood, and of the devil bearing off
+upon his shoulder a certain earl who was in any other way quite
+unbearable, and depositing some small unburnt portion of his remains
+fathoms deep below the soil in an old burying-ground near Kanturk.
+And there had been a good earl, as is always the case with such
+families; but even his virtues, according to tradition, had been of a
+useless namby-pamby sort. He had walked to the shrine of St. Finbar,
+up in the little island of the Gougane Barra, with unboiled peas in
+his shoes; had forgiven his tenants five years' rent all round, and
+never drank wine or washed himself after the death of his lady wife.
+
+At the present moment the Desmonds were not so potent either for
+good or ill. The late earl had chosen to live in London all his life,
+and had sunk down to be the toadying friend, or perhaps I should
+more properly say the bullied flunky, of a sensual, wine-bibbing,
+gluttonous--king. Late in life, when he was broken in means and
+character, he had married. The lady of his choice had been chosen as
+an heiress; but there had been some slip between that cup of fortune
+and his lip; and she, proud and beautiful, for such she had been--had
+neither relieved nor softened the poverty of her profligate old lord.
+
+She was left at his death with two children, of whom the eldest,
+Lady Clara Desmond, will be the heroine of this story. The youngest,
+Patrick, now Earl of Desmond, was two years younger than his sister,
+and will make our acquaintance as a lad fresh from Eton.
+
+In these days money was not plentiful with the Desmonds. Not but
+that their estates were as wide almost as their renown, and that the
+Desmonds were still great people in the country's estimation. Desmond
+Court stood in a bleak, unadorned region, almost among the mountains,
+half way between Kanturk and Maccoom, and the family had some claim
+to possession of the land for miles around. The earl of the day was
+still the head landlord of a huge district extending over the whole
+barony of Desmond, and half the adjacent baronies of Muskerry and
+Duhallow; but the head landlord's rent in many cases hardly amounted
+to sixpence an acre, and even those sixpences did not always find
+their way into the earl's pocket. When the late earl had attained
+his sceptre, he might probably have been entitled to spend some ten
+thousand a year; but when he died, and during the years just previous
+to that, he had hardly been entitled to spend anything.
+
+But, nevertheless, the Desmonds were great people, and owned a great
+name. They had been kings once over those wild mountains; and would
+be still, some said, if every one had his own. Their grandeur was
+shown by the prevalence of their name. The barony in which they lived
+was the barony of Desmond. The river which gave water to their cattle
+was the river Desmond. The wretched, ragged, poverty-stricken village
+near their own dismantled gate was the town of Desmond. The earl was
+Earl of Desmond--not Earl Desmond, mark you; and the family name was
+Desmond. The grandfather of the present earl, who had repaired his
+fortune by selling himself at the time of the Union, had been Desmond
+Desmond, Earl of Desmond.
+
+The late earl, the friend of the most illustrious person in the
+kingdom, had not been utterly able to rob his heir of everything, or
+he would undoubtedly have done so. At the age of twenty-one the young
+earl would come into possession of the property, damaged certainly,
+as far as an actively evil father could damage it by long leases, bad
+management, lack of outlay, and rack-renting;--but still into the
+possession of a considerable property. In the mean time it did not
+fare very well, in a pecuniary way, with Clara, the widowed countess,
+or with the Lady Clara, her daughter. The means at the widow's
+disposal were only those which the family trustees would allow her
+as the earl's mother: on his coming of age she would have almost no
+means of her own; and for her daughter no provision whatever had been
+made.
+
+As this first chapter is devoted wholly to the locale of my story, I
+will not stop to say a word as to the persons or characters of either
+of these two ladies, leaving them, as I did the Castle Richmond
+family, to come forth upon the canvas as opportunity may offer. But
+there is another homestead in this same barony of Desmond, of which
+and of its owner--as being its owner--I will say a word.
+
+Hap House was also the property of a Fitzgerald. It had originally
+been built by an old Sir Simon Fitzgerald, for the use and behoof
+of a second son, and the present owner of it was the grandson of
+that man for whom it had been built. And old Sir Simon had given
+his offspring not only a house--he had endowed the house with
+a comfortable little slice of land, either cut from the large
+patrimonial loaf, or else, as was more probable, collected together
+and separately baked for this younger branch of the family. Be that
+as it may, Hap House had of late years been always regarded as
+conferring some seven or eight hundred a year upon its possessor, and
+when young Owen Fitzgerald succeeded to this property, on the death
+of an uncle in the year 1843, he was regarded as a rich man to that
+extent.
+
+At that time he was some twenty-two years of age, and he came down
+from Dublin, where his friends had intended that he should practise
+as a barrister, to set up for himself as a country gentleman. Hap
+House was distant from Castle Richmond about four miles, standing
+also on the river Blackwater, but nearer to Mallow. It was a
+pleasant, comfortable residence, too large no doubt for such a
+property, as is so often the case in Ireland; surrounded by pleasant
+grounds and pleasant gardens, with a gorse fox covert belonging to
+the place within a mile of it, with a slated lodge, and a pretty
+drive along the river. At the age of twenty-two, Owen Fitzgerald came
+into all this; and as he at once resided upon the place, he came in
+also for the good graces of all the mothers with unmarried daughters
+in the county, and for the smiles also of many of the daughters
+themselves.
+
+Sir Thomas and Lady Fitzgerald were not his uncle and aunt, but
+nevertheless they took kindly to him;--very kindly at first, though
+that kindness after a while became less warm. He was the nearest
+relation of the name; and should anything happen--as the fatal
+death-foretelling phrase goes--to young Herbert Fitzgerald, he would
+become the heir of the family title and of the family place.
+
+When I hear of a young man sitting down by himself as the master of
+a household, without a wife, or even without a mother or sister to
+guide him, I always anticipate danger. If he does not go astray in
+any other way, he will probably mismanage his money matters. And then
+there are so many other ways. A house, if it be not made pleasant by
+domestic pleasant things, must be made pleasant by pleasure. And a
+bachelor's pleasures in his own house are always dangerous. There is
+too much wine drunk at his dinner parties. His guests sit too long
+over their cards. The servants know that they want a mistress; and,
+in the absence of that mistress, the language of the household
+becomes loud and harsh--and sometimes improper. Young men among us
+seldom go quite straight in their course, unless they are, at any
+rate occasionally, brought under the influence of tea and small talk.
+
+There was no tea and small talk at Hap House, but there were
+hunting-dinners. Owen Fitzgerald was soon known for his horses
+and his riding. He lived in the very centre of the Duhallow hunt;
+and before he had been six months owner of his property had built
+additional stables, with half a dozen loose boxes for his friends'
+nags. He had an eye, too, for a pretty girl--not always in the way
+that is approved of by mothers with marriageable daughters; but in
+the way of which they so decidedly disapprove.
+
+And thus old ladies began to say bad things. Those pleasant
+hunting-dinners were spoken of as the Hap House orgies. It was
+declared that men slept there half the day, having played cards all
+the night; and dreadful tales were told. Of these tales one-half was
+doubtless false. But, alas, alas! what if one-half were also true?
+
+It is undoubtedly a very dangerous thing for a young man of
+twenty-two to keep house by himself, either in town or country.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+OWEN FITZGERALD.
+
+
+I have tied myself down to thirteen years ago as the time of my
+story; but I must go back a little beyond this for its first scenes,
+and work my way up as quickly as may be to the period indicated. I
+have spoken of a winter in which Herbert Fitzgerald was at home at
+Castle Richmond, having then completed his Oxford doings; but I must
+say something of two years previous to that, of a time when Herbert
+was not so well known in the county as was his cousin of Hap House.
+
+It was a thousand pities that a bad word should ever have been spoken
+of Owen Fitzgerald; ten thousand pities that he should ever have
+given occasion for such bad word. He was a fine, high-spirited,
+handsome fellow, with a loving heart within his breast, and
+bright thoughts within his brain. It was utterly wrong that a man
+constituted as he was should commence life by living alone in a large
+country-house. But those who spoke ill of him should have remembered
+that this was his misfortune rather than his fault. Some greater
+endeavour might perhaps have been made to rescue him from evil ways.
+Very little such endeavour was made at all. Sir Thomas once or
+twice spoke to him; but Sir Thomas was not an energetic man; and
+as for Lady Fitzgerald, though she was in many things all that was
+excellent, she was far too diffident to attempt the reformation of a
+headstrong young man, who after all was only distantly connected with
+her.
+
+And thus there was no such attempt, and poor Owen became the subject
+of ill report without any substantial effort having been made to save
+him. He was a very handsome man--tall, being somewhat over six feet
+in height--athletic, almost more than in proportion--with short,
+light chestnut-tinted hair, blue eyes, and a mouth perfect as that
+of Phoebus. He was clever, too, though perhaps not educated as
+carefully as might have been: his speech was usually rapid, hearty,
+and short, and not seldom caustic and pointed. Had he fallen among
+good hands, he might have done very well in the world's fight; but
+with such a character, and lacking such advantages, it was quite as
+open to him to do ill. Alas! the latter chance seemed to have fallen
+to him.
+
+For the first year of his residence at Hap House, he was popular
+enough among his neighbours. The Hap House orgies were not commenced
+at once, nor when commenced did they immediately become a subject of
+scandal; and even during the second year he was tolerated;--tolerated
+by all, and still flattered by some.
+
+Among the different houses in the country at which he had become
+intimate was that of the Countess of Desmond. The Countess of Desmond
+did not receive much company at Desmond Court. She had not the means,
+nor perhaps the will, to fill the huge old house with parties of her
+Irish neighbours--for she herself was English to the backbone. Ladies
+of course made morning calls, and gentlemen too, occasionally; but
+society at Desmond Court was for some years pretty much confined to
+this cold formal mode of visiting. Owen Fitzgerald, however, did
+obtain admittance into the precincts of the Desmond barracks.
+
+He went there first with the young earl, who, then quite a boy, had
+had an ugly tumble from his pony in the hunting-field. The countess
+had expressed herself as very grateful for young Fitzgerald's care,
+and thus an intimacy had sprung up. Owen had gone there once or twice
+to see the lad, and on those occasions had dined there; and on one
+occasion, at the young earl's urgent request, had stayed and slept.
+
+And then the good-natured people of Muskerry, Duhallow, and Desmond
+began, of course, to say that the widow was going to marry the young
+man. And why not? she was still a beautiful woman; not yet forty by a
+good deal, said the few who took her part; or at any rate, not much
+over, as was admitted by the many who condemned her. We, who have
+been admitted to her secrets, know that she was then in truth only
+thirty-eight. She was beautiful, proud, and clever; and if it would
+suit her to marry a handsome young fellow with a good house and an
+unembarrassed income of eight hundred a year, why should she not
+do so? As for him, would it not be a great thing for him to have a
+countess for his wife, and an earl for his stepson?
+
+What ideas the countess had on this subject we will not just now
+trouble ourselves to inquire. But as to young Owen Fitzgerald, we
+may declare at once that no thought of such a wretched alliance ever
+entered his head. He was sinful in many things, and foolish in many
+things. But he had not that vile sin, that unmanly folly, which would
+have made a marriage with a widowed countess eligible in his eyes,
+merely because she was a countess, and not more than fifteen years
+his senior. In a matter of love he would as soon have thought of
+paying his devotions to his far-away cousin, old Miss Barbara
+Beamish, of Ballyclahassan, of whom it was said that she had set her
+cap at every unmarried man that had come into the west riding of the
+county for the last forty years. No; it may at any rate be said of
+Owen Fitzgerald, that he was not the man to make up to a widowed
+countess for the sake of the reflected glitter which might fall on
+him from her coronet.
+
+But the Countess of Desmond was not the only lady at Desmond Court. I
+have before said that she had a daughter, the Lady Clara, the heroine
+of this coming story; and it may be now right that I should attempt
+some short description of her; her virtues and faults, her merits and
+defects. It shall be very short; for let an author describe as he
+will, he cannot by such course paint the characters of his personages
+on the minds of his readers. It is by gradual, earnest efforts that
+this must be done--if it be done. Ten, nay, twenty pages of the
+finest descriptive writing that ever fell from the pen of a novelist
+will not do it.
+
+Clara Desmond, when young Fitzgerald first saw her, had hardly
+attained that incipient stage of womanhood which justifies a mother
+in taking her out into the gaieties of the world. She was then only
+sixteen; and had not in her manner and appearance so much of the
+woman as is the case with many girls of that age. She was shy and
+diffident in manner, thin and tall in person. If I were to say that
+she was angular and bony, I should disgust my readers, who, disliking
+the term, would not stop to consider how many sweetest girls are
+at that age truly subject to those epithets. Their undeveloped but
+active limbs are long and fleshless, the contour of their face is the
+same, their elbows and shoulders are pointed, their feet and hands
+seem to possess length without breadth. Birth and breeding have given
+them the frame of beauty, to which coming years will add the soft
+roundness of form, and the rich glory of colour. The plump, rosy
+girl of fourteen, though she also is very sweet, never rises to such
+celestial power of feminine grace as she who is angular and bony,
+whose limbs are long, and whose joints are sharp.
+
+Such was Clara Desmond at sixteen. But still, even then, to those
+who were gifted with the power of seeing, she gave promise of great
+loveliness. Her eyes were long and large, and wonderfully clear.
+There was a liquid depth in them which enabled the gazer to look down
+into them as he would into the green, pellucid transparency of still
+ocean water. And then they said so much--those young eyes of hers:
+from her mouth in those early years words came but scantily, but from
+her eyes questions rained quicker than any other eyes could answer
+them. Questions of wonder at what the world contained,--of wonder as
+to what men thought and did; questions as to the inmost heart, and
+truth, and purpose of the person questioned. And all this was asked
+by a glance now and again; by a glance of those long, shy, liquid
+eyes, which were ever falling on the face of him she questioned, and
+then ever as quickly falling from it.
+
+Her face, as I have said, was long and thin, but it was the longness
+and thinness of growing youth. The natural lines of it were full of
+beauty, of pale silent beauty, too proud in itself to boast itself
+much before the world, to make itself common among many. Her hair was
+already long and rich, but was light in colour, much lighter than
+it grew to be when some four or five more years had passed over her
+head. At the time of which I speak she wore it in simple braids
+brushed back from her forehead, not having as yet learned that
+majestic mode of sweeping it from her face which has in subsequent
+years so generally prevailed.
+
+And what then of her virtues and her faults--of her merits and
+defects? Will it not be better to leave them all to time and the
+coming pages? That she was proud of her birth, proud of being an
+Irish Desmond, proud even of her poverty, so much I may say of her,
+even at that early age. In that she was careless of the world's
+esteem, fond to a fault of romance, poetic in her temperament, and
+tender in her heart, she shared the ordinary--shall I say foibles or
+virtues?--of so many of her sex. She was passionately fond of her
+brother, but not nearly equally so of her mother, of whom the brother
+was too evidently the favoured child.
+
+She had lived much alone; alone, that is, with her governess and
+with servants at Desmond Court. Not that she had been neglected by
+her mother, but she had hardly found herself to be her mother's
+companion; and other companions there she had had none. When she was
+sixteen her governess was still with her; but a year later than that
+she was left quite alone, except inasmuch as she was with her mother.
+
+She was sixteen when she first began to ask questions of Owen
+Fitzgerald's face with those large eyes of hers; and she saw much
+of him, and he of her, for the twelve months immediately after that.
+Much of him, that is, as much goes in this country of ours, where
+four or five interviews in as many months between friends is supposed
+to signify that they are often together. But this much-seeing
+occurred chiefly during the young earl's holidays. Now and again
+he did ride over in the long intervals, and when he did do so was
+not frowned upon by the countess; and so, at the end of the winter
+holidays subsequent to that former winter in which the earl had had
+his tumble, people through the county began to say that he and the
+countess were about to become man and wife.
+
+It was just then that people in the county were also beginning to
+talk of the Hap House orgies; and the double scandal reached Owen's
+ears, one shortly after the other. That orgies scandal did not
+hurt him much. It is, alas! too true that consciousness of such a
+reputation does not often hurt a young man's feelings. But the other
+rumour did wound him. What! he sell himself to a widowed countess
+almost old enough to be his mother; or bestow himself rather,--for
+what was there in return that could be reckoned as a price? At any
+rate, he had given no one cause to utter such falsehood, such calumny
+as that. No; it certainly was not probable that he should marry the
+countess.
+
+But this set him to ask himself whether it might or might not be
+possible that he should marry some one else. Might it not be well
+for him if he could find a younger bride at Desmond Court? Not for
+nothing had he ridden over there through those bleak mountains;
+not for nothing, nor yet solely with the view of tying flies for
+the young earl's summer fishing, or preparing the new nag for
+his winter's hunting. Those large bright eyes had asked him many
+questions. Would it not be well that he should answer them?
+
+For many months of that year Clara Desmond had hardly spoken to
+him. Then, in the summer evening, as he and her brother would lie
+sprawling together on the banks of the little Desmond river, while
+the lad was talking of his fish, and his school, and his cricket
+club, she would stand by and listen, and so gradually she learned to
+speak.
+
+And the mother also would sometimes be there; or else she would
+welcome Fitzgerald in to tea, and let him stay there talking as
+though they were all at home, till he would have to make a midnight
+ride of it before he reached Hap House. It seemed that no fear as to
+her daughter had ever crossed the mother's mind; that no idea had
+ever come upon her that her favoured visitor might learn to love the
+young girl with whom he was allowed to associate on so intimate a
+footing. Once or twice he had caught himself calling her Clara, and
+had done so even before her mother; but no notice had been taken of
+it. In truth, Lady Desmond did not know her daughter, for the mother
+took her absolutely to be a child, when in fact she was a child no
+longer.
+
+"You take Clara round by the bridge," said the earl to his friend one
+August evening, as they were standing together on the banks of the
+river, about a quarter of a mile distant from the sombre old pile in
+which the family lived. "You take Clara round by the bridge, and I
+will get over the stepping-stones." And so the lad, with his rod in
+his hand, began to descend the steep bank.
+
+"I can get over the stepping-stones, too, Patrick," said she.
+
+"Can you though, my gay young woman? You'll be over your ankles if
+you do. That rain didn't come down yesterday for nothing."
+
+Clara as she spoke had come up to the bank, and now looked wistfully
+down at the stepping-stones. She had crossed them scores of times,
+sometimes with her brother, and often by herself. Why was it that she
+was so anxious to cross them now?
+
+"It's no use your trying," said her brother, who was now half across,
+and who spoke from the middle of the river. "Don't you let her, Owen.
+She'll slip in, and then there will be no end of a row up at the
+house."
+
+"You had better come round by the bridge," said Fitzgerald. "It is
+not only that the stones are nearly under water, but they are wet,
+and you would slip."
+
+So cautioned, Lady Clara allowed herself to be persuaded, and turned
+upwards along the river by a little path that led to a foot bridge.
+It was some quarter of a mile thither, and it would be the same
+distance down the river again before she regained her brother.
+
+"I needn't bring you with me, you know," she said to Fitzgerald. "You
+can get over the stones easily, and I can go very well by myself."
+
+But it was not probable that he would let her do so. "Why should I
+not go with you?" he said. "When I get there I have nothing to do but
+see him fish. Only if we were to leave him by himself he would not be
+happy."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Fitzgerald, how very kind you are to him! I do so often
+think of it. How dull his holidays would be in this place if it were
+not for you!"
+
+"And what a godsend his holidays are to me!" said Owen. "When they
+come round I can ride over here and see him, and you--and your
+mother. Do you think that I am not dull also, living alone at Hap
+House, and that this is not an infinite blessing to me?"
+
+He had named them all--son, daughter, and mother; but there had been
+a something in his voice, an almost inappreciable something in his
+tone, which had seemed to mark to Clara's hearing that she herself
+was not the least prized of the three attractions. She had felt this
+rather than realized it, and the feeling was not unpleasant.
+
+"I only know that you are very goodnatured," she continued, "and that
+Patrick is very fond of you. Sometimes I think he almost takes you
+for a brother." And then a sudden thought flashed across her mind,
+and she said hardly a word more to him that evening.
+
+This had been at the close of the summer holidays. After that he had
+been once or twice at Desmond Court, before the return of the boy
+from Eton; but on these occasions he had been more with the countess
+than with her daughter. On the last of these visits, just before
+the holidays commenced, he had gone over respecting a hunter he had
+bought for Lord Desmond, and on this occasion he did not even see
+Clara.
+
+The countess, when she had thanked him for his trouble in the matter
+of the purchase, hesitated a moment, and then went on to speak of
+other matters.
+
+"I understand, Mr. Fitzgerald," said she, "that you have been very
+gay at Hap House since the hunting commenced."
+
+"Oh, I don't know," said Owen, half laughing and half blushing. "It's
+a convenient place for some of the men, and one must be sociable."
+
+"Sociable! yes, one ought to be sociable certainly. But I am always
+afraid of the sociability of young men without ladies. Do not be
+angry with me if I venture as a friend to ask you not to be too
+sociable."
+
+"I know what you mean, Lady Desmond. People have been accusing us
+of--of being rakes. Isn't that it?"
+
+"Yes, Mr. Fitzgerald, that is it. But then I know that I have no
+right to speak to you on such a--such a subject."
+
+"Yes, yes; you have every right," said he, warmly; "more right than
+any one else."
+
+"Oh, no; Sir Thomas, you know--"
+
+"Well, yes, Sir Thomas. Sir Thomas is very well, and so also is Lady
+Fitzgerald; but I do not feel the same interest about them that I
+do about you. And they are such humdrum, quiet-going people. As for
+Herbert, I'm afraid he'll turn out a prig."
+
+"Well, Mr. Fitzgerald, if you give me the right I shall use it." And
+getting up from her chair, and coming to him where he stood, she
+looked kindly into his face. It was a bonny, handsome face for a
+woman to gaze on, and there was much kindness in hers as she smiled
+on him. Nay, there was almost more than kindness, he thought, as he
+caught her eye. It was like,--almost like the sweetness of motherly
+love. "And I shall scold you," she continued. "People say that for
+two or three nights running men have been playing cards at Hap House
+till morning."
+
+"Yes, I had some men there for a week. I could not take their candles
+away, and put them to bed; could I, Lady Desmond?"
+
+"And there were late suppers, and drinking of toasts, and headaches
+in the morning, and breakfast at three o'clock, and gentlemen with
+very pale faces when they appeared rather late at the meet--eh, Mr.
+Fitzgerald?" And she held up one finger at him, as she upbraided
+him with a smile. The smile was so sweet, so unlike her usual look;
+that, to tell the truth, was often too sad and careworn for her age.
+
+"Such things do happen, Lady Desmond."
+
+"Ah, yes; they do happen. And with such a one as you, heaven knows
+I do not begrudge the pleasure, if it were but now and then,--once
+again and then done with. But you are too bright and too good for
+such things to continue." And she took his hand and pressed it, as
+a mother or a mother's dearest friend might have done. "It would so
+grieve me to think that you should be even in danger of shipwreck.
+
+"You will not be angry with me for taking this liberty?" she
+continued.
+
+"Angry! how could any man be angry for such kindness?"
+
+"And you will think of what I say. I would not have you unsociable,
+or morose, or inhospitable; but--"
+
+"I understand, Lady Desmond; but when young men are together, one
+cannot always control them."
+
+"But you will try. Say that you will try because I have asked you."
+
+He promised that he would, and then went his way, proud in his heart
+at this solicitude. And how could he not be proud? was she not high
+in rank, proud in character, beautiful withal, and the mother of
+Clara Desmond? What sweeter friend could a man have; what counsellor
+more potent to avert those dangers which now hovered round his head?
+
+And as he rode home he was half in love with the countess. Where is
+the young man who has not in his early years been half in love with
+some woman older, much older than himself, who has half conquered his
+heart by her solicitude for his welfare?--with some woman who has
+whispered to him while others were talking, who has told him in such
+gentle, loving tones of his boyish follies, whose tenderness and
+experience together have educated him and made him manly? Young men
+are so proud, proud in their inmost hearts, of such tenderness and
+solicitude, as long as it remains secret and wrapt as it were in
+a certain mystery. Such liaisons have the interests of intrigue,
+without--I was going to say without its dangers. Alas! it may be that
+it is not always so.
+
+Owen Fitzgerald as he rode home was half in love with the countess.
+Not that his love was of a kind which made him in any way desirous
+of marrying her, or of kneeling at her feet and devoting himself to
+her for ever; not that it in any way interfered with the other love
+which he was beginning to feel for her daughter. But he thought with
+pleasure of the tone of her voice, of the pressure of her hand, of
+the tenderness which he had found in her eye.
+
+It was after that time, as will be understood, that some goodnatured
+friend had told him that he was regarded in the county as the future
+husband of Lady Desmond. At first he laughed at this as being--as
+he himself said to himself--too good a joke. When the report
+first reached him, it seemed to be a joke which he could share so
+pleasantly with the countess. For men of three and twenty, though
+they are so fond of the society of women older than themselves,
+understand so little the hearts and feelings of such women. In his
+ideas there was an interval as of another generation between him and
+the countess. In her thoughts the interval was probably much less
+striking.
+
+But the accusation was made to him again and again till it wounded
+him, and he gave up that notion of a mutual joke with his kind friend
+at Desmond Court. It did not occur to him that she could ever think
+of loving him as her lord and master; but it was brought home to him
+that other people thought so.
+
+A year had now passed by since those winter holidays in which Clara
+Desmond had been sixteen, and during which she was described by
+epithets which will not, I fear, have pleased my readers. Those
+epithets were now somewhat less deserved, but still the necessity
+of them had not entirely passed away. Her limbs were still thin
+and long, and her shoulders pointed; but the growth of beauty had
+commenced, and in Owen's eyes she was already very lovely.
+
+At Christmas-time during that winter a ball was given at Castle
+Richmond, to celebrate the coming of age of the young heir. It was
+not a very gay affair, for the Castle Richmond folk, even in those
+days, were not very gay people. Sir Thomas, though only fifty, was
+an old man for his age; and Lady Fitzgerald, though known intimately
+by the poor all round her, was not known intimately by any but the
+poor. Mary and Emmeline Fitzgerald, with whom we shall become better
+acquainted as we advance in our story, were nice, good girls, and
+handsome withal; but they had not that special gift which enables
+some girls to make a party in their own house bright in spite of all
+obstacles.
+
+We should have but little to do with this ball, were it not that
+Clara Desmond was here first brought out, as the term goes. It was
+the first large party to which she had been taken, and it was to her
+a matter of much wonder and inquiry with those wondering, speaking
+eyes.
+
+And Owen Fitzgerald was there;--as a matter of course, the reader
+will say. By no means so. Previous to that ball Owen's sins had been
+commented upon at Castle Richmond, and Sir Thomas had expostulated
+with him. These expostulations had not been received quite so
+graciously as those of the handsome countess, and there had been
+anger at Castle Richmond.
+
+Now there was living in the house of Castle Richmond one Miss Letty
+Fitzgerald, a maiden sister of the baronet's, older than her brother
+by full ten years. In her character there was more of energy, and
+also much more of harsh judgment, and of consequent ill-nature, than
+in that of her brother. When the letters of invitation were being
+sent out by the two girls, she had given a decided opinion that the
+reprobate should not be asked. But the reprobate's cousins, with that
+partiality for a rake which is so common to young ladies, would not
+abide by their aunt's command, and referred the matter both to mamma
+and papa. Mamma thought it very hard that their own cousin should be
+refused admittance to their house, and very dreadful that his sins
+should be considered to be of so deep a dye as to require so severe a
+sentence; and then papa, much balancing the matter, gave final orders
+that the prodigal cousin should be admitted.
+
+He was admitted, and dangerously he used the privilege. The countess,
+who was there, stood up to dance twice, and twice only. She opened
+the ball with young Herbert Fitzgerald the heir; and in about an hour
+afterwards she danced again with Owen. He did not ask her twice; but
+he asked her daughter three or four times, and three or four times he
+asked her successfully.
+
+"Clara," whispered the mother to her child, after the last of these
+occasions, giving some little pull or twist to her girl's frock as
+she did so, "you had better not dance with Owen Fitzgerald again
+to-night. People will remark about it."
+
+"Will they?" said Clara, and immediately sat down, checked in her
+young happiness.
+
+Not many minutes afterwards, Owen came up to her again. "May we have
+another waltz together, I wonder?" he said.
+
+"Not to-night, I think. I am rather tired already." And so she did
+not waltz again all the evening, for fear she should offend him.
+
+But the countess, though she had thus interdicted her daughter's
+dancing with the master of Hap House, had not done so through any
+absolute fear. To her, her girl was still a child; a child without
+a woman's thoughts, or any of a woman's charms. And then it was
+so natural that Clara should like to dance with almost the only
+gentleman who was not absolutely a stranger to her. Lady Desmond had
+been actuated rather by a feeling that it would be well that Clara
+should begin to know other persons.
+
+By that feeling,--and perhaps unconsciously by another, that it would
+be well that Owen Fitzgerald should be relieved from his attendance
+on the child, and enabled to give it to the mother. Whether Lady
+Desmond had at that time realized any ideas as to her own interest
+in this young man, it was at any rate true that she loved to have
+him near her. She had refused to dance a second time with Herbert
+Fitzgerald; she had refused to stand up with any other person who had
+asked her; but with Owen she would either have danced again, or have
+kept him by her side, while she explained to him with flattering
+frankness that she could not do so lest others should be offended.
+
+And Owen was with her frequently through the evening. She was taken
+to and from supper by Sir Thomas, but any other takings that were
+incurred were done by him. He led her from one drawing-room to
+another; he took her empty coffee-cup; he stood behind her chair,
+and talked to her; and he brought her the scarf which she had left
+elsewhere; and finally, he put a shawl round her neck while old Sir
+Thomas was waiting to hand her to her carriage. Reader, good-natured,
+middle-aged reader, remember that she was only thirty-eight, and that
+hitherto she had known nothing of the delights of love. By the young,
+any such hallucination on her part, at her years, will be regarded as
+lunacy, or at least frenzy.
+
+Owen Fitzgerald drove home from that ball in a state of mind that
+was hardly satisfactory. In the first place, Miss Letty had made a
+direct attack upon his morals, which he had not answered in the most
+courteous manner.
+
+"I have heard a great deal of your doings, Master Owen," she said to
+him. "A fine house you're keeping."
+
+"Why don't you come and join us, Aunt Letty?" he replied. "It would
+be just the thing for you."
+
+"God forbid!" said the old maid, turning up her eyes to heaven.
+
+"Oh, you might do worse, you know. With us you'd only drink and
+play cards, and perhaps hear a little strong language now and again.
+But what's that to slander, and calumny, and bearing false witness
+against one's neighbour?" and so saying he ended that interview--not
+in a manner to ingratiate himself with his relative, Miss Letty
+Fitzgerald.
+
+After that, in the supper-room, more than one wag of a fellow had
+congratulated him on his success with the widow. "She's got some
+sort of a jointure, I suppose," said one. "She's very young-looking,
+certainly, to be the mother of that girl," declared another. "Upon my
+word, she's a handsome woman still," said a third. "And what title
+will you get when you marry her, Fitz?" asked a fourth, who was
+rather ignorant as to the phases under which the British peerage
+develops itself.
+
+Fitzgerald pshawed, and pished, and poohed; and then, breaking away
+from them, rode home. He felt that he must at any rate put an end to
+this annoyance about the countess, and that he must put an end also
+to his state of doubt about the countess's daughter. Clara had been
+kind and gracious to him in the first part of the evening; nay,
+almost more than gracious. Why had she been so cold when he went up
+to her on that last occasion? why had she gathered herself like a
+snail into its shell for the rest of the evening?
+
+The young earl had also been at the party, and had exacted a promise
+from Owen that he would be over at Desmond Court on the next day. It
+had almost been on Owen's lips to tell his friend, not only that he
+would be there, but what would be his intention when he got there.
+He knew that the lad loved him well; and almost fancied that, earl
+as he was, he would favour his friend's suit. But a feeling that
+Lord Desmond was only a boy, restrained him. It would not be well to
+induce one so young to agree to an arrangement of which in after and
+more mature years he would so probably disapprove.
+
+But not the less did Fitzgerald, as he drove home, determine that
+on the next day he would know something of his fate: and with this
+resolve he endeavoured to comfort himself as he drove up into his own
+avenue, and betook himself to his own solitary home.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+CLARA DESMOND.
+
+
+It had been Clara Desmond's first ball, and on the following morning
+she had much to occupy her thoughts. In the first place, had she been
+pleased or had she not? Had she been most gratified or most pained?
+
+Girls when they ask themselves such questions seldom give themselves
+fair answers. She had liked dancing with Owen Fitzgerald; oh, so
+much! She had liked dancing with others too, though she had not known
+them, and had hardly spoken to them. The mere act of dancing, with
+the loud music in the room, and the gay dresses and bright lights
+around her, had been delightful. But then it had pained her--she knew
+not why, but it had pained her--when her mother told her that people
+would make remarks about her. Had she done anything improper on this
+her first entry into the world? Was her conduct to be scanned, and
+judged, and condemned, while she was flattering herself that no one
+had noticed her but him who was speaking to her?
+
+Their breakfast was late, and the countess sat, as was her wont, with
+her book beside her tea-cup, speaking a word every now and again to
+her son.
+
+"Owen will be over here to-day," said he. "We are going to have a
+schooling match down on the Callows." Now in Ireland a schooling
+match means the amusement of teaching your horses to jump.
+
+"Will he?" said Lady Desmond, looking up from her book for a moment.
+"Mind you bring him in to lunch; I want to speak to him."
+
+"He doesn't care much about lunch, I fancy," said he; "and, maybe, we
+shall be half way to Millstreet by that time."
+
+"Never mind, but do as I tell you. You expect everybody to be as wild
+and wayward as yourself." And the countess smiled on her son in a
+manner which showed that she was proud even of his wildness and his
+waywardness.
+
+Clara had felt that she blushed when she heard that Mr. Fitzgerald
+was to be there that morning. She felt that her own manner became
+constrained, and was afraid that her mother should look at her. Owen
+had said nothing to her about love; and she, child as she was, had
+thought nothing about love. But she was conscious of something, she
+knew not what. He had touched her hand during those dances as it had
+never been touched before; he had looked into her eyes, and her eyes
+had fallen before his glance; he had pressed her waist, and she had
+felt that there was tenderness in the pressure. So she blushed, and
+almost trembled, when she heard that he was coming, and was glad in
+her heart when she found that there was neither anger nor sunshine in
+her mother's face.
+
+Not long after breakfast, the earl went out on his horse, and met
+Owen at some gate or back entrance. In his opinion the old house was
+stupid, and the women in it were stupid companions in the morning.
+His heart for the moment was engaged on the thought of making his
+animal take the most impracticable leaps which he could find, and
+it did not occur to him at first to give his mother's message to
+his companion. As for lunch, they would get a biscuit and glass of
+cherry-brandy at Wat M'Carthy's, of Drumban; and as for his mother
+having anything to say, that of course went for nothing.
+
+Owen would have been glad to have gone up to the house, but in that
+he was frustrated by the earl's sharpness in catching him. His next
+hope was to get through the promised lesson in horse-leaping as
+quickly as possible, so that he might return to Desmond Court, and
+take his chance of meeting Clara. But in this he found the earl very
+difficult to manage.
+
+"Oh, Owen, we won't go there," he said, when Fitzgerald proposed a
+canter through some meadows down by the river-side. "There are only
+a few gripes"--Irish for small ditches--"and I have ridden Fireball
+over them a score of times. I want you to come away towards Drumban."
+
+"Drumban! why Drumban's seven miles from here."
+
+"What matter? Besides, it's not six the way I'll take you. I want to
+see Wat M'Carthy especially. He has a litter of puppies there, out of
+that black bitch of his, and I mean to make him give me one of them."
+
+But on that morning, Owen Fitzgerald would not allow himself to be
+taken so far a-field as Drumban, even on a mission so important as
+this. The young lord fought the matter stoutly; but it ended by
+his being forced to content himself with picking out all the most
+dangerous parts of the fences in the river meadows.
+
+"Why, you've hardly tried your own mare at all," said the lad,
+reproachfully.
+
+"I'm going to hunt her on Saturday," said Owen; "and she'll have
+quite enough to do then."
+
+"Well, you're very slow to-day. You're done up with the dancing, I
+think. And what do you mean to do now?"
+
+"I'll go home with you, I think, and pay my respects to the
+countess."
+
+"By-the-by, I was to bring you in to lunch. She said she wanted to
+see you. By jingo, I forgot all about it! But you've all become very
+stupid among you, I know that." And so they rode back to Desmond
+Court, entering the demesne by one of the straight, dull, level roads
+which led up to the house.
+
+But it did not suit the earl to ride on the road while the grass was
+so near him; so they turned off with a curve across what was called
+the park, thus prolonging their return by about double the necessary
+distance.
+
+As they were cantering on, Owen saw her of whom he was in quest
+walking in the road which they had left. His best chance of seeing
+her alone had been that of finding her outside the house. He knew
+that the countess rarely or never walked with her daughter, and that,
+as the governess was gone, Clara was driven to walk by herself.
+
+"Desmond," he said, pulling up his horse, "do you go on and tell your
+mother that I will be with her almost immediately."
+
+"Why, where are you off to now?"
+
+"There is your sister, and I must ask her how she is after the ball;"
+and so saying he trotted back in the direction of the road.
+
+Lady Clara had seen them; and though she had hardly turned her head,
+she had seen also how suddenly Mr. Fitzgerald had stopped his horse,
+and turned his course when he perceived her. At the first moment she
+had been almost angry with him for riding away from her, and now she
+felt almost angry with him because he did not do so.
+
+He slackened his pace as he came near her, and approached her at a
+walk. There was very little of the faint heart about Owen Fitzgerald
+at any time, or in anything that he attempted. He had now made up
+his mind fairly to tell Clara Desmond that he loved her, and to ask
+for her love in return. He had resolved to do so, and there was very
+little doubt but that he would carry out his resolution. But he had
+in nowise made up his mind how he should do it, or what his words
+should be. And now that he saw her so near him he wanted a moment to
+collect his thoughts.
+
+He took off his hat as he rode up, and asked her whether she was
+tired after the ball; and then dismounting, he left his mare to
+follow as she pleased.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Fitzgerald, won't she run away?" said Clara, as she gave him
+her hand.
+
+"Oh, no; she has been taught better than that. But you don't tell me
+how you are. I thought you were tired last night when I saw that you
+had altogether given over dancing." And then he walked on beside her,
+and the docile mare followed them like a dog.
+
+"No, I was not tired; at least, not exactly," said Clara, blushing
+again and again, being conscious that she blushed. "But--but--you
+know it was the first ball I was ever at."
+
+"That is just the reason why you should have enjoyed it the more,
+instead of sitting down as you did, and being dull and unhappy. For
+I know you were unhappy; I could see it."
+
+"Was I?" said Clara, not knowing what else to say.
+
+"Yes; and I'll tell you what. I could see more than that; it was I
+that made you unhappy."
+
+"You, Mr. Fitzgerald!"
+
+"Yes, I. You will not deny it, because you are so true. I asked you
+to dance with me too often. And because you refused me, you did not
+like to dance with any one else. I saw it all. Will you deny that it
+was so?"
+
+"Oh, Mr. Fitzgerald!" Poor girl! She did not know what to say; how to
+shape her speech into indifference; how to assure him that he made
+himself out to be of too much consequence by far; how to make it
+plain that she had not danced because there was no one there worth
+dancing with. Had she been out for a year or two, instead of being
+such a novice, she would have accomplished all this in half a dozen
+words. As it was, her tell-tale face confessed it all, and she was
+only able to ejaculate, "Oh, Mr. Fitzgerald!"
+
+"When I went there last night," he continued, "I had only one
+wish--one hope. That was, to see you pleased and happy. I knew it was
+your first ball, and I did so long to see you enjoy it."
+
+"And so I did, till--"
+
+"Till what? Will you not let me ask?"
+
+"Mamma said something to me, and that stopped me from dancing."
+
+"She told you not to dance with me. Was that it?"
+
+How was it possible that she should have had a chance with him;
+innocent, young, and ignorant as she was? She did not tell him in
+words that so it had been; but she looked into his face with a glance
+of doubt and pain that answered his question as plainly as any words
+could have done.
+
+"Of course she did; and it was I that destroyed it all. I that should
+have been satisfied to stand still and see you happy. How you must
+have hated me!"
+
+"Oh, no; indeed I did not. I was not at all angry with you. Indeed,
+why should I have been? It was so kind of you, wishing to dance with
+me."
+
+"No; it was selfish--selfish in the extreme. Nothing but one thing
+could excuse me, and that excuse--"
+
+"I'm sure you don't want any excuse, Mr. Fitzgerald."
+
+"And that excuse, Clara, was this: that I love you with all my heart.
+I had not strength to see you there, and not long to have you near
+me--not begrudge that you should dance with another. I love you with
+all my heart and soul. There, Lady Clara, now you know it all."
+
+The manner in which he made his declaration to her was almost fierce
+in its energy. He had stopped in the pathway, and she, unconscious
+of what she was doing, almost unconscious of what she was hearing,
+had stopped also. The mare, taking advantage of the occasion, was
+cropping the grass close to them. And so, for a few seconds, they
+stood in silence.
+
+"Am I so bold, Lady Clara," said he, when those few seconds had gone
+by--"Am I so bold that I may hope for no answer?" But still she
+said nothing. In lieu of speaking she uttered a long sigh; and then
+Fitzgerald could hear that she was sobbing.
+
+"Oh, Clara, I love you so fondly, so dearly, so truly!" said he in an
+altered voice and with sweet tenderness. "I know my own presumption
+in thus speaking. I know and feel bitterly the difference in our
+rank."
+
+"I--care--nothing--for rank," said the poor girl, sobbing through her
+tears. He was generous, and she at any rate would not be less so. No;
+at that moment, with her scanty seventeen years of experience, with
+her ignorance of all that the world had in it of grand and great, of
+high and rich, she did care nothing for rank. That Owen Fitzgerald
+was a gentleman of good lineage, fit to mate with a lady, that
+she did know; for her mother, who was a proud woman, delighted to
+have him in her presence. Beyond this she cared for none of the
+conventionalities of life. Rank! If she waited for rank, where was
+she to look for friends who would love her? Earls and countesses,
+barons and their baronesses, were scarce there where fate had placed
+her, under the shadow of the bleak mountains of Muskerry. Her want,
+her undefined want, was that some one should love her. Of all men
+and women whom she had hitherto known, this Owen Fitzgerald was the
+brightest, the kindest, the gentlest in his manner, the most pleasant
+to look on. And now he was there at her feet, swearing that he loved
+her;--and then drawing back as it were in dread of her rank. What did
+she care for rank?
+
+"Clara, Clara, my Clara! Can you learn to love me?"
+
+She had made her one little effort at speaking when she attempted to
+repudiate the pedestal on which he affected to place her; but after
+that she could for a while say no more. But she still sobbed, and
+still kept her eyes fixed upon the ground.
+
+"Clara, say one word to me. Say that you do not hate me." But just at
+that moment she had not one word to say.
+
+"If you will bid me do so, I will leave this country altogether. I
+will go away, and I shall not much care whither. I can only stay now
+on condition of your loving me. I have thought of this day for the
+last year past, and now it has come."
+
+Every word that he now spoke was gospel to her. Is it not always
+so,--should it not be so always, when love first speaks to loving
+ears? What! he had loved her for that whole twelvemonth that she had
+known him; loved her in those days when she had been wont to look up
+into his face, wondering why he was so nice, so much nicer than any
+one else that came near her! A year was a great deal to her; and had
+he loved her through all those days? and after that should she banish
+him from her house, turn him away from his home, and drive him forth
+unhappy and wretched? Ah, no! She could not be so unkind to him;--she
+could not be so unkind to her own heart. But still she sobbed; and
+still she said nothing.
+
+In the mean time they had turned, and were now walking back towards
+the house, the gentle-natured mare still following at their heels.
+They were walking slowly--very slowly back--just creeping along the
+path, when they saw Lady Desmond and her son coming to meet them on
+the road.
+
+"There is your mother, Clara. Say one word to me before we meet
+them."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Fitzgerald; I am so frightened. What will mamma say?"
+
+"Say about what? As yet I do not know what she may have to say. But
+before we meet her, may I not hope to know what her daughter will
+say? Answer me this, Clara. Can you, will you love me?"
+
+There was still a pause, a moment's pause, and then some sound did
+fall from her lips. But yet it was so soft, so gentle, so slight,
+that it could hardly be said to reach even a lover's ear. Fitzgerald,
+however, made the most of it. Whether it were Yes, or whether it were
+No, he took it as being favourable, and Lady Clara Desmond gave him
+no sign to show that he was mistaken.
+
+"My own, own, only loved one," he said, embracing her as it were with
+his words, since the presence of her approaching mother forbade him
+even to take her hand in his, "I am happy now, whatever may occur;
+whatever others may say; for I know that you will be true to me. And
+remember this--whatever others may say, I also will be true to you.
+You will think of that, will you not, love?"
+
+This time she did answer him, almost audibly. "Yes," she said. And
+then she devoted herself to a vain endeavour to remove the traces of
+her tears before her mother should be close to them.
+
+Fitzgerald at once saw that such endeavour must be vain. At one time
+he had thought of turning away, and pretending that they had not seen
+the countess. But he knew that Clara would not be able to carry out
+any such pretence; and he reflected also that it might be just as
+well that Lady Desmond should know the whole at once. That she would
+know it, and know it soon, he was quite sure. She could learn it
+not only from Clara, but from himself. He could not now be there at
+the house without showing that he both loved and knew that he was
+beloved. And then why should Lady Desmond not know it? Why should he
+think that she would set herself against the match? He had certainly
+spoken to Clara of the difference in their rank; but, after all, it
+was no uncommon thing for an earl's daughter to marry a commoner.
+And in this case the earl's daughter was portionless, and the lover
+desired no portion. Owen Fitzgerald at any rate might boast that he
+was true and generous in his love.
+
+So he plucked up his courage, and walked on with a smiling face to
+meet Lady Desmond and her son; while poor Clara crept beside him with
+eyes downcast, and in an agony of terror.
+
+Lady Desmond had not left the house with any apprehension that there
+was aught amiss. Her son had told her that Owen had gone off "to do
+the civil to Clara;" and as he did not come to the house within some
+twenty minutes after this, she had proposed that they would go and
+meet him.
+
+"Did you tell him that I wanted him?" said the countess.
+
+"Oh, yes, I did; and he is coming, only he would go away to Clara."
+
+"Then I shall scold him for his want of gallantry," said Lady
+Desmond, laughing, as they walked out together from beneath the huge
+portal.
+
+But as soon as she was near enough to see the manner of their gait,
+as they slowly came on towards her, her woman's tact told her that
+something was wrong;--and whispered to her also what might too
+probably be the nature of that something. Could it be possible, she
+asked herself, that such a man as Owen Fitzgerald should fall in love
+with such a girl as her daughter Clara?
+
+"What shall I say to mamma?" whispered Clara to him, as they all drew
+near together.
+
+"Tell her everything."
+
+"But, Patrick--"
+
+"I will take him off with me if I can." And then they were all
+together, standing in the road.
+
+"I was coming to obey your behests, Lady Desmond," said Fitzgerald,
+trying to look and speak as though he were at his ease.
+
+"Coming rather tardily, I think," said her ladyship, not altogether
+playfully.
+
+"I told him you wanted him, as we were crossing to the house," said
+the earl. "Didn't I, Owen?"
+
+"Is anything the matter with Clara?" said Lady Desmond, looking at
+her daughter.
+
+"No, mamma," said Clara; and she instantly began to sob and cry.
+
+"What is it, sir?" And as she asked she turned to Fitzgerald; and her
+manner now at least had in it nothing playful.
+
+"Lady Clara is nervous and hysterical. The excitement of the ball has
+perhaps been too much for her. I think, Lady Desmond, if you were to
+take her in with you it would be well."
+
+Lady Desmond looked up at him; and he then saw, for the first time,
+that she could if she pleased look very stern. Hitherto her face had
+always worn smiles, had at any rate always been pleasing when he had
+seen it. He had never been intimate with her, never intimate enough
+to care what her face was like, till that day when he had carried her
+son up from the hall door to his room. Then her countenance had been
+all anxiety for her darling; and afterwards it had been all sweetness
+for her darling's friend. From that day to this present one, Lady
+Desmond had ever given him her sweetest smiles.
+
+But Fitzgerald was not a man to be cowed by any woman's looks. He met
+hers by a full, front face in return. He did not allow his eye for a
+moment to fall before hers. And yet he did not look at her haughtily,
+or with defiance, but with an aspect which showed that he was ashamed
+of nothing that he had done,--whether he had done anything that he
+ought to be ashamed of or no.
+
+"Clara," said the countess, in a voice which fell with awful severity
+on the poor girl's ears, "you had better return to the house with
+me."
+
+"Yes, mamma."
+
+"And shall I wait on you to-morrow, Lady Desmond?" said Fitzgerald,
+in a tone which seemed to the countess to be, in the present state of
+affairs, almost impertinent. The man had certainly been misbehaving
+himself; and yet there was not about him the slightest symptom of
+shame.
+
+"Yes; no," said the countess. "That is, I will write a note to you if
+it be necessary. Good morning."
+
+"Good-bye, Lady Desmond," said Owen. And as he took off his hat with
+his left hand, he put out his right to shake hands with her, as was
+customary with him. Lady Desmond was at first inclined to refuse the
+courtesy; but she either thought better of such intention, or else
+she had not courage to maintain it; for at parting she did give him
+her hand.
+
+"Good-bye, Lady Clara;" and he also shook hands with her, and it need
+hardly be said that there was a lover's pressure in the grasp.
+
+"Good-bye," said Clara, through her tears, in the saddest, soberest
+tone. He was going away, happy, light hearted, with nothing to
+trouble him. But she had to encounter that fearful task of telling
+her own crime. She had to depart with her mother;--her mother, who,
+though never absolutely unkind, had so rarely been tender with her.
+And then her brother--!
+
+"Desmond," said Fitzgerald, "walk as far as the lodge with me like a
+good fellow. I have something that I want to say to you."
+
+The mother thought for a moment that she would call her son back; but
+then she bethought herself that she also might as well be without
+him. So the young earl, showing plainly by his eyes that he knew that
+much was the matter, went back with Fitzgerald towards the lodge.
+
+"What is it you have done now?" said the earl. The boy had some sort
+of an idea that the offence committed was with reference to his
+sister; and his tone was hardly as gracious as was usual with him.
+
+This want of kindliness at the present moment grated on Owen's ears;
+but he resolved at once to tell the whole story out, and then leave
+it to the earl to take it in dudgeon or in brotherly friendship as he
+might please.
+
+"Desmond," said he, "can you not guess what has passed between me and
+your sister?"
+
+"I am not good at guessing," he answered, brusquely.
+
+"I have told her that I loved her, and would have her for my wife;
+and I have asked her to love me in return."
+
+There was an open manliness about this which almost disarmed the
+earl's anger. He had felt a strong attachment to Fitzgerald, and was
+very unwilling to give up his friendship; but, nevertheless, he had
+an idea that it was presumption on the part of Mr. Fitzgerald of Hap
+House to look up to his sister. Between himself and Owen the earl's
+coronet never weighed a feather; he could not have abandoned his
+boy's heart to the man's fellowship more thoroughly had that man
+been an earl as well as himself. But he could not get over the
+feeling that Fitzgerald's worldly position was beneath that of
+his sister;--that such a marriage on his sister's part would be a
+mesalliance. Doubting, therefore, and in some sort dismayed--and in
+some sort also angry--he did not at once give any reply.
+
+"Well, Desmond, what have you to say to it? You are the head of her
+family, and young as you are, it is right that I should tell you."
+
+"Tell me! of course you ought to tell me. I don't see what youngness
+has to do with it. What did she say?"
+
+"Well, she said but little; and a man should never boast that a lady
+has favoured him. But she did not reject me." He paused a moment, and
+then added, "After all, honesty and truth are the best. I have reason
+to think that she loves me."
+
+The poor young lord felt that he had a double duty, and hardly knew
+how to perform it. He owed a duty to his sister which was paramount
+to all others; but then he owed a duty also to the friend who had
+been so kind to him. He did not know how to turn round upon him and
+tell him that he was not fit to marry his sister.
+
+"And what do you say to it, Desmond?"
+
+"I hardly know what to say. It would be a very bad match for her.
+You, you know, are a capital fellow; the best fellow going. There is
+nobody about anywhere that I like so much."
+
+"In thinking of your sister, you should put that out of the
+question."
+
+"Yes; that's just it. I like you for a friend better than any one
+else. But Clara ought--ought--ought--"
+
+"Ought to look higher, you would say."
+
+"Yes; that's just what I mean. I don't want to offend you, you know."
+
+"Desmond, my boy, I like you the better for it. You are a fine
+fellow, and I thoroughly respect you. But let us talk sensibly about
+this. Though your sister's rank is high--"
+
+"Oh, I don't want to talk about rank. That's all bosh, and I don't
+care about it. But Hap House is a small place, and Clara wouldn't be
+doing well; and what's more, I am quite sure the countess will not
+hear of it."
+
+"You won't approve then?"
+
+"No, I can't say I will."
+
+"Well, that is honest of you. I am very glad that I have told you at
+once. Clara will tell her mother, and at any rate there will be no
+secrets. Good-bye, old fellow."
+
+"Good-bye," said the earl. Then they shook hands, and Fitzgerald rode
+off towards Hap House. Lord Desmond pondered over the matter some
+time, standing alone near the lodge; and then walked slowly back
+towards the mansion. He had said that rank was all bosh; and in so
+saying had at the moment spoken out generously the feelings of his
+heart. But that feeling regarded himself rather than his sister; and
+if properly analyzed would merely have signified that, though proud
+enough of his own rank, he did not require that his friends should be
+of the same standing. But as regarded his sister, he certainly would
+not be well pleased to see her marry a small squire with a small
+income.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE COUNTESS.
+
+
+The countess, as she walked back with her daughter towards the house,
+had to bethink herself for a minute or two as to how she should act,
+and what she would say. She knew, she felt that she knew, what had
+occurred. If her daughter's manner had not told her, the downcast
+eyes, the repressed sobs, the mingled look of shame and fear;--if she
+had not read the truth from these, she would have learned it from the
+tone of Fitzgerald's voice, and the look of triumph which sat upon
+his countenance.
+
+And then she wondered that this should be so, seeing that she had
+still regarded Clara as being in all things a child; and as she
+thought further, she wondered at her own fatuity, in that she had
+allowed herself to be so grossly deceived.
+
+"Clara," said she, "what is all this?"
+
+"Oh, mamma!"
+
+"You had better come on to the house, my dear, and speak to me there.
+In the mean time, collect your thoughts, and remember this, Clara,
+that you have the honour of a great family to maintain."
+
+Poor Clara! what had the great family done for her, or how had she
+been taught to maintain its honour? She knew that she was an earl's
+daughter, and that people called her Lady Clara; whereas other young
+ladies were only called Miss So-and-So. But she had not been taught
+to separate herself from the ordinary throng of young ladies by any
+other distinction. Her great family had done nothing special for her,
+nor placed before her for example any grandly noble deeds. At that
+old house at Desmond Court company was scarce, money was scarce,
+servants were scarce. She had been confided to the care of a very
+ordinary governess; and if there was about her anything that was
+great or good, it was intrinsically her own, and by no means due to
+intrinsic advantages derived from her grand family. Why should she
+not give what was so entirely her own to one whom she loved, to one
+by whom it so pleased her to be loved?
+
+And then they entered the house, and Clara followed her mother to the
+countess's own small up-stairs sitting-room. The daughter did not
+ordinarily share this room with her mother, and when she entered it,
+she seldom did so with pleasurable emotion. At the present moment she
+had hardly strength to close the door after her.
+
+"And now, Clara, what is all this?" said the countess, sitting down
+in her accustomed chair.
+
+"All which, mamma?" Can any one blame her in that she so far
+equivocated?
+
+"Clara, you know very well what I mean. What has there been between
+you and Mr. Fitzgerald?"
+
+The guilt-stricken wretch sat silent for a while, sustaining the
+scrutiny of her mother's gaze; and then falling from her chair on to
+her knees, she hid her face in her mother's lap, exclaiming, "Oh,
+mamma, mamma, do not look at me like that!"
+
+Lady Desmond's heart was somewhat softened by this appeal; nor would
+I have it thought that she was a cruel woman, or an unnatural mother.
+It had not been her lot to make an absolute, dearest, heartiest
+friend of her daughter, as some mothers do; a friend between whom
+and herself there should be, nay could be, no secrets. She could not
+become young again in sharing the romance of her daughter's love, in
+enjoying the gaieties of her daughter's balls, in planning dresses,
+amusements, and triumphs with her child. Some mothers can do this;
+and they, I think, are the mothers who enjoy most fully the delights
+of maternity. This was not the case with Lady Desmond; but yet she
+loved her child, and would have made any reasonable sacrifice for
+what she regarded as that child's welfare.
+
+"But, my dear," she said, in a softened tone, "you must tell me what
+has occurred. Do you not know that it is my duty to ask, and yours
+to tell me? It cannot be right that there should be any secret
+understanding between yourself and Mr. Fitzgerald. You know that,
+Clara, do you not?"
+
+"Yes, mamma," said Clara, remembering that her lover had bade her
+tell her mother everything.
+
+"Well, my love?"
+
+Clara's story was very simple, and did not, in fact, want any
+telling. It was merely the old well-worn tale, so common through all
+the world. "He had laughed on the lass with his bonny black eye!"
+and she,--she was ready to go "to the mountain to hear a love-tale!"
+One may say that an occurrence so very common could not want much
+telling.
+
+"Mamma; he says--"
+
+"Well, my dear?"
+
+"He says--. Oh, mamma! I could not help it."
+
+"No, Clara; you certainly could not help what he might say to you.
+You could not refuse to listen to him. A lady in such a case, when
+she is on terms of intimacy with a gentleman, as you were with Mr.
+Fitzgerald, is bound to listen to him, and to give him an answer. You
+could not help what he might say, Clara. The question now is, what
+answer did you give to what he said?"
+
+Clara, who was still kneeling, looked up piteously into her mother's
+face, sighed bitterly, but said nothing.
+
+"He told you that he loved you, I suppose?"
+
+"Yes, mamma."
+
+"And I suppose you gave him some answer? Eh! my dear?"
+
+The answer to this was another long sigh.
+
+"But, Clara, you must tell me. It is absolutely necessary that I
+should know whether you have given him any hope, and if so, how much.
+Of course the whole thing must be stopped at once. Young as you are,
+you cannot think that a marriage with Mr. Owen Fitzgerald would be a
+proper match for you to make. Of course the whole thing must cease
+at once--at once." Here there was another piteous sigh. "But before
+I take any steps, I must know what you have said to him. Surely you
+have not told him that you have any feeling for him warmer than
+ordinary regard?"
+
+Lady Desmond knew what she was doing very well. She was perfectly
+sure that her daughter had pledged her troth to Owen Fitzgerald.
+Indeed, if she made any mistake in the matter, it was in thinking
+that Clara had given a more absolute assurance of love than had in
+truth been extracted from her. But she calculated, and calculated
+wisely, that the surest way of talking her daughter out of all hope,
+was to express herself as unable to believe that a child of hers
+would own to love for one so much beneath her, and to speak of such
+a marriage as a thing absolutely impossible. Her method of acting
+in this manner had the effect which she desired. The poor girl was
+utterly frightened, and began to fear that she had disgraced herself,
+though she knew that she dearly loved the man of whom her mother
+spoke so slightingly.
+
+"Have you given him any promise, Clara?"
+
+"Not a promise, mamma."
+
+"Not a promise! What then? Have you professed any regard for him?"
+But upon this Clara was again silent.
+
+"Then I suppose I must believe that you have professed a regard for
+him--that you have promised to love him?"
+
+"No, mamma; I have not promised anything. But when he asked me, I--I
+didn't--I didn't refuse him."
+
+It will be observed that Lady Desmond never once asked her daughter
+what were her feelings. It never occurred to her to inquire, even
+within her own heart, as to what might be most conducive to her
+child's happiness. She meant to do her duty by Clara, and therefore
+resolved at once to put a stop to the whole affair. She now desisted
+from her interrogatories, and sitting silent for a while, looked out
+into the extent of flat ground before the house. Poor Clara the while
+sat silent also, awaiting her doom.
+
+"Clara," said the mother at last, "all this must of course be made to
+cease. You are very young, very young indeed, and therefore I do not
+blame you. The fault is with him--with him entirely."
+
+"No, mamma."
+
+"But I say it is. He has behaved very badly, and has betrayed the
+trust which was placed in him when he was admitted here so intimately
+as Patrick's friend."
+
+"I am sure he has not intended to betray any trust," said Clara,
+through her sobs. The conviction was beginning to come upon her that
+she would be forced to give up her lover; but she could not bring
+herself to hear so much evil spoken of him.
+
+"He has not behaved like a gentleman," continued the countess,
+looking very stern. "And his visits here must of course be altogether
+discontinued. I am sorry on your brother's account, for Patrick was
+very fond of him--"
+
+"Not half so fond as I am," thought Clara to herself. But she did not
+dare to speak her thoughts out loud.
+
+"But I am quite sure that your brother, young as he is, will not
+continue to associate with a friend who has thought so slightly of
+his sister's honour. Of course I shall let Mr. Fitzgerald know that
+he can come here no more; and all I want from you is a promise that
+you will on no account see him again, or hold any correspondence with
+him."
+
+That was all she wanted. But Clara, timid as she was, hesitated
+before she could give a promise so totally at variance with the
+pledge which she felt that she had given, hardly an hour since, to
+Fitzgerald. She knew and acknowledged to herself that she had given
+him a pledge, although she had given it in silence. How then was she
+to give this other pledge to her mother?
+
+"You do not mean to say that you hesitate?" said Lady Desmond,
+looking as though she were thunderstruck at the existence of such
+hesitation. "You do not wish me to suppose that you intend to
+persevere in such insanity? Clara, I must have from you a distinct
+promise,--or--"
+
+What might be the dreadful alternative the countess did not at that
+minute say. She perhaps thought that her countenance might be more
+effective than her speech, and in thinking so she was probably right.
+
+It must be remembered that Clara Desmond was as yet only seventeen,
+and that she was young even for that age. It must be remembered also,
+that she knew nothing of the world's ways, of her own privileges as
+a creature with a soul and heart of her own, or of what might be
+the true extent of her mother's rights over her. She had not in her
+enough of matured thought to teach her to say that she would make no
+promise that should bind her for ever; but that for the present, in
+her present state, she would obey her mother's orders. And thus the
+promise was exacted and given.
+
+"If I find you deceiving me, Clara," said the countess, "I will never
+forgive you."
+
+Hitherto, Lady Desmond may probably have played her part well;--well,
+considering her object. But she played it very badly in showing that
+she thought it possible that her daughter should play her false. It
+was now Clara's turn to be proud and indignant.
+
+"Mamma!" she said, holding her head high, and looking at her mother
+boldly through her tears, "I have never deceived you yet."
+
+"Very well, my dear. I will take steps to prevent his intruding on
+you any further. There may be an end of the matter now. I have no
+doubt that he has endeavoured to use his influence with Patrick; but
+I will tell your brother not to speak of the matter further." And so
+saying, she dismissed her daughter.
+
+Shortly afterwards the earl came in, and there was a conference
+between him and his mother. Though they were both agreed on the
+subject, though both were decided that it would not do for Clara to
+throw herself away on a county Cork squire with eight hundred a year,
+a cadet in his family, and a man likely to rise to nothing, still the
+earl would not hear him abused.
+
+"But, Patrick, he must not come here any more," said the countess.
+
+"Well, I suppose not. But it will be very dull, I know that. I wish
+Clara hadn't made herself such an ass;" and then the boy went away,
+and talked kindly over the matter to his poor sister.
+
+But the countess had another task still before her. She must make
+known the family resolution to Owen Fitzgerald. When her children
+had left her, one after the other, she sat at the window for an hour,
+looking at nothing, but turning over her own thoughts in her mind.
+Hitherto she had expressed herself as being very angry with her
+daughter's lover; so angry that she had said that he was faithless,
+a traitor, and no gentleman. She had called him a dissipated
+spendthrift, and had threatened his future wife, if ever he should
+have one, with every kind of misery that could fall to a woman's lot;
+but now she began to think of him perhaps more kindly.
+
+She had been very angry with him;--and the more so because she had
+such cause to be angry with herself;--with her own lack of judgment,
+her own ignorance of the man's character, her own folly with
+reference to her daughter. She had never asked herself whether she
+loved Fitzgerald--had never done so till now. But now she knew that
+the sharpest blow she had received that day was the assurance that he
+was indifferent to herself.
+
+She had never thought herself too old to be on an equality with
+him,--on such an equality in point of age as men and women feel when
+they learn to love each other; and therefore it had not occurred to
+her that he could regard her daughter as other than a child. To Lady
+Desmond, Clara was a child; how then could she be more to him? And
+yet now it was too plain that he had looked on Clara as a woman. In
+what light then must he have thought of that woman's mother? And so,
+with saddened heart, but subdued anger, she continued to gaze through
+the window till all without was dusk and dark.
+
+There can be to a woman no remembrance of age so strong as that of
+seeing a daughter go forth to the world a married woman. If that does
+not tell the mother that the time of her own youth has passed away,
+nothing will ever bring the tale home. It had not quite come to this
+with Lady Desmond;--Clara was not going forth to the world as a
+married woman. But here was one now who had judged her as fit to
+be so taken; and this one was the very man of all others in whose
+estimation Lady Desmond would have wished to drop a few of the years
+that encumbered her.
+
+She was not, however, a weak woman, and so she performed her task.
+She had candles brought to her, and sitting down, she wrote a note to
+Owen Fitzgerald, saying that she herself would call at Hap House at
+an hour named on the following day.
+
+She had written three or four letters before she had made up her mind
+exactly as to the one she would send. At first she had desired him
+to come to her there at Desmond Court; but then she thought of the
+danger there might be of Clara seeing him;--of the danger, also, of
+her own feelings towards him when he should be there with her, in her
+own house, in the accustomed way. And she tried to say by letter all
+that it behoved her to say, so that there need be no meeting. But in
+this she failed. One letter was stern and arrogant, and the next was
+soft-hearted, so that it might teach him to think that his love for
+Clara might yet be successful. At last she resolved to go herself to
+Hap House; and accordingly she wrote her letter and despatched it.
+
+Fitzgerald was of course aware of the subject of the threatened
+visit. When he determined to make his proposal to Clara, the matter
+did not seem to him to be one in which all chances of success were
+desperate. If, he thought, he could induce the girl to love him,
+other smaller difficulties might be made to vanish from his path.
+He had now induced the girl to own that she did love him; but not
+the less did he begin to see that the difficulties were far from
+vanishing. Lady Desmond would never have taken upon herself to make a
+journey to Hap House, had not a sentence of absolute banishment from
+Desmond Court been passed against him.
+
+"Mr. Fitzgerald," she began, as soon as she found herself alone with
+him, "you will understand what has induced me to seek you here. After
+your imprudence with Lady Clara Desmond, I could not of course ask
+you to come to Desmond Court."
+
+"I may have been presumptuous, Lady Desmond, but I do not think that
+I have been imprudent. I love your daughter dearly, and I told her
+so. Immediately afterwards I told the same to her brother; and she,
+no doubt, has told the same to you."
+
+"Yes, she has, Mr. Fitzgerald. Clara, as you are well aware, is a
+child, absolutely a child; much more so than is usual with girls of
+her age. The knowledge of this should, I think, have protected her
+from your advances."
+
+"But I absolutely deny any such knowledge. And more than that, I
+think that you are greatly mistaken as to her character."
+
+"Mistaken, sir, as to my own daughter?"
+
+"Yes, Lady Desmond; I think you are. I think--"
+
+"On such a matter, Mr. Fitzgerald, I need not trouble you for an
+expression of your thoughts. Nor need we argue that subject any
+further. You must of course be aware that all ideas of any such
+marriage as this must be laid aside."
+
+"On what grounds, Lady Desmond?"
+
+Now this appeared to the countess to be rather impudent on the part
+of the young squire. The reasons why he, Owen Fitzgerald of Hap
+House, should not marry a daughter of an Earl of Desmond, seemed to
+her to be so conspicuous and conclusive, that it could hardly be
+necessary to enumerate them. And such as they were, it might not be
+pleasant to announce them in his hearing. But though Owen Fitzgerald
+was so evidently an unfit suitor for an earl's daughter, it might
+still be possible that he should be acceptable to an earl's widow.
+Ah! if it might be possible to teach him the two lessons at the same
+time!
+
+"On what grounds, Mr. Fitzgerald!" she said, repeating his question;
+"surely I need hardly tell you. Did not my son say the same thing to
+you yesterday, as he walked with you down the avenue?"
+
+"Yes; he told me candidly that he looked higher for his sister; and I
+liked him for his candour. But that is no reason that I should agree
+with him; or, which is much more important, that his sister should do
+so. If she thinks that she can be happy in such a home as I can give
+her, I do not know why he, or why you should object."
+
+"You think, then, that I might give her to a blacksmith, if she
+herself were mad enough to wish it?"
+
+"I thank you for the compliment, Lady Desmond."
+
+"You have driven me to it, sir."
+
+"I believe it is considered in the world," said he,--"that is, in
+our country, that the one great difference is between gentlemen
+and ladies, and those who are not gentlemen or ladies. A lady does
+not degrade herself if she marry a gentleman, even though that
+gentleman's rank be less high than her own."
+
+"It is not a question of degradation, but of prudence;--of the
+ordinary caution which I, as a mother, am bound to use as regards my
+daughter. Oh, Mr. Fitzgerald!" and she now altered her tone as she
+spoke to him; "we have all been so pleased to know you, so happy to
+have you there; why have you destroyed all this by one half-hour's
+folly?"
+
+"The folly, as you call it, Lady Desmond, has been premeditated for
+the last twelve months."
+
+"For twelve months!" said she, taken absolutely by surprise, and in
+her surprise believing him.
+
+"Yes, for twelve months. Ever since I began to know your daughter, I
+have loved her. You say that your daughter is a child. I also thought
+so this time last year, in our last winter holidays. I thought so
+then; and though I loved her as a child, I kept it to myself. Now she
+is a woman, and so thinking I have spoken to her as one. I have told
+her that I loved her, as I now tell you that come what may I must
+continue to do so. Had she made me believe that I was indifferent to
+her, absence, perhaps, and distance might have taught me to forget
+her. But such, I think, is not the case."
+
+"And you must forget her now."
+
+"Never, Lady Desmond."
+
+"Nonsense, sir. A child that does not know her own mind, that thinks
+of a lover as she does of some new toy, whose first appearance in the
+world was only made the other night at your cousin's house! you ought
+to feel ashamed of such a passion, Mr. Fitzgerald."
+
+"I am very far from being ashamed of it, Lady Desmond."
+
+"At any rate, let me tell you this. My daughter has promised me
+most solemnly that she will neither see you again, nor have any
+correspondence with you. And this I know of her, that her word is
+sacred. I can excuse her on account of her youth; and, young as
+she is, she already sees her own folly in having allowed you so to
+address her. But for you, Mr. Fitzgerald, under all the circumstances
+I can make no excuse for you. Is yours, do you think, the sort of
+house to which a young girl should be brought as a bride? Is your
+life, are your companions of that kind which could most profit her? I
+am sorry that you drive me to remind you of these things."
+
+His face became very dark, and his brow stern as his sins were thus
+cast into his teeth.
+
+"And from what you know of me, Lady Desmond," he said,--and as he
+spoke he assumed a dignity of demeanour which made her more inclined
+to love him than ever she had been before,--"do you think that I
+should be the man to introduce a young wife to such companions as
+those to whom you allude? Do you not know, are you not sure in your
+own heart, that my marriage with your daughter would instantly put an
+end to all that?"
+
+"Whatever may be my own thoughts, and they are not likely to be
+unfavourable to you--for Patrick's sake, I mean; but whatever may
+be my own thoughts, I will not subject my daughter to such a risk.
+And, Mr. Fitzgerald, you must allow me to say, that your income
+is altogether insufficient for her wants and your own. She has no
+fortune--"
+
+"I want none with her."
+
+"And--but I will not argue the matter with you. I did not come to
+argue it, but to tell you, with as little offence as may be possible,
+that such a marriage is absolutely impossible. My daughter herself
+has already abandoned all thoughts of it."
+
+"Her thoughts then must be wonderfully under her own control. Much
+more so than mine are."
+
+"Lord Desmond, you may be sure, will not hear of it."
+
+"Lord Desmond cannot at present be less of a child than his sister."
+
+"I don't know that, Mr. Fitzgerald."
+
+"At any rate, Lady Desmond, I will not put my happiness, nor as far
+as I am concerned in it, his sister's happiness, at his disposal.
+When I told her that I loved her, I did not speak, as you seem to
+think, from an impulse of the moment. I spoke because I loved her;
+and as I love her, I shall of course try to win her. Nothing can
+absolve me from my engagement to her but her marriage with another
+person."
+
+The countess had once or twice made small efforts to come to terms of
+peace with him; or rather to a truce, under which there might still
+be some friendship between them,--accompanied, however, by a positive
+condition that Clara should be omitted from any participation in it.
+She would have been willing to say, "Let all this be forgotten, only
+for some time to come you and Clara cannot meet each other." But
+Fitzgerald would by no means agree to such terms; and the countess
+was obliged to leave his house, having in effect only thrown down a
+gauntlet of battle; having in vain attempted to extend over it an
+olive-branch of peace.
+
+He helped her, however, into her little pony carriage, and at parting
+she gave him her hand. He just touched it, and then, taking off his
+hat, bowed courteously to her as she drove from his door.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE FITZGERALDS OF CASTLE RICHMOND.
+
+
+What idea of carrying out his plans may have been prevalent in
+Fitzgerald's mind when he was so defiant of the countess, it may be
+difficult to say. Probably he had no idea, but felt at the spur of
+the moment that it would be weak to yield. The consequence was, that
+when Lady Desmond left Hap House, he was obliged to consider himself
+as being at feud with the family.
+
+The young lord he did see once again during the holidays, and even
+entertained him at Hap House; but the earl's pride would not give way
+an inch.
+
+"Much as I like you, Owen, I cannot do anything but oppose it. It
+would be a bad match for my sister, and so you'd feel if you were in
+my place." And then Lord Desmond went back to Eton.
+
+After that they none of them met for many months. During this time
+life went on in a very triste manner at Desmond Court. Lady Desmond
+felt that she had done her duty by her daughter; but her tenderness
+to Clara was not increased by the fact that her foolish attachment
+had driven Fitzgerald from the place. As for Clara herself, she
+not only kept her word, but rigidly resolved to keep it. Twice she
+returned unopened, and without a word of notice, letters which Owen
+had caused to be conveyed to her hand. It was not that she had ceased
+to love him, but she had high ideas of truth and honour, and would
+not break her word. Perhaps she was sustained in her misery by the
+remembrance that heroines are always miserable.
+
+And then the orgies at Hap House became hotter and faster. Hitherto
+there had perhaps been more smoke than fire, more calumny than sin.
+And Fitzgerald, when he had intimated that the presence of a young
+wife would save him from it all, had not boasted falsely. But now
+that his friends had turned their backs upon him, that he was
+banished from Desmond Court, and twitted with his iniquities at
+Castle Richmond, he threw off all restraint, and endeavoured to enjoy
+himself in his own way. So the orgies became fast and furious; all
+which of course reached the ears of poor Clara Desmond.
+
+During the summer holidays, Lord Desmond was not at home, but Owen
+Fitzgerald was also away. He had gone abroad, perhaps with the
+conviction that it would be well that he and the Desmonds should not
+meet; and he remained abroad till the hunting season again commenced.
+Then the winter came again, and he and Lord Desmond used to meet in
+the field. There they would exchange courtesies, and, to a certain
+degree, show that they were intimate. But all the world knew that the
+old friendship was over. And, indeed, all the world--all the county
+Cork world--soon knew the reason. And so we are brought down to the
+period at which our story was to begin.
+
+We have hitherto said little or nothing of Castle Richmond and its
+inhabitants; but it is now time that we should do so, and we will
+begin with the heir of the family. At the period of which we are
+speaking, Herbert Fitzgerald had just returned from Oxford, having
+completed his affairs there in a manner very much to the satisfaction
+of his father, mother, and sisters; and to the unqualified admiration
+of his aunt, Miss Letty. I am not aware that the heads of colleges,
+and supreme synod of Dons had signified by any general expression of
+sentiment, that Herbert Fitzgerald had so conducted himself as to
+be a standing honour and perpetual glory to the University; but at
+Castle Richmond it was all the same as though they had done so. There
+are some kindly-hearted, soft-minded parents, in whose estimation
+not to have fallen into disgrace shows the highest merit on the part
+of their children. Herbert had not been rusticated; had not got
+into debt, at least not to an extent that had been offensive to
+his father's pocket; he had not been plucked. Indeed, he had taken
+honours, in some low unnoticed degree;--unnoticed, that is, at
+Oxford; but noticed at Castle Richmond by an ovation--almost by a
+triumph.
+
+But Herbert Fitzgerald was a son to gladden a father's heart and a
+mother's eye. He was not handsome, as was his cousin Owen; not tall
+and stalwart and godlike in his proportions, as was the reveller
+of Hap House; but nevertheless, and perhaps not the less, was he
+pleasant to look on. He was smaller and darker than his cousin; but
+his eyes were bright and full of good humour. He was clean looking
+and clean made; pleasant and courteous in all his habits; attached
+to books in a moderate, easy way, but no bookworm; he had a gentle
+affection for bindings and title-pages; was fond of pictures, of
+which it might be probable that he would some day know more than
+he did at present; addicted to Gothic architecture, and already
+proprietor of the germ of what was to be a collection of coins.
+
+Owen Fitzgerald had called him a prig; but Herbert was no prig. Nor
+yet was he a pedant; which word might, perhaps, more nearly have
+expressed his cousin's meaning. He liked little bits of learning,
+the easy outsides and tags of classical acquirements, which come so
+easily within the scope of the memory when a man has passed some ten
+years between a public school and a university. But though he did
+love to chew the cud of these morsels of Attic grass which he had
+cropped, certainly without any great or sustained effort, he had no
+desire to be ostentatious in doing so, or to show off more than he
+knew. Indeed, now that he was away from his college friends, he was
+rather ashamed of himself than otherwise when scraps of quotations
+would break forth from him in his own despite. Looking at his true
+character, it was certainly unjust to call him either a prig or a
+pedant.
+
+He was fond of the society of ladies, and was a great favourite with
+his sisters, who thought that every girl who saw him must instantly
+fall in love with him. He was goodnatured, and, as the only son of a
+rich man, was generally well provided with money. Such a brother is
+usually a favourite with his sisters. He was a great favourite too
+with his aunt, whose heart, however, was daily sinking into her shoes
+through the effect of one great terror which harassed her respecting
+him. She feared that he had become a Puseyite. Now that means much
+with some ladies in England; but with most ladies of the Protestant
+religion in Ireland, it means, one may almost say, the very Father of
+Mischief himself. In their minds, the pope, with his lady of Babylon,
+his college of cardinals, and all his community of pinchbeck saints,
+holds a sort of second head-quarters of his own at Oxford. And there
+his high priest is supposed to be one wicked infamous Pusey, and his
+worshippers are wicked infamous Puseyites. Now, Miss Letty Fitzgerald
+was strong on this subject, and little inklings had fallen from her
+nephew which robbed her of much of her peace of mind.
+
+It is impossible that these volumes should be graced by any hero,
+for the story does not admit of one. But if there were to be a hero,
+Herbert Fitzgerald would be the man.
+
+Sir Thomas Fitzgerald at this period was an old man in appearance,
+though by no means an old man in years, being hardly more than fifty.
+Why he should have withered away as it were into premature grayness,
+and loss of the muscle and energy of life, none knew; unless, indeed,
+his wife did know. But so it was. He had, one may say, all that a
+kind fortune could give him. He had a wife who was devoted to him; he
+had a son on whom he doted, and of whom all men said all good things;
+he had two sweet, happy daughters; he had a pleasant house, a fine
+estate, position and rank in the world. Had it so pleased him, he
+might have sat in Parliament without any of the trouble, and with
+very little of the expense, which usually attends aspirants for that
+honour. And, as it was, he might hope to see his son in Parliament
+within a year or two. For among other possessions of the Fitzgerald
+family was the land on which stands the borough of Kilcommon, a
+borough to which the old Reform Bill was merciful, as it was to so
+many others in the south of Ireland.
+
+Why, then, should Sir Thomas Fitzgerald be a silent, melancholy man,
+confining himself for the last year or two almost entirely to his own
+study; giving up to his steward the care even of his own demesne and
+farm; never going to the houses of his friends, and rarely welcoming
+them to his; rarely as it was, and never as it would have been, had
+he been always allowed to have his own way?
+
+People in the surrounding neighbourhood had begun to say that Sir
+Thomas's sorrow had sprung from shortness of cash, and that money was
+not so easily to be had at Castle Richmond now-a-days as was the case
+some ten years since. If this were so, the dearth of that very useful
+article could not have in any degree arisen from extravagance. It
+was well known that Sir Thomas's estate was large, being of a value,
+according to that public and well-authenticated rent-roll which the
+neighbours of a rich man always carry in their heads, amounting to
+twelve or fourteen thousand a year. Now Sir Thomas had come into the
+unencumbered possession of this at an early age, and had never been
+extravagant himself or in his family. His estates were strictly
+entailed, and therefore, as he had only a life interest in them,
+it of course was necessary that he should save money and insure
+his life, to make provision for his daughters. But by a man of his
+habits and his property, such a burden as this could hardly have been
+accounted any burden at all. That he did, however, in this mental
+privacy of his carry some heavy burden, was made plain enough to all
+who knew him.
+
+And Lady Fitzgerald was in many things a counterpart of her husband,
+not in health so much as in spirits. She, also, was old for her age,
+and woebegone, not only in appearance, but also in the inner workings
+of her heart. But then it was known of her that she had undergone
+deep sorrows in her early youth, which had left their mark upon her
+brow, and their trace upon her inmost thoughts. Sir Thomas had not
+been her first husband. When very young, she had been married, or
+rather, given in marriage, to a man who in a very few weeks after
+that ill-fated union had shown himself to be perfectly unworthy of
+her.
+
+Her story, or so much of it as was known to her friends, was this.
+Her father had been a clergyman in Dorsetshire, burdened with a small
+income, and blessed with a large family. She who afterwards became
+Lady Fitzgerald was his eldest child; and, as Miss Wainwright--Mary
+Wainwright--had grown up to be the possessor of almost perfect female
+loveliness. While she was yet very young, a widower with an only boy,
+a man who at that time was considerably less than thirty, had come
+into her father's parish, having rented there a small hunting-box.
+This gentleman--we will so call him, in lack of some other
+term--immediately became possessed of an establishment, at any rate
+eminently respectable. He had three hunters, two grooms, and a gig;
+and on Sundays went to church with a prayer-book in his hand, and
+a black coat on his back. What more could be desired to prove his
+respectability?
+
+He had not been there a month before he was intimate in the parson's
+house. Before two months had passed he was engaged to the parson's
+daughter. Before the full quarter had flown by, he and the parson's
+daughter were man and wife; and in five months from the time of his
+first appearance in the Dorsetshire parish, he had flown from his
+creditors, leaving behind him his three horses, his two grooms, his
+gig, his wife, and his little boy.
+
+The Dorsetshire neighbours, and especially the Dorsetshire ladies,
+had at first been loud in their envious exclamations as to Miss
+Wainwright's luck. The parson and the parson's wife, and poor Mary
+Wainwright herself, had, according to the sayings of that moment
+prevalent in the county, used most unjustifiable wiles in trapping
+this poor rich stranger. Miss Wainwright, as they all declared, had
+not clothes to her back when she went to him. The matter had been got
+up and managed in most indecent hurry, so as to rob the poor fellow
+of any chance of escape. And thus all manner of evil things were
+said, in which envy of the bride and pity of the bridegroom were
+equally commingled.
+
+But when the sudden news came that Mr. Talbot had bolted, and when
+after a week's inquiry no one could tell whither Mr. Talbot had gone,
+the objurgations of the neighbours were expressed in a different
+tone. Then it was declared that Mr. Wainwright had sacrificed his
+beautiful child without making any inquiry as to the character of
+the stranger to whom he had so recklessly given her. The pity of the
+county fell to the share of the poor beautiful girl, whose welfare
+and happiness were absolutely ruined; and the parson was pulled to
+pieces for his sordid parsimony in having endeavoured to rid himself
+in so disgraceful a manner of the charge of one of his children.
+
+It would be beyond the scope of my story to tell here of the anxious
+family councils which were held in that parsonage parlour, during the
+time of that daughter's courtship. There had been misgivings as to
+the stability of the wooer; there had been an anxious wish not to
+lose for the penniless daughter the advantage of a wealthy match;
+the poor girl herself had been much cross-questioned as to her own
+feelings. But let them have been right, or let them have been wrong
+at that parsonage, the matter was settled, very speedily as we have
+seen; and Mary Wainwright became Mrs. Talbot when she was still
+almost a child.
+
+And then Mr. Talbot bolted; and it became known to the Dorsetshire
+world that he had not paid a shilling for rent, or for butcher's meat
+for his human family, or for oats for his equine family, during the
+whole period of his sojourn at Chevy-chase Lodge. Grand references
+had been made to a London banker, which had been answered by
+assurances that Mr. Talbot was as good as the Bank of England. But
+it turned out that the assurances were forged, and that the letter
+of inquiry addressed to the London banker had been intercepted. In
+short, it was all ruin, roguery, and wretchedness.
+
+And very wretched they all were, the old father, the young bride, and
+all that parsonage household. After much inquiry something at last
+was discovered. The man had a sister whose whereabouts was made out;
+and she consented to receive the child--on condition that the bairn
+should not come to her empty-handed. In order to get rid of this
+burden, Mr. Wainwright with great difficulty made up thirty pounds.
+
+And then it was discovered that the man's name was not Talbot.
+What it was did not become known in Dorsetshire, for the poor wife
+resumed her maiden name--with very little right to do so, as her kind
+neighbours observed--till fortune so kindly gave her the privilege of
+bearing another honourably before the world.
+
+And then other inquiries, and almost endless search was made with
+reference to that miscreant--not quite immediately--for at the moment
+of the blow such search seemed to be but of little use; but after
+some months, when the first stupor arising from their grief had
+passed away, and when they once more began to find that the fields
+were still green, and the sun warm, and that God's goodness was not
+at an end.
+
+And the search was made not so much with reference to him as to his
+fate, for tidings had reached the parsonage that he was no more. The
+period was that in which Paris was occupied by the allied forces,
+when our general, the Duke of Wellington, was paramount in the French
+capital, and the Tuileries and Champs Elysees were swarming with
+Englishmen.
+
+Report at the time was brought home that the soi-disant Talbot,
+fighting his battles under the name of Chichester, had been seen and
+noted in the gambling-houses of Paris; that he had been forcibly
+extruded from some such chamber for non-payment of a gambling debt;
+that he had made one in a violent fracas which had subsequently taken
+place in the French streets; and that his body had afterwards been
+identified in the Morgue.
+
+Such was the story which bit by bit reached Mr. Wainwright's ears,
+and at last induced him to go over to Paris, so that the absolute and
+proof-sustained truth of the matter might be ascertained, and made
+known to all men. The poor man's search was difficult and weary. The
+ways of Paris were not then so easy to an Englishman as they have
+since become, and Mr. Wainwright could not himself speak a word of
+French. But nevertheless he did learn much; so much as to justify
+him, as he thought, in instructing his daughter to wear a widow's
+cap. That Talbot had been kicked out of a gambling-house in the Rue
+Richelieu was absolutely proved. An acquaintance who had been with
+him in Dorsetshire on his first arrival there had seen this done;
+and bore testimony of the fact that the man so treated was the man
+who had taken the hunting-lodge in England. This same acquaintance
+had been one of the party adverse to Talbot in the row which had
+followed, and he could not, therefore, be got to say that he had
+seen him dead. But other evidence had gone to show that the man who
+had been so extruded was the man who had perished; and the French
+lawyer whom Mr. Wainwright had employed, at last assured the poor
+broken-hearted clergyman that he might look upon it as proved. "Had
+he not been dead," said the lawyer, "the inquiry which has been
+made would have traced him out alive." And thus his daughter was
+instructed to put on her widow's cap, and her mother again called her
+Mrs. Talbot.
+
+Indeed, at that time they hardly knew what to call her, or how to act
+in the wisest and most befitting manner. Among those who had truly
+felt for them in their misfortunes, who had really pitied them and
+encountered them with loving sympathy, the kindest and most valued
+friend had been the vicar of a neighbouring parish. He himself was
+a widower without children; but living with him at that time, and
+reading with him, was a young gentleman whose father was just dead,
+a baronet of large property, and an Irishman. This was Sir Thomas
+Fitzgerald.
+
+It need not now be told how this young man's sympathies were also
+excited, or how sympathy had grown into love. In telling our tale
+we fain would not dwell much on the cradledom of our Meleager. The
+young widow in her widow's cap grew to be more lovely than she
+had ever been before her miscreant husband had seen her. They who
+remembered her in those days told wondrous tales of her surprising
+loveliness;--how men from London would come down to see her in the
+parish church; how she was talked of as the Dorsetshire Venus, only
+that unlike Venus she would give a hearing to no man; how sad she was
+as well as lovely; and how impossible it was found to win a smile
+from her.
+
+But though she could not smile, she could love; and at last she
+accepted the love of the young baronet. And then the father, who had
+so grossly neglected his duty when he gave her in marriage to an
+unknown rascally adventurer, endeavoured to atone for such neglect
+by the severest caution with reference to this new suitor. Further
+inquiries were made. Sir Thomas went over to Paris himself with that
+other clergyman. Lawyers were employed in England to sift out the
+truth; and at last, by the united agreement of some dozen men, all
+of whom were known to be worthy, it was decided that Talbot was dead,
+and that his widow was free to choose another mate. Another mate she
+had already chosen, and immediately after this she was married to Sir
+Thomas Fitzgerald.
+
+Such was the early life-story of Lady Fitzgerald; and as this was
+widely known to those who lived around her--for how could such a
+life-story as that remain untold?--no one wondered why she should
+be gentle and silent in her life's course. That she had been an
+excellent wife, a kind and careful mother, a loving neighbour to
+the poor, and courteous neighbour to the rich, all the county
+Cork admitted. She had lived down envy by her gentleness and soft
+humility, and every one spoke of her and her retiring habits with
+sympathy and reverence.
+
+But why should her husband also be so sad--nay, so much sadder?
+For Lady Fitzgerald, though she was gentle and silent, was not
+a sorrowful woman--otherwise than she was made so by seeing her
+husband's sorrow. She had been to him a loving partner, and no man
+could more tenderly have returned a wife's love than he had done.
+One would say that all had run smoothly at Castle Richmond since the
+house had been made happy, after some years of waiting, by the birth
+of an eldest child and heir. But, nevertheless, those who knew most
+of Sir Thomas saw that there was a peacock on the wall.
+
+It is only necessary to say further a word or two as to the other
+ladies of the family, and hardly necessary to say that. Mary and
+Emmeline Fitzgerald were both cheerful girls. I do not mean that they
+were boisterous laughers, that in waltzing they would tear round a
+room like human steam-engines, that they rode well to hounds as some
+young ladies now-a-days do--and some young ladies do ride very well
+to hounds; nor that they affected slang, and decked their persons
+with odds and ends of masculine costume. In saying that they were
+cheerful, I by no means wish it to be understood that they were loud.
+
+They were pretty, too, but neither of them lovely, as their mother
+had been--hardly, indeed, so lovely as that pale mother was now,
+even in these latter days. Ah, how very lovely that pale mother was,
+as she sat still and silent in her own place on the small sofa by
+the slight, small table which she used! Her hair was gray, and her
+eyes sunken, and her lips thin and bloodless; but yet never shall I
+see her equal for pure feminine beauty, for form and outline, for
+passionless grace, and sweet, gentle, womanly softness. All her sad
+tale was written upon her brow; all its sadness and all its poetry.
+One could read there the fearful, all but fatal danger to which her
+childhood had been exposed, and the daily thanks with which she
+praised her God for having spared and saved her.
+
+But I am running back to the mother in attempting to say a word
+about her children. Of the two, Emmeline, the younger, was the more
+like her; but no one who was a judge of outline could imagine that
+Emmeline, at her mother's age, would ever have her mother's beauty.
+Nevertheless, they were fine, handsome girls, more popular in the
+neighbourhood than any of their neighbours, well educated, sensible,
+feminine, and useful; fitted to be the wives of good men.
+
+And what shall I say of Miss Letty? She was ten years older than her
+brother, and as strong as a horse. She was great at walking, and
+recommended that exercise strongly to all young ladies as an antidote
+to every ill, from love to chilblains. She was short and dapper in
+person; not ugly, excepting that her nose was long, and had a little
+bump or excrescence at the end of it. She always wore a bonnet, even
+at meal times; and was supposed by those who were not intimately
+acquainted with the mysteries of her toilet, to sleep in it; often,
+indeed, she did sleep in it, and gave unmusical evidence of her doing
+so. She was not illnatured; but so strongly prejudiced on many points
+as to be equally disagreeable as though she were so. With her, as
+with the world in general, religion was the point on which those
+prejudices were the strongest; and the peculiar bent they took was
+horror and hatred of popery. As she lived in a country in which the
+Roman Catholic was the religion of all the poorer classes, and of
+very many persons who were not poor, there was ample scope in which
+her horror and hatred could work. She was charitable to a fault, and
+would exercise that charity for the good of Papists as willingly as
+for the good of Protestants; but in doing so she always remembered
+the good cause. She always clogged the flannel petticoat with some
+Protestant teaching, or burdened the little coat and trousers with
+the pains and penalties of idolatry.
+
+When her brother had married the widow Talbot, her anger with him
+and her hatred towards her sister-in-law had been extreme. But time
+and conviction had worked in her so thorough a change, that she now
+almost worshipped the very spot in which Lady Fitzgerald habitually
+sat. She had the faculty to know and recognize goodness when she saw
+it, and she had known and recognized it in her brother's wife.
+
+Him also, her brother himself, she warmly loved and greatly
+reverenced. She deeply grieved over his state of body and mind, and
+would have given all she ever had, even her very self, to restore him
+to health and happiness.
+
+The three children of course she loved, and petted, and scolded;
+and as children bothered them out of all their peace and quietness.
+To the girls she was still almost as great a torment as in their
+childish days. Nevertheless, they still loved, and sometimes obeyed
+her. Of Herbert she stood somewhat more in awe. He was the future
+head of the family, and already a Bachelor of Arts. In a very few
+years he would probably assume the higher title of a married man of
+arts, she thought; and perhaps the less formidable one of a member of
+Parliament also. Him, therefore, she treated with deference. But,
+alas! what if he should become a Puseyite!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE KANTURK HOTEL, SOUTH MAIN STREET, CORK.
+
+
+All the world no doubt knows South Main Street in the city of Cork.
+In the "ould" ancient days, South and North Main Streets formed the
+chief thoroughfare through the city, and hence of course they derived
+their names. But now, since Patrick Street, and Grand Parade, and the
+South Mall have grown up, Main Street has but little honour. It is
+crowded with second-rate tobacconists and third-rate grocers; the
+houses are dirty, and the street is narrow; fashionable ladies never
+visit it for their shopping, nor would any respectable commercial
+gent stop at an inn within its purlieus.
+
+But here in South Main Street, at the time of which I am writing,
+there was an inn, or public-house, called the Kanturk Hotel. In dear
+old Ireland they have some foibles, and one of them is a passion
+for high nomenclature. Those who are accustomed to the sort of
+establishments which are met with in England, and much more in
+Germany and Switzerland, under the name of hotels, might be surprised
+to see the place in South Main Street which had been dignified with
+the same appellation. It was a small, dingy house of three stories,
+the front door of which was always open, and the passage strewed
+with damp, dirty straw. On the left-hand side as you entered was
+a sitting-room, or coffee-room as it was announced to be by an
+appellation painted on the door. There was but one window to the
+room, which looked into the street, and was always clouded by a
+dingy-red curtain. The floor was uncarpeted, nearly black with dirt,
+and usually half covered with fragments of damp straw brought into
+it by the feet of customers. A strong smell of hot whisky and water
+always prevailed, and the straggling mahogany table in the centre
+of the room, whose rickety legs gave way and came off whenever an
+attempt was made to move it, was covered by small greasy circles, the
+impressions of the bottoms of tumblers which had been made by the
+overflowing tipple. Over the chimney there was a round mirror, the
+framework of which was bedizened with all manner of would-be gilt
+ornaments, which had been cracked, and twisted, and mended till it
+was impossible to know what they had been intended to represent; and
+the whole affair had become a huge receptacle of dust, which fell in
+flakes upon the chimney-piece when it was invaded. There was a second
+table opposite the window, more rickety than that in the centre;
+and against the wall opposite to the fireplace there was an old
+sideboard, in the drawers of which Tom, the one-eyed waiter, kept
+knives and forks, and candle-ends, and bits of bread, and dusters.
+There was a sour smell, as of old rancid butter, about the place,
+to which the guests sometimes objected, little inclined as they
+generally were to be fastidious. But this was a tender subject, and
+not often alluded to by those who wished to stand well in the good
+graces of Tom. Many things much annoyed Tom; but nothing annoyed him
+so fearfully as any assertion that the air of the Kanturk Hotel was
+not perfectly sweet and wholesome.
+
+Behind the coffee-room was the bar, from which Fanny O'Dwyer
+dispensed dandies of punch and goes of brandy to her father's
+customers from Kanturk. For at this, as at other similar
+public-houses in Irish towns, the greater part of the custom on
+which the publican depends came to him from the inhabitants of one
+particular country district. A large four-wheeled vehicle, called
+a long car, which was drawn by three horses, and travelled over a
+mountain road at the rate of four Irish miles an hour, came daily
+from Kanturk to Cork, and daily returned. This public conveyance
+stopped in Cork at the Kanturk Hotel, and was owned by the owner of
+that house, in partnership with a brother in the same trade located
+in Kanturk. It was Mr. O'Dwyer's business to look after this concern,
+to see to the passengers and the booking, the oats, and hay, and
+stabling, while his well-known daughter, the charming Fanny O'Dwyer,
+took care of the house, and dispensed brandy and whisky to the
+customers from Kanturk.
+
+To tell the truth, the bar was a much more alluring place than the
+coffee-room, and Fanny O'Dwyer a more alluring personage than Tom,
+the one-eyed waiter. This Elysium, however, was not open to all
+comers--not even to all comers from Kanturk. Those who had the right
+of entry well knew their privilege; and so also did they who had not.
+This sanctum was screened off from the passage by a window, which
+opened upwards conveniently, as is customary with bar-windows; but
+the window was blinded inside by a red curtain, so that Fanny's
+stool near the counter, her father's wooden arm-chair, and the old
+horsehair sofa on which favoured guests were wont to sit, were not
+visible to the public at large.
+
+Of the up-stair portion of this establishment it is not necessary to
+say much. It professed to be an hotel, and accommodation for sleeping
+was to be obtained there; but the well-being of the house depended
+but little on custom of this class.
+
+Nor need I say much of the kitchen, a graphic description of which
+would not be pleasing. Here lived a cook, who, together with Tom
+the waiter, did all that servants had to do at the Kanturk Hotel.
+From this kitchen lumps of beef, mutton chops, and potatoes did
+occasionally emanate, all perfumed with plenteous onions; as also did
+fried eggs, with bacon an inch thick, and other culinary messes too
+horrible to be thought of. But drinking rather than eating was the
+staple of this establishment. Such was the Kanturk Hotel in South
+Main Street, Cork.
+
+It was on a disagreeable, cold, sloppy, raw, winter evening--an
+evening drizzling sometimes with rain, and sometimes with sleet--that
+an elderly man was driven up to the door of the hotel on a one-horse
+car--or jingle, as such conveniences were then called in the south of
+Ireland. He seemed to know the house, for with his outside coat all
+dripping as it was he went direct to the bar-window, and as Fanny
+O'Dwyer opened the door he walked into that warm precinct. There he
+encountered a gentleman, dressed one would say rather beyond the
+merits of the establishment, who was taking his ease at full length
+on Fanny's sofa, and drinking some hot compound which was to be seen
+in a tumbler on the chimney-shelf just above his head. It was now six
+o'clock in the evening, and the gentleman no doubt had dined.
+
+"Well, Aby; here I am, as large as life, but as cold as death. Ugh;
+what an affair that coach is! Fanny, my best of darlings, give me a
+drop of something that's best for warming the cockles of an old man's
+heart."
+
+"A young wife then is the best thing in life to do that, Mr.
+Mollett," said Fanny, sharply, preparing, however, at the same time
+some mixture which might be taken more instantaneously.
+
+"The governor's had enough of that receipt already," said the man
+on the sofa; or rather the man now off the sofa, for he had slowly
+arisen to shake hands with the new comer.
+
+This latter person proceeded to divest himself of his dripping
+greatcoat. "Here, Tom," said he, "bring your old Cyclops eye to bear
+this way, will you. Go and hang that up in the kitchen; not too near
+the fire now; and get me something to eat: none of your mutton chops;
+but a beefsteak if there is such a thing in this benighted place.
+Well, Aby, how goes on the war?"
+
+It was clear that the elderly gentleman was quite at home in his
+present quarters; for Tom, far from resenting such impertinence, as
+he would immediately have done had it proceeded from an ordinary
+Kanturk customer, declared "that he would do his honour's bidding av
+there was such a thing as a beefsteak to be had anywhere's in the
+city of Cork."
+
+And indeed the elderly gentleman was a person of whom one might
+premise, judging by his voice and appearance, that he would probably
+make himself at home anywhere. He was a hale hearty man, of perhaps
+sixty years of age, who had certainly been handsome, and was even
+now not the reverse. Or rather, one may say, that he would have been
+so were it not that there was a low, restless, cunning legible in
+his mouth and eyes, which robbed his countenance of all manliness.
+He was a hale man, and well preserved for his time of life; but
+nevertheless, the extra rubicundity of his face, and certain
+incipient pimply excrescences about his nose, gave tokens that he
+lived too freely. He had lived freely; and were it not that his
+constitution had been more than ordinarily strong, and that constant
+exercise and exposure to air had much befriended him, those pimply
+excrescences would have shown themselves in a more advanced stage.
+Such was Mr. Mollett senior--Mr. Matthew Mollett, with whom it will
+be soon our fate to be better acquainted.
+
+The gentleman who had slowly risen from the sofa was his son, Mr.
+Mollett junior--Mr. Abraham Mollett, with whom also we shall become
+better acquainted. The father has been represented as not being
+exactly prepossessing; but the son, according to my ideas, was much
+less so. He also would be considered handsome by some persons--by
+women chiefly of the Fanny O'Dwyer class, whose eyes are capable of
+recognizing what is good in shape and form, but cannot recognize
+what is good in tone and character. Mr. Abraham Mollett was perhaps
+some thirty years of age, or rather more. He was a very smart man,
+with a profusion of dark, much-oiled hair, with dark, copious
+mustachoes--and mustachoes being then not common as they are now,
+added to his otherwise rakish, vulgar appearance--with various rings
+on his not well-washed hands, with a frilled front to his not lately
+washed shirt, with a velvet collar to his coat, and patent-leather
+boots upon his feet.
+
+Free living had told more upon him, young as he was, than upon his
+father. His face was not yet pimply, but it was red and bloated;
+his eyes were bloodshot and protruding; his hand on a morning was
+unsteady; and his passion for brandy was stronger than that for
+beefsteaks; whereas his father's appetite for solid food had never
+flagged. Those who were intimate with the family, and were observant
+of men, were wont to remark that the son would never fill the
+father's shoes. These family friends, I may perhaps add, were
+generally markers at billiard-tables, head grooms at race-courses, or
+other men of that sharp, discerning class. Seeing that I introduce
+these gentlemen to my readers at the Kanturk Hotel, in South Main
+Street, Cork, it may be perhaps as well to add that they were both
+Englishmen; so that mistakes on that matter may be avoided.
+
+The father, as soon as he had rid himself of his upper coat, his
+dripping hat, and his goloshes, stood up with his back to the
+bar-room fire, with his hands in his trousers-pockets, and the tails
+of his coat stuck inside his arms.
+
+"I tell you, Aby, it was cold enough outside that infernal coach. I'm
+blessed if I've a morsel of feeling in my toes yet. Why the d----
+don't they continue the railway on to Cork? It's as much as a man's
+life is worth to travel in that sort of way at this time of the
+year."
+
+"You'll have more of it then if you intend going out of town
+to-morrow," said the son.
+
+"Well; I don't know that I shall. I shall take a day to consider of
+it I think."
+
+"Consideration be bothered," said Mollett junior; "strike when the
+iron's hot; that's my motto."
+
+The father here turned half round to his son and winked at him,
+nodding his head slightly towards the girl, thereby giving token
+that, according to his ideas, the conversation could not be
+discreetly carried on before a third person.
+
+"All right," said the son, lifting his joram of brandy and water to
+his mouth; an action in which he was immediately imitated by his
+father, who had now received the means of doing so from the hands of
+the fair Fanny.
+
+"And how about a bed, my dear?" said Mollett senior; "that's a matter
+of importance too; or will be when we are getting on to the little
+hours."
+
+"Oh, we won't turn you out, Mr. Mollett," said Fanny; "we'll find a
+bed for you, never fear."
+
+"That's all right then, my little Venus. And now if I had some dinner
+I'd sit down and make myself comfortable for the evening."
+
+As he said this, Fanny slipped out of the room, and ran down into the
+kitchen to see what Tom and the cook were doing. The Molletts, father
+and son, were rather more than ordinary good customers at the Kanturk
+Hotel, and it was politic therefore to treat them well. Mr. Mollett
+junior, moreover, was almost more than a customer; and for the sake
+of the son Fanny was anxious that the father should be well treated.
+
+"Well, governor, and what have you done?" said the younger man in a
+low voice, jumping up from his seat as soon as the girl had left them
+alone.
+
+"Well, I've got the usual remittance from the man in Bucklersbury.
+That was all as right as a trivet."
+
+"And no more than that? Then I tell you what it is; we must be down
+on him at once."
+
+"But you forget that I got as much more last month, out of the usual
+course. Come, Aby, don't you be unreasonable."
+
+"Bother--I tell you, governor, if he don't--" And then Miss O'Dwyer
+returned to her sanctum, and the rest of the conversation was
+necessarily postponed.
+
+"He's managed to get you a lovely steak, Mr. Mollett," said Fanny,
+pronouncing the word as though it were written "steek." "And we've
+beautiful pickled walnuts; haven't we, Mr. Aby? and there'll be
+kidneys biled" (meaning potatoes) "by the time the 'steek's' ready.
+You like it with the gravy in, don't you, Mr. Mollett?" And as she
+spoke she drew a quartern of whisky for two of Beamish and Crawford's
+draymen, who stood outside in the passage and drank it at the bar.
+
+The lovely "steek" with the gravy in it--that is to say, nearly
+raw--was now ready, and father and son adjourned to the next room.
+"Well, Tom, my lad of wax; and how's the world using you?" said Mr.
+Mollett senior.
+
+"There ain't much difference then," said Tom; "I ain't no younger,
+nor yet no richer than when yer honour left us--and what is't to be,
+sir?--a pint of stout, sir?"
+
+As soon as Mr. Mollett senior had finished his dinner, and Tom had
+brought the father and son materials for making whisky-punch, they
+both got their knees together over the fire, and commenced the
+confidential conversation which Miss O'Dwyer had interrupted on her
+return to the bar-room. They spoke now almost in a whisper, with
+their heads together over the fender, knowing from experience that
+what Tom wanted in eyes he made up in ears.
+
+"And what did Prendergast say when he paid you the rhino?" asked the
+son.
+
+"Not a word," said the other. "After all, I don't think he knows
+any more than a ghost what he pays it for: I think he gets fresh
+instructions every time. But, any ways, there it was, all right."
+
+"Hall right, indeed! I do believe you'd be satisfied to go on getting
+a few dribblets now and then like that. And then if anything 'appened
+to you, why I might go fish."
+
+"How, Aby, look here--"
+
+"It's hall very well, governor; but I'll tell you what. Since you
+started off I've been thinking a good deal about it, and I've made up
+my mind that this shilly-shallying won't do any good: we must strike
+a blow that'll do something for us."
+
+"Well, I don't think we've done so bad already, taking it
+all-in-all."
+
+"Ah, that's because you haven't the pluck to strike a good blow.
+Now I'll just let you know what I propose--and I tell you fairly,
+governor, if you'll not hear reason, I'll take the game into my own
+hands."
+
+The father looked up from his drink and scowled at his son, but said
+nothing in answer to this threat.
+
+"By G---- I will!" continued Aby. "It's no use 'umbugging, and I mean
+to make myself understood. While you've been gone I've been down to
+that place."
+
+"You 'aven't seen the old man?"
+
+"No; I 'aven't taken that step yet; but I think it's very likely I
+may before long if you won't hear reason."
+
+"I was a d---- fool, Aby, ever to let you into the affair at all.
+It's been going on quiet enough for the last ten years, till I let
+you into the secret."
+
+"Well, never mind about that. That mischief's done. But I think
+you'll find I'll pull you through a deal better than hever you'd have
+pulled through yourself. You're already making twice more out of it
+than you did before I knew it. As I was saying, I went down there;
+and in my quiet way I did just venture on a few hinquiries."
+
+"I'll be bound you did. You'll blow it all in about another month,
+and then it'll be up with the lot of us."
+
+"It's a beautiful place: a lovely spot; and hall in prime horder.
+They say it's fifteen thousand a year, and that there's not a
+shilling howing on the whole property. Even in these times the
+tenants are paying the rent, when no one else, far and near,
+is getting a penny out of them. I went by another place on the
+road--Castle Desmond they call it, and I wish you'd seen the
+difference. The old boy must be rolling in money."
+
+"I don't believe it. There's one as I can trust has told me he's hard
+up enough sometimes. Why, we've had twelve hundred in the last eight
+months."
+
+"Twelve hundred! and what's that? But, dickens, governor, where has
+the twelve hundred gone? I've only seen three of it, and part of
+that--. Well; what do you want there, you long-eared shark, you?"
+These last words were addressed to Tom, who had crept into the room,
+certainly without much preparatory noise.
+
+"I was only wanting the thingumbob, yer honour," said Tom, pretending
+to search diligently in the drawer for some required article.
+
+"Then take your thingumbob quickly out of that, and be d---- to you.
+And look here; if you don't knock at the door when next you come in,
+by heavens I'll throw this tumbler at your yead."
+
+"Sure and I will, yer honour," said Tom, withdrawing.
+
+"And where on hearth has the twelve hundred pounds gone?" asked the
+son, looking severely at the father.
+
+Old Mr. Mollett made no immediate answer in words, but putting his
+left hand to his right elbow, began to shake it.
+
+"I do wonder that you keep hon at that work," said Mollett junior,
+reproachfully. "You never by any chance have a stroke of luck."
+
+"Well, I have been unfortunate lately; but who knows what's coming?
+And I was deucedly sold by those fellows at the October meeting. If
+any chap ever was safe, I ought to have been safe then; but hang me
+if I didn't drop four hundred of Sir Thomas's shiners coolly on the
+spot. That was the only big haul I've had out of him all at once; and
+the most of it went like water through a sieve within forty-eight
+hours after I touched it." And then, having finished this pathetical
+little story of his misfortune, Mr. Mollett senior finished his glass
+of toddy.
+
+"It's the way of the world, governor; and it's no use sighing after
+spilt milk. But I'll tell you what I propose; and if you don't like
+the task yourself, I have no hobjection in life to take it into my
+own hands. You see the game's so much our own that there's nothing on
+hearth for us to fear."
+
+"I don't know that. If we were all blown, where should we be--"
+
+"Why, she's your own--"
+
+"H-h-sh, Aby. There's that confounded long-eared fellow at the
+keyhole, as sure as my name's Matthew; and if he hears you, the
+game's all up with a vengeance."
+
+"Lord bless you, what could he hear? Besides, talking as we are now,
+he wouldn't catch a word even if he were in the room itself. And now
+I'll tell you what it is; do you go down yourself, and make your way
+into the hold gentleman's room. Just send your own name in boldly.
+Nobody will know what that means, except himself."
+
+"I did that once before; and I never shall forget it."
+
+"Yes, you did it once before, and you have had a steady income
+to live on ever since; not such an income as you might have had.
+Not such an income as will do for you and me, now that we both
+know so well what a fine property we have under our thumbs. But,
+nevertheless, that little visit has been worth something to you."
+
+"Upon my word, Aby, I never suffered so much as I did that day. I
+didn't know till then that I had a soft heart."
+
+"Soft heart! Oh, bother. Such stuff as that always makes me sick. If
+I 'ate anything, it's maudlin. Your former visit down there did very
+well, and now you must make another, or else, by the holy poker! I'll
+make it for you."
+
+"And what would you have me say to him if I did manage to see him?"
+
+"Perhaps I'd better go--"
+
+"That's out of the question. He wouldn't see you, or understand who
+you were. And then you'd make a row, and it would all come out, and
+the fat would be in the fire."
+
+"Well, I guess I should not take it quite quiet if they didn't treat
+me as a gentleman should be treated. I ain't always over-quiet if I'm
+put upon."
+
+"If you go near that house at all I'll have done with it. I'll give
+up the game."
+
+"Well, do you go, at any rate first. Perhaps it may be well that I
+should follow after with a reminder. Do you go down, and just tell
+him this, quite coolly, remember--"
+
+"Oh, I shall be cool enough."
+
+"That, considering hall things, you think he and you ought to--"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Just divide it between you; share and share alike. Say it's fourteen
+thousand--and it's more than that--that would be seven for him and
+seven for you. Tell him you'll agree to that, but you won't take one
+farthing less."
+
+"Aby!" said the father, almost overcome by the grandeur of his son's
+ideas.
+
+"Well; and what of Haby? What's the matter now?"
+
+"Expect him to shell out seven thousand pounds a year!"
+
+"And why not? He'll do a deal more than that, I expect, if he were
+quite sure that it would make all things serene. But it won't; and
+therefore you must make him another hoffer."
+
+"Another offer!"
+
+"Yes. He'll know well enough that you'll be thinking of his death.
+And for all they do say he might pop off any day."
+
+"He's a younger man than me, Aby, by full ten years."
+
+"What of that? You may pop off any day too, mayn't you? I believe you
+old fellows don't think of dying nigh as hoften as we young ones."
+
+"You young ones are always looking for us old ones to go. We all know
+that well enough."
+
+"That's when you've got anything to leave behind you, which hain't
+the case with you, governor, just at present. But what I was saying
+is this. He'll know well enough that you can split upon his son
+hafter he's gone, every bit as well as you can split on him now."
+
+"Oh, I always looked to make the young gentleman pay up handsome, if
+so be the old gentleman went off the hooks. And if so be he and I
+should go off together like, why you'd carry on, of course. You'll
+have the proofs, you know."
+
+"Oh, I should, should I? Well, we'll look to them by-and-by. But
+I'll tell you what, governor, the best way is to make all that safe.
+We'll make him another hoffer--for a regular substantial family
+harrangement--"
+
+"A family arrangement, eh?"
+
+"Yes; that's the way they always manage things when great family
+hinterests is at stake. Let him give us a cool seven thousand a year
+between us while he's alive; let him put you down for twenty thousand
+when he's dead--that'd come out of the young gentleman's share of the
+property, of course--and then let him give me his daughter Hemmeline,
+with another twenty thousand tacked on to her skirt-tail. I should be
+mum then for hever for the honour of the family."
+
+The father for a moment or two was struck dumb by the magnitude
+of his son's proposition. "That's what I call playing the game
+firm," continued the son. "Do you lay down your terms before him,
+substantial, and then stick to 'em. 'Them's my terms, Sir Thomas,'
+you'll say. 'If you don't like 'em, as I can't halter, why in course
+I'll go elsewhere.' Do you be firm to that, and you'll see how the
+game'll go."
+
+"And you think he'll give you his daughter in marriage?"
+
+"Why not? I'm honest born, hain't I? And she's a bastard."
+
+"But, Aby, you don't know what sort of people these are. You don't
+know what her breeding has been."
+
+"D---- her breeding. I know this: she'd get a deuced pretty fellow
+for her husband, and one that girls as good as her has hankered
+hafter long enough. It won't do, governor, to let people as is in
+their position pick and choose like. We've the hupper hand, and we
+must do the picking and choosing."
+
+"She'd never have you, Aby; not if her father went down on his knees
+to her to ask her."
+
+"Oh, wouldn't she? By heaven, then, she shall, and that without any
+kneeling at all. She shall have me, and be deuced glad to take me.
+What! she'd refuse a fellow like me when she knows that she and all
+belonging to her'd be turned into the streets if she don't have me!
+I'm clear of another way of thinking, then. My opinion is she'd come
+to me jumping. I'll tell you what, governor, you don't know the sex."
+
+Mr. Mollett senior upon this merely shook his head. Perhaps the fact
+was that he knew the sex somewhat better than his son. It had been
+his fate during a portion of his life to live among people who were,
+or ought to have been, gentlemen. He might have been such himself had
+he not gone wrong in life from the very starting-post. But his son
+had had no such opportunities. He did know and could know nothing
+about ladies and gentlemen.
+
+"You're mistaken, Aby," said the old man. "They'd never suffer you to
+come among them on such a footing as that. They'd sooner go forth to
+the world as beggars."
+
+"Then, by G----! they shall go forth as beggars. I've said it now,
+father, and I'll stick to it. You know the stuff I'm made of." As he
+finished speaking, he swallowed down the last half of a third glass
+of hot spirits and water, and then glared on his father with angry,
+blood-shot eyes, and a red, almost lurid face. The unfortunate father
+was beginning to know the son, and to feel that his son would become
+his master.
+
+Shortly after this they were interrupted; and what further
+conversation they had on the matter that night took place in their
+joint bedroom; to which uninviting retreat it is not now necessary
+that we should follow them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+THE FAMINE YEAR.
+
+
+They who were in the south of Ireland during the winter of 1846-47
+will not readily forget the agony of that period. For many, many
+years preceding and up to that time, the increasing swarms of the
+country had been fed upon the potato, and upon the potato only; and
+now all at once the potato failed them, and the greater part of eight
+million human beings were left without food.
+
+The destruction of the potato was the work of God; and it was natural
+to attribute the sufferings which at once overwhelmed the unfortunate
+country to God's anger--to his wrath for the misdeeds of which
+that country had been guilty. For myself, I do not believe in such
+exhibitions of God's anger. When wars come, and pestilence, and
+famine; when the people of a land are worse than decimated, and the
+living hardly able to bury the dead, I cannot coincide with those who
+would deprecate God's wrath by prayers. I do not believe that our God
+stalks darkly along the clouds, laying thousands low with the arrows
+of death, and those thousands the most ignorant, because men who are
+not ignorant have displeased Him. Nor, if in his wisdom He did do so,
+can I think that men's prayers would hinder that which his wisdom had
+seen to be good and right.
+
+But though I do not believe in exhibitions of God's anger, I do
+believe in exhibitions of his mercy. When men by their folly and by
+the shortness of their vision have brought upon themselves penalties
+which seem to be overwhelming, to which no end can be seen, which
+would be overwhelming were no aid coming to us but our own, then God
+raises his hand, not in anger, but in mercy, and by his wisdom does
+for us that for which our own wisdom has been insufficient.
+
+But on no Christian basis can I understand the justice or acknowledge
+the propriety of asking our Lord to abate his wrath in detail, or to
+alter his settled purpose. If He be wise, would we change his wisdom?
+If He be merciful, would we limit his mercy? There comes upon us some
+strange disease, and we bid Him to stay his hand. But the disease,
+when it has passed by, has taught us lessons of cleanliness, which
+no master less stern would have made acceptable. A famine strikes us,
+and we again beg that that hand may be stayed;--beg as the Greeks
+were said to beg when they thought that the anger of Phoebus was
+hot against them because his priest had been dishonoured. We so beg,
+thinking that God's anger is hot also against us. But, lo! the famine
+passes by, and a land that had been brought to the dust by man's
+folly is once more prosperous and happy.
+
+If this was ever so in the world's history, it was so in Ireland
+at the time of which I am speaking. The country, especially in the
+south and west, had been brought to a terrible pass;--not as so
+many said and do say, by the idolatry of popery, or by the sedition
+of demagogues, or even mainly by the idleness of the people. The
+idolatry of popery, to my way of thinking, is bad; though not so bad
+in Ireland as in most other Papist countries that I have visited.
+Sedition also is bad; but in Ireland, in late years, it has not been
+deep-seated--as may have been noted at Ballingarry and other places,
+where endeavour was made to bring sedition to its proof. And as for
+the idleness of Ireland's people, I am inclined to think they will
+work under the same compulsion and same persuasion which produce work
+in other countries.
+
+The fault had been the lowness of education and consequent want of
+principle among the middle classes; and this fault had been found as
+strongly marked among the Protestants as it had been among the Roman
+Catholics. Young men were brought up to do nothing. Property was
+regarded as having no duties attached to it. Men became rapacious,
+and determined to extract the uttermost farthing out of the land
+within their power, let the consequences to the people on that land
+be what they might.
+
+We used to hear much of absentees. It was not the absence of the
+absentees that did the damage, but the presence of those they left
+behind them on the soil. The scourge of Ireland was the existence
+of a class who looked to be gentlemen living on their property,
+but who should have earned their bread by the work of their brain,
+or, failing that, by the sweat of their brow. There were men to be
+found in shoals through the country speaking of their properties and
+boasting of their places, but who owned no properties and had no
+places when the matter came to be properly sifted.
+
+Most Englishmen have heard of profit-rent. In Ireland the term is
+so common that no man cannot have heard of it. It may, of course,
+designate a very becoming sort of income. A man may, for instance,
+take a plot of land for one hundred pounds a year, improve and build
+on it till it be fairly worth one thousand pounds a year, and thus
+enjoy a profit-rent of nine hundred pounds. Nothing can be better or
+fairer. But in Ireland the management was very different. Men there
+held tracts of ground, very often at their full value, paying for
+them such proportion of rent as a farmer could afford to pay in
+England and live. But the Irish tenant would by no means consent to
+be a farmer. It was needful to him that he should be a gentleman, and
+that his sons should be taught to live and amuse themselves as the
+sons of gentlemen--barring any such small trifle as education. They
+did live in this way; and to enable them to do so, they underlet
+their land in small patches, and at an amount of rent to collect
+which took the whole labour of their tenants, and the whole produce
+of the small patch, over and above the quantity of potatoes
+absolutely necessary to keep that tenant's body and soul together.
+
+And thus a state of things was engendered in Ireland which
+discouraged labour, which discouraged improvements in farming,
+which discouraged any produce from the land except the potato crop;
+which maintained one class of men in what they considered to be the
+gentility of idleness, and another class, the people of the country,
+in the abjectness of poverty.
+
+It is with thorough rejoicing, almost with triumph, that I declare
+that the idle, genteel class has been cut up root and branch, has
+been driven forth out of its holding into the wide world, and has
+been punished with the penalty of extermination. The poor cotter
+suffered sorely under the famine, and under the pestilence which
+followed the famine; but he, as a class, has risen from his bed of
+suffering a better man. He is thriving as a labourer either in his
+own country or in some newer--for him better--land to which he has
+emigrated. He, even in Ireland, can now get eight and nine shillings
+a week easier and with more constancy than he could get four some
+fifteen years since. But the other man has gone, and his place is
+left happily vacant.
+
+There are an infinite number of smaller bearings in which this
+question of the famine, and of agricultural distress in Ireland, may
+be regarded, and should be regarded by those who wish to understand
+it. The manner in which the Poor Law was first rejected and then
+accepted, and then, if one may say so, swallowed whole by the people;
+the way in which emigration has affected them; the difference in the
+system of labour there from that here, which in former days was so
+strong that an agricultural labourer living on his wages and buying
+food with them, was a person hardly to be found: all these things
+must be regarded by one who would understand the matter. But seeing
+that this book of mine is a novel, I have perhaps already written
+more on a dry subject than many will read.
+
+Such having been the state of the country, such its wretchedness,
+a merciful God sent the remedy which might avail to arrest it; and
+we--we deprecated his wrath. But all this will soon be known and
+acknowledged; acknowledged as it is acknowledged that new cities
+rise up in splendour from the ashes into which old cities have been
+consumed by fire. If this beneficent agency did not from time to time
+disencumber our crowded places, we should ever be living in narrow
+alleys with stinking gutters, and supply of water at the minimum.
+
+But very frightful are the flames as they rush through the chambers
+of the poor, and very frightful was the course of that violent remedy
+which brought Ireland out of its misfortunes. Those who saw its
+course, and watched its victims, will not readily forget what they
+saw.
+
+Slowly, gradually, and with a voice that was for a long time
+discredited, the news spread itself through the country that the food
+of the people was gone. That his own crop was rotten and useless each
+cotter quickly knew, and realized the idea that he must work for
+wages if he could get them, or else go to the poorhouse. That the
+crop of his parish or district was gone became evident to the priest,
+and the parson, and the squire; and they realized the idea that they
+must fall on other parishes or other districts for support. But it
+was long before the fact made itself known that there was no food in
+any parish, in any district.
+
+When this was understood, men certainly did put their shoulders to
+the wheel with a great effort. Much abuse at the time was thrown upon
+the government; and they who took upon themselves the management of
+the relief of the poor in the south-west were taken most severely
+to task. I was in the country, travelling always through it, during
+the whole period, and I have to say--as I did say at the time with a
+voice that was not very audible--that in my opinion the measures of
+the government were prompt, wise, and beneficent; and I have to say
+also that the efforts of those who managed the poor were, as a rule,
+unremitting, honest, impartial, and successful.
+
+The feeding of four million starving people with food, to be brought
+from foreign lands, is not an easy job. No government could bring the
+food itself; but by striving to do so it might effectually prevent
+such bringing on the part of others. Nor when the food was there,
+on the quays, was it easy to put it, in due proportions, into the
+four million mouths. Some mouths, and they, alas! the weaker ones,
+would remain unfed. But the opportunity was a good one for slashing
+philanthropical censure; and then the business of the slashing,
+censorious philanthropist is so easy, so exciting, and so pleasant!
+
+I think that no portion of Ireland suffered more severely during
+the famine than the counties Cork and Kerry. The poorest parts
+were perhaps the parishes lying back from the sea and near to the
+mountains; and in the midst of such a district Desmond Court was
+situated. The region immediately round Castle Richmond was perhaps
+better. The tenants there had more means at their disposal, and did
+not depend so absolutely on the potato crop; but even round Castle
+Richmond the distress was very severe.
+
+Early in the year relief committees were formed, on one of which
+young Herbert Fitzgerald agreed to act. His father promised, and was
+prepared to give his best assistance, both by money and countenance;
+but he pleaded that the state of his health hindered him from active
+exertion, and therefore his son came forward in his stead on this
+occasion, as it appeared probable that he would do on all others
+having reference to the family property.
+
+This work brought people together who would hardly have met but for
+such necessity. The priest and the parson of a parish, men who had
+hitherto never been in a room together, and between whom neither had
+known anything of the other but the errors of his doctrine, found
+themselves fighting for the same object at the same board, and each
+for the moment laid aside his religious ferocity. Gentlemen, whose
+ancestors had come over with Strongbow, or maybe even with Milesius,
+sat cheek by jowl with retired haberdashers, concerting new soup
+kitchens, and learning on what smallest modicum of pudding made
+from Indian corn a family of seven might be kept alive, and in such
+condition that the father at least might be able to stand upright.
+
+The town of Kanturk was the head-quarters of that circle to which
+Herbert Fitzgerald was attached, in which also would have been
+included the owner of Desmond Court, had there been an owner
+of an age to undertake such work. But the young earl was still
+under sixteen, and the property was represented, as far as any
+representation was made, by the countess.
+
+But even in such a work as this, a work which so strongly brought out
+what there was of good among the upper classes, there was food for
+jealousy and ill will. The name of Owen Fitzgerald at this time did
+not stand high in the locality of which we are speaking. Men had
+presumed to talk both to him and of him, and he replied to their
+censures by scorn. He would not change his mode of living for them,
+or allow them to believe that their interference could in any way
+operate upon his conduct. He had therefore affected a worse character
+for morals than he had perhaps truly deserved, and had thus thrown
+off from him all intimacy with many of the families among whom he
+lived.
+
+When, therefore, he had come forward as others had done, offering to
+join his brother-magistrates and the clergyman of the district in
+their efforts, they had, or he had thought that they had, looked
+coldly on him. His property was half way between Kanturk and Mallow;
+and when this occurred he turned his shoulder upon the former place,
+and professed to act with those whose meetings were held at the
+latter town. Thus he became altogether divided from that Castle
+Richmond neighbourhood to which he was naturally attached by old
+intimacies and family ties.
+
+It was a hard time this for the poor countess. I have endeavoured to
+explain that the position in which she had been left with regard to
+money was not at any time a very easy one. She possessed high rank
+and the name of a countess, but very little of that wealth which
+usually constitutes the chief advantage of such rank and name. But
+now such means as had been at her disposal were terribly crippled.
+There was no poorer district than that immediately around her, and
+none, therefore, in which the poor rates rose to a more fearful
+proportion of the rent. The country was, and for that matter still
+is, divided, for purposes of poor-law rating, into electoral
+districts. In ordinary times a man, or at any rate a lady, may live
+and die in his or her own house without much noticing the limits or
+peculiarities of each district. In one the rate may be one and a
+penny in the pound, in another only a shilling. But the difference
+is not large enough to create inquiry. It is divided between the
+landlord and the tenant, and neither perhaps thinks much about it.
+But when the demand made rises to seventeen or eighteen shillings in
+the pound--as was the case in some districts in those days,--when out
+of every pound of rent that he paid the tenant claimed to deduct nine
+shillings for poor rates, that is, half the amount levied--then a
+landlord becomes anxious enough as to the peculiarities of his own
+electoral division.
+
+In the case of Protestant clergymen, the whole rate had to be paid
+by the incumbent. A gentleman whose half-yearly rent-charge amounted
+to perhaps two hundred pounds might have nine tenths of that sum
+deducted from him for poor rates. I have known a case in which the
+proportion has been higher than this.
+
+And then the tenants in such districts began to decline to pay any
+rent at all--in very many cases could pay no rent at all. They, too,
+depended on the potatoes which were gone; they, too, had been subject
+to those dreadful demands for poor rates; and thus a landlord whose
+property was in any way embarrassed had but a bad time of it. The
+property from which Lady Desmond drew her income had been very much
+embarrassed; and for her the times were very bad.
+
+In such periods of misfortune, a woman has always some friend. Let
+her be who she may, some pair of broad shoulders is forthcoming on
+which may be laid so much of the burden as is by herself unbearable.
+It is the great privilege of womanhood, that which compensates them
+for the want of those other privileges which belong exclusively to
+manhood--sitting in Parliament, for instance, preaching sermons, and
+going on 'Change.
+
+At this time Lady Desmond would doubtless have chosen the shoulders
+of Owen Fitzgerald for the bearing of her burden, had he not turned
+against her, as he had done. But now there was no hope of that. Those
+broad shoulders had burdens of their own to bear of another sort, and
+it was at any rate impossible that he should come to share those of
+Desmond Court.
+
+But a champion was forthcoming; one, indeed, whose shoulders were
+less broad; on looking at whose head and brow Lady Desmond could not
+forget her years as she had done while Owen Fitzgerald had been near
+her;--but a champion, nevertheless, whom she greatly prized. This was
+Owen's cousin, Herbert Fitzgerald.
+
+"Mamma," her daughter said to her one evening, as they were sitting
+together in the only room which they now inhabited. "Herbert wants us
+to go to that place near Kilcommon to-morrow, and says he will send
+the car at two. I suppose I can go?"
+
+There were two things that Lady Desmond noticed in this: first, that
+her daughter should have called young Mr. Fitzgerald by his Christian
+name; and secondly, that it should have come to that with them, that
+a Fitzgerald should send a vehicle for a Desmond, seeing that the
+Desmond could no longer provide a vehicle for herself.
+
+"You could have had the pony-chair, my dear."
+
+"Oh, no, mamma; I would not do that." The pony was now the only
+quadruped kept for the countess's own behoof; and the young earl's
+hunter was the only other horse in the Desmond Court stables. "I
+wouldn't do that, mamma; Mary and Emmeline will not mind coming
+round."
+
+"But they will have to come round again to bring you back."
+
+"Yes, mamma. Herbert said they wouldn't mind it. We want to see how
+they are managing at the new soup kitchen they have there. That one
+at Clady is very bad. The boiler won't boil at all."
+
+"Very well, my dear; only mind you wrap yourself up."
+
+"Oh, yes; I always do."
+
+"But, Clara--" and Lady Desmond put on her sweetest, smoothest smile
+as she spoke to her daughter.
+
+"Yes, mamma."
+
+"How long have you taken to call young Mr. Fitzgerald by his
+Christian name?"
+
+"Oh, I never do, mamma," said Clara, with a blush all over her face;
+"not to himself, I mean. You see, Mary and Emmeline are always
+talking about him."
+
+"And therefore you mean always to talk about him also."
+
+"No, mamma. But one can't help talking about him; he is doing so much
+for these poor people. I don't think he ever thinks about anything
+else from morning to night. Emmeline says he always goes to it again
+after dinner. Don't you think he is very good about it, mamma?"
+
+"Yes, my dear; very good indeed; almost good enough to be called
+Herbert."
+
+"But I don't call him so; you know I don't," protested Clara, very
+energetically.
+
+"He is very good," continued the countess; "very good indeed. I don't
+know what on earth we should do without him. If he were my own son,
+he could hardly be more attentive to me."
+
+"Then I may go with the girls to that place? I always forget the
+name."
+
+"Gortnaclough, you mean."
+
+"Yes, mamma. It is all Sir Thomas's property there; and they have got
+a regular kitchen, beautifully built, Her--Mr. Fitzgerald says, with
+a regular cook. I do wish we could have one at Clady."
+
+"Mr. Fitzgerald will be here to-morrow morning, and I will talk to
+him about it. I fear we have not sufficient funds there."
+
+"No; that's just it. I do wish I had some money now. You won't mind
+if I am not home quite early? We all mean to dine there at the
+kitchen. The girls will bring something, and then we can stay out the
+whole afternoon."
+
+"It won't do for you to be out after nightfall, Clara."
+
+"No, I won't, mamma. They did want me to go home with them to Castle
+Richmond for to-morrow night; but I declined that," and Clara uttered
+a slight sigh, as though she had declined something that would have
+been very pleasant to her.
+
+"And why did you decline it?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know. I didn't know whether you would like it; and
+besides--"
+
+"Besides what?"
+
+"You'd be here all alone, mamma."
+
+The countess got up from her chair and coming over to the place where
+her daughter was sitting, kissed her on her forehead. "In such a
+matter as that, I don't want you to think of me, my dear. I would
+rather you went out. I must remain here in this horrid, dull,
+wretched place; but that is no reason why you should be buried alive.
+I would much rather that you went out sometimes."
+
+"No, mamma; I will remain with you."
+
+"It will be quite right that you should go to Castle Richmond
+to-morrow. If they send their carriage round here for you--"
+
+"It'll only be the car."
+
+"Well, the car; and if the girls come all that way out of their road
+in the morning to pick you up, it will be only civil that you should
+go back by Castle Richmond, and you would enjoy an evening there with
+the girls very much."
+
+"But I said decidedly that I would not go."
+
+"Tell them to-morrow as decidedly that you have changed your
+mind, and will be delighted to accept their invitation. They will
+understand that it is because you have spoken to me."
+
+"But, mamma--"
+
+"You will like going; will you not?"
+
+"Yes; I shall like it."
+
+And so that matter was settled. On the whole, Lady Desmond was
+inclined to admit within her own heart that her daughter had behaved
+very well in that matter of the banishment of Owen Fitzgerald. She
+knew that Clara had never seen him, and had refused to open his
+letters. Very little had been said upon the subject between the
+mother and daughter. Once or twice Owen's name had been mentioned;
+and once, when it had been mentioned, with heavy blame on account of
+his alleged sins, Clara had ventured to take his part.
+
+"People delight to say ill-natured things," she had said; "but one is
+not obliged to believe them all."
+
+From that time Lady Desmond had never mentioned his name, rightly
+judging that Clara would be more likely to condemn him in her own
+heart if she did not hear him condemned by others: and so the mother
+and daughter had gone on, as though the former had lost no friend,
+and the latter had lost no lover.
+
+For some time after the love adventure, Clara had been pale and
+drooping, and the countess had been frightened about her; but
+latterly she had got over this. The misfortune which had fallen so
+heavily upon them all seemed to have done her good. She had devoted
+herself from the first to do her little quota of work towards
+lessening the suffering around her, and the effort had been salutary
+to her.
+
+Whether or no in her heart of hearts she did still think of Owen
+Fitzgerald, her mother was unable to surmise. From the fire which
+had flashed from her eyes on that day when she accused the world of
+saying ill-natured things of him, Lady Desmond had been sure that
+such was the case. But she had never ventured to probe her child's
+heart. She had given very little confidence to Clara, and could not,
+therefore, and did not expect confidence in return.
+
+Nor was Clara a girl likely in such a matter to bestow confidence on
+any one. She was one who could hold her heart full, and yet not speak
+of her heart's fulness. Her mother had called her a child, and in
+some respects she then was so; but this childishness had been caused,
+not by lack of mental power, but want of that conversation with
+others which is customary to girls of her age. This want had in some
+respects made her childish; for it hindered her from expressing
+herself in firm tones, and caused her to blush and hesitate when she
+spoke. But in some respects it had the opposite effect, and made her
+older than her age, for she was thoughtful, silent, and patient of
+endurance.
+
+Latterly, since this dreary famine-time had come upon them, an
+intimacy had sprung up between Clara and the Castle Richmond girls,
+and in a measure, too, between Clara and Herbert Fitzgerald. Lady
+Desmond had seen this with great pleasure. Though she had objected
+to Owen Fitzgerald for her daughter, she had no objection to the
+Fitzgerald name. Herbert was his father's only son, and heir to the
+finest property in the county--at any rate, to the property which at
+present was the best circumstanced. Owen Fitzgerald could never be
+more than a little squire, but Herbert would be a baronet. Owen's
+utmost ambition would be to live at Hap House all his life, and
+die the oracle of the Duhallow hunt; but Herbert would be a member
+of Parliament, with a house in London. A daughter of the house of
+Desmond might marry the heir of Sir Thomas Fitzgerald, and be thought
+to have done well; whereas, she would disgrace herself by becoming
+the mistress of Hap House. Lady Desmond, therefore, had been
+delighted to see this intimacy.
+
+It had been in no spirit of fault-finding that she had remarked to
+her daughter as to her use of that Christian name. What would be
+better than that they should be to each other as Herbert and Clara?
+But the cautious mother had known how easy it would be to frighten
+her timid fawn-like child. It was no time, no time as yet, to
+question her heart about this second lover--if lover he might be. The
+countess was much too subtle in her way to frighten her child's heart
+back to its old passion. That passion doubtless would die from want
+of food. Let it be starved and die; and then this other new passion
+might spring up.
+
+The Countess of Desmond had no idea that her daughter, with severe
+self-questioning, had taken her own heart to task about this former
+lover; had argued with herself that the man who could so sin, could
+live such a life, and so live in these fearful times, was unworthy of
+her love, and must be torn out of her heart, let the cost be what it
+might. Of such high resolves on her daughter's part, nay, on the part
+of any young girl, Lady Desmond had no knowledge.
+
+Clara Desmond had determined, slowly determined, to give up the man
+whom she had owned to love. She had determined that duty and female
+dignity required her to do so. And in this manner it had been done;
+not by the childlike forgetfulness which her mother attributed to
+her.
+
+And so it was arranged that she should stay the following night at
+Castle Richmond.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+GORTNACLOUGH AND BERRYHILL.
+
+
+And now at last we will get to Castle Richmond, at which place,
+seeing that it gives the title to our novel, we ought to have arrived
+long since.
+
+As had been before arranged, the two Miss Fitzgeralds did call at
+Desmond Court early on the following day, and were delighted at being
+informed by Lady Desmond that Clara had changed her mind, and would,
+if they would now allow her, stay the night at Castle Richmond.
+
+"The truth was, she did not like to leave me," said the countess,
+whispering prettily into the ear of the eldest of the two girls; "but
+I am delighted that she should have an opportunity of getting out of
+this dull place for a few hours. It was so good of you to think of
+her."
+
+Miss Fitzgerald made some civil answer, and away they all went.
+Herbert was on horseback, and remained some minutes after them to
+discuss her own difficulties with the countess, and to say a few
+words about that Clady boiler that would not boil. Clara on this
+subject had opened her heart to him, and he had resolved that the
+boiler should be made to boil. So he said that he would go over and
+look at it, resolving also to send that which would be much more
+efficacious than himself, namely, the necessary means and workmen
+for bringing about so desirable a result. And then he rode after the
+girls, and caught the car just as it reached Gortnaclough.
+
+How they all spent their day at the soup kitchen, which however,
+though so called, partook quite as much of the character of a
+bake-house; how they studied the art of making yellow Indian meal
+into puddings; how the girls wanted to add milk and sugar, not
+understanding at first the deep principles of political economy,
+which soon taught them not to waste on the comforts of a few that
+which was so necessary for the life of many; how the poor women
+brought in their sick ailing children, accepting the proffered food,
+but bitterly complaining of it as they took it,--complaining of it
+because they wanted money, with which they still thought that they
+could buy potatoes--all this need not here or now be described. Our
+present business is to get them all back to Castle Richmond.
+
+There had been some talk of their dining at Gortnaclough, because it
+was known that the ladies at Desmond Court dined early; but now that
+Clara was to return to Castle Richmond, that idea was given up, and
+they all got back to the house in time for the family dinner.
+
+"Mamma," said Emmeline, walking first into the drawing-room, "Lady
+Clara has come back with us after all, and is going to stay here
+to-night; we are so glad."
+
+Lady Fitzgerald got up from her sofa, and welcomed her young guest
+with a kiss.
+
+"It is very good of you to come," she said; "very good indeed. You
+won't find it dull, I hope, because I know you are thinking about the
+same thing as these children."
+
+Lady Clara muttered some sort of indistinct little protest as to the
+impossibility of being dull with her present friends.
+
+"Oh, she's as full of corn meal and pints of soup as any one," said
+Emmeline; "and knows exactly how much turf it takes to boil fifteen
+stone of pudding; don't you, Clara? But come up-stairs, for we
+haven't long, and I know you are frozen. You must dress with us,
+dear; for there will be no fire in your own room, as we didn't expect
+you."
+
+"I wish we could get them to like it," said Clara, standing with one
+foot on the fender, in the middle of the process of dressing, so as
+to warm her toes; and her friend Emmeline was standing by her, with
+her arm round her waist.
+
+"I don't think we shall ever do that," said Mary, who was sitting
+at the glass brushing her hair; "it's so cold, and heavy, and
+uncomfortable when they get it."
+
+"You see," said Emmeline, "though they did only have potatoes before,
+they always had them quite warm; and though a dinner of potatoes
+seems very poor, they did have it altogether, in their own houses,
+you know; and I think the very cooking it was some comfort to them."
+
+"And I suppose they couldn't be taught to cook this themselves, so as
+to make it comfortable in their own cabins?" said Clara,
+despondingly.
+
+"Herbert says it's impossible," said Mary.
+
+"And I'm sure he knows," said Clara.
+
+"They would waste more than they would eat," said Emmeline. "Besides,
+it is so hard to cook it as it should be cooked; sometimes it seems
+impossible to make it soft."
+
+"So it does," said Clara, sadly; "but if we could only have it hot
+for them when they come for it, wouldn't that be better?"
+
+"The great thing is to have it for them at all," said Mary the wise
+(for she had been studying the matter more deeply than her friend);
+"there are so many who as yet get none."
+
+"Herbert says that the millers will grind up the husks and all at the
+mills, so as to make the most of it; that's what makes it so hard to
+cook," said Emmeline.
+
+"How very wrong of them!" protested Clara; "but isn't Herbert going
+to have a mill put up of his own?"
+
+And so they went on, till I fear they kept the Castle Richmond dinner
+waiting for full fifteen minutes.
+
+Castle Richmond, too, would have been a dull house, as Lady
+Fitzgerald had intimated, had it not been that there was a common
+subject of such vital interest to the whole party. On that subject
+they were all intent, and on that subject they talked the whole
+evening, planning, preparing, and laying out schemes; devising how
+their money might be made to go furthest; discussing deep questions
+of political economy, and making, no doubt, many errors in their
+discussions.
+
+Lady Fitzgerald took a part in all this, and so occasionally did Sir
+Thomas. Indeed, on this evening he was more active than was usual
+with him. He got up from his arm-chair, and came to the table, in
+order that he might pore over the map of the estate with them; for
+they were dividing the property into districts, and seeing how best
+the poor might be visited in their own localities.
+
+And then, as he did so, he became liberal. Liberal, indeed, he always
+was; but now he made offers of assistance more than his son had dared
+to ask; and they were all busy, contented, and in a great degree
+joyous--joyous, though their work arose from the contiguity of such
+infinite misery. But what can ever be more joyous than efforts made
+for lessening misery?
+
+During all this time Miss Letty was fast asleep in her own arm-chair.
+But let no one on that account accuse her of a hard heart; for she
+had nearly walked her old legs off that day in going about from cabin
+to cabin round the demesne.
+
+"But we must consult Somers about that mill," said Sir Thomas.
+
+"Oh, of course," said Herbert; "I know how to talk Somers over."
+
+This was added _sotto voce_ to his mother and the girls. Now Mr.
+Somers was the agent on the estate.
+
+This mill was to be at Berryhill, a spot also on Sir Thomas's
+property, but in a different direction from Gortnaclough. There was
+there what the Americans would call a water privilege, a stream to
+which some fall of land just there gave power enough to turn a mill;
+and was now a question how they might utilize that power.
+
+During the day just past Clara had been with them, but they were now
+talking of what they would do when she would have left them. This
+created some little feeling of awkwardness, for Clara had put her
+whole heart into the work at Gortnaclough, and it was evident that
+she would have been so delighted to continue with them.
+
+"But why on earth need you go home to-morrow, Lady Clara?" said
+Herbert.
+
+"Oh, I must; mamma expects me, you know."
+
+"Of course we should send word. Indeed, I must send to Clady
+to-morrow, and the man must pass by Desmond Court gate."
+
+"Oh, yes, Clara; and you can write a line. It would be such a pity
+that you should not see all about the mill, now that we have talked
+it over together. Do tell her to stay, mamma."
+
+"I am sure I wish she would," said Lady Fitzgerald. "Could not Lady
+Desmond manage to spare you for one day?"
+
+"She is all alone, you know," said Clara, whose heart, however, was
+bent on accepting the invitation.
+
+"Perhaps she would come over and join us," said Lady Fitzgerald,
+feeling, however, that the subject was not without danger. Sending a
+carriage for a young girl like Lady Clara did very well, but it might
+not answer if she were to offer to send for the Countess of Desmond.
+
+"Oh, mamma never goes out."
+
+"I'm quite sure she'd like you to stay," said Herbert. "After you
+were all gone yesterday, she said how delighted she was to have you
+go away for a little time. And she did say she thought you could not
+go to a better place than Castle Richmond."
+
+"I am sure that was very kind of her," said Lady Fitzgerald.
+
+"Did she?" said Clara, longingly.
+
+And so after a while it was settled that she should send a line to
+her mother, saying that she had been persuaded to stay over one other
+night, and that she should accompany them to inspect the site of this
+embryo mill at Berryhill.
+
+"And I will write a line to the countess," said Lady Fitzgerald,
+"telling her how impossible it was for you to hold your own intention
+when we were all attacking you on the other side."
+
+And so the matter was settled.
+
+On the following day they were to leave home almost immediately after
+breakfast; and on this occasion Miss Letty insisted on going with
+them.
+
+"There's a seat on the car, I know, Herbert," she said; "for you mean
+to ride; and I'm just as much interested about the mill as any of
+you."
+
+"I'm afraid the day would be too long for you, Aunt Letty," said
+Mary: "we shall stay there, you know, till after four."
+
+"Not a bit too long. When I'm tired I shall go into Mrs. Townsend's;
+the glebe is not ten minutes' drive from Berryhill."
+
+The Rev. Aeneas Townsend was the rector of the parish, and he, as
+well as his wife, were fast friends of Aunt Letty. As we get on in
+the story we shall, I trust, become acquainted with the Rev. Aeneas
+Townsend and his wife. It was ultimately found that there was no
+getting rid of Aunt Letty, and so the party was made up.
+
+They were all standing about the hall after breakfast, looking up
+their shawls and cloaks and coats, and Herbert was in the act of
+taking special and very suspicious care of Lady Clara's throat, when
+there came a ring at the door. The visitor, whoever he might be, was
+not kept long waiting, for one servant was in the hall, and another
+just outside the front door with the car, and a third holding
+Herbert's horse.
+
+"I wish to see Sir Thomas," said a man's voice as soon as the door
+was opened; and the man entered the hall, and then seeing that it was
+full of ladies, retreated again into the doorway. He was an elderly
+man, dressed almost more than well, for there was about him a slight
+affectation of dandyism; and though he had for the moment been
+abashed, there was about him also a slight swagger. "Good morning,
+ladies," he said, re-entering again, and bowing to young Herbert, who
+stood looking at him; "I believe Sir Thomas is at home; would you
+send your servant in to say that a gentleman wants to see him for a
+minute or so, on very particular business? I am a little in a hurry
+like."
+
+The door of the drawing-room was ajar, so that Lady Fitzgerald, who
+was sitting there tranquilly in her own seat, could hear the voice.
+And she did hear it, and knew that some stranger had come to trouble
+her husband. But she did not come forth; why should she? was not
+Herbert there--if, indeed, even Herbert could be of any service?
+
+"Shall I take your card in to Sir Thomas, sir?" said one of the
+servants, coming forward.
+
+"Card!" said Mollett senior out loud; "well, if it is necessary,
+I believe I have a card." And he took from his pocket a greasy
+pocket-book, and extracted from it a piece of pasteboard on which
+his name was written. "There; give that to Sir Thomas. I don't think
+there's much doubt but that he'll see me." And then, uninvited, he
+sat himself down in one of the hall chairs.
+
+Sir Thomas's study, the room in which he himself sat, and in which
+indeed he might almost be said to live at present,--for on many days
+he only came out to dine, and then again to go to bed,--was at some
+little distance to the back of the house, and was approached by
+a passage from the hall. While the servant was gone, the ladies
+finished their wrapping, and got up on the car.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Fitzgerald," said Clara, laughing, "I shan't be able to
+breathe with all that on me."
+
+"Look at Mary and Emmeline," said he; "they have got twice as much.
+You don't know how cold it is."
+
+"You had better have the fur close to your body," said Aunt Letty;
+"look here;" and she showed that her gloves were lined with fur, and
+her boots, and that she had gotten some nondescript furry article of
+attire stuck in underneath the body of her dress.
+
+"But you must let me have them a little looser, Mr. Fitzgerald," said
+Clara; "there, that will do," and then they all got upon the car
+and started. Herbert was perhaps two minutes after them before he
+mounted; but when he left the hall the man was still sitting there;
+for the servant had not yet come back from his father's room.
+
+But the clatter of his horse's hoofs was still distinct enough at
+the hall door when the servant did come back, and in a serious tone
+desired the stranger to follow him. "Sir Thomas will see you," said
+the servant, putting some stress on the word will.
+
+"Oh, I did not doubt that the least in the world," said Mr. Mollett,
+as he followed the man along the passage.
+
+The morning was very cold. There had been rainy weather, but it now
+appeared to be a settled frost. The roads were rough and hard, and
+the man who was driving them said a word now and again to his young
+master as to the expediency of getting frost nails put into the
+horse's shoes. "I'd better go gently, Mr. Herbert; it may be he might
+come down at some of these pitches." So they did go gently, and at
+last arrived safely at Berryhill.
+
+And very busy they were there all day. The inspection of the site
+for the mill was not their only employment. Here also was an
+establishment for distributing food, and a crowd of poor half-fed
+wretches were there to meet them. Not that at that time things
+were so bad as they became afterwards. Men were not dying on the
+road-side, nor as yet had the apathy of want produced its terrible
+cure for the agony of hunger. The time had not yet come when the
+famished living skeletons might be seen to reject the food which
+could no longer serve to prolong their lives.
+
+Though this had not come as yet, the complaints of the women
+with their throngs of children were bitter enough; and it was
+heart-breaking too to hear the men declare that they had worked like
+horses, and that it was hard upon them now to see their children
+starve like dogs. For in this earlier part of the famine the people
+did not seem to realize the fact that this scarcity and want had come
+from God. Though they saw the potatoes rotting in their own gardens,
+under their own eyes, they still seemed to think that the rich men of
+the land could stay the famine if they would; that the fault was with
+them; that the famine could be put down if the rich would but stir
+themselves to do it. Before it was over they were well aware that no
+human power could suffice to put it down. Nay, more than that; they
+had almost begun to doubt the power of God to bring back better days.
+
+They strove, and toiled, and planned, and hoped at Berryhill that
+day. And infinite was the good that was done by such efforts as
+these. That they could not hinder God's work we all know; but much
+they did do to lessen the sufferings around, and many were the lives
+that were thus saved.
+
+They were all standing behind the counter of a small store that had
+been hired in the village--the three girls at least, for Aunt Letty
+had already gone to the glebe, and Herbert was still down at the
+"water privilege," talking to a millwright and a carpenter. This was
+a place at which Indian corn flour, that which after a while was
+generally termed "meal" in those famine days, was sold to the poor.
+At this period much of it was absolutely given away. This plan,
+however, was soon found to be injurious; for hundreds would get it
+who were not absolutely in want, and would then sell it;--for the
+famine by no means improved the morals of the people.
+
+And therefore it was found better to sell the flour; to sell it at a
+cheap rate, considerably less sometimes than the cost price; and to
+put the means of buying it into the hands of the people by giving
+them work, and paying them wages. Towards the end of these times,
+when the full weight of the blow was understood, and the subject had
+been in some sort studied, the general rule was thus to sell the meal
+at its true price, hindering the exorbitant profit of hucksters by
+the use of large stores, and to require that all those who could
+not buy it should seek the means of living within the walls of
+workhouses. The regular established workhouses,--unions as they were
+called,--were not as yet numerous, but supernumerary houses were
+provided in every town, and were crowded from the cellars to the
+roofs.
+
+It need hardly be explained that no general rule could be established
+and acted upon at once. The numbers to be dealt with were so great,
+that the exceptions to all rules were overwhelming. But such and
+such like were the efforts made, and these efforts ultimately were
+successful.
+
+The three girls were standing behind the counter of a little store
+which Sir Thomas had hired at Berryhill, when a woman came into the
+place with two children in her arms and followed by four others of
+different ages. She was a gaunt tall creature, with sunken cheeks and
+hollow eyes, and her clothes hung about her in unintelligible rags.
+There was a crowd before the counter, for those who had been answered
+or served stood staring at the three ladies, and could hardly be got
+to go away; but this woman pressed her way through, pushing some and
+using harsh language to others, till she stood immediately opposite
+to Clara.
+
+"Look at that, madam," she cried, undoing an old handkerchief which
+she held in her hand, and displaying the contents on the counter; "is
+that what the likes of you calls food for poor people? is that fit
+'ating to give to children? Would any av ye put such stuff as that
+into the stomachs of your own bairns?" and she pointed to the mess
+which lay revealed upon the handkerchief.
+
+The food, as food, was not nice to look at; and could not have been
+nice to eat, or probably easy of digestion when eaten.
+
+"Feel of that." And the woman rubbed her forefinger among it to show
+that it was rough and hard, and that the particles were as sharp as
+though sand had been mixed with it. The stuff was half-boiled Indian
+meal, which had been improperly subjected at first to the full heat
+of boiling water; and in its present state was bad food either for
+children or grown people. "Feel of that," said the woman; "would you
+like to be 'ating that yourself now?"
+
+"I don't think you have cooked it quite enough," said Clara, looking
+into the woman's face, half with fear and half with pity, and
+putting, as she spoke, her pretty delicate finger down into the nasty
+daubed mess of parboiled yellow flour.
+
+"Cooked it!" said the woman scornfully. "All the cooking on 'arth
+wouldn't make food of that fit for a Christian--feel of the roughness
+of it"--and she turned to another woman who stood near her; "would
+you like to be putting sharp points like that into your children's
+bellies?"
+
+It was quite true that the grains of it were hard and sharp, so as to
+give one an idea that it would make good eating neither for women nor
+children. The millers and dealers, who of course made their profits
+in these times, did frequently grind up the whole corn without
+separating the grain from the husks, and the shell of a grain of
+Indian corn does not, when ground, become soft flour. This woman had
+reason for her complaints, as had many thousands reason for similar
+complaints.
+
+"Don't be throubling the ladies, Kitty," said an old man standing by;
+"sure and weren't you glad enough to be getting it."
+
+"She'd be axing the ladies to go home wid her and cook it for her
+after giving it her," said another.
+
+"Who says it war guv' me?" said the angry mother. "Didn't I buy it,
+here at this counter, with Mike's own hard-'arned money? and it's
+chaiting us they are. Give me back my money." And she looked at Clara
+as though she meant to attack her across the counter.
+
+"Mr. Fitzgerald is going to put up a mill of his own, and then the
+corn will be better ground," said Emmeline Fitzgerald, deprecating
+the woman's wrath.
+
+"Put up a mill!" said the woman, still in scorn. "Are you going to
+give me back my money; or food that my poor bairns can ate?"
+
+This individual little difficulty was ended by a donation to the
+angry woman of another lot of meal, in taking away which she was
+careful not to leave behind her the mess which she had brought in her
+handkerchief. But she expressed no thanks on being so treated.
+
+The hardest burden which had to be borne by those who exerted
+themselves at this period was the ingratitude of the poor for whom
+they worked;--or rather I should say thanklessness. To call them
+ungrateful would imply too deep a reproach, for their convictions
+were that they were being ill used by the upper classes. When they
+received bad meal which they could not cook, and even in their
+extreme hunger could hardly eat half-cooked; when they were desired
+to leave their cabins and gardens, and flock into the wretched
+barracks which were prepared for them; when they saw their children
+wasting away under a suddenly altered system of diet, it would have
+been unreasonable to expect that they should have been grateful.
+Grateful for what? Had they not at any rate a right to claim life,
+to demand food that should keep them and their young ones alive? But
+not the less was it a hard task for delicate women to work hard, and
+to feel that all their work was unappreciated by those whom they so
+thoroughly commiserated, whose sufferings they were so anxious to
+relieve.
+
+It was almost dark before they left Berryhill, and then they had to
+go out of their way to pick up Aunt Letty at Mr. Townsend's house.
+
+"Don't go in whatever you do, girls," said Herbert; "we should never
+get away."
+
+"Indeed we won't unpack ourselves again before we get home; will we,
+Clara?"
+
+"Oh, I hope not. I'm very nice now, and so warm. But, Mr. Fitzgerald,
+is not Mrs. Townsend very queer?"
+
+"Very queer indeed. But you mustn't say a word about her before Aunt
+Letty. They are sworn brothers-in-arms."
+
+"I won't of course. But, Mr. Fitzgerald, she's very good, is she
+not?"
+
+"Yes, in her way. Only it's a pity she's so prejudiced."
+
+"You mean about religion?"
+
+"I mean about everything. If she wears a bonnet on her head, she'll
+think you very wicked because you wear a hat."
+
+"Will she? what a very funny woman! But, Mr. Fitzgerald, I shan't
+give up my hat, let her say what she will."
+
+"I should rather think not."
+
+"And Mr. Townsend? we know him a little; he's very good too, isn't
+he?"
+
+"Do you mean me to answer you truly, or to answer you according to
+the good-natured idea of never saying any ill of one's neighbour?"
+
+"Oh, both; if you can."
+
+"Oh both; must I? Well, then, I think him good as a man, but bad as a
+clergyman."
+
+"But I thought he worked so very hard as a clergyman?"
+
+"So he does. But if he works evil rather than good, you can't call
+him a good clergyman. Mind, you would have my opinion; and if I talk
+treason and heterodoxy and infidelity and papistry, you must only
+take it for what it's worth."
+
+"I'm sure you won't talk infidelity."
+
+"Nor yet treason; and then, moreover, Mr. Townsend would be so much
+better a clergyman, to my way of thinking, if he would sometimes
+brush his hair, and occasionally put on a clean surplice. But,
+remember, not a word of all this to Aunt Letty."
+
+"Oh dear, no; of course not."
+
+Mr. Townsend did come out of the house on the little sweep before
+the door to help Miss Letty up on the car, though it was dark and
+piercingly cold.
+
+"Well, young ladies, and won't you come in now and warm yourselves?"
+
+They all of course deprecated any such idea, and declared that they
+were already much too late.
+
+"Richard, mind you take care going down Ballydahan Hill," said the
+parson, giving a not unnecessary caution to the servant. "I came up
+it just now, and it was one sheet of ice."
+
+"Now, Richard, do be careful," said Miss Letty.
+
+"Never fear, miss," said Richard.
+
+"We'll take care of you," said Herbert. "You're not frightened, Lady
+Clara, are you?"
+
+"Oh, no," said Clara; and so they started.
+
+It was quite dark and very cold, and there was a sharp hard frost.
+But the lamps of the car were lighted, and the horse seemed to be on
+his mettle, for he did his work well. Ballydahan Hill was not above
+a mile from the glebe, and descending that, Richard, by his young
+master's orders, got down from his seat and went to the animal's
+head. Herbert also himself got off, and led his horse down the hill.
+At first the girls were a little inclined to be frightened, and
+Miss Letty found herself obliged to remind them that they couldn't
+melt the frost by screaming. But they all got safely down, and were
+soon chattering as fast as though they were already safe in the
+drawing-room of Castle Richmond.
+
+They went on without any accident, till they reached a turn in the
+road, about two miles from home; and there, all in a moment, quite
+suddenly, when nobody was thinking about the frost or the danger,
+down came the poor horse on his side, his feet having gone quite from
+under him, and a dreadful cracking sound of broken timber gave notice
+that a shaft was smashed. A shaft at least was smashed; if only no
+other harm was done!
+
+It can hardly be that Herbert Fitzgerald cared more for such a
+stranger as Lady Clara Desmond than he did for his own sisters and
+aunt; but nevertheless, it was to Lady Clara's assistance that he
+first betook himself. Perhaps he had seen, or fancied that he saw,
+that she had fallen with the greatest violence.
+
+"Speak, speak," said he, as he jumped from his horse close to her
+side. "Are you hurt? do speak to me." And going down on his knees on
+the hard ground, he essayed to lift her in his arms.
+
+"Oh dear, oh dear!" said she. "No; I am not hurt; at least I think
+not--only just my arm a very little. Where is Emmeline? Is Emmeline
+hurt?"
+
+"No," said Emmeline, picking herself up. "But, oh dear, dear, I've
+lost my muff, and I've spoiled my hat! Where are Mary and Aunt
+Letty?"
+
+After some considerable confusion it was found that nothing was much
+damaged except the car, one shaft of which was broken altogether in
+two. Lady Clara's arm was bruised and rather sore, but the three
+other ladies had altogether escaped. The quantity of clothes that had
+been wrapped round them had no doubt enabled them to fall softly.
+
+"And what about the horse, Richard?" asked young Fitzgerald.
+
+"He didn't come upon his knees at all at all, Master Herbert," said
+Richard, scrutinizing the animal's legs with the car lamp in his
+hand. "I don't think he's a taste the worse. But the car, Master
+Herbert, is clane smashed."
+
+Such being found to be undoubtedly the fact, there was nothing for
+it but that the ladies should walk home. Herbert again forgot that
+the age of his aunt imperatively demanded all the assistance that he
+could lend her, and with many lamentations that fortune and the frost
+should have used her so cruelly, he gave his arm to Clara.
+
+"But do think of Miss Fitzgerald," said Clara, speaking gently into
+his ear.
+
+"Who? oh, my aunt. Aunt Letty never cares for anybody's arm; she
+always prefers walking alone."
+
+"Fie, Mr. Fitzgerald, fie! It is impossible to believe such an
+assertion as that." And yet Clara did seem to believe it; for she
+took his proffered arm without further objection.
+
+It was half-past seven when they reached the hall door, and at that
+time they had all forgotten the misfortune of the car in the fun of
+the dark frosty walk home. Herbert had found a boy to lead his horse,
+and Richard was of course left with the ruins in the road.
+
+"And how's your arm now?" asked Herbert, tenderly, as they entered in
+under the porch.
+
+"Oh, it does not hurt me hardly at all. I don't mind it in the
+least." And then the door was opened for them.
+
+They all flocked into the hall, and there they were met by Lady
+Fitzgerald.
+
+"Oh, mamma," said Mary, "I know you're quite frightened out of your
+life! But there's nothing the matter. The horse tumbled down; but
+there's nobody hurt."
+
+"And we had to walk home from the turn to Ballyclough," said
+Emmeline. "But, oh mamma, what's the matter?" They all now looked up
+at Lady Fitzgerald, and it was evident enough that something was the
+matter; something to be thought of infinitely more than that accident
+on the road.
+
+"Oh, Mary, Mary, what is it?" said Aunt Letty, coming forward and
+taking hold of her sister-in-law's hand. "Is my brother ill?"
+
+"Sir Thomas is not very well, and I've been waiting for you so long.
+Where's Herbert? I must speak to Herbert." And then the mother and
+son left the hall together.
+
+There was then a silence among the four ladies that were left there
+standing. At first they followed each other into the drawing-room,
+all wrapped up as they were and sat on chairs apart, saying nothing
+to each other. At last Aunt Letty got up.
+
+"You had better go up-stairs with Lady Clara," said she; "I will go
+to your mamma."
+
+"Oh, Aunt Letty, do send us word; pray send us word," said Emmeline.
+
+Mary now began to cry. "I know he's very ill. I'm sure he's very ill.
+Oh, what shall we do?"
+
+"You had better go up stairs with Lady Clara," said Aunt Letty. "I
+will send you up word immediately."
+
+"Oh, don't mind me; pray don't mind me," said Clara. "Pray, pray,
+don't take notice of me;" and she rushed forward, and throwing
+herself on her knees before Emmeline, began to kiss her.
+
+They remained here, heedless of Aunt Letty's advice, for some ten
+minutes, and then Herbert came to them. The two girls flew at him
+with questions; while Lady Clara stood by the window, anxious to
+learn, but unwilling to thrust herself into their family matters.
+
+"My father has been much troubled to-day, and is not well," said
+Herbert. "But I do not think there is anything to frighten us. Come;
+let us go to dinner."
+
+The going to dinner was but a sorry farce with any of them; but
+nevertheless, they went through the ceremony, each for the sake of
+the others.
+
+"Mayn't we see him?" said the girls to their mother, who did come
+down into the drawing-room for one moment to speak to Clara.
+
+"Not to-night, loves. He should not be disturbed." And so that day
+came to an end; not satisfactorily.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+FAMILY COUNCILS.
+
+
+When the girls and Aunt Letty went to their chambers that night,
+Herbert returned to his mother's own dressing-room, and there, seated
+over the fire with her, discussed the matter of his father's sudden
+attack. He had been again with his father, and Sir Thomas had seemed
+glad to have him there; but now he had left him for the night.
+
+"He will sleep now, mother," said the son; "he has taken laudanum."
+
+"I fear he takes that too often now."
+
+"It was good for him to have it to-night. He did not get too much,
+for I dropped it for him." And then they sat silent for a few moments
+together.
+
+"Mother," said Herbert, "who can this man have been?"
+
+"I have no knowledge--no idea--no guess even," said Lady Fitzgerald.
+
+"It is that man's visit that has upset him."
+
+"Oh, certainly. I think there is no doubt of that. I was waiting for
+the man to go, and went in almost before he was out of the house."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"And I found your father quite prostrated."
+
+"Not on the floor?"
+
+"No, not exactly on the floor. He was still seated on his chair, but
+his head was on the table, over his arms."
+
+"I have often found him in that way, mother."
+
+"But you never saw him looking as he looked this morning, Herbert.
+When I went in he was speechless, and he remained so, I should say,
+for some minutes."
+
+"Was he senseless?"
+
+"No; he knew me well enough, and grasped me by the hand; and when I
+would have gone to the bell to ring for assistance, he would not let
+me. I thought he would have gone into a fit when I attempted it."
+
+"And what did you do?"
+
+"I sat there by him, with his hand in mine, quite quietly. And then
+he uttered a long, deep sigh, and--oh, Herbert!"
+
+"Well, mother?"
+
+"At last, he burst into a flood of tears, and sobbed and cried like a
+child."
+
+"Mother!"
+
+"He did, so that it was piteous to see him. But it did him good, for
+he was better after it. And all the time he never let go my hand, but
+held it and kissed it. And then he took me by the waist, and kissed
+me, oh, so often. And all the while his tears were running like the
+tears of a girl." And Lady Fitzgerald, as she told the story, could
+not herself refrain from weeping.
+
+"And did he say anything afterwards about this man?"
+
+"Yes; not at first, that is. Of course I asked him who he was as soon
+as I thought he could bear the question. But he turned away, and
+merely said that he was a stupid man about some old London business,
+and that he should have gone to Prendergast. But when, after a while,
+I pressed him, he said that the man's name was Mollett, and that he
+had, or pretended to have, some claim upon the city property."
+
+"A claim on the city property! Why, it's not seven hundred a year
+altogether. If any Mollett could run away with it all, that loss
+would not affect him like that."
+
+"So I said, Herbert; not exactly in those words, but trying to
+comfort him. He then put it off by declaring that it was the
+consciousness of his inability to see any one on business which
+affected him so grievously."
+
+"It was that he said to me."
+
+"And there may be something in that, Herbert."
+
+"Yes; but then what should make him so weak, to begin with? If you
+remember, mother, he was very well,--more like himself than usual
+last night."
+
+"Oh, I observed it. He seemed to like having Clara Desmond there."
+
+"Didn't he, mother? I observed that too. But then Clara Desmond is
+such a sweet creature." The mother looked at her son as he said this,
+but the son did not notice the look. "I do wonder what the real truth
+can be," he continued. "Do you think there is anything wrong about
+the property in general? About this estate, here?"
+
+"No, I don't think that," said the mother, sadly.
+
+"What can it be then?" But Lady Fitzgerald sat there, and did not
+answer the question. "I'll tell you what I will do, mother; I'll go
+up to London, and see Prendergast, and consult him."
+
+"Oh, no; you mustn't do that. I am wrong to tell you all this, for he
+told me to talk to no one. But it would kill me if I didn't speak of
+it to you."
+
+"All the same, mother, I think it would be best to consult
+Prendergast."
+
+"Not yet, Herbert. I dare say Mr. Prendergast may be a very good sort
+of man, but we none of us know him. And if, as is very probable, this
+is only an affair of health, it would be wrong in you to go to a
+stranger. It might look--"
+
+"Look what, mother?"
+
+"People might think--he, I mean--that you wanted to interfere."
+
+"But who ought to interfere on his behalf if I don't?"
+
+"Quite true, dearest; I understand what you mean, and know how good
+you are. But perhaps Mr. Prendergast might not. He might think you
+wanted--"
+
+"Wanted what, mother? I don't understand you."
+
+"Wanted to take the things out of your father's hands."
+
+"Oh, mother!"
+
+"He doesn't know you. And, what is more, I don't think he knows much
+of your father. Don't go to him yet." And Herbert promised that he
+would not.
+
+"And you don't think that this man was ever here before?" he asked.
+
+"Well, I rather think he was here once before; many years ago--soon
+after you went to school."
+
+"So long ago as that?"
+
+"Yes; not that I remember him, or, indeed, ever knew of his coming
+then, if he did come. But Jones says that she thinks she remembers
+him."
+
+"Did Jones see him now?"
+
+"Yes; she was in the hall as he passed through on his way out. And it
+so happened that she let him in and out too when he came before. That
+is, if it is the same man."
+
+"That's very odd."
+
+"It did not happen here. We were at Tenby for a few weeks in the
+summer."
+
+"I remember; you went there with the girls just when I went back to
+school."
+
+"Jones was with us, and Richard. We had none other of our own
+servants. And Jones says that the same man did come then; that he
+stayed with your father for an hour or two; and that when he left,
+your father was depressed--almost as he was yesterday. I well
+remember that. I know that a man did come to him at Tenby; and--oh,
+Herbert!"
+
+"What is it, mother? Speak out at any rate to me."
+
+"Since that man came to him at Tenby he has never been like what he
+was before."
+
+And then there was more questioning between them about Jones and her
+remembrances. It must be explained that Jones was a very old and very
+valued servant. She had originally been brought up as a child by Mrs.
+Wainwright, in that Dorsetshire parsonage, and had since remained
+firm to the fortunes of the young lady, whose maid she had become on
+her first marriage. As her mistress had been promoted, so had Jones.
+At first she had been Kitty to all the world, now she was Mrs. Jones
+to the world at large, Jones to Sir Thomas and her mistress and
+of late years to Herbert, and known by all manner of affectionate
+sobriquets to the young ladies. Sometimes they would call her
+Johnny, and sometimes the Duchess; but doubtless they and Mrs. Jones
+thoroughly understood each other. By the whole establishment Mrs.
+Jones was held in great respect, and by the younger portion in
+extreme awe. Her breakfast and tea she had in a little sitting-room
+by herself; but the solitude of this was too tremendous for her
+to endure at dinner-time. At that meal she sat at the head of the
+table in the servants' hall, though she never troubled herself to
+carve anything except puddings and pies, for which she had a great
+partiality, and of which she was supposed to be the most undoubted
+and severe judge known of anywhere in that part of the country.
+
+She was supposed by all her brother and sister servants to be a very
+Croesus for wealth; and wondrous tales were told of the money she
+had put by. But as she was certainly honest, and supposed to be very
+generous to certain poor relations in Dorsetshire, some of these
+stories were probably mythic. It was known, however, as a fact, that
+two Castle Richmond butlers, one out-door steward, three neighbouring
+farmers, and one wickedly ambitious coachman, had endeavoured to
+tempt her to matrimony--in vain. "She didn't want none of them," she
+told her mistress. "And, what was more, she wouldn't have none of
+them." And therefore she remained Mrs. Jones, with brevet rank.
+
+It seemed, from what Lady Fitzgerald said, that Mrs. Jones's manner
+had been somewhat mysterious about this man, Mollett. She had
+endeavoured to reassure and comfort her mistress, saying that nothing
+would come of it as nothing had come of that other Tenby visit, and
+giving it as her counsel that the ladies should allow the whole
+matter to pass by without further notice. But at the same time Lady
+Fitzgerald had remarked that her manner had been very serious when
+she first said that she had seen the man before.
+
+"Jones," Lady Fitzgerald had said to her, very earnestly, "if you
+know more about this man than you are telling me, you are bound to
+speak out, and let me know everything."
+
+"Who--I, my lady? what could I know? Only he do look to me like the
+same man, and so I thought it right to say to your ladyship."
+
+Lady Fitzgerald had seen that there was nothing more to be gained by
+cross-questioning, and so she had allowed the matter to drop. But she
+was by no means satisfied that this servant whom she so trusted did
+not know more than she had told. And then Mrs. Jones had been with
+her in those dreadful Dorsetshire days, and an undefined fear began
+to creep over her very soul.
+
+"God bless you, my child!" said Lady Fitzgerald, as her son got up to
+leave her. And then she embraced him with more warmth even than was
+her wont. "All that we can do at present is to be gentle with him,
+and not to encourage people around him to talk of his illness."
+
+On the next morning Lady Fitzgerald did not come down to breakfast,
+but sent her love to Clara, and begged her guest to excuse her on
+account of headache. Sir Thomas rarely came in to breakfast, and
+therefore his absence was not remarkable. His daughters, however,
+went up to see him, as did also his sister; and they all declared
+that he was very much better.
+
+"It was some sudden attack, I suppose?" said Clara.
+
+"Yes, very sudden; he has had the same before," said Herbert. "But
+they do not at all affect his intellect or bodily powers. Depression
+is, I suppose, the name that the doctors would call it."
+
+And then at last it became noticeable by them that Lady Clara did not
+use her left arm. "Oh, Clara!" said Emmeline, "I see now that you are
+hurt. How selfish we have been! Oh dear, oh dear!" And both Emmeline
+and Mary immediately surrounded her, examining her arm, and almost
+carrying her to the sofa.
+
+"I don't think it will be much," said Clara. "It's only a little
+stiff."
+
+"Oh, Herbert, what shall we do? Do look here; the inside of her arm
+is quite black."
+
+Herbert, gently touching her hand, did examine the arm, and declared
+his opinion that she had received a dreadfully violent blow. Emmeline
+proposed to send for a doctor to pronounce whether or no it were
+broken. Mary said that she didn't think it was broken, but that she
+was sure the patient ought not to be moved that day, or probably for
+a week. Aunt Letty, in the mean time, prescribed a cold-water bandage
+with great authority, and bounced out of the room to fetch the
+necessary linen and basin of water.
+
+"It's nothing at all," continued Clara. "And indeed I shall go home
+to-day; indeed I shall."
+
+"It might be very bad for your arm that you should be moved," said
+Herbert.
+
+"And your staying here will not be the least trouble to us. We shall
+all be so happy to have you; shall we not, Mary?"
+
+"Of course we shall; and so will mamma."
+
+"I am so sorry to be here now," said Clara, "when I know you are all
+in such trouble about Sir Thomas. But as for going, I shall go as
+soon as ever you can make it convenient to send me. Indeed I shall."
+And so the matter was discussed between them, Aunt Letty in the mean
+time binding up the bruised arm with cold-water appliances.
+
+Lady Clara was quite firm about going, and, therefore, at about
+twelve she was sent. I should say taken, for Emmeline insisted on
+going with her in the carriage. Herbert would have gone also, but he
+felt that he ought not to leave Castle Richmond that day, on account
+of his father. But he would certainly ride over, he said, and learn
+how her arm was the next morning.
+
+"And about Clady, you know," said Clara.
+
+"I will go on to Clady also. I did send a man there yesterday to see
+about the flue. It's the flue that's wrong, I know."
+
+"Oh, thank you; I am so much obliged to you," said Clara. And then
+the carriage drove off, and Herbert returned into the morning
+sitting-room with his sister Mary.
+
+"I'll tell you what it is, Master Herbert," said Mary.
+
+"Well--what is it?"
+
+"You are going to fall in love with her young ladyship."
+
+"Am I? Is that all you know about it? And who are you going to fall
+in love with pray?"
+
+"Oh! his young lordship, perhaps; only he ought to be about ten years
+older, so that I'm afraid that wouldn't do. But Clara is just the age
+for you. It really seems as though it were all prepared ready to your
+hand."
+
+"You girls always do think that those things are ready prepared;"
+and so saying, Herbert walked off with great manly dignity to some
+retreat among his own books and papers, there to meditate whether
+this thing were in truth prepared for him. It certainly was the fact
+that the house did seem very blank to him now that Clara was gone;
+and that he looked forward with impatience to the visit which it was
+so necessary that he should make on the following day to Clady.
+
+The house at Castle Richmond was very silent and quiet that day. When
+Emmeline came back, she and her sister remained together. Nothing had
+been said to them about Mollett's visit, and they had no other idea
+than that this lowness of spirits on their father's part, to which
+they had gradually become accustomed, had become worse and more
+dangerous to his health than ever.
+
+Aunt Letty talked much about it to Herbert, to Lady Fitzgerald,
+to Jones, and to her brother, and was quite certain that she had
+penetrated to the depth of the whole matter. That nasty city
+property, she said, which had come with her grandmother, had always
+given the family more trouble than it was worth. Indeed, her
+grandmother had been a very troublesome woman altogether; and no
+wonder, for though she was a Protestant herself, she had had Papist
+relations in Lancashire. She distinctly remembered to have heard that
+there was some flaw in the title of that property, and she knew that
+it was very hard to get some of the tenants to pay any rent. That she
+had always heard. She was quite sure that this man was some person
+laying a claim to it, and threatening to prosecute his claim at law.
+It was a thousand pities that her brother should allow such a trifle
+as this,--for after all it was but a trifle, to fret his spirits and
+worry him in this way. But it was the wretched state of his health:
+were he once himself again, all such annoyances as that would pass
+him by like the wind.
+
+It must be acknowledged that Aunt Letty's memory in this respect was
+not exactly correct; for, as it happened, Sir Thomas held his little
+property in the city of London by as firm a tenure as the laws and
+customs of his country could give him; and seeing that his income
+thence arising came from ground rents near the river, on which
+property stood worth some hundreds of thousands, it was not very
+probable that his tenants should be in arrear. But what she said had
+some effect upon Herbert. He was not quite sure whether this might
+not be the cause of his father's grief; and if the story did not have
+much effect upon Lady Fitzgerald, at any rate it did as well as any
+other to exercise the ingenuity and affection of Aunt Letty.
+
+Sir Thomas passed the whole of that day in his own room; but during a
+great portion of the day either his wife, or sister, or son was with
+him. They endeavoured not to leave him alone with his own thoughts,
+feeling conscious that something preyed upon his mind, though
+ignorant as to what that something might be.
+
+He was quite aware of the nature of their thoughts; perfectly
+conscious of the judgment they had formed respecting him. He knew
+that he was subjecting himself, in the eyes not only of his own
+family but of all those around him, to suspicions which must be
+injurious to him, and yet he could not shake off the feeling that
+depressed him.
+
+But at last he did resolve to make an attempt at doing so. For some
+time in the evening he was altogether alone, and he then strove to
+force his mind to work upon the matter which occupied it,--to arrange
+his ideas, and bring himself into a state in which he could make a
+resolution. For hours he had sat,--not thinking upon this subject,
+for thought is an exertion which requires a combination of ideas and
+results in the deducing of conclusions from premises; and no such
+effort as that had he hitherto made,--but endeavouring to think while
+he allowed the matter of his grief to lie ever before his mind's eye.
+
+He had said to himself over and over again, that it behoved him to
+make some great effort to shake off this incubus that depressed him;
+but yet no such effort had hitherto been even attempted. Now at last
+he arose and shook himself, and promised to himself that he would be
+a man. It might be that the misfortune under which he groaned was
+heavy, but let one's sorrow be what it may, there is always a better
+and a worse way of meeting it. Let what trouble may fall on a man's
+shoulders, a man may always bear it manfully. And are not troubles
+when so borne half cured? It is the flinching from pain which makes
+pain so painful.
+
+This truth came home to him as he sat there that day, thinking what
+he should do, endeavouring to think in what way he might best turn
+himself. But there was this that was especially grievous to him,
+that he had no friend whom he might consult in this matter. It was
+a sorrow, the cause of which he could not explain to his own family,
+and in all other troubles he had sought assistance and looked
+for counsel there and there only. He had had one best, steadiest,
+dearest, truest counsellor, and now it had come to pass that things
+were so placed that in this great trouble he could not go to her.
+
+And now a friend was so necessary to him! He felt that he was not fit
+to judge how he himself should act in this terrible emergency; that
+it was absolutely necessary for him that he should allow himself to
+be guided by some one else. But to whom should he appeal?
+
+"He is a cold man," said he to himself, as one name did occur to him,
+"very cold, almost unfeeling; but he is honest and just." And then
+again he sat and thought. "Yes, he is honest and just; and what
+should I want better than honesty and justice?" And then, shuddering
+as he resolved, he did resolve that he would send for this honest and
+just man. He would send for him; or, perhaps better still, go to him.
+At any rate, he would tell him the whole truth of his grief, and then
+act as the cold, just man should bid him.
+
+But he need not do this yet--not quite yet. So at least he said to
+himself, falsely. If a man decide with a fixed decision that his
+tooth should come out, or his leg be cut off, let the tooth come out
+or the leg be cut off on the earliest possible opportunity. It is the
+flinching from such pain that is so grievously painful.
+
+But it was something to have brought his mind to bear with a fixed
+purpose upon these things, and to have resolved upon what he would
+do, though he still lacked strength to put his resolution immediately
+to the proof.
+
+Then, later in the evening, his son came and sat with him, and he
+was able in some sort to declare that the worst of that evil day had
+passed from him. "I shall breakfast with you all to-morrow," he said,
+and as he spoke a faint smile passed across his face.
+
+"Oh! I hope you will," said Herbert; "we shall be so delighted: but,
+father, do not exert yourself too soon."
+
+"It will do me good, I think."
+
+"I am sure it will, if the fatigue be not too much."
+
+"The truth is, Herbert, I have allowed this feeling to grow upon me
+till I have become weak under it. I know that I ought to make an
+exertion to throw it off, and it is possible that I may succeed."
+
+Herbert muttered some few hopeful words, but he found it very
+difficult to know what he ought to say. That his father had some
+secret he was quite sure; and it is hard to talk to a man about his
+secret, without knowing what that secret is.
+
+"I have allowed myself to fall into a weak state," continued Sir
+Thomas, speaking slowly, "while by proper exertion I might have
+avoided it."
+
+"You have been very ill, father," said Herbert.
+
+"Yes, I have been ill, very ill, certainly. But I do not know that
+any doctor could have helped me."
+
+"Father--"
+
+"No, Herbert; do not ask me questions; do not inquire; at any rate,
+not at present. I will endeavour--now at least I will endeavour--to
+do my duty. But do not urge me by questions, or appear to notice me
+if I am infirm."
+
+"But, father,--if we could comfort you?"
+
+"Ah! if you could. But, never mind, I will endeavour to shake off
+this depression. And, Herbert, comfort your mother; do not let her
+think much of all this, if it can be helped."
+
+"But how can it be helped?"
+
+"And tell her this: there is a matter that troubles my mind."
+
+"Is it about the property, father?"
+
+"No--yes; it certainly is about the property in one sense."
+
+"Then do not heed it; we shall none of us heed it. Who has so good a
+right to say so as I?"
+
+"Bless you, my darling boy! But, Herbert, such things must be
+heeded--more or less, you know: but you may tell your mother this,
+and perhaps it may comfort her. I have made up my mind to go to
+London and to see Prendergast; I will explain the whole of this thing
+to him, and as he bids me so will I act."
+
+This was thought to be satisfactory to a certain extent both by the
+mother and son. They would have been better pleased had he opened
+his heart to them and told them everything; but that it was clear he
+could not bring himself to do. This Mr. Prendergast they had heard
+was a good man; and in his present state it was better that he should
+seek counsel of any man than allow his sorrow to feed upon himself
+alone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+THE RECTOR OF DRUMBARROW AND HIS WIFE.
+
+
+Herbert Fitzgerald, in speaking of the Rev. Aeneas Townsend to Lady
+Clara Desmond, had said that in his opinion the reverend gentleman
+was a good man, but a bad clergyman. But there were not a few in the
+county Cork who would have said just the reverse, and declared him
+to be a bad man, but a good clergyman. There were others, indeed,
+who knew him well, who would have declared him to be perfect in both
+respects, and others again who thought him in both respects to be
+very bad. Amidst these great diversities of opinion I will venture on
+none of my own, but will attempt to describe him.
+
+In Ireland stanch Protestantism consists too much in a hatred of
+Papistry--in that rather than in a hatred of those errors against
+which we Protestants are supposed to protest. Hence the cross--which
+should, I presume, be the emblem of salvation to us all--creates a
+feeling of dismay and often of disgust instead of love and reverence;
+and the very name of a saint savours in Irish Protestant ears of
+idolatry, although Irish Protestants on every Sunday profess to
+believe in a communion of such. These are the feelings rather than
+the opinions of the most Protestant of Irish Protestants, and it
+is intelligible that they should have been produced by the close
+vicinity of Roman Catholic worship in the minds of men who are
+energetic and excitable, but not always discreet or argumentative.
+
+One of such was Mr. Townsend, and few men carried their Protestant
+fervour further than he did. A cross was to him what a red cloth is
+supposed to be to a bull; and so averse was he to the intercession
+of saints, that he always regarded as a wolf in sheep's clothing a
+certain English clergyman who had written to him a letter dated from
+the feast of St. Michael and All Angels. On this account Herbert
+Fitzgerald took upon himself to say that he regarded him as a bad
+clergyman: whereas, most of his Protestant neighbours looked upon
+this enthusiasm as his chief excellence.
+
+And this admiration for him induced his friends to overlook what they
+must have acknowledged to be defects in his character. Though he
+had a good living--at least, what the laity in speaking of clerical
+incomes is generally inclined to call a good living, we will say
+amounting in value to four hundred pounds a year--he was always in
+debt. This was the more inexcusable as he had no children, and had
+some small private means.
+
+And nobody knew why he was in debt--in which word nobody he himself
+must certainly be included. He had no personal expenses of his own;
+his wife, though she was a very queer woman, as Lady Clara had said,
+could hardly be called an extravagant woman; there was nothing large
+or splendid about the way of living at the glebe; anybody who came
+there, both he and she were willing to feed as long as they chose
+to stay, and a good many in this way they did feed; but they never
+invited guests; and as for giving regular fixed dinner-parties, as
+parish rectors do in England, no such idea ever crossed the brain of
+either Mr. or Mrs. Townsend.
+
+That they were both charitable all the world admitted; and their
+admirers professed that hence arose all their difficulties. But their
+charities were of a most indiscreet kind. Money they rarely had to
+give, and therefore they would give promises to pay. While their
+credit with the butcher and baker was good they would give meat and
+bread; and both these functionaries had by this time learned that,
+though Mr. Townsend might not be able to pay such bills himself, his
+friends would do so, sooner or later, if duly pressed. And therefore
+the larder at Drumbarrow Glebe--that was the name of the parish--was
+never long empty, and then again it was never long full.
+
+But neither Mr. nor Mrs. Townsend were content to bestow their
+charities without some other object than that of relieving material
+wants by their alms. Many infidels, Mr. Townsend argued, had been
+made believers by the miracle of the loaves and fishes; and therefore
+it was permissible for him to make use of the same means for drawing
+over proselytes to the true church. If he could find hungry Papists
+and convert them into well-fed Protestants by one and the same
+process, he must be doing a double good, he argued;--could by no
+possibility be doing an evil.
+
+Such being the character of Mr. Townsend, it will not be thought
+surprising that he should have his warm admirers and his hot
+detractors. And they who were inclined to be among the latter were
+not slow to add up certain little disagreeable eccentricities among
+the list of his faults,--as young Fitzgerald had done in the matter
+of the dirty surplices.
+
+Mr. Townsend's most uncompromising foe for many years had been the
+Rev. Bernard M'Carthy, the parish priest for the same parish of
+Drumbarrow. Father Bernard, as he was called by his own flock, or
+Father Barney, as the Protestants in derision were delighted to name
+him, was much more a man of the world than his Protestant colleague.
+He did not do half so many absurd things as did Mr. Townsend, and
+professed to laugh at what he called the Protestant madness of the
+rector. But he also had been an eager, I may also say, a malicious
+antagonist. What he called the "souping" system of the Protestant
+clergyman stank in his nostrils--that system by which, as he stated,
+the most ignorant of men were to be induced to leave their faith by
+the hope of soup, or other food. He was as firmly convinced of the
+inward, heart-destroying iniquity of the parson as the parson was of
+that of the priest. And so these two men had learned to hate each
+other. And yet neither of them were bad men.
+
+I do not wish it to be understood that this sort of feeling always
+prevailed in Irish parishes between the priest and the parson even
+before the days of the famine. I myself have met a priest at a
+parson's table, and have known more than one parish in which the
+Protestant and Roman Catholic clergymen lived together on amicable
+terms. But such a feeling as that above represented was common,
+and was by no means held as proof that the parties themselves
+were quarrelsome or malicious. It was a part of their religious
+convictions, and who dares to interfere with the religious
+convictions of a clergyman?
+
+On the day but one after that on which the Castle Richmond ladies
+had been thrown from their car on the frosty road, Mr. Townsend and
+Father Bernard were brought together in an amicable way, or in a way
+that was intended to be amicable, for the first time in their lives.
+The relief committee for the district in which they both lived was
+one and the same, and it was of course well that both should act on
+it. When the matter was first arranged, Father Bernard took the bull
+by the horns and went there; but Mr. Townsend, hearing this, did not
+do so. But now that it had become evident that much work, and for a
+long time, would have to be performed at these committees, it was
+clear that Mr. Townsend, as a Protestant clergyman, could not remain
+away without neglecting his duty. And so, after many mental struggles
+and questions of conscience, the parson agreed to meet the priest.
+
+The point had been very deeply discussed between the rector and his
+wife. She had given it as her opinion that priest M'Carthy was pitch,
+pitch itself in its blackest turpitude, and as such could not be
+touched without defilement. Had not all the Protestant clergymen
+of Ireland in a body, or, at any rate, all those who were worth
+anything, who could with truth be called Protestant clergymen, had
+they not all refused to enter the doors of the National schools
+because they could not do so without sharing their ministration
+there with papist priests; with priests of the altar of Baal, as Mrs.
+Townsend called them? And should they now yield, when, after all, the
+assistance needed was only for the body--not for the soul?
+
+It may be seen from this that the lady's mind was not in its nature
+logical; but the extreme absurdity of her arguments, though they did
+not ultimately have the desired effect, by no means came home to
+the understanding of her husband. He thought that there was a great
+deal in what she said, and almost felt that he was yielding to
+instigations from the evil one; but public opinion was too strong for
+him; public opinion and the innate kindness of his own heart. He felt
+that at this very moment he ought to labour specially for the bodies
+of these poor people, as at other times he would labour specially for
+their souls; and so he yielded.
+
+"Well," said his wife to him as he got off his car at his own door
+after the meeting, "what have you done?" One might have imagined from
+her tone of voice and her manner that she expected, or at least hoped
+to hear that the priest had been absolutely exterminated and made
+away with in the good fight.
+
+Mr. Townsend made no immediate answer, but proceeded to divest
+himself of his rusty outside coat, and to rub up his stiff, grizzled,
+bristly, uncombed hair with both his hands, as was his wont when he
+was not quite satisfied with the state of things.
+
+"I suppose he was there?" said Mrs. Townsend.
+
+"Oh, yes, he was there. He is never away, I take it, when there
+is any talking to be done." Now Mr. Townsend dearly loved to hear
+himself talk, but no man was louder against the sins of other
+orators. And then he began to ask how many minutes it wanted to
+dinner-time.
+
+Mrs. Townsend knew his ways. She would not have a ghost of a chance
+of getting from him a true and substantial account of what had really
+passed if she persevered in direct questions to the effect. So
+she pretended to drop the matter, and went and fetched her lord's
+slippers, the putting on of which constituted his evening toilet; and
+then, after some little hurrying inquiry in the kitchen, promised him
+his dinner in fifteen minutes.
+
+"Was Herbert Fitzgerald there?"
+
+"Oh yes; he is always there. He's a nice young fellow; a very fine
+young fellow; but--"
+
+"But what?"
+
+"He thinks he understands the Irish Roman Catholics, but he
+understands them no more than--than--than this slipper," he said,
+having in vain cudgelled his brain for a better comparison.
+
+"You know what Aunt Letty says about him. She doubts he isn't quite
+right, you know."
+
+Mrs. Townsend by this did not mean to insinuate that Herbert was at
+all afflicted in that way which we attempt to designate, when we
+say that one of our friends is not all right, and at the same time
+touch our heads with our forefinger. She had intended to convey an
+impression that the young man's religious ideas were not exactly of
+that stanch, true-blue description which she admired.
+
+"Well, he has just come from Oxford, you know," said Mr. Townsend:
+"and at the present moment Oxford is the most dangerous place to
+which a young man can be sent."
+
+"And Sir Thomas would send him there, though I remember telling his
+aunt over and over again how it would be." And Mrs. Townsend as she
+spoke, shook her head sorrowfully.
+
+"I don't mean to say, you know, that he's absolutely bitten."
+
+"Oh, I know--I understand. When they come to crosses and
+candlesticks, the next step to the glory of Mary is a very easy one.
+I would sooner send a young man to Rome than to Oxford. At the one he
+might be shocked and disgusted; but at the other he is cajoled, and
+cheated, and ruined." And then Mrs. Townsend threw herself back in
+her chair, and threw her eyes up towards the ceiling.
+
+But there was no hypocrisy or pretence in this expression of her
+feelings. She did in her heart of hearts believe that there was some
+college or club of papists at Oxford, emissaries of the Pope or of
+the Jesuits. In her moments of sterner thought the latter were the
+enemies she most feared; whereas, when she was simply pervaded by
+her usual chronic hatred of the Irish Roman Catholic hierarchy, she
+was wont to inveigh most against the Pope. And this college, she
+maintained, was fearfully successful in drawing away the souls of
+young English students. Indeed, at Oxford a man had no chance against
+the devil. Things were better at Cambridge; though even there there
+was great danger. Look at A---- and Z----; and she would name two
+perverts to the Church of Rome, of whom she had learned that they
+were Cambridge men. But, thank God, Trinity College still stood firm.
+Her idea was, that if there were left any real Protestant truth in
+the Church of England, that Church should look to feed her lambs
+by the hands of shepherds chosen from that seminary, and from that
+seminary only.
+
+"But isn't dinner nearly ready?" said Mr. Townsend, whose ideas were
+not so exclusively Protestant as were those of his wife. "I haven't
+had a morsel since breakfast." And then his wife, who was peculiarly
+anxious to keep him in a good humour that all might come out about
+Father Barney, made another little visit to the kitchen.
+
+At last the dinner was served. The weather was very cold, and the
+rector and his wife considered it more cosy to use only the parlour,
+and not to migrate into the cold air of a second room. Indeed, during
+the winter months the drawing-room of Drumbarrow Glebe was only used
+for visitors, and for visitors who were not intimate enough in the
+house to be placed upon the worn chairs and threadbare carpet of the
+dining-parlour. And very cold was that drawing-room found to be by
+each visitor.
+
+But the parlour was warm enough; warm and cosy, though perhaps at
+times a little close; and of evenings there would pervade it a smell
+of whisky punch, not altogether acceptable to unaccustomed nostrils.
+Not that the rector of Drumbarrow was by any means an intemperate
+man. His single tumbler of whisky toddy, repeated only on Sundays
+and some other rare occasions, would by no means equal, in point of
+drinking, the ordinary port of an ordinary English clergyman. But
+whisky punch does leave behind a savour of its intrinsic virtues,
+delightful no doubt to those who have imbibed its grosser elements,
+but not equally acceptable to others who may have been less
+fortunate.
+
+During dinner there was no conversation about Herbert Fitzgerald,
+or the committee, or Father Barney. The old gardener, who waited at
+table with all his garden clothes on him, and whom the neighbours,
+with respectful deference, called Mr. Townsend's butler, was a Roman
+Catholic; as, indeed, were all the servants at the glebe, and as are,
+necessarily, all the native servants in that part of the country. And
+though Mr. and Mrs. Townsend put great trust in their servant Jerry
+as to the ordinary duties of gardening, driving, and butlering,
+they would not knowingly trust him with a word of their habitual
+conversation about the things around them. Their idea was, that every
+word so heard was carried to the priest, and that the priest kept a
+book in which every word so uttered was written down. If this were so
+through the parish, the priest must in truth have had something to
+do, both for himself and his private secretary; for, in spite of all
+precautions that were taken, Jerry and Jerry's brethren no doubt did
+hear much of what was said. The repetitions to the priest, however, I
+must take leave to doubt.
+
+But after dinner, when the hot water and whisky were on the table,
+when the two old arm-chairs were drawn cozily up on the rug, each
+with an old footstool before it; when the faithful wife had mixed
+that glass of punch--or jug rather, for, after the old fashion, it
+was brewed in such a receptacle; and when, to inspire increased
+confidence, she had put into it a small extra modicum of the eloquent
+spirit, then the mouth of the rector was opened, and Mrs. Townsend
+was made happy.
+
+"And so Father Barney and I have met at last," said he, rather
+cheerily, as the hot fumes of the toddy regaled his nostrils.
+
+"And how did he behave now?"
+
+"Well, he was decent enough--that is, as far as absolute behaviour
+went. You can't have a silk purse from off a sow's ear, you know."
+
+"No, indeed; and goodness knows there's plenty of the sow's ear about
+him. But now, Aeneas, dear, do tell me how it all was, just from the
+beginning."
+
+"He was there before me," said the husband.
+
+"Catch a weasel asleep!" said the wife.
+
+"I didn't catch him asleep at any rate," continued he. "He was there
+before me; but when I went into the little room where they hold the
+meeting--"
+
+"It's at Berryhill, isn't it?"
+
+"Yes, at the Widow Casey's. To see that woman bowing and scraping
+and curtsying to Father Barney, and she his own mother's brother's
+daughter, was the best thing in the world."
+
+"That was just to do him honour before the quality, you know."
+
+"Exactly. When I went in, there was nobody there but his reverence
+and Master Herbert."
+
+"As thick as possible, I suppose. Dear, dear; isn't it dreadful!--Did
+I put sugar enough in it, Aeneas?"
+
+"Well, I don't know; perhaps you may give me another small lump. At
+any rate, you didn't forget the whisky."
+
+"I'm sure it isn't a taste too strong--and after such work as you've
+had to-day.--And so young Fitzgerald and Father Barney--"
+
+"Yes, there they were with their heads together. It was something
+about a mill they were saying."
+
+"Oh, it's perfectly dreadful!"
+
+"But Herbert stopped, and introduced me at once to Father Barney."
+
+"What! a regular introduction? I like that, indeed."
+
+"He didn't do it altogether badly. He said something about being glad
+to see two gentlemen together--"
+
+"A gentleman, indeed!"
+
+"--who were both so anxious to do the best they could in the parish,
+and whose influence was so great--or something to that effect. And
+then we shook hands."
+
+"You did shake hands?"
+
+"Oh, yes; if I went there at all, it was necessary that I should do
+that."
+
+"I am very glad it was not me, that's all. I don't think I could
+shake hands with Father Barney."
+
+"There's no knowing what you can do, my dear, till you try."
+
+"H--m," said Mrs. Townsend, meaning to signify thereby that she was
+still strong in the strength of her own impossibilities.
+
+"And then there was a little general conversation about the potato,
+for no one came in for a quarter of an hour or so. The priest said
+that they were as badly off in Limerick and Clare as we are here.
+Now, I don't believe that; and when I asked him how he knew, he
+quoted the 'Freeman.'"
+
+"The 'Freeman,' indeed! Just like him. I wonder it wasn't the
+'Nation.'" In Mrs. Townsend's estimation, the parish priest was much
+to blame because he did not draw his public information from some
+newspaper specially addicted to the support of the Protestant cause.
+
+"And then Somers came in, and he took the chair. I was very much
+afraid at one time that Father Barney was going to seat himself
+there."
+
+"You couldn't possibly have stood that?"
+
+"I had made up my mind what to do. I should have walked about the
+room, and looked on the whole affair as altogether irregular,--as
+though there was no chairman. But Somers was of course the proper
+man."
+
+"And who else came?"
+
+"There was O'Leary, from Boherbue."
+
+"He was another Papist?"
+
+"Oh, yes; there was a majority of them. There was Greilly, the man
+who has got that large take of land over beyond Banteer; and then
+Father Barney's coadjutor came in."
+
+"What! that wretched-looking man from Gortnaclough?"
+
+"Yes; he's the curate of the parish, you know."
+
+"And did you shake hands with him too?"
+
+"Indeed I did; and you never saw a fellow look so ashamed of himself
+in your life."
+
+"Well, there isn't much shame about them generally."
+
+"And there wasn't much about him by-and-by. You never heard a man
+talk such trash in your life, till Somers put him down."
+
+"Oh, he was put down? I'm glad of that."
+
+"And to do Father Barney justice, he did tell him to hold his tongue.
+The fool began to make a regular set speech."
+
+"Father Barney, I suppose, didn't choose that anybody should do that
+but himself."
+
+"He did enough for the two, certainly. I never heard a man so fond of
+his own voice. What he wants is to rule it all just his own way."
+
+"Of course he does; and that's just what you won't let him do. What
+other reason can there be for your going there?"
+
+And so the matter was discussed. What absolute steps were taken
+by the committee; how they agreed to buy so much meal of such a
+merchant, at such a price, and with such funds; how it was to be
+resold, and never given away on any pretext; how Mr. Somers had
+explained that giving away their means was killing the goose that
+laid the golden eggs, when the young priest, in an attitude for
+oratory, declared that the poor had no money with which to make the
+purchase; and how in a few weeks' time they would be able to grind
+their own flour at Herbert Fitzgerald's mill;--all this was also
+told. But the telling did not give so much gratification to Mrs.
+Townsend as the sly hits against the two priests.
+
+And then, while they were still in the middle of all this; when the
+punch-jug had given way to the teapot, and the rector was beginning
+to bethink himself that a nap in his arm-chair would be very
+refreshing, Jerry came into the room to announce that Richard had
+come over from Castle Richmond with a note for "his riverence." And
+so Richard was shown in.
+
+Now Richard might very well have sent in his note by Jerry, which
+after all contained only some information with reference to a list
+of old women which Herbert Fitzgerald had promised to send over to
+the glebe. But Richard knew that the minister would wish to chat
+with him, and Richard himself had no indisposition for a little
+conversation.
+
+"I hope yer riverences is quite well then," said Richard, as he
+tendered his note, making a double bow, so as to include them both.
+
+"Pretty well, thank you," said Mrs. Townsend. "And how's all the
+family?"
+
+"Well, then, they're all rightly, considhering. The Masther's no just
+what he war, you know, ma'am."
+
+"I'm afraid not--I'm afraid not," said the rector. "You'll not take a
+glass of spirits, Richard?"
+
+"Yer riverence knows I never does that," said Richard, with somewhat
+of a conscious look of high morality, for he was a rigid teetotaller.
+
+"And do you mean to say that you stick to that always?" said Mrs.
+Townsend, who firmly believed that no good could come out of
+Nazareth, and that even abstinence from whisky must be bad if
+accompanied by anything in the shape of a Roman Catholic ceremony.
+
+"I do mean to say, ma'am, that I never touched a dhrop of anything
+sthronger than wather, barring tay, since the time I got the pledge
+from the blessed apostle." And Richard boldly crossed himself in the
+presence of them both. They knew well whom he meant by the blessed
+apostle: it was Father Mathew.
+
+"Temperance is a very good thing, however we may come by it," said
+Mr. Townsend, who meant to imply by this that Richard's temperance
+had been come by in the worst way possible.
+
+"That's thrue for you, sir," said Richard; "but I never knew any
+pledge kept, only the blessed apostle's." By which he meant to imply
+that no sanctity inherent in Mr. Townsend's sacerdotal proceedings
+could be of any such efficacy.
+
+And then Mr. Townsend read the note. "Ah, yes," said he; "tell Mr.
+Herbert that I'm very much obliged to him. There will be no other
+answer necessary."
+
+"Very well, yer riverence, I'll be sure to give Mr. Herbert the
+message." And Richard made a sign as though he were going.
+
+"But tell me, Richard," said Mrs. Townsend, "is Sir Thomas any
+better? for we have been really very uneasy about him."
+
+"Indeed and he is, ma'am; a dail betther this morning, the Lord be
+praised."
+
+"It was a kind of a fit, wasn't it, Richard?" asked the parson.
+
+"A sort of a fit of illness of some kind, I'm thinking," said
+Richard, who had no mind to speak of his family's secrets out of
+doors. Whatever he might be called upon to tell the priest, at any
+rate he was not called on to tell anything to the parson.
+
+"But it was very sudden this time, wasn't it, Richard?" asked the
+lady; "immediately after that strange man was shown into his
+room--eh?"
+
+"I'm sure, ma'am, I can't say; but I don't think he was a ha'porth
+worse than ordinar, till after the gentleman went away. I did hear
+that he did his business with the gentleman, just as usual like."
+
+"And then he fell into a fit, didn't he, Richard?"
+
+"Not that I heard of, ma'am. He did a dail of talking about some law
+business, I did hear our Mrs. Jones say; and then afther he warn't
+just the betther of it."
+
+"Was that all?"
+
+"And I don't think he's none the worse for it neither, ma'am; for the
+masther do seem to have more life in him this day than I'se seen this
+many a month. Why, he's been out and about with her ladyship in the
+pony-carriage all the morning."
+
+"Has he now? Well, I'm delighted to hear that. It is some trouble
+about the English estates, I believe, that vexes him?"
+
+"Faix, then, ma'am, I don't just know what it is that ails him,
+unless it be just that he has too much money for to know what to do
+wid it. That'd be the sore vexation to me, I know."
+
+"Well; ah, yes; I suppose I shall see Mrs. Jones to-morrow, or at
+latest the day after," said Mrs. Townsend, resolving to pique the man
+by making him understand that she could easily learn all that she
+wished to learn from the woman: "a great comfort Mrs. Jones must be
+to her ladyship."
+
+"Oh yes, ma'am; 'deed an' she is," said Richard; "'specially in the
+matter of puddins and pies, and such like."
+
+He was not going to admit Mrs. Jones's superiority, seeing that he
+had lived in the family long before his present mistress's marriage.
+
+"And in a great many other things too, Richard. She's quite a
+confidential servant. That's because she's a Protestant, you know."
+
+Now of all men, women, and creatures living, Richard the coachman of
+Castle Richmond was the most good tempered. No amount of anger or
+scolding, no professional misfortune--such as the falling down of
+his horse upon the ice, no hardship--such as three hours' perpetual
+rain when he was upon the box--would make him cross. To him it was a
+matter of perfect indifference if he were sent off with his car just
+before breakfast, or called away to some stable work as the dinner
+was about to smoke in the servants' hall. He was a great eater, but
+what he didn't eat one day he could eat the next. Such things never
+ruffled him, nor was he ever known to say that such a job wasn't his
+work. He was always willing to nurse a baby, or dig potatoes, or cook
+a dinner, to the best of his ability, when asked to do so; but he
+could not endure to be made less of than a Protestant; and of all
+Protestants he could not endure to be made less of than Mrs. Jones.
+
+"'Cause she's a Protestant, is it, ma'am?"
+
+"Of course, Richard; you can't but see that Protestants are more
+trusted, more respected, more thought about than Romanists, can you?"
+
+"'Deed then I don't know, ma'am."
+
+"But look at Mrs. Jones."
+
+"Oh, I looks at her often enough; and she's well enough too for a
+woman. But we all know her weakness."
+
+"What's that, Richard?" asked Mrs. Townsend, with some interest
+expressed in her tone; for she was not above listening to a little
+scandal, even about the servants of her great neighbours.
+
+"Why, she do often talk about things she don't understand. But she's
+a great hand at puddins and pies, and that's what one mostly looks
+for in a woman."
+
+This was enough for Mrs. Townsend for the present, and so Richard was
+allowed to take his departure, in full self-confidence that he had
+been one too many for the parson's wife.
+
+"Jerry," said Richard, as they walked out into the yard together
+to get the Castle Richmond pony, "does they often thry to make a
+Prothestant of you now?"
+
+"Prothestants be d----," said Jerry, who by no means shared in
+Richard's good gifts as to temper.
+
+"Well, I wouldn't say that; at laist, not of all of 'em."
+
+"The likes of them's used to it," said Jerry.
+
+And then Richard, not waiting to do further battle on behalf of his
+Protestant friends, trotted out of the yard.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+SECOND LOVE.
+
+
+On the day after Clara's departure, Herbert did, as a matter of
+course, make his promised visit at Desmond Court. It was on that day
+that Sir Thomas had been driving about in the pony-carriage with Lady
+Fitzgerald, as Richard had reported. Herbert had been with his father
+in the morning, and then having seen him and his mother well packed
+up in their shawls and cloaks, had mounted his horse and ridden off.
+
+"I may be kept some time," said he, "as I have promised to go on to
+Clady, and see after that soup kitchen."
+
+"I shouldn't wonder if Herbert became attached to Clara Desmond,"
+said the mother to Sir Thomas, soon after they had begun their
+excursion.
+
+"Do you think so?" said the baronet; and his tone was certainly not
+exactly that of approbation.
+
+"Well, yes; I certainly do think it probable. I am sure he admires
+her, and I think it very likely to come to more. Would there be any
+objection?"
+
+"They are both very young," said Sir Thomas.
+
+"But in Herbert's position will not a young marriage be the best
+thing for him?"
+
+"And she has no fortune; not a shilling. If he does marry young,
+quite young you know, it might be prudent that his wife should have
+something of her own."
+
+"They'd live here," said Lady Fitzgerald, who knew that of all men
+her husband was usually most free from mercenary feelings and an
+over-anxiety as to increased wealth, either for himself or for his
+children; "and I think it would be such a comfort to you. Herbert,
+you see, is so fond of county business, and so little anxious for
+what young men generally consider pleasure."
+
+There was nothing more said about it at that moment; for the question
+in some measure touched upon money matters and considerations as to
+property, from all of which Lady Fitzgerald at present wished to keep
+her husband's mind free. But towards the end of the drive he himself
+again referred to it.
+
+"She is a nice girl, isn't she?"
+
+"Very nice, I think; as far as I've seen her."
+
+"She is pretty, certainly."
+
+"Very pretty; more than pretty; much more. She will be beautiful."
+
+"But she is such a mere child. You do not think that anything will
+come of it immediately;--not quite immediately?"
+
+"Oh no; certainly not quite immediately. I think Herbert is not
+calculated to be very sudden in any such feelings, or in the
+expression of them: but I do think such an event very probable before
+the winter is over."
+
+In the mean time Herbert spent the whole day over at Desmond Court,
+or at Clady. He found the countess delighted to see him, and both she
+and Lady Clara went on with him to Clady. It was past five and quite
+dark before he reached Castle Richmond, so that he barely got home in
+time to dress for dinner.
+
+The dinner-party that evening was more pleasant than usual. Sir
+Thomas not only dined with them, but came into the drawing-room after
+dinner, and to a certain extent joined in their conversation. Lady
+Fitzgerald could see that this was done by a great effort; but it
+was not remarked by Aunt Letty and the others, who were delighted to
+have him with them, and to see him once more interested about their
+interests.
+
+And now the building of the mill had been settled, and the final
+orders were to be given by Herbert at the spot on the following
+morning.
+
+"We can go with you to Berryhill, I suppose, can't we?" said Mary.
+
+"I shall be in a great hurry," said Herbert, who clearly did not wish
+to be encumbered by his sisters on this special expedition.
+
+"And why are you to be in such a hurry to-morrow?" asked Aunt Letty.
+
+"Well, I shall be hurried; I have promised to go to Clady again, and
+I must be back here early, and must get another horse."
+
+"Why, Herbert, you are becoming a Hercules of energy," said his
+father, smiling: "you will have enough to do if you look to all the
+soup kitchens on the Desmond property as well as our own."
+
+"I made a sort of promise about this particular affair at Clady, and
+I must carry it out," said Herbert.
+
+"And you'll pay your devoirs to the fair Lady Clara on your way home
+of course," said Mary.
+
+"More than probable," he replied.
+
+"And stay so late again that you'll hardly be here in time for
+dinner," continued Mary: to which little sally her brother vouchsafed
+no answer.
+
+But Emmeline said nothing. Lady Clara was specially her friend, and
+she was too anxious to secure such a sister-in-law to make any joke
+upon such a subject.
+
+On that occasion nothing more was said about it; but Sir Thomas hoped
+within his heart that his wife was right in prophesying that his son
+would do nothing sudden in this matter.
+
+On the following morning young Fitzgerald gave the necessary orders
+at Berryhill very quickly, and then coming back remounted another
+horse without going into the house. Then he trotted off to Clady,
+passing the gate of Desmond Court without calling; did what he had
+promised to do at Clady, or rather that which he had made to stand as
+an excuse for again visiting that part of the world so quickly; and
+after that, with a conscience let us hope quite clear, rode up the
+avenue at Desmond Court. It was still early in the day when he got
+there, probably not much after two o'clock; and yet Mary had been
+quite correct in foretelling that he would only be home just in time
+for dinner.
+
+But, nevertheless, he had not seen Lady Desmond. Why or how it had
+occurred that she had been absent from the drawing-room the whole of
+the two hours which he had passed in the house, it may be unnecessary
+to explain. Such, however, had been the fact. The first five minutes
+had been passed in inquiries after the bruise, and, it must be owned,
+in a surgical inspection of the still discoloured arm. "It must be
+very painful," he had said, looking into her face, as though by
+doing so he could swear that he would so willingly bear all the pain
+himself, if it were only possible to make such an exchange.
+
+"Not very," she had answered, smiling. "It is only a little stiff. I
+can't quite move it easily."
+
+And then she lifted it up, and afterwards dropped it with a little
+look of pain that ran through his heart.
+
+The next five minutes were taken up in discussing the case of the
+recusant boiler, and then Clara discovered that she had better go and
+fetch her mother. But against the immediate taking of this step he
+had alleged some valid reason, and so they had gone on, till the dark
+night admonished him that he could do no more than save the dinner
+hour at Castle Richmond.
+
+The room was nearly dark when he left her, and she got up and stood
+at the front window, so that, unseen, she might see his figure as he
+rode off from the house. He mounted his horse within the quadrangle,
+and coming out at the great old-fashioned ugly portal, galloped off
+across the green park with a loose rein and a happy heart. What is it
+the song says?
+
+
+   "Oh, ladies, beware of a gay young knight
+    Who loves and who rides away."
+
+
+There was at Clara's heart, as she stood there at the window, some
+feeling of the expediency of being beware, some shadow of doubt as
+to the wisdom of what she had done. He rode away gaily, with a happy
+spirit, for he had won that on the winning of which he had been
+intent. No necessity for caution presented itself to him. He had seen
+and loved; had then asked, and had not asked in vain.
+
+She stood gazing after him, as long as her straining eye could catch
+any outline of his figure as it disappeared through the gloom of the
+evening. As long as she could see him, or even fancy that she still
+saw him, she thought only of his excellence; of his high character,
+his kind heart, his talents--which in her estimation were ranked
+perhaps above their real value--his tastes, which coincided so well
+with her own, his quiet yet manly bearing, his useful pursuits, his
+gait, appearance, and demeanour. All these were of a nature to win
+the heart of such a girl as Clara Desmond; and then, probably, in
+some indistinct way, she remembered the broad acres to which he was
+the heir, and comforted herself by reflecting that this at least was
+a match which none would think disgraceful for a daughter even of an
+Earl of Desmond.
+
+But sadder thoughts did come when that figure had wholly disappeared.
+Her eye, looking out into the darkness, could not but see another
+figure on which it had often in past times delighted almost
+unconsciously to dwell. There, walking on that very road, another
+lover, another Fitzgerald, had sworn that he loved her; and had truly
+sworn so, as she well knew. She had never doubted his truth to her,
+and did not doubt it now;--and yet she had given herself away to
+another.
+
+And in many things he too, that other lover, had been noble and
+gracious, and fit for a woman to love. In person he exceeded all
+that she had ever seen or dreamed of; and why should we think that
+personal excellence is to count for nothing in female judgment, when
+in that of men it ranks so immeasurably above all other excellences?
+His bearing, too, was chivalrous and bold, his language full of
+poetry, and his manner of loving eager, impetuous, and of a kin to
+worship. Then, too, he was now in misfortune; and when has that
+failed to soften even the softness of a woman's heart?
+
+It was impossible that she should not make comparisons, comparisons
+that were so distasteful to her; impossible, also, that she should
+not accuse herself of some falseness to that first lover. The time to
+us, my friends, seems short enough since she was walking there, and
+listening with childish delight to Owen's protestations of love. It
+was but little more than one year since: but to her those months had
+been very long. And, reader, if thou hast arrived at any period of
+life which enables thee to count thy past years by lustrums; if thou
+art at a time of life, past thirty we will say, hast thou not found
+that thy years, which are now short enough, were long in those bygone
+days?
+
+Those fourteen months were to her the space almost of a second life,
+as she now looked back upon them. When those earlier vows were made,
+what had she cared for prudence, for the world's esteem, or an
+alliance that might be becoming to her? That Owen Fitzgerald was a
+gentleman of high blood and ancient family, so much she had cared to
+know; for the rest, she had only cared to feel this, that her heart
+beat high with pleasure when he was with her.
+
+Did her heart beat as high now, when his cousin was beside her? No;
+she felt that it did not. And sometimes she felt, or feared to feel,
+that it might beat high again when she should again see the lover
+whom her judgment had rejected.
+
+Her judgment had rejected him altogether long before an idea had at
+all presented itself to her that Herbert Fitzgerald could become her
+suitor. Nor had this been done wholly in obedience to her mother's
+mandate. She had realized in her own mind the conviction that Owen
+Fitzgerald was not a man with whom any girl could at present safely
+link her fortune. She knew well that he was idle, dissipated, and
+extravagant; and she could not believe that these vices had arisen
+only from his banishment from her, and that they would cease and
+vanish whenever that banishment might cease.
+
+Messages came to her, in underhand ways--ways well understood in
+Ireland, and not always ignored in England--to the effect that all
+his misdoings arose from his unhappiness; that he drank and gambled
+only because the gates of Desmond Court were no longer open to him.
+There was that in Clara's heart which did for a while predispose her
+to believe somewhat of this, to hope that it might not be altogether
+false. Could any girl loving such a man not have had some such hope?
+But then the stories of these revelries became worse and worse,
+and it was dinned into her ears that these doings had been running
+on in all their enormity before that day of his banishment. And
+so, silently and sadly, with no outspoken word either to mother or
+brother, she had resolved to give him up.
+
+There was no necessity to her for any outspoken word. She had
+promised her mother to hold no intercourse with the man; and she
+had kept and would keep her promise. Why say more about it? How she
+might have reconciled her promise to her mother with an enduring
+engagement, had Owen Fitzgerald's conduct allowed her to regard her
+engagement as enduring,--that had been a sore trouble to her while
+hope had remained; but now no hope remained, and that trouble was
+over.
+
+And then Herbert Fitzgerald had come across her path, and those
+sweet, loving, kind Fitzgerald girls, who were always ready to cover
+her with such sweet caresses, with whom she had known more of the
+happiness of friendliness than ever she had felt before. They threw
+themselves upon her like sisters, and she had never before enjoyed
+sisterly treatment. He had come across her path; and from the first
+moment she had become conscious of his admiration.
+
+She knew herself to be penniless, and dreaded that she should be
+looked upon as wishing to catch the rich heir. But every one had
+conspired to throw them together. Lady Fitzgerald had welcomed her
+like a mother, with more caressing soft tenderness than her own
+mother usually vouchsafed to her; and even Sir Thomas had gone out of
+his usual way to be kind to her.
+
+That her mother would approve of such a marriage she could not doubt.
+Lady Desmond in these latter days had not said much to her about
+Owen; but she had said very much of the horrors of poverty. And she
+had been too subtle to praise the virtues of Herbert with open plain
+words; but she had praised the comforts of a handsome income and
+well-established family mansion. Clara at these times had understood
+more than had been intended, and had, therefore, put herself on her
+guard against her mother's worldly wisdom; but, nevertheless, the
+dropping of the water had in some little measure hollowed the stone
+beneath.
+
+And thus, thinking of these things, she stood at the window for some
+half-hour after the form of her accepted lover had become invisible
+in the gathering gloom of the evening.
+
+And then her mother entered the room, and candles were brought. Lady
+Desmond was all smiles and benignity, as she had been for this last
+week past, while Herbert Fitzgerald had been coming and going almost
+daily at Desmond Court. But Clara understood this benignity, and
+disliked it.
+
+It was, however, now necessary that everything should be told.
+Herbert had declared that he should at once inform his father and
+mother, and obtain their permission for his marriage. He spoke of
+it as a matter on which there was no occasion for any doubt or
+misgiving. He was an only son, he said, and trusted and loved in
+everything. His father never opposed him on any subject whatever; and
+would, he was sure, consent to any match he might propose. "But as
+to you," he added, with a lover's flattering fervour, "they are all
+so fond of you, they all think so much of you, that my only fear is
+that I shall be jealous. They'll all make love to you, Aunt Letty
+included."
+
+It was therefore essential that she should at once tell her mother,
+and ask her mother's leave. She had once before confessed a tale of
+love, and had done so with palpitation of the heart, with trembling
+of the limbs, and floods of tears. Then her tale had been received
+with harsh sternness. Now she could tell her story without any
+trembling, with no tears; but it was almost indifferent to her
+whether her mother was harsh or tender.
+
+"What! has Mr. Fitzgerald gone?" said the countess, on entering the
+room.
+
+"Yes, mamma; this half-hour," said Clara, not as yet coming away from
+the window.
+
+"I did not hear his horse, and imagined he was here still. I hope he
+has not thought me terribly uncivil, but I could not well leave what
+I was doing."
+
+To this little make-believe speech Clara did not think it necessary
+to return any answer. She was thinking how she would begin to say
+that for saying which there was so strong a necessity, and she could
+not take a part in small false badinage on a subject which was so
+near her heart.
+
+"And what about that stupid mason at Clady?" asked the countess,
+still making believe.
+
+"Mr. Fitzgerald was there again to-day, mamma; and I think it will be
+all right now; but he did not say much about it."
+
+"Why not? you were all so full of it yesterday."
+
+Clara, who had half turned round towards the light, now again turned
+herself towards the window. This task must be done; but the doing of
+it was so disagreeable! How was she to tell her mother that she loved
+this man, seeing that so short a time since she had declared that she
+loved another?
+
+"And what was he talking about, love?" said the countess, ever
+so graciously. "Or, perhaps, no questioning on the matter can be
+allowed. May I ask questions, or may I not? eh, Clara?" and then the
+mother, walking up towards the window, put her fair white hands upon
+her daughter's two shoulders.
+
+"Of course you may inquire," said Clara.
+
+"Then I do inquire--immediately. What has this _preux chevalier_ been
+saying to my Clara, that makes her stand thus solemn and silent,
+gazing out into the dark night?"
+
+"Mamma!"
+
+"Well, love?"
+
+"Herbert Fitzgerald has--has asked me to be his wife. He has proposed
+to me."
+
+The mother's arm now encircled the daughter lovingly, and the
+mother's lips were pressed to the daughter's forehead. "Herbert
+Fitzgerald has asked you to be his wife, has he? And what answer has
+my bonny bird deigned to make to so audacious a request?"
+
+Lady Desmond had never before spoken to her daughter in tones so
+gracious, in a manner so flattering, so caressing, so affectionate.
+But Clara would not open her heart to her mother's tenderness. She
+could not look into her mother's face, and welcome her mother's
+consent with unutterable joy, as she would have done had that consent
+been given a year since to a less prudent proposition. That marriage
+for which she was now to ask her mother's sanction would of course
+be sanctioned. She had no favour to beg; nothing for which to be
+grateful. With a slight motion, unconsciously, unwillingly, but not
+the less positively, she repulsed her mother's caress as she answered
+her question.
+
+"I have accepted him, mamma; that is, of course, if you do not
+object."
+
+"My own, own child!" said the countess, seizing her daughter in her
+arms, and pressing her to her bosom. And in truth Clara was, now
+probably for the first time, her own heart's daughter. Her son,
+though he was but a poor earl, was Earl of Desmond. He too, though in
+truth but a poor earl, was not absolutely destitute,--would in truth
+be blessed with a fair future. But Lady Clara had hitherto been felt
+only as a weight. She had been born poor as poverty itself, and
+hitherto had shown so little disposition to find for herself a remedy
+for this crushing evil! But now--now matters were indeed changed. She
+had obtained for herself the best match in the whole country round,
+and, in doing so, had sacrificed her heart's young love. Was she not
+entitled to all a mother's tenderness? Who knew, who could know the
+miseries of poverty so well as the Countess of Desmond? Who then
+could feel so much gratitude to a child for prudently escaping from
+them? Lady Desmond did feel grateful to her daughter.
+
+"My own, own child; my happy girl," she repeated. "He is a man to
+whom any mother in all the land would be proud to see her daughter
+married. Never, never did I see a young man so perfectly worthy of a
+girl's love. He is so thoroughly well educated, so thoroughly well
+conducted, so good-looking, so warm-hearted, so advantageously
+situated in all his circumstances. Of course he will go into
+Parliament, and then any course is open to him. The property is, I
+believe, wholly unembarrassed, and there are no younger brothers.
+You may say that the place is his own already, for old Sir Thomas
+is almost nobody. I do wish you joy, my own dearest, dearest Clara!"
+After which burst of maternal eloquence, the countess pressed her
+lips to those of her child, and gave her a mother's warmest kiss.
+
+Clara was conscious that she was thoroughly dissatisfied with her
+mother, but she could not exactly say why it was so. She did return
+her mother's kiss, but she did it coldly, and with lips that were not
+eager.
+
+"I'm glad you think that I have done right, mamma."
+
+"Right, my love! Of course I think that you have done right: only
+I give you no credit, dearest; none in the least; for how could you
+help loving one so lovable in every way as dear Herbert?"
+
+"Credit! no, there is no credit," she said, not choosing to share her
+mother's pleasantry.
+
+"But there is this credit. Had you not been one of the sweetest girls
+that ever was born, he would not have loved you."
+
+"He has loved me because there was no one else here," said Clara.
+
+"Nonsense! No one else here, indeed! Has he not the power if he
+pleases to go and choose whomever he will in all London. Had he been
+mercenary, and wanted money," said the countess, in a tone which
+showed how thoroughly she despised any such vice, "he might have
+had what he would. But then he could not have had my Clara. But
+he has looked for beauty and manners and high-bred tastes, and an
+affectionate heart; and, in my opinion, he could not have been more
+successful in his search." After which second burst of eloquence, she
+again kissed her daughter.
+
+'Twas thus, at that moment, that she congratulated the wife of the
+future Sir Herbert Fitzgerald; and then she allowed Clara to go up
+to her own room, there to meditate quietly on what she had done, and
+on that which she was about to do. But late in the evening, Lady
+Desmond, whose mind was thoroughly full of the subject, again broke
+out into triumph.
+
+"You must write to Patrick to-morrow, Clara. He must hear the good
+news from no one but yourself."
+
+"Had we not better wait a little, mamma?"
+
+"Why, my love? You hardly know how anxious your brother is for your
+welfare."
+
+"I knew it was right to tell you, mamma--"
+
+"Right to tell me! of course it was. You could not have had the heart
+to keep it from me for half a day."
+
+"But perhaps it may be better not to mention it further till we
+know--"
+
+"Till we know what?" said the countess with a look of fear about her
+brow.
+
+"Whether Sir Thomas and Lady Fitzgerald will wish it. If they
+object--"
+
+"Object! why should they object? how can they object? They are not
+mercenary people; and you are an earl's daughter. And Herbert is not
+like a girl. The property is his own, entailed on him, and he may do
+as he pleases."
+
+"In such a matter I am sure he would not wish to displease either his
+father or his mother."
+
+"Nonsense, my dear; quite nonsense; you do not at all see the
+difference between a young man and a girl. He has a right to do
+exactly as he likes in such a matter. But I am quite sure that they
+will not object. Why should they? How can they?"
+
+"Mr. Fitzgerald says that they will not," Clara admitted, almost
+grudgingly.
+
+"Of course they will not. I don't suppose they could bring themselves
+to object to anything he might suggest. I never knew a young man so
+happily situated in this respect. He is quite a free agent. I don't
+think they would say much to him if he insisted on marrying the
+cook-maid. Indeed, it seems to me that his word is quite paramount at
+Castle Richmond."
+
+"All the same, mamma, I would rather not write to Patrick till
+something more has been settled."
+
+"You are wrong there, Clara. If anything disagreeable should happen,
+which is quite impossible, it would be absolutely necessary that your
+brother should know. Believe me, my love, I only advise you for your
+own good."
+
+"But Mr. Fitzgerald will probably be here to-morrow; or if not
+to-morrow, next day."
+
+"I have no doubt he will, love. But why do you call him Mr.
+Fitzgerald? You were calling him Herbert the other day. Don't you
+remember how I scolded you? I should not scold you now."
+
+Clara made no answer to this, and then the subject was allowed to
+rest for that night. She would call him Herbert, she said to herself;
+but not to her mother. She would keep the use of that name till
+she could talk with Emmeline as a sister. Of all her anticipated
+pleasures, that of having now a real sister was perhaps the greatest;
+or, rather, that of being able to talk about Herbert with one whom
+she could love and treat as a sister. But Herbert himself would exact
+the use of his own Christian name, for the delight of his own ears;
+that was a matter of course; that, doubtless, had been already done.
+
+And then mother and daughter went to bed. The countess, as she did
+so, was certainly happy to her heart's core. Could it be that she had
+some hope, unrecognized by herself, that Owen Fitzgerald might now
+once more be welcomed at Desmond Court? that something might now be
+done to rescue him from that slough of despond?
+
+And Clara too was happy, though her happiness was mixed. She did love
+Herbert Fitzgerald. She was sure of that. She said so to herself over
+and over again. Love him! of course she loved him, and would cherish
+him as her lord and husband to the last day of her life, the last
+gasp of her breath.
+
+But still, as sleep came upon her eyelids, she saw in her memory
+the bright flash of that other lover's countenance, when he first
+astonished her with the avowal of his love, as he walked beside her
+under the elms, with his horse following at his heels.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+DOUBTS.
+
+
+I believe there is no period of life so happy as that in which a
+thriving lover leaves his mistress after his first success. His joy
+is more perfect then than at the absolute moment of his own eager
+vow, and her half-assenting blushes. Then he is thinking mostly of
+her, and is to a certain degree embarrassed by the effort necessary
+for success. But when the promise has once been given to him, and
+he is able to escape into the domain of his own heart, he is as a
+conqueror who has mastered half a continent by his own strategy.
+
+It never occurs to him, he hardly believes, that his success is no
+more than that which is the ordinary lot of mortal man. He never
+reflects that all the old married fogies whom he knows and despises,
+have just as much ground for pride, if such pride were enduring; that
+every fat, silent, dull, somnolent old lady whom he sees and quizzes,
+has at some period been deemed as worthy a prize as his priceless
+galleon; and so deemed by as bold a captor as himself.
+
+Some one has said that every young mother, when her first child is
+born, regards the babe as the most wonderful production of that
+description which the world has yet seen. And this too is true. But
+I doubt even whether that conviction is so strong as the conviction
+of the young successful lover, that he has achieved a triumph which
+should ennoble him down to late generations. As he goes along he has
+a contempt for other men; for they know nothing of such glory as
+his. As he pores over his "Blackstone," he remembers that he does so,
+not so much that he may acquire law, as that he may acquire Fanny;
+and then all other porers over "Blackstone" are low and mean in his
+sight--are mercenary in their views and unfortunate in their ideas,
+for they have no Fanny in view.
+
+Herbert Fitzgerald had this proud feeling strong within his heart
+as he galloped away across the greensward, and trotted fast along
+the road, home to Castle Richmond. She was compounded of all
+excellences--so he swore to himself over and over again--and being so
+compounded, she had consented to bestow all these excellences upon
+him. Being herself goddess-like, she had promised to take him as the
+object of her world's worship. So he trotted on fast and faster, as
+though conscious of the half-continent which he had won by his skill
+and valour.
+
+She had told him about his cousin Owen. Indeed, the greater number of
+the soft musical words which she had spoken in that long three hours'
+colloquy had been spoken on this special point. It had behoved her to
+tell him all; and she thought that she had done so. Nay, she had done
+so with absolute truth--to the best of her heart's power.
+
+"You were so young then," he had argued; "so very young."
+
+"Yes, very young. I am not very old now, you know," and she smiled
+sweetly on him.
+
+"No, no; but a year makes so much difference. You were all but a
+child then. You do not love him now, Clara?"
+
+"No; I do not love him now," she had answered.
+
+And then he exacted a second, a third, a fourth assurance, that she
+did absolutely, actually, and with her whole heart love him, him
+Herbert, in lieu of that other him, poor Owen; and with this he,
+Herbert, was contented. Content; nay, but proud, elated with triumph,
+and conscious of victory. In this spirit he rode home as fast as his
+horse could carry him.
+
+He too had to tell his tale to those to whom he owed obedience, and
+to beg that they would look upon his intended bride with eyes of
+love and with parental affection. But in this respect he was hardly
+troubled with more doubt than Clara had felt. How could any one
+object to his Clara?
+
+There are young men who, from their positions in life, are obliged to
+abstain from early marriage, or to look for dowries with their wives.
+But he, luckily, was not fettered in this way. He could marry as he
+pleased, so long as she whom he might choose brought with her gentle
+blood, a good heart, a sweet temper, and such attraction of person
+and manners as might make the establishment at Castle Richmond proud
+of his young bride. And of whom could that establishment be more
+proud than of Lady Clara Desmond? So he rode home without any doubt
+to clog his happiness.
+
+But he had a source of joy which Clara wanted. She was almost
+indifferent to her mother's satisfaction; but Herbert looked forward
+with the liveliest, keenest anticipation to his mother's gratified
+caresses and unqualified approval--to his father's kind smile and
+warm assurance of consent. Clara had made herself known at Castle
+Richmond; and he had no doubt but that all this would be added to his
+cup of happiness. There was therefore no alloy to debase his virgin
+gold as he trotted quickly into the stable-yard.
+
+But he resolved that he would say nothing about the matter that
+night. He could not well tell them all in full conclave together.
+Early after breakfast he would go to his father's room; and after
+that, he would find his mother. There would then be no doubt that the
+news would duly leak out among his sisters and Aunt Letty.
+
+"Again only just barely in time, Herbert," said Mary, as they
+clustered round the fire before dinner.
+
+"You can't say I ever keep you waiting; and I really think that's
+some praise for a man who has got a good many things on his hand."
+
+"So it is, Herbert," said Emmeline. "But we have done something too.
+We have been over to Berryhill; and the people have already begun
+there: they were at work with their pickaxes among the rocks by the
+river-side."
+
+"So much the better. Was Mr. Somers there?"
+
+"We did not see him; but he had been there," said Aunt Letty. "But
+Mrs. Townsend found us. And who do you think came up to us in the
+most courteous, affable, condescending way?"
+
+"Who? I don't know. Brady, the builder, I suppose."
+
+"No, indeed: Brady was not half so civil, for he kept himself to his
+own work. It was the Rev. Mr. M'Carthy, if you please."
+
+"I only hope you were civil to him," said Herbert, with some slight
+suffusion of colour over his face; for he rather doubted the conduct
+of his aunt to the priest, especially as her great Protestant ally,
+Mrs. Townsend, was of the party.
+
+"Civil! I don't know what you would have, unless you wanted me to
+embrace him. He shook hands with us all round. I really thought Mrs.
+Townsend would have looked him into the river when he came to her."
+
+"She always was the quintessence of absurdity and prejudice," said
+he.
+
+"Oh, Herbert!" exclaimed Aunt Letty.
+
+"Well; and what of 'Oh, Herbert?' I say she is so. If you and Mary
+and Emmeline did not look him into the river when he shook hands with
+you, why should she do so? He is an ordained priest even according to
+her own tenets,--only she knows nothing of what her own tenets are."
+
+"I'll tell you what they are. They are the substantial, true, and
+holy doctrines of the Protestant religion, founded on the gospel.
+Mrs. Townsend is a thoroughly Protestant woman; one who cannot abide
+the sorceries of popery."
+
+"Hates them as a mad dog hates water; and with the same amount of
+judgment. We none of us wish to be drowned; but nevertheless there
+are some good qualities in water."
+
+"But there are no good qualities in popery," said Aunt Letty, with
+her most extreme energy.
+
+"Are there not?" said Herbert. "I should have thought that belief in
+Christ, belief in the Bible, belief in the doctrine of a Saviour's
+atonement, were good qualities. Even the Mahommedan's religion has
+some qualities that are good."
+
+"I would sooner be a Mahommedan than a Papist," said Aunt Letty,
+somewhat thoughtlessly, but very stoutly.
+
+"You would alter your opinion after the first week in a harem," said
+Herbert. And then there was a burst of laughter, in which Aunt Letty
+herself joined. "I would sooner go there than go to confession," she
+whispered to Mary, as they all walked off to dinner.
+
+"And how is the Lady Clara's arm?" asked Mary, as soon as they were
+again once more round the fire.
+
+"The Lady Clara's arm is still very blue," said Herbert.
+
+"And I suppose it took you half an hour to weep over it?" continued
+his sister.
+
+"Exactly, by Shrewsbury clock."
+
+"And while you were weeping over the arm, what happened to the hand?
+She did not surrender it, did she, in return for so much tenderness
+on your part?"
+
+Emmeline thought that Mary was very pertinacious in her badinage, and
+was going to bid her hold her tongue; but she observed that Herbert
+blushed, and walked away without further answer. He went to the
+further end of the long room, and there threw himself on to a sofa.
+"Could it be that it was all settled?" thought Emmeline to herself.
+
+She followed him to the sofa, and sitting beside him, took hold of
+his arm. "Oh, Herbert! if there is anything to tell, do tell me."
+
+"Anything to tell!" said he. "What do you mean?"
+
+"Oh! you know. I do love her so dearly. I shall never be contented to
+love any one else as your wife--not to love her really, really with
+all my heart."
+
+"What geese you girls are!--you are always thinking of love, and
+weddings, and orange-blossoms."
+
+"It is only for you I think about them," said Emmeline. "I know there
+is something to tell. Dear Herbert, do tell me."
+
+"There is a young bachelor duke coming here to-morrow. He has a
+million a year, and three counties all his own; he has blue eyes, and
+is the handsomest man that ever was seen. Is that news enough?"
+
+"Very well, Herbert. I would tell you anything."
+
+"Well; tell me anything."
+
+"I'll tell you this. I know you're in love with Clara Desmond, and
+I'm sure she's in love with you; and I believe you are both engaged,
+and you're not nice at all to have a secret from me. I never tease
+you, as Mary does, and it would make me so happy to know it."
+
+Upon this he put his arm round her waist and whispered one word into
+her ear. She gave an exclamation of delight; and as the tears came
+into her eyes congratulated him with a kiss. "Oh dear, oh dear! I am
+so happy!" she exclaimed.
+
+"Hush--sh," he whispered. "I knew how it would be if I told you."
+
+"But they will all know to-morrow, will they not?"
+
+"Leave that to me. You have coaxed me out of my secret, and you
+are bound to keep it." And then he went away well pleased. This
+description of delight on his sister's part was the first instalment
+of that joy which he had promised himself from the satisfaction of
+his family.
+
+Lady Fitzgerald had watched all that had passed, and had already
+learned her mistake--her mistake in that she had prophesied that no
+immediate proposal was likely to be made by her son. She now knew
+well enough that he had made such a proposal, and that he had been
+accepted.
+
+And this greatly grieved her. She had felt certain from the few
+slight words which Sir Thomas had spoken that there were valid
+reasons why her son should not marry a penniless girl. That
+conversation, joined to other things, to the man's visit, and her
+husband's deep dejection, had convinced her that all was not right.
+Some misfortune was impending over them, and there had been that in
+her own early history which filled her with dismay as she thought of
+this.
+
+She had ardently desired to caution her son in this respect,--to
+guard him, if possible, against future disappointment and future
+sorrow. But she could not do so without obtaining in some sort her
+husband's assent to her doing so. She resolved that she would talk it
+over with Sir Thomas. But the subject was one so full of pain, and he
+was so ill, and therefore she had put it off.
+
+And now she saw that the injury was done. Nevertheless, she said
+nothing either to Emmeline or to Herbert. If the injury were done,
+what good could now result from talking? She doubtless would hear it
+all soon enough. So she sat still, watching them.
+
+On the following morning Sir Thomas did not come out to breakfast.
+Herbert went into his room quite early, as was always his custom; and
+as he left it for the breakfast-parlour he said, "Father, I should
+like to speak to you just now about something of importance."
+
+"Something of importance, Herbert; what is it? Anything wrong?" For
+Sir Thomas was nervous, and easily frightened.
+
+"Oh dear, no; nothing is wrong. It is nothing that will annoy you; at
+least I think not. But it will keep till after breakfast. I will come
+in again the moment breakfast is over." And so saying he left the
+room with a light step.
+
+In the breakfast-parlour it seemed to him as though everybody was
+conscious of some important fact. His mother's kiss was peculiarly
+solemn and full of solicitude; Aunt Letty smirked as though she was
+aware of something--something over and above the great Protestant
+tenets which usually supported her; and Mary had no joke to fling at
+him.
+
+"Emmeline," he whispered, "you have told."
+
+"No, indeed," she replied. But what mattered it? Everybody would know
+now in a few minutes. So he ate his breakfast, and then returned to
+Sir Thomas.
+
+"Father," said he, as soon as he had got into the arm-chair, in which
+it was his custom to sit when talking with Sir Thomas, "I hope what
+I am going to tell you will give you pleasure. I have proposed to a
+young lady, and she has--accepted me."
+
+"You have proposed, and have been accepted!"
+
+"Yes, father."
+
+"And the young lady--?"
+
+"Is Lady Clara Desmond. I hope you will say that you approve of it.
+She has no fortune, as we all know, but that will hardly matter to
+me; and I think you will allow that in every other respect she is--"
+
+Perfect, Herbert would have said, had he dared to express his true
+meaning. But he paused for a moment to look for a less triumphant
+word; and then paused again, and left his sentence incomplete, when
+he saw the expression of his father's face.
+
+"Oh, father! you do not mean to say that you do not like her?"
+
+But it was not dislike that was expressed in his father's face, as
+Herbert felt the moment after he had spoken. There was pain there,
+and solicitude, and disappointment; a look of sorrow at the tidings
+thus conveyed to him; but nothing that seemed to betoken dislike of
+any person.
+
+"What is it, sir? Why do you not speak to me? Can it be that you
+disapprove of my marrying?"
+
+Sir Thomas certainly did disapprove of his son's marrying, but he
+lacked the courage to say so. Much misery that had hitherto come upon
+him, and that was about to come on all those whom he loved so well,
+arose from this lack of courage. He did not dare to tell his son that
+he advised him for the present to put aside all such hopes. It would
+have been terrible for him to do so; but he knew that in not doing so
+he was occasioning sorrow that would be more terrible.
+
+And yet he did not do it. Herbert saw clearly that the project was
+distasteful to his father,--that project which he had hoped to have
+seen received with so much delight; but nothing was said to him which
+tended to make him alter his purpose.
+
+"Do you not like her?" he asked his father, almost piteously.
+
+"Yes, yes; I do like her, we all like her, very much indeed,
+Herbert."
+
+"Then why--"
+
+"You are so young, my boy, and she is so very young, and--"
+
+"And what?"
+
+"Why, Herbert, it is not always practicable for the son even of a man
+of property to marry so early in life as this. She has nothing, you
+know."
+
+"No," said the young man, proudly; "I never thought of looking for
+money."
+
+"But in your position it is so essential if a young man wishes to
+marry."
+
+Herbert had always regarded his father as the most liberal man
+breathing,--as open-hearted and open-handed almost to a fault. To
+him, his only son, he had ever been so, refusing him nothing, and
+latterly allowing him to do almost as he would with the management
+of the estate. He could not understand that this liberality should
+be turned to parsimony on such an occasion as that of his son's
+marriage.
+
+"You think then, sir, that I ought not to marry Lady Clara?" said
+Herbert very bitterly.
+
+"I like her excessively," said Sir Thomas. "I think she is a sweet
+girl, a very sweet girl, all that I or your mother could desire to
+see in your wife; but--"
+
+"But she is not rich."
+
+"Do not speak to me in that tone, my boy," said Sir Thomas, with an
+expression that would have moved his enemy to pity, let alone his
+son. His son did pity him, and ceased to wear the angry expression of
+face which had so wounded his father.
+
+"But, father, I do not understand you," he said. "Is there any real
+objection why I should not marry? I am more than twenty-two, and you,
+I think, married earlier than that."
+
+In answer to this Sir Thomas only sighed meekly and piteously.
+
+"If you mean to say," continued the son, "that it will be
+inconvenient to you to make me any allowance--"
+
+"No, no, no; you are of course entitled to what you want, and as long
+as I can give it, you shall have it."
+
+"As long as you can give it, father!"
+
+"As long as it is in my power, I mean. What can I want of anything
+but for you--for you and them?"
+
+After this Herbert sat silent for a while, leaning on his arm. He
+knew that there existed some mischief, but he could not fathom
+it. Had he been prudent, he would have felt that there was some
+impediment to his love; some evil which it behoved him to fathom
+before he allowed his love to share it; but when was a lover prudent?
+
+"We should live here, should we not, father? No second establishment
+would be necessary."
+
+"Of course you would live here," said Sir Thomas, glad to be able to
+look at the subject on any side that was not painful. "Of course you
+would live here. For the matter of that, Herbert, the house should be
+considered as your own if you so wished it."
+
+Against this the son put in his most violent protest. Nothing on
+earth should make him consider himself master of Castle Richmond as
+long as his father lived. Nor would Clara,--his Clara, wish it. He
+knew her well, he boasted. It would amply suffice to her to live
+there with them all. Was not the house large enough? And, indeed,
+where else could he live, seeing that all his interests were
+naturally centred upon the property?
+
+And then Sir Thomas did give his consent. It would be wrong to say
+that it was wrung from him. He gave it willingly enough, as far
+as the present moment was concerned. When it was once settled, he
+assured his son that he would love Clara as his daughter. But,
+nevertheless--
+
+The father knew that he had done wrong; and Herbert knew that he
+also, he himself, had done wrongly. He was aware that there was
+something which he did not understand. But he had promised to see
+Clara either that day or the next, and he could not bring himself
+to unsay all that he had said to her. He left his father's room
+sorrowful at heart, and discontented. He had expected that his
+tidings would have been received in so far other a manner; that he
+would have been able to go from his father's study up stairs to his
+mother's room with so exulting a step; that his news, when once
+the matter was ratified by his father's approval, would have flown
+about the house with so loud a note of triumph. And now it was so
+different! His father had consented; but it was too plain that there
+was no room for any triumph.
+
+"Well, Herbert!" said Emmeline, jumping up to meet him as he returned
+to a small back drawing-room, through which he had gone to his
+father's dressing-room. She had calculated that he would come there,
+and that she might thus get the first word from him after the
+interview was over.
+
+But there was a frown upon his brow, and displeasure in his eyes.
+There was none of that bright smile of gratified pride with which
+she had expected that her greeting would have been met. "Is there
+anything wrong?" she said. "He does not disapprove, does he?"
+
+"Never mind; and do leave me now. I never can make you understand
+that one is not always in a humour for joking." And so saying, he put
+her aside, and passed on.
+
+Joking! That was indeed hard upon poor Emmeline, seeing that her
+thoughts were so full of him, that her heart beat so warmly for his
+promised bride. But she said nothing, shrinking back abashed, and
+vanishing out of the way. Could it be possible that her father should
+have refused to receive Lady Clara Desmond as his daughter-in-law?
+
+He then betook himself to a private territory of his own, where he
+might be sure that he would remain undisturbed for some half-hour or
+so. He would go to his mother, of course, but not quite immediately.
+He would think over the matter, endeavouring to ascertain what it was
+that had made his father's manner and words so painful to him.
+
+But he could not get his thoughts to work rightly;--which getting of
+the thoughts to work rightly is, by-the-by, as I take it, the hardest
+work which a man is called upon to do. Not that the subject to be
+thought about need in itself be difficult. Were one to say that
+thoughts about hydrostatics and pneumatics are difficult to the
+multitude, or that mental efforts in regions of political economy
+or ethical philosophy are beyond ordinary reach, one would only
+pronounce an evident truism, an absurd platitude. But let any man
+take any subject fully within his own mind's scope, and strive to
+think about it steadily, with some attempt at calculation as to
+results. The chances are his mind will fly off, will-he-nill-he,
+to some utterly different matter. When he wishes to debate within
+himself that question of his wife's temper, he will find himself
+considering whether he may not judiciously give away half a dozen
+pairs of those old boots; or when it behoves him to decide whether it
+shall be manure and a green crop, or a fallow season and then grass
+seeds, he cannot keep himself from inward inquiry as to the meaning
+of that peculiar smile on Mrs. Walker's face when he shook hands with
+her last night.
+
+Lord Brougham and Professor Faraday can, no doubt, command their
+thoughts. If many men could do so, there would be many Lord Broughams
+and many Professor Faradays.
+
+At the present moment Herbert Fitzgerald had no right to consider
+himself as following in the steps of either one or other of these
+great men. He wished to think about his father's circumstances, but
+his mind would fly off to Clara Desmond and her perfections. And
+thus, though he remained there for half an hour, with his back to the
+fire and his hands in his pockets, his deliberations had done him no
+good whatever,--had rather done him harm, seeing that he had only
+warmed himself into a firmer determination to go on with what he was
+doing. And then he went to his mother.
+
+She kissed him, and spoke very tenderly, nay affectionately, about
+Clara; but even she, even his mother, did not speak joyously; and she
+also said something about the difficulty of providing a maintenance
+for a married son. Then to her he burst forth, and spoke somewhat
+loudly.
+
+"I cannot understand all this, mother. If either you or my father
+know any reason why I should be treated differently from other sons,
+you ought to tell me; not leave me to grope about in the dark."
+
+"But, my boy, we both think that no son was ever entitled to more
+consideration, or to kinder or more liberal treatment."
+
+"Why do I hear all this, then, about the difficulty of my marrying?
+Or if I hear so much, why do I not hear more? I know pretty well, I
+believe, what is my father's income."
+
+"If you do not, he would tell you for the asking."
+
+"And I know that I must be the heir to it, whatever it is,--not that
+that feeling would make any difference in my dealings with him, not
+the least. And, under these circumstances, I cannot conceive why he
+and you should look coldly upon my marriage."
+
+"I look coldly on it, Herbert!"
+
+"Do you not? Do you not tell me that there will be no income for me?
+If that is to be so; if that really is the case; if the property has
+so dwindled away, or become embarrassed--"
+
+"Oh, Herbert! there never was a man less likely to injure his son's
+property than your father."
+
+"I do not mean that, mother. Let him do what he likes with it,
+I should not upbraid him, even in my thoughts. But if it be
+embarrassed; if it has dwindled away; if there be any reason why
+I should not regard myself as altogether untrammelled with regard
+to money, he ought to tell me. I cannot accuse myself of expensive
+tastes."
+
+"Dearest Herbert, nobody accuses you of anything."
+
+"But I do desire to marry; and now I have engaged myself, and will
+not break from my engagement, unless it be shown to me that I am
+bound in honour to do so. Then, indeed--"
+
+"Oh, Herbert! I do not know what you mean."
+
+"I mean this: that I expect that Clara shall be received as my wife
+with open arms--"
+
+"And so she shall be if she comes."
+
+"Or else that some reason should be given me why she should not come.
+As to income, something must be done, I suppose. If the means at our
+disposal are less than I have been taught to believe, I at any rate
+will not complain. But they cannot, I think, be so small as to afford
+any just reason why I should not marry."
+
+"Your father, you see, is ill, and one can hardly talk to him fully
+upon such matters at present."
+
+"Then I will speak to Somers. He, at any rate, must know how the
+property is circumstanced, and I suppose he will not hesitate to tell
+me."
+
+"I don't think Somers can tell you anything."
+
+"Then what is it? As for the London estate, mother, that is all
+moonshine. What if it were gone altogether? It may be that it is that
+which vexes my father; but if so, it is a monomania."
+
+"Oh, my boy, do not use such a word!"
+
+"You know what I mean. If any doubt as to that is creating this
+despondency, it only shows that though we are bound to respect and
+relieve my father's state of mind, we are not at all bound to share
+it. What would it really matter, mother, if that place in London were
+washed away by the Thames? There is more than enough left for us all,
+unless--"
+
+"Ah, Herbert, that is it."
+
+"Then I will go to Somers, and he shall tell me. My father's interest
+in this property cannot have been involved without his knowledge; and
+circumstanced as we and my father are, he is bound to tell me."
+
+"If there be anything within his knowledge to tell, he will tell it."
+
+"And if there be nothing within his knowledge, then I can only look
+upon all this as a disease on my poor father's part. I will do all I
+can to comfort him in it; but it would be madness to destroy my whole
+happiness because he labours under delusions."
+
+Lady Fitzgerald did not know what further to say. She half believed
+that Sir Thomas did labour under some delusion; but then she half
+believed also that he had upon his mind a sorrow, terribly real,
+which was in no sort delusive. Under such circumstances, how could
+she advise her son? Instead of advising him, she caressed him.
+
+"But I may claim this from you, mother, that if Somers tells me
+nothing which ought to make me break my word to Clara, you will
+receive her as your daughter. You will promise me that, will you
+not?"
+
+Lady Fitzgerald did promise, warmly; assuring him that she already
+dearly loved Clara Desmond, that she would delight in having such
+a daughter-in-law, and that she would go to her to welcome her as
+such as soon as ever he should bid her do so. With this Herbert was
+somewhat comforted, and immediately started on his search after Mr.
+Somers.
+
+I do not think that any person is to be found, as a rule, attached
+to English estates whose position is analogous to that of an Irish
+agent. And there is a wide misunderstanding in England as to these
+Irish functionaries. I have attempted, some pages back, to describe
+the national delinquencies of a middleman, or profit-renter. In
+England we are apt to think that the agents on Irish properties are
+to be charged with similar shortcomings. This I can assert to be a
+great mistake; and I believe that, as a class, the agents on Irish
+properties do their duty in a manner beneficial to the people.
+
+That there are, or were, many agents who were also middlemen, or
+profit-renters, and that in this second position they were a nuisance
+to the country, is no doubt true. But they were no nuisance in their
+working capacity as agents. That there are some bad agents there can
+be no doubt, as there are also some bad shoemakers.
+
+The duties towards an estate which an agent performs in Ireland
+are, I believe, generally shared in England between three or four
+different persons. The family lawyer performs part, the estate
+steward performs part, and the landlord himself performs part;--as to
+small estates, by far the greater part.
+
+In Ireland, let the estate be ever so small--eight hundred a year we
+will say--all the working of the property is managed by the agent. It
+is he who knows the tenants, and the limits of their holdings; it is
+he who arranges leases, and allows--or much more generally does not
+allow--for improvements. He takes the rent, and gives the order for
+the ejection of tenants if he cannot get it.
+
+I am far from saying that it would not be well that much of this
+should be done by the landlord himself;--that all of it should be so
+done on a small property. But it is done by agents; and, as a rule
+is, I think, done honestly.
+
+Mr. Somers was agent to the Castle Richmond property, and as he took
+to himself as such five per cent. on all rents paid, and as he was
+agent also to sundry other small properties in the neighbourhood,
+he succeeded in making a very snug income. He had also an excellent
+house on the estate, and was altogether very much thought of; on the
+whole, perhaps, more than was Sir Thomas. But in this respect it was
+probable that Herbert might soon take the lead.
+
+He was a large, heavy, consequential man, always very busy, as though
+aware of being one of the most important wheels that kept the Irish
+clock agoing; but he was honest, kind-hearted in the main, true as
+steel to his employers, and good-humoured--as long as he was allowed
+to have his own way. In these latter days he had been a little soured
+by Herbert's interference, and had even gone so far as to say that,
+"in his humble judgment, Mr. Fitzgerald was wrong in doing"--so and
+so. But he generally called him Herbert, was always kind to him, and
+in his heart of hearts loved him dearly. But that was a matter of
+course, for had he not been agent to the estate before Herbert was
+born?
+
+Immediately after his interview with his mother, Mr. Herbert rode
+over to Mr. Somers's house, and there found him sitting alone in his
+office. He dashed immediately into the subject that had brought him
+there. "I have come, Mr. Somers," said he, "to ask you a question
+about the property."
+
+"About the Castle Richmond property?" said Mr. Somers, rather
+surprised by his visitor's manner.
+
+"Yes; you know in what a state my poor father now is."
+
+"I know that Sir Thomas is not very well. I am sorry to say that it
+is long since he has been quite himself."
+
+"There is something that is preying upon his spirits."
+
+"I am afraid so, Herbert."
+
+"Then tell me fairly, Mr. Somers, do you know what it is?"
+
+"Not--in--the least. I have no conception whatever, and never have
+had any. I know no cause for trouble that should disquiet him."
+
+"There is nothing wrong about the property?"
+
+"Not to my knowledge."
+
+"Who has the title-deeds?"
+
+"They are at Coutts's."
+
+"You are sure of that?"
+
+"Well; as sure as a man can be of a thing that he does not see. I
+have never seen them there; indeed, have never seen them at all; but
+I feel no doubt in my own mind as to their being at the bankers."
+
+"Is there much due on the estate?"
+
+"Very little. No estate in county Cork has less on it. Miss Letty has
+her income, and when Poulnasherry was bought,--that townland lying
+just under Berryhill, where the gorse cover is, part of the purchase
+money was left on mortgage. That is still due; but the interest is
+less than a hundred a year."
+
+"And that is all?"
+
+"All that I know of."
+
+"Could there be encumbrances without your knowing it?"
+
+"I think not. I think it is impossible. Of all men your father is the
+last to encumber his estates in a manner unknown to his agent, and to
+pay off the interest in secret."
+
+"What is it then, Mr. Somers?"
+
+"I do not know." And then Mr. Somers paused. "Of course you have
+heard of a visit he received the other day from a stranger?"
+
+"Yes; I heard of it."
+
+"People about here are talking of it. And he--that man, with
+a younger man--they are still living in Cork, at a little
+drinking-house in South Main Street. The younger man has been seen
+down here twice."
+
+"But what can that mean?"
+
+"I do not know. I tell you everything that I do know."
+
+Herbert exacted a promise from him that he would continue to tell him
+everything which he might learn, and then rode back to Castle
+Richmond.
+
+"The whole thing must be a delusion," he said to himself; and
+resolved that there was no valid reason why he should make Clara
+unhappy by any reference to the circumstance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+MR. MOLLETT RETURNS TO SOUTH MAIN STREET.
+
+
+I must now take my readers back to that very unsavoury public-house
+in South Main Street, Cork, in which, for the present, lived Mr.
+Matthew Mollett and his son Abraham.
+
+I need hardly explain to a discerning public that Mr. Matthew Mollett
+was the gentleman who made that momentous call at Castle Richmond,
+and flurried all that household.
+
+"Drat it!" said Mrs. Jones to herself on that day, as soon as she
+had regained the solitude of her own private apartment, after having
+taken a long look at Mr. Mollett in the hall. On that occasion she
+sat down on a low chair in the middle of the room, put her two hands
+down substantially on her two knees, gave a long sigh, and then made
+the above exclamation,--"Drat it!"
+
+Mrs. Jones was still thoroughly a Saxon, although she had lived for
+so many years among the Celts. But it was only when she was quite
+alone that she allowed herself the indulgence of so peculiarly Saxon
+a mode of expressing either her surprise or indignation.
+
+"It's the same man," she said to herself, "as come that day, as sure
+as eggs;" and then for five minutes she maintained her position,
+cogitating. "And he's like the other fellow too," she continued.
+"Only, somehow he's not like him." And then another pause. "And yet
+he is; only it can't be; and he ain't just so tall, and he's older
+like." And then, still meditating, Mrs. Jones kept her position for
+full ten minutes longer; at the end of which time she got up and
+shook herself. She deserved to be bracketed with Lord Brougham and
+Professor Faraday, for she had kept her mind intent on her subject,
+and had come to a resolution. "I won't say nothing to nobody,
+noways," was the expression of her mind's purpose. "Only I'll tell
+missus as how he was the man as come to Wales." And she did tell so
+much to her mistress--as we have before learned.
+
+Mr. Mollett had gone down from Cork to Castle Richmond in one
+of those delightful Irish vehicles called a covered car. An
+inside-covered car is an equipage much given to shaking, seeing that
+it has a heavy top like a London cab, and that it runs on a pair of
+wheels. It is entered from behind, and slopes backwards. The sitter
+sits sideways, between a cracked window on one side and a cracked
+doorway on the other; and as a draught is always going in at the ear
+next the window, and out at the ear next the door, it is about as
+cold and comfortless a vehicle for winter as may be well imagined.
+Now the journey from Castle Richmond to Cork has to be made right
+across the Boggeragh Mountains. It is over twenty miles Irish; and
+the road is never very good. Mr. Mollett, therefore, was five hours
+in the covered car on his return journey; and as he had stopped for
+lunch at Kanturk, and had not hurried himself at that meal, it was
+very dark and very cold when he reached the house in South Main
+Street.
+
+I think I have explained that Mr. Mollett senior was not absolutely
+a drunkard; but nevertheless, he was not averse to spirits in cold
+weather, and on this journey had warmed himself with whisky once or
+twice on the road. He had found a shebeen house when he crossed the
+Nad river, and another on the mountain-top, and a third at the point
+where the road passes near the village of Blarney, and at all these
+convenient resting-spots Mr. Mollett had endeavoured to warm himself.
+
+There are men who do not become absolutely drunk, but who do become
+absolutely cross when they drink more than is good for them; and of
+such men Mr. Mollett was one. What with the cold air, and what with
+the whisky, and what with the jolting, Mr. Mollett was very cross
+when he reached the Kanturk Hotel, so that he only cursed the driver
+instead of giving him the expected gratuity.
+
+"I'll come to yer honour in the morning," said the driver.
+
+"You may go to the devil in the morning," answered Mr. Mollett; and
+this was the first intimation of his return which reached the ears of
+his expectant son.
+
+"There's the governor," said Aby, who was then flirting with Miss
+O'Dwyer in the bar. "Somebody's been stroking him the wrong way of
+the 'air."
+
+The charms of Miss O'Dwyer in these idle days had been too much for
+the prudence of Mr. Abraham Mollett; by far too much, considering
+that in his sterner moments his ambition led him to contemplate a
+match with a young lady of much higher rank in life. But wine, which
+"inspires us" and fires us
+
+
+   "With courage, love, and joy,"
+
+
+had inspired him with courage to forget his prudence, and with love
+for the lovely Fanny.
+
+"Now, nonsense, Mr. Aby," she had said to him a few minutes before
+the wheels of the covered car were heard in South Main Street. "You
+know you main nothing of the sort."
+
+"By 'eavens, Fanny, I mean every word of it; may this drop be my
+poison if I don't. This piece of business here keeps me and the
+governor hon and hoff like, and will do for some weeks perhaps; but
+when that's done, honly say the word, and I'll make you Mrs. M. Isn't
+that fair now?"
+
+"But, Mr. Aby--"
+
+"Never mind the mister, Fan, between friends."
+
+"La! I couldn't call you Aby without it; could I?"
+
+"Try, my darling."
+
+"Well--Aby--there now. It does sound so uppish, don't it? But tell
+me this now; what is the business that you and the old gentleman is
+about down at Kanturk?"
+
+Abraham Mollett hereupon had put one finger to his nose, and then
+winked his eye.
+
+"If you care about me, as you say you do, you wouldn't be shy of just
+telling me as much as that."
+
+"That's business, Fan; and business and love don't hamalgamate like
+whisky and sugar."
+
+"Then I'll tell you what it is, Mr. Aby; I don't want to have
+anything to do with a man who won't show his rispect by telling me
+his sacrets."
+
+"That's it, is it, Fan?"
+
+"I suppose you think I can't keep a sacret. You think I'd be telling
+father, I suppose."
+
+"Well, it's about some money that's due to him down there."
+
+"Who from?"
+
+"He expects to get it from some of those Fitzgerald people."
+
+In saying so much Mr. Mollett the younger had not utterly abandoned
+all prudence. He knew very well that the car-driver and others would
+be aware that his father had been to Castle Richmond; and that it was
+more than probable that either he or his father would have to make
+further visits there. Indeed, he had almost determined that he would
+go down to the baronet himself. Under these circumstances it might be
+well that some pretext for these visits should be given.
+
+"Which Fitzgerald, Mr. Aby? Is it the Hap House young man?"
+
+"Hap House. I never heard of such a place. These people live at
+Castle Richmond."
+
+"Oh--h--h! If Mr. Mollett have money due there, sure he have a good
+mark to go upon. Why, Sir Thomas is about the richest man in these
+parts."
+
+"And who is this other man; at 'Appy--what is it you call his place?"
+
+"Hap House. Oh, it's he is the thorough-going young gentleman.
+Only they say he's a leetle too fast. To my mind, Mr. Owen is the
+finest-looking man to be seen anywhere's in the county Cork."
+
+"He's a flame of yours, is he, Fan?"
+
+"I don't know what you main by a flame. But there's not a girl in
+Cork but what likes the glance of his eye. They do say that he'd have
+Lady Clara Desmond; only there ain't no money."
+
+"And what's he to these other people?"
+
+"Cousin, I believe; or hardly so much as that, I'm thinking. But all
+the same if anything was to happen to young Mr. Herbert, it would all
+go to him."
+
+"It would, would it?"
+
+"So people say."
+
+"Mr. 'Erbert is the son of the old cock at Castle Richmond, isn't
+he?"
+
+"Just so. He's the young cock; he, he, he!"
+
+"And if he was to be--nowhere like; not his father's son at all, for
+instance, it would all go to this 'andsome 'Appy 'Ouse man; would
+it?"
+
+"Every shilling, they say; house, title, and all."
+
+"Hum," said Mr. Abraham Mollett; and he began again to calculate his
+family chances. Perhaps, after all, this handsome young man who was
+at present too poor to marry his noble lady love might be the more
+liberal man to deal with. But then any dealings with him would kill
+the golden goose at once. All would depend on the size of the one egg
+which might be extracted.
+
+He certainly felt, however, that this Fitzgerald family arrangement
+was one which it was beneficial that he should know; but he felt also
+that it would be by no means necessary at present to communicate the
+information to his father. He put it by in his mind, regarding it as
+a fund on which he might draw if occasion should require. It might
+perhaps be pleasant for him to make the acquaintance of this 'andsome
+young Fitzgerald of 'Appy 'Ouse.
+
+"And now, Fan, my darling, give us a kiss," said he, getting up from
+his seat.
+
+"'Deed and I won't," said Fan, withdrawing herself among the bottles
+and glasses.
+
+"'Deed and you shall, my love," said Aby, pertinaciously, as he
+prepared to follow her through the brittle ware.
+
+"Hu--sh--be aisy now. There's Tom. He's ears for everything, and eyes
+like a cat."
+
+"What do I care for Tom?"
+
+"And father 'll be coming in. Be aisy, I tell you. I won't now, Mr.
+Aby; and that's enough. You'll break the bottle."
+
+"D---- the bottle. That's smashed hany way. Come, Fan, what's a kiss
+among friends?"
+
+"Cock you up with kisses, indeed! how bad you are for dainties!
+There; do you hear that? That's the old gentleman;" and then, as the
+voice of Mr. Mollett senior was heard abusing the car-driver, Miss
+O'Dwyer smoothed her apron, put her hands to her side hair, and
+removed the debris of the broken bottle.
+
+"Well, governor," said Aby, "how goes it?"
+
+"How goes it, indeed! It goes pretty well, I dare say, in here, where
+you can sit drinking toddy all the evening, and doing nothing."
+
+"Why, what on hearth would you have me be doing? Better here than
+paddling about in the streets, isn't it?"
+
+"If you could do a stroke of work now and then to earn your bread,
+it might be better." Now Aby knew from experience that whenever his
+father talked to him about earning his bread, he was half drunk and
+whole cross. So he made no immediate reply on that point.
+
+"You are cold I suppose, governor, and had better get a bit of
+something to eat, and a little tea."
+
+"And put my feet in hot water, and tallow my nose, and go to bed,
+hadn't I? Miss O'Dwyer, I'll trouble you to mix me a glass of
+brandy-punch. Of all the roads I ever travelled, that's the longest
+and hardest to get over. Dashed, if I didn't begin to think I'd never
+be here." And so saying he flung himself into a chair, and put up his
+feet on the two hobs.
+
+There was a kettle on one of them, which the young lady pushed a
+little nearer to the hot coals, in order to show that the water
+should be boiling; and as she did so Aby gave her a wink over his
+father's shoulder, by way of conveying to her an intimation that "the
+governor was a little cut," or in other language tipsy, and that the
+brandy-punch should be brewed with a discreet view to past events of
+the same description. All which Miss O'Dwyer perfectly understood.
+
+It may easily be conceived that Aby was especially anxious to
+receive tidings of what had been done this day down in the Kanturk
+neighbourhood. He had given his views to his father, as will be
+remembered; and though Mr. Mollett senior had not professed himself
+as absolutely agreeing with them, he had nevertheless owned that he
+was imbued with the necessity of taking some great step. He had gone
+down to take this great step, and Aby was very anxious to know how it
+had been taken.
+
+When the father and son were both sober, or when the son was tipsy,
+or when the father was absolutely drunk--an accident which would
+occur occasionally, the spirit and pluck of the son was in the
+ascendant. He at such times was the more masterful of the two, and
+generally contrived, either by persuasion or bullying, to govern his
+governor. But when it did happen that Mollett pere was half drunk
+and cross with drink, then, at such moments, Mollett fils had to
+acknowledge to himself that his governor was not to be governed.
+
+And, indeed, at such moments his governor could be very
+disagreeable--could say nasty, bitter things, showing very little
+parental affection, and make himself altogether bad society, not only
+to his son, but to his son's companions also. Now it appeared to Aby
+that his father was at present in this condition.
+
+He had only to egg him on to further drinking, and the respectable
+gentleman would become stupid, noisy, soft, and affectionate. But
+then, when in that state, he would blab terribly. It was much with
+the view of keeping him from that state, that under the present
+circumstances the son remained with the father. To do the father
+justice, it may be asserted that he knew his own weakness, and that,
+knowing it, he had abstained from heavy drinking since he had taken
+in hand this great piece of diplomacy.
+
+"But you must be hungry, governor; won't you take a bit of
+something?"
+
+"Shall we get you a steek, Mr. Mollett?" asked Miss O'Dwyer,
+hospitably, "or just a bit of bacon with a couple of eggs or so? It
+wouldn't be a minute, you know?"
+
+"Your eggs are all addled and bad," said Mr. Mollett; "and as for a
+beef-steak, it's my belief there isn't such a thing in all Ireland."
+After which civil speech, Miss O'Dwyer winked at Aby, as much as to
+say, "You see what a state he's in."
+
+"Have a bit of buttered toast and a cup of tea, governor," suggested
+the son.
+
+"I'm d---- if I do," replied the father. "You're become uncommon fond
+of tea of late--that is, for other people. I don't see you take much
+of it yourself."
+
+"A cup of tay is the thing to warm one afther such a journey as
+you've had; that's certain, Mr. Mollett," said Fanny.
+
+"Them's your ideas about warming, are they, my dear?" said the
+elderly gentleman. "Do you come and sit down on my knee here for a
+few minutes or so, and that'd warm me better than all the 'tay' in
+the world."
+
+Aby showed by his face that he was immeasurably disgusted by the
+iniquitous coarseness of this overture. Miss O'Dwyer, however,
+looking at the gentleman's age, and his state as regarded liquor,
+passed it over as of no moment whatsoever. So that when, in the
+later part of the evening, Aby expressed to that young lady his deep
+disgust, she merely said, "Oh, bother; what matters an old man like
+that?"
+
+And then, when they were at this pass, Mr. O'Dwyer came in. He did
+not interfere much with his daughter in the bar room, but he would
+occasionally take a dandy of punch there, and ask how things were
+going on in doors. He was a fat, thickset man, with a good-humoured
+face, a flattened nose, and a great aptitude for stable occupations.
+He was part owner of the Kanturk car, as has been before said, and
+was the proprietor of sundry other cars, open cars and covered cars,
+plying for hire in the streets of Cork.
+
+"I hope the mare took your honour well down to Kanturk and back
+again," said he, addressing his elder customer with a chuck of his
+head intended for a bow.
+
+"I don't know what you call well," said Mr. Mollett. "She hadn't a
+leg to stand upon for the last three hours."
+
+"Not a leg to stand upon! Faix, then, and it's she'd have the four
+good legs if she travelled every inch of the way from Donagh-a-Dee to
+Ti-vora," to which distance Mr. O'Dwyer specially referred as being
+supposed to be the longest known in Ireland.
+
+"She may be able to do that; but I'm blessed if she's fit to go to
+Kanturk and back."
+
+"She's done the work, anyhow," said Mr. O'Dwyer, who evidently
+thought that this last argument was conclusive.
+
+"And a precious time she's been about it. Why, my goodness, it would
+have been better for me to have walked it. As Sir Thomas said to
+me--"
+
+"What! did you see Sir Thomas Fitzgerald?"
+
+Hereupon Aby gave his father a nudge; but the father either did not
+appreciate the nudge, or did not choose to obey it.
+
+"Yes; I did see him. Why shouldn't I?"
+
+"Only they do say he's hard to get to speak to now-a-days. He's not
+over well, you know, these years back."
+
+"Well or ill he'll see me, I take it, when I go that distance to ask
+him. There's no doubt about that; is there, Aby?"
+
+"Can't say, I'm sure, not knowing the gentleman," said Aby.
+
+"We holds land from Sir Thomas, we do; that is, me and my brother
+Mick, and a better landlord ain't nowhere," said Mr. O'Dwyer.
+
+"Oh, you're one of the tenants, are you? The rents are paid pretty
+well, ain't they?"
+
+"To the day," said Mr. O'Dwyer, proudly.
+
+"What would you think now--" Mr. Mollett was continuing; but Aby
+interrupted him somewhat violently.
+
+"Hold your confounded stupid tongue, will you, you old jolterhead;"
+and on this occasion he put his hand on his father's shoulder and
+shook him.
+
+"Who are you calling jolterhead? Who do you dare to speak to in that
+way? you impudent young cub you. Am I to ask your leave when I want
+to open my mouth?"
+
+Aby had well known that his father in his present mood would not
+stand the manner in which the interruption was attempted. Nor did he
+wish to quarrel before the publican and his daughter. But anything
+was better than allowing his father to continue in the strain in
+which he was talking.
+
+"You are talking of things which you don't hunderstand, and about
+people you don't know," said Aby. "You've had a drop too much on the
+road too, and you 'ad better go to bed."
+
+Old Mollett turned round to strike at his son; but even in his
+present state he was somewhat quelled by Aby's eye. Aby was keenly
+alive to the necessity for prudence on his father's part, though he
+was by no means able to be prudent himself.
+
+"Talking of things which I don't understand, am I?" said the old man.
+"That's all you know about it. Give me another glass of that brandy
+toddy, my dear."
+
+But Aby's look had quelled, or at any rate silenced him; and though
+he did advance another stage in tipsiness before they succeeded in
+getting him off to bed, he said no more about Sir Thomas Fitzgerald
+or his Castle Richmond secrets.
+
+Nevertheless, he had said enough to cause suspicion. One would not
+have imagined, on looking at Mr. O'Dwyer, that he was a very crafty
+person, or one of whose finesse in affairs of the world it would be
+necessary to stand much in awe. He seemed to be thick, and stolid,
+and incapable of deep inquiry; but, nevertheless, he was as fond
+of his neighbours' affairs as another, and knew as much about the
+affairs of his neighbours at Kanturk as any man in the county Cork.
+
+He himself was a Kanturk man, and his wife had been a Kanturk woman;
+no less a person, indeed, than the sister of Father Bernard M'Carthy,
+rest her soul;--for it was now at peace, let us all hope. She had
+been dead these ten years; but he did not the less keep up his
+connection with the old town, or with his brother-in-law the priest,
+or with the affairs of the persons there adjacent; especially, we
+may say, those of his landlord, Sir Thomas Fitzgerald, under whom he
+still held a small farm, in conjunction with his brother Mick, the
+publican at Kanturk.
+
+"What's all that about Sir Thomas?" said he to his daughter in a low
+voice as soon as the Molletts had left the bar.
+
+"Well, I don't just know," said Fanny. She was a good daughter, and
+loved her father, whose indoor affairs she kept tight enough for him.
+But she had hardly made up her mind as yet whether or no it would
+suit her to be Mrs. Abraham Mollett. Should such be her destiny, it
+might be as well for her not to talk about her husband's matters.
+
+"Is it true that the old man did see Sir Thomas to-day?"
+
+"You heard what passed, father; but I suppose it is true."
+
+"And the young 'un has been down to Kanturk two or three times. What
+can the like of them have to do with Sir Thomas?"
+
+To this Fanny could only say that she knew nothing about it, which
+in the main was true. Aby, indeed, had said that his father had gone
+down to collect money that was due to him; but then Fanny did not
+believe all that Aby said.
+
+"I don't like that young 'un at all," continued Mr. O'Dwyer. "He's a
+nasty, sneaking fellow, as cares for no one but his own belly. I'm
+not over fond of the old 'un neither."
+
+"They is both free enough with their money, father," said the prudent
+daughter.
+
+"Oh, they is welcome in the way of business, in course. But look
+here, Fan; don't you have nothing to say to that Aby; do you hear
+me?"
+
+"Who? I? ha, ha, ha!"
+
+"It's all very well laughing; but mind what I says, for I won't have
+it. He is a nasty, sneaking, good-for-nothing fellow, besides being a
+heretic. What'd your uncle Bernard say?"
+
+"Oh! for the matter of that, if I took a liking to a fellow I
+shouldn't ask Uncle Bernard what he had to say. If he didn't like it,
+I suppose he might do the other thing."
+
+"Well, I won't have it. Do you hear that?"
+
+"Laws, father, what nonsense you do talk. Who's thinking about the
+man? He comes here for what he wants to ate and dhrink, and I suppose
+the house is free to him as another. If not we'd betther just shut up
+the front door." After which she tossed herself up and began to wipe
+her glasses in a rather dignified manner.
+
+Mr. O'Dwyer sat smoking his pipe and chewing the cud of his
+reflections. "They ain't afther no good; I'm sure of that." In saying
+which, however, he referred to the doings of the Molletts down at
+Kanturk, rather than to any amatory proceedings which might have
+taken place between the young man and his daughter.
+
+On the following morning Mr. Mollett senior awoke with a racking
+headache. My belief is, that when men pay this penalty for drinking,
+they are partly absolved from other penalties. The penalties on
+drink are various. I mean those which affect the body, exclusive of
+those which affect the mind. There are great red swollen noses, very
+disagreeable both to the wearer and his acquaintances; there are
+morning headaches, awful to be thought of; there are sick stomachs,
+by which means the offender escapes through a speedy purgatory; there
+are sallow cheeks, sunken eyes, and shaking shoulders; there are very
+big bellies, and no bellies at all; and there is delirium tremens.
+For the most part a man escapes with one of these penalties. If he
+have a racking headache, his general health does not usually suffer
+so much as though he had endured no such immediate vengeance from
+violated nature. Young Aby when he drank had no headaches; but his
+eye was bloodshot, his cheek bloated, and his hand shook. His father,
+on the other hand, could not raise his head after a debauch; but
+when that was gone, all ill results of his imprudence seemed to have
+vanished.
+
+At about noon on that day Aby was sitting by his father's bedside. Up
+to that time it had been quite impossible to induce him to speak a
+word. He could only groan, swallow soda-water with "hairs of the dog
+that bit him" in it, and lay with his head between his arms. But soon
+after noon Aby did induce him to say a word or two. The door of the
+room was closely shut, the little table was strewed with soda-water
+bottles and last drops of small goes of brandy. Aby himself had a
+cigar in his mouth, and on the floor near the bed-foot was a plate
+with a cold, greasy mutton chop, Aby having endeavoured in vain
+to induce his father to fortify exhausted nature by eating. The
+appearance of the room and the air within it would not have been
+pleasant to fastidious people. But then the Molletts were not
+fastidious.
+
+"You did see Sir Thomas, then?"
+
+"Yes, I did see him. I wish, Aby, you'd let me lie just for another
+hour or so. I'd be all right then. The jolting of that confounded car
+has nearly shaken my head to pieces."
+
+But Aby was by no means inclined to be so merciful. The probability
+was that he would be able to pump his father more thoroughly in his
+present weak state than he might do in a later part of the afternoon;
+so he persevered.
+
+"But, governor, it's so important we should know what we're about.
+Did you see any one else except himself?"
+
+"I saw them all I believe, except her. I was told she never showed
+in the morning; but I'm blessed if I don't think I saw the skirt of
+her dress through an open door. I'll tell you what, Aby, I could not
+stand that."
+
+"Perhaps, father, after hall it'll be better I should manage the
+business down there."
+
+"I believe there won't be much more to manage. But, Aby, do leave me
+now, there's a good fellow; then in another hour or so I'll get up,
+and we'll have it all out."
+
+"When you're out in the open air and comfortable, it won't be fair
+to be bothering you with business. Come, governor, ten minutes will
+tell the whole of it if you'll only mind your eye. How did you begin
+with Sir Thomas?" And then Aby went to the door, opened it very
+gently, and satisfied himself that there was nobody listening on the
+landing-place.
+
+Mr. Mollett sighed wearily, but he knew that his only hope was to get
+this job of talking over. "What was it you were saying, Aby?"
+
+"How did you begin with Sir Thomas?"
+
+"How did I begin with him? Let me see. Oh! I just told him who I was;
+and then he turned away and looked down under the fire like, and I
+thought he was going to make a faint of it."
+
+"I didn't suppose he would be very glad to see you, governor."
+
+"When I saw how badly he took it, and how wretched he seemed, I
+almost made up my mind to go away and never trouble him any more."
+
+"You did, did you?"
+
+"And just to take what he'd choose to give me."
+
+"Oh, them's your hideas, hare they? Then I tell you what; I shall
+just take the matter into my own hands hentirely. You have no more
+'eart than a chicken."
+
+"Ah, that's very well, Aby; but you did not see him."
+
+"Do you think that would make hany difference? When a man's a job of
+work to do, 'e should do it. Them's my notions. Do you think a man
+like that is to go and hact in that way, and then not pay for it?
+Whose wife is she I'd like to know?"
+
+There was a tone of injured justice about Aby which almost roused the
+father to participate in the son's indignation. "Well; I did my best,
+though the old gentleman was in such a taking," said he.
+
+"And what was your best? Come, out with it at once."
+
+"I--m-m. I--just told him who I was, you know."
+
+"I guess he understood that quite well."
+
+"And then I said things weren't going exactly well with me."
+
+"You shouldn't have said that at all. What matters that to him? What
+you hask for you hask for because you're able to demand it. That's
+the ground for hus to take, and by ---- I'll take it too. There shall
+be no 'alf-measures with me."
+
+"And then I told him--just what we were agreed, you know."
+
+"That we'd go snacks in the whole concern?"
+
+"I didn't exactly say that."
+
+"Then what the devil did you say?"
+
+"Why, I told him that, looking at what the property was, twelve
+hundred pounds wasn't much."
+
+"I should think not either."
+
+"And that if his son was to be allowed to have it all--"
+
+"A bastard, you know, keeping it away from the proper heir." It may
+almost be doubted whether, in so speaking, Aby did not almost think
+that he himself had a legitimate right to inherit the property at
+Castle Richmond.
+
+"He must look to pay up handsome."
+
+"But did you say what 'andsome meant?"
+
+"Well, I didn't--not then. He fell about upon the table like, and I
+wasn't quite sure he wouldn't make a die of it; and then heaven knows
+what might have happened to me."
+
+"Psha; you 'as no pluck, governor."
+
+"I'll tell you what it is, Aby, I ain't so sure you'd have such an
+uncommon deal of pluck yourself."
+
+"Well, I'll try, at any rate."
+
+"It isn't such a pleasant thing to see an old gentleman in that
+state. And what would happen if he chose to ring the bell and order
+the police to take me? Have you ever thought of that?"
+
+"Gammon."
+
+"But it isn't gammon. A word from him would put me into quod, and
+there I should be for the rest of my days. But what would you care
+for that?" And poor Mr. Mollett senior shook under the bedclothes
+as his attention became turned to this very dreary aspect of his
+affairs. "Pluck, indeed! I'll tell you what it is, Aby, I often
+wonder at my own pluck."
+
+"Psha! Wouldn't a word from you split upon him, and upon her, and
+upon the young 'un, and ruin 'em? Or a word from me either, for the
+matter of that?"
+
+Mr. Mollett senior shook again. He repented now, as he had already
+done twenty times, that he had taken that son of his into his
+confidence.
+
+"And what on hearth did you say to him?" continued Aby.
+
+"Well, not much more then; at least, not very much more. There was
+a good deal of words, but they didn't seem to lead to much, except
+this, just to make him understand that he must come down handsome."
+
+"And there was nothing done about Hemmiline?"
+
+"No," said the father, rather shortly.
+
+"If that was settled, that would be the clincher. There would be no
+further trouble to nobody then. It would be all smooth sailing for
+your life, governor, and lots of tin."
+
+"I tell you what it is, Aby, you may just drop that, for I won't have
+the young lady bothered about it, nor yet the young lady's father."
+
+"You won't, won't you?"
+
+"No, I won't; so there's an end of it."
+
+"I suppose I may pay my distresses to any young lady if I think
+fitting."
+
+"And have yourself kicked into the ditch."
+
+"I know too much for kicking, governor."
+
+"They shall know as much as you do, and more too, if you go on with
+that. There's a measure in all things. I won't have it done, so I
+tell you." And the father turned his face round to the wall.
+
+This was by no means the end of the conversation, though we need not
+verbatim go through any more of it. It appeared that old Mollett
+had told Sir Thomas that his permanent silence could be purchased
+by nothing short of a settled "genteel" income for himself and his
+son, no absolute sum having been mentioned; and that Sir Thomas had
+required a fortnight for his answer, which answer was to be conveyed
+to Mr. Mollett verbally at the end of that time. It was agreed that
+Mr. Mollett should repeat his visit to Castle Richmond on that day
+fortnight.
+
+"In the mean time I'll go down and freshen the old gentleman up a
+bit," said Aby, as he left his father's bedroom.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+THE REJECTED SUITOR.
+
+
+After the interview between Herbert and his mother, it became an
+understood thing at Castle Richmond that he was engaged to Lady
+Clara. Sir Thomas raised no further objection, although it was clear
+to all the immediate family that he was by no means gratified at his
+son's engagement. Very little more passed between Sir Thomas and Lady
+Fitzgerald on the subject. He merely said that he would consider the
+question of his son's income, and expressed a hope, or perhaps an
+opinion rather than a hope, that the marriage would not take place
+quite immediately.
+
+Under these circumstances, Herbert hardly spoke further to his father
+upon the matter. He certainly did feel sore that he should be so
+treated--that he should be made to understand that there was a
+difficulty, but that the difficulty could not be explained to him.
+No absolute opposition was however made, and he would not therefore
+complain. As to money, he would say nothing till something should be
+said to him.
+
+With his mother, however, the matter was different. She had said that
+she would welcome Clara; and she did so. Immediately after speaking
+to Sir Thomas she drove over to Desmond Court, and said soft, sweet
+things to Clara in her most winning way;--said soft things also to
+the countess, who received them very graciously; took Clara home to
+Castle Richmond for that night, somewhat to the surprise and much to
+the gratification of Herbert, who found her sitting slily with the
+other girls when he came in before dinner; and arranged for her to
+make a longer visit after the interval of a week or two. Herbert,
+therefore, was on thoroughly good terms with his mother, and did
+enjoy some of the delights which he had promised himself.
+
+With his sisters, also, and especially with Emmeline, he was once
+more in a good humour. To her he made ample apology for his former
+crossness, and received ample absolution. "I was so harassed," he
+said, "by my father's manner that I hardly knew what I was doing.
+And even now, when I think of his evident dislike to the marriage,
+it nearly drives me wild." The truth of all which Emmeline sadly
+acknowledged. How could any of them talk of their father except in a
+strain of sadness?
+
+All these things did not happen in the drawing-room at Castle
+Richmond without also being discussed in the kitchen. It was soon
+known over the house that Master Herbert was to marry Lady Clara,
+and, indeed, there was no great pretence of keeping it secret.
+The girls told the duchess, as they called Mrs. Jones--of course
+in confidence--but Mrs. Jones knew what such confidence meant,
+especially as the matter was more than once distinctly alluded
+to by her ladyship; and thus the story was told, in confidence,
+to everybody in the establishment, and then repeated by them, in
+confidence also, to nearly everybody out of it.
+
+Ill news, they say, flies fast; and this news, which, going in that
+direction, became ill, soon flew to Hap House.
+
+"So young Fitzgerald and the divine Clara are to hit it off, are
+they?" said Captain Donnellan, who had driven over from Buttevant
+barracks to breakfast at Hap House on a hunting-morning.
+
+There were other men present, more intimate friends of Owen than this
+captain, who had known of Owen's misfortune in that quarter; and a
+sign was made to Donnellan to bid him drop the subject; but it was
+too late.
+
+"Who? my cousin Herbert," said Owen, sharply. "Have you heard of
+this, Barry?"
+
+"Well," said Barry, "those sort of things are always being said,
+you know. I did hear something of it somewhere. But I can't say I
+thought much about it." And then the subject was dropped during that
+morning's breakfast. They all went to the hunt, and in the course of
+the day Owen contrived to learn that the report was well founded.
+
+That evening, as the countess and her daughter were sitting together
+over the fire, the gray-headed old butler brought in a letter upon an
+old silver salver, saying, "For Lady Clara, if you please, my lady."
+
+The countess not unnaturally thought that the despatch had come from
+Castle Richmond, and smiled graciously as Clara put out her hand for
+the missive. Lady Desmond again let her eyes drop upon the book which
+she was reading, as though to show that she was by far too confiding
+a mamma to interfere in any correspondence between her daughter
+and her daughter's lover. At the moment Lady Clara had been doing
+nothing. Her work was, indeed, on her lap, and her workbox was at
+her elbow; but her thoughts had been far away; far away as regards
+idea, though not so as to absolute locality; for in her mind she was
+walking beneath those elm-trees, and a man was near her, with a horse
+following at his heels.
+
+"The messenger is to wait for an answer, my lady," said the old
+butler, with a second nod, which on this occasion was addressed to
+Clara; and then the man withdrew.
+
+Lady Clara blushed ruby red up to the roots of her hair when her
+eyes fell on the address of the letter, for she knew it to be in the
+handwriting of Owen Fitzgerald. Perhaps the countess from the corner
+of her eye may have observed some portion of her daughter's blushes;
+but if so, she said nothing, attributing them to Clara's natural
+bashfulness in her present position. "She will get over it soon," the
+countess may probably have said to herself.
+
+Clara was indecisive, disturbed in her mind, and wretched. Owen
+had sent her other letters; but they had been brought to her
+surreptitiously, had been tendered to her in secret, and had always
+been returned by her unopened. She had not told her mother of these;
+at least, not purposely or at the moment: but she had been at
+no trouble to conceal the facts; and when the countess had once
+asked, she freely told her what had happened with an absence of any
+confusion which had quite put Lady Desmond at her ease. But this
+letter was brought to her in the most open manner, and an answer to
+it openly demanded.
+
+She turned it round slowly in her hand, and then looking up, said,
+"Mamma, this is from Owen Fitzgerald; what had I better do with it?"
+
+"From Owen Fitzgerald! Are you sure?"
+
+"Yes, mamma." And then the countess had also to consider what steps
+under such circumstances had better be taken. In the mean time Clara
+held out her hand, tendering the letter to her mother.
+
+"You had better open it, my dear, and read it. No doubt it must be
+answered." Lady Desmond felt that now there could be no danger from
+Owen Fitzgerald. Indeed she thought that there was not a remembrance
+of him left in her daughter's bosom; that the old love, such
+baby-love as there had been, had vanished, quite swept out of that
+little heart by this new love of a brighter sort. But then Lady
+Desmond knew nothing of her daughter.
+
+So instructed, Clara broke the seal, and read the letter, which ran
+thus:--
+
+
+   Hap House, February, 184--.
+
+   My promised Love,
+
+   For let what will happen, such you are; I have this
+   morning heard tidings which, if true, will go far to drive
+   me to despair. But I will not believe them from any lips
+   save your own. I have heard that you are engaged to marry
+   Herbert Fitzgerald. At once, however, I declare that I do
+   not believe the statement. I have known you too well to
+   think that you can be false.
+
+   But, at any rate, I beg the favour of an interview
+   with you. After what has passed I think that under any
+   circumstances I have a right to demand it. I have pledged
+   myself to you; and as that pledge has been accepted, I am
+   entitled to some consideration.
+
+   I write this letter to you openly, being quite willing
+   that you should show it to your mother if you think fit.
+   My messenger will wait, and I do implore you to send me an
+   answer. And remember, Lady Clara, that, having accepted
+   my love, you cannot whistle me down the wind as though I
+   were of no account. After what has passed between us, you
+   cannot surely refuse to see me once more.
+
+   Ever your own--if you will have it so,
+
+   OWEN FITZGERALD.
+
+
+She read the letter very slowly, ever and anon looking up at her
+mother's face, and seeing that her mother was--not reading her book,
+but pretending to read it. When she had finished it, she held it for
+a moment, and then said, "Mamma, will you not look at it?"
+
+"Certainly, my dear, if you wish me to do so." And she took the
+letter from her daughter's hand, and read it.
+
+"Just what one would expect from him, my dear; eager, impetuous, and
+thoughtless. One should not blame him much, for he does not mean to
+do harm. But if he had any sense, he would know that he was taking
+trouble for nothing."
+
+"And what shall I do, mamma?"
+
+"Well, I really think that I should answer him." It was delightful to
+see the perfect confidence which the mother had in her daughter. "And
+I think I should see him, if he will insist upon it. It is foolish in
+him to persist in remembering two words which you spoke to him as a
+child; but perhaps it will be well that you should tell him yourself
+that you were a child when you spoke those two words."
+
+And then Clara sent off the following reply, written under her
+mother's dictation; though the countess strove very hard to convince
+her daughter that she was wording it out of her own head:--
+
+
+   Lady Clara Desmond presents her compliments to Mr. Owen
+   Fitzgerald, and will see Mr. Owen Fitzgerald at Desmond
+   Court at two o'clock to-morrow, if Mr. Owen Fitzgerald
+   persists in demanding such an interview. Lady Clara
+   Desmond, however, wishes to express her opinion that it
+   would be better avoided.
+
+   Desmond Court,
+   Thursday evening.
+
+
+The countess thought that this note was very cold and formal, and
+would be altogether conclusive; but, nevertheless, at about eleven
+o'clock that night there came another messenger from Hap House with
+another letter, saying that Owen would be at Desmond Court at two
+o'clock on the following day.
+
+"He is very foolish; that is all I can say," said the countess.
+
+All that night and all the next morning poor Clara was very wretched.
+That she had been right to give up a suitor who lived such a life as
+Owen Fitzgerald lived she could not doubt. But, nevertheless, was she
+true in giving him up? Had she made any stipulation as to his life
+when she accepted his love? If he called her false, as doubtless he
+would call her, how would she defend herself? Had she any defence
+to offer? It was not only that she had rejected him, a poor lover;
+but she had accepted a rich lover! What could she say to him when he
+upbraided her for such sordid conduct?
+
+And then as to her whistling him down the wind. Did she wish to do
+that? In what state did her heart stand towards him? Might it not
+be that, let her be ever so much on her guard, she would show him
+some tenderness,--tenderness which would be treason to her present
+affianced suitor? Oh, why had her mother desired her to go through
+such an interview as this!
+
+When two o'clock came Clara was in the drawing-room. She had said
+nothing to her mother as to the manner in which this meeting should
+take place. But then at first she had had an idea that Lady Desmond
+would be present. But as the time came near Clara was still alone.
+When her watch told her that it was already two, she was still by
+herself; and when the old servant, opening the door, announced that
+Mr. Fitzgerald was there, she was still unsupported by the presence
+of any companion. It was very surprising that on such an occasion her
+mother should have kept herself away.
+
+She had not seen Owen Fitzgerald since that day when they had walked
+together under the elm-trees, and it can hardly be said that she saw
+him now. She had a feeling that she had injured him--had deceived,
+and in a manner betrayed him; and that feeling became so powerful
+with her that she hardly dared to look him in the face.
+
+He, when he entered the room, walked straight up to her, and offered
+her his hand. He, too, looked round the room to see whether Lady
+Desmond was there, and not finding her, was surprised. He had hardly
+hoped that such an opportunity would be allowed to him for declaring
+the strength of his passion.
+
+She got up, and taking his hand, muttered something; it certainly did
+not matter what, for it was inaudible; but such as the words were,
+they were the first spoken between them.
+
+"Lady Clara," he began; and then stopped himself; and, considering,
+recommenced--"Clara, a report has reached my ears which I will
+believe from no lips but your own."
+
+She now sat down on a sofa, and pointed to a chair for him, but he
+remained standing, and did so during the whole interview; or rather,
+walking; for when he became energetic and impetuous, he moved about
+from place to place in the room, as though incapable of fixing
+himself in one position.
+
+Clara was ignorant whether or no it behoved her to rebuke him for
+calling her simply by her Christian name. She thought that she ought
+to do so, but she did not do it.
+
+"I have been told," he continued, "that you have engaged yourself to
+marry Herbert Fitzgerald; and I have now come to hear a contradiction
+of this from yourself."
+
+"But, Mr. Fitzgerald, it is true."
+
+"It is true that Herbert Fitzgerald is your accepted lover?"
+
+"Yes," she said, looking down upon the ground, and blushing deeply as
+she said it.
+
+There was a pause of a few moments, during which she felt that the
+full fire of his glance was fixed upon her, and then he spoke.
+
+"You may well be ashamed to confess it," he said; "you may well feel
+that you dare not look me in the face as you pronounce the words. I
+would have believed it, Clara, from no other mouth than your own."
+
+It appeared to Clara herself now as though she were greatly a
+culprit. She had not a word to say in her own defence. All those
+arguments as to Owen's ill course of life were forgotten; and she
+could only remember that she had acknowledged that she loved him, and
+that she was now acknowledging that she loved another.
+
+But now Owen had made his accusation; and as it was not answered, he
+hardly knew how to proceed. He walked about the room, endeavouring to
+think what he had better say next.
+
+"I know this, Clara; it is your mother's doing, and not your own. You
+could not bring yourself to be false, unless by her instigation."
+
+"No," said she; "you are wrong there. It is not my mother's doing:
+what I have done, I have done myself."
+
+"Is it not true," he asked, "that your word was pledged to me? Had
+you not promised me that you would be my wife?"
+
+"I was very young," she said, falling back upon the only excuse which
+occurred to her at the moment as being possible to be used without
+incriminating him.
+
+"Young! Is not that your mother's teaching? Why, those were her very
+words when she came to me at my house. I did not know that youth was
+any excuse for falsehood."
+
+"But it may be an excuse for folly," said Clara.
+
+"Folly! what folly? The folly of loving a poor suitor; the folly of
+being willing to marry a man who has not a large estate! Clara, I did
+not think that you could have learned so much in so short a time."
+
+All this was very hard upon her. She felt that it was hard, for she
+knew that he had done that which entitled her to regard her pledge to
+him as at an end; but the circumstances were such that she could not
+excuse herself.
+
+"Am I to understand," said Owen Fitzgerald, "that all that has passed
+between us is to go for nothing? that such promises as we have made
+to each other are to be of no account? To me they are sacred pledges,
+from which I would not escape even if I could."
+
+As he then paused for a reply, she was obliged to say something.
+
+"I hope you have not come here to upbraid me, Mr. Fitzgerald."
+
+"Clara," he continued, "I have passed the last year with perfect
+reliance upon your faith. I need hardly tell you that it has not been
+passed happily, for it has been passed without seeing you. But though
+you have been absent from me, I have never doubted you. I have known
+that it was necessary that we should wait--wait perhaps till years
+should make you mistress of your own actions: but nevertheless I was
+not unhappy, for I was sure of your love."
+
+Now it was undoubtedly the case that Fitzgerald was treating her
+unfairly; and though she had not her wits enough about her to
+ascertain this by process of argument, nevertheless the idea did come
+home to her. It was true that she had promised her love to this man,
+as far as such promise could be conveyed by one word of assent; but
+it was true also that she had been almost a child when she pronounced
+that word, and that things which had since occurred had entitled her
+to annul any amount of contract to which she might have been supposed
+to bind herself by that one word. She bethought herself, therefore,
+that as she was so hard pressed she was forced to defend herself.
+
+"I was very young then, Mr. Fitzgerald, and hardly knew what I was
+saying: afterwards, when mamma spoke to me, I felt that I was bound
+to obey her."
+
+"What, to obey her by forgetting me?"
+
+"No; I have never forgotten you, and never shall. I remember too well
+your kindness to my brother; your kindness to us all."
+
+"Psha! you know I do not speak of that. Are you bound to obey your
+mother by forgetting that you have loved me?"
+
+She paused a moment before she answered him, looking now full before
+her,--hardly yet bold enough to look him in the face.
+
+"No," she said; "I have not forgotten that I loved you. I shall never
+forget it. Child as I was, it shall never be forgotten. But I cannot
+love you now--not in the manner you would have me."
+
+"And why not, Lady Clara? Why is love to cease on your part--to be
+thrown aside so easily by you, while with me it remains so stern a
+fact, and so deep a necessity? Is that just? When the bargain has
+once been made, should it not be equally binding on us both?"
+
+"I do not think you are fair to me, Mr. Fitzgerald," she said; and
+some spirit was now rising in her bosom.
+
+"Not fair to you? Do you say that I am unfair to you? Speak but one
+word to say that the troth which you pledged me a year since shall
+still remain unbroken, and I will at once leave you till you yourself
+shall name the time when my suit may be renewed."
+
+"You know that I cannot do that."
+
+"And why not? I know that you ought to do it."
+
+"No, Mr. Fitzgerald, I ought not. I am now engaged to your cousin,
+with the consent of mamma and of his friends. I can say nothing to
+you now which I cannot repeat to him; nor can I say anything which
+shall oppose his wishes."
+
+"He is then so much more to you now than I am?"
+
+"He is everything to me now."
+
+"That is all the reply I am to get then! You acknowledge your
+falseness, and throw me off without vouchsafing me any answer beyond
+this."
+
+"What would you have me say? I did do that which was wrong and
+foolish, when--when we were walking there on the avenue. I did give a
+promise which I cannot now keep. It was all so hurried that I hardly
+remember what I said. But of this I am sure, that if I have caused
+you unhappiness, I am very sorry to have done so. I cannot alter it
+all now; I cannot unsay what I said then; nor can I offer you that
+which I have now absolutely given to another."
+
+And then, as she finished speaking, she did pluck up courage to look
+him in the face. She was now standing as well as he; but she was so
+standing that the table, which was placed near the sofa, was still
+between him and her. As she finished speaking the door opened, and
+the Countess of Desmond walked slowly into the room.
+
+Owen Fitzgerald, when he saw her, bowed low before her, and then
+frankly offered her his hand. There was something in his manner to
+ladies devoid of all bashfulness, and yet never too bold. He seemed
+to be aware that in speaking to any lady, be she who she might, he
+was only exercising his undoubted privilege as a man. He never hummed
+and hawed and shook in his shoes as though the majesty of womanhood
+were too great for his encounter. There are such men, and many of
+them, who carry this dread to the last day of their long lives. I
+have often wondered what women think of men who regard women as too
+awful for the free exercise of open speech.
+
+"Mr. Fitzgerald," she said, accepting the hand which he offered to
+her, but resuming her own very quickly, and then standing before him
+in all the dignity which she was able to assume, "I quite concurred
+with my daughter that it was right that she should see you, as you
+insisted on such an interview; but you must excuse me if I interrupt
+it. I must protect her from the embarrassment which your--your
+vehemence may occasion her."
+
+"Lady Desmond," he replied, "you are quite at liberty, as far as I
+am concerned, to hear all that passes between us. Your daughter is
+betrothed to me, and I have come to claim from her the fulfilment of
+her promise."
+
+"For shame, Mr. Fitzgerald, for shame! When she was a child you
+extracted from her one word of folly; and now you would take
+advantage of that foolish word; now, when you know that she is
+engaged to a man she loves with the full consent of all her friends.
+I thought I knew you well enough to feel sure that you were not so
+ungenerous."
+
+"Ungenerous! no; I have not that generosity which would enable me to
+give up my very heart's blood, the only joy of my soul, to such a one
+as my cousin Herbert."
+
+"You have nothing to give up, Mr. Fitzgerald: you must have known
+from the very first that my daughter could not marry you--"
+
+"Not marry me! And why not, Lady Desmond? Is not my blood as good
+as his?--unless, indeed, you are prepared to sell your child to the
+highest bidder!"
+
+"Clara, my dear, I think you had better leave the room," said the
+countess; "no doubt you have assured Mr. Fitzgerald that you are
+engaged to his cousin Herbert."
+
+"Yes, mamma."
+
+"Then he can have no further claim on your attendance, and his
+vehemence will terrify you."
+
+"Vehement! how can I help being vehement when, like a ruined gambler,
+I am throwing my last chance for such a stake?"
+
+And then he intercepted Clara as she stepped towards the drawing-room
+door. She stopped in her course, and stood still, looking down upon
+the ground.
+
+"Mr. Fitzgerald," said the countess, "I will thank you to let Lady
+Clara leave the room. She has given you the answer for which you have
+asked, and it would not be right in me to permit her to be subjected
+to further embarrassment."
+
+"I will only ask her to listen to one word. Clara--"
+
+"Mr. Fitzgerald, you have no right to address my daughter with that
+freedom," said the countess; but Owen hardly seemed to hear her.
+
+"I here, in your hearing, protest against your marriage with Herbert
+Fitzgerald. I claim your love as my own. I bid you think of the
+promise which you gave me; and I tell you that as I loved you then
+with all my heart, so do I love you at this moment; so shall I love
+you always. Now I will not hinder you any longer."
+
+And then he opened the door for her, and she passed on, bowing to
+him, and muttering some word of farewell that was inaudible.
+
+He stood for a moment with the door in his hand, meditating whether
+he might not say good morning to the countess without returning into
+the room; but as he so stood she called him. "Mr. Fitzgerald," she
+said; and so he therefore came back, and once more closed the door.
+
+And then he saw that the countenance of Lady Desmond was much
+changed. Hitherto she had been every inch the countess, stern and
+cold and haughty; but now she looked at him as she used to look in
+those old winter evenings when they were accustomed to talk together
+over the evening fire in close friendliness, while she, Lady Desmond,
+would speak to him in the intimacy of her heart of her children,
+Patrick and Clara.
+
+"Mr. Fitzgerald," she said, and the tone of her voice also was
+changed. "You are hardly fair to us; are you?"
+
+"Not fair, Lady Desmond?"
+
+"No, not fair. Sit down now, and listen to me for a moment. If you
+had a child, a penniless girl like Clara, would you be glad to see
+her married to such a one as you are yourself?"
+
+"In what way do you mean? Speak out, Lady Desmond."
+
+"No; I will not speak out, for I would not hurt you. I myself am too
+fond of you--as an old friend, to wish to do so. That you may marry
+and live happily, live near us here, so that we may know you, I most
+heartily desire. But you cannot marry that child."
+
+"And why not, if she loves me?"
+
+"Nay, not even if she did. Wealth and position are necessary to
+the station in which she has been born. She is an earl's daughter,
+penniless as she is. I will have no secrets from you. As a mother, I
+could not give her to one whose career is such as yours. As the widow
+of an earl, I could not give her to one whose means of maintaining
+her are so small. If you will think of this, you will hardly be angry
+with me."
+
+"Love is nothing then?"
+
+"Is all to be sacrificed to your love? Think of it, Mr. Fitzgerald,
+and let me have the happiness of knowing that you consent to this
+match."
+
+"Never!" said he. "Never!" And so he left the room, without wishing
+her further farewell.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+DIPLOMACY.
+
+
+About a week after the last conversation that has been related as
+having taken place at the Kanturk Hotel, Mr. Mollett junior was
+on his way to Castle Richmond. He had on that occasion stated his
+intention of making such a journey with the view of "freshening the
+old gentleman up a bit;" and although his father did all in his power
+to prevent the journey, going so far on one occasion as to swear that
+if it was made he would throw over the game altogether, nevertheless
+Aby persevered.
+
+"You may leave the boards whenever you like, governor," said Aby. "I
+know quite enough of the part to carry on the play."
+
+"You think you do," said the father in his anger; "but you'll find
+yourself in the dark yet before you've done."
+
+And then again he expostulated in a different tone. "You'll ruin it
+all, Aby; you will indeed; you don't know all the circumstances;
+indeed you don't."
+
+"Don't I?" said Aby. "Then I'll not be long learning them."
+
+The father did what he could; but he had no means of keeping his son
+at home, and so Aby went. Aby doubtless entertained an idea that his
+father was deficient in pluck for the management of so difficult
+a matter, and that he could supply what his father wanted. So he
+dressed himself in his best, and having hired a gig and a man who he
+flattered himself would look like a private servant, he started from
+Cork, and drove himself to Castle Richmond.
+
+He had on different occasions been down in the neighbourhood,
+prowling about like a thief in the night, picking up information
+as he called it, and seeing how the land lay; but he had never yet
+presented himself to any one within the precincts of the Castle
+Richmond demesne. His present intention was to drive up to the front
+door, and ask at once for Sir Thomas Fitzgerald, sending in his card
+if need be, on which were printed the words:--
+
+
+   MR. ABRAHAM MOLLETT, Junior.
+
+
+With the additional words, "Piccadilly, London," written in the
+left-hand lower corner.
+
+"I'll take the bull by the horns," said he to himself. "It's better
+to make the spoon at once, even if we do run some small chance of
+spoiling the horn." And that he might be well enabled to carry out
+his purpose with reference to this bull, he lifted his flask to
+his mouth as soon as he had passed through the great demesne gate,
+and took a long pull at it. "There's nothing like a little jumping
+powder," he said, speaking to himself again, and then he drove boldly
+up the avenue.
+
+He had not yet come in sight of the house when he met two gentlemen
+walking on the road. They, as he approached, stood a little on one
+side, not only so as to allow him to pass, but to watch him as he did
+so. They were Mr. Somers and Herbert Fitzgerald.
+
+"It is the younger of those two men. I'm nearly certain of it,"
+said Somers as the gig approached. "I saw him as he walked by me in
+Kanturk Street, and I don't think I can mistake the horrid impudence
+of his face. I beg your pardon, sir,"--and now he addressed Mollett
+in the gig--"but are you going up to the house?"
+
+"Yes, sir; that's my notion just at present. Any commands that way?"
+
+"This is Mr. Fitzgerald--Mr. Herbert Fitzgerald; and I am Mr. Somers,
+the agent. Can we do anything for you?"
+
+Aby Mollett raised his hat, and the two gentlemen touched theirs.
+"Thank'ee, sir," said Aby; "but I believe my business must be with
+the worthy baro-nett himself; more particularly as I 'appen to know
+that he's at home."
+
+"My father is not very well," said Herbert, "and I do not think that
+he will be able to see you."
+
+"I'll take the liberty of hasking and of sending in my card," said
+Aby; and he gave his horse a flick as intending thus to cut short the
+conversation. But Mr. Somers had put his hand upon the bridle, and
+the beast was contented to stand still.
+
+"If you'll have the kindness to wait a moment," said Mr. Somers; and
+he put on a look of severity, which he well knew how to assume, and
+which somewhat cowed poor Aby. "You have been down here before, I
+think," continued Mr. Somers.
+
+"What, at Castle Richmond? No, I haven't. And if I had, what's that
+to you if Sir Thomas chooses to see me? I hain't hintruding, I
+suppose."
+
+"You've been down at Kanturk before--once or twice; for I have seen
+you."
+
+"And supposing I've been there ten or twelve times,--what is there in
+that?" said Aby.
+
+Mr. Somers still held the horse's head, and stood a moment
+considering.
+
+"I'll thank you to let go my 'oss," said Aby raising his whip and
+shaking the reins.
+
+"What do you say your name is?" asked Mr. Somers.
+
+"I didn't say my name was anything yet. I hain't ashamed of it,
+however, nor hasn't hany cause to be. That's my name, and if you'll
+send my card in to Sir Thomas, with my compliments, and say that
+hi've three words to say to him very particular; why hi'll be obliged
+to you." And then Mr. Mollett handed Mr. Somers his card.
+
+"Mollett!" said Mr. Somers very unceremoniously. "Mollett, Mollett.
+Do you know the name, Herbert?"
+
+Herbert said that he did not.
+
+"It's about business I suppose?" asked Mr. Somers.
+
+"Yes," said Aby; "private business; very particular."
+
+"The same that brought your father here;" and Mr. Somers again looked
+into his face with a close scrutiny.
+
+Aby was abashed, and for a moment or two he did not answer. "Well,
+then; it is the same business," he said at last. "And I'll thank you
+to let me go on. I'm not used to be stopped in this way."
+
+"You can follow us up to the house," said Mr. Somers to him. "Come
+here, Herbert." And then they walked along the road in such a way
+that Aby was forced to allow his horse to walk after them.
+
+"These are the men who are doing it," said Mr. Somers in a whisper to
+his companion. "Whatever is in the wind, whatever may be the cause of
+your father's trouble, they are concerned in it. They are probably
+getting money from him in some way."
+
+"Do you think so?"
+
+"I do. We must not force ourselves upon your father's confidence, but
+we must endeavour to save him from this misery. Do you go in to him
+with this card. Do not show it to him too suddenly; and then find out
+whether he really wishes to see the man. I will stay about the place;
+for it may be possible that a magistrate will be wanted, and in such
+a matter you had better not act."
+
+They were now at the hall-door, and Somers, turning to Mollett, told
+him that Mr. Herbert Fitzgerald would carry the card to his father.
+And then he added, seeing that Mollett was going to come down, "You
+had better stay in the gig till Mr. Fitzgerald comes back; just sit
+where you are; you'll get an answer all in good time."
+
+Sir Thomas was crouching over the fire in his study when his son
+entered, with his eyes fixed upon a letter which he held in his hand,
+and which, when he saw Herbert, he closed up and put away.
+
+"Father," said Herbert, in a cheerful every-day voice, as though he
+had nothing special to communicate, "there is a man in a gig out
+there. He says he wants to see you."
+
+"A man in a gig!" and Herbert could see that his father had already
+begun to tremble. But every sound made him tremble now.
+
+"Yes; a man in a gig. What is it he says his name is? I have his card
+here. A young man."
+
+"Oh, a young man?" said Sir Thomas.
+
+"Yes, here it is. Abraham Mollett. I can't say that your friend seems
+to be very respectable, in spite of his gig," and Herbert handed the
+card to his father.
+
+The son purposely looked away as he mentioned the name, as his great
+anxiety was not to occasion distress. But he felt that the sound of
+the word had been terrible in his father's ears. Sir Thomas had risen
+from his chair; but he now sat down again, or rather fell into it.
+But nevertheless he took the card, and said that he would see the
+man.
+
+"A young man do you say, Herbert?"
+
+"Yes, father, a young man. And, father, if you are not well, tell me
+what the business is and let me see him."
+
+But Sir Thomas persisted, shaking his head, and saying that he would
+see the man himself.
+
+"Somers is out there. Will you let him do it?"
+
+"No. I wonder, Herbert, that you can tease me so. Let the man be sent
+in here. But, oh, Herbert--Herbert--!"
+
+The young man rushed round and kneeled at his father's knee. "What is
+it, father? Why will you not tell me? I know you have some grief, and
+cannot you trust me? Do you not know that you can trust me?"
+
+"My poor boy, my poor boy!"
+
+"What is it, father? If this man here is concerned in it, let me see
+him."
+
+"No, no, no."
+
+"Or at any rate let me be with you when he is here. Let me share your
+trouble if I can do nothing to cure it."
+
+"Herbert, my darling, leave me and send him in. If it be necessary
+that you should bear this calamity, it will come upon you soon
+enough."
+
+"But I am afraid of this man--for your sake, father."
+
+"He will do me no harm; let him come to me. But, Herbert, say nothing
+to Somers about this. Somers has not seen the man; has he?"
+
+"Yes; we both spoke to him together as he drove up the avenue."
+
+"And what did he say? Did he say anything?"
+
+"Nothing but that he wanted to see you, and then he gave his card to
+Mr. Somers. Mr. Somers wished to save you from the annoyance."
+
+"Why should it annoy me to see any man? Let Mr. Somers mind his
+own business. Surely I can have business of my own without his
+interference." With this Herbert left his father, and returned to the
+hall-door to usher in Mr. Mollett junior.
+
+"Well?" said Mr. Somers, who was standing by the hall fire, and who
+joined Herbert at the front door.
+
+"My father will see the man."
+
+"And have you learned who he is?"
+
+"I have learned nothing but this--that Sir Thomas does not wish that
+we should inquire. Now, Mr. Mollett, Sir Thomas will see you; so you
+can come down. Make haste now, and remember that you are not to stay
+long, for my father is ill." And then leading Aby through the hall
+and along a passage, he introduced him into Sir Thomas's room.
+
+"And Herbert--" said the father; whereupon Herbert again turned
+round. His father was endeavouring to stand, but supporting himself
+by the back of his chair. "Do not disturb me for half an hour; but
+come to me then, and knock at the door. This gentleman will have done
+by that time."
+
+"If we do not put a stop to this, your father will be in a mad-house
+or on his death-bed before long." So spoke Mr. Somers in a low,
+solemn whisper when Herbert again joined him at the hall-door.
+
+"Sit down, sir; sit down," said Sir Thomas, endeavouring to be civil
+and to seem at his ease at the same time. Aby was himself so much
+bewildered for the moment, that he hardly perceived the embarrassment
+under which the baronet was labouring.
+
+Aby sat down, in the way usual to such men in such places, on the
+corner of his chair, and put his hat on the ground between his feet.
+Then he took out his handkerchief and blew his nose, and after that
+he expressed an opinion that he was in the presence of Sir Thomas
+Fitzgerald.
+
+"And you are Mr. Abraham Mollett," said Sir Thomas.
+
+"Yes, Sir Thomas, that's my name. I believe, Sir Thomas, that you
+have the pleasure of some slight acquaintance with my father, Mr.
+Matthew Mollett?"
+
+What a pleasure under such circumstances! Sir Thomas, however, nodded
+his head, and Aby went on.
+
+"Well, now, Sir Thomas, business is business; and my father, 'e ain't
+a good man of business. A gen'leman like you, Sir Thomas, has seen
+that with 'alf an eye, I know." And then he waited a moment for an
+answer; but as he got none he proceeded.
+
+"My governor's one of the best of fellows going, but 'e ain't sharp
+and decisive. Sharp's the word now a days, Sir Thomas; ain't it?" and
+he spoke this in a manner so suited to the doctrine which he intended
+to inculcate, that the poor old gentleman almost jumped up in his
+chair.
+
+And Aby, seeing this, seated himself more comfortably in his own. The
+awe which the gilt bindings of the books and the thorough comfort of
+the room had at first inspired was already beginning to fade away. He
+had come there to bully, and though his courage had failed him for a
+moment under the stern eye of Mr. Somers, it quickly returned to him
+now that he was able to see how weak was his actual victim.
+
+"Sharp's the word, Sir Thomas; and my governor, 'e ain't sharp--not
+sharp as he ought to be in such a matter as this. This is what I
+calls a real bit of cheese. Now it's no good going on piddling and
+peddling in such a case as this; is it now, Sir Thomas?"
+
+Sir Thomas muttered something, but it was no more than a groan.
+
+"Not the least use," continued Aby. "Now the question, as I takes it,
+is this. There's your son there as fetched me in 'ere; a fine young
+gen'leman 'e is, as ever I saw; I will say that. Well, now; who's to
+have this 'ere property when you walk the plank--as walk it you must
+some day, in course? Is it to be this son of yours, or is it to be
+this other Fitzgerald of 'Appy 'Ouse? Now, if you ask me, I'm all for
+your son, though maybe he mayn't be all right as regards the dam."
+
+There was certainly some truth in what Aby had said with reference to
+his father. Mr. Mollett senior had never debated the matter in terms
+sharp and decisive as these were. Think who they were of whom this
+brute was talking to that wretched gentleman; the wife of his bosom,
+than whom no wife was ever more dearly prized; the son of his love,
+the centre of all his hopes, the heir of his wealth--if that might
+still be so. And yet he listened to such words as these, and did not
+call in his servants to turn the speaker of them out of his doors.
+
+"I've no wish for that 'Appy 'Ouse man, Sir Thomas; not the least.
+And as for your good lady, she's nothing to me one way or the
+other--whatever she may be to my governor--" and here there fell
+a spasm upon the poor man's heart, which nearly brought him from
+the chair to the ground; but, nevertheless, he still contained
+himself--"my governor's former lady, my own mother," continued Aby,
+"whom I never see'd, she'd gone to kingdom come, you know, before
+that time, Sir Thomas. There hain't no doubt about that. So you
+see--" and hereupon he dropped his voice from the tone which he had
+hitherto been using to an absolute whisper, and drawing his chair
+close to that of the baronet, and putting his hands upon his knees,
+brought his mouth close to his companion's ear--"So you see," he
+said, "when that youngster was born, Lady F. was Mrs. M.--wasn't she?
+and for the matter of that, Lady F. is Mrs. M. to this very hour.
+That's the real chat; ain't it, Sir Thomas? My stepmother, you know.
+The governor could take her away with him to-morrow if he chose,
+according to the law of the land--couldn't he now?"
+
+There was no piddling or peddling about this at any rate. Old Mollett
+in discussing the matter with his victim had done so by hints and
+inuendos, through long windings, by signs and the dropping of a few
+dark words. He had never once mentioned in full terms the name of
+Lady Fitzgerald; had never absolutely stated that he did possess or
+ever had possessed a wife. It had been sufficient for him to imbue
+Sir Thomas with the knowledge that his son Herbert was in great
+danger as to his heritage. Doubtless the two had understood each
+other; but the absolute naked horror of the surmised facts had been
+kept delicately out of sight. But such delicacy was not to Aby's
+taste. Sharp, short, and decisive; that was his motto. No "longae
+ambages" for him. The whip was in his hand, as he thought, and he
+could best master the team by using it.
+
+And yet Sir Thomas lived and bore it. As he sat there half stupefied,
+numbed as it were by the intensity of his grief, he wondered at his
+own power of endurance. "She is Mrs. M., you know; ain't she now?" He
+could sit there and hear that, and yet live through it. So much he
+could do, and did do; but as for speaking, that was beyond him.
+
+Young Mollett thought that this "freshening up of the old gentleman"
+seemed to answer; so he continued. "Yes, Sir Thomas, your son's my
+favourite, I tell you fairly. But then, you know, if I backs the
+favourite, in course I likes to win upon him. How is it to be, now?"
+and then he paused for an answer, which, however, was not
+forthcoming.
+
+"You see you haven't been dealing quite on the square with the
+governor. You two is, has it were, in a boat together. We'll call
+that boat the Lady F., or the Mrs. M., which ever you like;"--and
+then Aby laughed, for the conceit pleased him--"but the hearnings of
+that boat should be divided hequally. Ain't that about the ticket?
+heh, Sir Thomas? Come, don't be down on your luck. A little quiet
+talkee-talkee between you and me'll soon put this small matter on a
+right footing."
+
+"What is it you want? tell me at once," at last groaned the poor man.
+
+"Well now, that's something like; and I'll tell you what we want.
+There are only two of us you know, the governor and I; and very
+lonely we are, for it's a sad thing for a man to have the wife of his
+bosom taken from him."
+
+Then there was a groan which struck even Aby's ear; but Sir Thomas
+was still alive and listening, and so he went on.
+
+"This property here, Sir Thomas, is a good twelve thousand a year. I
+know hall about it as though I'd been 'andling it myself for the last
+ten years. And a great deal of cutting there is in twelve thousand
+a year. You've 'ad your whack out of it, and now we wants to have
+hourn. That's Henglish, hain't it?"
+
+"Did your father send you here, Mr. Mollett?"
+
+"Never you mind who sent me, Sir Thomas. Perhaps he did, and perhaps
+he didn't. Perhaps I came without hany sending. Perhaps I'm more
+hup to this sort of work than he is. At any rate, I've got the part
+pretty well by 'eart--you see that, don't you? Well, hour hultimatum
+about the business is this. Forty thousand pounds paid down on the
+nail, half to the governor, and half to your 'umble servant, before
+the end of this year; a couple of thousand more in hand for the
+year's hexpenses--and--and--a couple of hundred or so now at once
+before I leave you; for to tell the truth we're run huncommonly dry
+just at the present moment." And then Aby drew his breath and paused
+for an answer.
+
+Poor Sir Thomas was now almost broken down. His head swam round and
+round, and he felt that he was in a whirlpool from which there was no
+escape. He had heard the sum named, and knew that he had no power of
+raising it. His interest in the estate was but for his life, and that
+life was now all but run out. He had already begun to feel that his
+son must be sacrificed, but he had struggled and endured in order
+that he might save his wife. But what could he do now? What further
+struggle could he make? His present most eager desire was that that
+horrid man should be removed from his hearing and his eyesight.
+
+But Aby had not yet done: he had hitherto omitted to mention one not
+inconsiderable portion of the amicable arrangement which, according
+to him, would have the effect of once more placing the two families
+comfortably on their feet. "There's one other pint, Sir Thomas," he
+continued, "and hif I can bring you and your good lady to my way of
+thinking on that, why, we may all be comfortable for all that is come
+and gone. You've a daughter Hemmeline."
+
+"What!" said Sir Thomas, turning upon him; for there was still so
+much of life left in him that he could turn upon his foe when he
+heard his daughter's name thus polluted.
+
+"Has lovely a gal to my way of thinking as my heyes ever rested on;
+and I'm not haccounted a bad judge of such cattle, I can tell you,
+Sir Thomas."
+
+"That will do, that will do," said Sir Thomas, attempting to rise,
+but still holding on by the back of his chair. "You can go now, sir;
+I cannot hear more from you."
+
+"Go!"
+
+"Yes, sir; go."
+
+"I know a trick worth two of that, Sir Thomas. If you like to give
+me your daughter Hemmeline for my wife, whatever her fortin's to be,
+I'll take it as part of my half of the forty thousand pounds. There
+now." And then Aby again waited for a reply.
+
+But now there came a knock at the door, and following quick upon the
+knock Herbert entered the room. "Well, father," said the son.
+
+"Herbert!"
+
+"Yes, father;" and he went round and supported his father on his arm.
+
+"Herbert, will you tell that man to go?"
+
+"Come, sir, you have disturbed my father enough; will you have the
+kindness to leave him now?"
+
+"I may chance to disturb him more, and you too, sir, if you treat me
+in that way. Let go my arm, sir. Am I to have any answer from you,
+Sir Thomas?"
+
+But Sir Thomas could make no further attempt at speaking. He was now
+once more seated in his chair, holding his son's hand, and when he
+again heard Mollett's voice he merely made a sign for him to go.
+
+"You see the state my father is in, Mr. Mollett," said Herbert; "I do
+not know what is the nature of your business, but whatever it may be,
+you must leave him now." And he made a slight attempt to push the
+visitor towards the door.
+
+"You'd better take care what you're doing, Mr. Fitzgerald," said
+Mollett. "By ---- you had! If you anger me, I might say a word that
+I couldn't unsay again, which would put you into queer street, I can
+tell you."
+
+"Don't quarrel with him, my boy; pray don't quarrel with him, but let
+him leave me," said Sir Thomas.
+
+"Mr. Mollett, you see my father's state; you must be aware that it is
+imperative that he should be left alone."
+
+"I don't know nothing about that, young gen'leman; business is
+business, and I hain't got hany answer to my proposals. Sir Thomas,
+do you say 'Yes' to them proposals." But Sir Thomas was still dumb.
+"To all but the last? Come," continued Aby, "that was put in quite as
+much for your good as it was for mine." But not a word came from the
+baronet.
+
+"Then I shan't stir," said Aby, again seating himself.
+
+"Then I shall have the servants in," said Herbert, "and a magistrate
+who is in the hall;" and he put his hand towards the handle of the
+bell.
+
+"Well, as the old gen'leman's hill, I'll go now and come again. But
+look you here, Sir Thomas, you have got my proposals, and if I don't
+get an answer to them in three days' time,--why you'll hear from me
+in another way, that's all. And so will her ladyship." And with this
+threat Mr. Abraham Mollett allowed himself to be conducted through
+the passage into the hall, and from thence to his gig.
+
+"See that he drives away; see that he goes," said Herbert to Mr.
+Somers, who was still staying about the place.
+
+"Oh, I'll drive away fast enough," said Aby, as he stepped into the
+gig, "and come back fast enough too," he muttered to himself. In the
+mean time Herbert had run back to his father's room.
+
+"Has he gone?" murmured Sir Thomas.
+
+"Yes, he has gone. There; you can hear the wheels of his gig on the
+gravel."
+
+"Oh, my boy, my poor boy!"
+
+"What is it, father? Why do you not tell me? Why do you allow such
+men as that to come and harass you, when a word would keep them from
+you? Father, good cannot come of it."
+
+"No, Herbert, no; good will not come of it. There is no good to come
+at all."
+
+"Then why will you not tell us?"
+
+"You will know it all soon enough. But Herbert, do not say a word to
+your mother. Not a word as you value my love. Let us save her while
+we can. You promise me that."
+
+Herbert gave him the required promise.
+
+"Look here," and he took up the letter which he had before crumpled
+in his hand. "Mr. Prendergast will be here next week. I shall tell
+everything to him."
+
+Soon afterwards Sir Thomas went to his bed, and there by his bedside
+his wife sat for the rest of the evening. But he said no word to her
+of his sorrow.
+
+"Mr. Prendergast is coming here," said Herbert to Mr. Somers.
+
+"I am glad of it, though I do not know him," said Mr. Somers. "For,
+my dear boy, it is necessary that there should be some one here."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+THE PATH BENEATH THE ELMS.
+
+
+It will be remembered that in the last chapter but one Owen
+Fitzgerald left Lady Desmond in the drawing-room at Desmond Court
+somewhat abruptly, having absolutely refused to make peace with the
+Desmond faction by giving his consent to the marriage between Clara
+and his cousin Herbert. And it will perhaps be remembered also, that
+Lady Desmond had asked for this consent in a manner that was almost
+humble. She had shown herself most anxious to keep on friendly terms
+with the rake of Hap House,--rake and roue, gambler and spendthrift,
+as he was reputed to be,--if only he would abandon his insane claim
+to the hand of Clara Desmond. But this feeling she had shown when
+they two were alone together, after Clara had left them. As long
+as her daughter had been present, Lady Desmond had maintained her
+tone of indignation and defiance; but, when the door was closed and
+they two were alone, she had become kind in her language and almost
+tender.
+
+My readers will probably conceive that she had so acted, overcome by
+her affection for Owen Fitzgerald and with a fixed resolve to win him
+for herself. Men and women when they are written about are always
+supposed to have fixed resolves, though in life they are so seldom
+found to be thus armed. To speak the truth, the countess had had no
+fixed resolve in the matter, either when she had thought about Owen's
+coming, or when, subsequently, she had found herself alone with him
+in her drawing-room. That Clara should not marry him,--on so much
+she had resolved long ago. But all danger on that head was, it may
+be said, over. Clara, like a good child, had behaved in the best
+possible manner; had abandoned her first lover, a lover that was poor
+and unfitted for her, as soon as told to do so; and had found for
+herself a second lover, who was rich, and proper, and in every way
+desirable. As regards Clara, the countess felt herself to be safe;
+and, to give her her due, she had been satisfied that the matter
+should so rest. She had not sought any further interview with
+Fitzgerald. He had come there against her advice, and she had gone to
+meet him prompted by the necessity of supporting her daughter, and
+without any other views of her own.
+
+But when she found herself alone with him; when she looked into his
+face, and saw how handsome, how noble, how good it was--good in its
+inherent manliness and bravery--she could not but long that this feud
+should be over, and that she might be able once more to welcome him
+as her friend. If only he would give up this frantic passion, this
+futile, wicked, senseless attempt to make them all wretched by an
+insane marriage, would it not be sweet again to make some effort to
+rescue him from the evil ways into which he had fallen?
+
+But Owen himself would make no response to this feeling. Clara
+Desmond was his love, and he would, of his own consent, yield her to
+no one. In truth, he was, in a certain degree, mad on this subject.
+He did think that because the young girl had given him a promise--had
+said to him a word or two which he called a promise--she was now of
+right his bride; that there belonged to him an indefeasible property
+in her heart, in her loveliness, in the inexpressible tenderness of
+her young springing beauty, of which no subsequent renouncing on her
+part could fairly and honestly deprive him. That others should oppose
+the match was intelligible to him; but it was hardly intelligible
+that she should betray him. And, as yet, he did not believe that she
+herself was the mainspring of this renouncing. Others, the countess
+and the Castle Richmond people, had frightened her into falseness;
+and, therefore, it became him to maintain his right by any
+means--almost by any means, within his power. Give her up of his own
+free will and voice! Say that Herbert Fitzgerald should take her with
+his consent! that she should go as a bride to Castle Richmond, while
+he stood by and smiled, and wished them joy! Never! And so he rode
+away with a stern heart, leaving her standing there with something of
+sternness about her heart also.
+
+In the meantime, Clara, when she was sure that her rejected suitor
+was well away from the place, put on her bonnet and walked out. It
+was her wont at this time to do so; and she was becoming almost a
+creature of habit, shut up as she was in that old dreary barrack. Her
+mother very rarely went with her; and she habitually performed the
+same journey over the same ground, at the same hour, day after day.
+So it had been, and so it was still,--unless Herbert Fitzgerald were
+with her.
+
+On the present occasion she saw no more of her mother before she left
+the house. She passed the drawing-room door, and seeing that it was
+ajar, knew that the countess was there; but she had nothing to say to
+her mother as to the late interview, unless her mother had aught to
+say to her. So she passed on. In truth her mother had nothing to say
+to her. She was sitting there alone, with her head resting on her
+hand, with that sternness at her heart and a cloud upon her brow, but
+she was not thinking of her daughter. Had she not, with her skill
+and motherly care, provided well for Clara? Had she not saved her
+daughter from all the perils which beset the path of a young girl?
+Had she not so brought her child up and put her forth into the world,
+that, portionless as that child was, all the best things of the world
+had been showered into her lap? Why should the countess think more
+of her daughter? It was of herself she was thinking; and of what her
+life would be all alone, absolutely alone, in that huge frightful
+home of hers, without a friend, almost without an acquaintance,
+without one soul near her whom she could love or who would love her.
+She had put out her hand to Owen Fitzgerald, and he had rejected it.
+Her he had regarded merely as the mother of the woman he loved. And
+then the Countess of Desmond began to ask herself if she were old and
+wrinkled and ugly, only fit to be a dowager in mind, body, and in
+name!
+
+Over the same ground! Yes, always over the same ground. Lady Clara
+never varied her walk. It went from the front entrance of the court,
+with one great curve, down to the old ruined lodge which opened on to
+the road running from Kanturk to Cork. It was here that the row of
+elm trees stood, and it was here that she had once walked with a hot,
+eager lover beside her, while a docile horse followed behind their
+feet. It was here that she walked daily; and was it possible that she
+should walk here without thinking of him?
+
+It was always on the little well-worn path by the road-side, not on
+the road itself, that she took her measured exercise; and now, as she
+went along, she saw on the moist earth the fresh prints of a horse's
+hoofs. He also had ridden down the same way, choosing to pass over
+the absolute spot in which those words had been uttered, thinking of
+that moment, as she also was thinking of it. She felt sure that such
+had been the case. She knew that it was this that had brought him
+there--there on to the foot-traces which they had made together.
+
+And did he then love her so truly,--with a love so hot, so eager, so
+deeply planted in his very soul? Was it really true that a passion
+for her had so filled his heart, that his whole life must by that be
+made or marred? Had she done this thing to him? Had she so impressed
+her image on his mind that he must be wretched without her? Was she
+so much to him, so completely all in all as regarded his future
+worldly happiness? Those words of his, asserting that love--her
+love--was to him a stern fact, a deep necessity--recurred over and
+over again to her mind. Could it really be that in doing as she had
+done, in giving herself to another after she had promised herself to
+him, she had committed an injustice which would constantly be brought
+up against her by him and by her own conscience? Had she in truth
+deceived and betrayed him,--deserted him because he was poor, and
+given herself over to a rich lover because of his riches?
+
+As she thought of this she forgot again that fact--which, indeed, she
+had never more than half realized in her mind--that he had justified
+her in separating herself from him by his reckless course of living;
+that his conduct must be held to have so justified her, let the
+pledge between them have been of what nature it might. Now, as she
+walked up and down that path, she thought nothing of his wickedness
+and his sins; she thought only of the vows to which she had once
+listened, and the renewal of those vows to which it was now so
+necessary that her ear should be deaf.
+
+But was her heart deaf to them? She swore to herself, over and over
+again, scores and scores of oaths, that it was so; but each time that
+she swore, some lowest corner in the depth of her conscience seemed
+to charge her with a falsehood. Why was it that in all her hours of
+thinking she so much oftener saw his face, Owen's, than she did that
+other face of which in duty she was bound to think and dream? It
+was in vain that she told herself that she was afraid of Owen, and
+therefore thought of him. The tone of his voice that rang in her
+ears the oftenest was not that of his anger and sternness, but the
+tone of his first assurance of love--that tone which had been so
+inexpressibly sweet to her--that to which she had listened on this
+very spot where she now walked slowly, thinking of him. The look of
+his which was ever present to her eyes was not that on which she
+had almost feared to gaze but an hour ago; but the form and spirit
+which his countenance had worn when they were together on that
+well-remembered day.
+
+And then she would think, or try to think, of Herbert, and of all
+his virtues and of all his goodness. He too loved her well. She
+never doubted that. He had come to her with soft words, and pleasant
+smiles, and sweet honeyed compliments--compliments which had been
+sweet to her as they are to all girls; but his soft words, and
+pleasant smiles, and honeyed love-making had never given her so
+strong a thrill of strange delight as had those few words from
+Owen. Her very heart's core had been affected by the vigour of his
+affection. There had been in it a mysterious grandeur which had half
+charmed and half frightened her. It had made her feel that he, were
+it fated that she should belong to him, would indeed be her lord and
+ruler; that his was a spirit before which hers would bend and feel
+itself subdued. With him she could realize all that she had dreamed
+of woman's love; and that dream which is so sweet to some women--of
+woman's subjugation. But could it be the same with him to whom she
+was now positively affianced, with him to whom she knew that she did
+now owe all her duty? She feared that it was not the same.
+
+And then again she swore that she loved him. She thought over all his
+excellences; how good he was as a son--how fondly his sisters loved
+him--how inimitable was his conduct in these hard trying times. And
+she remembered also that it was right in every way that she should
+love him. Her mother and brother approved of it. Those who were to
+be her new relatives approved of it. It was in every way fitting.
+Pecuniary considerations were so favourable! But when she thought of
+that her heart sank low within her breast. Was it true that she had
+sold herself at her mother's bidding? Should not the remembrance of
+Owen's poverty have made her true to him had nothing else done so?
+
+But be all that as it might, one thing, at any rate, was clear to
+her, that it was now her fate, her duty--and, as she repeated again
+and again, her wish to marry Herbert. No thought of rebellion against
+him and her mother ever occurred to her as desirable or possible.
+She would be to him a true and loving wife, a wife in very heart and
+soul. But, nevertheless, walking thus beneath those trees, she could
+not but think of Owen Fitzgerald.
+
+In this mood she had gone twice down from the house to the lodge and
+back again; and now again she had reached the lodge the third time,
+making thus her last journey: for in these solitary walks her work
+was measured. The exercise was needful, but there was little in the
+task to make her prolong it beyond what was necessary. But now, as
+she was turning for the last time, she heard the sound of a horse's
+hoof coming fast along the road; and looking from the gate, she saw
+that Herbert was coming to her. She had not expected him, but now she
+waited at the gate to meet him.
+
+It had been arranged that she was to go over in a few days to Castle
+Richmond, and stay there for a fortnight. This had been settled
+shortly before the visit made by Mr. Mollett junior, at that place,
+and had not as yet been unsettled. But as soon as it was known that
+Sir Thomas had summoned Mr. Prendergast from London, it was felt
+by them all that it would be as well that Clara's visit should be
+postponed. Herbert had been especially cautioned by his father, at
+the time of Mollett's visit, not to tell his mother anything of what
+had occurred, and to a certain extent he had kept his promise. But
+it was of course necessary that Lady Fitzgerald should know that Mr.
+Prendergast was coming to the house, and it was of course impossible
+to keep from her the fact that his visit was connected with the
+lamentable state of her husband's health and spirits. Indeed, she
+knew as much as that without any telling. It was not probable that
+Mr. Prendergast should come there now on a visit of pleasure.
+
+"Whatever this may be that weighs upon his mind," Herbert had said,
+"he will be better for talking it over with a man whom he trusts."
+
+"And why not with Somers?" said Lady Fitzgerald.
+
+"Somers is too often with him, too near to him in all the affairs of
+his life. I really think he is wise to send for Mr. Prendergast. We
+do not know him, but I believe him to be a good man."
+
+Then Lady Fitzgerald had expressed herself as satisfied--as satisfied
+as she could be, seeing that her husband would not take her into his
+confidence; and after this it was settled that Herbert should at once
+ride over to Desmond Court, and explain that Clara's visit had better
+be postponed.
+
+Herbert got off his horse at the gate, and gave it to one of the
+children at the lodge to lead after him. His horse would not follow
+him, Clara said to herself as they walked back together towards the
+house. She could not prevent her mind running off in that direction.
+She would fain not have thought of Owen as she thus hung upon
+Herbert's arm, but as yet she had not learned to control her
+thoughts. His horse had followed him lovingly--the dogs about the
+place had always loved him--the men and women of the whole country
+round, old and young, all spoke of him with a sort of love: everybody
+admired him. As all this passed through her brain, she was hanging on
+her accepted lover's arm, and listening to his soft sweet words.
+
+"Oh, yes! it will be much better," she said, answering his proposal
+that she should put off her visit to Castle Richmond. "But I am so
+sorry that Sir Thomas should be ill. Mr. Prendergast is not a doctor,
+is he?"
+
+And then Herbert explained that Mr. Prendergast was not a doctor,
+that he was a physician for the mind rather than for the body.
+Regarding Clara as already one of his own family, he told her as much
+as he had told his mother. He explained that there was some deep
+sorrow weighing on his father's heart of which they none of them knew
+anything save its existence; that there might be some misfortune
+coming on Sir Thomas of which he, Herbert, could not even guess the
+nature; but that everything would be told to this Mr. Prendergast.
+
+"It is very sad," said Herbert.
+
+"Very sad; very sad," said Clara, with tears in her eyes. "Poor
+gentleman! I wish that we could comfort him."
+
+"And I do hope that we may," said Herbert. "Somers seems to think
+that his mind is partly affected, and that this misfortune, whatever
+it be, may not improbably be less serious than we anticipate;--that
+it weighs heavier on him than it would do, were he altogether well."
+
+"And your mother, Herbert?"
+
+"Oh, yes; she also is to be pitied. Sometimes, for moments, she seems
+to dread some terrible misfortune; but I believe that in her calm
+judgment she thinks that our worst calamity is the state of my
+father's health."
+
+Neither in discussing the matter with his mother or Clara, nor in
+thinking it over when alone, did it ever occur to Herbert that he
+himself might be individually subject to the misfortune over which
+his father brooded. Sir Thomas had spoken piteously to him, and
+called him poor, and had seemed to grieve over what might happen to
+him; but this had been taken by the son as a part of his father's
+malady.
+
+Everything around him was now melancholy, and therefore these terms
+had not seemed to have any special force of their own. He did not
+think it necessary to warn Clara that bad days might be in store for
+both of them, or to caution her that their path of love might yet be
+made rough.
+
+"And whom do you think I met, just now, on horseback?" he asked, as
+soon as this question of her visit had been decided.
+
+"Mr. Owen Fitzgerald, probably," said Clara. "He went from hence
+about an hour since."
+
+"Owen Fitzgerald here!" he repeated, as though the tidings of such a
+visit having been made were not exactly pleasant to him. "I thought
+that Lady Desmond did not even see him now."
+
+"His visit was to me, Herbert, and I will explain it to you. I was
+just going to tell you when you first came in, only you began about
+Castle Richmond."
+
+"And have you seen him?"
+
+"Oh yes, I saw him. Mamma thought it best. Yesterday he wrote a note
+to me which I will show you." And then she gave him such an account
+of the interview as was possible to her, making it, at any rate,
+intelligible to him that Owen had come thither to claim her for
+himself, having heard the rumour of her engagement to his cousin.
+
+"It was inexcusable on his part--unpardonable!" said Herbert,
+speaking with an angry spot on his face, and with more energy than
+was usual with him.
+
+"Was it? why?" said Clara, innocently. She felt unconsciously that it
+was painful to her to hear Owen ill spoken of by her lover, and that
+she would fain excuse him if she could.
+
+"Why, dearest? Think what motives he could have had; what other
+object than to place you in a painful position, and to cause trouble
+and vexation to us all. Did he not know that we were engaged?"
+
+"Oh yes; he knew that;--at least, no; I am not quite sure--I think he
+said that he had heard it but did not--"
+
+"Did not what, love?"
+
+"I think he said he did not quite believe it;" and then she was
+forced, much against her will, to describe to her betrothed how Owen
+had boldly claimed her as his own.
+
+"His conduct has been unpardonable," said Herbert, again. "Nay, it
+has been ungentlemanlike. He has intruded himself where he well knew
+that he was not wanted; and he has done so taking advantage of a few
+words which, under the present circumstances, he should force himself
+to forget."
+
+"But, Herbert, it is I that have been to blame."
+
+"No; you have not been in the least to blame. I tell you honestly
+that I can lay no blame at your door. At the age you were then, it
+was impossible that you should know your own mind. And even had your
+promise to him been of a much more binding nature, his subsequent
+conduct, and your mother's remonstrance, as well as your own age,
+would have released you from it without any taint of falsehood. He
+knew all this as well as I do; and I am surprised that he should
+have forced his way into your mother's house with the mere object of
+causing you embarrassment."
+
+It was marvellous how well Herbert Fitzgerald could lay down the law
+on the subject of Clara's conduct, and on all that was due to her,
+and all that was not due to Owen. He was the victor; he had gained
+the prize; and therefore it was so easy for him to acquit his
+promised bride, and heap reproaches on the head of his rejected
+rival. Owen had been told that he was not wanted, and of course
+should have been satisfied with his answer. Why should he intrude
+himself among happy people with his absurd aspirations? For were they
+not absurd? Was it not monstrous on his part to suppose that he could
+marry Clara Desmond?
+
+It was in this way that Herbert regarded the matter. But it was not
+exactly in that way that Clara looked at it. "He did not force his
+way in," she said. "He wrote to ask if we would see him; and mamma
+said that she thought it better."
+
+"That is forcing his way in the sense that I meant it; and if I find
+that he gives further annoyance I shall tell him what I think about
+it. I will not have you persecuted."
+
+"Herbert, if you quarrel with him you will make me wretched. I think
+it would kill me."
+
+"I shall not do it if I can help it, Clara. But it is my duty to
+protect you, and if it becomes necessary I must do so; you have
+no father, and no brother of an age to speak to him, and that
+consideration alone should have saved you from such an attack."
+
+Clara said nothing more, for she knew that she could not speak out to
+him the feelings of her heart. She could not plead to him that she
+had injured Owen, that she had loved him and then given him up; that
+she had been false to him: she could not confess that, after all,
+the tribute of such a man's love could not be regarded by her as
+an offence. So she said nothing further, but walked on in silence,
+leaning on his arm.
+
+They were now close to the house, and as they drew near to it Lady
+Desmond met them on the door-step. "I dare say you have heard that
+we had a visitor here this morning," she said, taking Herbert's hand
+in an affectionate motherly way, and smiling on him with all her
+sweetness.
+
+Herbert said that he had heard it, and expressed an opinion that
+Mr. Owen Fitzgerald would have been acting far more wisely to have
+remained at home at Hap House.
+
+"Yes, perhaps so; certainly so," said Lady Desmond, putting her arm
+within that of her future son, and walking back with him through
+the great hall. "He would have been wiser; he would have saved dear
+Clara from a painful half-hour, and he would have saved himself from
+perhaps years of sorrow. He has been very foolish to remember Clara's
+childhood as he does remember it. But, my dear Herbert, what can we
+do? You lords of creation sometimes will be foolish even about such
+trifling things as women's hearts."
+
+And then, when Herbert still persisted that Owen's conduct had been
+inexcusable and ungentlemanlike, she softly flattered him into
+quiescence. "You must not forget," she said, "that he perhaps has
+loved Clara almost as truly as you do. And then what harm can he do?
+It is not very probable that he should succeed in winning Clara away
+from you!"
+
+"Oh no, it is not that I mean. It is for Clara's sake."
+
+"And she, probably, will never see him again till she is your wife.
+That event will, I suppose, take place at no very remote period."
+
+"As soon as ever my father's health will admit. That is if I can
+persuade Clara to be so merciful."
+
+"To tell the truth, Herbert, I think you could persuade her to
+anything. Of course we must not hurry her too much. As for me, my
+losing her will be very sad; you can understand that; but I would not
+allow any feeling of my own to stand in her way for half-an-hour."
+
+"She will be very near you, you know."
+
+"Yes, she will; and therefore, as I was saying, it would be absurd
+for you to quarrel with Mr. Owen Fitzgerald. For myself, I am sorry
+for him--very sorry for him. You know the whole story of what
+occurred between him and Clara, and of course you will understand
+that my duty at that time was plain. Clara behaved admirably, and if
+only he would not be so foolish, the whole matter might be forgotten.
+As far as you and I are concerned I think it may be forgotten."
+
+"But then his coming here?"
+
+"That will not be repeated. I thought it better to show him that we
+were not afraid of him, and therefore I permitted it. Had I conceived
+that you would have objected--"
+
+"Oh, no!" said Herbert.
+
+"Well, there was not much for you to be afraid of, certainly," said
+the countess. And so he was appeased, and left the house promising
+that he, at any rate, would do nothing that might lead to a quarrel
+with his cousin Owen.
+
+Clara, who had still kept on her bonnet, again walked down with him
+to the lodge, and encountered his first earnest supplication that an
+early day should be named for their marriage. She had many reasons,
+excellent good reasons, to allege why this should not be the case.
+When was a girl of seventeen without such reasons? And it is so
+reasonable that she should have such reasons. That period of having
+love made to her must be by far the brightest in her life. Is it not
+always a pity that it should be abridged?
+
+"But your father's illness, Herbert, you know."
+
+Herbert acknowledged that, to a certain extent, his father's illness
+was a reason--only to a certain extent. It would be worse than
+useless to think of waiting till his father's health should be
+altogether strong. Just for the present, till Mr. Prendergast should
+have gone, and perhaps for a fortnight longer, it might be well to
+wait. But after that--and then he pressed very closely the hand which
+rested on his arm. And so the matter was discussed between them with
+language and arguments which were by no means original.
+
+At the gate, just as Herbert was about to remount his horse, they
+were encountered by a sight which for years past had not been
+uncommon in the south of Ireland, but which had become frightfully
+common during the last two or three months. A woman was standing
+there, of whom you could hardly say that she was clothed, though she
+was involved in a mass of rags which covered her nakedness. Her head
+was all uncovered, and her wild black hair was streaming round her
+face. Behind her back hung two children enveloped among the rags in
+some mysterious way; and round about her on the road stood three
+others, of whom the two younger were almost absolutely naked. The
+eldest of the five was not above seven. They all had the same wild
+black eyes, and wild elfish straggling locks; but neither the
+mother nor the children were comely. She was short and broad in the
+shoulders, though wretchedly thin; her bare legs seemed to be of
+nearly the same thickness up to the knee, and the naked limbs of the
+children were like yellow sticks. It is strange how various are the
+kinds of physical development among the Celtic peasantry in Ireland.
+In many places they are singularly beautiful, especially as children;
+and even after labour and sickness shall have told on them as labour
+and sickness will tell, they still retain a certain softness and
+grace which is very nearly akin to beauty. But then again in a
+neighbouring district they will be found to be squat, uncouth, and in
+no way attractive to the eye. The tint of the complexion, the nature
+of the hair, the colour of the eyes, shall be the same. But in one
+place it will seem as though noble blood had produced delicate limbs
+and elegant stature, whereas in the other a want of noble blood had
+produced the reverse. The peasants of Clare, Limerick, and Tipperary
+are, in this way, much more comely than those of Cork and Kerry.
+
+When Herbert and Clara reached the gate they found this mother with
+her five children crouching at the ditch-side, although it was still
+mid-winter. They had seen him enter the demesne, and were now waiting
+with the patience of poverty for his return.
+
+"An' the holy Virgin guide an' save you, my lady," said the woman,
+almost frightening Clara by the sudden way in which she came forward,
+"an' you too, Misther Herbert; and for the love of heaven do
+something for a poor crathur whose five starving childher have not
+had wholesome food within their lips for the last week past."
+
+Clara looked at them piteously and put her hand towards her pocket.
+Her purse was never well furnished, and now in these bad days was
+usually empty. At the present moment it was wholly so. "I have
+nothing to give her; not a penny," she said, whispering to her lover.
+
+But Herbert had learned deep lessons of political economy, and was by
+no means disposed to give promiscuous charity on the road-side. "What
+is your name," said he; "and from where do you come?"
+
+"Shure, an' it's yer honor knows me well enough; and her ladyship
+too; may the heavens be her bed. And don't I come from Clady; that
+is two long miles the fur side of it? And my name is Bridget Sheehy.
+Shure, an' yer ladyship remembers me at Clady the first day ye war
+over there about the biler."
+
+Clara looked at her, and thought that she did remember her, but she
+said nothing. "And who is your husband?" said Herbert.
+
+"Murty Brien, plaze yer honor;" and the woman ducked a curtsey with
+the heavy load of two children on her back. It must be understood
+that among the poorer classes in the south and west of Ireland it is
+almost rare for a married woman to call herself or to be called by
+her husband's name.
+
+"And is he not at work?"
+
+"Shure, an' he is, yer honor--down beyant Kinsale by the say. But
+what's four shilling a week for a man's diet, let alone a woman and
+five bairns?"
+
+"And so he has deserted you?"
+
+"No, yer honor; he's not dasarted me thin. He's a good man and
+a kind, av' he had the mains. But we've a cabin up here, on her
+ladyship's ground that is; and he has sent me up among my own people,
+hoping that times would come round; but faix, yer honor, I'm thinking
+that they'll never come round, no more."
+
+"And what do you want now, Bridget?"
+
+"What is it I'm wanting? just a thrifle of money then to get a sup of
+milk for thim five childher as is starving and dying for the want of
+it." And she pointed to the wretched, naked brood around her with a
+gesture which in spite of her ugliness had in it something of tragic
+grandeur.
+
+"But you know that we will not give money. They will take you in at
+the poorhouse at Kanturk."
+
+"Is it the poorhouse, yer honor?"
+
+"Or, if you get a ticket from your priest they will give you meal
+twice a week at Clady. You know that. Why do you not go to Father
+Connellan?"
+
+"Is it the mail? An' shure an' haven't I had it, the last month past;
+nothin' else; not a taste of a piaty or a dhrop of milk for nigh a
+month, and now look at the childher. Look at them, my lady. They are
+dyin' by the very road-side." And she undid the bundle at her back,
+and laying the two babes down on the road showed that the elder of
+them was in truth in a fearful state. It was a child nearly two years
+of age, but its little legs seemed to have withered away; its cheeks
+were wan, and yellow and sunken, and the two teeth which it had
+already cut were seen with terrible plainness through its emaciated
+lips. Its head and forehead were covered with sores; and then the
+mother, moving aside the rags, showed that its back and legs were in
+the same state. "Look to that," she said, almost with scorn. "That's
+what the mail has done--my black curses be upon it, and the day that
+it first come nigh the counthry." And then again she covered the
+child and began to resume her load.
+
+"Do give her something, Herbert, pray do," said Clara, with her whole
+face suffused with tears.
+
+"You know that we cannot give away money," said Herbert, arguing
+with Bridget Sheehy, and not answering Clara at the moment. "You
+understand enough of what is being done to know that. Why do you not
+go into the Union?"
+
+"Shure thin an' I'll jist tramp on as fur as Hap House, I and my
+childher; that is av' they do not die by the road-side. Come on,
+bairns. Mr. Owen won't be afther sending me to the Kanturk union when
+I tell him that I've travelled all thim miles to get a dhrink of
+milk for a sick babe; more by token when I tells him also that I'm
+one of the Desmond tinantry. It's he that loves the Desmonds, Lady
+Clara,--loves them as his own heart's blood. And it's I that wish him
+good luck with his love, in spite of all that's come and gone yet.
+Come on, bairns, come along; we have seven weary miles to walk." And
+then, having rearranged her burden on her back, she prepared again to
+start.
+
+Herbert Fitzgerald, from the first moment of his interrogating the
+woman, had of course known that he would give her somewhat. In spite
+of all his political economy, there were but few days in which he
+did not empty his pocket of his loose silver, with these culpable
+deviations from his theoretical philosophy. But yet he felt that it
+was his duty to insist on his rules, as far as his heart would allow
+him to do so. It was a settled thing at their relief committee that
+there should be no giving away of money to chance applicants for
+alms. What money each had to bestow would go twice further by being
+brought to the general fund--by being expended with forethought and
+discrimination. This was the system which all attempted, which all
+resolved to adopt who were then living in the south of Ireland.
+But the system was impracticable, for it required frames of iron
+and hearts of adamant. It was impossible not to waste money in
+almsgiving.
+
+"Oh, Herbert!" said Clara, imploringly, as the woman prepared to
+start.
+
+"Bridget, come here," said Herbert, and he spoke very seriously, for
+the woman's allusion to Owen Fitzgerald had driven a cloud across
+his brow. "Your child is very ill, and therefore I will give you
+something to help you," and he gave her a shilling and two sixpences.
+
+"May the God in heaven bless you thin, and make you happy, whoever
+wins the bright darling by your side; and may the good days come back
+to yer house and all that belongs to it. May yer wife clave to you
+all her days, and be a good mother to your childher." And she would
+have gone on further with her blessing had not he interrupted her.
+
+"Go on now, my good woman," said he, "and take your children where
+they may be warm. If you will be advised by me, you will go to the
+Union at Kanturk." And so the woman passed on still blessing them.
+Very shortly after this none of them required pressing to go to the
+workhouse. Every building that could be arranged for the purpose was
+filled to overflowing as soon as it was ready. But the worst of the
+famine had not come upon them as yet. And then Herbert rode back to
+Castle Richmond.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+FATHER BARNEY.
+
+
+Mick O'Dwyer's public-house at Kanturk was by no means so pretentious
+an establishment as that kept by his brother in South Main Street,
+Cork, but it was on the whole much less nasty. It was a drinking-shop
+and a public car office, and such places in Ireland are seldom very
+nice; but there was no attempt at hotel grandeur, and the little
+room in which the family lived behind the bar was never invaded by
+customers.
+
+On one evening just at this time--at the time, that is, with which we
+have been lately concerned--three persons were sitting in this room
+over a cup of tea. There was a gentleman, middle-aged, but none the
+worse on that account, who has already been introduced in these pages
+as Father Bernard M'Carthy. He was the parish priest of Drumbarrow;
+and as his parish comprised a portion of the town of Kanturk, he
+lived, not exactly in the town, but within a mile of it. His sister
+had married Mr. O'Dwyer of South Main Street, and therefore he was
+quite at home in the little back parlour of Mick O'Dwyer's house in
+Kanturk. Indeed Father Bernard was a man who made himself at home in
+the houses of most of his parishioners,--and of some who were not his
+parishioners.
+
+His companions on the present occasion were two ladies who seemed to
+be emulous in supplying his wants. The younger and more attractive
+of the two was also an old friend of ours, being no other than
+Fanny O'Dwyer from South Main Street. Actuated, doubtless, by some
+important motive she had left her bar at home for one night, having
+come down to Kanturk by her father's car, with the intention of
+returning by it in the morning. She was seated as a guest here on the
+corner of the sofa near the fire, but nevertheless she was neither
+too proud nor too strange in her position to administer as best she
+might to the comfort of her uncle.
+
+The other lady was Mistress O'Dwyer, the lady of the mansion. She was
+fat, very; by no means fair, and perhaps something over forty. But
+nevertheless there were those who thought that she had her charms.
+A better hand at curing a side of bacon there was not in the county
+Cork, nor a woman who was more knowing in keeping a house straight
+and snug over her husband's head. That she had been worth more than
+a fortune to Mick O'Dwyer was admitted by all in Kanturk; for it was
+known to all that Mick O'Dwyer was not himself a good hand at keeping
+a house straight and snug.
+
+"Another cup of tay, Father Bernard," said this lady. "It'll be
+more to your liking now than the first, you'll find." Father Barney,
+perfectly reliant on her word, handed in his cup.
+
+"And the muffin is quite hot," said Fanny, stooping down to a tray
+which stood before the peat fire, holding the muffin dish. "But
+perhaps you'd like a morsel of buttered toast; say the word, uncle,
+and I'll make it in a brace of seconds."
+
+"In course she will," said Mrs. O'Dwyer: "and happy too, av you'll
+only say that you have a fancy, Father Bernard."
+
+But Father Bernard would not own to any such fancy. The muffin, he
+said, was quite to his liking, and so was the tea; and from the
+manner in which he disposed of these delicacies, even Mrs. Townsend
+might have admitted that this assertion was true, though she was
+wont to express her belief that nothing but lies could, by any
+possibility, fall from his mouth.
+
+"And they have been staying with you now for some weeks, haven't
+they?" said Father Barney.
+
+"Off and on," said Fanny.
+
+"But there's one of them mostly there, isn't he?" added the priest.
+
+"The two of them is mostly there, just now. Sometimes one goes away
+for a day or two, and sometimes the other."
+
+"And they have no business which keeps them in Cork?" continued the
+priest, who seemed to be very curious on the matter.
+
+"Well, they do have business, I suppose," said Fanny, "but av so
+I never sees it." Fanny O'Dwyer had a great respect for her uncle,
+seeing that he filled an exalted position, and was a connexion of
+whom she could be justly proud; but, though she had now come down to
+Kanturk with the view of having a good talk with her aunt and uncle
+about the Molletts, she would only tell as much as she liked to tell,
+even to the parish priest of Drumbarrow. And we may as well explain
+here that Fanny had now permanently made up her mind to reject the
+suit of Mr. Abraham Mollett. As she had allowed herself to see more
+and more of the little domestic ways of that gentleman, and to become
+intimate with him as a girl should become with the man she intends
+to marry, she had gradually learned to think that he hardly came up
+to her beau ideal of a lover. That he was crafty and false did not
+perhaps offend her as it should have done. Dear Fanny, excellent and
+gracious as she was, could herself be crafty on occasions. He drank
+too, but that came in the way of her profession. It is hard, perhaps,
+for a barmaid to feel much severity against that offence. But in
+addition to this Aby was selfish and cruel and insolent, and seldom
+altogether good tempered. He was bad to his father, and bad to those
+below him whom he employed. Old Mollett would give away his sixpences
+with a fairly liberal hand, unless when he was exasperated by drink
+and fatigue. But Aby seldom gave away a penny. Fanny had sharp eyes,
+and soon felt that her English lover was not a man to be loved,
+though he had two rings, a gold chain, and half a dozen fine
+waistcoats.
+
+And then another offence had come to light in which the Molletts were
+both concerned. Since their arrival in South Main Street they had
+been excellent customers--indeed quite a godsend, in this light, to
+Fanny, who had her own peculiar profit out of such house-customers
+as they were. They had paid their money like true Britons,--not
+regularly indeed, for regularity had not been desired, but by a five
+pound now, and another in a day or two, just as they were wanted.
+Nothing indeed could be better than this, for bills so paid are
+seldom rigidly scrutinized. But of late, within the last week,
+Fanny's requests for funds had not been so promptly met, and only on
+the day before her visit to Kanturk she had been forced to get her
+father to take a bill from Mr. Mollett senior for L20 at two months'
+date. This was a great come-down, as both Fanny and her father felt,
+and they had begun to think that it might be well to bring their
+connexion with the Molletts to a close. What if an end had come to
+the money of these people, and their bills should be dishonoured when
+due? It was all very well for a man to have claims against Sir Thomas
+Fitzgerald, but Fanny O'Dwyer had already learnt that nothing goes so
+far in this world as ready cash.
+
+"They do have business, I suppose," said Fanny.
+
+"It won't be worth much, I'm thinking," said Mrs. O'Dwyer, "when they
+can't pay their weekly bills at a house of public entertainment,
+without flying their names at two months' date."
+
+Mrs. O'Dwyer hated any such payments herself, and looked on them as
+certain signs of immorality. That every man should take his drop of
+drink, consume it noiselessly, and pay for it immediately--that was
+her idea of propriety in its highest form.
+
+"And they've been down here three or four times, each of them," said
+Father Barney, thinking deeply on the subject.
+
+"I believe they have," said Fanny. "But of course I don't know much
+of where they've been to."
+
+Father Barney knew very well that his dear niece had been on much
+more intimate terms with her guest than she pretended. The rumours
+had reached his ears some time since that the younger of the two
+strangers in South Main Street was making himself agreeable to the
+heiress of the hotel, and he had intended to come down upon her with
+all the might of an uncle, and, if necessary, with all the authority
+of the Church. But now that Fanny had discarded her lover, he wisely
+felt that it would be well for him to know nothing about it. Both
+uncles and priests may know too much--very foolishly.
+
+"I have seen them here myself," said he, "and they have both been up
+at Castle Richmond."
+
+"They do say as poor Sir Thomas is in a bad way," said Mrs. O'Dwyer,
+shaking her head piteously.
+
+"And yet he sees these men," said Father Barney. "I know that
+for certain. He has seen them, though he will rarely see anybody
+now-a-days."
+
+"Young Mr. Herbert is a-doing most of the business up about the
+place," said Mrs. O'Dwyer. "And people do say as how he is going to
+make a match of it with Lady Clara Desmond. And it's the lucky girl
+she'll be, for he's a nice young fellow entirely."
+
+"Not half equal to her other Joe, Mr. Owen that is," said Fanny.
+
+"Well, I don't know that, my dear. Such a house and property as
+Castle Richmond is not likely to go a-begging among the young women.
+And then Mr. Herbert is not so rampageous like as him of Hap House,
+by all accounts."
+
+But Father Barney still kept to his subject. "And they are both at
+your place at the present moment, eh, Fanny?"
+
+"They was to dine there, after I left."
+
+"And the old man said he'd be down here again next Thursday,"
+continued the priest. "I heard that for certain. I'll tell you what
+it is, they're not after any good here. They are Protestants, ain't
+they?"
+
+"Oh, black Protestants," said Mrs. O'Dwyer. "But you are not taking
+your tay, Father Bernard," and she again filled his cup for him.
+
+"If you'll take my advice, Fanny, you'll give them nothing more
+without seeing their money. They'll come to no good here, I'm sure of
+that. They're afther some mischief with that poor old gentleman at
+Castle Richmond, and it's my belief the police will have them before
+they've done."
+
+"Like enough," said Mrs. O'Dwyer.
+
+"They may have them to-morrow, for what I care," said Fanny, who
+could not help feeling that Aby Mollett had at one time been not
+altogether left without hope as her suitor.
+
+"But you wouldn't like anything like that to happen in your father's
+house," said Father Barney.
+
+"Bringing throuble and disgrace on an honest name," said Mrs.
+O'Dwyer.
+
+"There'd be no disgrace as I knows of," said Fanny, stoutly. "Father
+makes his money by the public, and in course he takes in any that
+comes the way with money in their pockets to pay the shot."
+
+"But these Molletts ain't got the money to pay the shot," said Mrs.
+O'Dwyer, causticly. "You've about sucked 'em dhry, I'm thinking, and
+they owes you more now than you're like to get from 'em."
+
+"I suppose father 'll have to take that bill up," said Fanny,
+assenting. And so it was settled down there among them that the
+Molletts were to have the cold shoulder, and that they should in fact
+be turned out of the Kanturk Hotel as quickly as this could be done.
+"Better a small loss at first, than a big one at last," said Mrs.
+O'Dwyer, with much wisdom. "They'll come to mischief down here, as
+sure as my name's M'Carthy," said the priest. "And I'd be sorry your
+father should be mixed up in it."
+
+And then by degrees the conversation was changed, but not till the
+tea-things had been taken away, and a square small bottle of very
+particular whisky put on the table in its place. And the sugar also
+was brought, and boiling water in an immense jug, as though Father
+Barney were going to make a deep potation indeed, and a lemon in a
+wine glass; and then the priest was invited, with much hospitality,
+to make himself comfortable. Nor did the luxuries prepared for him
+end here; but Fanny, the pretty Fan herself, filled a pipe for him,
+and pretended that she would light it, for such priests are merry
+enough sometimes, and can joke as well as other men with their pretty
+nieces.
+
+"But you're not mixing your punch, Father Bernard," said Mrs.
+O'Dwyer, with a plaintive melancholy voice, "and the wather getting
+cowld and all! Faix then, Father Bernard, I'll mix it for ye, so
+I will." And so she did, and well she knew how. And then she made
+another for herself and her niece, urging that "a thimbleful
+would do Fanny all the good in life afther her ride acrass them
+cowld mountains," and the priest looked on assenting, blowing the
+comfortable streams of smoke from his nostrils.
+
+"And so, Father Bernard, you and Parson Townsend is to meet again
+to-morrow at Gortnaclough." Whereupon Father Bernard owned that such
+was the case, with a nod, not caring to disturb the pipe which lay
+comfortably on his lower lip.
+
+"Well, well; only to think on it," continued Mrs. O'Dwyer. "That the
+same room should hould the two of ye." And she lifted up her hands
+and shook her head.
+
+"It houlds us both very comfortable, I can assure you, Mrs. O'Dwyer."
+
+"And he ain't rampageous and highty-tighty? He don't give hisself no
+airs?"
+
+"Well, no; nothing in particular. Why should the man be such a fool
+as that?"
+
+"Why, in course? But they are such fools, Father Bernard. They does
+think theyselves such grand folks. Now don't they? I'd give a dandy
+of punch all round to the company just to hear you put him down once;
+I would. But he isn't upsetting at all, then?"
+
+"Not the last time we met, he wasn't; and I don't think he intends
+it. Things have come to that now that the parsons know where they are
+and what they have to look to. They're getting a lesson they'll not
+forget in a hurry. Where are their rent charges to come from--can you
+tell me that, Mrs. O'Dwyer?"
+
+Mrs. O'Dwyer could not, but she remarked that pride would always have
+a fall. "And there's no pride like Protesthant pride," said Fanny.
+"It is so upsetting, I can't abide it." All which tended to show that
+she had quite given up her Protestant lover.
+
+"And is it getthing worse than iver with the poor crathurs?" said
+Mrs. O'Dwyer, referring, not to the Protestants, but to the victims
+of the famine.
+
+"Indeed it's getting no betther," said the priest, "and I'm fearing
+it will be worse before it is over. I haven't married one couple in
+Drumbarrow since November last."
+
+"And that's a heavy sign, Father Bernard."
+
+"The surest sign in the world that they have no money among them at
+all, at all. And it is bad with thim, Mrs. O'Dwyer,--very bad, very
+bad indeed."
+
+"Glory be to God, the poor cratures!" said the soft-hearted lady.
+"It isn't much the like of us have to give away, Father Bernard; I
+needn't be telling you that. But we'll help, you know,--we'll help."
+
+"And so will father, uncle Bernard. If you're so bad off about here
+I know he'll give you a thrifle for the asking." In a short time,
+however, it came to pass that those in the cities could spare no aid
+to the country. Indeed it may be a question whether the city poverty
+was not the harder of the two.
+
+"God bless you both--you've soft hearts, I know." And Father Barney
+put his punch to his lips. "Whatever you can do for me shall not be
+thrown away. And I'll tell you what, Mrs. O'Dwyer, it does behove us
+all to put our best foot out now. We will not let them say that the
+Papists would do nothing for their own poor."
+
+"'Deed then an' they'll say anything of us, Father Bernard. There's
+nothing too hot or too heavy for them."
+
+"At any rate let us not deserve it, Mrs. O'Dwyer. There will be a lot
+of them at Gortnaclough to-morrow, and I shall tell them that we, on
+our side, won't be wanting. To give them their due, I must say that
+they are working well. That young Herbert Fitzgerald's a trump,
+whether he's Protestant or Catholic."
+
+"An' they do say he's a strong bearing towards the ould religion,"
+said Mrs. O'Dwyer. "God bless his sweet young face av' he'd come back
+to us. That's what I say."
+
+"God bless his face any way, say I," said Father Barney, with a wider
+philanthropy. "He is doing his best for the people, and the time has
+come now when we must hang together, if it be any way possible." And
+with this the priest finished his pipe, and wishing the ladies good
+night, walked away to his own house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+THE RELIEF COMMITTEE.
+
+
+At this time the famine was beginning to be systematised. The
+sternest among landlords and masters were driven to acknowledge that
+the people had not got food or the means of earning it. The people
+themselves were learning that a great national calamity had happened,
+and that the work was God's work; and the Government had fully
+recognized the necessity of taking the whole matter into its own
+hands. They were responsible for the preservation of the people, and
+they acknowledged their responsibility.
+
+And then two great rules seemed to get themselves laid down--not by
+general consent, for there were many who greatly contested their
+wisdom--but by some force strong enough to make itself dominant.
+The first was, that the food to be provided should be earned and
+not given away. And the second was, that the providing of that
+food should be left to private competition, and not in any way be
+undertaken by the Government. I make bold to say that both these
+rules were wise and good.
+
+But how should the people work? That Government should supply
+the wages was of course an understood necessity; and it was also
+necessary that on all such work the amount of wages should be
+regulated by the price at which provisions might fix themselves.
+These points produced questions which were hotly debated by the
+Relief Committees of the different districts; but at last it got
+itself decided, again by the hands of Government, that all hills
+along the country roads should be cut away, and that the people
+should be employed on this work. They were so employed,--very little
+to the advantage of the roads for that or some following years.
+
+"So you have begun, my men," said Herbert to a gang of labourers whom
+he found collected at a certain point on Ballydahan Hill, which lay
+on his road from Castle Richmond to Gortnaclough. In saying this
+he had certainly paid them an unmerited compliment, for they had
+hitherto begun nothing. Some thirty or forty wretched-looking men
+were clustered together in the dirt and slop and mud, on the brow
+of the hill, armed with such various tools as each was able to
+find--with tools, for the most part, which would go but a little
+way in making Ballydahan Hill level or accessible. This question of
+tools also came to a sort of understood settlement before long; and
+within three months of the time of which I am writing legions of
+wheelbarrows were to be seen lying near every hill; wheelbarrows in
+hundreds and thousands. The fate of those myriads of wheelbarrows has
+always been a mystery to me.
+
+"So you have begun, my men," said Herbert, addressing them in a
+kindly voice. There was a couple of gangsmen with them, men a
+little above the others in appearance, but apparently incapable
+of commencing the work in hand, for they also were standing idle,
+leaning against a bit of wooden paling. It had, however, been decided
+that the works at Ballydahan Hill should begin on this day, and there
+were the men assembled. One fact admitted of no doubt, namely, this,
+that the wages would begin from this day.
+
+And then the men came and clustered round Herbert's horse. They were
+wretched-looking creatures, half-clad, discontented, with hungry
+eyes, each having at his heart's core a deep sense of injustice done
+personally upon him. They hated this work of cutting hills from the
+commencement to the end,--hated it, though it was to bring them wages
+and save them and theirs from actual famine and death. They had not
+been accustomed to the discomfort of being taken far from their homes
+to their daily work. Very many of them had never worked regularly
+for wages, day after day, and week after week. Up to this time such
+was not the habit of Irish cottiers. They held their own land, and
+laboured there for a spell; and then they would work for a spell, as
+men do in England, taking wages; and then they would be idle for a
+spell. It was not exactly a profitable mode of life, but it had its
+comforts; and now these unfortunates who felt themselves to be driven
+forth like cattle in droves for the first time, suffered the full
+wretchedness of their position. They were not rough and unruly, or
+inclined to be troublesome and perhaps violent, as men similarly
+circumstanced so often are in England;--as Irishmen are when
+collected in gangs out of Ireland. They had no aptitudes for
+such roughness, and no spirits for such violence. But they were
+melancholy, given to complaint, apathetic, and utterly without
+interest in that they were doing.
+
+"Yz, yer honer," said one man who was standing, shaking himself, with
+his hands enveloped in the rags of his pockets. He had on no coat,
+and the keen north wind seemed to be blowing through his bones; cold,
+however, as he was, he would do nothing towards warming himself,
+unless that occasional shake can be considered as a doing of
+something. "Yz, yer honer; we've begun thin since before daylight
+this blessed morning."
+
+It was now eleven o'clock, and a pick-axe had not been put into the
+ground, nor the work marked.
+
+"Been here before daylight!" said Herbert. "And has there been nobody
+to set you to work?"
+
+"Divil a sowl, yer honer," said another, who was sitting on a
+hedge-bank leaning with both his hands on a hoe, which he held
+between his legs, "barring Thady Molloy and Shawn Brady; they two do
+be over us, but they knows nothin' o' such jobs as this."
+
+Thady Molloy and Shawn Brady had with the others moved up so as
+to be close to Herbert's horse, but they said not a word towards
+vindicating their own fitness for command.
+
+"And it's mortial cowld standing here thin," said another, "without
+a bit to ate or a sup to dhrink since last night, and then only a
+lump of the yally mail." And the speaker moved about on his toes and
+heels, desirous of keeping his blood in circulation with the smallest
+possible amount of trouble.
+
+"I'm telling the boys it's home we'd betther be going," said a
+fourth.
+
+"And lose the tizzy they've promised us," said he of the hoe.
+
+"Sorrow a tizzy they'll pay any of yez for standing here all day,"
+said an ill-looking little wretch of a fellow, with a black muzzle
+and a squinting eye; "ye may all die in the road first." And the man
+turned away among the crowd, as an Irishman does who has made his
+speech and does not want to be answered.
+
+"You need have no fear about that, my men," said Herbert. "Whether
+you be put to work or no you'll receive your wages; you may take my
+word for that."
+
+"I've been telling 'em that for the last half-hour," said the man
+with the hoe, now rising to his feet. "'Shure an' didn't Mr. Somers
+be telling us that we'd have saxpence each day as long we war here
+afore daylight?' said I, yer honer; 'an' shure an' wasn't it black
+night when we war here this blessed morning, and devil a fear of the
+tizzy?' said I. But it's mortial cowld, an' it'd be asier for uz to
+be doing a spell of work than crouching about on our hunkers down on
+the wet ground."
+
+All this was true. It had been specially enjoined upon them to be
+early at their work. An Irishman as a rule will not come regularly to
+his task. It is a very difficult thing to secure his services every
+morning at six o'clock; but make a special point,--tell him that you
+want him very early, and he will come to you in the middle of the
+night. Breakfast every morning punctually at eight o'clock is almost
+impossible in Ireland; but if you want one special breakfast, so that
+you may start by a train at 4 A.M., you are sure to be served. No
+irregular effort is distasteful to an Irishman of the lower classes,
+not if it entails on him the loss of a day's food and the loss of a
+night's rest; the actual pleasure of the irregularity repays him for
+all this, and he never tells you that this or that is not his work.
+He prefers work that is not his own. Your coachman will have no
+objection to turn the mangle, but heaven and earth put together won't
+persuade him to take the horses out to exercise every morning at the
+same hour. These men had been told to come early, and they had been
+there on the road-side since five o'clock. It was not surprising that
+they were cold and hungry, listless and unhappy.
+
+And then, as young Fitzgerald was questioning the so-named gangmen
+as to the instructions they had received, a jaunting car came up to
+the foot of the hill. "We war to wait for the ongineer," Shawn Brady
+had said, "an' shure an' we have waited." "An' here's one of Misther
+Carroll's cars from Mallow," said Thady Molloy, "and that's the
+ongineer hisself." Thady Molloy was right; this was the engineer
+himself, who had now arrived from Mallow. From this time forth, and
+for the next twelve months, the country was full of engineers, or of
+men who were so called. I do not say this in disparagement; but the
+engineers were like the yellow meal. When there is an immense demand,
+and that a suddenly immense demand, for any article, it is seldom
+easy to get it very good. In those days men became engineers with a
+short amount of apprenticeship, but, as a rule, they did not do their
+work badly. In such days as those, men, if they be men at all, will
+put their shoulders to the wheel.
+
+The engineer was driven up to where they were standing, and he
+jumped off the car among the men who were to work under him with
+rather a pretentious air. He had not observed, or probably had not
+known, Herbert Fitzgerald. He was a very young fellow, still under
+one-and-twenty, beardless, light-haired, blue-eyed, and fresh from
+England. "And what hill is this?" said he to the driver.
+
+"Ballydahan, shure, yer honer. That last war Connick-a-coppul, and
+that other, the big un intirely, where the crass road takes away to
+Buttevant, that was Glounthauneroughtymore. Faix and that's been the
+murthering hill for cattle since first I knew it. Bedad yer honer 'll
+make it smooth as a bowling-green."
+
+"Ballydahan," said the young man, taking a paper out of his pocket
+and looking up the names in his list, "I've got it. There should be
+thirty-seven of them here."
+
+"Shure an' here we are these siven hours," said our friend of the
+hoe, "and mighty cowld we are."
+
+"Thady Molloy and Shawn Brady," called out the engineer, managing
+thoroughly to Anglicise the pronunciation of the names, though they
+were not Celtically composite to any great degree.
+
+"Yez, we's here," said Thady, coming forward. And then Herbert came
+up and introduced himself, and the young engineer took off his hat.
+"I came away from Mallow before eight," said he apologetically; "but
+I have four of these places to look after, and when one gets to one
+of them it is impossible to get away again. There was one place where
+I was kept two hours before I could get one of the men to understand
+what they were to do. What is it you call that big hill?"
+
+"Glounthauneroughtymore, yer honer," said the driver, to whom the
+name was as easy and familiar as his own.
+
+"And you are going to set these men to work now?" said Herbert.
+
+"Well, I don't suppose they'll do much to-day, Mr. Fitzgerald. But
+I must try and explain to the head men how they are to begin. They
+have none of them any tools, you see." And then he called out again.
+"Thady Molloy and Shawn Brady."
+
+"We's here," said Thady again; "we did not exactly know whether yer
+honer'd be afther beginning at the top or the botthom. That's all
+that war staying us."
+
+"Never fear," said Shawn, "but we'll have ould Ballydahan level in
+less than no time. We're the boys that can do it, fair and aisy."
+
+It appeared to Herbert that the young engineer seemed to be rather
+bewildered by the job of work before him, and therefore he rode on,
+not stopping to embarrass him by any inspection of his work. In
+process of time no doubt so much of the top of Ballydahan Hill was
+carried to the bottom as made the whole road altogether impassable
+for many months. But the great object was gained; the men were fed,
+and were not fed by charity. What did it matter, that the springs of
+every conveyance in the county Cork were shattered by the process,
+and that the works resulted in myriads of wheelbarrows?
+
+And then, as he rode on towards Gortnaclough, Herbert was overtaken
+by his friend the parson, who was also going to the meeting of the
+relief committee. "You have not seen the men at Ballydahan Hill, have
+you?" said Herbert.
+
+Mr. Townsend explained that he had not seen them. His road had struck
+on to that on which they now were not far from the top of the hill.
+"But I knew they were to be there this morning," said Mr. Townsend.
+
+"They have sent quite a lad of a fellow to show them how to work,"
+said Herbert. "I fear we shall all come to grief with these
+road-cuttings."
+
+"For heaven's sake don't say that at the meeting," said Mr. Townsend,
+"or you'll be playing the priests' game out and out. Father Barney
+has done all in his power to prevent the works."
+
+"But what if Father Barney be right?" said Herbert.
+
+"But he's not right," said the parson, energetically. "He's
+altogether wrong. I never knew one of them right in my life yet in
+anything. How can they be right?"
+
+"But I think you are mixing up road-making and Church doctrine, Mr.
+Townsend."
+
+"I hope I may never be in danger of mixing up God and the devil.
+You cannot touch pitch and not be defiled. Remember that, Herbert
+Fitzgerald."
+
+"I will remember nothing of the kind," said Herbert. "Am I to set
+myself up as a judge and say that this is pitch and that is pitch? Do
+you remember St. Peter on the housetop? Was not he afraid of what was
+unclean?"
+
+"The meaning of that was that he was to convert the Gentiles, and
+not give way to their errors. He was to contend with them and not
+give way an inch till he had driven them from their idolatry." Mr.
+Townsend had been specially primed by his wife that morning with
+vigorous hostility against Father Barney, and was grieved to his
+heart at finding that his young friend was prepared to take the
+priest's part in anything. In this matter of the roads Mr. Townsend
+was doubtless right, but hardly on the score of the arguments
+assigned by him.
+
+"I don't mean to say that there should be no road-making," said
+Herbert, after a pause. "The general opinion seems to be that we
+can't do better. I only say that we shall come to grief about it.
+Those poor fellows there have as much idea of cutting down a hill as
+I have; and it seems to me that the young lad whom I left with them
+has not much more."
+
+"They'll learn all in good time."
+
+"Let us hope it will be in good time."
+
+"If we once let them have the idea that we are to feed them in
+idleness," said Mr. Townsend, "they will want to go on for ever in
+the same way. And then, when they receive such immense sums in money
+wages, the priests will be sure to get their share. If the matter had
+been left to me, I would have paid the men in meal. I would never
+have given them money. They should have worked and got their food.
+The priest will get a penny out of every shilling; you'll see else."
+And so the matter was discussed between them as they went along to
+Gortnaclough.
+
+When they reached the room in which the committee was held they found
+Mr. Somers already in the chair. Priest McCarthy was there also,
+with his coadjutor, the Rev. Columb Creagh--Father Columb as he was
+always called; and there was a Mr. O'Leary from Boherbuy, one of the
+middlemen as they were formerly named,--though by the way I never
+knew that word to be current in Ireland; it is familiar to all, and
+was I suppose common some few years since, but I never heard the
+peasants calling such persons by that title. He was one of those with
+whom the present times were likely to go very hard. He was not a bad
+man, unless in so far as this, that he had no idea of owing any duty
+to others beyond himself and his family. His doctrine at present
+amounted to this, that if you left the people alone and gave them no
+false hopes, they would contrive to live somehow. He believed in a
+good deal, but he had no belief whatever in starvation,--none as yet.
+It was probable enough that some belief in this might come to him
+now before long. There were also one or two others; men who had some
+stake in the country, but men who hadn't a tithe of the interest
+possessed by Sir Thomas Fitzgerald.
+
+Mr. Townsend again went through the ceremony of shaking hands with
+his reverend brethren, and, on this occasion, did not seem to be
+much the worse for it. Indeed, in looking at the two men cursorily a
+stranger might have said that the condescension was all on the other
+side. Mr. M'Carthy was dressed quite smartly. His black clothes were
+spruce and glossy; his gloves, of which he still kept on one and
+showed the other, were quite new; he was clean shaven, and altogether
+he had a shiny, bright, ebon appearance about him that quite did
+a credit to his side of the church. But our friend the parson was
+discreditably shabby. His clothes were all brown, his white neck-tie
+could hardly have been clean during the last forty-eight hours, and
+was tied in a knot, which had worked itself nearly round to his ear
+as he had sat sideways on the car; his boots were ugly and badly
+brushed, and his hat was very little better than some of those worn
+by the workmen--so called--at Ballydahan Hill. But, nevertheless,
+on looking accurately into the faces of both, one might see which
+man was the better nurtured and the better born. That operation
+with the sow's ear is, one may say, seldom successful with the first
+generation.
+
+"A beautiful morning, this," said the coadjutor, addressing Herbert
+Fitzgerald, with a very mild voice and an unutterable look of
+friendship; as though he might have said, "Here we are in a boat
+together, and of course we are all very fond of each other." To
+tell the truth, Father Columb was not a nice-looking young man. He
+was red-haired, slightly marked with the small-pox, and had a low
+forehead and cunning eyes.
+
+"Yes, it is, a nice morning," said Herbert. "We don't expect anybody
+else here, do we, Somers?"
+
+"At any rate we won't wait," said Somers. So he sat down in the
+arm-chair, and they all went to work.
+
+"I am afraid, Mr. Somers," said Mr. M'Carthy from the other end
+of the table, where he had constituted himself a sort of deputy
+chairman, "I am afraid we are going on a wrong tack." The priest had
+shuffled away his chair as he began to speak, and was now standing
+with his hands upon the table. It is singular how strong a propensity
+some men have to get upon their legs in this way.
+
+"How so, Mr. M'Carthy?" said Somers. "But shan't we be all more
+comfortable if we keep our chairs? There'll be less ceremony, won't
+there, Mr. Townsend?"
+
+"Oh! certainly," said Townsend.
+
+"Less liable to interruption, perhaps, on our legs," said Father
+Columb, smiling blandly.
+
+But Mr. M'Carthy was far too wise to fight the question, so he sat
+down. "Just as you like," said he; "I can talk any way, sitting or
+standing, walking or riding; it's all one to me. But I'll tell you
+how we are on the wrong tack. We shall never get these men to work in
+gangs on the road. Never. They have not been accustomed to be driven
+like droves of sheep."
+
+"But droves of sheep don't work on the road," said Mr. Townsend.
+
+"I know that, Mr. Townsend," continued Mr. M'Carthy. "I am quite well
+aware of that. But droves of sheep are driven, and these men won't
+bear it."
+
+"'Deed an' they won't," said Father Columb, having altogether laid
+aside his bland smile now that the time had come, as he thought, to
+speak up for the people. "They may bear it in England, but they won't
+here." And the sternness of his eye was almost invincible.
+
+"If they are so foolish, they must be taught better manners," said
+Mr. Townsend. "But you'll find they'll work just as other men
+do--look at the navvies."
+
+"And look at the navvies' wages," said Father Columb.
+
+"Besides the navvies only go if they like it," said the parish
+priest.
+
+"And these men need not go unless they like it," said Mr. Somers.
+"Only with this proviso, that if they cannot manage for themselves
+they must fall into our way of managing for them."
+
+"What I say, is this," said Mr. O'Leary. "Let 'em manage for
+'emselves. God bless my sowl! Why we shall be skinned alive if we
+have to pay all this money back to Government. If Government chooses
+to squander thousands in this way, Government should bear the brunt.
+That's what I say." Eventually, Government, that is the whole nation,
+did bear the brunt. But it would not have been very wise to promise
+this at the time.
+
+"But we need hardly debate all that at the present moment," said Mr.
+Somers. "That matter of the roads has already been decided for us,
+and we can't alter it if we would."
+
+"Then we may as well shut up shop," said Mr. O'Leary.
+
+"It's all very aisy to talk in that way," said Father Columb; "but
+the Government, as you call it, can't make men work. It can't force
+eight millions of the finest pisantry on God's earth--," and Father
+Columb was, by degrees, pushing away the seat from under him, when he
+was cruelly and ruthlessly stopped by his own parish priest.
+
+"I beg your pardon for a moment, Creagh," said he; "but perhaps we
+are getting a little out of the track. What Mr. Somers says is very
+true. If these men won't work on the road--and I don't think they
+will--the responsibility is not on us. That matter has been decided
+for us."
+
+"Men will sooner work anywhere than starve," said Mr. Townsend.
+
+"Some men will," said Father Columb, with a great deal of meaning in
+his tone. What he intended to convey was this--that Protestants, no
+doubt, would do so, under the dominion of the flesh; but that Roman
+Catholics, being under the dominion of the Spirit, would perish
+first.
+
+"At any rate we must try," said Father M'Carthy.
+
+"Exactly," said Mr. Somers; "and what we have now to do is to see
+how we may best enable these workers to live on their wages, and how
+those others are to live, who, when all is done, will get no wages."
+
+"I think we had better turn shopkeepers ourselves, and open stores
+for them everywhere," said Herbert. "That is what we are doing
+already at Berryhill."
+
+"And import our own corn," said the parson.
+
+"And where are we to get the money?" said the priest.
+
+"And why are we to ruin the merchants?" said O'Leary, whose brother
+was in the flour-trade, in Cork.
+
+"And shut up all the small shopkeepers," said Father Columb,
+whose mother was established in that line in the neighbourhood of
+Castleisland.
+
+"We could not do it," said Somers. "The demand upon us would be so
+great, that we should certainly break down. And then where would we
+be?"
+
+"But for a time, Somers," pleaded Herbert.
+
+"For a time we may do something in that way, till other means present
+themselves. But we must refuse all out-door relief. They who cannot
+or do not bring money must go into the workhouses."
+
+"You will not get houses in county Cork sufficient to hold them,"
+said Father Bernard. And so the debate went on, not altogether
+without some sparks of wisdom, with many sparks also of eager
+benevolence, and some few passing clouds of fuliginous self-interest.
+And then lists were produced, with the names on them of all who
+were supposed to be in want--which were about to become, before
+long, lists of the whole population of the country. And at last
+it was decided among them, that in their district nothing should
+be absolutely given away, except to old women and widows,--which
+kindhearted clause was speedily neutralised by women becoming widows
+while their husbands were still living; and it was decided also, that
+as long as their money lasted, the soup-kitchen at Berryhill should
+be kept open, and mill kept going, and the little shop maintained, so
+that to some extent a check might be maintained on the prices of the
+hucksters. And in this way they got through their work, not perhaps
+with the sagacity of Solomon, but as I have said, with an average
+amount of wisdom, as will always be the case when men set about their
+tasks with true hearts and honest minds.
+
+And then, when they parted, the two clergymen of the parish shook
+hands with each other again, having perhaps less animosity against
+each other than they had ever felt before. There had been a joke or
+two over the table, at which both had laughed. The priest had wisely
+shown some deference to the parson, and the parson had immediately
+returned it, by referring some question to the priest. How often does
+it not happen that when we come across those whom we have hated and
+avoided all our lives, we find that they are not quite so bad as we
+had thought? That old gentleman of whom we wot is never so black as
+he has been painted.
+
+The work of the committee took them nearly the whole day, so that
+they did not separate till it was nearly dark. When they did so,
+Somers and Herbert Fitzgerald rode home together.
+
+"I always live in mortal fear," said Herbert, "that Townsend and the
+priests will break out into warfare."
+
+"As they haven't done it yet, they won't do it now," said Somers.
+"M'Carthy is not without sense, and Townsend, queer and intolerant as
+he is, has good feeling. If he and Father Columb were left together,
+I don't know what might happen. Mr. Prendergast is to be with you the
+day after to-morrow, is he not?"
+
+"So I understood my father to say."
+
+"Will you let me give you a bit of advice, Herbert?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"Then don't be in the house much on the day after he comes. He'll
+arrive, probably, to dinner."
+
+"I suppose he will."
+
+"If so, leave Castle Richmond after breakfast the next morning, and
+do not return till near dinner-time. It may be that your father will
+not wish you to be near him. Whatever this matter may be, you may be
+sure that you will know it before Mr. Prendergast leaves the country.
+I am very glad that he is coming."
+
+Herbert promised that he would take this advice, and he thought
+himself that among other things he might go over to inspect that
+Clady boiler, and of course call at Desmond Court on his way. And
+then, when they got near to Castle Richmond they parted company, Mr.
+Somers stopping at his own place, and Herbert riding home alone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+THE FRIEND OF THE FAMILY.
+
+
+On the day named by Herbert, and only an hour before dinner, Mr.
+Prendergast did arrive at Castle Richmond. The Great Southern and
+Western Railway was not then open as far as Mallow, and the journey
+from Dublin was long and tedious. "I'll see him of course," said
+Sir Thomas to Lady Fitzgerald; "but I'll put off this business till
+to-morrow." This he said in a tone of distress and agony, which
+showed too plainly how he dreaded the work which he had before him.
+"But you'll come in to dinner," Lady Fitzgerald had said. "No," he
+answered, "not to-day, love; I have to think about this." And he put
+his hand up to his head, as though this thinking about it had already
+been too much for him.
+
+Mr. Prendergast was a man over sixty years of age, being, in fact,
+considerably senior to Sir Thomas himself. But no one would have
+dreamed of calling Mr. Prendergast an old man. He was short of
+stature, well made, and in good proportion; he was wiry, strong, and
+almost robust. He walked as though in putting his foot to the earth
+he always wished to proclaim that he was afraid of no man and no
+thing. His hair was grizzled, and his whiskers were grey, and round
+about his mouth his face was wrinkled; but with him even these things
+hardly seemed to be signs of old age. He was said by many who knew
+him to be a stern man, and there was that in his face which seemed
+to warrant such a character. But he had also the reputation of being
+a very just man; and those who knew him best could tell tales of
+him which proved that his sternness was at any rate compatible with
+a wide benevolence. He was a man who himself had known but little
+mental suffering, and who owned no mental weakness; and it might
+be, therefore, that he was impatient of such weakness in others. To
+chance acquaintances his manners were not soft, or perhaps palatable;
+but to his old friends his very brusqueness was pleasing. He was
+a bachelor, well off in the world, and, to a certain extent, fond
+of society. He was a solicitor by profession, having his office
+somewhere in the purlieus of Lincoln's Inn, and living in an
+old-fashioned house not far distant from that classic spot. I have
+said that he owned no mental weakness. When I say further that he
+was slightly afflicted with personal vanity, and thought a good deal
+about the set of his hair, the shape of his coat, the fit of his
+boots, the whiteness of his hands, and the external trim of his
+umbrella, perhaps I may be considered to have contradicted myself.
+But such was the case. He was a handsome man too, with clear, bright,
+gray eyes, a well-defined nose, and expressive mouth--of which the
+lips, however, were somewhat too thin. No man with thin lips ever
+seems to me to be genially human at all points.
+
+Such was Mr. Prendergast; and my readers will, I trust, feel for Sir
+Thomas, and pity him, in that he was about to place his wounds in the
+hands of so ruthless a surgeon. But a surgeon, to be of use, should
+be ruthless in one sense. He should have the power of cutting and
+cauterizing, of phlebotomy and bone-handling without effect on his
+own nerves. This power Mr. Prendergast possessed, and therefore it
+may be said that Sir Thomas had chosen his surgeon judiciously. None
+of the Castle Richmond family, except Sir Thomas himself, had ever
+seen this gentleman, nor had Sir Thomas often come across him of
+late years. But he was what we in England call an old family friend;
+and I doubt whether we in England have any more valuable English
+characteristic than that of having old family friends. Old family
+feuds are not common with us now-a-days--not so common as with some
+other people. Sons who now hated their father's enemies would have
+but a bad chance before a commission of lunacy; but an old family
+friend is supposed to stick to one from generation to generation.
+
+On his arrival at Castle Richmond he was taken in to Sir Thomas
+before dinner. "You find me but in a poor state," said Sir Thomas,
+shaking in his fear of what was before him, as the poor wretch does
+before an iron-wristed dentist who is about to operate. "You will
+be better soon," Mr. Prendergast had said, as a man always does say
+under such circumstances. What other remark was possible to him?
+"Sir Thomas thinks that he had better not trouble you with business
+to-night," said Lady Fitzgerald. To this also Mr. Prendergast
+agreed willingly. "We shall both of us be fresher to-morrow, after
+breakfast," he remarked, as if any time made any difference to
+him,--as though he were not always fresh, and ready for any work that
+might turn up.
+
+That evening was not passed very pleasantly by the family at Castle
+Richmond. To all of them Mr. Prendergast was absolutely a stranger,
+and was hardly the man to ingratiate himself with strangers at the
+first interview. And then, too, they were all somewhat afraid of
+him. He had come down thither on some business which was to them
+altogether mysterious, and, as far as they knew, he, and he alone,
+was to be intrusted with the mystery. He of course said nothing to
+them on the subject, but he looked in their eyes as though he were
+conscious of being replete with secret importance; and on this very
+account they were afraid of him. And then poor Lady Fitzgerald,
+though she bore up against the weight of her misery better than did
+her husband, was herself very wretched. She could not bring herself
+to believe that all this would end in nothing; that Mr. Prendergast
+would put everything right, and that after his departure they would
+go on as happily as ever. This was the doctrine of the younger part
+of the family, who would not think that anything was radically wrong.
+But Lady Fitzgerald had always at her heart the memory of her early
+marriage troubles, and she feared greatly, though she feared she knew
+not what.
+
+Herbert Fitzgerald and Aunt Letty did endeavour to keep up some
+conversation with Mr. Prendergast; and the Irish famine was,
+of course, the subject. But this did not go on pleasantly. Mr.
+Prendergast was desirous of information; but the statements which
+were made to him one moment by young Fitzgerald were contradicted in
+the next by his aunt. He would declare that the better educated of
+the Roman Catholics were prepared to do their duty by their country,
+whereas Aunt Letty would consider herself bound both by party feeling
+and religious duty, to prove that the Roman Catholics were bad in
+everything.
+
+"Oh, Herbert, to hear you say so!" she exclaimed at one time, "it
+makes me tremble in my shoes. It is dreadful to think that those
+people should have got such a hold over you."
+
+"I really think that the Roman Catholic priests are liberal in their
+ideas and moral in their conduct." This was the speech which had made
+Aunt Letty tremble in her shoes, and it may, therefore, be conceived
+that Mr. Prendergast did not find himself able to form any firm
+opinion from the statements then made to him. Instead of doing so, he
+set them both down as "Wild Irish," whom it would be insane to trust,
+and of whom it was absurd to make inquiries. It may, however, be
+possibly the case that Mr. Prendergast himself had his own prejudices
+as well as Aunt Letty and Herbert Fitzgerald.
+
+On the following morning they were still more mute at breakfast. The
+time was coming in which Mr. Prendergast was to go to work, and even
+he, gifted though he was with iron nerves, began to feel somewhat
+unpleasantly the nature of the task which he had undertaken. Lady
+Fitzgerald did not appear at all. Indeed, during the whole of
+breakfast-time and up to the moment at which Mr. Prendergast was
+summoned, she was sitting with her husband, holding his hand in hers,
+and looking tenderly but painfully into his face. She so sat with him
+for above an hour, but he spoke to her no word of this revelation he
+was about to make. Herbert and the girls, and even Aunt Letty, sat
+solemn and silent, as though it was known by them all that something
+dreadful was to be said and done. At last Herbert, who had left the
+room, returned to it. "My father will see you now, Mr. Prendergast,
+if you will step up to him," said he; and then he ran to his mother
+and told her that he should leave the house till dinner-time.
+
+"But if he sends for you, Herbert, should you not be in the way?"
+
+"It is more likely that he should send for you; and, were I to remain
+here, I should be going into his room when he did not want me." And
+then he mounted his horse and rode off.
+
+Mr. Prendergast, with serious air and slow steps, and solemn resolve
+to do what he had to do at any rate with justice, walked away from
+the dining-room to the baronet's study. The task of an old friend
+is not always a pleasant one, and Mr. Prendergast felt that it was
+not so at the present moment. "Be gentle with him," said Aunt Letty,
+catching hold of his arm as he went through the passage. He merely
+moved his head twice, in token of assent, and then passed on into the
+room.
+
+The reader will have learnt by this time, with tolerable accuracy,
+what was the nature of the revelation which Sir Thomas was called
+upon to make, and he will be tolerably certain as to the advice which
+Mr. Prendergast, as an honest man, would give. In that respect there
+was no difficulty. The laws of meum and tuum are sufficiently clear
+if a man will open his eyes to look at them. In this case they were
+altogether clear. These broad acres of Castle Richmond did belong to
+Sir Thomas--for his life. But after his death they could not belong
+to his son Herbert. It was a matter which admitted of no doubt. No
+question as to whether the Molletts would or would not hold their
+tongue could bear upon it in the least. Justice in this case must be
+done, even though the heavens should fall. It was sad and piteous.
+Stern and hard as was the man who pronounced this doom, nevertheless
+the salt tear collected in his eyes and blinded him as he looked upon
+the anguish which his judgment had occasioned.
+
+Yes, Herbert must be told that he in the world was nobody; that he
+must earn his bread, and set about doing so right soon. Who could say
+that his father's life was worth a twelvemonth's purchase? He must
+be told that he was nobody in the world, and instructed also to tell
+her whom he loved, an Earl's daughter, the same tidings; that he was
+nobody, that he would come to possess no property, and that in the
+law's eyes did not possess even a name. How would his young heart
+suffice for the endurance of so terrible a calamity? And those
+pretty girls, so softly brought up--so tenderly nurtured; it must
+be explained to them too that they must no longer be proud of their
+father's lineage and their mother's fame. And that other Fitzgerald
+must be summoned and told of all this; he on whom they had looked
+down, whom the young heir had robbed of his love, whom they had cast
+out from among them as unworthy. Notice must be sent to him that he
+was the heir to Castle Richmond, that he would reign as the future
+baronet in those gracious chambers. It was he who could now make a
+great county lady of the daughter of the countess.
+
+"It will be very soon, very soon," sobbed forth the poor victim. And
+indeed, to look at him one might say that it would be soon. There
+were moments when Mr. Prendergast hardly thought that he would live
+through that frightful day.
+
+But all of which we have yet spoken hardly operated upon the
+baronet's mind in creating that stupor of sorrow which now weighed
+him to the earth. It was none of these things that utterly broke him
+down and crushed him like a mangled reed. He had hardly mind left
+to remember his children. It was for the wife of his bosom that he
+sorrowed.
+
+The wife of his bosom! He persisted in so calling her through the
+whole interview, and, even in his weakness, obliged the strong man
+before him so to name her also. She was his wife before God, and
+should be his to the end. Ah! for how short a time was that! "Is she
+to leave me?" he once said, turning to his friend, with his hands
+clasped together, praying that some mercy might be shown to his
+wretchedness. "Is she to leave me?" he repeated, and then sank on his
+knees upon the floor.
+
+And how was Mr. Prendergast to answer this question? How was he to
+decide whether or no this man and woman might still live together
+as husband and wife? Oh, my reader, think of it if you can, and put
+yourself for a moment in the place of that old family friend! "Tell
+me, tell me; is she to leave me?" repeated the poor victim of all
+this misery.
+
+The sternness and justice of the man at last gave way. "No," said
+he, "that cannot, I should think, be necessary. They cannot demand
+that." "But you won't desert me?" said Sir Thomas, when this crumb
+of comfort was handed to him. And he remembered as he spoke, the
+bloodshot eyes of the miscreant who had dared to tell him that the
+wife of his bosom might be legally torn from him by the hands of
+another man. "You won't desert me?" said Sir Thomas; meaning by that,
+to bind his friend to an obligation that, at any rate, his wife
+should not be taken from him.
+
+"No," said Mr. Prendergast, "I will not desert you; certainly not
+that; certainly not that." Just then it was in his heart to promise
+almost anything that he was asked. Who could have refused such solace
+as this to a man so terribly overburthened?
+
+But there was another point of view at which Mr. Prendergast had
+looked from the commencement, but at which he could not get Sir
+Thomas to look at all. It certainly was necessary that the whole
+truth in this matter should be made known and declared openly. This
+fair inheritance must go to the right owner and not to the wrong.
+Though the affliction on Sir Thomas was very heavy, and would be
+equally so on all the family, he would not on that account, for the
+sake of saving him and them from that affliction, be justified in
+robbing another person of what was legally and actually that other
+person's property. It was a matter of astonishment to Mr. Prendergast
+that a conscientious man, as Sir Thomas certainly was, should have
+been able to look at the matter in any other light; that he should
+ever have brought himself to have dealings in the matter with Mr.
+Mollett. Justice in the case was clear, and the truth must be
+declared. But then they must take good care to find out absolutely
+what the truth was. Having heard all that Sir Thomas had to say,
+and having sifted all that he did hear, Mr. Prendergast thoroughly
+believed, in his heart of hearts, that that wretched miscreant was
+the actual and true husband of the poor lady whom he would have to
+see. But it was necessary that this should be proved. Castle Richmond
+for the family, and all earthly peace of mind for that unfortunate
+lady and gentleman were not to be given up on the bare word of a
+scheming scoundrel, for whom no crime would be too black, and no
+cruelty too monstrous. The proofs must be looked into before anything
+was done, and they must be looked into before anything was said--to
+Lady Fitzgerald. We surely may give her that name as yet.
+
+But then, how were they to get at the proofs--at the proofs one way
+or the other? That Mollett himself had his marriage certificate Sir
+Thomas declared. That evidence had been brought home to his own
+mind of the identity of the man--though what was the nature of that
+evidence he could not now describe--as to that he was quite explicit.
+Indeed, as I have said above, he almost refused to consider the
+question as admitting of a doubt. That Mollett was the man to whom
+his wife had been married he thoroughly believed; and, to tell the
+truth, Mr. Prendergast was afraid to urge him to look for much
+comfort in this direction. The whole manner of the man, Mollett, had
+been such as to show that he himself was sure of his ground. Mr.
+Prendergast could hardly doubt that he was the man, although he
+felt himself bound to remark that nothing should be said to Lady
+Fitzgerald till inquiry had been made. Mr. Mollett himself would be
+at Castle Richmond on the next day but one, in accordance with the
+appointment made by himself; and, if necessary, he could be kept in
+custody till he had been identified as being the man, or as not being
+the man, who had married Miss Wainwright.
+
+"There is nobody living with you now who knew Lady Fitzgerald at--?"
+asked Mr. Prendergast.
+
+"Yes," said Sir Thomas, "there is one maid servant." And then he
+explained how Mrs. Jones had lived with his wife before her first
+marriage, during those few months in which she had been called Mrs.
+Talbot, and from that day even up to the present hour.
+
+"Then she must have known this man," said Mr. Prendergast.
+
+But Sir Thomas was not in a frame of mind at all suited to the
+sifting of evidence. He did not care to say anything about Mrs.
+Jones; he got no crumb of comfort out of that view of the matter.
+Things had come out, unwittingly for the most part, in his
+conversations with Mollett, which made him quite certain as to
+the truth of the main part of the story. All those Dorsetshire
+localities were well known to the man, the bearings of the house,
+the circumstances of Mr. Wainwright's parsonage, the whole history
+of those months; so that on this subject Sir Thomas had no doubt;
+and we may as well know at once that there was no room for doubt.
+Our friend of the Kanturk Hotel, South Main Street, Cork, was the
+man who, thirty years before, had married the child-daughter of the
+Dorsetshire parson.
+
+Mr. Prendergast, however, stood awhile before the fire balancing
+the evidence. "The woman must have known him," he said to himself,
+"and surely she could tell us whether he be like the man. And Lady
+Fitzgerald herself would know; but then who would have the hardness
+of heart to ask Lady Fitzgerald to confront that man?"
+
+He remained with Sir Thomas that day for hours. The long winter
+evening had begun to make itself felt by its increasing gloom before
+he left him. Wine and biscuits were sent in to them, but neither
+of them even noticed the man who brought them. Twice in the day,
+however, Mr. Prendergast gave the baronet a glass of sherry, which
+the latter swallowed unconsciously; and then, at about four, the
+lawyer prepared to take his leave. "I will see you early to-morrow,"
+said he, "immediately after breakfast."
+
+"You are going then?" said Sir Thomas, who greatly dreaded being left
+alone.
+
+"Not away, you know," said Mr. Prendergast. "I am not going to leave
+the house."
+
+"No," said Sir Thomas; "no, of course not, but--" and then he paused.
+
+"Eh!" said Mr. Prendergast, "you were saying something."
+
+"They will be coming in to me now," said Sir Thomas, wailing like a
+child; "now, when you are gone; and what am I to say to them?"
+
+"I would say nothing at present; nothing to-day."
+
+"And my wife?" he asked, again. Through this interview he studiously
+called her his wife. "Is--is she to know it?"
+
+"When we are assured that this man's story is true, Sir Thomas, she
+must know it. That will probably be very soon,--in a day or two. Till
+then I think you had better tell her nothing."
+
+"And what shall I say to her?"
+
+"Say nothing. I think it probable that she will not ask any
+questions. If she does, tell her that the business between you and me
+is not yet over. I will tell your son that at present he had better
+not speak to you on the subject of my visit here." And then he again
+took the hand of the unfortunate gentleman, and having pressed it
+with more tenderness than seemed to belong to him, he left the room.
+
+He left the room, and hurried into the hall and out of the house; but
+as he did so he could see that he was watched by Lady Fitzgerald. She
+was on the alert to go to her husband as soon as she should know that
+he was alone. Of what then took place between those two we need say
+nothing, but will wander forth for a while with Mr. Prendergast into
+the wide-spreading park.
+
+Mr. Prendergast had been used to hard work all his life, but he had
+never undergone a day of severer toil than that through which he had
+just past. Nor was it yet over. He had laid it down in a broad way as
+his opinion that the whole truth in this matter should be declared
+to the world, let the consequences be what they might; and to this
+opinion Sir Thomas had acceded without a word of expostulation. But
+in this was by no means included all that portion of the burden which
+now fell upon Mr. Prendergast's shoulders. It would be for him to
+look into the evidence, and then it would be for him also--heavy and
+worst task of all--to break the matter to Lady Fitzgerald.
+
+As he sauntered out into the park, to wander about for half an hour
+in the dusk of the evening, his head was throbbing with pain. The
+family friend in this instance had certainly been severely taxed in
+the exercise of his friendship. And what was he to do next? How was
+he to conduct himself that evening in the family circle, knowing, as
+he so well did, that his coming there was to bring destruction upon
+them all? "Be tender to him," Aunt Letty had said, little knowing
+how great a call there would be on his tenderness of heart, and how
+little scope for any tenderness of purpose.
+
+And was it absolutely necessary that that blow should fall in all its
+severity? He asked himself this question over and over again, and
+always had to acknowledge that it was necessary. There could be no
+possible mitigation. The son must be told that he was no son--no son
+in the eye of the law; the wife must be told that she was no wife,
+and the distant relative must be made acquainted with his golden
+prospects. The position of Herbert and Clara, and of their promised
+marriage, had been explained to him,--and all that too must be
+shivered into fragments. How was it possible that the penniless
+daughter of an earl should give herself in marriage to a youth,
+who was not only penniless also, but illegitimate and without a
+profession? Look at it in which way he would, it was all misery and
+ruin, and it had fallen upon him to pronounce the doom!
+
+He could not himself believe that there was any doubt as to the
+general truth of Mollett's statement. He would of course inquire. He
+would hear what the man had to say and see what he had to adduce.
+He would also examine that old servant, and, if necessary--and if
+possible also--he would induce Lady Fitzgerald to see the man. But he
+did feel convinced that on this point there was no doubt. And then
+he lifted up his hands in astonishment at the folly which had been
+committed by a marriage under such circumstances--as wise men will
+do in the decline of years, when young people in the heyday of youth
+have not been wise. "If they had waited for a term of years," he
+said, "and if he then had not presented himself!" A term of years,
+such as Jacob served for Rachel, seems so light an affair to old
+bachelors looking back at the loves of their young friends.
+
+And so he walked about in the dusk by no means a happy man, nor in
+any way satisfied with the work which was still before him. How was
+he to face Lady Fitzgerald, or tell her of her fate? In what words
+must he describe to Herbert Fitzgerald the position which in future
+he must fill? The past had been dreadful to him, and the future would
+be no less so, in spite of his character as a hard, stern man.
+
+When he returned to the house he met young Fitzgerald in the hall.
+"Have you been to your father?" he asked immediately. Herbert, in a
+low voice, and with a saddened face, said that he had just come from
+his father's room; but Mr. Prendergast at once knew that nothing of
+the truth had been told to him. "You found him very weak," said Mr.
+Prendergast. "Oh, very weak," said Herbert. "More than weak, utterly
+prostrate. He was lying on the sofa almost unable to speak. My mother
+was with him and is still there."
+
+"And she?" He was painfully anxious to know whether Sir Thomas had
+been weak enough--or strong enough--to tell his wife any of the story
+which that morning had been told to him.
+
+"She is doing what she can to comfort him," said Herbert; "but it is
+very hard for her to be left so utterly in the dark."
+
+Mr. Prendergast was passing on to his room, but at the foot of the
+stairs Herbert stopped him again, going up the stairs with him, and
+almost whispering into his ear--
+
+"I trust, Mr. Prendergast," said he, "that things are not to go on in
+this way."
+
+"No, no," said Mr. Prendergast.
+
+"Because it is unbearable--unbearable for my mother and for me, and
+for us all. My mother thinks that some terrible thing has happened to
+the property; but if so, why should I not be told?"
+
+"Of anything that really has happened, or does happen, you will be
+told."
+
+"I don't know whether you are aware of it, Mr. Prendergast, but I am
+engaged to be married. And I have been given to understand--that is,
+I thought that this might take place very soon. My mother seems to
+think that your coming here may--may defer it. If so, I think I have
+a right to expect that something shall be told to me."
+
+"Certainly you have a right, my dear young friend. But Mr.
+Fitzgerald, for your own sake, for all our sakes, wait patiently for
+a few hours."
+
+"I have waited patiently."
+
+"Yes, I know it. You have behaved admirably. But I cannot speak
+to you now. This time the day after to-morrow, I will tell you
+everything that I know. But do not speak of this to your mother.
+I make this promise only to you." And then he passed on into his
+bed-room.
+
+With this Herbert was obliged to be content. That evening he again
+saw his father and mother, but he told them nothing of what had
+passed between him and Mr. Prendergast. Lady Fitzgerald remained in
+the study with Sir Thomas the whole evening, nay, almost the whole
+night, and the slow hours as they passed there were very dreadful.
+No one came to table but Aunt Letty, Mr. Prendergast, and Herbert,
+and between them hardly a word was spoken. The poor girls had found
+themselves utterly unable to appear. They were dissolved in tears,
+and crouching over the fire in their own room. And the moment
+that Aunt Letty left the table Mr. Prendergast arose also. He was
+suffering, he said, cruelly from headache, and would ask permission
+to go to his chamber. It would have been impossible for him to have
+sat there pretending to sip his wine with Herbert Fitzgerald.
+
+After this Herbert again went to his father, and then, in the
+gloom of the evening, he found Mr. Somers in the office, a little
+magistrate's room, that was used both by him and by Sir Thomas. But
+nothing passed between them. Herbert had nothing to tell. And then at
+about nine he also went up to his bedroom. A more melancholy day than
+that had never shed its gloom upon Castle Richmond.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+TWO WITNESSES.
+
+
+Mr. Prendergast had given himself two days to do all that was to
+be done, before he told Herbert Fitzgerald the whole of the family
+history. He had promised that he would then let him know all that
+there was to be known; and he had done so advisedly, considering
+that it would be manifestly unjust to leave him in the dark an hour
+longer than was absolutely necessary. To expect that Sir Thomas
+himself should, with his own breath and his own words, make the
+revelation either to his son or to his wife, was to expect a manifest
+impossibility. He would, altogether, have sank under such an
+effort, as he had already sank under the effort of telling it to Mr.
+Prendergast; nor could it be left to the judgment of Sir Thomas to
+say when the story should be told. He had now absolutely abandoned
+all judgment in the matter. He had placed himself in the hands of a
+friend, and he now expected that that friend should do all that there
+was to be done. Mr. Prendergast had therefore felt himself justified
+in making this promise.
+
+But how was he to set about the necessary intervening work, and how
+pass the intervening hours? It had already been decided that Mr.
+Abraham Mollett, when he called, should be shown, as usual, into the
+study, but that he should there find himself confronted, not with Sir
+Thomas, but with Mr. Prendergast. But there was some doubt whether
+or no Mr. Mollett would come. It might be that he had means of
+ascertaining what strangers arrived at Castle Richmond; and it
+might be, that he would, under the present circumstances, think it
+expedient to stay away. This visit, however, was not to take place
+till the second day after that on which Mr. Prendergast had heard the
+story; and, in the meantime, he had that examination of Mrs. Jones to
+arrange and conduct.
+
+The breakfast was again very sad. The girls suggested to their
+brother that he and Mr. Prendergast should sit together by themselves
+in a small breakfast parlour, but to this he would not assent.
+Nothing could be more difficult or embarrassing than a conversation
+between himself and that gentleman, and he moreover was unwilling to
+let it be thought in the household that affairs were going utterly
+wrong in the family. On this matter he need hardly have disturbed
+himself, for the household was fully convinced that things were
+going very wrong. Maid-servants and men-servants can read the
+meaning of heavy brows and sad faces, of long meetings and whispered
+consultations, as well as their betters. The two girls, therefore,
+and Aunt Letty, appeared at the breakfast-table, but it was as though
+so many ghosts had assembled round the urn.
+
+Immediately after breakfast, Mr. Prendergast applied to Aunt Letty.
+"Miss Fitzgerald," said he, "I think you have an old servant of the
+name of Jones living here."
+
+"Yes, sure," said Aunt Letty. "She was living with my sister-in-law
+before her marriage."
+
+"Exactly,--and ever since too, I believe," said Mr. Prendergast,
+with a lawyer's instinctive desire to divert suspicion from the true
+point.
+
+"Oh yes, always; Mrs. Jones is quite one of ourselves."
+
+"Then would you do me the favour to beg Mrs. Jones to oblige me with
+her company for half an hour or so. There is an excellent fire in my
+room, and perhaps Mrs. Jones would not object to step there."
+
+Aunt Letty promised that Mrs. Jones should be sent, merely suggesting
+the breakfast-parlour, instead of the bed-room; and to the
+breakfast-parlour Mr. Prendergast at once betook himself. "What can
+she know about the London property, or about the Irish property?"
+thought Aunt Letty, to herself; and then it occurred to her that,
+perhaps, all these troubles arose from some source altogether
+distinct from the property.
+
+In about a quarter of an hour, a knock came to the breakfast-parlour
+door, and Mrs. Jones, having been duly summoned, entered the room
+with a very clean cap and apron, and with a very low curtsey. "Good
+morning, Mrs. Jones," said Mr. Prendergast; "pray take a seat;" and
+he pointed to an arm-chair that was comfortably placed near the fire,
+on the further side of the hearth-rug. Mrs. Jones sat herself down,
+crossed her hands on her lap, and looked the very personification of
+meek obedience.
+
+And yet there was something about her which seemed to justify the
+soubriquet of duchess, which the girls had given to her. She had a
+certain grandeur about her cap, and a majestical set about the skirt
+of her dress, and a rigour in the lines of her mouth, which indicated
+a habit of command, and a confidence in her own dignity, which might
+be supposed to be the very clearest attribute of duchessdom.
+
+"You have been in this family a long time, I am told, Mrs. Jones,"
+said Mr. Prendergast, using his pleasantest voice.
+
+"A very long time indeed," said Mrs. Jones.
+
+"And in a very confidential situation, too. I am told by Sir Thomas
+that pretty nearly the whole management of the house is left in your
+hands?"
+
+"Sir Thomas is very kind, sir; Sir Thomas always was very kind,--poor
+gentleman!"
+
+"Poor gentleman, indeed! you may well say that, Mrs. Jones. This
+family is in great affliction; you are no doubt aware of that." And
+Mr. Prendergast as he spoke got up, went to the door, and saw that it
+was firmly closed.
+
+Mrs. Jones acknowledged that she was aware of it. "It was
+impossible," she said, "for servants to shut their eyes to things, if
+they tried ever so."
+
+"Of course, of course," said Mr. Prendergast; "and particularly for a
+person so attached to them all as you are."
+
+"Well, Mr. Pendrergrass, I am attached to them, certainly. I have
+seed 'em all born, sir--that is, the young ladies and Mr. Herbert.
+And as for her ladyship, I didn't see her born, in course, for we're
+both of an age. But it comes much to the same thing, like."
+
+"Exactly, exactly; you are quite one of themselves, as Sir Thomas's
+sister said to me just now. 'Mrs. Jones is quite one of ourselves.'
+Those were her very words."
+
+"I'm sure I'm much obliged to Miss Letty."
+
+"Well, as I was saying, a great sorrow has come upon them all, Mrs.
+Jones. Now will you tell me this--do you know what it is? Can you
+guess at all? Do the servants know, down stairs?"
+
+"I'd rather not be guessing on any such matters, Mr. Pendrergrass.
+And as for them, if they were impudent enough for the like, they'd
+never dare to tell me. Them Irish servants is very impudent betimes,
+only they're good at the heart too, and there isn't one'd hurt a dog
+belonging to the family."
+
+"I am sure they would not," said Mr. Prendergast. "But you yourself,
+you don't know what this trouble is?"
+
+"Not a know," said Mrs. Jones, looking down and smoothing her apron.
+
+"Well, now. Of course you understand, Mrs. Jones--and I must explain
+this to you to account for my questions. Of course you understand
+that I am here as Sir Thomas's friend, to set certain matters right
+for him if I can."
+
+"I supposed as much as that, if you please, sir."
+
+"And any questions that I may ask you, I ask altogether on his
+behalf--on his behalf and on that of his wife, Lady Fitzgerald. I
+tell you, that you may have no scruples as to answering me."
+
+"Oh, sir, I have no scruples as to that. But of course, sir, in
+anything I say I must be guided by--by--"
+
+"By your own judgment you were going to say."
+
+"Yes, sir; begging pardon for mentioning such a thing to the likes of
+you, sir."
+
+"Quite right; quite right. Everybody should use their own judgment in
+everything they do or say, more or less. But now, Mrs. Jones, I want
+to know this: you remember her ladyship's first marriage, I dare
+say."
+
+"Yes, sir, I remember it," said Mrs. Jones, shaking her head.
+
+"It was a sad affair, wasn't it? I remember it well, though I was
+very young then. So were you too, Mrs. Jones."
+
+"Young enough, surely, sir; and foolish enough too. We were the most
+of us that, then, sir."
+
+"True, true; so we were. But you remember the man, don't you--her
+ladyship's husband? Mr. Talbot, he called himself." And Mr.
+Prendergast took some trouble to look as though he did not at all
+wish to frighten her.
+
+"Yes, I do remember him." This she said after a considerable pause.
+"But it is a very long time ago, you know, Mr. Pendrergrass."
+
+"A very long time. But I am sure you do remember. You lived in the
+house, you know, for some months."
+
+"Yes, I did. He was my master for three months, or thereabouts; and
+to tell the truth, I never got my wages for those three months yet.
+But that's neither here nor there."
+
+"Do you believe now, Mrs. Jones, that that Mr. Talbot is still
+alive?" He asked the question in a very soft voice, and endeavoured
+not to startle her by his look as he did so. But it was necessary to
+his purpose that he should keep his eye upon her. Half the answer to
+his question was to be conveyed by the effect on the muscles of her
+face which that question would produce. She might perhaps command
+her voice to tell a falsehood, but be unable to command her face to
+support it.
+
+"Believe what, sir?" said she, and the lawyer could immediately
+perceive that she did believe and probably knew that that man who had
+called himself Talbot was still alive.
+
+"Do you believe, Mrs. Jones, that he is alive--her ladyship's former
+husband, you know?"
+
+The question was so terrible in its nature, that Mrs. Jones
+absolutely shook under it. Did she think that that man was still
+alive? Why, if she thought that what was she to think of her
+ladyship? It was in that manner that she would have answered the
+question, had she known how; but she did not know; she had therefore
+to look about her for some other words which might be equally
+evasive. Those which she selected served her turn just as well. "Lord
+bless you, sir!" she said. It was not that the words were expressive,
+but the tone was decidedly so. It was as though she said, "How can
+that man be alive, who has been dead these twenty years and more?"
+But nevertheless, she was giving evidence all the time against the
+cause of her poor mistress.
+
+"You think, then, that he is dead?"
+
+"Dead, sir! Oh, laws! why shouldn't he be dead?" And then there was a
+pause between them for a couple of minutes.
+
+"Mrs. Jones," said Mr. Prendergast, when he had well considered the
+matter, "my belief is that your only object and wish is to do good to
+your master and mistress."
+
+"Surely, sir, surely; it would be my bounden duty to do them good, if
+I knew how."
+
+"I will tell you how. Speak out to me the whole truth openly and
+freely. I am here as the friend of Sir Thomas and of her ladyship. He
+has sent to me that I may advise him what to do in a great trouble
+that has befallen him, and I cannot give him good advice till I know
+the truth."
+
+"What good could it do him, poor gentleman, to know that that man is
+alive?"
+
+"It will do him good to know the truth; to know whether he be alive
+or no. Until he knows that he cannot act properly."
+
+"Poor gentleman! poor gentleman!" said Mrs. Jones, putting her
+handkerchief up to her eyes.
+
+"If you have any information in this matter--and I think you have,
+Mrs. Jones--or even any suspicion, it is your duty to tell me."
+
+"Well, sir, I'm sure I don't say against that. You are Sir Thomas's
+friend to be sure, and no doubt you know best. And I'm a poor
+ignorant woman. But to speak candidly, sir, I don't feel myself free
+to talk on this matter. I haven't never made nor marred since I've
+been in this family, not in such matters as them. What I've seed,
+I've kep' to myself, and when I've had my suspecs, as a woman
+can't but have 'em, I've kep' them to myself also. And saving your
+presence, sir, and meaning no offence to a gentleman like you," and
+here she got up from her chair and made another curtsey, "I think
+I'd liefer hold my tongue than say anything more on this matter."
+And then she remained standing as though she expected permission to
+retire.
+
+But there was still another pause, and Mr. Prendergast sat looking at
+the fire. "Don't you know, ma'am," at last he said, with almost an
+angry voice, "that the man was here, in this house, last week?" And
+now he turned round at her and looked her full in the face. He did
+not, however, know Mrs. Jones. It might be difficult to coax her
+into free communication, but it was altogether out of his power to
+frighten her into it.
+
+"What I knows, sir, I knows," said she, "and what I don't know, I
+don't know. And if you please, sir, Lady Fitzgerald--she's my missus;
+and if I'm to be said anything more to about this here matter, why,
+I'd choose that her ladyship should be by." And then she made a
+little motion as though to walk towards the door, but Mr. Prendergast
+managed to stop her.
+
+"But we want to spare Lady Fitzgerald, if we can--at any rate for a
+while," said he. "You would not wish to bring more sorrow upon her,
+would you?"
+
+"God forbid, Mr. Pendrergrass; and if I could take the sorrow from
+her heart, I would willingly, and bear it myself to the grave; for
+her ladyship has been a good lady to me. But no good never did come,
+and never will, of servants talking of their missusses. And so if you
+please, sir, I'll make bold to"--and again she made an attempt to
+reach the door.
+
+But Mr. Prendergast was not yet persuaded that he could not get
+from the good old woman the information that he wanted, and he was
+persuaded that she had the information if only she could be prevailed
+upon to impart it. So he again stopped her, though on this occasion
+she made some slight attempt to pass him by as she did so. "I don't
+think," said she, "that there will be much use in my staying here
+longer."
+
+"Wait half a minute, Mrs. Jones, just half a minute. If I could only
+make you understand how we are all circumstanced here. And I tell you
+what; though you will trust me with nothing, I will trust you with
+everything."
+
+"I don't want no trust, sir; not about all this."
+
+"But listen to me. Sir Thomas has reason to believe--nay, he feels
+quite sure--that this man is alive."
+
+"Poor gentleman! poor gentleman!"
+
+"And has been here in this house two or three times within the last
+month. Sir Thomas is full sure of this. Now can you tell me whether
+the man who did come was this Talbot, or was not? If you can answer
+that positively, either one way or the other, you will do a service
+to the whole family,--which shall not go unrewarded."
+
+"I don't want no reward, sir. Ask me to tattle of them for rewards,
+after thirty years!" And she put her apron up to her eyes.
+
+"Well, then, for the good of the family. Can you say positively that
+the man who came here to your master was Talbot, or that he was not?"
+
+"Indeed then, sir, I can't say anything positively, nor for that
+matter, not impositively either." And then she shut herself up
+doggedly, and sat with compressed lips, determined to resist all the
+lawyer's arts.
+
+Mr. Prendergast did not immediately give up the game, but he failed
+in learning from her any more than what she had already told him. He
+felt confident that she did know the secret of this man's existence
+and presence in the south of Ireland, but he was forced to satisfy
+himself with that conviction. So he let her go, giving her his hand
+as she went in token of respect, and receiving her demure curtsey
+with his kindest smile. "It may be," thought he to himself, "that I
+have not done with her yet."
+
+And then he passed another tedious day,--a day that was terribly
+tedious to them all. He paid a visit to Sir Thomas; but as that
+arrangement about Mollett's visit had been made between them, it was
+not necessary that anything should be done or said about the business
+on hand. It was understood that further action was to be stayed till
+that visit was over, and therefore for the present he had nothing
+to say to Sir Thomas. He did not see Lady Fitzgerald throughout
+the whole day, and it appeared to him, not unnaturally, that she
+purposely kept out of his way, anticipating evil from his coming. He
+took a walk with Herbert and Mr. Somers, and was driven as far as
+the soup-kitchen and mill at Berry Hill, inquiring into the state of
+the poor, or rather pretending to inquire. It was a pretence with
+them all, for at the present moment their minds were intent on other
+things. And then there was that terrible dinner, that mockery of a
+meal, at which the three ladies were constrained to appear, but at
+which they found it impossible to eat or to speak. Mr. Somers had
+been asked to join the party, so that the scene after dinner might
+be less painful; but even he felt that he could not talk as was his
+ordinary wont. Horrible suspicions of the truth had gradually come
+upon him; and with a suspicion of such a truth--of such a tragedy
+in the very household--how could he, or how could any one hold a
+conversation? and then at about half-past nine, Mr. Prendergast was
+again in his bed-room.
+
+On the next morning he was early with Sir Thomas, persuading him to
+relinquish altogether the use of his study for that day. On that
+evening they were to have another interview there, in which Mr.
+Prendergast was to tell his friend the result of what had been done.
+And then he had to arrange certain manoeuvring with the servants in
+which he was forced to obtain the assistance of Herbert. Mollett
+was to be introduced into the study immediately on his arrival, and
+this was to be done in such a manner that Mrs. Jones might assuredly
+be ignorant of his arrival. On this duty our old friend Richard
+was employed, and it was contrived that Mrs. Jones should be kept
+upstairs with her mistress. All this was difficult enough, but he
+could not explain even to Herbert the reason why such scheming
+was necessary. Herbert, however, obeyed in silence, knowing that
+something dreadful was about to fall on them.
+
+Immediately after breakfast Mr. Prendergast betook himself to the
+study, and there remained with his London newspaper in his hand. A
+dozen times he began a leading article, in which the law was laid
+down with great perspicuity and certainty as to the present state of
+Ireland; but had the writer been treating of the Sandwich Islands
+he could not have attracted less of his attention. He found it
+impossible to read. On that evening he would have to reveal to
+Herbert Fitzgerald what was to be his fate!
+
+Matthew Mollett at his last interview with Sir Thomas had promised to
+call on this day, and had been counting the days till that one should
+arrive on which he might keep his promise. He was terribly in want
+of cash, and as we all know Aby had entirely failed in raising the
+wind--any immediate fund of wind--on the occasion of his visit to the
+baronet; and now, when this morning came, old Mollett was early on
+the road. Aby had talked of going with him, but Aby had failed so
+signally on the occasion of the visit which he did make to Castle
+Richmond, that he had been without the moral strength to persist in
+his purpose.
+
+"Then I shall write to the baronet and go alone to London," said
+Mollett, pere.
+
+"Bother!" replied Mollett, fils. "You hain't got the cash, governor."
+
+"I've got what 'll take me there, my boy, whether you know it or not.
+And Sir Thomas 'll be ready enough to send me a remittance when I'm
+once out of this country."
+
+And so Aby had given way,--partly perhaps in terror of Mr. Somers'
+countenance; and Matthew Mollett started again in a covered car
+on that cold journey over the Boggeragh mountains. It was still
+mid-winter, being now about the end of February, and the country
+was colder, and wetter, and more wretched, and the people in that
+desolate district more ragged and more starved than when he had last
+crossed it. But what were their rags and starvation to him? He was
+worse off than they were. They were merely dying, as all men must do.
+But he was inhabiting a hell on earth, which no man need do. They
+came out to him in shoals begging; but they came in vain, getting
+nothing from him but a curse through his chattering teeth. What right
+had they to torment with their misery one so much more wretched than
+themselves?
+
+At a little before twelve the covered car was at the front door of
+Castle Richmond house, and there was Richard under the porch. On
+former occasions Mr. Mollett had experienced some little delay
+in making his way into the baronet's presence. The servants had
+looked cold upon him, and he had felt as though there might be hot
+ploughshares under his feet at any step which he took. But now
+everything seemed to be made easy. Richard took him in tow without a
+moment's delay, told him confidentially that Sir Thomas was waiting
+for him, bade the covered car to be driven round into the yard with
+a voice that was uncommonly civil, seeing that it was addressed to a
+Cork carman, and then ushered Mr. Mollett through the hall and down
+the passage without one moment's delay. Wretched as he had been
+during his journey--wretched as an infernal spirit--his hopes
+were now again elated, and he dreamed of a golden paradise. There
+was something pleasant in feeling his mastery over that poor old
+shattered baronet.
+
+"The gentleman to wait upon Sir Thomas," said Richard, opening the
+study door; and then Mr. Mollett senior found himself in the presence
+of Mr. Prendergast.
+
+Mr. Prendergast was sitting in a high-backed easy chair, facing the
+fire, when the announcement was made, and therefore Mollett still
+fancied that he was in the presence of Sir Thomas until he was well
+into the room and the door was closed upon him; otherwise he might
+probably have turned on his heels and bolted. He had had three or
+four interviews with Mr. Prendergast, having received different
+sums of money from that gentleman's hands, and had felt on all
+such occasions that he was being looked through and through. Mr.
+Prendergast had asked but few questions, never going into the matter
+of his, Mollett's, pecuniary connexion with Sir Thomas; but there
+had always been that in the lawyer's eye which had frightened the
+miscreant, which had quelled his bluster as soon as it was assumed,
+and had told him that he was known for a blackguard and a scoundrel.
+And now when this man, with the terrible gray eye, got up from Sir
+Thomas's chair, and wheeling round confronted him, looking him full
+in the face, and frowning on him as an honest man does frown on an
+unconvicted rascal--when, I say, this happened to Mr. Mollett senior,
+he thoroughly at that moment wished himself back in London. He turned
+his eye round to the door, but that was closed behind him. He looked
+around to see whether Sir Thomas was there, but no one was in the
+room with him but Mr. Prendergast. Then he stood still, and as that
+gentleman did not address him, he was obliged to speak; the silence
+was too awful for him--"Oh, Mr. Prendergast!" said he. "Is that you?"
+
+"Yes, Mr. Mollett, it is I."
+
+"Oh, ah--I suppose you are here about business of your own. I was
+wishing to see Sir Thomas about a little business of my own; maybe
+he's not in the way."
+
+"No, he is not; not exactly. But perhaps, Mr. Mollett, I can do as
+well. You have known me before, you know, and you may say to me
+openly anything you have to say to Sir Thomas."
+
+"Well; I don't know about that, sir; my business is with the
+baronet--particular." Mr. Mollett, as he spoke, strained every
+nerve to do so without appearance of dismay; but his efforts were
+altogether ineffectual. He could not bring himself to look Mr.
+Prendergast in the face for a moment, or avoid feeling like a dog
+that dreads being kicked. All manner of fears came upon him, and he
+would at the moment have given up all his hopes of money from the
+Castle Richmond people to have been free from Mr. Prendergast and his
+influence. And yet Mollett was not a coward in the ordinary sense of
+the word. Indeed he had been very daring in the whole management of
+this affair. But then a course of crime makes such violent demands
+on a man's courage. Let any one think of the difference of attacking
+a thief, and being attacked as a thief! We are apt to call bad men
+cowards without much consideration. Mr. Mollett was not without
+pluck, but his pluck was now quelled. The circumstances were too
+strong against him.
+
+"Listen to me, Mr. Mollett--; and, look here, sir; never mind
+turning to the door; you can't go now till you and I have had some
+conversation. You may make up your mind to this: you will never
+see Sir Thomas Fitzgerald again--unless indeed he should be in the
+witness-box when you are standing in the dock."
+
+"Mr. Prendergast; sir!"
+
+"Well. Have you any reason to give why you should not be put in the
+dock? How much money have you got from Sir Thomas during the last two
+years by means of those threats which you have been using? You were
+well aware when you set about this business that you were committing
+felony; and have probably felt tolerably sure at times that you would
+some day be brought up short. That day has come."
+
+Mr. Prendergast had made up his mind that nothing could be gained by
+soft usage with Mr. Mollett. Indeed nothing could be gained in any
+way, by any usage, unless it could be shown that Mollett and Talbot
+were not the same person. He could afford therefore to tell the
+scoundrel that he was a scoundrel, and to declare against him--war to
+the knife. The more that Mollett trembled, the more abject he became,
+the easier would be the task Mr. Prendergast now had in hand. "Well,
+sir," he continued, "are you going to tell me what business has
+brought you here to-day?"
+
+But Mr. Mollett, though he did shake in his shoes, did not look at
+the matter exactly in the same light. He could not believe that Sir
+Thomas would himself throw up the game on any consideration, or that
+Mr. Prendergast as his friend would throw it up on his behalf. He,
+Mollett, had a strong feeling that he could have continued to deal
+easily with Sir Thomas, and that it might be very hard to deal at all
+with Mr. Prendergast; but nevertheless the game was still open. Mr.
+Prendergast would probably distrust the fact of his being the lady's
+husband, and it would be for him therefore to use the indubitable
+proofs of the facts that were in his possession.
+
+"Sir Thomas knows very well what I've come about," he began, slowly;
+"and if he's told you, why you know too; and in that case--."
+
+But what might or might not happen in that case Mr. Mollett had not
+now an opportunity of explaining, for the door opened and Mrs. Jones
+entered the room.
+
+"When that man comes this morning," Mr. Prendergast had said to
+Herbert, "I must get you to induce Mrs. Jones to come to us in the
+study as soon as may be." He had not at all explained to Herbert why
+this was necessary, nor had he been at any pains to prevent the young
+heir from thinking and feeling that some terrible mystery hung over
+the house. There was a terrible mystery--which indeed would be more
+terrible still when it ceased to be mysterious. He therefore quietly
+explained to Herbert what he desired to have done, and Herbert,
+awaiting the promised communication of that evening, quietly did as
+he was bid.
+
+"You must go down to him, Jones," he had said.
+
+"But I'd rather not, sir. I was with him yesterday for two mortal
+hours; and, oh, Mr. Herbert! it ain't for no good."
+
+But Herbert was inexorable; and Mrs. Jones, feeling herself overcome
+by the weight of the misfortune that was oppressing them all, obeyed,
+and descending to her master's study, knocked at the door. She knew
+that Mr. Prendergast was there, and she knew that Sir Thomas was
+not; but she did not know that any stranger was in the room with Mr.
+Prendergast. Mr. Mollett had not heard the knock, nor, indeed, had
+Mr. Prendergast; but Mrs. Jones having gone through this ceremony,
+opened the door and entered.
+
+"Sir Thomas knows; does he?" said Mr. Prendergast, when Mollett
+ceased to speak on the woman's entrance. "Oh, Mrs. Jones, good
+morning. Here is your old master, Mr. Talbot."
+
+Mollett of course turned round, and found himself confronted with the
+woman. They stared at each other for some moments, and then Mollett
+said, in a low dull voice, "Yes, she knows me; it was she that lived
+with her at Tallyho Lodge."
+
+"You remember him now, Mrs. Jones; don't you?" said Mr. Prendergast.
+
+For another moment or two Mrs. Jones stood silent; and then she
+acknowledged herself overcome, and felt that the world around her had
+become too much for her. "Yes," said she, slowly; "I remembers him,"
+and then sinking into a chair near the door, she put her apron up to
+her eyes, and burst into tears.
+
+"No doubt about that; she remembers me well enough," said Mollett,
+thinking that this was so much gained on his side. "But there ain't
+a doubt about the matter at all, Mr. Prendergast. You look here,
+and you'll see it all as plain as black and white." And Mr. Mollett
+dragged a large pocket-book from his coat, and took out of it certain
+documents, which he held before Mr. Prendergast's eyes, still keeping
+them in his own hand. "Oh, I'm all right; I am," said Mollett.
+
+"Oh, you are, are you?" said the lawyer, just glancing at the paper,
+which he would not appear to heed. "I am glad you think so."
+
+"If there were any doubt about it, she'd know," said he, pointing
+away up towards the body of the house. Both Mr. Prendergast and Mrs.
+Jones understood well who was that she to whom he alluded.
+
+"You are satisfied at any rate, Mrs. Jones," said the lawyer. But
+Mrs. Jones had hidden her face in her apron, and would not look up.
+She could not understand why this friend of the family should push
+the matter so dreadfully against them. If he would rise from his
+chair and destroy that wretch who stood before them, then indeed he
+might be called a friend!
+
+Mr. Prendergast had now betaken himself to the door, and was standing
+with his back to it, and with his hands in his trousers-pockets,
+close to the chair on which Mrs. Jones was sitting. He had resolved
+that he would get that woman's spoken evidence out of her; and he
+had gotten it. But now, what was he to do with her next?--with her
+or with the late Mr. Talbot of Tallyho Lodge? And having satisfied
+himself of that fact, which from the commencement he had never
+doubted, what could he best do to spare the poor lady who was so
+terribly implicated in this man's presence?
+
+"Mrs. Jones," said he, standing over her, and gently touching her
+shoulder, "I am sorry to have pained you in this way; but it was
+necessary that we should know, without a doubt, who this man is,--and
+who he was. Truth is always the best, you know. So good a woman as
+you cannot but understand that."
+
+"I suppose it is, sir,--I suppose it is," said Mrs. Jones, through
+her tears, now thoroughly humbled. The world was pretty nearly at
+an end, as far as she was concerned. Here, in this very house of
+Castle Richmond, in Sir Thomas's own room, was her ladyship's former
+husband, acknowledged as such! What further fall of the planet into
+broken fragments could terrify, or drive her from her course more
+thoroughly than this? Truth! yes, truth in the abstract, might be
+very good. But such a truth as this! how could any one ever say that
+that was good? Such was the working of her mind; but she took no
+trouble to express her thoughts.
+
+"Yes," continued Mr. Prendergast, speaking still in a low voice, with
+a tone that was almost tender, "truth is always best. Look at this
+wretched man here! He would have killed the whole family--destroyed
+them one by one--had they consented to assist him in concealing the
+fact of his existence. The whole truth will now be known; and it is
+very dreadful; but it will not be so dreadful as the want of truth."
+
+"My poor lady! my poor lady!" almost screamed Mrs. Jones from under
+her apron, wagging her head, and becoming almost convulsive in her
+grief.
+
+"Yes, it is very sad. But you will live to acknowledge that even this
+is better than living in that man's power."
+
+"I don't know that," said Mollett. "I am not so bad as you'd make me.
+I don't want to distress the lady."
+
+"No, not if you are allowed to rob the gentleman till there's not a
+guinea left for you to suck at. I know pretty well the extent of the
+evil that's in you. If we were to kick you from here to Cork, you'd
+forgive all that, so that we still allowed you to go on with your
+trade. I wonder how much money you've had from him altogether?"
+
+"What does the money signify? What does the money signify?" said Mrs.
+Jones, still wagging her head beneath her apron. "Why didn't Sir
+Thomas go on paying it, and then my lady need know nothing about it?"
+
+It was clear that Mrs. Jones would not look at the matter in a
+proper light. As far as she could see, there was no reason why a
+fair bargain should not have been made between Mollett and Sir
+Thomas,--made and kept on both sides, with mutual convenience. That
+doing of justice at the cost of falling heavens was not intelligible
+to her limited philosophy. Nor did she bethink herself, that a
+leech will not give over sucking until it be gorged with blood. Mr.
+Prendergast knew that such leeches as Mr. Mollett never leave the
+skin as long as there is a drop of blood left within the veins.
+
+Mr. Prendergast was still standing against the door, where he had
+placed himself to prevent the unauthorized departure of either Mrs.
+Jones or Mr. Mollett; but now he was bethinking himself that he might
+as well bring this interview to an end. "Mr. Mollett," said he, "you
+are probably beginning to understand that you will not get much more
+money from the Castle Richmond family?"
+
+"I don't want to do any harm to any of them," said Mollett, humbly;
+"and if I don't make myself troublesome, I hope Sir Thomas will
+consider me."
+
+"It is out of your power, sir, to do any further harm to any of them.
+You don't pretend to think that after what has passed, you can have
+any personal authority over that unfortunate lady?"
+
+"My poor mistress! my poor mistress!" sobbed Mrs. Jones.
+
+"You cannot do more injury than you at present have done. No one is
+now afraid of you; no one here will ever give you another shilling.
+When and in what form you will be prosecuted for inducing Sir Thomas
+to give you money, I cannot yet tell. Now, you may go; and I strongly
+advise you never to show your face here again. If the people about
+here knew who you are, and what you are, they would not let you off
+the property with a whole bone in your skin. Now go, sir. Do you hear
+me?"
+
+"Upon my word, Mr. Prendergast, I have not intended any harm!"
+
+"Go, sir!"
+
+"And even now, Mr. Prendergast, it can all be made straight, and I
+will leave the country altogether, if you wish it--"
+
+"Go, sir!" shouted Mr. Prendergast. "If you do not move at once, I
+will ring the bell for the servants!"
+
+"Then, if misfortune comes upon them, it is your doing, and not
+mine," said Mollett.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Pendrergrass, if it can be hushed up--" said Mrs. Jones,
+rising from her chair and coming up to him with her hands clasped
+together. "Don't send him away in your anger; don't'ee now, sir.
+Think of her ladyship. Do, do, do;" and the woman took hold of his
+arm, and looked up into his face with her eyes swimming with tears.
+Then going to the door she closed it, and returning again, touched
+his arm, and again appealed to him. "Think of Mr. Herbert, sir, and
+the young ladies! What are they to be called, sir, if this man is to
+be my lady's husband? Oh, Mr. Pendrergrass, let him go away, out of
+the kingdom; do let him go away."
+
+"I'll be off to Australia by the next boat, if you'll only say the
+word," said Mollett. To give him his due, he was not at that moment
+thinking altogether of himself and of what he might get. The idea of
+the misery which he had brought on these people did, to a certain
+measure, come home to him. And it certainly did come home to him
+also, that his own position was very perilous.
+
+"Mrs. Jones," said the lawyer, seeming to pay no attention whatever
+to Mollett's words, "you know nothing of such men as that. If I were
+to take him at his word now, he would turn upon Sir Thomas again
+before three weeks were over."
+
+"By ----, I would not! By all that is holy, I would not. Mr.
+Prendergast, do--."
+
+"Mr. Mollett, I will trouble you to walk out of this house. I have
+nothing further to say to you."
+
+"Oh, very well, sir." And then slowly Mollett took his departure,
+and finding his covered car at the door, got into it without saying
+another word to any of the Castle Richmond family.
+
+"Mrs. Jones," said Mr. Prendergast, as soon as Mollett was gone, "I
+believe I need not trouble you any further. Your conduct has done you
+great honour, and I respect you greatly as an honest woman and an
+affectionate friend."
+
+Mrs. Jones could only acknowledge this by loud sobs.
+
+"For the present, if you will take my advice, you will say nothing of
+this to your mistress."
+
+"No, sir, no; I shall say nothing. Oh, dear! oh dear!"
+
+"The whole matter will be known soon, but in the mean time, we may as
+well remain silent. Good day to you." And then Mrs. Jones also left
+the room, and Mr. Prendergast was alone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+FAIR ARGUMENTS.
+
+
+As Mollett left the house he saw two men walking down the road
+away from the sweep before the hall door, and as he passed them he
+recognised one as the young gentleman of the house. He also saw that
+a horse followed behind them, on the grass by the roadside, not led
+by the hand, but following with the reins laid loose upon his neck.
+They took no notice of him or his car, but allowed him to pass as
+though he had no concern whatever with the destinies of either of
+them. They were Herbert and Owen Fitzgerald.
+
+The reader will perhaps remember the way in which Owen left Desmond
+Court on the occasion of his last visit there. It cannot be said
+that what he had heard had in any way humbled him, nor indeed had it
+taught him to think that Clara Desmond looked at him altogether with
+indifference. Greatly as she had injured him, he could not bring
+himself to look upon her as the chief sinner. It was Lady Desmond who
+had done it all. It was she who had turned against him because of his
+poverty, who had sold her daughter to his rich cousin, and robbed
+him of the love which he had won for himself. Or perhaps not of
+the love--it might be that this was yet his; and if so, was it not
+possible that he might beat the countess at her own weapons? Thinking
+over this, he felt that it was necessary for him to do something, to
+take some step; and therefore he resolved to go boldly to his cousin,
+and tell him that he regarded Lady Clara Desmond as still his own.
+
+On this morning, therefore, he had ridden up to the Castle Richmond
+door. It was now many months since he had been there, and he was
+no longer entitled to enter the house on the acknowledged intimate
+footing of a cousin. He rode up, and asked the servant with grave
+ceremony whether Mr. Herbert Fitzgerald were at home. He would not go
+in, he said, but if Mr. Herbert were there he would wait for him at
+the porch. Herbert at the time was standing in the dining-room, all
+alone, gloomily leaning against the mantelpiece. There was nothing
+for him to do during the whole of that day but wait for the evening,
+when the promised revelation would be made to him. He knew that
+Mollett and Mrs. Jones were with Mr. Prendergast in the study, but
+what was the matter now being investigated between them--that he did
+not know. And till he knew that, closely as he was himself concerned,
+he could meddle with nothing. But it was already past noon and the
+evening would soon be there.
+
+In this mood he was interrupted by being told that his cousin Owen
+was at the door. "He won't come in at all, Mr. Herbert," Richard
+had said; for Richard, according to order, was still waiting about
+the porch; "but he says that you are to go to him there." And then
+Herbert, after considering the matter for a moment, joined his cousin
+at the front entrance.
+
+"I want to speak to you a few words," said Owen; "but as I hear that
+Sir Thomas is not well, I will not go into the house; perhaps you
+will walk with me as far as the lodge. Never mind the mare, she will
+not go astray." And so Herbert got his hat and accompanied him. For
+the first hundred yards neither of them said anything. Owen would not
+speak of Clara till he was well out of hearing from the house, and
+at the present moment Herbert had not much inclination to commence a
+conversation on any subject.
+
+Owen was the first to speak. "Herbert," said he, "I have been told
+that you are engaged to marry Lady Clara Desmond."
+
+"And so I am," said Herbert, feeling very little inclined to admit
+of any question as to his privilege in that respect. Things were
+happening around him which might have--Heaven only knows what
+consequence. He did fear--fear with a terrible dread that something
+might occur which would shatter the cup of his happiness, and rob him
+of the fruition of his hopes. But nothing had occurred as yet. "And
+so I am," he said; "it is no wonder that you should have heard it,
+for it has been kept no secret. And I also have heard of your visit
+to Desmond Court. It might have been as well, I think, if you had
+stayed away."
+
+"I thought differently," said Owen, frowning blackly. "I thought that
+the most straightforward thing for me was to go there openly, having
+announced my intention, and tell them both, mother and daughter,
+that I hold myself as engaged to Lady Clara, and that I hold her as
+engaged to me."
+
+"That is absurd nonsense. She cannot be engaged to two persons."
+
+"Anything that interferes with you, you will of course think absurd.
+I think otherwise. It is hardly more than twelve months since she and
+I were walking there together, and then she promised me her love. I
+had known her long and well, when you had hardly seen her. I knew her
+and loved her; and what is more, she loved me. Remember, it is not I
+only that say so. She said it herself, and swore that nothing should
+change her. I do not believe that anything has changed her."
+
+"Do you mean to say that at present she cares nothing for me? Owen,
+you must be mad on this matter."
+
+"Mad; yes, of course; if I think that any girl can care for me while
+you are in the way. Strange as it may appear, I am as mad even as
+that. There are people who will not sell themselves even for money
+and titles. I say again, that I do not believe her to be changed.
+She has been weak, and her mother has persuaded her. To her mother,
+rank and money, titles and property, are everything. She has sold
+her daughter, and I have come to ask you, whether, under such
+circumstances, you intend to accept the purchase."
+
+In his ordinary mood Herbert Fitzgerald was by no means a quarrelsome
+man. Indeed we may go further than that, and say that he was very
+much the reverse. His mind was argumentative rather than impulsive,
+and in all matters he was readier to persuade than overcome. But his
+ordinary nature had been changed. It was quite new with him to be
+nervous and fretful, but he was so at the present moment. He was
+deeply concerned in the circumstances around him, but yet had been
+allowed no voice in them. In this affair that was so peculiarly his
+own,--this of his promised bride, he was determined that no voice
+should be heard but his own; and now, contrary to his wont, he was
+ready enough to quarrel with his cousin.
+
+Of Owen we may say, that he was a man prone to fighting of all sorts,
+and on all occasions. By fighting I do not mean the old-fashioned
+resource of putting an end to fighting by the aid of two pistols,
+which were harmless in nineteen cases out of twenty. In saying that
+Owen Fitzgerald was prone to fight, I do not allude to fighting of
+that sort; I mean that he was impulsive, and ever anxious to contend
+and conquer. To yield was to him ignoble, even though he might know
+that he was yielding to the right. To strive for mastery was to
+him noble, even though he strove against those who had a right to
+rule, and strove on behalf of the wrong. Such was the nature of his
+mind and spirit; and this nature had impelled him to his present
+enterprise at Castle Richmond. But he had gone thither with an
+unwonted resolve not to be passionate. He had, he had said to
+himself, right on his side, and he had purposed to argue it out
+fairly with his more cold-blooded cousin. The reader may probably
+guess the result of these fair arguments on such a subject. "And I
+have come to ask you," he said, "whether under such circumstances you
+intend to accept the purchase?"
+
+"I will not allow you to speak of Lady Desmond in such language; nor
+of her daughter," said Herbert, angrily.
+
+"Ah! but, Herbert, you must allow me; I have been ill used in this
+matter, and I have a right to make myself heard."
+
+"Is it I that have ill used you? I did not know before that gentlemen
+made loud complaints of such ill usage from the hands of ladies."
+
+"If the ill usage, as you please to call it--"
+
+"It is your own word."
+
+"Very well. If this ill usage came from Clara Desmond herself, I
+should be the last person to complain of it; and you would be the
+last person to whom I should make complaint. But I feel sure that it
+is not so. She is acting under the influence of her mother, who has
+frightened her into this thing which she is doing. I do not believe
+that she is false herself."
+
+"I am sure that she is not false. We are quite agreed there, but it
+is not likely that we should agree further. To tell you the truth
+frankly I think you are ill-judged to speak to me on such a topic."
+
+"Perhaps in that respect you will allow me to think for myself. But I
+have not yet said that which I came to say. My belief is that unfair
+and improper restraint is put upon Clara Desmond, that she has been
+induced by her mother to accept your offer in opposition to her
+own wishes, and that therefore it is my duty to look upon her as
+still betrothed to me. I do so regard her, and shall act under such
+conviction. The first thing that I do therefore is to call upon you
+to relinquish your claim."
+
+"What, to give her up?"
+
+"Yes, to give her up;--to acknowledge that you cannot honestly call
+upon her to fulfil her pledge to you."
+
+"The man must be raving," Herbert said.
+
+"Very probably; but remember this, it may be that he will rave to
+some purpose, when such insolence will be but of little avail to you.
+Raving! Yes, I suppose that a man poor as I am must be mad indeed to
+set his heart upon anything that you may choose to fancy."
+
+"All that is nonsense; Owen, I ask for nothing but my own. I won her
+love fairly, and I mean to keep it firmly."
+
+"You may possibly have won her hand, but never her heart. You are
+rich, and it may be that even she will condescend to barter her hand;
+but I doubt it; I altogether doubt it. It is her mother's doing, as
+it was plain enough for me to see the other day at Desmond Court; but
+much as she may fear her mother, I cannot think that she will go to
+the altar with a lie in her mouth."
+
+And then they walked on in silence for a few yards. Herbert was
+anxious to get back to the house, and was by no means desirous of
+continuing this conversation with his cousin. He at any rate could
+get nothing by talking about Lady Clara Desmond to Owen Fitzgerald.
+He stopped therefore on the path, and said, that if Owen had nothing
+further to say, he, Herbert, would go back to the house.
+
+"Nothing further! Nothing further, if you understand me; but you
+do not. You are not honest enough in this matter to understand any
+purpose but your own."
+
+"I tell you what, Owen: I did not come out here to hear myself
+abused; and I will not stand it. According to my idea you had no
+right whatever to speak to me about Lady Clara Desmond. But you are
+my cousin; and therefore I have borne it. It may be as well that we
+should both understand that it is once for all. I will not listen to
+you again on the same subject."
+
+"Oh, you won't. Upon my word you are a very great man! You will tell
+me next, I suppose, that this is your demesne, and will warn me off!"
+
+"Even if I did that, I should not be wrong, under such provocation."
+
+"Very well, sir; then I will go off. But remember this, Herbert
+Fitzgerald, you shall live to rue the day when you treated me with
+such insolence. And remember this also, Clara Desmond is not your
+wife as yet. Everything now seems happy with you, and fortunate; you
+have wealth and a fine house, and a family round you, while I am
+there all alone, left like a dog, as far as my own relatives are
+concerned. But yet it may come to pass that the Earl of Desmond's
+daughter will prefer my hand to yours, and my house to your house.
+They who mount high may chance to get a fall." And then, having
+uttered this caution, he turned to his mare, and putting his hand
+upon the saddle, jumped into his seat, and pressing her into a
+gallop, darted off across the grass.
+
+He had not meant anything specially by his threat; but his heart was
+sore within him. During some weeks past, he had become sick of the
+life that he was leading. He had begun to hate his own solitary
+house--his house that was either solitary, or filled with riot and
+noise. He sighed for the quiet hours that were once his at Desmond
+Court, and the privilege of constant entrance there, which was now
+denied him. His cousin Herbert had everything at his command--wealth,
+station, family ties, society, and all the consideration of high
+place. Every blessing was at the feet of the young heir; but every
+blessing was not enough, unless Clara Desmond was also added. All
+this seemed so cruel to him, as he sat alone in his parlour at Hap
+House, meditating on his future course of life! And then he would
+think of Clara's promise, of her assurance that nothing should
+frighten her from her pledge. He thought of this as though the words
+had been spoken to him only yesterday. He pondered over these things
+till he hated his cousin Herbert; and hating him, he vowed that Clara
+Desmond should not be his wife. "Is he to have everything?" he would
+say to himself. "No, by heavens! not everything. He has enough, and
+may be contented; but he shall not have all." And now, with similar
+thoughts running through his mind, he rode back to Hap House.
+
+And Herbert turned back to Castle Richmond. As he approached the
+front door, he met Mr. Prendergast, who was leaving the house; but
+they had no conversation with each other. Herbert was in hopes that
+he might now, at once, be put out of suspense. Mollett was gone; and
+would it not be better that the tale should be told? But it was clear
+that Mr. Prendergast had no intention of lessening by an hour the
+interval he had given himself. He merely muttered a few words passing
+on, and Herbert went into the house.
+
+And then there was another long, tedious, dull afternoon. Herbert sat
+with his sisters, but they had not the heart to talk to each other.
+At about four a note was brought to him. It was from Mr. Prendergast,
+begging Herbert to meet him in Sir Thomas's study at eight. Sir
+Thomas had not been there during the day; and now did not intend to
+leave his own room. They dined at half-past six; and the appointment
+was therefore to take place almost immediately after dinner.
+
+"Tell Mr. Prendergast that I will be there," he said to the servant.
+And so that afternoon passed away, and the dinner also, very slowly
+and very sadly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+THE TELLING OF THE TALE.
+
+
+The dinner passed away as the former dinners had done; and as soon
+as Aunt Letty got up Mr. Prendergast also rose, and touching Herbert
+on his shoulder, whispered into his ear, "You'll come to me at eight
+then." Herbert nodded his head; and when he was alone he looked
+at his watch. These slow dinners were not actually very long, and
+there still remained to him some three-quarters of an hour for
+anticipation.
+
+What was to be the nature of this history? That it would affect
+himself personally in the closest manner he could not but know.
+There seemed to be no doubt on the minds of any of them that the
+affair was one of money, and his father's money questions were his
+money questions. Mr. Prendergast would not have been sent for with
+reference to any trifle; nor would any pecuniary difficulty that was
+not very serious have thrown his father into such a state of misery.
+Could it be that the fair inheritance was absolutely in danger?
+
+Herbert Fitzgerald was by no means a selfish man. As regarded
+himself, he could have met ruin in the face with more equanimity than
+most young men so circumstanced. The gilt of the world had not eaten
+into his soul; his heart was not as yet wedded to the splendour of
+pinchbeck. This is saying much for him; for how seldom is it that the
+hearts and souls of the young are able to withstand pinchbeck and
+gilding? He was free from this pusillanimity; free as yet as regarded
+himself; but he was hardly free as regarded his betrothed. He had
+promised her, not in spoken words but in his thoughts, rank, wealth,
+and all the luxuries of his promised high position; and now on
+her behalf, it nearly broke his heart to think that they might be
+endangered.
+
+Of his mother's history, he can hardly be said to have known
+anything. That there had been something tragic in her early life;
+that something had occurred before his father's marriage; and that
+his mother had been married twice, he had learned,--he hardly
+knew when or from whom. But on such matters there had never been
+conversation between him and any of his own family; and it never
+occurred to him that all this sorrow arose in any way from this
+subject. That his father had taken some fatal step with regard to the
+property--had done some foolish thing for which he could not forgive
+himself, that was the idea with which his mind was filled.
+
+He waited, with his watch in his hand, till the dial showed him that
+it was exactly eight; and then, with a sinking heart, he walked
+slowly out of the dining-room along the passage, and into his
+father's study. For an instant he stood with the handle in his hand.
+He had been terribly anxious for the arrival of this moment, but now
+that it had come, he would almost fain have had it again postponed.
+His heart sank very low as he turned the lock, and entering, found
+himself in the presence of Mr. Prendergast.
+
+Mr. Prendergast was standing with his back to the fire. For him, too,
+the last hour had been full of bitterness; his heart also had sunk
+low within him; his blood had run cold within his veins: he too, had
+it been possible, would have put off this wretched hour.
+
+Mr. Prendergast, it may be, was not much given to poetry; but the
+feeling, if not the words, were there within him. The work which a
+friend has to perform for a friend is so much heavier than that which
+comes in the way of any profession!
+
+When Herbert entered the room, Mr. Prendergast came forward from
+where he was standing, and took him by the hand. "This is a very sad
+affair," he said; "very sad."
+
+"At present I know nothing about it," said Herbert. "As I see people
+about me so unhappy, I suppose it is sad. If there be anything that I
+hate, it is a mystery."
+
+"Sit down, Mr. Fitzgerald," said the other; "sit down." And Mr.
+Prendergast himself sat down in the chair that was ordinarily
+occupied by Sir Thomas. Although he had been thinking about it all
+the day, he had not even yet made up his mind how he was to begin
+his story. Even now he could not help thinking whether it might be
+possible for him to leave it untold. But it was not possible.
+
+"Mr. Fitzgerald," said he, "you must prepare yourself for tidings
+which are very grievous indeed--very grievous."
+
+"Whatever it is I must bear it," said he.
+
+"I hope you have that moral strength which enables a man to bear
+misfortune. I have not known you in happy days, and therefore perhaps
+can hardly judge; but it seems to me that you do possess such
+courage. Did I not think so, I could hardly go through the task that
+is before me."
+
+Here he paused as though he expected some reply, some assurance that
+his young friend did possess this strength of which he spoke; but
+Herbert said nothing--nothing out loud. "If it were only for myself!
+if it were only for myself!" It was thus that he spoke to his own
+heart.
+
+"Mr. Fitzgerald," continued the lawyer, "I do not know how far you
+may be acquainted with the history of your mother's first marriage."
+
+Herbert said that he was hardly acquainted with it in any degree;
+and explained that he merely knew the fact that his mother had been
+married before she met Sir Thomas.
+
+"I do not know that I need recount all the circumstances to you
+now, though doubtless you will learn them. Your mother's conduct
+throughout was, I believe, admirable."
+
+"I am quite sure of that. No amount of evidence could make me believe
+the contrary."
+
+"And there is no tittle of evidence to make any one think so. But
+in her early youth, when she was quite a child, she was given in
+marriage to a man--to a man of whom it is impossible to speak in
+terms too black, or in language too strong. And now, this day--"
+
+But here he paused. It had been his intention to say that that very
+man, the first husband of this loved mother now looked upon as dead
+for so many years, this miscreant of whom he had spoken--that this
+man had been in that room that very day. But he hardly knew how to
+frame the words.
+
+"Well," said Herbert, "well;" and he spoke in a hoarse voice that was
+scarcely audible.
+
+Mr. Prendergast was afraid to bring out the very pith of his story in
+so abrupt a manner. He wished to have the work over, to feel, that as
+regarded Herbert it was done,--but his heart failed him when he came
+to it.
+
+"Yes," he said, going back as it were to his former thoughts. "A
+heartless, cruel, debauched, unscrupulous man; one in whose bosom no
+good thing seemed to have been implanted. Your father, when he first
+knew your mother, had every reason to believe that this man was
+dead."
+
+"And he was not dead?" Mr. Prendergast could see that the young man's
+face became perfectly pale as he uttered these words. He became pale,
+and clutched hold of the table with his hand, and there sat with
+mouth open and staring eyes.
+
+"I am afraid not," said Mr. Prendergast; "I am afraid not."
+
+"And--"
+
+"I must go further than that, and tell you that he is still living."
+
+"Mr. Prendergast, Mr. Prendergast!" exclaimed the poor fellow,
+rising up from his chair and shouting out as though for mercy. Mr.
+Prendergast also rose from his seat, and coming up to him took him by
+the arm. "My dear boy, my dear boy, I am obliged to tell you. It is
+necessary that you should know it. The fact is as I say, and it is
+now for you to show that you are a man."
+
+Who was ever called upon for a stronger proof of manhood than this?
+In nine cases out of ten it is not for oneself that one has to be
+brave. A man, we may almost say, is no man, whose own individual
+sufferings call for the exercise of much courage. But we are all so
+mixed up and conjoined with others--with others who are weaker and
+dearer than ourselves, that great sorrows do require great powers of
+endurance.
+
+By degrees, as he stood there in silence, the whole truth made its
+way into his mind,--as he stood there with his arm still tenderly
+pressed by that old man. No one now would have called the lawyer
+stern in looking at him, for the tears were coursing down his cheeks.
+But no tears came to the relief of young Fitzgerald as the truth
+slowly came upon him, fold by fold, black cloud upon cloud, till the
+whole horizon of his life's prospect was dark as death. He stood
+there silent for some few minutes hardly conscious that he was not
+alone, as he saw all his joys disappearing from before his mind's
+eye, one by one; his family pride, the pleasant high-toned duties of
+his station, his promised seat in Parliament and prosperous ambition,
+the full respect of all the world around him, his wealth and pride of
+place--for let no man be credited who boasts that he can part with
+these without regret. All these were gone. But there were losses more
+bitter than these. How could he think of his affianced bride? and how
+could he think of his mother?
+
+No tears came to his relief while the truth, with all its bearings,
+burnt itself into his very soul, but his face expressed such agony
+that it was terrible to be seen. Mr. Prendergast could stand that
+silence no longer, so at last he spoke. He spoke,--for the sake of
+words; for all his tale had been told.
+
+"You saw the man that was here yesterday? That was he, who then
+called himself Talbot."
+
+"What! the man that went away in the car? Mollett?"
+
+"Yes; that was the man."
+
+Herbert had said that no evidence could be sufficient to make him
+believe that his mother had been in any way culpable: and such
+probably was the case. He had that reliance on his mother--that
+assurance in his mind that everything coming from her must
+be good--that he could not believe her capable of ill. But,
+nevertheless, he could not prevent himself from asking within his
+own breast, how it had been possible that his mother should ever
+have been concerned with such a wretch as that. It was a question
+which could not fail to make itself audible. What being on earth was
+sweeter than his mother, more excellent, more noble, more fitted for
+the world's high places, more absolutely entitled to that universal
+respect which seemed to be given to her as her own by right? And what
+being could be more loathsome, more contemptible than he, who was,
+as he was now told, his mother's husband? There was in it a want of
+verisimilitude which almost gave him comfort,--which almost taught
+him to think that he might disbelieve the story that was told to him.
+Poor fellow! he had yet to learn the difference that years may make
+in men and women--for better as well as for worse. Circumstances had
+given to the poor half-educated village girl the simple dignity of
+high station; as circumstances had also brought to the lowest dregs
+of human existence the man, whose personal bearing, and apparent
+worldly standing had been held sufficient to give warrant that he was
+of gentle breeding and of honest standing; nay, her good fortune in
+such a marriage had once been almost begrudged her by all her maiden
+neighbours.
+
+But Herbert, as he thought of this, was almost encouraged to
+disbelieve the story. To him, with his knowledge of what his mother
+was, and such knowledge as he also had of that man, it did not seem
+possible. "But how is all this known?" he muttered forth at last.
+
+"I fear there is no doubt of its truth," said Mr. Prendergast. "Your
+father has no doubt whatever; has had none--I must tell you this
+plainly--for some months."
+
+"For some months! And why have I not been told?"
+
+"Do not be hard upon your father."
+
+"Hard! no; of course I would not be hard upon him."
+
+"The burden he has had to bear has been very terrible. He has thought
+that by payments of money to this man the whole thing might be
+concealed. As is always the case when such payments are made, the
+insatiable love of money grew by what it fed on. He would have poured
+out every shilling into that man's hands, and would have died,
+himself a beggar--have died speedily too under such torments--and yet
+no good would have been done. The harpy would have come upon you; and
+you--after you had innocently assumed a title that was not your own
+and taken a property to which you have no right, you then would have
+had to own--that which your father must own now."
+
+"If it be so," said Herbert, slowly, "it must be acknowledged."
+
+"Just so, Mr. Fitzgerald; just so. I know you will feel that--in
+such matters we can only sail safely by the truth. There is no other
+compass worth a man's while to look at."
+
+"Of course not," said Herbert, with hoarse voice. "One does not wish
+to be a robber and a thief. My cousin shall have what is his own."
+And then he involuntarily thought of the interview they had had on
+that very day. "But why did he not tell me when I spoke to him of
+her?" he said, with something approaching to bitterness in his voice
+and a slight struggle in his throat that was almost premonitory of a
+sob.
+
+"Ah! it is there that I fear for you. I know what your feelings are;
+but think of his sorrows, and do not be hard on him."
+
+"Ah me, ah me!" exclaimed Herbert.
+
+"I fear that he will not be with you long. He has already endured
+till he is now almost past the power of suffering more. And yet there
+is so much more that he must suffer!"
+
+"My poor father!"
+
+"Think what such as he must have gone through in bringing himself
+into contact with that man; and all this has been done that he might
+spare you and your mother. Think of the wound to his conscience
+before he would have lowered himself to an unworthy bargain with a
+swindler. But this has been done that you might have that which you
+have been taught to look on as your own. He has been wrong. No other
+verdict can be given. But you, at any rate, can be tender to such a
+fault; you and your mother."
+
+"I will--I will," said Herbert. "But if it had happened a month since
+I could have borne it." And then he thought of his mother, and hated
+himself for what he had said. How could he have borne that with
+patience? "And there is no doubt, you say?"
+
+"I think none. The man carries his proofs with him. An old servant
+here in the house, too, knows him."
+
+"What, Mrs. Jones?"
+
+"Yes; Mrs. Jones. And the burden of further proof must now, of
+course, be thrown on us,--not on him. Directly that we believe the
+statement, it is for us to ascertain its truth. You and your father
+must not be seen to hold a false position before the world."
+
+"And what are we to do now?"
+
+"I fear that your mother must be told, and Mr. Owen Fitzgerald; and
+then we must together openly prove the facts, either in one way or in
+the other. It will be better that we should do this together;--that
+is, you and your cousin Owen conjointly. Do it openly, before the
+world,--so that the world may know that each of you desires only what
+is honestly his own. For myself I tell you fairly that I have no
+doubt of the truth of what I have told you; but further proof is
+certainly needed. Had I any doubt I would not propose to tell your
+mother. As it is I think it will be wrong to keep her longer in the
+dark."
+
+"Does she suspect nothing?"
+
+"I do not know. She has more power of self-control than your father.
+She has not spoken to me ten words since I have been in the house,
+and in not doing so I have thought that she was right."
+
+"My own mother; my dear mother!"
+
+"If you ask me my opinion, I think that she does suspect the
+truth,--very vaguely, with an indefinite feeling that the calamity
+which weighs so heavily on your father, has come from this source.
+She, dear lady, is greatly to be pitied. But God has made her of
+firmer material than your father, and I think that she will bear her
+sorrow with a higher courage."
+
+"And she is to be told also?"
+
+"Yes, I think so. I do not see how we can avoid it. If we do not tell
+her we must attempt to conceal it, and that attempt must needs be
+futile when we are engaged in making open inquiry on the subject.
+Your cousin, when he hears of this, will of course be anxious to know
+what his real prospects are."
+
+"Yes, yes. He will be anxious, and determined too."
+
+"And then, when all the world will know it, how is your mother to be
+kept in the dark? And that which she fears and anticipates is as bad,
+probably, as the actual truth. If my advice be followed nothing will
+be kept from her."
+
+"We are in your hands, I suppose, Mr. Prendergast?"
+
+"I can only act as my judgment directs me."
+
+"And who is to tell her?" This he asked with a shudder, and almost in
+a whisper. The very idea of undertaking such a duty seemed almost too
+much for him. And yet he must undertake a duty almost as terrible; he
+himself--no one but him--must endure the anguish of repeating this
+story to Clara Desmond and to the countess. But now the question had
+reference to his own mother. "And who is to tell her?" he asked.
+
+For a moment or two Mr. Prendergast stood silent. He had not
+hitherto, in so many words, undertaken this task--this that would be
+the most dreadful of all. But if he did not undertake it, who would?
+"I suppose that I must do it," at last he said, very gently.
+
+"And when?"
+
+"As soon as I have told your cousin. I will go down to him to-morrow
+after breakfast. Is it probable that I shall find him at home?"
+
+"Yes, if you are there before ten. The hounds meet to-morrow at
+Cecilstown, within three miles of him, and he will not leave home
+till near eleven. But it is possible that he may have a house full of
+men with him."
+
+"At any rate I will try. On such an occasion as this he may surely
+let his friends go to the hunt without him."
+
+And then between nine and ten this interview came to an end. "Mr.
+Fitzgerald," said Mr. Prendergast, as he pressed Herbert's hand,
+"you have borne all this as a man should do. No loss of fortune can
+ruin one who is so well able to endure misfortune." But in this Mr.
+Prendergast was perhaps mistaken. His knowledge of human nature had
+not carried him sufficiently far. A man's courage under calamity
+is only tested when he is left in solitude. The meanest among us
+can bear up while strange eyes are looking at us. And then Mr.
+Prendergast went away, and he was alone.
+
+It had been his habit during the whole of this period of his father's
+illness to go to Sir Thomas at or before bedtime. These visits
+had usually been made to the study, the room in which he was now
+standing; but when his father had gone to his bedroom at an earlier
+hour, Herbert had always seen him there. Was he to go to him now--now
+that he had heard all this? And if so, how was he to bear himself
+there, in his father's presence? He stood still, thinking of this,
+till the hand of the clock showed him that it was past ten, and then
+it struck him that his father might be waiting for him. It would not
+do for him now, at such a moment, to appear wanting in that attention
+which he had always shown. He was still his father's son, though he
+had lost the right to bear his father's name. He was nameless now, a
+man utterly without respect or standing-place in the world, a being
+whom the law ignored except as the possessor of a mere life; such was
+he now, instead of one whose rights and privileges, whose property
+and rank all the statutes of the realm and customs of his country
+delighted to honour and protect. This he repeated to himself over
+and over again. It was to such a pass as this, to this bitter
+disappointment that his father had brought him. But yet it should not
+be said of him that he had begun to neglect his father as soon as he
+had heard the story.
+
+So with a weary step he walked up stairs, and found Sir Thomas in
+bed, with his mother sitting by the bedside. His mother held out her
+hand to him, and he took it, leaning against the bedside. "Has Mr.
+Prendergast left you?" she asked.
+
+He told her that Mr. Prendergast had left him, and gone to his own
+room for the night. "And have you been with him all the evening?" she
+asked. She had no special motive in so asking, but both the father
+and the son shuddered at the question. "Yes," said Herbert; "I have
+been with him, and now I have come to wish my father good night; and
+you too, mother, if you intend to remain here." But Lady Fitzgerald
+got up, telling Herbert that she would leave him with Sir Thomas; and
+before either of them could hinder her from departing, the father and
+the son were alone together.
+
+Sir Thomas, when the door closed, looked furtively up into his son's
+face. Might it be that he could read there how much had been already
+told, or how much still remained to be disclosed? That Herbert was
+to learn it all that evening, he knew; but it might be that Mr.
+Prendergast had failed to perform his task. Sir Thomas in his heart
+trusted that he had failed. He looked up furtively into Herbert's
+face, but at the moment there was nothing there that he could read.
+There was nothing there but black misery; and every face round him
+for many days past had worn that aspect.
+
+For a minute or two Herbert said nothing, for he had not made up his
+mind whether or no he would that night disturb his father's rest.
+But he could not speak in his ordinary voice, or bid his father
+good-night as though nothing special to him had happened. "Father,"
+said he, after a short pause, "father, I know it all now."
+
+"My boy, my poor boy, my unfortunate boy!"
+
+"Father," said Herbert, "do not be unhappy about me, I can bear it."
+And then he thought again of his bride--his bride as she was to have
+been; but nevertheless he repeated his last words, "I can bear it,
+father!"
+
+"I have meant it for the best, Herbert," said the poor man, pleading
+to his child.
+
+"I know that; all of us well know that. But what Mr. Prendergast says
+is true; it is better that it should be known. That man would have
+killed you had you kept it longer to yourself."
+
+Sir Thomas hid his face upon the pillow as the remembrance of what he
+had endured in those meetings came upon him. The blow that had told
+heaviest was that visit from the son, and the threats which the man
+had made still rung in his ears--"When that youngster was born Lady
+F. was Mrs. M., wasn't she? . . . My governor could take her away
+to-morrow, according to the law of the land, couldn't he now?" These
+words, and more such as these, had nearly killed him at the time, and
+now, as they recurred to him, he burst out into childish tears. Poor
+man! the days of his manhood had gone, and nothing but the tears of
+a second bitter childhood remained to him. The hot iron had entered
+into his soul, and shrivelled up the very muscles of his mind's
+strength.
+
+Herbert, without much thought of what he was doing, knelt down by
+the bedside and put his hand upon that of his father which lay out
+upon the sheet. There he knelt for one or two minutes, watching and
+listening to his father's sobs. "You will be better now, father," he
+said, "for the great weight of this terrible secret will be off your
+mind." But Sir Thomas did not answer him. With him there could never
+be any better. All things belonging to him had gone to ruin. All
+those around him whom he had loved--and he had loved those around him
+very dearly--were brought to poverty, and sorrow, and disgrace. The
+power of feeling this was left to him, but the power of enduring this
+with manhood was gone. The blow had come upon him too late in life.
+
+And Herbert himself, as he knelt there, could hardly forbear from
+tears. Now, at such a moment as this, he could think of no one but
+his father, the author of his being, who lay there so grievously
+afflicted by sorrows which were in nowise selfish. "Father," he said
+at last, "will you pray with me?" And then when the poor sufferer
+had turned his face towards him, he poured forth his prayer to his
+Saviour that they all in that family might be enabled to bear the
+heavy sorrows which God in his mercy and wisdom had now thought fit
+to lay upon them. I will not make his words profane by repeating them
+here, but one may say confidently that they were not uttered in vain.
+
+"And now, dearest father, good night," he said as he rose from his
+knees; and stretching over the bed, he kissed his father's forehead.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+BEFORE BREAKFAST AT HAP HOUSE.
+
+
+It may be imagined that Mr. Mollett's drive back to Cork after his
+last visit to Castle Richmond had not been very pleasant; and indeed
+it may be said that his present circumstances altogether were as
+unpleasant as his worst enemies could desire. I have endeavoured to
+excite the sympathy of those who are going with me through this story
+for the sufferings of that family of the Fitzgeralds; but how shall
+I succeed in exciting their sympathy for this other family of the
+Molletts? And yet why not? If we are to sympathise only with the
+good, or worse still, only with the graceful, how little will there
+be in our character that is better than terrestrial? Those Molletts
+also were human, and had strings to their hearts, at which the world
+would now probably pull with sufficient vigour. For myself I can
+truly say that my strongest feeling is for their wretchedness.
+
+The father and son had more than once boasted among themselves that
+the game they were now playing was a high one; that they were, in
+fact, gambling for mighty stakes. And in truth, as long as the
+money came in to them--flowing in as the result of their own craft
+in this game--the excitement had about it something that was very
+pleasurable. There was danger, which makes all games pleasant; there
+was money in handfuls for daily expenses--those daily wants of the
+appetite, which are to such men more important by far than the
+distant necessities of life; there was a possibility of future
+grandeur, an opening out of magnificent ideas of fortune, which
+charmed them greatly as they thought about it. What might they not
+do with forty thousand pounds divided between them, or even with a
+thousand a year each, settled on them for life? and surely their
+secret was worth that money! Nay, was it not palpable to the meanest
+calculation that it was worth much more? Had they not the selling
+of twelve thousand a year for ever and ever to this family of
+Fitzgerald?
+
+But for the last fortnight things had begun to go astray with them.
+Money easily come by goes easily, and money badly come by goes badly.
+Theirs had come easily and badly, and had so gone. What necessity
+could there be for economy with such a milch-cow as that close to
+their elbows? So both of them had thought, if not argued; and there
+had been no economy--no economy in the use of that very costly
+amusement, the dice-box; and now, at the present moment, ready money
+having failed to be the result of either of the two last visits to
+Castle Richmond, the family funds were running low.
+
+It may be said that ready money for the moment was the one desire
+nearest to the heart of Mollett pere, when he took that last journey
+over the Boggeragh mountains--ready money wherewith to satisfy the
+pressing claims of Miss O'Dwyer, and bring back civility, or rather
+servility, to the face and manner of Tom the waiter at the Kanturk
+Hotel. Very little of that servility can be enjoyed by persons of
+the Mollett class when money ceases to be ready in their hands and
+pockets, and there is, perhaps, nothing that they enjoy so keenly as
+servility. Mollett pere had gone down determined that that comfort
+should at any rate be forthcoming to him, whatever answer might
+be given to those other grander demands, and we know what success
+had attended his mission. He had looked to find his tame milch-cow
+trembling in her accustomed stall, and he had found a resolute bull
+there in her place--a bull whom he could by no means take by the
+horns. He had got no money, and before he had reached Cork he had
+begun to comprehend that it was not probable that he should get more
+from that source.
+
+During a part of the interview between him and Mr. Prendergast, some
+spark of mercy towards his victims had glimmered into his heart. When
+it was explained to him that the game was to be given up, that the
+family at Castle Richmond was prepared to acknowledge the truth, and
+that the effort made was with the view of proving that the poor lady
+up stairs was not entitled to the name she bore rather than that she
+was so entitled, then some slight promptings of a better spirit did
+for a while tempt him to be merciful. "Oh, what are you about to do?"
+he would have said had Mr. Prendergast admitted of speech from him.
+"Why make this terrible sacrifice? Matters have not come to that.
+There is no need for you to drag to the light this terrible fact. I
+will not divulge it--no not although you are hard upon me in regard
+to these terms of mine. I will still keep it to myself, and trust
+to you,--to you who are all so rich and able to pay, for what
+consideration you may please to give me." This was the state of his
+mind when Mrs. Jones's evidence was being slowly evoked from her;
+but it had undergone a considerable change before he reached Cork.
+By that time he had taught himself to understand that there was no
+longer a chance to him of any consideration whatever. Slowly he
+had brought it home to himself that these people had resolutely
+determined to blow up the ground on which they themselves stood. This
+he perceived was their honesty. He did not understand the nature of a
+feeling which could induce so fatal a suicide, but he did understand
+that the feeling was there, and that the suicide would be completed.
+
+And now what was he to do next in the way of earning his
+bread? Various thoughts ran through his brain, and different
+resolves--half-formed but still, perhaps, capable of shape--presented
+themselves to him for the future. It was still on the cards--on the
+cards, but barely so--that he might make money out of these people;
+but he must wait perhaps for weeks before he again commenced such an
+attempt. He might perhaps make money out of them, and be merciful to
+them at the same time;--not money by thousands and tens of thousands;
+that golden dream was gone for ever; but still money that might be
+comfortably luxurious as long as it could be made to last. But then
+on one special point he made a firm and final resolution,--whatever
+new scheme he might hatch he alone would manage. Never again would he
+call into his councils that son of his loins whose rapacious greed
+had, as he felt sure, brought upon him all this ruin. Had Aby not
+gone to Castle Richmond, with his cruelty and his greed, frightening
+to the very death the soul of that poor baronet by the enormity of
+his demands, Mr. Prendergast would not have been there. Of what
+further chance of Castle Richmond pickings there might be Aby should
+know nothing. He and his son would no longer hunt in couples. He
+would shake him off in that escape which they must both now make from
+Cork, and he would not care how long it might be before he again saw
+his countenance.
+
+But then that question of ready money; and that other question,
+perhaps as interesting, touching a criminal prosecution! How was he
+to escape if he could not raise the wind? And how could he raise
+the wind now that his milch-cow had run so dry? He had promised the
+O'Dwyers money that evening, and had struggled hard to make that
+promise with an easy face. He now had none to give them. His orders
+at the inn were treated almost with contempt. For the last three days
+they had given him what he wanted to eat and drink, but would hardly
+give him all that he wanted. When he called for brandy they brought
+him whisky, and it had only been by hard begging, and by oaths as to
+the promised money, that he had induced them to supply him with the
+car which had taken him on his fruitless journey to Castle Richmond.
+As he was driven up to the door in South Main Street, his heart was
+very sad on all these subjects.
+
+Aby was again sitting within the bar, but was no longer basking in
+the sunshine of Fanny's smiles. He was sitting there because Fanny
+had not yet mustered courage to turn him out. He was half-drunk, for
+it had been found impossible to keep spirits from him. And there had
+been hot words between him and Fanny, in which she had twitted him
+with his unpaid bill, and he had twitted her with her former love.
+And things had gone from bad to worse, and she had all but called
+in Tom for aid in getting quit of him; she had, however, refrained,
+thinking of the money that might be coming, and waiting also till her
+father should arrive. Fanny's love for Mr. Abraham Mollett had not
+been long lived.
+
+I will not describe another scene such as those which had of late
+been frequent in the Kanturk Hotel. The father and the son soon found
+themselves together in the small room in which they now both slept,
+at the top of the house; and Aby, tipsy as he was, understood the
+whole of what had happened at Castle Richmond. When he heard that
+Mr. Prendergast was seen in that room in lieu of Sir Thomas, he knew
+at once that the game had been abandoned. "But something may yet be
+done at 'Appy 'ouse," Aby said to himself, "only one must be deuced
+quick."
+
+The father and the son of course quarrelled frightfully, like dogs
+over the memory of a bone which had been arrested from the jaws of
+both of them. Aby said that his father had lost everything by his
+pusillanimity, and old Mollett declared that his son had destroyed
+all by his rashness. But we need not repeat their quarrels, nor
+repeat all that passed between them and Tom before food was
+forthcoming to satisfy the old man's wants. As he ate he calculated
+how much he might probably raise upon his watch towards taking him to
+London, and how best he might get off from Cork without leaving any
+scent in the nostrils of his son. His clothes he must leave behind
+him at the inn, at least all that he could not pack upon his person.
+Lately he had made himself comfortable in this respect, and he
+sorrowed over the fine linen which he had worn but once or twice
+since it had been bought with the last instalment from Sir Thomas.
+Nevertheless in this way he did make up his mind for the morrow's
+campaign.
+
+And Aby also made up his mind. Something at any rate he had learned
+from Fanny O'Dwyer in return for his honeyed words. When Herbert
+Fitzgerald should cease to be the heir to Castle Richmond, Owen
+Fitzgerald of Hap House would be the happy man. That knowledge was
+his own in absolute independence of his father, and there might still
+be time for him to use it. He knew well the locality of Hap House,
+and he would be there early on the following morning. These tidings
+had probably not as yet reached the owner of that blessed abode, and
+if he could be the first to tell him--! The game there too might be
+pretty enough, if it were played well, by such a master-hand as his
+own. Yes; he would be at Hap House early in the morning;--but then,
+how to get there?
+
+He left his father preparing for bed, and going down into the bar
+found Mr. O'Dwyer and his daughter there in close consultation.
+They were endeavouring to arrive, by their joint wisdom, at some
+conclusion as to what they should do with their two guests. Fanny
+was for turning them out at once. "The first loss is the least,"
+said she. "And they is so disrispectable. I niver know what they're
+afther, and always is expecting the p'lice will be down on them."
+But the father shook his head. He had done nothing wrong; the police
+could not hurt him; and thirty pounds, as he told his daughter, with
+much emphasis, was "a deuced sight of money." "The first loss is
+the least," said Fanny, perseveringly; and then Aby entered to them.
+
+"My father has made a mull of this matter again," said he, going at
+once into the middle of the subject. "'E 'as come back without a
+shiner."
+
+"I'll be bound he has," said Mr. O'Dwyer, sarcastically.
+
+"And that when 'e'd only got to go two or three miles further, and
+hall his troubles would have been over."
+
+"Troubles over, would they?" said Fanny. "I wish he'd have the
+goodness to get over his little troubles in this house, by paying us
+our bill. You'll have to walk if it's not done, and that to-morrow,
+Mr. Mollett; and so I tell you; and take nothing with you, I can tell
+you. Father 'll have the police to see to that."
+
+"Don't you be so cruel now, Miss Fanny," said Aby, with a leering
+look. "I tell you what it is, Mr. O'Dwyer, I must go down again to
+them diggings very early to-morrow, starting, say, at four o'clock."
+
+"You'll not have a foot out of my stables," said Mr. O'Dwyer. "That's
+all."
+
+"Look here, Mr. O'Dwyer; there's been a sight of money due to us from
+those Fitzgerald people down there. You know 'em; and whether they're
+hable to pay or not. I won't deny but what father's 'ad the best of
+it,--'ad the best of it, and sent it trolling, bad luck to him. But
+there's no good looking hafter spilt milk; is there?"
+
+"If so be that Sir Thomas owed the likes of you money, he would have
+paid it without your tramping down there time after time to look for
+it. He's not one of that sort."
+
+"No, indeed," said Fanny; "and I don't believe anything about your
+seeing Sir Thomas."
+
+"Oh, we've seed him hoften enough. There's no mistake about that. But
+now--" and then, with a mysterious air and low voice, he explained
+to them, that this considerable balance of money still due to
+them was to be paid by the cousin, "Mr. Owen of Appy 'ouse." And
+to substantiate all his story, he exhibited a letter from Mr.
+Prendergast to his father, which some months since had intimated that
+a sum of money would be paid on behalf of Sir Thomas Fitzgerald, if
+Mr. Mollett would call at Mr. Prendergast's office at a certain hour.
+The ultimate effect of all this was, that the car was granted for
+the morning, with certain dire threats as to any further breach of
+engagement.
+
+Very early on the following morning Aby was astir, hoping that he
+might manage to complete his not elaborate toilet without disturbing
+his father's slumbers. For, it must be known, he had been very urgent
+with the O'Dwyers as to the necessity of keeping this journey of
+his a secret from his "governor." But the governor was wide awake,
+looking at him out of the corner of his closed eye whenever his back
+was turned, and not caring much what he was about to do with himself.
+Mollett pere wished to be left alone for that morning, that he also
+might play his little game in his own solitary fashion, and was not
+at all disposed to question the movements of his son.
+
+At about five Aby started for Hap House. His toilet, I have said, was
+not elaborate; but in this I have perhaps wronged him. Up there in
+the bed-room he did not waste much time over his soap and water; but
+he was aware that first impressions are everything, and that one
+young man should appear smart and clever before another if he wished
+to carry any effect with him; so he took his brush and comb in his
+pocket, and a pot of grease with which he was wont to polish his long
+side-locks, and he hurriedly grasped up his pins, and his rings, and
+the satin stock which Fanny in her kinder mood had folded for him;
+and then, during his long journey to Hap House, he did perform a
+toilet which may, perhaps, be fairly called elaborate.
+
+There was a long, tortuous, narrow avenue, going from the Mallow
+and Kanturk road down to Hap House, which impressed Aby with the
+idea that the man on whom he was now about to call was also a big
+gentleman, and made him more uneasy than he would have been had he
+entered a place with less pretence. There is a story current, that
+in the west of England the grandeur of middle-aged maiden ladies
+is measured by the length of the tail of their cats; and Aby had a
+perhaps equally correct idea, that the length of the private drive up
+to a gentleman's house, was a fair criterion of the splendour of his
+position. If this man had about him as much grandeur as Sir Thomas
+himself, would he be so anxious as Aby had hoped to obtain the
+additional grandeur of Sir Thomas? It was in that direction that his
+mind was operating when he got down from the car and rang at the
+door-bell.
+
+Mr. Owen, as everybody called him, was at home, but not down; and
+so Aby was shown into the dining-room. It was now considerably past
+nine; and the servant told him that his master must be there soon, as
+he had to eat his breakfast and be at the hunt by eleven. The servant
+at Hap House was more unsophisticated than those at Castle Richmond,
+and Aby's personal adornments had had their effect. He found himself
+sitting in the room with the cups and saucers,--aye, and with the
+silver tea-spoons; and began again to trust that his mission might be
+successful.
+
+And then the door opened, and a man appeared, clad from top to toe in
+hunting costume. This was not Owen Fitzgerald, but his friend Captain
+Donnellan. As it had happened, Captain Donnellan was the only guest
+who had graced the festivities of Hap House on the previous evening;
+and now he appeared at the breakfast table before his host. Aby got
+up from his chair when the gentleman entered, and was proceeding to
+business; but the Captain gave him to understand that the master of
+the house was not yet in presence, and so Aby sat down again. What
+was he to do when the master did arrive? His story was not one which
+would well bear telling before a third person.
+
+And then, while Captain Donnellan was scanning this visitor to
+his friend Owen, and bethinking himself whether he might not be a
+sheriff's officer, and whether if so some notice ought not to be
+conveyed up stairs to the master of the house, another car was driven
+up to the front door. In this case the arrival was from Castle
+Richmond, and the two servants knew each other well. "Thady," said
+Richard, with much authority in his voice, "this gentl'man is Mr.
+Prendergast from our place, and he must see the masther before he
+goes to the hunt." "Faix and the masther 'll have something to do
+this blessed morning," said Thady, as he showed Mr. Prendergast also
+into the dining-room, and went up stairs to inform his master that
+there was yet another gentleman come upon business. "The Captain has
+got 'em both to hisself," said Thady, as he closed the door.
+
+The name of Mr. "Pendhrergrast," as the Irish servants generally
+called him, was quite unknown to the owner of Hap House, as was also
+that of Mr. Mollett, which had been brought up to him the first of
+the two; but Owen began to think that there must be something very
+unusual in a day so singularly ushered in to him. Callers at Hap
+House on business were very few, unless when tradesmen in want of
+money occasionally dropped in upon him. But now that he was so
+summoned Owen began to bestir himself with his boots and breeches.
+A gentleman's costume for a hunting morning is always a slow
+one--sometimes so slow and tedious as to make him think of
+forswearing such articles of dress for all future ages. But now he
+did bestir himself,--in a moody melancholy sort of manner; for his
+manner in all things latterly had become moody and melancholy.
+
+In the mean time Captain Donnellan and the two strangers sat almost
+in silence in the dining-room. The Captain, though he did not perhaps
+know much of things noticeable in this world, did know something of
+a gentleman, and was therefore not led away, as poor Thady had been,
+by Aby's hat and rings. He had stared Aby full in the face when he
+entered the room, and having explained that he was not the master
+of the house, had not vouchsafed another word. But then he had also
+seen that Mr. Prendergast was of a different class, and had said a
+civil word or two, asking him to come near the fire, and suggesting
+that Owen would be down in less than five minutes. "But the old cock
+wouldn't crow," as he afterwards remarked to his friend, and so they
+all three sat in silence, the Captain being very busy about his
+knees, as hunting gentlemen sometimes are when they come down to
+bachelor breakfasts.
+
+And then at last Owen Fitzgerald entered the room. He has been
+described as a handsome man, but in no dress did he look so well as
+when equipped for a day's sport. And what dress that Englishmen ever
+wear is so handsome as this? Or we may perhaps say what other dress
+does English custom allow them that is in any respect not the reverse
+of handsome. We have come to be so dingy,--in our taste I was going
+to say, but it is rather in our want of taste,--so careless of any of
+the laws of beauty in the folds and lines and hues of our dress, so
+opposed to grace in the arrangement of our persons, that it is not
+permitted to the ordinary English gentleman to be anything else but
+ugly. Chimney-pot hats, swallow-tailed coats, and pantaloons that fit
+nothing, came creeping in upon us, one after the other, while the
+Georges reigned--creeping in upon us with such pictures as we painted
+under the reign of West, and such houses as we built under the reign
+of Nash, till the English eye required to rest on that which was
+constrained, dull, and graceless. For the last two score of years
+it has come to this, that if a man go in handsome attire he is a
+popinjay and a vain fool; and as it is better to be ugly than to be
+accounted vain I would not counsel a young friend to leave the beaten
+track on the strength of his own judgment. But not the less is the
+beaten track to be condemned, and abandoned, and abolished, if such
+be in any way possible. Beauty is good in all things; and I cannot
+but think that those old Venetian senators, and Florentine men of
+Council, owed somewhat of their country's pride and power to the
+manner in which they clipped their beards and wore their flowing
+garments.
+
+But an Englishman may still make himself brave when he goes forth
+into the hunting field. Custom there allows him colour, and garments
+that fit his limbs. Strength is the outward characteristic of
+manhood, and at the covert-side he may appear strong. Look at men as
+they walk along Fleet-street, and ask yourself whether any outward
+sign of manhood or strength can be seen there. And of gentle manhood
+outward dignity should be the trade mark. I will not say that such
+outward dignity is incompatible with a black hat and plaid trousers,
+for the eye instructed by habit will search out dignity for itself
+wherever it may truly exist, let it be hidden by what vile covering
+it may. But any man who can look well at his club, will look better
+as he clusters round the hounds; while many a one who is comely
+there, is mean enough as he stands on the hearth-rug before his club
+fire. In my mind men, like churches and books, and women too, should
+be brave, not mean, in their outward garniture.
+
+And Owen, as I have said, was brave as he walked into his
+dining-room. The sorrow which weighed on his heart had not wrinkled
+his brow, but had given him a set dignity of purpose. His tall
+figure, which his present dress allowed to be seen, was perfect in
+its symmetry of strength. His bright chestnut hair clustered round
+his forehead, and his eye shone like that of a hawk. They must have
+been wrong who said that he commonly spent his nights over the
+wine-cup. That pleasure always leaves its disgusting traces round the
+lips; and Owen Fitzgerald's lips were as full and lusty as Apollo's.
+Mollett, as he saw him, was stricken with envy. "If I could only get
+enough money out of this affair to look like that," was his first
+thought, as his eye fell on the future heir; not understanding, poor
+wretch that he was, that all the gold of California could not bring
+him one inch nearer to the goal he aimed at. I think I have said
+before, that your silk purse will not get itself made out of that
+coarse material with which there are so many attempts to manufacture
+that article. And Mr. Prendergast rose from his chair when he saw
+him, with a respect that was almost involuntary. He had not heard
+men speak well of Owen Fitzgerald;--not that ill-natured things had
+been said by the family at Castle Richmond, but circumstances had
+prevented the possibility of their praising him. If a relative or
+friend be spoken of without praise, he is, in fact, censured. From
+what he had heard he had certainly not expected a man who would look
+so noble as did the owner of Hap House, who now came forward to ask
+him his business.
+
+Both Mr. Prendergast and Aby Mollett rose at the same time. Since the
+arrival of the latter gentleman, Aby had been wondering who he might
+be, but no idea that he was that lawyer from Castle Richmond had
+entered his head. That he was a stranger like himself, Aby saw; but
+he did not connect him with his own business. Indeed he had not
+yet realized the belief, though his father had done so, that the
+truth would be revealed by those at Castle Richmond to him at Hap
+House. His object now was that the old gentleman should say his say
+and begone, leaving him to dispose of the other young man in the
+top-boots as best he might. But then, as it happened, that was also
+Mr. Prendergast's line of action.
+
+"Gentlemen," said Owen, "I beg your pardon for keeping you waiting;
+but the fact is that I am so seldom honoured in this way in a
+morning, that I was hardly ready. Donnellan, there's the tea; don't
+mind waiting. These gentlemen will perhaps join us." And then he
+looked hard at Aby, as though he trusted in Providence that no such
+profanation would be done to his table-cloth.
+
+"Thank you, I have breakfasted," said Mr. Prendergast.
+
+"And so 'ave I," said Aby, who had eaten a penny loaf in the car, and
+would have been delighted to sit down at that rich table. But he was
+a little beside himself, and not able to pluck up courage for such an
+effort.
+
+"I don't know whether you two gentlemen have come about the same
+business," said Owen, looking from one to the other.
+
+"No," said Mr. Prendergast, very confidently, but not very correctly.
+"I wish to speak to you, Mr. Fitzgerald, for a few minutes: but my
+business with you is quite private."
+
+"So is mine," said Aby, "very private; very private indeed."
+
+"Well, gentlemen, I have just half an hour in which to eat my
+breakfast, attend to business, get on my horse and leave the house.
+Out of that twenty-five minutes are very much at your service.
+Donnellan, I beg your pardon. Do pitch into the broiled bones while
+they are hot; never mind me. And now, gentlemen, if you will walk
+with me into the other room. First come first served: that I suppose
+should be the order." And he opened the door and stood with it ajar
+in his hand.
+
+"I will wait, Mr. Fitzgerald, if you please," said Mr. Prendergast;
+and as he spoke he motioned Mollett with his hand to go to the door.
+
+"Oh! I can wait, sir; I'd rather wait, sir. I would indeed," said
+Aby. "My business is a little particular; and if you'll go on, sir,
+I'll take up with the gen'leman as soon as you've done, sir."
+
+But Mr. Prendergast was accustomed to have his own way. "I should
+prefer that you should go first, sir. And to tell the truth, Mr.
+Fitzgerald, what I have to say to you will take some time. It is of
+much importance, to yourself and to others; and I fear that you will
+probably find that it will detain you from your amusement to-day."
+
+Owen looked black as he heard this. The hounds were going to draw
+a covert of his own; and he was not in the habit of remaining away
+from the drawing of any coverts, belonging to himself or others,
+on any provocation whatever. "That will be rather hard," said he,
+"considering that I do not know any more than the man in the moon
+what you've come about."
+
+"You shall be the sole judge yourself, sir, of the importance of my
+business with you," said Mr. Prendergast.
+
+"Well, Mr.-- I forget your name," said Owen.
+
+"My name's Mollett," said Aby. Whereupon Mr. Prendergast looked up
+at him very sharply, but he said nothing.--He said nothing, but
+he looked very sharply indeed. He now knew well who this man was,
+and guessed with tolerable accuracy the cause of his visit. But,
+nevertheless, at the moment he said nothing.
+
+"Come along, then, Mr. Mollett. I hope your affair is not likely to
+be a very long one also. Perhaps you'll excuse my having a cup of tea
+sent in to me as you talk to me. There is nothing like saving time
+when such very important business is on the tapis. Donnellan, send
+Thady in with a cup of tea, like a good fellow. Now, Mr. Mollett."
+
+Mr. Mollett rose slowly from his chair, and followed his host. He
+would have given all he possessed in the world, and that was very
+little, to have had the coast clear. But in such an emergency,
+what was he to do? By the time he had reached the door of the
+drawing-room, he had all but made up his mind to tell Fitzgerald
+that, seeing there was so much other business on hand this morning at
+Hap House, this special piece of business of his must stand over. But
+then, how could he go back to Cork empty-handed? So he followed Owen
+into the room, and there opened his budget with what courage he had
+left to him.
+
+Captain Donnellan, as he employed himself on the broiled bones,
+twice invited Mr. Prendergast to assist him; but in vain. Donnellan
+remained there, waiting for Owen, till eleven; and then got on his
+horse. "You'll tell Fitzgerald, will you, that I've started? He'll
+see nothing of to-day's hunt; that's clear."
+
+"I don't think he will," said Mr. Prendergast.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+AFTER BREAKFAST AT HAP HOUSE.
+
+
+"I don't think he will," said Mr. Prendergast; and as he spoke,
+Captain Donnellan's ear could detect that there was something
+approaching to sarcasm in the tone of the old man's voice. The
+Captain was quite sure that his friend would not be even at the heel
+of the hunt that day; and without further compunction proceeded to
+fasten his buckskin gloves round his wrists. The meet was so near
+to them, that they had both intended to ride their own hunters from
+the door; and the two nags were now being led up and down upon the
+gravel.
+
+But at this moment a terrible noise was heard to take place in
+the hall. There was a rush and crushing there which made even Mr.
+Prendergast to jump from his chair, and drove Captain Donnellan to
+forget his gloves and run to the door.
+
+It was as though all the winds of heaven were being driven down the
+passage, and as though each separate wind was shod with heavy-heeled
+boots. Captain Donnellan ran to the door, and Mr. Prendergast with
+slower steps followed him. When it was opened, Owen was to be seen
+in the hall, apparently in a state of great excitement; and the
+gentleman whom he had lately asked to breakfast,--he was to be seen
+also, in a position of unmistakeable discomfort. He was at that
+moment proceeding, with the utmost violence, into a large round bed
+of bushes, which stood in the middle of the great sweep before the
+door of the house, his feet just touching the ground as he went; and
+then, having reached his bourne, he penetrated face foremost into the
+thicket, and in an instant disappeared. He had been kicked out of the
+house. Owen Fitzgerald had taken him by the shoulders, with a run
+along the passage and hall, and having reached the door, had applied
+the flat of his foot violently to poor Aby's back, and sent him
+flying down the stone steps. And now, as Captain Donnellan and Mr.
+Prendergast stood looking on, Mr. Mollett junior buried himself
+altogether out of sight among the shrubs.
+
+"You have done for that fellow, at any rate, Owen," said Captain
+Donnellan, glancing for a moment at Mr. Prendergast. "I should say
+that he will never get out of that alive."
+
+"Not if he wait till I pick him out," said Owen, breathing very hard
+after his exertion. "An infernal scoundrel! And now, Mr. Prendergast,
+if you are ready, sir, I am." It was as much as he could do to finish
+these few words with that sang froid which he desired to assume, so
+violent was his attempt at breathing after his late exercise.
+
+It was impossible not to conceive the idea that, as one disagreeable
+visitor had been disposed of in a somewhat summary fashion, so might
+be the other also. Mr. Prendergast did not look like a man who was
+in the habit of leaving gentlemen's houses in the manner just now
+adopted by Mr. Mollett; but nevertheless, as they had come together,
+both unwished for and unwelcome, Captain Donnellan did for a moment
+bethink himself whether there might not be more of such fun, if he
+remained there on the spot. At any rate, it would not do for him to
+go to the hunt while such deeds as these were being done. It might be
+that his assistance would be wanted.
+
+Mr. Prendergast smiled, with a saturnine and somewhat bitter
+smile--the nearest approach to a laugh in which he was known to
+indulge,--for the same notion came also into his head. "He has
+disposed of him, and now he is thinking how he will dispose of me."
+Such was Mr. Prendergast's thought about the matter; and that made
+him smile. And then, too, he was pleased at what he had seen. That
+this Mollett was the son of that other Mollett, with whom he had been
+closeted at Castle Richmond, was plain enough; it was plain enough
+also to him, used as he was to trace out in his mind the courses of
+action which men would follow, that Mollett junior, having heard of
+his father's calamitous failure at Castle Richmond, had come down to
+Hap House to see what he could make out of the hitherto unconscious
+heir. It had been matter of great doubt with Mr. Prendergast, when he
+first heard young Mollett's name mentioned, whether or no he would
+allow him to make his attempt. He, Mr. Prendergast, could by a word
+have spoilt the game; but acting, as he was forced to act, on the
+spur of the moment, he resolved to permit Mr. Mollett junior to play
+out his play. He would be yet in time to prevent any ill result to
+Mr. Fitzgerald, should that gentleman be weak enough to succumb to
+any such ill results. As things had now turned out Mr. Prendergast
+rejoiced that Mr. Mollett junior had been permitted to play out his
+play. "And now, Mr. Prendergast, if you are ready, I am," said Owen.
+
+"Perhaps we had better first pick up the gentleman among the trees,"
+said Mr. Prendergast. And he and Captain Donnellan went down into the
+bushes.
+
+"Do as you please about that," said Owen. "I have touched him once
+and shall not touch him again." And he walked back into the
+dining-room.
+
+One of the grooms who were leading the horses had now gone to the
+assistance of the fallen hero; and as Captain Donnellan also had
+already penetrated as far as Aby's shoulders, Mr. Prendergast,
+thinking that he was not needed, returned also to the house. "I hope
+he is not seriously hurt," he said.
+
+"Not he," said Owen. "Those sort of men are as used to be kicked,
+as girls are to be kissed; and it comes as naturally to them. But
+anything short of having his bones broken will be less than he
+deserves."
+
+"May I ask what was the nature of his offence?"
+
+Owen remained silent for a moment, looking his guest full in the
+face. "Well; not exactly," said he. "He has been talking of people of
+whom he knows nothing, but it would not be well for me to repeat what
+he has said to a perfect stranger."
+
+"Quite right, Mr. Fitzgerald; it would not be well. But there can be
+no harm in my repeating it to you. He came here to get money from you
+for certain tidings which he brought; tidings which if true would be
+of great importance to you. As I take it, however, he has altogether
+failed in his object."
+
+"And how do you come to know all this, sir?"
+
+"Merely from having heard that man mention his own name. I also
+have come with the same tidings; and as I ask for no money for
+communicating them, you may believe them to be true on my telling."
+
+"What tidings?" asked Owen, with a frown, and an angry jerk in his
+voice. No remotest notion had yet come in upon his mind that there
+was any truth in the story that had been told him. He had looked upon
+it all as a lie, and had regarded Mollett as a sorry knave who had
+come to him with a poor and low attempt at raising a few pounds. And
+even now he did not believe. Mr. Prendergast's words had been too
+sudden to produce belief of so great a fact, and his first thought
+was that an endeavour was being made to fool him.
+
+"Those tidings which that man has told you," said Mr. Prendergast,
+solemnly. "That you should not have believed them from him shows only
+your discretion. But from me you may believe them. I have come from
+Castle Richmond, and am here as a messenger from Sir Thomas,--from
+Sir Thomas and from his son. When the matter became clear to them
+both, then it was felt that you also should be made acquainted with
+it."
+
+Owen Fitzgerald now sat down, and looked up into the lawyer's face,
+staring at him. I may say that the power of saying much was for the
+moment taken away from him by the words that he heard. What! was it
+really possible that that title, that property, that place of honour
+in the country was to be his when one frail old man should drop away?
+And then again was it really true that all this immeasurable misery
+was to fall--had fallen--upon that family whom he had once known so
+well? It was but yesterday that he had been threatening all manner
+of evil to his cousin Herbert; and had his threats been proved true
+so quickly? But there was no shadow of triumph in his feelings.
+Owen Fitzgerald was a man of many faults. He was reckless,
+passionate, prone to depreciate the opinion of others, extravagant
+in his thoughts and habits, ever ready to fight, both morally and
+physically, those who did not at a moment's notice agree with him.
+He was a man who would at once make up his mind that the world was
+wrong when the world condemned him, and who would not in compliance
+with any argument allow himself to be so. But he was not avaricious,
+nor cruel, nor self-seeking, nor vindictive. In his anger he could
+pronounce all manner of ill things against his enemy, as he had
+pronounced some ill things against Herbert; but it was not in him to
+keep up a sustained wish that those ill things should really come to
+pass. This news which he now heard, and which he did not yet fully
+credit, struck him with awe, but created no triumph in his bosom.
+He realized the catastrophe as it affected his cousins of Castle
+Richmond rather than as it affected himself.
+
+"Do you mean to say that Lady Fitzgerald--" and then he stopped
+himself. He had not the courage to ask the question which was in his
+mind. Could it really be the case that Lady Fitzgerald,--that she
+whom all the world had so long honoured under that name, was in truth
+the wife of that man's father,--of the father of that wretch whom
+he had just spurned from his house? The tragedy was so deep that he
+could not believe in it.
+
+"We fear that it is so, Mr. Fitzgerald," said Mr. Prendergast. "That
+it certainly is so I cannot say. And therefore, if I may take the
+liberty to give you counsel, I would advise you not to make too
+certain of this change in your prospects."
+
+"Too certain!" said he, with a bitter laugh. "Do you suppose then
+that I would wish to see all this ruin accomplished? Heavens and
+earth! Lady Fitzgerald--! I cannot believe it."
+
+And then Captain Donnellan also returned to the room. "Fitzgerald,"
+said he, "what the mischief are we to do with this fellow? He says
+that he can't walk, and he bleeds from his face like a pig."
+
+"What fellow? Oh, do what you like with him. Here: give him a pound
+note, and let him go to the d----. And Donnellan, for heaven's sake
+go to Cecilstown at once. Do not wait for me. I have business that
+will keep me here all day."
+
+"But I do not know what to do with this fellow that's bleeding," said
+the captain, piteously, as he took the proffered note. "If he puts up
+with a pound note for what you've done to him, he's softer than what
+I take him for."
+
+"He will be very glad to be allowed to escape without being given up
+to the police," said Mr. Prendergast.
+
+"But I don't know what to do with him," said Captain Donnellan. "He
+says that he can't stand."
+
+"Then lay him down on the dunghill," said Owen Fitzgerald; "but
+for heaven's sake do not let him interrupt me. And, Donnellan, you
+will altogether lose the day if you stay any longer." Whereupon
+the captain, seeing that in very truth he was not wanted, did take
+himself off, casting as he went one farewell look on Aby as he lay
+groaning on the turf on the far side of the tuft of bushes.
+
+"He's kilt intirely, I'm thinking, yer honor," said Thady, who was
+standing over him on the other side.
+
+"He'll come to life again before dinner-time," said the Captain.
+
+"Oh, in course he'll do that, yer honor," said Thady; and then added
+sotto voce, to himself, as the captain rode down the avenue, "Faix,
+an' I don't know about that. Shure an' it's the masther has a heavy
+hand." And then Thady stood for a while perplexed, endeavouring to
+reanimate Aby by a sight of the pound note which he held out visibly
+between his thumb and fingers.
+
+And now Mr. Prendergast and Owen were again alone. "And what am I to
+do?" said Owen, after a pause of a minute or two; and he asked the
+question with a serious solemn voice.
+
+"Just for the present--for the next day or two--I think that you
+should do nothing. As soon as the first agony of this time is over
+at Castle Richmond, I think that Herbert should see you. It would
+be very desirable that he and you should take in concert such
+proceedings as will certainly become necessary. The absolute proof of
+the truth of this story must be obtained. You understand, I hope, Mr.
+Fitzgerald, that the case still admits of doubt."
+
+Owen nodded his head impatiently, as though it were needless on the
+part of Mr. Prendergast to insist upon this. He did not wish to take
+it for true a moment sooner than was necessary.
+
+"It is my duty to give you this caution. Many lawyers--I presume you
+know that I am a lawyer--"
+
+"I did not know it," said Owen; "but it makes no difference."
+
+"Thank you; that's very kind," said Mr. Prendergast; but the sarcasm
+was altogether lost upon his hearer. "Some lawyers, as I was saying,
+would in such a case have advised their clients to keep all their
+suspicions, nay all their knowledge, to themselves. Why play the game
+of an adversary? they would ask. But I have thought it better that we
+should have no adversary."
+
+"And you will have none," said Owen; "none in me at least."
+
+"I am much gratified in so perceiving, and in having such evidence
+that my advice has not been indiscreet. It occurred to me that if
+you received the first intimation of these circumstances from other
+sources, you would be bound on your own behalf to employ an agent to
+look after your own interests."
+
+"I should have done nothing of the kind," said Owen.
+
+"Ah, but, my dear young friend, in such a case it would have been
+your duty to do so."
+
+"Then I should have neglected my duty. And do you tell Herbert this
+from me, that let the truth be what it may, I shall never interrupt
+him in his title or his property. It is not there that I shall look
+either for justice or revenge. He will understand what I mean."
+
+But Mr. Prendergast did not, by any means; nor did he enter into the
+tone of Owen Fitzgerald's mind. They were both just men, but just in
+an essentially different manner. The justice of Mr. Prendergast had
+come of thought and education. As a young man, when entering on his
+profession, he was probably less just than he was now. He had thought
+about matters of law and equity, till thought had shown to him the
+beauty of equity as it should be practised,--often by the aid of law,
+and not unfrequently in spite of law. Such was the justice of Mr.
+Prendergast. That of Owen Fitzgerald had come of impulse and nature,
+and was the justice of a very young man rather than of a very wise
+one. That title and property did not, as he felt, of justice belong
+to him, but to his cousin. What difference could it make in the true
+justice of things, whether or no that wretched man was still alive
+whom all the world had regarded as dead? In justice he ought to be
+dead. Now that this calamity of the man's life had fallen upon Sir
+Thomas and Lady Fitzgerald and his cousin Herbert, it would not
+be for him to aggravate it by seizing upon a heritage which might
+possibly accrue to him under the letter of the world's law, but which
+could not accrue to him under heaven's law. Such was the justice
+of Owen Fitzgerald; and we may say this of it in its dispraise,
+as comparing it with that other justice, that whereas that of Mr.
+Prendergast would wear for ever, through ages and ages, that other
+justice of Owen's would hardly have stood the pull of a ten years'
+struggle. When children came to him, would he not have thought of
+what might have been theirs by right; and then have thought of what
+ought to be theirs by right; and so on?
+
+But in speaking of justice, he had also spoken of revenge, and Mr.
+Prendergast was altogether in the dark. What revenge? He did not know
+that poor Owen had lost a love, and that Herbert had found it. In the
+midst of all the confused thoughts which this astounding intelligence
+had brought upon him, Owen still thought of his love. There Herbert
+had robbed him--robbed him by means of his wealth; and in that matter
+he desired justice--justice or revenge. He wanted back his love.
+Let him have that and Herbert might yet be welcome to his title and
+estates.
+
+Mr. Prendergast remained there for some half-hour longer, explaining
+what ought to be done, and how it ought to be done. Of course he
+combated that idea of Owen's, that the property might be allowed to
+remain in the hands of the wrong heir. Had that been consonant with
+his ideas of justice he would not have made his visit to Hap House
+this morning. Right must have its way, and if it should be that Lady
+Fitzgerald's marriage with Sir Thomas had not been legal, Owen, on
+Sir Thomas's death, must become Sir Owen, and Herbert could not
+become Sir Herbert. So much to the mind of Mr. Prendergast was as
+clear as crystal. Let justice be done, even though these Castle
+Richmond heavens should fall in ruins.
+
+And then he took his departure, leaving Owen to his solitude, much
+perplexed. "And where is that man?" Mr. Prendergast asked, as he got
+on to his car.
+
+"Bedad thin, yer honer, he's very bad intirely. He's jist sitthing
+over the kitchen fire, moaning and croning this way and that, but
+sorrow a word he's spoke since the masther hoisted him out o' the big
+hall door. And thin for blood--why, saving yer honer's presence, he's
+one mash of gore."
+
+"You'd better wash his face for him, and give him a little tea," said
+Mr. Prendergast, and then he drove away.
+
+And strange ideas floated across Owen Fitzgerald's brain as he sat
+there alone, in his hunting gear, leaning on the still covered
+breakfast-table. They floated across his brain backwards and
+forwards, and at last remained there, taking almost the form of a
+definite purpose. He would make a bargain with Herbert; let each of
+them keep that which was fairly his own; let Herbert have all the
+broad lands of Castle Richmond; let him have the title, the seat in
+parliament, and the county honour; but for him, Owen--let him have
+Clara Desmond. He desired nothing that was not fairly his own; but
+as his own he did regard her, and without her he did not know how to
+face the future of his life. And in suggesting this arrangement to
+himself, he did not altogether throw over her feelings; he did take
+into account her heart, though he did not take into account her
+worldly prospects. She had loved him--him--Owen; and he would not
+teach himself to believe that she did not love him still. Her mother
+had been too powerful for her, and she had weakly yielded; but as to
+her heart--Owen could not bring himself to believe that that was gone
+from him.
+
+They two would make a bargain,--he and his cousin. Honour and renown,
+and the money and the title would be everything to his cousin.
+Herbert had been brought up to expect these things, and all the world
+around him had expected them for him. It would be terrible to him
+to find himself robbed of them. But the loss of Clara Desmond was
+equally terrible to Owen Fitzgerald. He allowed his heart to fill
+itself with a romantic sense of honour, teaching him that it behoved
+him as a man not to give up his love. Without her he would live
+disgraced in his own estimation; but who would not think the better
+of him for refraining from the possession of those Castle Richmond
+acres? Yes; he would make a bargain with Herbert. Who was there in
+the world to deny his right to do so?
+
+As he sat revolving these things in his mind, he suddenly heard a
+rushing sound, as of many horsemen down the avenue, and going to the
+window, he saw two or three leading men of the hunt, accompanied by
+the gray-haired old huntsman; and through and about and under the
+horsemen were the dogs, running in and out of the laurels which
+skirted the road, with their noses down, giving every now and then
+short yelps as they caught up the uncertain scent from the leaves on
+the ground, and hurried on upon the trail of their game.
+
+"Yo ho! to him, Messenger; hark to him, Maybird; good bitch,
+Merrylass. He's down here, gen'lemen, and he'll never get away
+alive. He came to a bad place when he looked out for going to ground
+anywhere near Mr. Owen."
+
+And then there came, fast trotting down through the other horsemen,
+making his way eagerly to the front, a stout heavy man, with a florid
+handsome face and eager eye. He might be some fifty years of age, but
+no lad there of three-and-twenty was so anxious and impetuous as he.
+He was riding a large-boned, fast-trotting bay horse, that pressed on
+as eagerly as his rider. As he hurried forward all made way for him,
+till he was close to the shrubs in the front of the house.
+
+"Bless my soul, gentlemen," he said, in an angry voice, "how, in the
+name of all that's good, are hounds to hunt if you press them down
+the road in that way? By heavens, Barry, you are enough to drive
+a man wild. Yoicks, Merrylass! there it is, Pat;"--Pat was the
+huntsman--"outside the low wall there, down towards the river." This
+was Sam O'Grady, the master of the Duhallow hounds, the god of Owen's
+idolatry. No better fellow ever lived, and no master of hounds, so
+good; such at least was the opinion common among Duhallow sportsmen.
+
+"Yes, yer honer,--he did skirt round there, I knows that; but he's
+been among them laurels at the bottom, and he'll be about the place
+and outhouses somewhere. There's a drain here that I knows on, and he
+knows on. But Mr. Owen, he knows on it too; and there aint a chance
+for him." So argued Pat, the Duhallow huntsman, the experienced craft
+of whose aged mind enabled him to run counter to the cutest dodges
+of the cutest fox in that and any of the three neighbouring baronies.
+
+And now the sweep before the door was crowded with red coats; and
+Owen, looking from his dining-room window, felt that he must take
+some step. As an ordinary rule, had the hunt thus drifted near his
+homestead, he would have been off his horse and down among his
+bottles, sending up sherry and cherry-brandy; and there would have
+been comfortable drink in plenty, and cold meat, perhaps, not in
+plenty; and every one would have been welcome in and out of the
+house. But now there was that at his heart which forbade him to mix
+with the men who knew him so well, and among whom he was customarily
+so loudly joyous. Dressed as he was, he could not go among them
+without explaining why he had remained at home; and as to that, he
+felt that he was not able to give any explanation at the present
+moment.
+
+"What's the matter with Owen?" said one fellow to Captain Donnellan.
+
+"Upon my word I hardly know. Two chaps came to him this morning,
+before he was up; about business, they said. He nearly murdered one
+of them out of hand; and I believe that he's locked up somewhere with
+the other this minute."
+
+But in the meantime a servant came up to Mr. O'Grady, and, touching
+his hat, asked the master of the hunt to go into the house for a
+moment; and then Mr. O'Grady, dismounting, entered in through the
+front door. He was only there two minutes, for his mind was still
+outside, among the laurels, with the fox; but as he put his foot
+again into the stirrup, he said to those around him that they
+must hurry away, and not disturb Owen Fitzgerald that day. It may,
+therefore, easily be imagined that the mystery would spread quickly
+through that portion of the county of Cork.
+
+They must hurry away;--but not before they could give an account of
+their fox. Neither for gods nor men must he be left, as long as his
+skin was whole above ground. There is an importance attaching to the
+pursuit of a fox, which gives it a character quite distinct from that
+of any other amusement which men follow in these realms. It justifies
+almost anything that men can do, and that at any place and in any
+season. There is about it a sanctity which forbids interruption,
+and makes its votaries safe under any circumstances of trespass or
+intrusion. A man in a hunting county who opposes the county hunt must
+be a misanthrope, willing to live in seclusion, fond of being in
+Coventry, and in love with the enmity of his fellow-creatures. There
+are such men, but they are regarded as lepers by those around them.
+All this adds to the nobleness of the noble sport, and makes it
+worthy of a man's energies.
+
+And then the crowd of huntsmen hurried round from the front of
+the house to a paddock at the back, and then again through the
+stable yard to the front. The hounds were about--here, there, and
+everywhere, as any one ignorant of the craft would have said, but
+still always on the scent of that doomed beast. From one thicket
+to another he tried to hide himself, but the moist leaves of the
+underwood told quickly of his whereabouts. He tried every hole and
+cranny about the house, but every hole and corner had been stopped by
+Owen's jealous care. He would have lived disgraced for ever in his
+own estimation, had a fox gone to ground anywhere about his domicile.
+At last a loud whoop was heard just in front of the hall door. The
+poor fox, with his last gasp of strength, had betaken himself to the
+thicket before the door, and there the dogs had killed him, at the
+very spot on which Aby Mollett had fallen.
+
+Standing well back from the window, still thinking of Clara Desmond,
+Owen Fitzgerald saw the fate of the hunted animal; he saw the head
+and tail severed from the carcase by old Pat, and the body thrown to
+the hounds,--a ceremony over which he had presided so many scores of
+times; and then, when the dogs had ceased to growl over the bloody
+fragments, he saw the hunt move away, back along the avenue to the
+high road. All this he saw, but still he was thinking of Clara
+Desmond.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+A MUDDY WALK ON A WET MORNING.
+
+
+All that day of the hunt was passed very quietly at Castle Richmond.
+Herbert did not once leave the house, having begged Mr. Somers to
+make his excuse at a Relief Committee which it would have been his
+business to attend. A great portion of the day he spent with his
+father, who lay all but motionless, in a state that was apparently
+half comatose. During all those long hours very little was said
+between them about this tragedy of their family. Why should more be
+said now; now that the worst had befallen them--all that worst, to
+hide which Sir Thomas had endured such superhuman agony? And then
+four or five times during the day he went to his mother, but with her
+he did not stay long. To her he could hardly speak upon any subject,
+for to her as yet the story had not been told.
+
+And she, when he thus came to her from time to time, with a soft word
+or two, or a softer kiss, would ask him no question. She knew that
+he had learned the whole, and knew also from the solemn cloud on his
+brow that that whole must be very dreadful. Indeed we may surmise
+that her woman's heart had by this time guessed somewhat of the
+truth. But she would inquire of no one. Jones, she was sure, knew
+it all; but she did not ask a single question of her servant. It
+would be told to her when it was fitting. Why should she move in the
+matter?
+
+Whenever Herbert entered her room she tried to receive him with
+something of a smile. It was clear enough that she was always glad of
+his coming, and that she made some little show of welcoming him. A
+book was always put away, very softly and by the slightest motion;
+but Herbert well knew what that book was, and whence his mother
+sought that strength which enabled her to live through such an ordeal
+as this.
+
+And his sisters were to be seen, moving slowly about the house like
+the very ghosts of their former selves. Their voices were hardly
+heard; no ring of customary laughter ever came from the room in which
+they sat; when they passed their brother in the house they hardly
+dared to whisper to him. As to sitting down at table now with Mr.
+Prendergast, that effort was wholly abandoned; they kept themselves
+even from the sound of his footsteps.
+
+Aunt Letty perhaps spoke more than the others, but what could she
+speak to the purpose? "Herbert," she once said, as she caught him
+close by the door of the library and almost pulled him into the
+room--"Herbert, I charge you to tell me what all this is!"
+
+"I can tell you nothing, dear aunt, nothing;--nothing as yet."
+
+"But, Herbert, tell me this; is it about my sister?" For very many
+years past Aunt Letty had always called Lady Fitzgerald her sister.
+
+"I can tell you nothing;--nothing to-day."
+
+"Then, to-morrow."
+
+"I do not know--we must let Mr. Prendergast manage this matter as he
+will. I have taken nothing on myself, Aunt Letty--nothing."
+
+"Then I tell you what, Herbert; it will kill me. It will kill us all,
+as it is killing your father and your darling mother. I tell you that
+it is killing her fast. Human nature cannot bear it. For myself I
+could endure anything if I were trusted." And sitting down in one of
+the high-backed library chairs she burst into a flood of tears; a
+sight which, as regarded Aunt Letty, Herbert had never seen before.
+
+What if they all died? thought Herbert to himself in the bitterness
+of the moment. There was that in store for some of them which was
+worse than death. What business had Aunt Letty to talk of her misery?
+Of course she was wretched, as they all were; but how could she
+appreciate the burden that was on his back? What was Clara Desmond to
+her?
+
+Shortly after noon Mr. Prendergast was back at the house; but he
+slunk up to his room, and no one saw anything of him. At half-past
+six he came down, and Herbert constrained himself to sit at the table
+while dinner was served; and so the day passed away. One more day
+only Mr. Prendergast was to stay at Castle Richmond; and then, if,
+as he expected, certain letters should reach him on that morning, he
+was to start for London late on the following day. It may well be
+imagined that he was not desirous of prolonging his visit.
+
+Early on the following morning Herbert started for a long solitary
+walk. On that day Mr. Prendergast was to tell everything to his
+mother, and it was determined between them that her son should not be
+in the house during the telling. In the evening, when he came home,
+he was to see her. So he started on his walk, resolving some other
+things also in his mind before he went. He would reach Desmond Court
+before he returned home that day, and let the two ladies there know
+the fate that was before them. Then, after that, they might let him
+know what was to be his fate;--but on this head he would not hurry
+them.
+
+So he started on his walk, resolving to go round by Gortnaclough on
+his way to Desmond Court, and then to return home from that place.
+The road would be more than twenty long Irish miles; but he felt
+that the hard work would be of service. It was instinct rather than
+thought which taught him that it would be good for him to put some
+strain on the muscles of his body, and thus relieve the muscles of
+his mind. If his limbs could become thoroughly tired,--thoroughly
+tired so that he might wish to rest--then he might hope that for a
+moment he might cease to think of all this sorrow which encompassed
+him.
+
+So he started on his walk, taking with him a thick cudgel and his own
+thoughts. He went away across the demesne and down into the road that
+led away by Gortnaclough and Boherbue towards Castleisland and the
+wilds of county Kerry. As he went, the men about the place refrained
+from speaking to him, for they all knew that bad news had come to the
+big house. They looked at him with lowered eyes and with tenderness
+in their hearts, for they loved the very name of Fitzgerald. The love
+which a poor Irishman feels for the gentleman whom he regards as his
+master--"his masther," though he has probably never received from
+him, in money, wages for a day's work, and in all his intercourse
+has been the man who has paid money and not the man who received
+it--the love which he nevertheless feels, if he has been occasionally
+looked on with a smiling face and accosted with a kindly word, is
+astonishing to an Englishman. I will not say that the feeling is
+altogether good. Love should come of love. Where personal love exists
+on one side, and not even personal regard on the other, there must be
+some mixture of servility. That unbounded respect for human grandeur
+cannot be altogether good; for human greatness, if the greatness be
+properly sifted, it may be so.
+
+He got down into the road, and went forth upon his journey at a rapid
+pace. The mud was deep upon the way, but he went through the thickest
+without a thought of it. He had not been out long before there came
+on a cold, light, drizzling rain, such a rain as gradually but
+surely makes its way into the innermost rag of a man's clothing,
+running up the inside of his waterproof coat, and penetrating by its
+perseverance the very folds of his necktie. Such cold, drizzling rain
+is the commonest phase of hard weather during Irish winters, and
+those who are out and about get used to it and treat it tenderly.
+They are euphemistical as to the weather, calling it hazy and soft,
+and never allowing themselves to carry bad language on such a subject
+beyond the word dull. And yet at such a time one breathes the rain
+and again exhales it, and become as it were oneself a water spirit,
+assuming an aqueous fishlike nature into one's inner fibres. It must
+be acknowledged that a man does sometimes get wet in Ireland; but
+then a wetting there brings no cold in the head, no husky voice, no
+need for multitudinous pocket-handkerchiefs, as it does here in this
+land of catarrhs. It is the east wind and not the rain that kills;
+and of east wind in the south of Ireland they know nothing.
+
+But Herbert walked on quite unmindful of the mist, swinging his thick
+stick in his hand, and ever increasing his pace as he went. He was
+usually a man careful of such things, but it was nothing to him now
+whether he were wet or dry. His mind was so full of the immediate
+circumstances of his destiny that he could not think of small
+external accidents. What was to be his future life in this world, and
+how was he to fight the battle that was now before him? That was the
+question which he continually asked himself, and yet never succeeded
+in answering. How was he to come down from the throne on which early
+circumstances had placed him, and hustle and struggle among the crowd
+for such approach to other thrones as his sinews and shoulders might
+procure for him? If he had been only born to the struggle, he said to
+himself, how easy and pleasant it would have been to him! But to find
+himself thus cast out from his place by an accident--cast out with
+the eyes of all the world upon him; to be talked of, and pointed at,
+and pitied; to have little aids offered him by men whom he regarded
+as beneath him--all this was terribly sore, and the burden was almost
+too much for his strength. "I do not care for the money," he said to
+himself a dozen times; and in saying so he spoke in one sense truly.
+But he did care for things which money buys; for outward respect,
+permission to speak with authority among his fellow-men, for power
+and place, and the feeling that he was prominent in his walk of life.
+To be in advance of other men, that is the desire which is strongest
+in the hearts of all strong men; and in that desire how terrible a
+fall had he not received from this catastrophe!
+
+And what were they all to do, he and his mother and his sisters?
+How were they to act--now, at once? In what way were they to carry
+themselves when this man of law and judgment should have gone from
+them? For himself, his course of action must depend much upon the
+word which might be spoken to him to-day at Desmond Court. There
+would still be a drop of comfort left at the bottom of his cup if he
+might be allowed to hope there. But in truth he feared greatly. What
+the countess would say to him he thought he could foretell; what it
+would behove him to say himself--in matter, though not in words--that
+he knew well. Would not the two sayings tally well together? and
+could it be right for him even to hope that the love of a girl of
+seventeen should stand firm against her mother's will, when her lover
+himself could not dare to press his suit? And then another reflection
+pressed on his mind sorely. Clara had already given up one poor lover
+at her mother's instance; might she not resume that lover, also at
+her mother's instance, now that he was no longer poor? What if Owen
+Fitzgerald should take from him everything!
+
+And so he walked on through the mud and rain, always swinging his big
+stick. Perhaps, after all, the worst of it was over with him, when he
+could argue with himself in this way. It is the first plunge into the
+cold water that gives the shock. We may almost say that every human
+misery will cease to be miserable if it be duly faced; and something
+is done towards conquering our miseries, when we face them in any
+degree, even if not with due courage. Herbert had taken his plunge
+into the deep, dark, cold, comfortless pool of misfortune; and he
+felt that the waters around him were very cold. But the plunge had
+been taken, and the worst, perhaps, was gone by.
+
+As he approached near to Gortnaclough, he came upon one of those
+gangs of road-destroyers who were now at work everywhere, earning
+their pittance of "yellow meal" with a pickaxe and a wheelbarrow. In
+some sort or other the labourers had been got to their work. Gangsmen
+there were with lists, who did see, more or less accurately, that
+the men, before they received their sixpence or eightpence for their
+day's work, did at any rate pass their day with some sort of tool
+in their hands. And consequently the surface of the hill began to
+disappear, and there were chasms in the road, which caused those who
+travelled on wheels to sit still, staring across with angry eyes, and
+sometimes to apostrophize the doer of these deeds with very naughty
+words. The doer was the Board of Works, or the "Board" as it was
+familiarly termed; and were it not that those ill words must have
+returned to the bosoms which vented them, and have flown no further,
+no Board could ever have been so terribly curse-laden. To find
+oneself at last utterly stopped, after proceeding with great strain
+to one's horse for half a mile through an artificial quagmire of
+slush up to the wheelbox, is harassing to the customary traveller;
+and men at that crisis did not bethink themselves quite so frequently
+as they should have done, that a people perishing from famine is more
+harassing.
+
+But Herbert was not on wheels, and was proceeding through the slush
+and across the chasm, regardless of it all, when he was stopped
+by some of the men. All the land thereabouts was Castle Richmond
+property; and it was not probable that the young master of it all
+would be allowed to pass through some two score of his own tenantry
+without greetings, and petitions, and blessings, and complaints.
+
+"Faix, yer honer, thin, Mr. Herbert," said one man, standing at the
+bottom of the hill, with the half-filled wheelbarrow still hanging
+in his hands--an Englishman would have put down the barrow while
+he was speaking, making some inner calculation about the waste of
+his muscles; but an Irishman would despise himself for such low
+economy--"Faix, thin, yer honer, Mr. Herbert; an' it's yourself is a
+sight good for sore eyes. May the heavens be your bed, for it's you
+is the frind to a poor man."
+
+"How are you, Pat?" said Herbert, without intending to stop. "How are
+you, Mooney? I hope the work suits you all." And then he would at
+once have passed on, with his hat pressed down low over his brow.
+
+But this could be by no means allowed. In the first place, the
+excitement arising from the young master's presence was too valuable
+to be lost so suddenly; and then, when might again occur so excellent
+a time for some mention of their heavy grievances? Men whose whole
+amount of worldly good consists in a bare allowance of nauseous food,
+just sufficient to keep body and soul together, must be excused if
+they wish to utter their complaints to ears that can hear them.
+
+"Arrah, yer honer, thin, we're none on us very well; and how could
+we, with the male at a penny a pound?" said Pat.
+
+"Sorrow to it for male," said Mooney. "It's the worst vittles iver a
+man tooked into the inside of him. Saving yer honer's presence it's
+as much as I can do to raise the bare arm of me since the day I first
+began with the yally male."
+
+"It's as wake as cats we all is," said another, who from the weary
+way in which he dragged his limbs about certainly did not himself
+seem to be gifted with much animal strength.
+
+"And the childer is worse, yer honer," said a fourth. "The male is
+bad for them intirely. Saving yer honer's presence, their bellies is
+gone away most to nothing."
+
+"And there's six of us in family, yer honer," said Pat. "Six mouths
+to feed; and what's eight pennorth of yally male among such a lot as
+that; let alone the Sundays, when there's nothing?"
+
+"An' shure, Mr. Herbert," said another, a small man with a squeaking
+voice, whose rags of clothes hardly hung on to his body, "warn't I
+here with the other boys the last Friday as iver was? Ax Pat Condon
+else, yer honer; and yet when they comed to give out the wages, they
+sconced me of--." And so on. There were as many complaints to be made
+as there were men, if only he could bring himself to listen to them.
+
+On ordinary occasions Herbert would listen to them, and answer them,
+and give them, at any rate, the satisfaction which they derived from
+discoursing with him, if he could give them no other satisfaction.
+But now, on this day, with his own burden so heavy at his heart, he
+could not even do this. He could not think of their sorrows; his
+own sorrow seemed to him to be so much the heavier. So he passed on,
+running the gauntlet through them as best he might, and shaking them
+off from him, as they attempted to cling round his steps. Nothing is
+so powerful in making a man selfish as misfortune.
+
+And then he went on to Gortnaclough. He had not chosen his walk
+to this place with any fixed object, except this perhaps, that it
+enabled him to return home round by Desmond Court. It was one of the
+places at which a Relief Committee sat every fortnight, and there was
+a soup-kitchen here, which, however, had not been so successful as
+the one at Berryhill; and it was the place of residence selected by
+Father Barney's coadjutor. But in spite of all this, when Herbert
+found himself in the wretched, dirty, straggling, damp street of the
+village, he did not know what to do or where to betake himself. That
+every eye in Gortnaclough would be upon him was a matter of course.
+He could hardly turn round on his heel and retrace his steps through
+the village, as he would have to do in going to Desmond Court,
+without showing some pretext for his coming there; so he walked into
+the little shop which was attached to the soup-kitchen, and there he
+found the Rev. Mr. Columb Creagh, giving his orders to the little
+girl behind the counter.
+
+Herbert Fitzgerald was customarily very civil to the Roman Catholic
+priests around him,--somewhat more so, indeed, than seemed good to
+those very excellent ladies, Mrs. Townsend and Aunt Letty; but it
+always went against the grain with him to be civil to the Rev. Columb
+Creagh; and on this special day it would have gone against the
+grain with him to be civil to anybody. But the coadjutor knew his
+character, and was delighted to have an opportunity of talking to
+him, when he could do so without being snubbed either by Mr. Somers,
+the chairman, or by his own parish priest. Mr. Creagh had rejoiced
+much at the idea of forming one at the same council board with county
+magistrates and Protestant parsons; but the fruition of his promised
+delights had never quite reached his lips. He had been like Sancho
+Panza in his government; he had sat down to the grand table day after
+day, but had never yet been allowed to enjoy the rich dish of his
+own oratory. Whenever he had proposed to help himself, Mr. Somers or
+Father Barney had stopped his mouth. Now probably he might be able to
+say a word or two; and though the glory would not be equal to that of
+making a speech at the Committee, still it would be something to be
+seen talking on equal terms, and on affairs of state, to the young
+heir of Castle Richmond.
+
+"Mr. Fitzgerald! well, I declare! And how are you, sir?" And he took
+off his hat and bowed, and got hold of Herbert's hand, shaking it
+ruthlessly; and altogether he made him very disagreeable.
+
+Herbert, though his mind was not really intent on the subject, asked
+some question of the girl as to the amount of meal that had been
+sold, and desired to see the little passbook that they kept at the
+shop.
+
+"We are doing pretty well, Mr. Fitzgerald," said the coadjutor;
+"pretty well. I always keep my eye on, for fear things should go
+wrong, you know."
+
+"I don't think they'll do that," said Herbert.
+
+"No; I hope not. But it's always good to be on the safe side, you
+know. And to tell you the truth, I don't think we're altogether on
+the right tack about them shops. It's very hard on a poor woman--"
+
+Now the fact was, though the Relief Committee at Gortnaclough was
+attended by magistrates, priests, and parsons, the shop there was
+Herbert Fitzgerald's own affair. It had been stocked with his or his
+father's money; the flour was sold without profit at his risk, and
+the rent of the house and wages of the woman who kept it came out of
+his own pocket-money. Under these circumstances he did not see cause
+why Mr. Creagh should interfere, and at the present moment was not
+well inclined to put up with such interference.
+
+"We do the best we can, Mr. Creagh," said he, interrupting the
+priest. "And no good will be done at such a time as this by
+unnecessary difficulties."
+
+"No, no, certainly not. But still I do think--" And Mr. Creagh was
+girding up his loins for eloquence, when he was again interrupted.
+
+"I am rather in a hurry to-day," said Herbert, "and therefore, if you
+please, we won't make any change now. Never mind the book to-day,
+Sally. Good day, Mr. Creagh." And so saying, he left the shop and
+walked rapidly back out of the village.
+
+The poor coadjutor was left alone at the shop-door, anathematizing in
+his heart the pride of all Protestants. He had been told that this
+Mr. Fitzgerald was different from others, that he was a man fond of
+priests and addicted to the "ould religion;" and so hearing, he had
+resolved to make the most of such an excellent disposition. But he
+was forced to confess to himself that they were all alike. Mr. Somers
+could not have been more imperious, nor Mr. Townsend more insolent.
+
+And then, through the still drizzling rain, Herbert walked on to
+Desmond Court. By the time that he reached the desolate-looking lodge
+at the demesne gate, he was nearly wet through, and was besmeared
+with mud up to his knees. But he had thought nothing of this as he
+walked along. His mind had been intent on the scene that was before
+him. In what words was he to break the news to Clara Desmond and
+her mother? and with what words would they receive the tidings? The
+former question he had by no means answered to his own satisfaction,
+when, all muddy and wet, he passed up to the house through that
+desolate gate.
+
+"Is Lady Desmond at home?" he asked of the butler. "Her ladyship is
+at home," said the gray-haired old man, with his blandest smile, "and
+so is Lady Clara." He had already learned to look on the heir of
+Castle Richmond as the coming saviour of the impoverished Desmond
+family.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+COMFORTLESS.
+
+
+"But, Mr. Herbert, yer honor, you're wet through and
+through--surely," said the butler, as soon as Fitzgerald was well
+inside the hall. Herbert muttered something about his being only
+damp, and that it did not signify. But it did signify,--very
+much,--in the butler's estimation. Whose being wet through could
+signify more; for was not Mr. Herbert to be a baronet, and to have
+the spending of twelve thousand a year; and would he not be the
+future husband of Lady Clara? not signify indeed!
+
+"An' shure, Mr. Herbert, you haven't walked to Desmond Court this
+blessed morning. Tare an' ages! Well; there's no knowing what you
+young gentlemen won't do. But I'll see and get a pair of trousers of
+my Lord's ready for you in two minutes. Faix, and he's nearly as big
+as yourself, now, Mr. Herbert."
+
+But Herbert would hardly speak to him, and gave no assent whatever as
+to his proposition for borrowing the Earl's clothes. "I'll go in as
+I am," said he. And the old man looking into his face saw that there
+was something wrong. "Shure an' he ain't going to sthrike off now,"
+said this Irish Caleb Balderstone to himself. He also as well as some
+others about Desmond Court had feared greatly that Lady Clara would
+throw herself away upon a poor lover.
+
+It was now past noon, and Fitzgerald pressed forward into the room
+in which Lady Clara usually sat. It was the same in which she had
+received Owen's visit, and here of a morning she was usually to be
+found alone; but on this occasion when he opened the door he found
+that her mother was with her. Since the day on which Clara had
+disposed of herself so excellently, the mother had spent more of
+her time with her daughter. Looking at Clara now through Herbert
+Fitzgerald's eyes, the Countess had began to confess to herself that
+her child did possess beauty and charm.
+
+She got up to greet her future son-in-law with a sweet smile and that
+charming quiet welcome with which a woman so well knows how to make
+her house pleasant to a man that is welcome to it. And Clara, not
+rising, but turning her head round and looking at him, greeted him
+also. He came forward and took both their hands, and it was not till
+he had held Clara's for half a minute in his own that they both saw
+that he was more than ordinarily serious. "I hope Sir Thomas is not
+worse," said Lady Desmond, with that voice of feigned interest which
+is so common. After all, if anything should happen to the poor old
+weak gentleman, might it not be as well?
+
+"My father has not been very well these last two days," he said.
+
+"I am so sorry," said Clara. "And your mother, Herbert?"
+
+"But Herbert, how wet you are. You must have walked," said the
+Countess.
+
+Herbert, in a few dull words said that he had walked. He had thought
+that the walk would be good for him, and he had not expected that it
+would be so wet. And then Lady Desmond, looking carefully into his
+face, saw that in truth he was very serious;--so much so that she
+knew that he had come there on account of his seriousness. But still
+his sorrow did not in any degree go to her heart. He was grieving
+doubtless for his father,--or his mother. The house at Castle
+Richmond was probably sad, because sickness and fear of death were
+there;--nay perhaps death itself now hanging over some loved head.
+But what was this to her? She had had her own sorrows;--enough of
+them perhaps to account for her being selfish. So with a solemn face,
+but with nothing amiss about her heart, she again asked for tidings
+from Castle Richmond.
+
+"Do tell us," said Clara, getting up. "I am afraid Sir Thomas is very
+ill." The old baronet had been kind to her, and she did regard him.
+To her it was a sorrow to think that there should be any sorrow at
+Castle Richmond.
+
+"Yes; he is ill," said Herbert. "We have had a gentleman from London
+with us for the last few days--a friend of my father's. His name is
+Mr. Prendergast."
+
+"Is he a doctor?" asked the Countess.
+
+"No, not a doctor," said Herbert. "He is a lawyer."
+
+It was very hard for him to begin his story; and perhaps the more so
+in that he was wet through and covered with mud. He now felt cold and
+clammy, and began to have an idea that he should not be seated there
+in that room in such a guise. Clara, too, had instinctively learned
+from his face, and tone, and general bearing that something truly was
+the matter. At other times when he had been there, since that day on
+which he had been accepted, he had been completely master of himself.
+Perhaps it had almost been deemed a fault in him that he had had none
+of the timidity or hesitation of a lover. He had seemed to feel, no
+doubt, that he, with his fortune and position at his back, need feel
+no scruple in accepting as his own the fair hand for which he had
+asked. But now--nothing could be more different from this than his
+manner was now.
+
+Lady Desmond was now surprised, though probably not as yet
+frightened. Why should a lawyer have come from London to visit Sir
+Thomas at a period of such illness? and why should Herbert have
+walked over to Desmond Court to tell them of this illness? There must
+be something in this lawyer's coming which was intended to bear in
+some way on her daughter's marriage. "But, Herbert," she said, "you
+are quite wet. Will you not put on some of Patrick's things?"
+
+"No, thank you," said he; "I shall not stay long. I shall soon have
+said what I have got to say."
+
+"But do, Herbert," said Clara. "I cannot bear to see you so
+uncomfortable. And then you will not be in such a hurry to go back."
+
+"Ill as my father is," said he, "I cannot stay long; but I have
+thought it my duty to come over and tell you--tell you what has
+happened at Castle Richmond."
+
+And now the countess was frightened. There was that in Herbert's tone
+of voice and the form of his countenance which was enough to frighten
+any woman. What had happened at Castle Richmond? what could have
+happened there to make necessary the presence of a lawyer, and at the
+same time thus to sadden her future son-in-law? And Clara also was
+frightened, though she knew not why. His manner was so different from
+that which was usual; he was so cold, and serious, and awe-struck,
+that she could not but be unhappy.
+
+"And what is it?" said the Countess.
+
+Herbert then sat for a few minutes silent, thinking how best he
+should tell them his story. He had been all the morning resolving to
+tell it, but he had in nowise as yet fixed upon any method. It was
+all so terribly tragic, so frightful in the extent of its reality,
+that he hardly knew how it would be possible for him to get through
+his task.
+
+"I hope that no misfortune has come upon any of the family," said
+Lady Desmond, now beginning to think that there might be misfortunes
+which would affect her own daughter more nearly than the illness
+either of the baronet or of his wife.
+
+"Oh, I hope not!" said Clara, getting up and clasping her hands.
+"What is it, Herbert? why don't you speak?" And coming round to him,
+she took hold of his arm.
+
+"Dearest Clara," he said, looking at her with more tenderness than
+had ever been usual with him, "I think that you had better leave us.
+I could tell it better to your mother alone."
+
+"Do, Clara, love. Go, dearest, and we will call you by-and-by."
+
+Clara moved away very slowly towards the door, and then she turned
+round. "If it is anything that makes you unhappy, Herbert," she said,
+"I must know it before you leave me."
+
+"Yes, yes; either I or your mother--. You shall be told, certainly."
+
+"Yes, yes, you shall be told," said the countess. "And now go, my
+darling." Thus dismissed, Clara did go, and betook herself to her own
+chamber. Had Owen had sorrows to tell her, he would have told them to
+herself; of that she was quite sure. "And now, Herbert, for heaven's
+sake what is it?" said the countess, pale with terror. She was fully
+certain now that something was to be spoken which would be calculated
+to interfere with her daughter's prospects.
+
+We all know the story which Herbert had to tell, and we need not
+therefore again be present at the telling of it. Sitting there, wet
+through, in Lady Desmond's drawing-room, he did contrive to utter it
+all--the whole of it from the beginning to the end, making it clearly
+to be understood that he was no longer Fitzgerald of Castle Richmond,
+but a nameless, pennyless outcast, without the hope of portion or
+position, doomed from henceforth to earn his bread in the sweat of
+his brow--if only he could be fortunate enough to find the means of
+earning it.
+
+Nor did Lady Desmond once interrupt him in his story. She sat
+perfectly still, listening to him almost with unmoved face. She was
+too wise to let him know what the instant working of her mind might
+be before she had made her own fixed resolve; and she had conceived
+the truth much before he had completed the telling of it. We
+generally use three times the number of words which are necessary
+for the purpose which we have in hand; but had he used six times the
+number, she would not have interrupted him. It was good in him to
+give her this time to determine in what tone and with what words
+she would speak, when speaking on her part should become absolutely
+necessary. "And now," he concluded by saying--and at this time he
+was standing up on the rug--"you know it all, Lady Desmond. It will
+perhaps be best that Clara should learn it from you."
+
+He had said not a word of giving up his pretensions to Lady Clara's
+hand; but then neither had he in any way hinted that the match
+should, in his opinion, be regarded as unbroken. He had not spoken of
+his sorrow at bringing down all this poverty on his wife; and surely
+he would have so spoken had he thought their engagement was still
+valid; but then he had not himself pointed out that the engagement
+must necessarily be broken, as, in Lady Desmond's opinion, he
+certainly should have done.
+
+"Yes," said she, in a cold, low, meaningless voice--in a voice that
+told nothing by its tones--"Lady Clara had better hear it from me."
+But in the title which she gave her daughter, Herbert instantly read
+his doom. He, however, remained silent. It was for the countess now
+to speak.
+
+"But it is possible it may not be true," she said, speaking almost in
+a whisper, looking, not into his face, but by him, at the fire.
+
+"It is possible; but so barely possible, that I did not think it
+right to keep the matter from you any longer."
+
+"It would have been very wrong--very wicked, I may say," said the
+countess.
+
+"It is only two days since I knew anything of it myself," said he,
+vindicating himself.
+
+"You were of course bound to let me know immediately," she said,
+harshly.
+
+"And I have let you know immediately, Lady Desmond." And then they
+were both again silent for a while.
+
+"And Mr. Prendergast thinks there is no doubt?" she asked.
+
+"None," said Herbert, very decidedly.
+
+"And he has told your cousin Owen?"
+
+"He did so yesterday; and by this time my poor mother knows it also."
+And then there was another period of silence.
+
+During the whole time Lady Desmond had uttered no one word of
+condolence--not a syllable of commiseration for all the sufferings
+that had come upon Herbert and his family; and he was beginning to
+hate her for her harshness. The tenor of her countenance had become
+hard; and she received all his words as a judge might have taken
+them, merely wanting evidence before he pronounced his verdict. The
+evidence she was beginning to think sufficient, and there could be no
+doubt as to her verdict. After what she had heard, a match between
+Herbert Fitzgerald and her daughter would be out of the question.
+"It is very dreadful," she said, thinking only of her own child, and
+absolutely shivering at the danger which had been incurred.
+
+"It is very dreadful," said Herbert, shivering also. It was almost
+incredible to him that his great sorrow should be received in such a
+way by one who had professed to be so dear a friend to him.
+
+"And what do you propose to do, Mr. Fitzgerald?" said the countess.
+
+"What do I propose?" he said, repeating her words. "Hitherto I have
+had neither time nor heart to propose anything. Such a misfortune
+as that which I have told you does not break upon a man without
+disturbing for a while his power of resolving. I have thought so much
+of my mother, and of Clara, since Mr. Prendergast told me all this,
+that--that--that--" And then a slight gurgling struggle fell upon his
+throat and hindered him from speaking. He did not quite sob out, and
+he determined that he would not do so. If she could be so harsh and
+strong, he would be harsh and strong also.
+
+And again Lady Desmond sat silent, still thinking how she had better
+speak and act. After all she was not so cruel nor so bad as Herbert
+Fitzgerald thought her. What had the Fitzgeralds done for her that
+she should sorrow for their sorrows? She had lived there, in that old
+ugly barrack, long desolate, full of dreary wretchedness and poverty,
+and Lady Fitzgerald in her prosperity had never come to her to soften
+the hardness of her life. She had come over to Ireland a countess,
+and a countess she had been, proud enough at first in her little
+glory--too proud, no doubt; and proud enough afterwards in her
+loneliness and poverty; and there she had lived--alone. Whether the
+fault had been her own or no, she owed little to the kindness of any
+one; for no one had done aught to relieve her bitterness. And then
+her weak puny child had grown up in the same shade, and was now a
+lovely woman, gifted with high birth, and that special priceless
+beauty which high blood so often gives. There was a prize now within
+the walls of that old barrack--something to be won--something for
+which a man would strive, and a mother smile that her son might win
+it. And now Lady Fitzgerald had come to her. She had never complained
+of this, she said to herself. The bargain between Clara Desmond and
+Herbert Fitzgerald had been good for both of them, and let it be
+made and settled as a bargain. Young Herbert Fitzgerald had money
+and position; her daughter had beauty and high blood. Let it be a
+bargain. But in all this there was nothing to make her love that rich
+prosperous family at Castle Richmond. There are those whose nature
+it is to love new-found friends at a few hours' warning, but the
+Countess of Desmond was not one of them. The bargain had been made,
+and her daughter would have been able to perform her part of it. She
+was still able to give that which she had stipulated to give. But
+Herbert Fitzgerald was now a bankrupt, and could give nothing! Would
+it not have been madness to suppose that the bargain should still
+hold good?
+
+One person and one only had come to her at Desmond Court, whose
+coming had been a solace to her weariness. Of all those among whom
+she had lived in cold desolateness for so many years, one only had
+got near her heart. There had been but one Irish voice that she
+had cared to hear; and the owner of that voice had loved her child
+instead of loving her.
+
+And she had borne that wretchedness too, if not well, at least
+bravely. True she had separated that lover from her daughter; but the
+circumstances of both had made it right for her, as a mother, to do
+so. What mother, circumstanced as she had been, would have given her
+girl to Owen Fitzgerald? So she had banished from the house the only
+voice that sounded sweetly in her ears, and again she had been alone.
+
+And then, perhaps, thoughts had come to her, when Herbert Fitzgerald
+was frequent about the place, a rich and thriving wooer, that Owen
+might come again to Desmond Court, when Clara had gone to Castle
+Richmond. Years were stealing over her. Ah, yes. She knew that full
+well. All her youth and the pride of her days she had given up for
+that countess-ship which she now wore so gloomily--given up for
+pieces of gold which had turned to stone and slate and dirt within
+her grasp. Years, alas, were fast stealing over her! But nevertheless
+she had something to give. Her woman's beauty was not all faded; and
+she had a heart which was as yet virgin--which had hitherto loved
+no other man. Might not that suffice to cover a few years, seeing
+that in return she wanted nothing but love? And so she had thought,
+lingering over her hopes, while Herbert was there at his wooing.
+
+It may be imagined with what feelings at her heart she had seen and
+listened to the frantic attempt made by Owen to get back his childish
+love. But that too she had borne, bravely, if not well. It had not
+angered her that her child was loved by the only man she had ever
+loved herself. She had stroked her daughter's hair that day, and
+kissed her cheek, and bade her be happy with her better, richer
+lover. And had she not been right in this? Nor had she been angry
+even with Owen. She could forgive him all, because she loved him. But
+might there not even yet be a chance for her when Clara should in
+very truth have gone to Castle Richmond?
+
+But now! How was she to think about all this now? And thinking of
+these things, how was it possible that she should have heart left to
+feel for the miseries of Lady Fitzgerald? With all her miseries would
+not Lady Fitzgerald still be more fortunate than she? Let come what
+might, Lady Fitzgerald had had a life of prosperity and love. No; she
+could not think of Lady Fitzgerald, nor of Herbert: she could only
+think of Owen Fitzgerald, of her daughter, and of herself.
+
+He, Owen, was now the heir to Castle Richmond, and would, as far
+as she could learn, soon become the actual possessor. He, who had
+been cast forth from Desmond Court as too poor and contemptible in
+the world's eye to be her daughter's suitor, would become the rich
+inheritor of all those broad acres, and that old coveted family
+honour. And this Owen still loved her daughter--loved her not as
+Herbert did, with a quiet, gentleman-like, every-day attachment, but
+with the old, true, passionate love of which she had read in books,
+and dreamed herself, before she had sold herself to be a countess.
+That Owen did so love her daughter, she was very sure. And then, as
+to her daughter; that she did not still love this new heir in her
+heart of hearts--of that the mother was by no means sure. That her
+child had chosen the better part in choosing money and a title, she
+had not doubted; and that having so chosen Clara would be happy,--of
+that also she did not doubt. Clara was young, she would say, and her
+heart in a few months would follow her hand.
+
+But now! How was she to decide, sitting there with Herbert Fitzgerald
+before her, gloomy as death, cold, shivering, and muddy, telling of
+his own disasters with no more courage than a whipped dog? As she
+looked at him she declared to herself twenty times in half a second
+that he had not about him a tithe of the manhood of his cousin Owen.
+Women love a bold front, and a voice that will never own its master
+to have been beaten in the world's fight. Had Owen came there with
+such a story, he would have claimed his right boldly to the lady's
+hand, in spite of all that the world had done to him.
+
+"Let her have him," said Lady Desmond to herself; and the struggle
+within her bosom was made and over. No wonder that Herbert, looking
+into her face for pity, should find that she was harsh and cruel. She
+had been sacrificing herself, and had completed the sacrifice. Owen
+Fitzgerald, the heir to Castle Richmond, Sir Owen as he would soon
+be, should have her daughter. They two, at any rate, should be happy.
+And she--she would live there at Desmond Court, lonely as she had
+ever lived. While all this was passing through her mind, she hardly
+thought of Herbert and his sorrows. That he must be given up and
+abandoned, and left to make what best fight he could by himself; as
+to that how was it possible that she as a mother should have any
+doubt?
+
+And yet it was a pity--a thousand pities. Herbert Fitzgerald, with
+his domestic virtues, his industry and thorough respectability, would
+so exactly have suited Clara's taste and mode of life--had he only
+continued to be the heir of Castle Richmond. She and Owen would not
+enter upon the world together with nearly the same fair chance of
+happiness. Who could prophecy to what Owen might be led with his
+passionate impulses, his strong will, his unbridled temper, and his
+love of pleasure? That he was noble-hearted, affectionate, brave, and
+tender in his inmost spirit, Lady Desmond was very sure; but were
+such the qualities which would make her daughter happy? When Clara
+should come to know her future lord as Clara's mother knew him, would
+Clara love him and worship him as her mother did? The mother believed
+that Clara had not in her bosom heart enough for such a love. But
+then, as I have said before, the mother did not know the daughter.
+
+"You say that you will break all this to Clara," said Herbert, having
+during this silence turned over some of his thoughts also in his
+mind. "If so I may as well leave you now. You can imagine that I am
+anxious to get back to my mother."
+
+"Yes, it will be better that I should tell her. It is very sad, very
+sad, very sad indeed."
+
+"Yes; it is a hard load for a man to bear," he answered, speaking
+very, very slowly. "But for myself I think I can bear it, if--"
+
+"If what?" asked the countess.
+
+"If Clara can bear it."
+
+And now it was necessary that Lady Desmond should speak out. She did
+not mean to be unnecessarily harsh; but she did mean to be decided,
+and as she spoke her face became stern and ill-favoured. "That
+Clara will be terribly distressed," she said, "terribly, terribly
+distressed," repeating her words with great emphasis, "of that I am
+quite sure. She is very young, and will, I hope, in time get over it.
+And then too I think she is one whose feelings, young as she is, have
+never conquered her judgment. Therefore I do believe that, with God's
+mercy, she will be able to bear it. But, Mr. Fitzgerald--"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Of course you feel with me--and I am sure that with your excellent
+judgment it is a thing of course--that everything must be over
+between you and Lady Clara." And then she came to a full stop as
+though all had been said that could be considered necessary.
+
+Herbert did not answer at once, but stood there shivering and shaking
+in his misery. He was all but overcome by the chill of his wet
+garments; and though he struggled to throw off the dead feeling of
+utter cold which struck him to the heart, he was quite unable to
+master it. He could hardly forgive himself that on such an occasion
+he should have been so conquered by his own outer feelings, but now
+he could not help himself. He was weak with hunger too--though he did
+not know it, for he had hardly eaten food that day, and was nearly
+exhausted with the unaccustomed amount of hard exercise which he had
+taken. He was moreover thoroughly wet through, and heavy laden with
+the mud of the road. It was no wonder that Lady Desmond had said to
+herself that he looked like a whipped dog.
+
+"That must be as Lady Clara shall decide," he said at last, barely
+uttering the words through his chattering teeth.
+
+"It must be as I say," said the countess firmly; "whether by her
+decision or by yours--or if necessary by mine. But if your feelings
+are, as I take them to be, those of a man of honour, you will not
+leave it to me or to her. What! now that you have the world to
+struggle with, would you seek to drag her down into the struggle?"
+
+"Our union was to be for better or worse. I would have given her all
+the better, and--"
+
+"Yes; and had there been a union she would have bravely borne her
+part in sharing the worst. But who ought to be so thankful as you
+that this truth has broken upon you before you had clogged yourself
+with a wife of high birth but without fortune? Alone, a man educated
+as you are, with your talents, may face the world without fearing
+anything. But how could you make your way now if my daughter were
+your wife? When you think of it, Mr. Fitzgerald, you will cease to
+wish for it."
+
+"Never; I have given my heart to your daughter, and I cannot take
+back the gift. She has accepted it, and she cannot return it."
+
+"And what would you have her do?" Lady Desmond asked, with anger and
+almost passion in her voice.
+
+"Wait--as I must wait," said Herbert. "That will be her duty, as I
+believe it will also be her wish."
+
+"Yes, and wear out her young heart here in solitude for the next
+ten years, and then learn when her beauty and her youth are gone--.
+But no, Mr. Fitzgerald; I will not allow myself to contemplate
+such a prospect either for her or for you. Under the lamentable
+circumstances which you have now told me it is imperative that this
+match should be broken off. Ask your own mother and hear what she
+will say. And if you are a man you will not throw upon my poor child
+the hard task of declaring that it must be so. You, by your calamity,
+are unable to perform your contract with her; and it is for you to
+announce that that contract is therefore over."
+
+Herbert in his present state was unable to argue with Lady Desmond.
+He had in his brain, and mind, and heart, and soul--at least so he
+said to himself afterwards, having perhaps but a loose idea of the
+different functions of these four different properties--a thorough
+conviction that as he and Clara had sworn to each other that for life
+they would live together and love each other, no misfortune to either
+of them could justify the other in breaking that oath;--could even
+justify him in breaking it, though he was the one on whom misfortune
+had fallen. He, no doubt, had first loved Clara for her beauty; but
+would he have ceased to love her, or have cast her from him, if,
+by God's will, her beauty had perished and gone from her? Would he
+not have held her closer to his heart, and told her, with strong
+comforting vows, that his love had now gone deeper than that; that
+they were already of the same bone, of the same flesh, of the same
+family and hearthstone? He knew himself in this, and knew that he
+would have been proud so to do, and so to feel,--that he would have
+cast from him with utter indignation any who would have counselled
+him to do or to feel differently. And why should Clara's heart be
+different from his?
+
+All this, I say, was his strong conviction. But, nevertheless, her
+heart might be different. She might look on that engagement of theirs
+with altogether other thoughts and other ideas; and if so his voice
+should never reproach her;--not his voice, however his heart might
+do so. Such might be the case with her, but he did not think it; and
+therefore he would not pronounce that decision which Clara's mother
+expected from him.
+
+"When you have told her of this, I suppose I may be allowed to see
+her," he said, avoiding the direct proposition which Lady Desmond had
+made to him.
+
+"Allowed to see her?" said Lady Desmond, now also in her turn
+speaking very slowly. "I cannot answer that question as yet; not
+quite immediately, I should say. But if you will leave the matter in
+my hands, I will write to you, if not to-morrow, then the next day."
+
+"I would sooner that she should write."
+
+"I cannot promise that--I do not know how far her good sense and
+strength may support her under this affliction. That she will suffer
+terribly, on your account as well as on her own, you may be quite
+sure." And then, again, there was a pause of some moments.
+
+"I at any rate shall write to her," he then said, "and shall tell
+her that I expect her to see me. Her will in this matter shall be my
+will. If she thinks that her misery will be greater in being engaged
+to a poor man, than,--than in relinquishing her love, she shall hear
+no word from me to overpersuade her. But, Lady Desmond, I will say
+nothing that shall authorize her to think that she is given up by me,
+till I have in some way learned from herself, what her own feelings
+are. And now I will say good-bye to you."
+
+"Good-bye," said the countess, thinking that it might be as well that
+the interview should be ended. "But, Mr. Fitzgerald, you are very
+wet; and I fear that you are very cold. You had better take something
+before you go." Countess as she was she had no carriage in which she
+could send him home; no horse even on which he could ride. "Nothing,
+thank you, Lady Desmond," he said; and so, without offering her the
+courtesy of his hand he walked out of the room.
+
+He was very angry with her, as he tried to make the blood run
+quicker in his veins by hurrying down the avenue into the road at
+his quickest pace. So angry with her, that for a while, in his
+indignation, he almost forgot his father and his mother and his own
+family tragedy. That she should have wished to save her daughter
+from such a marriage might have been natural; but that she should
+have treated him so coldly, so harshly--without one spark of love
+or pity,--him, who to her had been so loyal during his courtship of
+her daughter! It was almost incredible to him. Was not his story one
+that would have melted the heart of a stranger--at which men would
+weep? He himself had seen tears in the eyes of that dry time-worn
+world-used London lawyer, as the full depth of the calamity had
+forced itself upon his heart. Yes, Mr. Prendergast had not been able
+to repress his tears when he told the tale; but Lady Desmond had shed
+no tears when the tale had been told to her. No soft woman's message
+had been sent to the afflicted mother on whom it had pleased God to
+allow so heavy a hand to fall. No word of tenderness had been uttered
+for the sinking father. There had been no feeling for the household
+which was to have been so nearly linked with her own. No. Looking
+round with greedy eyes for wealth for her daughter, Lady Desmond
+had found a match that suited her. Now that match no longer suited
+her greed, and she could throw from her without a struggle to her
+feelings the suitor that was now poor, and the family of the suitor
+that was now neither grand nor powerful.
+
+And then too he felt angry with Clara, though he knew that as yet, at
+any rate, he had no cause. In spite of what he had said and felt, he
+would imagine to himself that she also would be cold and untrue. "Let
+her go," he said to himself. "Love is worth nothing--nothing if it
+does not believe itself to be of more worth than everything beside.
+If she does not love me now in my misery--if she would not choose me
+now for her husband--her love has never been worthy the name. Love
+that has no faith in itself, that does not value itself above all
+worldly things, is nothing. If it be not so with her, let her go back
+to him."
+
+It may easily be understood who was the him. And then Herbert walked
+on so rapidly that at length his strength almost failed him, and in
+his exhaustion he had more than once to lean against a gate on the
+road-side. With difficulty at last he got home, and dragged himself
+up the long avenue to the front door. Even yet he was not warm
+through to his heart, and he felt as he entered the house that he was
+quite unfitted for the work which he might yet have to do before he
+could go to his bed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+COMFORTED.
+
+
+When Herbert Fitzgerald got back to Castle Richmond it was nearly
+dark. He opened the hall door without ringing the bell, and walking
+at once into the dining-room, threw himself into a large leathern
+chair which always stood near the fire-place. There was a bright fire
+burning on the hearth, and he drew himself close to it, putting his
+wet feet up on to the fender, thinking that he would at any rate warm
+himself before he went in among any of the family. The room, with
+its deep red curtains and ruby-embossed paper, was almost dark, and
+he knew that he might remain there unseen and unnoticed for the
+next half hour. If he could only get a glass of wine! He tried the
+cellaret, which was as often open as locked, but now unfortunately
+it was closed. In such a case it was impossible to say whether the
+butler had the key or Aunt Letty; so he sat himself down without that
+luxury.
+
+By this time, as he well knew, all would have been told to his
+mother, and his first duty would be to go to her--to go to her and
+comfort her, if comfort might be possible, by telling her that he
+could bear it all; that as far as he was concerned title and wealth
+and a proud name were as nothing to him in comparison with his
+mother's love. In whatever guise he may have appeared before Lady
+Desmond, he would not go to his mother with a fainting heart. She
+should not hear his teeth chatter, nor see his limbs shake. So he sat
+himself down there that he might become warm, and in five minutes he
+was fast asleep.
+
+How long he slept he did not know; not very long, probably; but
+when he awoke it was quite dark. He gazed at the fire for a moment,
+bethought himself of where he was and why, shook himself to get rid
+of his slumber, and then roused himself in his chair. As he did so a
+soft sweet voice close to his shoulder spoke to him. "Herbert," it
+said, "are you awake?" And he found that his mother, seated by his
+side on a low stool, had been watching him in his sleep.
+
+"Mother!" he exclaimed.
+
+"Herbert, my child, my son!" And the mother and son were fast locked
+in each other's arms.
+
+He had sat down there thinking how he would go to his mother and
+offer her solace in her sorrow; how he would bid her be of good
+cheer, and encourage her to bear the world as the world had now
+fallen to her lot. He had pictured to himself that he would find
+her sinking in despair, and had promised himself that with his
+vows, his kisses, and his prayers, he would bring her back to her
+self-confidence, and induce her to acknowledge that God's mercy was
+yet good to her. But now, on awakening, he discovered that she had
+been tending him in his misery, and watching him while he slept, that
+she might comfort him with her caresses the moment that he awoke to
+the remembrance of his misfortunes.
+
+"Herbert, Herbert, my son, my son!" she said again, as she pressed
+him close in her arms.
+
+"Mother, has he told you?"
+
+Yes, she had learned it all; but hardly more than she had known
+before; or, at any rate, not more than she had expected. As she now
+told him, for many days past she had felt that this trouble which had
+fallen upon his father must have come from the circumstances of their
+marriage. And she would have spoken out, she said, when the idea
+became clear to her, had she not then been told that Mr. Prendergast
+had been invited to come thither from London. Then she knew that she
+had better remain silent, at any rate till his visit had been made.
+
+And Herbert again sat in the chair, and his mother crouched, or
+almost kneeled, on the cushion at his knee. "Dearest, dearest,
+dearest mother," he said, as he supported her head against his
+shoulder, "we must love each other now more than ever we have loved."
+
+"And you forgive us, Herbert, for all that we have done to you?"
+
+"Mother, if you speak in that way to me you will kill me. My darling,
+darling mother!"
+
+There was but little more said between them upon the matter--but
+little more, at least, in words; but there was an infinity of
+caresses, and deep--deep assurances of undying love and confidence.
+And then she asked him about his bride, and he told her where he
+had been, and what had happened. "You must not claim her, Herbert,"
+she said to him. "God is good, and will teach you to bear even that
+also."
+
+"Must I not?" he asked, with a sadly plaintive voice.
+
+"No, my child. You invited her to share your prosperity, and would it
+be just--"
+
+"But, mother, if she wills it?"
+
+"It is for you to give her back her troth, then leave it to time and
+her own heart."
+
+"But if she love me, mother, she will not take back her troth. Would
+I take back hers because she was in sorrow?"
+
+"Men and women, Herbert, are different. The oak cares not whether the
+creeper which hangs to it be weak or strong. If it be weak the oak
+can give it strength. But the staff which has to support the creeper
+must needs have strength of its own."
+
+He made no further answer to her, but understood that he must do as
+she bade him. He understood now also, without many arguments within
+himself, that he had no right to expect from Clara Desmond that
+adherence to him and his misfortunes which he would have owed to her
+had she been unfortunate. He understood this now; but still he hoped.
+"Two hearts that have once become as one cannot be separated," he
+said to himself that night, as he resolved that it was his duty to
+write to her, unconditionally returning to her her pledges.
+
+"But, Herbert, what a state you are in!" said Lady Fitzgerald, as
+the flame of the coal glimmering out, threw a faint light upon his
+clothes.
+
+"Yes, mother; I have been walking."
+
+"And you are wet!"
+
+"I am nearly dry now. I was wet. But, mother, I am tired and fagged.
+It would do me good if I could get a glass of wine."
+
+She rang the bell, and gave her orders calmly--though every servant
+in the house now knew the whole truth,--and then lit a candle
+herself, and looked at him. "My child, what have you done to
+yourself? Oh, Herbert, you will be ill!" And then, with his arm round
+her waist, she took him up to her own room, and sat by him while he
+took off his muddy boots and clammy socks, and made him hot drinks,
+and tended him as she had done when he was a child. And yet she
+had that day heard of her great ruin! With truth, indeed, had Mr.
+Prendergast said that she was made of more enduring material than Sir
+Thomas.
+
+And she endeavoured to persuade him to go to his bed; but in this he
+would not listen to her. He must, he said, see his father that night.
+"You have been with him, mother, since--since--."
+
+"Oh, yes; directly after Mr. Prendergast left me."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"He cried like a child, Herbert. We both sobbed together like two
+children. It was very piteous. But I think I left him better than he
+has been. He knows now that those men cannot come again to harass
+him."
+
+Herbert gnashed his teeth, and clenched his fist as he thought of
+them; but he could not speak of them, or mention their name before
+his mother. What must her thoughts be, as she remembered that elder
+man and looked back to her early childhood!
+
+"He is very weak," she went on to say: "almost helplessly weak now,
+and does not seem to think of leaving his bed. I have begged him to
+let me send to Dublin for Sir Henry; but he says that nothing ails
+him."
+
+"And who is with him now, mother?"
+
+"The girls are both there."
+
+"And Mr. Prendergast?"
+
+Lady Fitzgerald then explained to him, that Mr. Prendergast had
+returned to Dublin that afternoon, starting twenty-four hours
+earlier than he intended,--or, at any rate, than he had said that
+he intended. Having done his work there, he had felt that he would
+now only be in the way. And, moreover, though his work was done at
+Castle Richmond, other work in the same matter had still to be done
+in England. Mr. Prendergast had very little doubt as to the truth
+of Mollett's story;--indeed we may say he had no doubt; otherwise
+he would hardly have made it known to all that world round Castle
+Richmond. But nevertheless it behoved him thoroughly to sift the
+matter. He felt tolerably sure that he should find Mollett in London;
+and whether he did or no, he should be able to identify, or not to
+identify, that scoundrel with the Mr. Talbot who had hired Chevy
+Chase Lodge, in Dorsetshire, and who had undoubtedly married poor
+Mary Wainwright.
+
+"He left a kind message for you," said Lady Fitzgerald.--My readers
+must excuse me if I still call her Lady Fitzgerald, for I cannot
+bring my pen to the use of any other name. And it was so also with
+the dependents and neighbours of Castle Richmond, when the time came
+that the poor lady felt that she was bound publicly to drop her
+title. It was not in her power to drop it; no effort that she could
+make would induce those around her to call her by another name.
+
+"He bade me say," she continued, "that if your future course of life
+should take you to London, you are to go to him, and look to him as
+another father. He has no child of his own," he said, "and you shall
+be to him as a son."
+
+"I will be no one's son but yours,--yours and my father's," he said,
+again embracing her.
+
+And then, when, under his mother's eye, he had eaten and drank and
+made himself warm, he did go to his father and found both his sisters
+sitting there. They came and clustered round him, taking hold of
+his hands and looking up into his face, loving him, and pitying
+him, and caressing him with their eyes; but standing there by their
+father's bed, they said little or nothing. Nor did Sir Thomas say
+much;--except this, indeed, that, just as Herbert was leaving him,
+he declared with a faint voice, that henceforth his son should be
+master of that house, and the disposer of that property--"As long as
+I live!" he exclaimed with his weak voice; "as long as I live!"
+
+"No, father; not so."
+
+"Yes, yes! as long as I live. It will be little that you will have,
+even so--very little. But so it shall be as long as I live."
+
+Very little indeed, poor man, for, alas! his days were numbered.
+
+And then, when Herbert left the room, Emmeline followed him. She had
+ever been his dearest sister, and now she longed to be with him that
+she might tell him how she loved him, and comfort him with her tears.
+And Clara too--Clara whom she had welcomed as a sister!--she must
+learn now how Clara would behave, for she had already made herself
+sure that her brother had been at Desmond Court, the herald of his
+own ruin.
+
+"May I come with you, Herbert?" she asked, closing in round him and
+getting under his arm. How could he refuse her? So they went together
+and sat over a fire in a small room that was sacred to her and her
+sister, and there, with many sobs on her part and much would-be brave
+contempt of poverty on his, they talked over the altered world as it
+now showed itself before them.
+
+"And you did not see her?" she asked, when with many efforts she had
+brought the subject round to Clara Desmond and her brother's walk to
+Desmond Court.
+
+"No; she left the room at my own bidding. I could not have told it
+myself to her."
+
+"And you cannot know then what she would say?"
+
+"No, I cannot know what she would say; but I know now what I must
+say myself. All that is over, Emmeline. I cannot ask her to marry a
+beggar."
+
+"Ask her; no! there will be no need of asking her; she has already
+given you her promise. You do not think that she will desert you? you
+do not wish it?"
+
+Herein were contained two distinct questions, the latter of which
+Herbert did not care to answer. "I shall not call it desertion," he
+said; "indeed the proposal will come from me. I shall write to her,
+telling her that she need think about me no longer. Only that I am so
+weary I would do it now."
+
+"And how will she answer you? If she is the Clara that I take her
+for she will throw your proposal back into your face. She will tell
+you that it is not in your power to reject her now. She will swear
+to you, that let your words be what they may, she will think of
+you--more now than she has ever thought in better days. She will tell
+you of her love in words that she could not use before. I know she
+will. I know that she is good, and true, and honest, and generous.
+Oh, I should die if I thought she were false! But, Herbert, I am sure
+that she is true. You can write your letter, and we shall see."
+
+Herbert, with wise arguments learned from his mother, reasoned with
+his sister, explaining to her that Clara was now by no means bound to
+cling to him; but as he spoke them his arm fastened itself closely
+round his sister's waist, for the words which she uttered with so
+much energy were comfortable to him.
+
+And then, seated there, before he moved from the room, he made her
+bring him pens, ink, and paper, and he wrote his letter to Clara
+Desmond. She would fain have stayed with him while he did so, sitting
+at his feet, and looking into his face, and trying to encourage his
+hope as to what Clara's answer might be; but this he would not allow;
+so she went again to her father's room, having succeeded in obtaining
+a promise that Clara's answer should be shown to her. And the letter,
+when it was written, copied, and recopied, ran as follows:--
+
+
+   Castle Richmond, ---- night.
+
+   My dearest Clara,--
+
+
+It was with great difficulty that he could satisfy himself with that,
+or indeed with any other mode of commencement. In the short little
+love-notes which had hitherto gone from him, sent from house to
+house, he had written to her with appellations of endearment of his
+own--as all lovers do; and as all lovers seem to think that no lovers
+have done before themselves--with appellations which are so sweet to
+those who write, and so musical to those who read, but which sound
+so ludicrous when barbarously made public in hideous law courts by
+brazen-browed lawyers with mercenary tongues. In this way only had
+he written, and each of these sweet silly songs of love had been as
+full of honey as words could make it. But he had never yet written to
+her, on a full sheet of paper, a sensible positive letter containing
+thoughts and facts, as men do write to women and women also to men,
+when the lollypops and candied sugar-drops of early love have passed
+away. Now he was to write his first serious letter to her,--and
+probably his last,--and it was with difficulty that he could get
+himself over the first three words; but there they were decided on at
+last.
+
+
+   My dearest Clara,
+
+   Before you get this your mother will have told you
+   all that which I could not bring myself to speak out
+   yesterday, as long as you were in the room. I am sure you
+   will understand now why I begged you to go away, and will
+   not think the worse of me for doing so. You now know the
+   whole truth, and I am sure that you will feel for us all
+   here.
+
+   Having thought a good deal upon the matter, chiefly during
+   my walk home from Desmond Court, and indeed since I
+   have been at home, I have come to the resolution that
+   everything between us must be over. It would be unmanly
+   in me to wish to ruin you because I myself am ruined. Our
+   engagement was, of course, made on the presumption that
+   I should inherit my father's estate; as it is I shall
+   not do so, and therefore I beg that you will regard that
+   engagement as at an end. Of my own love for you I will say
+   nothing. But I know that you have loved me truly, and that
+   all this, therefore, will cause you great grief. It is
+   better, however, that it should be so, than that I should
+   seek to hold you to a promise which was made under such
+   different circumstances.
+
+   You will, of course, show this letter to your mother. She,
+   at any rate, will approve of what I am now doing; and so
+   will you when you allow yourself to consider it calmly.
+
+   We have not known each other so long that there is much
+   for us to give back to each other. If you do not think it
+   wrong I should like still to keep that lock of your hair,
+   to remind me of my first love--and, as I think, my only
+   one. And you, I hope, will not be afraid to have near you
+   the one little present that I made you.
+
+   And now, dearest Clara, good-bye. Let us always think,
+   each of the other, as of a very dear friend. May God bless
+   you, and preserve you, and make you happy.
+
+   Yours, with sincere affection,
+
+   HERBERT FITZGERALD.
+
+
+This, when at last he had succeeded in writing it, he read over and
+over again; but on each occasion he said to himself that it was
+cold and passionless, stilted and unmeaning. It by no means pleased
+him, and seemed as though it could bring but one answer--a cold
+acquiescence in the proposal which he so coldly made. But yet he knew
+not how to improve it. And after all it was a true exposition of
+that which he had determined to say. All the world--her world and
+his world--would think it better that they should part; and let the
+struggle cost him what it would, he would teach himself to wish
+that it might be so--if not for his own sake, then for hers. So he
+fastened the letter, and taking it with him determined to send it
+over, so that it should reach Clara quite early on the following
+morning.
+
+And then having once more visited his father, and once more kissed
+his mother, he betook himself to bed. It had been with him one of
+those days which seem to pass away without reference to usual hours
+and periods. It had been long dark, and he seemed to have been
+hanging about the house, doing nothing and aiding nobody, till he
+was weary of himself. So he went off to bed, almost wondering, as he
+bethought himself of what had happened to him within the last two
+days, that he was able to bear the burden of his life so easily as he
+did. He betook himself to bed; and with the letter close at his hand,
+so that he might despatch it when he awoke, he was soon asleep. After
+all, that walk, terrible as it had been, was in the end serviceable
+to him.
+
+He slept without waking till the light of the February morning was
+beginning to dawn into his room, and then he was roused by a servant
+knocking at the door. It was grievous enough, that awaking to his
+sorrow after the pleasant dreams of the night.
+
+"Here is a letter, Mr. Herbert, from Desmond Court," said Richard.
+"The boy as brought it says as how--"
+
+"A letter from Desmond Court," said Herbert, putting out his hand
+greedily.
+
+"Yes, Mr. Herbert. The boy's been here this hour and better. I warn't
+just up and about myself, or I wouldn't have let 'em keep it from
+you, not half a minute."
+
+"And where is he? I have a letter to send to Desmond Court. But never
+mind. Perhaps--"
+
+"It's no good minding, for the gossoon's gone back any ways." And
+then Richard, having drawn the blind, and placed a little table by
+the bed-head, left his young master to read the despatch from Desmond
+Court. Herbert, till he saw the writing, feared that it was from the
+countess; but the letter was from Clara. She also had thought good to
+write before she betook herself to bed, and she had been earlier in
+despatching her messenger. Here is her letter:
+
+
+   Dear Herbert, my own Herbert,
+
+   I have heard it all. But remember this; nothing, nothing,
+   _nothing_ can make any change between you and me. I will
+   hear of no arguments that are to separate us. I know
+   beforehand what you will say, but I will not regard
+   it--not in the least. I love you ten times the more for
+   all your unhappiness; and as I would have shared your good
+   fortune, I claim my right to share your bad fortune. _Pray
+   believe me_, that nothing shall turn me from this; for I
+   will _not be given up_.
+
+   Give my kindest love to your dear, dear, dearest
+   mother--my mother, as she is and must be; and to my
+   darling girls. I do so wish I could be with them, and with
+   you, my own Herbert. I cannot help writing in confusion,
+   but I will explain all when I see you. I have been so
+   unhappy.
+
+   Your own faithful
+
+   CLARA.
+
+
+Having read this, Herbert Fitzgerald, in spite of his affliction, was
+comforted.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+FOR A' THAT AND A' THAT.
+
+
+Herbert as he started from his bed with this letter in his hand felt
+that he could yet hold up his head against all that the world could
+do to him. How could he be really unhappy while he possessed such an
+assurance of love as this, and while his mother was able to give him
+so glorious an example of endurance? He was not really unhappy. The
+low-spirited broken-hearted wretchedness of the preceding day seemed
+to have departed from him as he hurried on his clothes, and went off
+to his sister's room that he might show his letter to Emmeline in
+accordance with the promise he had made her.
+
+"May I come in?" he said, knocking at the door. "I must come in,
+for I have something to show you." But the two girls were dressing
+and he could not be admitted. Emmeline, however, promised to come
+to him, and in about three minutes she was out in the cold little
+sitting-room which adjoined their bed-room with her slippers on, and
+her dressing gown wrapped round her, an object presentable to no male
+eyes but those of her brother.
+
+"Emmeline," said he, "I have got a letter this morning."
+
+"Not from Clara?"
+
+"Yes, from Clara. There; you may read it;" and he handed her the
+precious epistle.
+
+"But she could not have got your letter?" said Emmeline, before she
+looked at the one in her hand.
+
+"Certainly not, for I have it here. I must write another now; but in
+truth I do not know what to say. I can be as generous as she is."
+
+And then his sister read the letter. "My own Clara!" she exclaimed,
+as she saw what was the tenor of it. "Did I not tell you so, Herbert?
+I knew well what she would do and say. Love you ten times better!--of
+course she does. What honest girl would not? My own beautiful Clara,
+I knew I could depend on her. I did not doubt her for one moment."
+But in this particular it must be acknowledged that Miss Emmeline
+Fitzgerald hardly confined herself to the strictest veracity, for she
+had lain awake half the night perplexed with doubt. What, oh what,
+if Clara should be untrue! Such had been the burden of her doubting
+midnight thoughts. "'I will not be given up,'" she continued, quoting
+the letter. "No; of course not. And I tell you what, Herbert, you
+must not dare to talk of giving her up. Money and titles may be
+tossed to and fro, but not hearts. How beautifully she speaks of dear
+mamma!" and now the tears began to run down the young lady's cheeks.
+"Oh, I do wish she could be with us! My darling, darling, darling
+Clara! Unhappy? Yes: I am sure Lady Desmond will give her no peace.
+But never mind. She will be true through it all; and I said so from
+the first." And then she fell to crying, and embracing her brother,
+and declaring that nothing now should make her altogether unhappy.
+
+"But, Emmeline, you must not think that I shall take her at her word.
+It is very generous of her--"
+
+"Nonsense, Herbert!" And then there was another torrent of eloquence,
+in answering which Herbert found that his arguments were of very
+little efficacy.
+
+And now we must go back to Desmond Court, and see under what all but
+overwhelming difficulties poor Clara wrote her affectionate letter.
+And in the first place it should be pointed out how very wrong
+Herbert had been in going to Desmond Court on foot, through the mud
+and rain. A man can hardly bear himself nobly unless his outer aspect
+be in some degree noble. It may be very sad, this having to admit
+that the tailor does in great part make the man; but such I fear is
+undoubtedly the fact. Could the Chancellor look dignified on the
+woolsack, if he had had an accident with his wig, or allowed his
+robes to be torn or soiled? Does not half the piety of a bishop
+reside in his lawn sleeves, and all his meekness in his anti-virile
+apron? Had Herbert understood the world he would have had out the
+best pair of horses standing in the Castle Richmond stables, when
+going to Desmond Court on such an errand. He would have brushed his
+hair, and anointed himself; he would have clothed himself in his rich
+Spanish cloak; he would have seen that his hat was brushed, and his
+boots spotless; and then with all due solemnity but with head erect,
+he would have told his tale out boldly. The countess would still have
+wished to be rid of him, hearing that he was a pauper; but she would
+have lacked the courage to turn him from the house as she had done.
+
+But seeing how wobegone he was and wretched, how mean to look at, and
+low in his outward presence, she had been able to assume the mastery,
+and had kept it throughout the interview. And having done this her
+opinion of his prowess naturally became low, and she felt that he
+would have been unable to press his cause against her.
+
+For some time after he had departed, she sat alone in the room in
+which she had received him. She expected every minute that Clara
+would come down to her, still wishing however that she might be left
+for a while alone. But Clara did not come, and she was able to pursue
+her thoughts.
+
+How very terrible was this tragedy that had fallen out in her close
+neighbourhood! That was the first thought that came to her now that
+Herbert had left her. How terrible, overwhelming, and fatal! What
+calamity could fall upon a woman so calamitous as this which had
+now overtaken that poor lady at Castle Richmond? Could she live
+and support such a burden? Could she bear the eyes of people, when
+she knew the light in which she must be now regarded? To lose at
+one blow, her name, her pride of place, her woman's rank and high
+respect! Could it be possible that she would still live on? It was
+thus that Lady Desmond thought; and had any one told her that this
+degraded mother would that very day come down from her room, and sit
+watchful by her sleeping son, in order that she might comfort and
+encourage him when he awoke, she would not have found it in her heart
+to believe such a marvel. But then Lady Desmond knew but one solace
+in her sorrows--had but one comfort in her sad reflections. She was
+Countess of Desmond, and that was all. To Lady Fitzgerald had been
+vouchsafed other solace and other comforts.
+
+And then, on one point the countess made herself fixed as fate, by
+thinking and re-thinking upon it till no doubt remained upon her
+mind. The match between Clara and Herbert must be broken off, let
+the cost be what it might; and--a point on which there was more room
+for doubt, and more pain in coming to a conclusion--that other match
+with the more fortunate cousin must be encouraged and carried out.
+For herself, if her hope was small while Owen was needy and of poor
+account, what hope could there be now that he would be rich and
+great? Moreover, Owen loved Clara, and not herself; and Clara's hand
+would once more be vacant and ready for the winning. For herself, her
+only chance had been in Clara's coming marriage.
+
+In all this she knew that there would be difficulty. She was sure
+enough that Clara would at first feel the imprudent generosity of
+youth, and offer to join her poverty to Herbert's poverty. That was
+a matter of course. She, Lady Desmond herself, would have done this,
+at Clara's age,--so at least to herself she said, and also to her
+daughter. But a little time, and a little patience, and a little care
+would set all this in a proper light. Herbert would go away and would
+gradually be forgotten. Owen would again come forth from beneath the
+clouds, with renewed splendour; and then, was it not probable that,
+in her very heart of hearts, Owen was the man whom Clara had ever
+loved?
+
+And thus having realized to herself the facts which Herbert had told
+her, she prepared to make them known to her daughter. She got up
+from her chair, intending at first to seek her, and then, changing
+her purpose, rang the bell and sent for her. She was astonished to
+find how violently she herself was affected; not so much by the
+circumstances, as by this duty which had fallen to her of telling
+them to her child. She put one hand upon the other and felt that she
+herself was in a tremor, and was conscious that the blood was running
+quick round her heart. Clara came down, and going to her customary
+seat waited till her mother should speak to her.
+
+"Mr. Fitzgerald has brought very dreadful news," Lady Desmond said,
+after a minute's pause.
+
+"Oh mamma!" said Clara. She had expected bad tidings, having thought
+of all manner of miseries while she had been up stairs alone; but
+there was that in her mother's voice which seemed to be worse than
+the worst of her anticipations.
+
+"Dreadful, indeed, my child! It is my duty to tell them to you;
+but I must caution you, before I do so, to place a guard upon your
+feelings. That which I have to say must necessarily alter all your
+future prospects, and, unfortunately, make your marrying Herbert
+Fitzgerald quite impossible."
+
+"Mamma!" she exclaimed, with a loud voice, jumping from her chair.
+"Not marry him! Why; what can he have done? Is it his wish to break
+it off?"
+
+Lady Desmond had calculated that she would best effect her object
+by at once impressing her daughter with the idea that, under the
+circumstances which were about to be narrated, this marriage would
+not only be imprudent, but altogether impracticable and out of
+the question. Clara must be made to understand at once, that the
+circumstances gave her no option,--that the affair was of such a
+nature as to make it a thing manifest to everybody, that she could
+not now marry Herbert Fitzgerald. She must not be left to think
+whether she could, or whether she could not, exercise her own
+generosity. And therefore, not without discretion, the countess
+announced at once to her the conclusion at which it would be
+necessary to arrive. But Clara was not a girl to adopt such a
+conclusion on any other judgment than her own, or to be led in such a
+matter by the feelings of any other person.
+
+"Sit down, my dear, and I will explain it all. But, dearest Clara,
+grieved as I must be to grieve you, I am bound to tell you again
+that it must be as I say. For both your sakes it must be so; but
+especially, perhaps, for his. But when I have told you my story, you
+will understand that this must be so."
+
+"Tell me, then, mother." She said this, for Lady Desmond had again
+paused.
+
+"Won't you sit down, dearest?"
+
+"Well, yes; it does not matter;" and Clara, at her mother's bidding,
+sat down, and then the story was told to her.
+
+It was a difficult tale for a mother to tell to so young a child--to
+a child whom she had regarded as being so very young. There were
+various little points of law which she thought that she was obliged
+to explain; how it was necessary that the Castle Richmond property
+should go to an heir-at-law, and how it was impossible that Herbert
+should be that heir-at-law, seeing that he had not been born in
+lawful wedlock. All these things Lady Desmond attempted to explain,
+or was about to attempt such explanation, but desisted on finding
+that her daughter understood them as well as she herself did. And
+then she had to make it also intelligible to Clara that Owen would
+be called on, when Sir Thomas should die, to fill the position and
+enjoy the wealth accruing to the heir of Castle Richmond. When Owen
+Fitzgerald's name was mentioned a slight blush came upon Clara's
+cheek; it was very slight, but nevertheless her mother saw it, and
+took advantage of it to say a word in Owen's favour.
+
+"Poor Owen!" she said. "He will not be the first to triumph in this
+change of fortune."
+
+"I am sure he will not," said Clara. "He is much too generous for
+that." And then the countess began to hope that the task might not
+be so very difficult. Ignorant woman! Had she been able to read one
+page in her daughter's heart, she would have known that the task was
+impossible. After that the story was told out to the end without
+further interruption; and then Clara, hiding her face within her
+hands on the head of the sofa, uttered one long piteous moan.
+
+"It is all very dreadful," said the countess.
+
+"Oh, Lady Fitzgerald, dear Lady Fitzgerald!" sobbed forth Clara.
+
+"Yes, indeed. Poor Lady Fitzgerald! Her fate is so dreadful that I
+know not how to think of it."
+
+"But, mamma--" and as she spoke Clara pushed back from her forehead
+her hair with both her hands, showing, as she did so, the form of her
+forehead, and the firmness of purpose that was written there, legible
+to any eyes that could read. "But, mamma, you are wrong about my not
+marrying Herbert Fitzgerald. Why should I not marry him? Not now, as
+we, perhaps, might have done but for this; but at some future time
+when he may think himself able to support a wife. Mamma, I shall not
+break our engagement; certainly not."
+
+This was said in a tone of voice so very decided that Lady Desmond
+had to acknowledge to herself that there would be difficulty in her
+task. But she still did not doubt that she would have her way, if
+not by concession on the part of her daughter, then by concession on
+the part of Herbert Fitzgerald. "I can understand your generosity
+of feeling, my dear," she said; "and at your age I should probably
+have felt the same. And therefore I do not ask you to take any
+steps towards breaking your engagement. The offer must come from Mr.
+Fitzgerald, and I have no doubt that it will come. He, as a man of
+honour, will know that he cannot now offer to marry you; and he will
+also know, as a man of sense, that it would be ruin for him to think
+of--of such a marriage under his present circumstances."
+
+"Why, mamma? Why should it be ruin to him?"
+
+"Why, my dear? Do you think that a wife with a titled name can be of
+advantage to a young man who has not only got his bread to earn, but
+even to look out for a way in which he may earn it?"
+
+"If there be nothing to hurt him but the titled name, that difficulty
+shall be easily conquered."
+
+"Dearest Clara, you know what I mean. You must be aware that a girl
+of your rank, and brought up as you have been, cannot be a fitting
+wife for a man who will now have to struggle with the world at every
+turn."
+
+Clara, as this was said to her, and as she prepared to answer,
+blushed deeply, for she felt herself obliged to speak on a matter
+which had never yet been subject of speech between her and her
+mother. "Mamma," she said, "I cannot agree with you there. I may have
+what the world calls rank; but nevertheless we have been poor, and I
+have not been brought up with costly habits. Why should I not live
+with my husband as--as--as poorly as I have lived with my mother? You
+are not rich, dear mamma, and why should I be?"
+
+Lady Desmond did not answer her daughter at once; but she was not
+silent because an answer failed her. Her answer would have been ready
+enough had she dared to speak it out. "Yes, it is true; we have been
+poor. I, your mother, did by my imprudence bring down upon my head
+and on yours absolute, unrelenting, pitiless poverty. And because I
+did so, I have never known one happy hour. I have spent my days in
+bitter remorse--in regretting the want of those things which it has
+been the more terrible to want as they are the customary attributes
+of people of my rank. I have been driven to hate those around me
+who have been rich, because I have been poor. I have been utterly
+friendless because I have been poor. I have been able to do none of
+those sweet, soft, lovely things, by doing which other women win
+the smiles of the world, because I have been poor. Poverty and rank
+together have made me wretched--have left me without employment,
+without society, and without love. And now would you tell me that
+because I have been poor you would choose to be poor also?" It would
+have been thus that she would have answered, had she been accustomed
+to speak out her thoughts. But she had ever been accustomed to
+conceal them.
+
+"I was thinking quite as much of him as of you," at last she said.
+"Such an engagement to you would be fraught with much misery, but to
+him it would be ruinous."
+
+"I do not think it, mamma."
+
+"But it is not necessary, Clara, that you should do anything. You
+will wait, of course, and see what Herbert may say himself."
+
+"Herbert--"
+
+"Wait half a moment, my love. I shall be very much surprised if we
+do not find that Mr. Fitzgerald himself will tell you that the match
+must be abandoned."
+
+"But that will make no difference, mamma."
+
+"No difference, my dear! You cannot marry him against his will. You
+do not mean to say that you would wish to bind him to his engagement,
+if he himself thought it would be to his disadvantage?"
+
+"Yes; I will bind him to it."
+
+"Clara!"
+
+"I will make him know that it is not for his disadvantage. I will
+make him understand that a friend and companion who loves him as
+I love him--as no one else will ever love him now--for I love him
+because he was so high-fortuned when he came to me, and because he
+is now so low-fortuned--that such a wife as I will be, cannot be a
+burden to him. I will cling to him whether he throws me off or no. A
+word from him might have broken our engagement before, but a thousand
+words cannot do it now."
+
+Lady Desmond stared at her daughter, for Clara, in her excitement,
+was walking up and down the room. The countess had certainly not
+expected all this, and she was beginning to think that the subject
+for the present might as well be left alone. But Clara had not done
+as yet.
+
+"Mamma," she said, "I will not do anything without telling you; but
+I cannot leave Herbert in all his misery to think that I have no
+sympathy with him. I shall write to him."
+
+"Not before he writes to you, Clara! You would not wish to be
+indelicate?"
+
+"I know but little about delicacy--what people call delicacy; but I
+will not be ungenerous or unkind. Mamma, you brought us two together.
+Was it not so? Did you not do so, fearing that I might--might still
+care for Herbert's cousin? You did it; and half wishing to obey you,
+half attracted by all his goodness, I did learn to love Herbert
+Fitzgerald; and I did learn to forget--no; but I learned to cease to
+love his cousin. You did this and rejoiced at it; and now what you
+did must remain done."
+
+"But, dearest Clara, it will not be for his good."
+
+"It shall be for his good. Mamma, I would not desert him now for all
+that the world could give me. Neither for mother nor brother could I
+do that. Without your leave I would not have given him the right to
+regard me as his own; but now I cannot take that right back again,
+even at your wish. I must write to him at once, mamma, and tell him
+this."
+
+"Clara, at any rate you must not do that; that at least I must
+forbid."
+
+"Mother, you cannot forbid it now," the daughter said, after walking
+twice the length of the room in silence. "If I be not allowed to send
+a letter, I shall leave the house and go to him."
+
+This was all very dreadful. Lady Desmond was astounded at the manner
+in which her daughter carried herself, and the voice with which she
+spoke. The form of her face was altered, and the very step with which
+she trod was unlike her usual gait. What would Lady Desmond do? She
+was not prepared to confine her daughter as a prisoner, nor could she
+publicly forbid the people about the place to go upon her message.
+
+"I did not expect that you would have been so undutiful," she said.
+
+"I hope I am not so," Clara answered. "But now my first duty is to
+him. Did you not sanction our loving each other? People cannot call
+back their hearts and their pledges."
+
+"You will at any rate wait till to-morrow, Clara."
+
+"It is dark now," said Clara, despondingly, looking out through the
+window upon the falling night; "I suppose I cannot send to-night."
+
+"And you will show me what you write, dearest?"
+
+"No, mamma. If I wrote it for your eyes it could not be the same as
+if I wrote it only for his."
+
+Very gloomy, sombre, and silent, was the Countess of Desmond all that
+night. Nothing further was said about the Fitzgeralds between her
+and her daughter, before they went to bed; and then Lady Desmond did
+speak a few futile words.
+
+"Clara," she said. "You had better think over what we have been
+saying, in bed to-night. You will be more collected to-morrow
+morning."
+
+"I shall think of it of course," said Clara; "but thinking can make
+no difference," and then just touching her mother's forehead with her
+lips she went off slowly to her room.
+
+What sort of a letter she wrote when she got there, we have already
+seen; and have seen also that she took effective steps to have her
+letter carried to Castle Richmond at an hour sufficiently early in
+the morning. There was no danger that the countess would stop the
+message, for the letter had been read twenty times by Emmeline and
+Mary, and had been carried by Herbert to his mother's room, before
+Lady Desmond had left her bed. "Do not set your heart on it too
+warmly," said Herbert's mother to him.
+
+"But is she not excellent?" said Herbert. "It is because she speaks
+of you in such a way--"
+
+"You would not wish to bring her into misery, because of her
+excellence."
+
+"But, mother, I am still a man," said Herbert. This was too much for
+the suffering woman, the one fault of whose life had brought her son
+to such a pass, and throwing her arm round his neck she wept upon his
+shoulders.
+
+There were other messengers went and came that day between Desmond
+Court and Castle Richmond. Clara and her mother saw nothing of each
+other early in the morning; they did not breakfast together, nor was
+there a word said between them on the subject of the Fitzgeralds.
+But Lady Desmond early in the morning--early for her that is--sent
+her note also to Castle Richmond. It was addressed to Aunt Letty,
+Miss Letitia Fitzgerald, and went to say that Lady Desmond was very
+anxious to see Miss Letty. Under the present circumstances of the
+family, as described to Lady Desmond by Mr. Herbert Fitzgerald, she
+felt that she could not ask to see "his mother;"--it was thus that
+she overcame the difficulty which presented itself to her as to the
+proper title now to be given to Lady Fitzgerald;--but perhaps Miss
+Letty would be good enough to see her, if she called at such and such
+an hour. Aunt Letty, much perplexed, had nothing for it, but to say
+that she would see her. The countess must now be looked on as closely
+connected with the family--at any rate until that match were broken
+off; and therefore Aunt Letty had no alternative. And so, precisely
+at the hour named, the countess and Aunt Letty were seated together
+in the little breakfast-room of which mention has before been made.
+
+No two women were ever closeted together who were more unlike each
+other,--except that they had one common strong love for family rank.
+But in Aunt Letty it must be acknowledged that this passion was not
+unwholesome or malevolent in its course of action. She delighted in
+being a Fitzgerald, and in knowing that her branch of the Fitzgeralds
+had been considerable people ever since her Norman ancestor had come
+over to Ireland with Strongbow. But then she had a useful idea that
+considerable people should do a considerable deal of good. Her family
+pride operated more inwardly than outwardly,--inwardly as regarded
+her own family, and not outwardly as regarded the world. Her brother,
+and her nephew, and her sister-in-law, and nieces, were, she thought,
+among the highest commoners in Ireland; they were gentlefolks of the
+first water, and walked openly before the world accordingly, proving
+their claim to gentle blood by gentle deeds and honest conduct.
+Perhaps she did think too much of the Fitzgeralds of Castle Richmond;
+but the sin was one of which no recording angel could have made much
+in his entry. That she was a stupid old woman, prejudiced in the
+highest degree, and horribly ignorant of all the world beyond her own
+very narrow circle,--even of that, I do not think that the recording
+angel could, under the circumstances, have made a great deal.
+
+And now how was her family pride affected by this horrible
+catastrophe that had been made known to her? Herbert the heir, whom
+as heir she had almost idolized, was nobody. Her sister-in-law, whom
+she had learned to love with the whole of her big heart, was no
+sister-in-law. Her brother was one, who, in lieu of adding glory to
+the family, would always be regarded as the most unfortunate of the
+Fitzgerald baronets. But with her, human nature was stronger than
+family pride, and she loved them all, not better, but more tenderly
+than ever.
+
+The two ladies were closeted together for about two hours; and then,
+when the door was opened, Aunt Letty might have been seen with her
+bonnet much on one side, and her poor old eyes and cheeks red with
+weeping. The countess, too, held her handkerchief to her eyes as she
+got back into her pony carriage. She saw no one else there but Aunt
+Letty; and from her mood when she returned to Desmond Court it might
+be surmised that from Aunt Letty she had learned little to comfort
+her.
+
+"They will be beggars!" she said to herself--"beggars!"--when the
+door of her own room had closed upon her. And there are few people in
+the world who held such beggary in less esteem than did the Countess
+of Desmond. It may almost be said that she hated herself on account
+of her own poverty.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+ILL NEWS FLIES FAST.
+
+
+A dull, cold, wretched week passed over their heads at Castle
+Richmond, during which they did nothing but realize the truth
+of their position; and then came a letter from Mr. Prendergast,
+addressed to Herbert, in which he stated that such inquiries as
+he had hitherto made left no doubt on his mind that the man named
+Mollett, who had lately made repeated visits at Castle Richmond, was
+he who had formerly taken the house in Dorsetshire under the name of
+Talbot. In his packet Mr. Prendergast sent copies of documents and of
+verbal evidence which he had managed to obtain; but with the actual
+details of these it is not necessary that I should trouble those who
+are following me in this story. In this letter Mr. Prendergast also
+recommended that some intercourse should be had with Owen Fitzgerald.
+It was expedient, he said, that all the parties concerned should
+recognise Owen's position as the heir presumptive to the title and
+estate; and as he, he said, had found Mr. Fitzgerald of Hap House
+to be forbearing, generous, and high-spirited, he thought that this
+intercourse might be conducted without enmity or ill blood. And then
+he suggested that Mr. Somers should see Owen Fitzgerald.
+
+All this Herbert explained to his father gently and without
+complaint; but it seemed now as though Sir Thomas had ceased to
+interest himself in the matter. Such battle as it had been in his
+power to make he had made to save his son's heritage and his wife's
+name and happiness, even at the expense of his own conscience. That
+battle had gone altogether against him, and now there was nothing
+left for him but to turn his face to the wall and die. Absolute
+ruin, through his fault, had come upon him and all that belonged to
+him,--ruin that would now be known to the world at large; and it was
+beyond his power to face that world again. In that the glory was gone
+from the house of his son, and of his son's mother, the glory was
+gone from his own house. He made no attempt to leave his bed, though
+strongly recommended so to do by his own family doctor. And then a
+physician came down from Dublin, who could only feel, whatever he
+might say, how impossible it is to administer to a mind diseased. The
+mind of that poor man was diseased past all curing in this world, and
+there was nothing left for him but to die.
+
+Herbert, of course, answered Clara's letter, but he did not go
+over to see her during that week, nor indeed for some little time
+afterwards. He answered it at considerable length, professing
+his ready willingness to give back to Clara her troth, and even
+recommending her, with very strong logic and unanswerable arguments
+of worldly sense, to regard their union as unwise and even
+impossible; but nevertheless there protruded through all his sense
+and all his rhetoric, evidences of love and of a desire for love
+returned, which were much more unanswerable than his arguments, and
+much stronger than his logic. Clara read his letter, not as he would
+have advised her to read it, but certainly in the manner which best
+pleased his heart, and answered it again, declaring that all that he
+said was no avail. He might be false to her if he would. If through
+fickleness of heart and purpose he chose to abandon her, she would
+never complain--never at least aloud. But she would not be false to
+him; nor were her inclinations such as to make it likely that she
+should be fickle, even though her affection might be tried by a delay
+of years. Love with her had been too serious to be thrown aside. All
+which was rather strong language on the part of a young lady, but was
+thought by those other young ladies at Castle Richmond to show the
+very essence of becoming young-ladyhood. They pronounced Clara to be
+perfect in feeling and in judgment, and Herbert could not find it in
+his heart to contradict them.
+
+And of all these doings, writings, and resolves, Clara dutifully told
+her mother. Poor Lady Desmond was at her wits' end in the matter.
+She could scold her daughter, but she had no other power of doing
+anything. Clara had so taken the bit between her teeth that it was
+no longer possible to check her with any usual rein. In these days
+young ladies are seldom deprived by force of paper, pen, and ink; and
+the absolute incarceration of such an offender would be still more
+unusual. Another countess would have taken her daughter away, either
+to London and a series of balls, or to the South of Italy, or to the
+family castle in the North of Scotland; but poor Lady Desmond had not
+the power of other countesses. Now that it was put to the trial, she
+found that she had no power, even over her own daughter. "Mamma, it
+was your own doing," Clara would say; and the countess would feel
+that this alluded not only to her daughter's engagement with Herbert
+the disinherited, but also to her non-engagement with Owen the heir.
+
+Under these circumstances Lady Desmond sent for her son. The earl was
+still at Eton, but was now grown to be almost a man--such a man as
+forward Eton boys are at sixteen--tall, and lathy, and handsome, with
+soft incipient whiskers, a bold brow and blushing cheeks, with all a
+boy's love for frolic still strong within him, but some touch of a
+man's pride to check it. In her difficulty Lady Desmond sent for the
+young earl, who had now not been home since the previous midsummer,
+hoping that his young manhood might have some effect in saving his
+sister from the disgrace of a marriage which would make her so
+totally bankrupt both in wealth and rank.
+
+Mr. Somers did go once to Hap House, at Herbert's instigation; but
+very little came of his visit. He had always disliked Owen, regarding
+him as an unthrift, any close connexion with whom could only bring
+contamination on the Fitzgerald property; and Owen had returned the
+feeling tenfold. His pride had been wounded by what he had considered
+to be the agent's insolence, and he had stigmatised Mr. Somers to his
+friends as a self-seeking, mercenary prig. Very little, therefore,
+came of the visit. Mr. Somers, to give him his due, had attempted to
+do his best; being anxious, for Herbert's sake, to conciliate Owen;
+perhaps having--and why not?--some eye to the future agency. But Owen
+was hard, and cold, and uncommunicative,--very unlike what he had
+before been to Mr. Prendergast. But then Mr. Prendergast had never
+offended his pride.
+
+"You may tell my cousin Herbert," he said, with some little special
+emphasis on the word cousin, "that I shall be glad to see him, as
+soon as he feels himself able to meet me. It will be for the good of
+us both that we should have some conversation together. Will you tell
+him, Mr. Somers, that I shall be happy to go to him, or to see him
+here? Perhaps my going to Castle Richmond, during the present illness
+of Sir Thomas, may be inconvenient." And this was all that Mr. Somers
+could get from him.
+
+In a very short time the whole story became known to everybody round
+the neighbourhood. And what would have been the good of keeping it
+secret? There are some secrets,--kept as secrets because they cannot
+well be discussed openly,--which may be allowed to leak out with so
+much advantage! The day must come, and that apparently at no distant
+time, when all the world would know the fate of that Fitzgerald
+family; when Sir Owen must walk into the hall of Castle Richmond, the
+undoubted owner of the mansion and demesne. Why then keep it secret?
+Herbert openly declared his wish to Mr. Somers that there should be
+no secret in the matter. "There is no disgrace," he said, thinking
+of his mother; "nothing to be ashamed of, let the world say what it
+will."
+
+Down in the servants' hall the news came to them gradually, whispered
+about from one to another. They hardly understood what it meant,
+or how it had come to pass; but they did know that their master's
+marriage had been no marriage, and that their master's son was no
+heir. Mrs. Jones said not a word in the matter to any one. Indeed,
+since that day on which she had been confronted with Mollett, she had
+not associated with the servants at all, but had kept herself close
+to her mistress. She understood what it all meant perfectly; and the
+depth of the tragedy had so cowed her spirit that she hardly dared
+to speak of it. Who told the servants,--or who does tell servants of
+such matters, it is impossible to say; but before Mr. Prendergast had
+been three days out of the house they all knew that the Mr. Owen of
+Hap House was to be the future master of Castle Richmond.
+
+"An' a sore day it'll be; a sore day, a sore day," said Richard,
+seated in an arm-chair by the fire, at the end of the servants' hall,
+shaking his head despondingly.
+
+"Faix, an' you may say that," said Corney, the footman. "That Misther
+Owen will go tatthering away to the divil, when the old place comes
+into his hans. No fear he'll make it fly."
+
+"Sorrow seize the ould lawyer for coming down here at all at all,"
+said the cook.
+
+"I never knew no good come of thim dry ould bachelors," said Biddy
+the housemaid; "specially the Englishers."
+
+"The two of yez are no better nor simpletons," said Richard,
+magisterially. "'Twarn't he that done it. The likes of him couldn't
+do the likes o' that."
+
+"And what was it as done it?" said Biddy.
+
+"Ax no questions, and may be you'll be tould no lies," replied
+Richard.
+
+"In course we all knows it's along of her ladyship's marriage which
+warn't no marriage," said the cook. "May the heavens be her bed when
+the Lord takes her! A betther lady nor a kinder-hearted niver stepped
+the floor of a kitchen."
+
+"'Deed an that's thrue for you, cook," said Biddy, with the corner of
+her apron up to her eyes. "But tell me, Richard, won't poor Mr.
+Herbert have nothing?"
+
+"Never you mind about Mr. Herbert," said Richard, who had seen Biddy
+grow up from a slip of a girl, and therefore was competent to snub
+her at every word.
+
+"Ah, but I do mind," said the girl. "I minds more about him than ere
+a one of 'em; and av' that Lady Clara won't have em a cause of
+this--"
+
+"Not a step she won't, thin," said Corney. "She'll go back to Mr.
+Owen. He was her fust love. You'll see else." And so the matter was
+discussed in the servants' hall at the great house.
+
+But perhaps the greatest surprise, the greatest curiosity, and the
+greatest consternation, were felt at the parsonage. The rumour
+reached Mr. Townsend at one of the Relief Committees;--and Mrs.
+Townsend from the mouth of one of her servants, during his absence,
+on the same day; and when Mr. Townsend returned to the parsonage,
+they met each other with blank faces.
+
+"Oh, Aeneas!" said she, before she could get his greatcoat from off
+his shoulders, "have you heard the news?"
+
+"What news?--about Castle Richmond?"
+
+"Yes; about Castle Richmond." And then she knew that he had heard it.
+
+Some glimmering of Lady Fitzgerald's early history had been known to
+both of them, as it had been known almost to all in the country; but
+in late years this history had been so much forgotten, that men had
+ceased to talk of it, and this calamity therefore came with all the
+weight of a new misfortune.
+
+"And, Aeneas, who told you of it?" she asked, as they sat together
+over the fire, in their dingy, dirty parlour.
+
+"Well, strange to say, I heard it first from Father Barney."
+
+"Oh, mercy! and is it all about the country in that way?"
+
+"Herbert, you know, has not been at any one of the Committees for
+the last ten days, and Mr. Somers for the last week past has been
+as silent as death; so much so, that that horrid creature, Father
+Columb, would have made a regular set speech the other day at
+Gortnaclough, if I hadn't put him down."
+
+"Dear, dear, dear!" said Mrs. Townsend.
+
+"And I was talking to Father Barney about this, to-day--about Mr.
+Somers, that is."
+
+"Yes, yes, yes!"
+
+"And then he said, 'I suppose you know what has happened at Castle
+Richmond?'"
+
+"How on earth had he learned?" asked Mrs. Townsend, jealous that a
+Roman Catholic priest should have heard such completely Protestant
+news before the Protestant parson and his wife.
+
+"Oh, they learn everything--from the servants I suppose."
+
+"Of course, the mean creatures!" said Mrs. Townsend, forgetting,
+probably, her own little conversation with her own man of all work
+that morning. "But go on, Aeneas."
+
+"'What has happened,' said I, 'at Castle Richmond?' 'Oh, you haven't
+heard,' said he. And I was obliged to own that I had not, though I
+saw that it gave him a kind of triumph. 'Why,' said he, 'very bad
+news has reached them indeed; the worst of news.' And then he told me
+about Lady Fitzgerald. To give him his due, I must say that he was
+very sorry--very sorry. 'The poor young fellow!' he said--'The poor
+young fellow!' And I saw that he turned away his face to hide a
+tear."
+
+"Crocodile tears!" said Mrs. Townsend.
+
+"No, they were not," said her reverend lord; "and Father Barney is
+not so bad as I once thought him."
+
+"I hope you are not going over too, Aeneas?" And his consort almost
+cried as such a horrid thought entered her head. In her ideas any
+feeling short of absolute enmity to a servant of the Church of Rome
+was an abandonment of some portion of the Protestant basis of the
+Church of England. "The small end of the wedge," she would call
+it, when people around her would suggest that the heart of a Roman
+Catholic priest might possibly not be altogether black and devilish.
+
+"Well, I hope not, my dear," said Mr. Townsend, with a slight touch
+of sarcasm in his voice. "But, as I was saying, Father Barney told me
+then that this Mr. Prendergast--"
+
+"Oh, I had known of his being there from the day of his coming."
+
+"This Mr. Prendergast, it seems, knew the whole affair, from
+beginning to end."
+
+"But how did he know it, Aeneas?"
+
+"That I can't tell you. He was a friend of Sir Thomas before his
+marriage; I know that. And he has told them that it is of no use
+their attempting to keep it secret. He was over at Hap House with
+Owen Fitzgerald before he went."
+
+"And has Owen Fitzgerald been told?"
+
+"Yes; he has been told--told that he is to be the next heir; so
+Father Barney says."
+
+Mrs. Townsend wished in her heart that the news could have reached
+her through a purer source; but all this, coming though it did from
+Father Barney, tallied too completely with what she herself had heard
+to leave on her mind any doubt of its truth. And then she began to
+think of Lady Fitzgerald and her condition, of Herbert and of his,
+and of the condition of them all, till by degrees her mind passed
+away from Father Barney and all his iniquities.
+
+"It is very dreadful," she said, in a low voice.
+
+"Very dreadful, very dreadful. I hardly know how to think of it. And
+I fear that Sir Thomas will not live many months to give them even
+the benefit of his life interest."
+
+"And when he dies all will be gone?"
+
+"Everything."
+
+And then tears stood in her eyes also, and in his also after a while.
+It is very easy for a clergyman in his pulpit to preach eloquently
+upon the vileness of worldly wealth, and the futility of worldly
+station; but where will you ever find one, who, when the time of
+proof shall come, will give proof that he himself feels what he
+preaches? Mr. Townsend was customarily loud and eager upon this
+subject, and yet he was now shedding tears because his young friend
+Herbert was deprived of his inheritance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+PALLIDA MORS.
+
+
+Mr. Somers, returning from Hap House, gave Owen's message to Herbert
+Fitzgerald, but at the same time told him that he did not think any
+good would come of such a meeting.
+
+"I went over there," he said, "because I would not willingly omit
+anything that Mr. Prendergast had suggested; but I did not expect
+any good to come of it. You know what I have always thought of Owen
+Fitzgerald."
+
+"But Mr. Prendergast said that he behaved so well."
+
+"He did not know Prendergast, and was cowed for the moment by what he
+had heard. That was natural enough. You do as you like, however; only
+do not have him over to Castle Richmond."
+
+Owen, however, did not trust solely to Mr. Somers, but on the
+following day wrote to Herbert, suggesting that they had better meet,
+and begging that the place and time of meeting might be named. He
+himself again suggested Hap House, and declared that he would be at
+home on any day and at any hour that his "cousin" might name, "only,"
+as he added, "the sooner the better." Herbert wrote back by the same
+messenger, saying that he would be with him early on the following
+morning; and on the following morning he drove up to the door of Hap
+House, while Owen was still sitting with his coffee-pot and knife and
+fork before him.
+
+Captain Donnellan, whom we saw there on the occasion of our first
+morning visit, was now gone, and Owen Fitzgerald was all alone in his
+home. The captain had been an accustomed guest, spending perhaps half
+his time there during the hunting season; but since Mr. Prendergast
+had been at Hap House, he had been made to understand that the master
+would fain be alone. And since that day Owen had never hunted, nor
+been noticed in his old haunts, nor had been seen talking to his old
+friends. He had remained at home, sitting over the fire thinking,
+wandering up and down his own avenue, or standing about the stable,
+idly, almost unconscious of the grooming of his horses. Once and once
+only he had been mounted; and then as the dusk of evening was coming
+on he had trotted over quickly to Desmond Court, as though he had
+in hand some purport of great moment; but if so he changed his mind
+when he came to the gate, for he walked on slowly for three or four
+hundred yards beyond it, and then turning his horse's head, slowly
+made his way back past the gate, and then trotted quickly home to Hap
+House. In these moments of his life he must make or mar himself for
+life; 'twas so that he felt it; and how should he make himself, or
+how avoid the marring? That was the question which he now strove to
+answer.
+
+When Herbert entered the room, he rose from his chair, and walked
+quickly up to his visitor, with extended hand, and a look of welcome
+in his face. His manner was very different from that with which he
+had turned and parted from his cousin, not many days since in the
+demesne at Castle Richmond. Then he had intended absolutely to defy
+Herbert Fitzgerald; but there was no spirit of defiance now, either
+in his hand, or face, or in the tone of his voice.
+
+"I am very glad you have come," said he. "I hope you understood that
+I would have gone to you, only that I thought it might be better for
+both of us to be here."
+
+Herbert said something to the effect that he had been quite
+willing to come over to Hap House. But he was not at the moment so
+self-possessed as the other, and hardly knew how to begin the subject
+which was to be discussed between them.
+
+"Of course you know that Mr. Prendergast was here?" said Owen.
+
+"Oh yes," said Herbert.
+
+"And Mr. Somers also? I tell you fairly, Herbert, that when Mr.
+Somers came, I was not willing to say much to him. What has to be
+said must be said between you and me, and not to any third party. I
+could not open my heart, nor yet speak my thoughts to Mr. Somers."
+
+In answer to this, Herbert again said that Owen need have no scruple
+in speaking to him. "It is all plain sailing; too plain, I fear,"
+said he. "There is no doubt whatever now as to the truth of what Mr.
+Prendergast has told you."
+
+And then having said so much, Herbert waited for Owen to speak. He,
+Herbert himself, had little or nothing to say. Castle Richmond with
+its title and acres was not to be his, but was to be the property of
+this man with whom he was now sitting. When that was actually and
+positively understood between them, there was nothing further to
+be said; nothing as far as Herbert knew. That other sorrow of his,
+that other and deeper sorrow which affected his mother's name and
+station,--as to that he did not find himself called on to speak to
+Owen Fitzgerald. Nor was it necessary that he should say anything as
+to his great consolation--the consolation which had reached him from
+Clara Desmond.
+
+"And is it true, Herbert," asked Owen at last, "that my uncle is so
+very ill?" In the time of their kindly intercourse, Owen had always
+called Sir Thomas his uncle, though latterly he had ceased to do so.
+
+"He is very ill; very ill indeed," said Herbert. This was a subject
+in which Owen had certainly a right to feel interested, seeing that
+his own investiture would follow immediately on the death of Sir
+Thomas; but Herbert almost felt that the question might as well have
+been spared. It had been asked, however, almost solely with the view
+of gaining some few moments.
+
+"Herbert," he said at last, standing up from his chair, as he made an
+effort to begin his speech, "I don't know how far you will believe
+me when I tell you that all this news has caused me great sorrow. I
+grieve for your father and your mother, and for you, from the very
+bottom of my heart."
+
+"It is very kind of you," said Herbert. "But the blow has fallen, and
+as for myself, I believe that I can bear it. I do not care so very
+much about the property."
+
+"Nor do I;" and now Owen spoke rather louder, and with his own look
+of strong impulse about his mouth and forehead. "Nor do I care so
+much about the property. You were welcome to it; and are so still. I
+have never coveted it from you, and do not covet it."
+
+"It will be yours now without coveting," replied Herbert; and then
+there was another pause, during which Herbert sat still, while Owen
+stood leaning with his back against the mantelpiece.
+
+"Herbert," said he, after they had thus remained silent for two or
+three minutes, "I have made up my mind on this matter, and I will
+tell you truly what I do desire, and what I do not. I do not desire
+your inheritance, but I do desire that Clara Desmond shall be my
+wife."
+
+"Owen," said the other, also getting up, "I did not expect when I
+came here that you would have spoken to me about this."
+
+"It was that we might speak about this that I asked you to come here.
+But listen to me. When I say that I want Clara Desmond to be my wife,
+I mean to say that I want that, and that only. It may be true that I
+am, or shall be, legally the heir to your father's estate. Herbert,
+I will relinquish all that, because I do not feel it to be my own. I
+will relinquish it in any way that may separate myself from it most
+thoroughly. But in return, do you separate yourself from her who was
+my own before you had ever known her."
+
+And thus he did make the proposition as to which he had been making
+up his mind since the morning on which Mr. Prendergast had come to
+him.
+
+Herbert for a while was struck dumb with amazement, not so much at
+the quixotic generosity of the proposal, as at the singular mind of
+the man in thinking that such a plan could be carried out. Herbert's
+best quality was no doubt his sturdy common sense, and that was
+shocked by a suggestion which presumed that all the legalities and
+ordinary bonds of life could be upset by such an agreement between
+two young men. He knew that Owen Fitzgerald could not give away his
+title to an estate of fourteen thousand a year in this off-hand way,
+and that no one could accept such a gift were it possible to be
+given. The estate and title must belong to Owen, and could not
+possibly belong to any one else, merely at his word and fancy. And
+then again, how could the love of a girl like Clara Desmond be
+bandied to and fro at the will of any suitor or suitors? That she had
+once accepted Owen's love, Herbert knew; but since that, in a soberer
+mood, and with maturer judgment, she had accepted his. How could he
+give it up to another, or how could that other take possession of it
+if so abandoned? The bargain was one quite impossible to be carried
+out; and yet Owen in proposing it had fully intended to be as good as
+his word.
+
+"That is impossible," said Herbert in a low voice.
+
+"Why impossible? May I not do what I like with that which is my own?
+It is not impossible. I will have nothing to do with that property of
+yours. In fact, it is not my own, and I will not take it; I will not
+rob you of that which you have been born to expect. But in return for
+this--"
+
+"Owen, do not talk of it; would you abandon a girl whom you loved for
+any wealth, or any property?"
+
+"You cannot love her as I love her. I will talk to you on this matter
+openly, as I have never yet talked to any one. Since first I saw
+Clara Desmond, the only wish of my life has been that I might have
+her for my wife. I have longed for her as a child longs--if you know
+what I mean by that. When I saw that she was old enough to understand
+what love meant, I told her what was in my heart, and she accepted my
+love. She swore to me that she would be mine, let mother or brother
+say what they would. As sure as you are standing there a living man
+she loved me with all truth. And that I loved her--! Herbert, I have
+never loved aught but her; nothing else!--neither man nor woman, nor
+wealth nor title. All I ask is that I may have that which was my
+own."
+
+"But, Owen--" and Herbert touched his cousin's arm.
+
+"Well; why do you not speak? I have spoken plainly enough."
+
+"It is not easy to speak plainly on all subjects. I would not, if I
+could avoid it, say a word that would hurt your feelings."
+
+"Never mind my feelings. Speak out, and let us have the truth, in
+God's name. My feelings have never been much considered yet--either
+in this matter or in any other."
+
+"It seems to me," said Herbert, "that the giving of Lady Clara's hand
+cannot depend on your will, or on mine."
+
+"You mean her mother."
+
+"No, by no means. Her mother now would be the last to favour me. I
+mean herself. If she loves me, as I hope and believe--nay, am sure--"
+
+"She did love me!" shouted Owen.
+
+"But even if so--. I do not now say anything of that; but even if
+so, surely you would not have her marry you if she does not love you
+still? You would not wish her to be your wife if her heart belongs to
+me?"
+
+"It has been given you at her mother's bidding."
+
+"However given it is now my own and it cannot be returned. Look here,
+Owen. I will show you her last two letters, if you will allow me; not
+in pride, I hope, but that you may truly know what are her wishes."
+And he took from his breast, where they had been ever since he
+received them, the two letters which Clara had written to him. Owen
+read them both twice over before he spoke, first one and then the
+other, and an indescribable look of pain fell on his brow as he did
+so. They were so tenderly worded, so sweet, so generous! He would
+have given all the world to have had those letters addressed by her
+to himself. But even they did not convince him. His heart had never
+changed, and he could not believe that there had been any change in
+hers.
+
+"I might have known," he said, as he gave them back, "that she would
+be too noble to abandon you in your distress. As long as you were
+rich I might have had some chance of getting her back, despite the
+machinations of her mother. But now that she thinks you are poor--."
+And then he stopped, and hid his face between his hands.
+
+And in what he had last said there was undoubtedly something of
+truth. Clara's love for Herbert had never been passionate, till
+passion had been created by his misfortune. And in her thoughts
+of Owen there had been much of regret. Though she had resolved to
+withdraw her love, she had not wholly ceased to love him. Judgment
+had bade her to break her word to him, and she had obeyed her
+judgment. She had admitted to herself that her mother was right in
+telling her that she could not join her own bankrupt fortunes to the
+fortunes of one who was both poor and a spendthrift; and thus she
+had plucked from her heart the picture of the man she had loved,--or
+endeavoured so to pluck it. Some love for him, however, had
+unwittingly lingered there. And then Herbert had come with his suit,
+a suitor fitted for her in every way. She had not loved him as she
+had loved Owen. She had never felt that she could worship him, and
+tremble at the tones of his voice, and watch the glance of his
+eye, and gaze into his face as though he were half divine. But she
+acknowledged his worth, and valued him: she knew that it behoved her
+to choose some suitor as her husband; and now that her dream was
+gone, where could she choose better than here? And thus Herbert had
+been accepted. He had been accepted, but the dream was not wholly
+gone. Owen was in adversity, ill spoken of by those around her,
+shunned by his own relatives, living darkly, away from all that is
+soft in life; and for these reasons Clara could not wholly forget her
+dream. She had, in some sort, unconsciously clung to her old love,
+till he to whom she had plighted her new troth was in adversity,--and
+then all was changed. Then her love for Herbert did become a passion;
+and then, as Owen had become rich, she felt that she could think of
+him without remorse. He was quite right in perceiving that his chance
+was gone now that Herbert had ceased to be rich.
+
+"Owen," said Herbert, and his voice was full of tenderness, for at
+this moment he felt that he did love and pity his cousin, "we must
+each of us bear the weight which fortune has thrown on us. It may
+be that we are neither of us to be envied. I have lost all that men
+generally value, and you--."
+
+"I have lost all on earth that is valuable to me. But no; it is not
+lost,--not lost as yet. As long as her name is Clara Desmond, she
+is as open for me to win as she is for you. And, Herbert, think of
+it before you make me your enemy. See what I offer you,--not as a
+bargain, mind you. I give up all my title to your father's property.
+I will sign any paper that your lawyers may bring to me, which may
+serve to give you back your inheritance. As for me, I would scorn to
+take that which belongs in justice to another. I will not have your
+property. Come what may, I will not have it. I will give it up to
+you, either as to my enemy or as to my friend."
+
+"I sincerely hope that we may be friends, but what you say is
+impossible."
+
+"It is not impossible. I hereby pledge myself that I will not take
+an acre of your father's lands; but I pledge myself also that I will
+always be your enemy if Clara Desmond becomes your wife: and I mean
+what I say. I have set my heart on one thing, and on one thing only,
+and if I am ruined in that I am ruined indeed."
+
+Herbert remained silent, for he had nothing further that he knew how
+to plead; he felt as other men would feel, that each of them must
+keep that which Fate had given him. Fate had decreed that Owen should
+be the heir to Castle Richmond, and the decree thus gone forth must
+stand valid; and Fate had also decreed that Owen should be rejected
+by Clara Desmond, which other decree, as Herbert thought, must be
+held as valid also. But he had no further inclination to argue upon
+the subject: his cousin was becoming hot and angry; and Herbert was
+beginning to wish that he was on his way home, that he might be once
+more at his father's bedside, or in his mother's room, comforting her
+and being comforted.
+
+"Well," said Owen, after a while in his deep-toned voice; "what do
+you say to my offer?"
+
+"I have nothing further to say: we must each take our own course; as
+for me, I have lost everything but one thing, and it is not likely
+that I shall throw that away from me."
+
+"Nor, so help me Heaven in my need! will I let that thing be filched
+from me. I have offered you kindness and brotherly love, and wealth,
+and all that friendship could do for a man; give me my way in this,
+and I will be to you such a comrade and such a brother."
+
+"Should I be a man, Owen, were I to give up this?"
+
+"Be a man! Yes! It is pride on your part. You do not love her; you
+have never loved her as I have loved; you have not sat apart long
+months and months thinking of her, as I have done. From the time she
+was a child I marked her as my own. As God will help me when I die,
+she is all that I have coveted in this world;--all! But her I have
+coveted with such longings of the heart, that I cannot bring myself
+to live without her;--nor will I." And then again they both were
+silent.
+
+"It may be as well that we should part now," said Herbert at last.
+"I do not know that we can gain anything by further talking on this
+subject."
+
+"Well, you know that best; but I have one further question to ask
+you."
+
+"What is it, Owen?"
+
+"You still think of marrying Clara Desmond?"
+
+"Certainly; of course I think of it."
+
+"And when? I presume you are not so chicken-hearted as to be afraid
+of speaking out openly what you intend to do."
+
+"I cannot say when; I had hoped that it would have been very soon;
+but all this will of course delay it. It may be years first."
+
+These last were the only pleasant words that Owen had heard. If there
+were to be a delay of years, might not his chance still be as good
+as Herbert's? But then this delay was to be the consequence of his
+cousin's ruined prospects--and the accomplishment of that ruin Owen
+had pledged himself to prevent! Was he by his own deed to enable
+his enemy to take that very step which he was so firmly resolved to
+prevent?
+
+"You will give me your promise," said he, "that you will not marry
+her for the next three years? Make me that promise, and I will make
+you the same."
+
+Herbert felt that there could be no possibility of his now marrying
+within the time named, but nevertheless he would not bring himself
+to make such a promise as this. He would make no bargain about Clara
+Desmond, about his Clara, which could in any way admit a doubt as to
+his own right. Had Owen asked him to promise that he would not marry
+her during the next week he would have given no such pledge. "No,"
+said he, "I cannot promise that."
+
+"She is now only seventeen."
+
+"It does not matter. I will make no such promise, because on such a
+subject you have no right to ask for any. When she will consent to
+run her risk of happiness in coming to me, then I shall marry her."
+
+Owen was now walking up and down the room with rapid steps. "You have
+not the courage to fight me fairly," said he.
+
+"I do not wish to fight you at all."
+
+"Ah, but you must fight me! Shall I see the prey taken out of my
+jaws, and not struggle for it? No, by heavens! you must fight me; and
+I tell you fairly, that the fight shall be as hard as I can make it.
+I have offered you that which one living man is seldom able to offer
+to another,--money, and land, and wealth, and station; all these
+things I throw away from me, because I feel that they should be
+yours; and I ask only in return the love of a young girl. I ask that
+because I feel that it should be mine. If it has gone from me--which
+I do not believe--it has been filched and stolen by a thief in the
+night. She did love me, if a girl ever loved a man; but she was
+separated from me, and I bore that patiently because I trusted her.
+But she was young and weak, and her mother was strong and crafty. She
+has accepted you at her mother's instance; and were I base enough to
+keep from you your father's inheritance, her mother would no more
+give her to you now than she would to me then. This is true; and
+if you know it to be true--as you do know, you will be mean, and
+dastard, and a coward--you will be no Fitzgerald if you keep from me
+that which I have a right to claim as my own. Not fight! Ay, but you
+must fight. We cannot both live here in this country if Clara Desmond
+become your wife. Mark my words, if that take place, you and I cannot
+live here alongside of each other's houses." He paused for a moment
+after this, and then added, "You can go now if you will, for I have
+said out my say."
+
+And Herbert did go,--almost without uttering a word of adieu. What
+could he say in answer to such threats as these? That his cousin was
+in every way unreasonable,--as unreasonable in his generosity as he
+was in his claims, he felt convinced. But an unreasonable man, though
+he is one whom one would fain conquer by arguments were it possible,
+is the very man on whom arguments have no avail. A madman is mad
+because he is mad. Herbert had a great deal that was very sensible to
+allege in favour of his views, but what use of alleging anything of
+sense to such a mind as that of Owen Fitzgerald? So he went his way
+without further speech.
+
+When he was gone, Owen for a time went on walking his room, and then
+sank again into his chair. Abominably irrational as his method of
+arranging all these family difficulties will no doubt seem to all
+who may read of it, to him it had appeared not only an easy but a
+happy mode of bringing back contentment to everybody. He was quite
+serious in his intention of giving up his position as heir to Castle
+Richmond. Mr. Prendergast had explained to him that the property was
+entailed as far as him, but no farther; and had done this, doubtless,
+with the view, not then expressed, to some friendly arrangement by
+which a small portion of the property might be saved and restored
+to the children of Sir Thomas. But Owen had looked at it quite in
+another light. He had, in justice, no right to inquire into all
+those circumstances of his old cousin's marriage. Such a union was
+a marriage in the eye of God, and should be held as such by him. He
+would take no advantage of so terrible an accident.
+
+He would take no advantage. So he said to himself over and over
+again; but yet, as he said it, he resolved that he would take
+advantage. He would not touch the estate; but surely if he abstained
+from touching it, Herbert would be generous enough to leave to him
+the solace of his love! And he had no scruple in allotting to Clara
+the poorer husband instead of the richer. He was no poorer now than
+when she had accepted him. Looking at it in that light, had he not a
+right to claim that she should abide by her first acceptance? Could
+any one be found to justify the theory that a girl may throw over a
+poor lover because a rich lover comes in the way? Owen had his own
+ideas of right and wrong--ideas which were not without a basis of
+strong, rugged justice; and nothing could be more antagonistic to
+them than such a doctrine as this. And then he still believed in his
+heart that he was dearer to Clara than that other richer suitor. He
+heard of her from time to time, and those who had spoken to him had
+spoken of her as pining for love of him. In this there had been much
+of the flattery of servants, and something of the subservience of
+those about him who wished to stand well in his graces. But he had
+believed it. He was not a conceited man, nor even a vain man. He did
+not think himself more clever than his cousin; and as for personal
+appearance, it was a matter to which his thoughts never descended;
+but he had about him a self-dependence and assurance in his own
+manhood, which forbade him to doubt the love of one who had told him
+that she loved him.
+
+And he did not believe in Herbert's love. His cousin was, as he
+thought, of a calibre too cold for love. That Clara was valued by
+him, Owen did not doubt--valued for her beauty, for her rank, for her
+grace and peerless manner; but what had such value as that to do with
+love? Would Herbert sacrifice everything for Clara Desmond? would he
+bid Pelion fall on Ossa? would he drink up Esil? All this would Owen
+do, and more; he would do more than any Laertes had ever dreamed.
+He would give up for now and for ever all title to those rich lands
+which made the Fitzgeralds of Castle Richmond the men of greatest
+mark in all their county.
+
+And thus he fanned himself into a fury as he thought of his cousin's
+want of generosity. Herbert would be the heir, and because he was the
+heir he would be the favoured lover. But there might yet be time and
+opportunity; and at any rate Clara should not marry without knowing
+what was the whole truth. Herbert was ungenerous, but Clara still
+might be just. If not,--then, as he had said before, he would fight
+out the battle to the end as with an enemy.
+
+Herbert, when he got on to his horse to ride home, was forced to
+acknowledge to himself that no good whatever had come from his visit
+to Hap House. Words had been spoken which might have been much better
+left unspoken. An angry man will often cling to his anger because
+his anger has been spoken; he will do evil because he has threatened
+evil, and is ashamed to be better than his words. And there was
+no comfort to be derived from those lavish promises made by Owen
+with regard to the property. To Herbert's mind they were mere
+moonshine--very graceful on the part of the maker, but meaning
+nothing. No one could have Castle Richmond but him who owned it
+legally. Owen Fitzgerald would become Sir Owen, and would, as a
+matter of course, be Sir Owen of Castle Richmond. There was no
+comfort on that score; and then, on that other score, there was so
+much discomfort. Of giving up his bride Herbert never for a moment
+thought; but he did think, with increasing annoyance, of the angry
+threats which had been pronounced against him.
+
+When he rode into the stable-yard as was his wont, he found Richard
+waiting for him. This was not customary; as in these latter days
+Richard, though he always drove the car, as a sort of subsidiary
+coachman to the young ladies to whom the car was supposed to belong
+in fee, did not act as general groom. He had been promoted beyond
+this, and was a sort of hanger-on about the house, half indoor
+servant and half out, doing very much what he liked, and giving
+advice to everybody, from the cook downwards. He thanked God that
+he knew his place, he would often say; but nobody else knew it.
+Nevertheless everybody liked him; even the poor housemaid whom he
+snubbed.
+
+"Is anything the matter?" asked Herbert, looking at the man's
+sorrow-laden face.
+
+"'Deed an' there is, Mr. Herbert; Sir Thomas is--"
+
+"My father is not dead!" exclaimed Herbert.
+
+"Oh no, Mr. Herbert; it's not so bad as that; but he is very
+failing,--very failing. My lady is with him now."
+
+Herbert ran into the house, and at the bottom of the chief stairs
+he met one of his sisters who had heard the steps of his horse. "Oh,
+Herbert, I am so glad you have come!" said she. Her eyes and cheeks
+were red with tears, and her hand, as her brother took it, was cold
+and numbed.
+
+"What is it, Mary? is he worse?"
+
+"Oh, so much worse. Mamma and Emmeline are there. He has asked for
+you three or four times, and always says that he is dying. I had
+better go up and say that you are here."
+
+"And what does my mother think of it?"
+
+"She has never left him, and therefore I cannot tell; but I know from
+her face that she thinks that he is--dying. Shall I go up, Herbert?"
+and so she went, and Herbert, following softly on his toes, stood
+in the corridor outside the bedroom-door, waiting till his arrival
+should have been announced. It was but a minute, and then his sister,
+returning to the door, summoned him to enter.
+
+The room had been nearly darkened, but as there were no curtains to
+the bed, Herbert could see his mother's face as she knelt on a stool
+at the bedside. His father was turned away from him, and lay with his
+hand inside his wife's, and Emmeline was sitting on the foot of the
+bed, with her face between her hands, striving to stifle her sobs.
+"Here is Herbert now, dearest," said Lady Fitzgerald, with a low,
+soft voice, almost a whisper, yet clear enough to cause no effort in
+the hearing. "I knew that he would not be long." And Herbert, obeying
+the signal of his mother's eye, passed round to the other side of the
+bed.
+
+"Father," said he, "are you not so well to-day?"
+
+"My poor boy, my poor ruined boy!" said the dying man, hardly
+articulating the words as he dropped his wife's hand and took that
+of his son. Herbert found that it was wet, and clammy, and cold, and
+almost powerless in its feeble grasp.
+
+"Dearest father, you are wrong if you let that trouble you; all that
+will never trouble me. Is it not well that a man should earn his own
+bread? Is it not the lot of all good men?" But still the old man
+murmured with his broken voice, "My poor boy, my poor boy!"
+
+The hopes and aspirations of his eldest son are as the breath of his
+nostrils to an Englishman who has been born to land and fortune.
+What had not this poor man endured in order that his son might be
+Sir Herbert Fitzgerald of Castle Richmond? But this was no longer
+possible; and from the moment that this had been brought home to him,
+the father had felt that for him there was nothing left but to die.
+"My poor boy," he muttered, "tell me that you have forgiven me."
+
+And then they all knelt round the bed and prayed with him; and
+afterwards they tried to comfort him, telling him how good he had
+been to them; and his wife whispered in his ear that if there had
+been fault, the fault was hers, but that her conscience told her that
+such fault had been forgiven; and while she said this she motioned
+the children away from him, and strove to make him understand that
+human misery could never kill the soul, and should never utterly
+depress the spirit. "Dearest love," she said, still whispering to
+him in her low, sweet voice--so dear to him, but utterly inaudible
+beyond--"if you would cease to accuse yourself so bitterly, you might
+yet be better, and remain with us to comfort us."
+
+But the slender, half-knit man, whose arms are without muscles and
+whose back is without pith, will strive in vain to lift the weight
+which the brawny vigour of another tosses from the ground almost
+without an effort. It is with the mind and the spirit as with the
+body; only this, that the muscles of the body can be measured, but
+not so those of the spirit. Lady Fitzgerald was made of other stuff
+than Sir Thomas; and that which to her had cost an effort, but with
+an effort had been done surely, was to him as impossible as the
+labour of Hercules. "My poor boy, my poor ruined boy!" he still
+muttered, as she strove to comfort him.
+
+"Mamma has sent for Mr. Townsend," Emmeline whispered to her brother,
+as they stood together in the bow of the window.
+
+"And do you really think he is so bad as that?"
+
+"I am sure that mamma does. I believe he had some sort of a fit
+before you came. At any rate, he did not speak for two hours."
+
+"And was not Finucane here?" Finucane was the Mallow doctor.
+
+"Yes; but he had left before papa became so much worse. Mamma has
+sent for him also."
+
+But I do not know that it boots to dally longer in a dying chamber.
+It is an axiom of old that the stage curtain should be drawn before
+the inexorable one enters in upon his final work. Doctor Finucane did
+come, but his coming was all in vain. Sir Thomas had known that it
+was in vain, and so also had his patient wife. There was that mind
+diseased, towards the cure of which no Doctor Finucane could make any
+possible approach. And Mr. Townsend came also, let us hope not in
+vain; though the cure which he fain would have perfected can hardly
+be effected in such moments as those. Let us hope that it had been
+already effected. The only crying sin which we can lay to the charge
+of the dying man is that of which we have spoken; he had endeavoured
+by pensioning falsehood and fraud to preserve for his wife her name,
+and for his son that son's inheritance. Even over this, deep as it
+was, the recording angel may have dropped some cleansing tears of
+pity.
+
+That night the poor man died, and the Fitzgeralds who sat in the
+chambers of Castle Richmond were no longer the owners of the mansion.
+There was no speech of Sir Herbert among the servants as there would
+have been had these tidings not have reached them. Dr. Finucane had
+remained in the house, and even he, in speaking of the son, had shown
+that he knew the story. They were strangers there now, as they all
+knew--intruders, as they would soon be considered in the house of
+their cousin Owen; or rather not their cousin. In that he was above
+them by right of his blood, they had no right to claim him as their
+relation.
+
+It may be said that at such a moment all this should not have been
+thought of; but those who say so know little, as I imagine, of the
+true effect of sorrow. No wife and no children ever grieved more
+heartily for a father; but their grief was blacker and more gloomy in
+that they knew that they were outcasts in the world.
+
+And during that long night as Herbert and his sisters sat up cowering
+round the fire, he told them of all that had been said at Hap House.
+"And can it not be as he says?" Mary had asked.
+
+"And that Herbert should give up his wife!" said Emmeline.
+
+"No; but that other thing."
+
+"Do not dream of it," said Herbert. "It is all, all impossible. The
+house that we are now in belongs to Sir Owen Fitzgerald."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+THE FIRST MONTH.
+
+
+And now I will beg my readers to suppose a month to have passed by
+since Sir Thomas Fitzgerald died. It was a busy month in Ireland.
+It may probably be said that so large a sum of money had never been
+circulated in the country in any one month since money had been known
+there; and yet it may also be said that so frightful a mortality had
+never occurred there from the want of that which money brings. It was
+well understood by all men now that the customary food of the country
+had disappeared. There was no longer any difference of opinion
+between rich and poor, between Protestant and Roman Catholic; as to
+that, no man dared now to say that the poor, if left to themselves,
+could feed themselves, or to allege that the sufferings of the
+country arose from the machinations of money-making speculators. The
+famine was an established fact, and all men knew that it was God's
+doing,--all men knew this, though few could recognize as yet with how
+much mercy God's hand was stretched out over the country.
+
+Or may it not perhaps be truer to say that in such matters there
+is no such thing as mercy--no special mercies--no other mercy than
+that fatherly, forbearing, all-seeing, perfect goodness by which the
+Creator is ever adapting this world to the wants of His creatures,
+and rectifying the evils arising from their faults and follies? _Sed
+quo Musa tendis?_ Such discourses of the gods as these are not to be
+fitly handled in such small measures.
+
+At any rate, there was the famine, undoubted now by any one; and
+death, who in visiting Castle Richmond may be said to have knocked at
+the towers of a king, was busy enough also among the cabins of the
+poor. And now the great fault of those who were the most affected was
+becoming one which would not have been at first sight expected. One
+would think that starving men would become violent, taking food by
+open theft--feeling, and perhaps not without some truth, that the
+agony of their want robbed such robberies of its sin. But such was by
+no means the case. I only remember one instance in which the bakers'
+shops were attacked; and in that instance the work was done by those
+who were undergoing no real suffering. At Clonmel, in Tipperary,
+the bread was one morning stripped away from the bakers' shops; but
+at that time, and in that place, there was nothing approaching to
+famine. The fault of the people was apathy. It was the feeling of the
+multitude that the world and all that was good in it was passing away
+from them; that exertion was useless, and hope hopeless. "Ah, me!
+your honour," said a man to me, "there'll never be a bit and a sup
+again in the county Cork! The life of the world is fairly gone!"
+
+And it was very hard to repress this feeling. The energy of a man
+depends so much on the outward circumstances that encumber him! It is
+so hard to work when work seems hopeless--so hard to trust where the
+basis of our faith is so far removed from sight! When large tracts
+of land went out of cultivation, was it not natural to think that
+agriculture was receding from the country, leaving the green hills
+once more to be brown and barren, as hills once green have become in
+other countries? And when men were falling in the highways, and women
+would sit with their babes in their arms, listless till death should
+come to them, was it not natural to think that death was making a
+huge success--that he, the inexorable one, was now the inexorable
+indeed?
+
+There were greatly trusting hearts that could withstand the weight of
+this terrible pressure, and thinking minds which saw that good would
+come out of this great evil; but such hearts and such minds were not
+to be looked for among the suffering poor; and were not, perhaps,
+often found even among those who were not poor or suffering. It was
+very hard to be thus trusting and thoughtful while everything around
+was full of awe and agony.
+
+The people, however, were conscious of God's work, and were becoming
+dull and apathetic. They clustered about the roads, working lazily
+while their strength lasted them; and afterwards, when strength
+failed them for this, they clustered more largely in the poor-houses.
+And in every town--in every assemblage of houses which in England
+would be called a village, there was a poor-house. Any big barrack of
+a tenement that could be obtained at a moment's notice, whatever the
+rent, became a poor-house in the course of twelve hours;--in twelve,
+nay, in two hours. What was necessary but the bare walls, and a
+supply of yellow meal? Bad provision this for all a man's wants,--as
+was said often enough by irrational philanthropists; but better
+provision than no shelter and no yellow meal! It was bad that men
+should be locked up at night without any of the appliances of
+decency; bad that they should be herded together for day after day
+with no resource but the eating twice a day of enough unsavoury
+food to keep life and soul together;--very bad, ye philanthropical
+irrationalists! But is not a choice of evils all that is left to us
+in many a contingency? Was not even this better than that life and
+soul should be allowed to part, without any effort at preserving
+their union?
+
+And thus life and soul were kept together, the government of the day
+having wisely seen what, at so short a notice, was possible for them
+to do, and what was absolutely impossible. It is in such emergencies
+as these that the watching and the wisdom of a government are
+necessary; and I shall always think--as I did think then--that the
+wisdom of its action and the wisdom of its abstinence from action
+were very good. And now again the fields in Ireland are green,
+and the markets are busy, and money is chucked to and fro like a
+weathercock which the players do not wish to have abiding with them;
+and the tardy speculator going over to look for a bit of land comes
+back muttering angrily that fancy prices are demanded. "They'll run
+you up to thirty-three years' purchase," says the tardy speculator,
+thinking, as it seems, that he is specially ill used. Agricultural
+wages have been nearly doubled in Ireland during the last fifteen
+years. Think of that, Master Brook. Work for which, at six shillings
+a week, there would be a hundred hungry claimants in 1845,--in the
+good old days before the famine, when repeal was so immediately
+expected--will now fetch ten shillings, the claimants being by no
+means numerous. In 1843 and 1844, I knew men to work for fourpence
+a day--something over the dole on which we are told, being mostly
+incredulous as we hear it, that a Coolie labourer can feed himself
+with rice in India;--not one man or two men, the broken down
+incapables of the parish, but the best labour of the country. One and
+twopence is now about the cheapest rate at which a man can be hired
+for agricultural purposes. While this is so, and while the prices
+are progressing, there is no cause for fear, let Bishops A and B,
+and Archbishops C and D fret and fume with never so great vexation
+touching the clipped honours of their father the Pope.
+
+But again; Quo Musa tendis? I could write on this subject for a week
+were it not that Rhadamanthus awaits me, Rhadamanthus the critic; and
+Rhadamanthus is, of all things, impatient of an episode.
+
+Life and soul were kept together in those terrible days;--that is,
+the Irish life and soul generally. There were many slips, in which
+the union was violently dissolved,--many cases in which the yellow
+meal allowed was not sufficient, or in which it did not reach the
+sufferer in time to prevent such dissolution,--cases which when
+numbered together amounted to thousands. And then the pestilence
+came, taking its victims by tens of thousands,--but that was after
+the time with which we shall have concern here; and immigration
+followed, taking those who were saved by hundreds of thousands.
+But the millions are still there, a thriving people; for His mercy
+endureth for ever.
+
+During this month, the month ensuing upon the death of Sir Thomas
+Fitzgerald, Herbert could of course pay no outward attention to the
+wants or relief of the people. He could make no offer of assistance,
+for nothing belonged to him; nor could he aid in the councils of
+the committees, for no one could have defined the position of the
+speaker. And during that month nothing was defined about Castle
+Richmond. Lady Fitzgerald was still always called by her title. The
+people of the country, including the tradesmen of the neighbouring
+towns, addressed the owner of Hap House as Sir Owen; and gradually
+the name was working itself into common use, though he had taken no
+steps to make himself legally entitled to wear it. But no one spoke
+of Sir Herbert. The story was so generally known, that none were so
+ignorant as to suppose him to be his father's heir. The servants
+about the place still called him Mr. Herbert, orders to that effect
+having been specially given; and the peasants of the country, with
+that tact which graces them, and with that anxiety to abstain from
+giving pain which always accompanies them unless when angered,
+carefully called him by no name. They knew that he was not Sir
+Herbert; but they would not believe but what, perchance, he might
+be so yet on some future day. So they took off their old hats to
+him, and passed him silently in his sorrow; or if they spoke to him,
+addressed his honour simply, omitting all mention of that Christian
+name, which the poor Irishman is generally so fond of using. "Mister
+Blake" sounds cold and unkindly in his ears. It is the "Masther,"
+or "His honour," or if possible "Misther Thady." Or if there be any
+handle, that is used with avidity. Pat is a happy man when he can
+address his landlord as "Sir Patrick."
+
+But now the "ould masther's son" could be called by no name. Men knew
+not what he was to be, though they knew well that he was not that
+which he ought to be. And there were some who attempted to worship
+Owen as the rising sun; but for such of them as had never worshipped
+him before that game was rather hopeless. In those days he was not
+much seen, neither hunting nor entertaining company; but when seen he
+was rough enough with those who made any deep attempt to ingratiate
+themselves with his coming mightiness. And during this month he
+went over to London, having been specially invited so to do by Mr.
+Prendergast; but very little came of his visit there, except that it
+was certified to him that he was beyond all doubt the baronet. "And
+there shall be no unnecessary delay, Sir Owen," said Mr. Prendergast,
+"in putting you into full possession of all your rights." In answer
+to which Owen had replied that he was not anxious to be put in
+possession of any rights. That as far as any active doing of his own
+was concerned, the title might lie in abeyance, and that regarding
+the property he would make known his wish to Mr. Prendergast very
+quickly after his return to Ireland. But he intimated at the same
+time that there could be no ground for disturbing Lady Fitzgerald,
+as he had no intention under any circumstances of living at Castle
+Richmond.
+
+"Had you not better tell Lady Fitzgerald that yourself?" said Mr.
+Prendergast, catching at the idea that his friend's widow--my readers
+will allow me so to call her--might be allowed to live undisturbed at
+the family mansion, if not for life, at any rate for a few years. If
+this young man were so generous, why should it not be so? He would
+not want the big house, at any rate, till he were married.
+
+"It would be better that you should say so," said Owen. "I have
+particular reasons for not wishing to go there."
+
+"But allow me to say, my dear young friend--and I hope I may call you
+so, for I greatly admire the way in which you have taken all these
+tidings--that I would venture to advise you to drop the remembrance
+of any unpleasantness that may have existed. You should now feel
+yourself to be the closest friend of that family."
+
+"So I would if--," and then Owen stopped short, though Mr.
+Prendergast gave him plenty of time to finish his sentence were he
+minded to do so.
+
+"In your present position," continued the lawyer, "your influence
+will be very great."
+
+"I can't explain it all," said Owen; "but I don't think my influence
+will be great at all. And what is more, I do not want any influence
+of that sort. I wish Lady Fitzgerald to understand that she is at
+perfect liberty to stay where she is,--as far as I am concerned. Not
+as a favour from me, mind; for I do not think that she would take a
+favour from my hands."
+
+"But, my dear sir!"
+
+"Therefore you had better write to her about remaining there."
+
+Mr. Prendergast did write to her, or rather to Herbert: but in doing
+so he thought it right to say that the permission to live at Castle
+Richmond should be regarded as a kindness granted them by their
+relative. "It is a kindness which, under the circumstances, your
+mother may, I think, accept without compunction; at any rate, for
+some time to come,--till she shall have suited herself without
+hurrying her choice; but, nevertheless, it must be regarded as a
+generous offer on his part; and I do hope, my dear Herbert, that you
+and he will be fast friends."
+
+But Mr. Prendergast did not in the least comprehend the workings of
+Owen's mind; and Herbert, who knew more of them than any one else,
+did not understand them altogether. Owen had no idea of granting any
+favour to his relatives, who, as he thought, had never granted any to
+him. What Owen wanted,--or what he told himself that he wanted,--was
+justice. It was his duty as a just man to abstain from taking hold of
+those acres, and he was prepared to do his duty. But it was equally
+Herbert's duty as a just man to abstain from taking hold of Clara
+Desmond, and he was resolved that he would never be Herbert's friend
+if Herbert did not perform that duty. And then, though he felt
+himself bound to give up the acres,--though he did regard this as an
+imperative duty, he nevertheless felt also that something was due
+to him for his readiness to perform such a duty,--that some reward
+should be conceded to him; what this reward was to be, or rather what
+he wished it to be, we all know.
+
+Herbert had utterly refused to engage in any such negotiation; but
+Owen, nevertheless, would not cease to think that something might yet
+be done. Who was so generous as Clara, and would not Clara herself
+speak out if she knew how much her old lover was prepared to do for
+this newer lover? Half a dozen times Owen made up his mind to explain
+the whole thing to Mr. Prendergast; but when he found himself in the
+presence of the lawyer, he could not talk about love. Young men are
+so apt to think that their seniors in age cannot understand romance,
+or acknowledge the force of a passion. But here they are wrong, for
+there would be as much romance after forty as before, I take it, were
+it not checked by the fear of ridicule. So Owen stayed a week in
+London, seeing Mr. Prendergast every day; and then he returned to Hap
+House.
+
+In the mean time life went on at a very sad pace at Desmond Court.
+There was no concord whatever between the two ladies residing there.
+The mother was silent, gloomy, and sometimes bitter, seldom saying a
+word about Herbert Fitzgerald or his prospects, but saying that word
+with great fixity of purpose when it was spoken. "No one," she said,
+"should attribute to her the poverty and misery of her child. That
+marriage should not take place from her house, or with her consent."
+And Clara for the most part was silent also. In answer to such words
+as the above she would say nothing; but when, as did happen once or
+twice, she was forced to speak, she declared openly enough that no
+earthly consideration should induce her to give up her engagement.
+
+And then the young earl came home, brought away from his school in
+order that his authority might have effect on his sister. To speak
+the truth, he was unwilling enough to interfere, and would have
+declined to come at all could he have dared to do so. Eton was now
+more pleasant to him than Desmond Court, which, indeed, had but
+little of pleasantness to offer to a lad such as he was now. He
+was sixteen, and manly for his age; but the question in dispute
+at Desmond Court offered little attraction even to a manly boy of
+sixteen. In that former question as to Owen he had said a word or
+two, knowing that Owen could not be looked upon as a fitting husband
+for his sister; but now he knew not how to counsel her again as to
+Herbert, seeing that it was but the other day that he had written a
+long letter, congratulating her on that connection.
+
+Towards the end of the month, however, he did arrive, making glad his
+mother's heart as she looked at his strong limbs and his handsome
+open face. And Clara, too, threw herself so warmly into his arms that
+he did feel glad that he had come to her. "Oh, Patrick, it is so
+sweet to have you here!" she said, before his mother had had time to
+speak to him.
+
+"Dearest Clara!"
+
+"But, Patrick, you must not be cruel to me. Look here, Patrick; you
+are my only brother, and I so love you that I would not offend you
+or turn you against me for worlds. You are the head of our family,
+too, and nothing should be done that you do not like. But if so much
+depends on you, you must think well before you decide on anything."
+
+He opened his young eyes and looked intently into her face, for there
+was an earnestness in her words that almost frightened him. "You must
+think well of it all before you speak, Patrick; and remember this,
+you and I must be honest and honourable, whether we be poor or no.
+You remember about Owen Fitzgerald, how I gave way then because I
+could do so without dishonour. But now--"
+
+"But, Clara, I do not understand it all as yet."
+
+"No; you cannot,--not as yet--and I will let mamma tell you the
+story. All I ask is this, that you will think of my honour before you
+say a word that can favour either her or me." And then he promised
+her that he would do so; and his mother, when on the following
+morning she told him all the history, found him reserved and silent.
+
+"Look at his position," said the mother, pleading her cause before
+her son. "He is illegitimate, and--"
+
+"Yes, but mother--"
+
+"I know all that, my dear; I know what you would say; and no one can
+pity Mr. Fitzgerald's position more than I do; but you would not on
+that account have your sister ruined. It is romance on her part."
+
+"But what does he say?"
+
+"He is quite willing to give up the match. He has told me so, and
+said as much to his aunt, whom I have seen three times on the
+subject."
+
+"Do you mean that he wishes to give it up?"
+
+"No,--at least I don't know. If he does, he cannot express such a
+wish, because Clara is so headstrong. Patrick, in my heart I do not
+believe that she cares for him. I have doubted it for some time."
+
+"But you wanted her to marry him."
+
+"So I did. It was an excellent match, and in a certain way she did
+like him; and then, you know, there was that great danger about poor
+Owen. It was a great danger then. But now she is so determined about
+this, because she thinks it would be ungenerous to go back from her
+word; and in this way she will ruin the very man she wishes to serve.
+Of course he cannot break off the match if she persists in it. What
+I want you to perceive is this, that he, utterly penniless as he is,
+will have to begin the world with a clog round his neck, because she
+is so obstinate. What could possibly be worse for him than a titled
+wife without a penny?" And in this way the countess pleaded her side
+of the question before her son.
+
+It was quite true that she had been three times to Castle Richmond,
+and had thrice driven Aunt Letty into a state bordering on
+distraction. If she could only get the Castle Richmond people to take
+it up as they ought to do! It was thus she argued with herself,--and
+with Aunt Letty also, endeavouring to persuade her that these two
+young people would undoubtedly ruin each other, unless those who were
+really wise and prudent, and who understood the world--such as Aunt
+Letty, for instance--would interfere to prevent it.
+
+Aunt Letty on the whole did agree with her, though she greatly
+disliked her. Miss Fitzgerald had strongly planted within her bosom
+the prudent old-world notion, that young gentlefolks should not
+love each other unless they have plenty of money; and that, if
+unfortunately such did love each other, it was better that they
+should suffer all the pangs of hopeless love than marry and trust to
+God and their wits for bread and cheese. To which opinion of Aunt
+Letty's, as well as to some others entertained by that lady with much
+pertinacity, I cannot subscribe myself as an adherent.
+
+Lady Desmond had wit enough to discover that Aunt Letty did agree
+with her in the main, and on this account she was eager in seeking
+her assistance. Lady Fitzgerald of course could not be seen, and
+there was no one else at Castle Richmond who could be supposed to
+have any weight with Herbert. And therefore Lady Desmond was very
+eloquent with Aunt Letty, talking much of the future miseries of the
+two young people, till the old lady had promised to use her best
+efforts in enlisting Lady Fitzgerald on the same side. "You cannot
+wonder, Miss Fitzgerald, that I should wish to put an end to the
+cruel position in which my poor girl is placed. You know how much a
+girl suffers from that kind of thing."
+
+Aunt Letty did dislike Lady Desmond very much; but, nevertheless, she
+could not deny the truth of all this; and therefore it may be said
+that the visits of the countess to Castle Richmond were on the whole
+successful.
+
+And the month wore itself away also in that sad household, and the
+Fitzgeralds were gradually becoming used to their position. Family
+discussions were held among them as to what they should do, and where
+they should live in future. Mr. Prendergast had written, seeing
+that Owen had persisted in refusing to make the offer personally
+himself--saying that there was no hurry for any removal. "Sir Owen,"
+he said,--having considered deeply whether or no he would call him
+by the title or no, and having resolved that it would be best to do
+so at once--"Sir Owen was inclined to behave very generously. Lady
+Fitzgerald could have the house and demesne at any rate for twelve
+months, and by that time the personal property left by Sir Thomas
+would be realized, and there would be enough," Mr. Prendergast
+said, "for the three ladies to live 'in decent quiet comfort.'" Mr.
+Prendergast had taken care before he left Castle Richmond that a will
+should be made and duly executed by Sir Thomas, leaving what money
+he had to his three children by name,--in trust for their mother's
+use. Till the girls should be of age that trust would be vested in
+Herbert.
+
+"Decent quiet comfort!" said Mary to her brother and sister as they
+conned the letter over; "how comfortless it sounds!"
+
+And so the first month after the death of Sir Thomas passed by,
+and the misfortunes of the Fitzgerald family ceased to be the only
+subject spoken of by the inhabitants of county Cork.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+PREPARATIONS FOR GOING.
+
+
+At the end of the month, Herbert began to prepare himself for facing
+the world. The first question to be answered was that one which is
+so frequently asked in most families, but which had never yet been
+necessary in this--What profession would he follow? All manners of
+ways by which an educated man can earn his bread had been turned over
+in his mind, and in the minds of those who loved him, beginning with
+the revenues of the Archbishop of Armagh, which was Aunt Letty's
+idea, and ending with a seat at a government desk, which was his own.
+Mr. Prendergast had counselled the law; not his own lower branch of
+the profession, but a barrister's full-blown wig, adding, in his
+letter to Lady Fitzgerald, that if Herbert would come to London, and
+settle in chambers, he, Mr. Prendergast, would see that his life
+was made agreeable to him. But Mr. Somers gave other advice. In
+those days Assistant Poor-Law Commissioners were being appointed in
+Ireland, almost by the score, and Mr. Somers declared that Herbert
+had only to signify his wish for such a position, and he would get
+it. The interest which he had taken in the welfare of the poor around
+him was well known, and as his own story was well known also, there
+could be no doubt that the government would be willing to assist one
+so circumstanced, and who when assisted would make himself so useful.
+Such was the advice of Mr. Somers; and he might have been right but
+for this, that both Herbert and Lady Fitzgerald felt that it would
+be well for them to move out of that neighbourhood,--out of Ireland
+altogether, if such could be possible.
+
+Aunt Letty was strong for the Church. A young man who had
+distinguished himself at the University so signally as her nephew
+had done, taking his degree at the very first attempt, and that in
+so high a class of honour as the fourth, would not fail to succeed
+in the Church. He might not perhaps succeed as to Armagh; that she
+admitted, but there were some thirty other bishoprics to be had, and
+it would be odd if, with his talents, he did not get one of them.
+Think what it would be if he were to return to his own country as
+Bishop of Cork, Cloyne, and Ross, as to which amalgamation of sees,
+however, Aunt Letty had her own ideas. He was slightly tainted with
+the venom of Puseyism, Aunt Letty said to herself; but nothing
+would dispel this with so much certainty as the theological studies
+necessary for ordination. And then Aunt Letty talked it over by the
+hour together with Mrs. Townsend, and both those ladies were agreed
+that Herbert should get himself ordained as quickly as possible;--not
+in England, where there might be danger even in ordination, but
+in good, wholesome, Protestant Ireland, where a Church of England
+clergyman was a clergyman of the Church of England, and not a priest,
+slipping about in the mud half way between England and Rome.
+
+Herbert himself was anxious to get some employment by which he might
+immediately earn his bread, but not unnaturally wished that London
+should be the scene of his work. Anywhere in Ireland he would be
+known as the Fitzgerald who ought to have been Fitzgerald of Castle
+Richmond. And then too, he, as other young men, had an undefined
+idea, that as he must earn his bread London should be his ground.
+He had at first been not ill inclined to that Church project, and
+had thus given a sort of ground on which Aunt Letty was able to
+stand,--had, as it were, given her some authority for carrying on an
+agitation in furtherance of her own views; but Herbert himself soon
+gave up this idea. A man, he thought, to be a clergyman should have
+a very strong predilection in favour of that profession; and so he
+gradually abandoned that idea,--actuated, as poor Aunt Letty feared,
+by the agency of the evil one, working through the means of Puseyism.
+
+His mother and sisters were in favour of Mr. Prendergast's views, and
+as it was gradually found by them all that there would not be any
+immediate pressure as regarded pecuniary means, that seemed at last
+to be their decision. Herbert would remain yet for three or four
+weeks at Castle Richmond, till matters there were somewhat more
+thoroughly settled, and would then put himself into the hands of Mr.
+Prendergast in London. Mr. Prendergast would select a legal tutor
+for him, and proper legal chambers; and then not long afterwards his
+mother and sisters should follow, and they would live together at
+some small villa residence near St. John's Wood Road, or perhaps out
+at Brompton.
+
+It is astonishing how quickly in this world of ours chaos will settle
+itself into decent and graceful order, when it is properly looked
+in the face, and handled with a steady hand which is not sparing of
+the broom. Some three months since, everything at Castle Richmond
+was ruin; such ruin, indeed, that the very power of living under it
+seemed to be doubtful. When first Mr. Prendergast arrived there, a
+feeling came upon them all as though they might hardly dare to live
+in a world which would look at them as so thoroughly degraded. As
+regards means, they would be beggars! and as regards position, so
+much worse than beggars! A broken world was in truth falling about
+their ears, and it was felt to be impossible that they should endure
+its convulsions and yet live.
+
+But now the world had fallen, the ruin had come, and they were
+already strong in future hopes. They had dared to look at their
+chaos, and found that it still contained the elements of order.
+There was much still that marred their happiness, and forbade the
+joyousness of other days. Their poor father had gone from them in
+their misery, and the house was still a house of mourning; and their
+mother too, though she bore up so wonderfully against her fate, and
+for their sakes hoped and planned and listened to their wishes, was a
+stricken woman. That she would never smile again with any heartfelt
+joy they were all sure. But, nevertheless, their chaos was conquered,
+and there was hope that the fields of life would again show
+themselves green and fruitful.
+
+On one subject their mother never spoke to them, nor had even Herbert
+dared to speak to her: not a word had been said in that house since
+Mr. Prendergast left it as to the future whereabouts or future doings
+of that man to whom she had once given her hand at the altar. But
+she had ventured to ask by letter a question of Mr. Prendergast. Her
+question had been this: What must I do that he may not come to me or
+to my children? In answer to this Mr. Prendergast had told her, after
+some delay, that he believed she need fear nothing. He had seen the
+man, and he thought that he might assure her that she would not be
+troubled in that respect.
+
+"It is possible," said Mr. Prendergast, "that he may apply to you by
+letter for money. If so, give him no answer whatever, but send his
+letters to me."
+
+"And are you all going?" asked Mrs. Townsend of Aunt Letty, with a
+lachrymose voice soon after the fate of the family was decided.
+They were sitting together with their knees over the fire in Mrs.
+Townsend's dining-parlour, in which the perilous state of the country
+had been discussed by them for many a pleasant hour together.
+
+"Well, I think we shall; you see, my sister would never be happy
+here."
+
+"No, no; the shock and the change would be too great for her. Poor
+Lady Fitzgerald! And when is that man coming into the house?"
+
+"What, Owen?"
+
+"Yes! Sir Owen I suppose he is now."
+
+"Well, I don't know; he does not seem to be in any hurry. I believe
+that he has said that my sister may continue to live there if she
+pleases. But of course she cannot do that."
+
+"They do say about the country," whispered Mrs. Townsend, "that he
+refuses to be the heir at all. He certainly has not had any cards
+printed with the title on them--I know that as a fact."
+
+"He is a very singular man, very. You know I never could bear him,"
+said Aunt Letty.
+
+"No, nor I either. He has not been to our church once these six
+months. But it's very odd, isn't it? Of course you know the story?"
+
+"What story?" asked Aunt Letty.
+
+"About Lady Clara. Owen Fitzgerald was dreadfully in love with her
+before your Herbert had ever seen her. And they do say that he has
+sworn his cousin shall never live if he marries her."
+
+"They can never marry now, you know. Only think of it. There would be
+three hundred a year between them.--Not at present, that is," added
+Aunt Letty, looking forward to a future period after her own death.
+
+"That is very little, very little indeed," said Mrs. Townsend,
+remembering, however, that she herself had married on less. "But,
+Miss Fitzgerald, if Herbert does not marry her do you think this Owen
+will?"
+
+"I don't think she'd have him. I am quite sure she would not."
+
+"Not when he has all the property, and the title too?"
+
+"No, nor double as much. What would people say of her if she did?
+But, however, there is no fear, for she declares that nothing shall
+induce her to give up her engagement with our Herbert."
+
+And so they discussed it backward and forward in every way, each
+having her own theory as to that singular rumour which was going
+about the country, signifying that Owen had declined to accept the
+title. Aunt Letty, however, would not believe that any good could
+come from so polluted a source, and declared that he had his own
+reasons for the delay. "It's not for any love of us," she said, "if
+he refuses to take either that or the estate." And in this she was
+right. But she would have been more surprised still had she learned
+that Owen's forbearance arose from a strong anxiety to do what was
+just in the matter.
+
+"And so Herbert won't go into the Church?"
+
+And Letty shook her head sorrowing.
+
+"Aeneas would have been so glad to have taken him for a twelvemonth's
+reading," said Mrs. Townsend. "He could have come here, you know,
+when you went away, and been ordained at Cork, and got a curacy close
+in the neighbourhood, where he was known. It would have been so nice;
+wouldn't it?"
+
+Aunt Letty would not exactly have advised the scheme as suggested by
+Mrs. Townsend. Her ideas as to Herbert's clerical studies would have
+been higher than this. Trinity College, Dublin, was in her estimation
+the only place left for good Church of England ecclesiastical
+teaching. But as Herbert was obstinately bent on declining sacerdotal
+life, there was no use in dispelling Mrs. Townsend's bright vision.
+
+"It's all of no use," she said; "he is determined to go to the bar."
+
+"The bar is very respectable," said Mrs. Townsend, kindly.
+
+"And you mean to go with them, too?" said Mrs. Townsend, after
+another pause. "You'll hardly be happy, I'm thinking, so far away
+from your old home."
+
+"It is sad to change at my time of life," said Aunt Letty,
+plaintively. "I'm sixty-two now."
+
+"Nonsense," said Mrs. Townsend, who, however, knew her age to a day.
+
+"Sixty-two if I live another week, and I have never yet had any home
+but Castle Richmond. There I was born, and till the other day I
+had every reason to trust that there I might die. But what does it
+matter?"
+
+"No, that's true of course; what does it matter where we are while we
+linger in this vale of tears? But couldn't you get a little place for
+yourself somewhere near here? There's Callaghan's cottage, with the
+two-acre piece for a cow, and as nice a spot of a garden as there is
+in the county Cork."
+
+"I wouldn't separate myself from her now," said Aunt Letty, "for
+all the cottages and all the gardens in Ireland. The Lord has been
+pleased to throw us together, and together we will finish our
+pilgrimage. Whither she goes, I will go, and where she lodges, I will
+lodge; her people shall be my people, and her God my God." And then
+Mrs. Townsend said nothing further of Callaghan's pretty cottage, or
+of the two-acre piece.
+
+But one reason for her going Aunt Letty did not give, even to her
+friend Mrs. Townsend. Her income, that which belonged exclusively
+to herself, was in no way affected by these sad Castle Richmond
+revolutions. This was a comfortable,--we may say a generous provision
+for an old maiden lady, amounting to some six hundred a year, settled
+upon her for life, and this, if added to what could be saved and
+scraped together, would enable them to live comfortably as far as
+means were concerned, in that suburban villa to which they were
+looking forward. But without Aunt Letty's income that suburban villa
+must be but a poor home. Mr. Prendergast had calculated that some
+fourteen thousand pounds would represent the remaining property of
+the family, with which it would be necessary to purchase government
+stock. Such being the case, Aunt Letty's income was very material to
+them.
+
+"I trust you will be able to find some one there who will preach the
+gospel to you," said Mrs. Townsend, in a tone that showed how serious
+were her misgivings on the subject.
+
+"I will search for such a one at any rate," said Aunt Letty. "You
+need not be afraid that I shall be a backslider."
+
+"But they have crosses now over the communion tables in the churches
+in England," said Mrs. Townsend.
+
+"I know it is very bad," said Aunt Letty. "But there will always be a
+remnant left. The Lord will not utterly desert us." And then she took
+her departure, leaving Mrs. Townsend with the conviction that the
+land to which her friend was going was one in which the light of the
+gospel no longer shone in its purity.
+
+It was not wonderful that they should all be anxious to get away
+from Castle Richmond, for the house there was now not a pleasant one
+in which to live. Let all those who have houses and the adjuncts
+of houses think how considerable a part of their life's pleasures
+consists in their interest in the things around them. When will the
+sea-kale be fit to cut, and when will the crocuses come up? will the
+violets be sweeter than ever? and the geranium cuttings, are they
+thriving? we have dug, and manured, and sown, and we look forward to
+the reaping, and to see our garners full. The very furniture which
+ministers to our daily uses is loved and petted; and in decorating
+our rooms we educate ourselves in design. The place in church which
+has been our own for years,--is not that dear to us, and the voice
+that has told us of God's tidings--even though the drone become
+more evident as it waxes in years, and though it grows feeble and
+indolent? And the faces of those who have lived around us, do we not
+love them too, the servants who have worked for us, and the children
+who have first toddled beneath our eyes and prattled in our ears, and
+now run their strong races, screaming loudly, splashing us as they
+pass--very unpleasantly? Do we not love them all? Do they not all
+contribute to the great sum of our enjoyment? All men love such
+things, more or less, even though they know it not. And women love
+them even more than men.
+
+And the Fitzgeralds were about to leave them all. The early buds of
+spring were now showing themselves, but how was it possible that
+they should look to them? One loves the bud because one expects the
+flower. The sea-kale now was beyond their notice, and though they
+plucked the crocuses, they did so with tears upon their cheeks.
+After much consideration the church had been abandoned by all except
+Aunt Letty and Herbert. That Lady Fitzgerald should go there was
+impossible, and the girls were only too glad to be allowed to stay
+with their mother. And the schools in which they had taught since the
+first day in which teaching had been possible for them, had to be
+abandoned with such true pangs of heartfelt sorrow.
+
+From the time when their misery first came upon them, from the days
+when it first began to be understood that the world had gone wrong at
+Castle Richmond, this separation from the schools had commenced. The
+work had been dropped for a while, but the dropping had in fact been
+final, and there was nothing further to be done than the saddest of
+all leavetaking. The girls had sent word to the children, perhaps
+imprudently, that they would go down and say a word of adieu to their
+pupils. The children had of course told their mothers, and when the
+girls reached the two neat buildings which stood at the corner of the
+park, there were there to meet them, not unnaturally, a concourse of
+women and children.
+
+In former prosperous days the people about Castle Richmond had, as
+a rule, been better to do than their neighbours. Money wages had
+been more plentiful, and there had been little or no subletting of
+land; the children had been somewhat more neatly clothed, and the
+women less haggard in their faces; but this difference was hardly
+perceptible any longer. To them, the Miss Fitzgeralds, looking at
+the poverty-stricken assemblage, it almost seemed as though the
+misfortune of their house had brought down its immediate consequences
+on all who had lived within their circle; but this was the work
+of the famine. In those days one could rarely see any member of a
+peasant's family bearing in his face a look of health. The yellow
+meal was a useful food--the most useful, doubtless, which could at
+that time be found; but it was not one that was gratifying either to
+the eye or palate.
+
+The girls had almost regretted their offer before they had left the
+house. It would have been better, they said to themselves, to have
+had the children up in the hall, and there to have spoken their
+farewells, and made their little presents. The very entering those
+schoolrooms again would almost be too much for them; but this
+consideration was now too late, and when they got to the corner of
+the gate, they found that there was a crowd to receive them. "Mary,
+I must go back," said Emmeline, when she first saw them; but Aunt
+Letty, who was with them, stepped forward, and they soon found
+themselves in the schoolroom.
+
+"We have come to say good-bye to you all," said Aunt Letty, trying to
+begin a speech.
+
+"May the heavens be yer bed then, the lot of yez, for ye war always
+good to the poor. May the Blessed Virgin guide and protect ye
+wherever ye be;"--a blessing against which Aunt Letty at once entered
+a little inward protest, perturbed though she was in spirit. "May the
+heavens rain glory on yer heads, for ye war always the finest family
+that war ever in the county Cork!"
+
+"You know, I dare say, that we are going to leave you," continued
+Aunt Letty.
+
+"We knows it, we knows it; sorrow come to them as did it all. Faix,
+an' there'll niver be any good in the counthry, at all at all, when
+you're gone, Miss Emmeline; an' what'll we do at all for the want
+of yez, and when shall we see the likes of yez? Eh, Miss Letty, but
+there'll be sore eyes weeping for ye; and for her leddyship too; may
+the Lord Almighty bless her, and presarve her, and carry her sowl
+to glory when she dies; for av there war iver a good woman on God's
+'arth, that woman is Leddy Fitzgerald."
+
+And then Aunt Letty found that there was no necessity for her to
+continue her speech, and indeed no possibility of her doing so even
+if she were so minded. The children began to wail and cry, and
+the mothers also mixed loud sobbings with their loud prayers; and
+Emmeline and Mary, dissolved in tears, sat themselves down, drawing
+to them the youngest bairns and those whom they had loved the best,
+kissing their sallow, famine-stricken, unwholesome faces, and weeping
+over them with a love of which hitherto they had been hardly
+conscious.
+
+There was not much more in the way of speech possible to any of
+them, for even Aunt Letty was far gone in tender wailing; and it
+was wonderful to see the liberties that were taken even with that
+venerable bonnet. The women had first of all taken hold of her hands
+to kiss them, and had kissed her feet, and her garments, and her
+shoulders, and then behind her back they had made crosses on her,
+although they knew how dreadfully she would have raged had she caught
+them polluting her by such doings; and they grasped her arms and
+embraced them, till at last, those who were more daring, reached her
+forehead and her face, and poor old Aunt Letty, who in her emotion
+could not now utter a syllable, was almost pulled to pieces among
+them.
+
+Mary and Emmeline had altogether surrendered themselves, and were
+the centres of clusters of children who hung upon them. And the sobs
+now were no longer low and tearful, but they had grown into long,
+protracted groanings, and loud wailings, and clapping of hands, and
+tearings of the hair. O, my reader, have you ever seen a railway
+train taking its departure from an Irish station, with a freight
+of Irish emigrants? if so, you know how the hair is torn, and how
+the hands are clapped, and how the low moanings gradually swell
+into notes of loud lamentation. It means nothing, I have heard men
+say,--men and women too. But such men and women are wrong. It means
+much; it means this: that those who are separated, not only love each
+other, but are anxious to tell each other that they so love. We have
+all heard of demonstrative people. A demonstrative person, I take
+it, is he who is desirous of speaking out what is in his heart. For
+myself I am inclined to think that such speaking out has its good
+ends. "The faculty of silence! is it not of all things the most
+beautiful?" That is the doctrine preached by a great latter-day
+philosopher; for myself, I think that the faculty of speech is
+much more beautiful--of speech if it be made but by howlings, and
+wailings, and loud clappings of the hand. What is in a man, let it
+come out and be known to those around him; if it be bad it will find
+correction; if it be good it will spread and be beneficent.
+
+And then one woman made herself audible over the sobs of the crowding
+children; she was a gaunt, high-boned woman, but she would have been
+comely, if not handsome, had not the famine come upon her. She held a
+baby in her arms, and another little toddling thing had been hanging
+on her dress till Emmeline had seen it, and plucked it away; and it
+was now sitting in her lap quite composed, and sucking a piece of
+cake that had been given to it. "An' it's a bad day for us all," said
+the woman, beginning in a low voice, which became louder and louder
+as she went on; "it's a bad day for us all that takes away from us
+the only rale friends that we iver had, and the back of my hand to
+them that have come in the way, bringin' sorrow, an' desolation, an'
+misery on gentlefolks that have been good to the poor since iver the
+poor have been in the land; rale gentlefolks, sich as there ain't no
+others to be found nowadays in any of these parts. O'hone, o'hone!
+but it's a bad day for us and for the childer; for where shall we
+find the dhrop to comfort us or the bit to ate when the sickness
+comes on us, as it's likely to come now, when the Fitzgeralds is out
+of the counthry. May the Lord bless them, and keep them, and presarve
+them, and the Holy Virgin have them in her keepin'!"
+
+"Wh--i--s--h--h," said Aunt Letty, who could not allow such idolatry
+to pass by unobserved or unrebuked.
+
+"An' shure the blessin' of a poor woman cannot haram you," continued
+the mother; "an' I'll tell you what, neighbours, it'll be a bad day
+for him that folk call the heir when he puts his foot in that house."
+
+"'Deed an' that's thrue for you, Bridget Magrath," said another voice
+from among the crowd of women.
+
+"A bad day intirely," continued the woman, with the baby; "av the
+house stans over his head when he does the like o' that, there'll be
+no justice in the heavens."
+
+"But, Mrs. Magrath," said Aunt Letty, trying to interrupt her, "you
+must not speak in that way; you are mistaken in supposing that Mr.
+Owen--"
+
+"We'll all live to see," said the woman; "for the time's comin' quick
+upon us now. But it's a bad law that kills our ould masther over our
+heads, an' takes away from us our ould misthress. An' as for him they
+calls Mr. Owen--"
+
+But the ladies found it impossible to listen to her any longer, so
+with some difficulty they extricated themselves from the crowd by
+which they were surrounded, and once more shaking hands with those
+who were nearest to them escaped into the park, and made their way
+back towards the house.
+
+They had not expected so much demonstration, and were not a little
+disconcerted at the scene which had taken place. Aunt Letty had never
+been so handled in her life, and hardly knew how to make her bonnet
+sit comfortably on her head; and the two girls were speechless till
+they were half across the park.
+
+"I am glad we have been," said Emmeline at last, as soon as the
+remains of her emotion would allow her to articulate her words.
+
+"It would have been dreadful to have gone away without seeing them,"
+said Mary. "Poor creatures, poor dear creatures; we shall never again
+have any more people to be fond of us like that!"
+
+"There is no knowing," said Aunt Letty; "the Lord giveth and the Lord
+taketh away, and blessed is the name of the Lord. You are both young,
+and may come back again; but for me--"
+
+"Dear Aunt Letty, if we come back you shall come too."
+
+"If I only thought that my bones could lie here near my brother's.
+But never mind; what signifies it where our bones lie?" And then they
+were silent for a while, till Aunt Letty spoke again. "I mean to be
+quite happy over in England; I believe I shall be happiest of you all
+if I can find any clergyman who is not half perverted to idolatry."
+
+This took place some time before the ladies left Castle
+Richmond,--perhaps as much as three weeks; it was even before
+Herbert's departure, who started for London the day but one after the
+scene here recorded; he had gone to various places to take his last
+farewell; to see the Townsends at the parsonage; to call on Father
+Barney at Kanturk, and had even shaken hands with the Rev. Mr.
+Creagh, at Gortnaclough. But one farewell visit had been put off
+for the last. It was now arranged that he was to go over to Desmond
+Court and see Clara before he went. There had been some difficulty
+in this, for Lady Desmond had at first declared that she could not
+feel justified in asking him into her house; but the earl was now at
+home, and her ladyship had at last given her consent: he was to see
+the countess first, and was afterwards to see Clara--alone. He had
+declared that he would not go there unless he were to be allowed an
+interview with her in private. The countess, as I have said, at last
+consented, trusting that her previous eloquence might be efficacious
+in counteracting the ill effects of her daughter's imprudence. On
+the day after that interview he was to start for London; "never to
+return," as he said to Emmeline, "unless he came to seek his wife."
+
+"But you will come to seek your wife," said Emmeline, stoutly; "I
+shall think you faint-hearted if you doubt it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+THE LAST STAGE.
+
+
+On the day before his departure for London, Herbert Fitzgerald
+once more got on his horse--the horse that was to be no longer his
+after that day--and rode off towards Desmond Court. He had already
+perceived how foolish he had been in walking thither through the mud
+and rain when last he went there, and how much he had lost by his
+sad appearance that day, and by his want of personal comfort. So he
+dressed himself with some care--dressing not for his love, but for
+the countess,--and taking his silver-mounted whip in his gloved
+hand, he got up on his well-groomed nag with more spirit than he had
+hitherto felt.
+
+Nothing could be better than the manner in which, at this time,
+the servants about Castle Richmond conducted themselves. Most of
+them--indeed, all but three--had been told that they must go; and in
+so telling them, the truth had been explained. It had been "found,"
+Aunt Letty said to one of the elder among them, that Mr. Herbert was
+not the heir to the property, and therefore the family was obliged
+to go away. Mrs. Jones of course accompanied her mistress. Richard
+had been told, both by Herbert and by Aunt Letty, that he had better
+remain and live on a small patch of land that should be provided
+for him. But in answer to this he stated his intention of removing
+himself to London. If the London air was fit for "my leddy and Miss
+Letty," it would be fit for him. "It's no good any more talking, Mr.
+Herbert," said Richard, "I main to go." So there was no more talking,
+and he did go.
+
+But all the other servants took their month's warning with tears and
+blessings, and strove one beyond another how they might best serve
+the ladies of the family to the end. "I'd lose the little fingers
+off me to go with you, Miss Emmeline; so I would," said one poor
+girl,--all in vain. If they could not keep a retinue of servants in
+Ireland, it was clear enough that they could not keep them in London.
+
+The groom who held the horse for Herbert to mount, touched his hat
+respectfully as his young master rode off slowly down the avenue, and
+then went back to the stables to meditate with awe on the changes
+which had happened in his time, and to bethink himself whether or no
+he could bring himself to serve in the stables of Owen the usurper.
+
+Herbert did not take the direct road to Desmond Court, but went round
+as though he were going to Gortnaclough, and then turning away from
+the Gortnaclough road, made his way by a cross lane towards Clady
+and the mountains. He hardly knew himself whether he had any object
+in this beyond one which he did not express even to himself,--that,
+namely, of not being seen on the way leading to Desmond Court. But
+this he did do, thereby riding out of the district with which he was
+most thoroughly acquainted, and passing by cabins and patches of
+now deserted land which were strange to him. It was a poor, bleak,
+damp, undrained country, lying beyond the confines of his father's
+property, which in good days had never been pleasant to the eye,
+but which now in these days--days that were so decidedly bad, was
+anything but pleasant. It was one of those tracts of land which had
+been divided and subdivided among the cottiers till the fields had
+dwindled down to parts of acres, each surrounded by rude low banks,
+which of themselves seemed to occupy a quarter of the surface of the
+land. The original landmarks, the big earthen banks,--banks so large
+that a horse might walk on the top of them,--were still visible
+enough, showing to the practised eye what had once been the fields
+into which the land had been divided; but these had since been
+bisected and crossected, and intersected by family arrangements,
+in which brothers had been jealous of brothers, and fathers of
+their children, till each little lot contained but a rood or two of
+available surface.
+
+This had been miserable enough to look at, even when those roods had
+been cropped with potatoes or oats; but now they were not cropped at
+all, nor was there preparation being made for cropping them. They had
+been let out under the con-acre system, at so much a rood, for the
+potato season, at rents amounting sometimes to ten or twelve pounds
+the acre; but nobody would take them now. There, in that electoral
+division, the whole proceeds of such land would hardly have paid the
+poor rates, and therefore the land was left uncultivated.
+
+The winter was over, for it was now April, and had any tillage been
+intended, it would have been commenced--even in Ireland. It was the
+beginning of April, but the weather was still stormy and cold, and
+the east wind, which, as a rule, strikes Ireland with but a light
+hand, was blowing sharply. On a sudden a squall of rain came on,--one
+of those spring squalls which are so piercingly cold, but which are
+sure to pass by rapidly, if the wayfarer will have patience to wait
+for them. Herbert, remembering his former discomfiture, resolved that
+he would have such patience, and dismounting from his horse at a
+cabin on the road-side, entered it himself, and led his horse in
+after him. In England no one would think of taking his steed into a
+poor man's cottage, and would hardly put his beast into a cottager's
+shed without leave asked and granted; but people are more intimate
+with each other, and take greater liberties in Ireland. It is
+no uncommon thing on a wet hunting-day to see a cabin packed
+with horses, and the children moving about among them, almost as
+unconcernedly as though the animals were pigs. But then the Irish
+horses are so well mannered and good-natured.
+
+The cabin was one abutting as it were on the road, not standing back
+upon the land, as is most customary; and it was built in an angle
+at a spot where the road made a turn, so that two sides of it stood
+close out in the wayside. It was small and wretched to look at,
+without any sort of outside shed, or even a scrap of potato-garden
+attached to it,--a miserable, low-roofed, damp, ragged tenement, as
+wretched as any that might be seen even in the county Cork.
+
+But the nakedness of the exterior was as nothing to the nakedness
+of the interior. When Herbert entered, followed by his horse, his
+eye glanced round the dark place, and it seemed to be empty of
+everything. There was no fire on the hearth, though a fire on the
+hearth is the easiest of all luxuries for an Irishman to acquire, and
+the last which he is willing to lose. There was not an article of
+furniture in the whole place; neither chairs, nor table, nor bed, nor
+dresser; there was there neither dish, nor cup, nor plate, nor even
+the iron pot in which all the cookery of the Irish cottiers' menage
+is usually carried on. Beneath his feet was the damp earthen floor,
+and around him were damp, cracked walls, and over his head was the
+old lumpy thatch, through which the water was already dropping; but
+inside was to be seen none of those articles of daily use which are
+usually to be found in the houses even of the poorest.
+
+But, nevertheless, the place was inhabited. Squatting in the middle
+of the cabin, seated on her legs crossed under her, with nothing
+between her and the wet earth, there crouched a woman with a child
+in her arms. At first, so dark was the place, Herbert hardly thought
+that the object before him was a human being. She did not move when
+he entered, or speak to him, or in any way show sign of surprise
+that he should have come there. There was room for him and his horse
+without pushing her from her place; and, as it seemed, he might have
+stayed there and taken his departure without any sign having been
+made by her.
+
+But as his eyes became used to the light he saw her eyes gleaming
+brightly through the gloom. They were very large and bright as they
+turned round upon him while he moved--large and bright, but with a
+dull, unwholesome brightness,--a brightness that had in it none of
+the light of life.
+
+And then he looked at her more closely. She had on her some rag of
+clothing which barely sufficed to cover her nakedness, and the baby
+which she held in her arms was covered in some sort; but he could
+see, as he came to stand close over her, that these garments were but
+loose rags which were hardly fastened round her body. Her rough short
+hair hung down upon her back, clotted with dirt, and the head and
+face of the child which she held was covered with dirt and sores. On
+no more wretched object, in its desolate solitude, did the eye of man
+ever fall.
+
+In those days there was a form of face which came upon the sufferers
+when their state of misery was far advanced, and which was a sure
+sign that their last stage of misery was nearly run. The mouth would
+fall and seem to hang, the lips at the two ends of the mouth would be
+dragged down, and the lower parts of the cheeks would fall as though
+they had been dragged and pulled. There were no signs of acute agony
+when this phasis of countenance was to be seen, none of the horrid
+symptoms of gnawing hunger by which one generally supposes that
+famine is accompanied. The look is one of apathy, desolation, and
+death. When custom had made these signs easily legible, the poor
+doomed wretch was known with certainty. "It's no use in life meddling
+with him; he's gone," said a lady to me in the far west of the south
+of Ireland, while the poor boy, whose doom was thus spoken, stood by
+listening. Her delicacy did not equal her energy in doing good,--for
+she did much good; but in truth it was difficult to be delicate when
+the hands were so full. And then she pointed out to me the signs on
+the lad's face, and I found that her reading was correct.
+
+The famine was not old enough at the time of which we are speaking
+for Herbert to have learned all this, or he would have known that
+there was no hope left in this world for the poor creature whom he
+saw before him. The skin of her cheek had fallen, and her mouth was
+dragged, and the mark of death was upon her; but the agony of want
+was past. She sat there listless, indifferent, hardly capable of
+suffering, even for her child, waiting her doom unconsciously.
+
+As he had entered without eliciting a word from her, so might he have
+departed without any outward sign of notice; but this would have been
+impossible on his part. "I have come in out of the rain for shelter,"
+said he, looking down on her.
+
+"Out o' the rain, is it?" said she, still fixing on him her glassy
+bright eyes. "Yer honour's welcome thin." But she did not attempt to
+move, nor show any of those symptoms of reverence which are habitual
+to the Irish when those of a higher rank enter their cabins.
+
+"You seem to be very poorly off here," said Herbert, looking round
+the bare walls of the cabin. "Have you no chair, and no bed to lie
+on?"
+
+"'Deed no," said she.
+
+"And no fire?" said he, for the damp and chill of the place struck
+through to his bones.
+
+"'Deed no," she said again; but she made no wail as to her wants, and
+uttered no complaint as to her misery.
+
+"And are you living here by yourself, without furniture or utensils
+of any kind?"
+
+"It's jist as yer honour sees it," answered she.
+
+For a while Herbert stood still, looking round him, for the woman was
+so motionless and uncommunicative that he hardly knew how to talk
+to her. That she was in the lowest depth of distress was evident
+enough, and it behoved him to administer to her immediate wants
+before he left her; but what could he do for one who seemed to be so
+indifferent to herself? He stood for a time looking round him till he
+could see through the gloom that there was a bundle of straw lying in
+the dark corner beyond the hearth, and that the straw was huddled up,
+as though there were something lying under it. Seeing this he left
+the bridle of his horse, and stepping across the cabin moved the
+straw with the handle of his whip. As he did so he turned his back
+from the wall in which the small window-hole had been pierced, so
+that a gleam of light fell upon the bundle at his feet, and he could
+see that the body of a child was lying there, stripped of every
+vestige of clothing.
+
+For a minute or two he said nothing--hardly, indeed, knowing how to
+speak, and looking from the corpselike woman back to the lifelike
+corpse, and then from the corpse back to the woman, as though he
+expected that she would say something unasked. But she did not say a
+word, though she so turned her head that her eyes rested on him.
+
+He then knelt down and put his hand upon the body, and found that
+it was not yet stone cold. The child apparently had been about four
+years old, while that still living in her arms might perhaps be half
+that age.
+
+"Was she your own?" asked Herbert, speaking hardly above his breath.
+
+"'Deed, yes!" said the woman. "She was my own, own little Kitty." But
+there was no tear in her eye or gurgling sob audible from her throat.
+
+"And when did she die?" he asked.
+
+"'Deed, thin, and I don't jist know--not exactly;" and sinking lower
+down upon her haunches, she put up to her forehead the hand with
+which she had supported herself on the floor--the hand which was not
+occupied with the baby, and pushing back with it the loose hairs from
+her face, tried to make an effort at thinking.
+
+"She was alive in the night, wasn't she?" he said.
+
+"I b'lieve thin she was, yer honour. 'Twas broad day, I'm thinking,
+when she guv' over moaning. She warn't that way when he went away."
+
+"And who's he?"
+
+"Jist Mike, thin."
+
+"And is Mike your husband?" he asked. She was not very willing to
+talk; but it appeared at last that Mike was her husband, and that
+having become a cripple through rheumatism, he had not been able to
+work on the roads. In this condition he and his should of course have
+gone into a poor-house. It was easy enough to give such advice in
+such cases when one came across them, and such advice when given
+at that time was usually followed; but there were so many who had
+no advice, who could get no aid, who knew not which way to turn
+themselves! This wretched man had succeeded in finding some one who
+would give him his food--food enough to keep himself alive--for such
+work as he could do in spite of his rheumatism, and this work to
+the last he would not abandon. Even this was better to him than
+the poor-house. But then, as long as a man found work out of the
+poor-house, his wife and children would not be admitted into it. They
+would not be admitted if the fact of the working husband was known.
+The rule in itself was salutary, as without it a man could work,
+earning such wages as were adjudged to be needful for a family, and
+at the same time send his wife and children to be supported on the
+rates. But in some cases, such as this, it pressed very cruelly.
+Exceptions were of course made in such cases, if they were known: but
+then it was so hard to know them!
+
+This man Mike, the husband of that woman, and the father of those
+children, alive and dead, had now gone to his work, leaving his home
+without one morsel of food within it, and the wife of his bosom
+and children of his love without the hope of getting any. And then
+looking closely round him, Herbert could see that a small basin or
+bowl lay on the floor near her, capable of holding perhaps a pint;
+and on lifting it he saw that there still clung to it a few grains
+of uncooked Indian corn-flour--the yellow meal, as it was called.
+Her husband, she said at last, had brought home with him in his
+cap a handful of this flour, stolen from the place where he was
+working--perhaps a quarter of a pound, then worth over a farthing,
+and she had mixed this with water in a basin; and this was the food
+which had sustained her, or rather had not sustained her, since
+yesterday morning--her and her two children, the one that was living
+and the one that was dead.
+
+Such was her story, told by her in the fewest of words. And then he
+asked her as to her hopes for the future. But though she cared, as
+it seemed, but little for the past, for the future she cared less.
+"'Deed, thin, an' I don't jist know." She would say no more than
+that, and would not even raise her voice to ask for alms when he
+pitied her in her misery. But with her the agony of death was already
+over.
+
+"And the child that you have in your arms," he said, "is it not
+cold?" And he stood close over her, and put out his hand and touched
+the baby's body. As he did so, she made some motion as though to
+arrange the clothing closer round the child's limbs, but Herbert
+could see that she was making an effort to hide her own nakedness. It
+was the only effort that she made while he stood there beside her.
+
+"Is she not cold?" he said again, when he had turned his face away to
+relieve her from her embarrassment.
+
+"Cowld," she muttered, with a vacant face and wondering tone of
+voice, as though she did not quite understand him. "I suppose she is
+could. Why wouldn't she be could? We're could enough, if that's all."
+But still she did not stir from the spot on which she sat; and the
+child, though it gave from time to time a low moan that was almost
+inaudible, lay still in her arms, with its big eyes staring into
+vacancy.
+
+He felt that he was stricken with horror as he remained there in the
+cabin with the dying woman and the naked corpse of the poor dead
+child. But what was he to do? He could not go and leave them without
+succour. The woman had made no plaint of her suffering, and had asked
+for nothing; but he felt that it would be impossible to abandon her
+without offering her relief; nor was it possible that he should leave
+the body of the child in that horribly ghastly state. So he took from
+his pocket his silk handkerchief, and, returning to the corner of the
+cabin, spread it as a covering over the corpse. At first he did not
+like to touch the small naked dwindled remains of humanity from which
+life had fled; but gradually he overcame his disgust, and kneeling
+down, he straightened the limbs and closed the eyes, and folded the
+handkerchief round the slender body. The mother looked on him the
+while, shaking her head slowly, as though asking him with all the
+voice that was left to her, whether it were not piteous; but of words
+she still uttered none.
+
+And then he took from his pocket a silver coin or two, and tendered
+them to her. These she did take, muttering some word of thanks, but
+they caused in her no emotion of joy. "She was there waiting," she
+said, "till Mike should return," and there she would still wait, even
+though she should die with the silver in her hand.
+
+"I will send some one to you," he said, as he took his departure;
+"some one that shall take the poor child and bury it, and who shall
+move you and the other one into the workhouse." She thanked him once
+more with some low muttered words, but the promise brought her no
+joy. And when the succour came it was all too late, for the mother
+and the two children never left the cabin till they left it together,
+wrapped in their workhouse shrouds.
+
+Herbert, as he remounted his horse and rode quietly on, forgot for a
+while both himself and Clara Desmond. Whatever might be the extent
+of his own calamity, how could he think himself unhappy after what
+he had seen? how could he repine at aught that the world had done
+for him, having now witnessed to how low a state of misery a fellow
+human being might be brought? Could he, after that, dare to consider
+himself unfortunate?
+
+Before he reached Desmond Court he did make some arrangements for
+the poor woman, and directed that a cart might be sent for her, so
+that she might be carried to the union workhouse at Kanturk. But his
+efforts in her service were of little avail. People then did not
+think much of a dying woman, and were in no special hurry to obey
+Herbert's behest.
+
+"A woman to be carried to the union, is it? For Mr. Fitzgerald, eh?
+What Mr. Fitzgerald says must be done, in course. But sure av' it's
+done before dark, won't that be time enough for the likes of her?"
+
+But had they flown to the spot on the wings of love, it would not
+have sufficed to prolong her life one day. Her doom had been spoken
+before Herbert had entered the cabin.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+FAREWELL.
+
+
+He was two hours later than he had intended as he rode up the avenue
+to Lady Desmond's gate, and his chief thought at the moment was how
+he should describe to the countess the scene he had just witnessed.
+Why describe it at all? That is what we should all say. He had come
+there to talk about other things--about other things which must be
+discussed, and which would require all his wits. Let him keep that
+poor woman on his mind, but not embarrass himself with any mention of
+her for the present. This, no doubt, would have been wise if only it
+had been possible; but out of the full heart the mouth speaks.
+
+But Lady Desmond had not witnessed the scene which I have attempted
+to describe, and her heart, therefore, was not full of it, and
+was not inclined to be so filled. And so, in answer to Herbert's
+exclamation, "Oh, Lady Desmond, I have seen such a sight!" she gave
+him but little encouragement to describe it, and by her coldness,
+reserve, and dignity, soon quelled the expression of his feelings.
+
+The earl was present and shook hands very cordially with Herbert when
+he entered the room; and he, being more susceptible as being younger,
+and not having yet become habituated to the famine as his mother was,
+did express some eager sympathy. He would immediately go down, or
+send Fahy with the car, and have her brought up and saved; but his
+mother had other work to do and soon put a stop to all this.
+
+"Mr. Fitzgerald," said she, speaking with a smile upon her face, and
+with much high-bred dignity of demeanour, "as you and Lady Clara
+both wish to see each other before you leave the country, and as
+you have known each other so intimately, and considering all the
+circumstances, I have not thought it well absolutely to forbid an
+interview. But I do doubt its expediency; I do, indeed. And Lord
+Desmond, who feels for your late misfortune as we all do, perfectly
+agrees with me. He thinks that it would be much wiser for you both
+to have parted without the pain of a meeting, seeing how impossible
+it is that you should ever be more to each other than you are now."
+And then she appealed to her son, who stood by, looking not quite so
+wise, nor even quite so decided as his mother's words would seem to
+make him.
+
+"Well, yes; upon my word I don't see how it's to be," said the young
+earl. "I am deuced sorry for it for one, and I wish I was well off,
+so that I could give Clara a pot of money, and then I should not care
+so much about your not being the baronet."
+
+"I am sure you must see, Mr. Fitzgerald, and I know that you do see
+it because you have very properly said so, that a marriage between
+you and Lady Clara is now impossible. For her such an engagement
+would be very bad--very bad indeed; but for you it would be utter
+ruin. Indeed, it would be ruin for you both. Unencumbered as you will
+be, and with the good connection which you will have, and with your
+excellent talents, it will be quite within your reach to win for
+yourself a high position. But with you, as with other gentlemen who
+have to work their way, marriage must come late in life, unless
+you marry an heiress. This I think is thoroughly understood by all
+people in our position; and I am sure that it is understood by your
+excellent mother, for whom I always had and still have the most
+unfeigned respect. As this is so undoubtedly the case, and as I
+cannot of course consent that Lady Clara should remain hampered by
+an engagement which would in all human probability hang over the ten
+best years of her life, I thought it wise that you should not see
+each other. I have, however, allowed myself to be overruled; and
+now I must only trust to your honour, forbearance, and prudence to
+protect my child from what might possibly be the ill effects of her
+own affectionate feelings. That she is romantic,--enthusiastic to
+a fault I should perhaps rather call it--I need not tell you. She
+thinks that your misfortune demands from her a sacrifice of herself;
+but you, I know, will feel that, even were such a sacrifice available
+to you, it would not become you to accept it. Because you have
+fallen, you will not wish to drag her down; more especially as you
+can rise again--and she could not."
+
+So spoke the countess, with much worldly wisdom, and with
+considerable tact in adjusting her words to the object which she had
+in view. Herbert, as he stood before her silent during the period of
+her oration, did feel that it would be well for him to give up his
+love, and go away in utter solitude of heart to those dingy studies
+which Mr. Prendergast was preparing for him. His love, or rather
+the assurance of Clara's love, had been his great consolation. But
+what right had he, with all the advantages of youth, and health, and
+friends, and education, to require consolation? And then from moment
+to moment he thought of the woman whom he had left in the cabin, and
+confessed that he did not dare to call himself unhappy.
+
+He had listened attentively, although he did thus think of other
+eloquence besides that of the countess--of the eloquence of that
+silent, solitary, dying woman; but when she had done he hardly knew
+what to say for himself. She did make him feel that it would be
+ungenerous in him to persist in his engagement; but then again,
+Clara's letters and his sister's arguments had made him feel that it
+was impossible to abandon it. They pleaded of heart-feelings so well
+that he could not resist them; and the countess--she pleaded so well
+as to world's prudence that he could not resist her.
+
+"I would not willingly do anything to injure Lady Clara," he said.
+
+"That's what we all knew," said the young earl. "You see, what is
+a girl to do like her? Love in a cottage is all very well, and all
+that; and as for riches, I don't care about them. It would be a
+pity if I did, for I shall be about the poorest nobleman in the
+three kingdoms, I suppose. But a chap when he marries should have
+something; shouldn't he now?"
+
+To tell the truth the earl had been very much divided in his opinions
+since he had come home, veering round a point or two this way or a
+point or two that, in obedience to the blast of eloquence to which
+he might be last subjected. But latterly the idea had grown upon him
+that Clara might possibly marry Owen Fitzgerald. There was about
+Owen a strange fascination which all felt who had once loved him. To
+the world he was rough and haughty, imperious in his commands, and
+exacting even in his fellowship; but to the few whom he absolutely
+loved, whom he had taken into his heart's core, no man ever was more
+tender or more gracious. Clara, though she had resolved to banish
+him from her heart, had found it impossible to do so till Herbert's
+misfortunes had given him a charm in her eyes which was not all his
+own. Clara's mother had loved him--had loved him as she never before
+had loved; and now she loved him still, though she had so strongly
+determined that her love should be that of a mother, and not that
+of a wife. And the young earl, now that Owen's name was again rife
+in his ears, remembered all the pleasantness of former days. He had
+never again found such a companion as Owen had been. He had met no
+other friend to whom he could talk of sport and a man's outward
+pleasures when his mind was that way given, and to whom he could also
+talk of soft inward things,--the heart's feelings, and aspirations,
+and wants. Owen would be as tender with him as a woman, allowing the
+young lad's arm round his body, listening to words which the outer
+world would have called bosh--and have derided as girlish. So at
+least thought the young earl to himself. And all boys long to be
+allowed utterance occasionally for these soft tender things;--as
+also do all men, unless the devil's share in the world has become
+altogether uppermost with them.
+
+And the young lad's heart hankered after his old friend. He had
+listened to his sister, and for a while had taken her part; but his
+mother had since whispered to him that Owen would now be the better
+suitor, the preferable brother-in-law; and that in fact Clara loved
+Owen the best, though she felt herself bound by honour to his
+kinsman. And then she reminded her son of Clara's former love for
+Owen--a love which he himself had witnessed; and he thought of the
+day when with so much regret he had told his friend that he was
+unsuited to wed with an earl's penniless daughter. Of the subsequent
+pleasantness which had come with Herbert's arrival, he had seen
+little or nothing. He had been told by letter that Herbert
+Fitzgerald, the prosperous heir of Castle Richmond, was to be his
+future brother-in-law, and he had been satisfied. But now, if Owen
+could return--how pleasant it would be!
+
+"But a chap when he marries should have something; shouldn't he now?"
+So spoke the young earl, re-echoing his mother's prudence.
+
+Herbert did not quite like this interference on the boy's part. Was
+he to explain to a young lad from Eton what his future intentions
+were with reference to his mode of living and period of marriage? "Of
+course," he said, addressing himself to the countess, "I shall not
+insist on an engagement made under such different circumstances."
+
+"Nor will you allow her to do so through a romantic feeling of
+generosity," said the countess.
+
+"You should know your own daughter, Lady Desmond, better than I do,"
+he answered; "but I cannot say what I may do at her instance till I
+shall have seen her."
+
+"Do you mean to say that you will allow a girl of her age to talk you
+into a proceeding which you know to be wrong?"
+
+"I will allow no one," he said, "to talk me into a proceeding which
+I know to be wrong; nor will I allow any one to talk me out of a
+proceeding which I believe to be right." And then, having uttered
+these somewhat grandiloquent words, he shut himself up as though
+there were no longer any need for discussing the subject.
+
+"My poor child!" said the countess, in a low tremulous voice, as
+though she did not intend him to hear them. "My poor unfortunate
+child!" Herbert as he did hear them thought of the woman in the
+cabin, and of her misfortunes and of her children. "Come, Patrick,"
+continued the countess, "it is perhaps useless for us to say anything
+further at present. If you will remain here, Mr. Fitzgerald, for
+a minute or two, I will send Lady Clara to wait upon you;" and
+then curtsying with great dignity she withdrew, and the young
+earl scuffled out after her. "Mamma," he said, as he went, "he is
+determined that he will have her."
+
+"My poor child!" answered the countess.
+
+"And if I were in his place I should be determined also. You may as
+well give it up. Not but that I like Owen a thousand times the best."
+
+Herbert did wait there for some five minutes, and then the door was
+opened very gently, was gently closed again, and Clara Desmond was in
+the room. He came towards her respectfully, holding out his hand that
+he might take hers; but before he had thought of how she would act
+she was in his arms. Hitherto, of all betrothed maidens, she had been
+the most retiring. Sometimes he had thought her cold when she had
+left the seat by his side to go and nestle closely by his sister. She
+had avoided the touch of his hand and the pressure of his arm, and
+had gone from him speechless, if not with anger then with dismay,
+when he had carried the warmth of his love beyond the touch of his
+hand or the pressure of his arm. But now she rushed into his embrace
+and hid her face upon his shoulder, as though she were over glad to
+return to the heart from which those around her had endeavoured to
+banish her. Was he or was he not to speak of his love? That had been
+the question which he had asked himself when left alone there for
+those five minutes, with the eloquence of the countess ringing in his
+ears. Now that question had in truth been answered for him.
+
+"Herbert," she said, "Herbert! I have so sorrowed for you; but I know
+that you have borne it like a man."
+
+She was thinking of what he had now half forgotten,--the position
+which he had lost, those hopes which had all been shipwrecked, his
+title surrendered to another, and his lost estates. She was thinking
+of them as the loss affected him; but he, he had reconciled himself
+to all that,--unless all that were to separate him from his promised
+bride.
+
+"Dearest Clara," he said, with his arm close round her waist, while
+neither anger nor dismay appeared to disturb the sweetness of that
+position, "the letter which you wrote me has been my chief comfort."
+Now if he had any intention of liberating Clara from the bond of her
+engagement,--if he really had any feeling that it behoved him not
+to involve her in the worldly losses which had come upon him,--he
+was taking a very bad way of carrying out his views in that respect.
+Instead of confessing the comfort which he had received from that
+letter, and holding her close to his breast while he did confess it,
+he should have stood away from her--quite as far apart as he had done
+from the countess; and he should have argued with her, showing her
+how foolish and imprudent her letter had been, explaining that it
+behoved her now to repress her feelings, and teaching her that peers'
+daughters as well as housemaids should look out for situations which
+would suit them, guided by prudence and a view to the wages,--not
+follow the dictates of impulse and of the heart. This is what he
+should have done, according, I believe, to the views of most men and
+women. Instead of that he held her there as close as he could hold
+her, and left her to do the most of the speaking. I think he was
+right. According to my ideas woman's love should be regarded as
+fair prize of war,--as long as the war has been carried on with due
+adherence to the recognized law of nations. When it has been fairly
+won, let it be firmly held. I have no opinion of that theory of
+giving up.
+
+"You knew that I would not abandon you! Did you not know it? say that
+you knew it?" said Clara, and then she insisted on having an answer.
+
+"I could hardly dare to think that there was so much happiness left
+for me," said Herbert.
+
+"Then you were a traitor to your love, sir; a false traitor." But
+deep as was the offence for which she arraigned him, it was clear
+to see that the pardon came as quick as the conviction. "And was
+Emmeline so untrue to me also as to believe that?"
+
+"Emmeline said--" and then he told her what Emmeline had said.
+
+"Dearest, dearest Emmeline! give her a whole heart-load of love from
+me; now mind you do,--and to Mary, too. And remember this, sir; that
+I love Emmeline ten times better than I do you; twenty times--,
+because she knew me. Oh, if she had mistrusted me--!"
+
+"And do you think that I mistrusted you?"
+
+"Yes, you did; you know you did, sir. You wrote and told me so;--and
+now, this very day, you come here to act as though you mistrusted me
+still. You know you have, only you have not the courage to go on with
+the acting."
+
+And then he began to defend himself, showing how ill it would have
+become him to have kept her bound to her engagements had she feared
+poverty as most girls in her position would have feared it. But on
+this point she would not hear much from him, lest the very fact of
+her hearing it should make it seem that such a line of conduct were
+possible to her.
+
+"You know nothing about most girls, sir, or about any, I am afraid;
+not even about one. And if most girls were frightfully heartless,
+which they are not, what right had you to liken me to most girls?
+Emmeline knew better, and why could not you take her as a type of
+most girls? You have behaved very badly, Master Herbert, and you know
+it; and nothing on earth shall make me forgive you; nothing--but
+your promise that you will not so misjudge me any more." And then
+the tears came to his eyes, and her face was again hidden on his
+shoulder.
+
+It was not very probable that after such a commencement the interview
+would terminate in a manner favourable to the wishes of the countess.
+Clara swore to her lover that she had given him all that she had to
+give,--her heart, and will, and very self; and swore, also, that she
+could not and would not take back the gift. She would remain as she
+was now as long as he thought proper, and would come to him whenever
+he should tell her that his home was large enough for them both. And
+so that matter was settled between them.
+
+Then she had much to say about his mother and sisters, and a word
+too about his poor father. And now that it was settled between them
+so fixedly, that come what might they were to float together in the
+same boat down the river of life, she had a question or two also to
+ask, and her approbation to give or to withhold, as to his future
+prospects. He was not to think, she told him, of deciding on anything
+without at any rate telling her. So he had to explain to her all the
+family plans, making her know why he had decided on the law as his
+own path to fortune, and asking for and obtaining her consent to all
+his proposed measures.
+
+In this way her view of the matter became more and more firmly
+adopted as that which should be the view resolutely to be taken by
+them both. The countess had felt that that interview would be fatal
+to her; and she had been right. But how could she have prevented it?
+Twenty times she had resolved that she would prevent it; but twenty
+times she had been forced to confess that she was powerless to do so.
+In these days a mother even can only exercise such power over a child
+as public opinion permits her to use. "Mother, it was you who brought
+us together, and you cannot separate us now." That had always been
+Clara's argument, leaving the countess helpless, except as far as she
+could work on Herbert's generosity. That she had tried,--and, as we
+have seen, been foiled there also. If only she could have taken her
+daughter away while the Castle Richmond family were still mersed in
+the bitter depth of their suffering,--at that moment when the blows
+were falling on them! Then, indeed, she might have done something;
+but she was not like other titled mothers. In such a step as this she
+was absolutely without the means.
+
+Thus talking together they remained closeted for a most
+unconscionable time. Clara had had her purpose to carry out, and to
+Herbert the moments had been too precious to cause him any regret as
+they passed. But now at last a knock was heard at the door, and Lady
+Desmond, without waiting for an answer to it, entered the room. Clara
+immediately started from her seat, not as though she were either
+guilty or tremulous, but with a brave resolve to go on with her
+purposed plan.
+
+"Mamma," she said, "it is fixed now; it cannot be altered now."
+
+"What is fixed, Clara?"
+
+"Herbert and I have renewed our engagement, and nothing must now
+break it, unless we die."
+
+"Mr. Fitzgerald, if this be true your conduct to my daughter has been
+unmanly as well as ungenerous."
+
+"Lady Desmond, it is true; and I think that my conduct is neither
+unmanly nor ungenerous."
+
+"Your own relations are against you, sir."
+
+"What relations?" asked Clara, sharply.
+
+"I am not speaking to you, Clara; your absurdity and romance are so
+great that I cannot speak to you."
+
+"What relations, Herbert?" again asked Clara; for she would not for
+the world have had Lady Fitzgerald against her.
+
+"Lady Desmond has, I believe, seen my Aunt Letty two or three times
+lately; I suppose she must mean her."
+
+"Oh," said Clara, turning away as though she were now satisfied. And
+then Herbert, escaping from the house as quickly as he could, rode
+home with a renewal of that feeling of triumph which he had once
+enjoyed before when returning from Desmond Court to Castle Richmond.
+
+On the next day Herbert started for London. The parting was sad
+enough, and the occasion of it was such that it could hardly be
+otherwise. "I am quite sure of one thing," he said to his sister
+Emmeline, "I shall never see Castle Richmond again." And, indeed,
+one may say that small as might be his chance of doing so, his wish
+to do so must be still less. There could be no possible inducement
+to him to come back to a place which had so nearly been his own,
+and the possession of which he had lost in so painful a manner.
+Every tree about the place, every path across the wide park, every
+hedge and ditch and hidden leafy corner, had had for him a special
+interest,--for they had all been his own. But all that was now over.
+They were not only not his own, but they belonged to one who was
+mounting into his seat of power over his head.
+
+He had spent the long evening before his last dinner in going round
+the whole demesne alone, so that no eye should witness what he felt.
+None but those who have known the charms of a country-house early in
+life can conceive the intimacy to which a man attains with all the
+various trifling objects round his own locality; how he knows the
+bark of every tree, and the bend of every bough; how he has marked
+where the rich grass grows in tufts, and where the poorer soil is
+always dry and bare; how he watches the nests of the rooks, and the
+holes of the rabbits, and has learned where the thrushes build, and
+can show the branch on which the linnet sits. All these things had
+been dear to Herbert, and they all required at his hand some last
+farewell. Every dog, too, he had to see, and to lay his hand on
+the neck of every horse. This making of his final adieu under such
+circumstances was melancholy enough.
+
+And then, too, later in the evening, after dinner, all the servants
+were called into the parlour that he might shake hands with them.
+There was not one of them who had not hoped, as lately as three
+months since, that he or she would live to call Herbert Fitzgerald
+master. Indeed, he had already been their master--their young master.
+All Irish servants especially love to pay respect to the "young
+masther;" but Herbert now was to be their master no longer, and the
+probability was that he would never see one of them again.
+
+He schooled himself to go through the ordeal with a manly gait and
+with dry eyes, and he did it; but their eyes were not dry, not even
+those of the men. Mrs. Jones and a favourite girl whom the young
+ladies patronized were not of the number, for it had been decided
+that they should follow the fortunes of their mistress; but Richard
+was there, standing a little apart from the others, as being now on a
+different footing. He was to go also, but before the scene was over
+he also had taken to sobbing violently.
+
+"I wish you all well and happy," said Herbert, making his little
+speech, "and regret deeply that the intercourse between us should be
+thus suddenly severed. You have served me and mine well and truly,
+and it is hard upon you now, that you should be bid to go and seek
+another home elsewhere."
+
+"It isn't that we mind, Mr. Herbert; it ain't that as frets us," said
+one of the men.
+
+"It ain't that at all, at all," said Richard, doing chorus; "but that
+yer honour should be robbed of what is yer honour's own."
+
+"But you all know that we cannot help it," continued Herbert; "a
+misfortune has come upon us which nobody could have foreseen, and
+therefore we are obliged to part with our old friends and servants."
+
+At the word friends the maid-servants all sobbed. "And 'deed we is
+your frinds, and true frinds, too," wailed the cook.
+
+"I know you are, and it grieves me to feel that I shall see you no
+more. But you must not be led to think by what Richard says that
+anybody is depriving me of that which ought to be my own. I am now
+leaving Castle Richmond because it is not my own, but justly belongs
+to another;--to another who, I must in justice tell you, is in no
+hurry to claim his inheritance. We none of us have any ground for
+displeasure against the present owner of this place, my cousin, Sir
+Owen Fitzgerald."
+
+"We don't know nothing about Sir Owen," said one voice.
+
+"And don't want," said another, convulsed with sobs.
+
+"He's a very good sort of young gentleman--of his own kind, no
+doubt," said Richard.
+
+"But you can all of you understand," continued Herbert, "that as this
+place is no longer our own, we are obliged to leave it; and as we
+shall live in a very different way in the home to which we are going,
+we are obliged to part with you, though we have no reason to find
+fault with any one among you. I am going to-morrow morning early, and
+my mother and sisters will follow after me in a few weeks. It will be
+a sad thing too for them to say good-bye to you all, as it is for me
+now; but it cannot be helped. God bless you all, and I hope that you
+will find good masters and kind mistresses, with whom you may live
+comfortably, as I hope you have done here."
+
+"We can't find no other mistresses like her leddyship," sobbed out
+the senior housemaid.
+
+"There ain't niver such a one in the county Cork," said the cook; "in
+a week of Sundays you wouldn't hear the breath out of her above her
+own swait nathural voice."
+
+"I've driv' her since iver--" began Richard; but he was going to say
+since ever she was married, but he remembered that this allusion
+would be unbecoming, so he turned his face to the door-post, and
+began to wail bitterly.
+
+And then Herbert shook hands with them all, and it was pretty to see
+how the girls wiped their hands in their aprons before they gave them
+to him, and how they afterwards left the room with their aprons up to
+their faces. The women walked out first, and then the men, hanging
+down their heads, and muttering as they went, each some little prayer
+that fortune and prosperity might return to the house of Fitzgerald.
+The property might go, but according to their views Herbert was
+always, and always would be, the head of the house. And then, last of
+all, Richard went. "There ain't one of 'em, Mr. Herbert, as wouldn't
+guv his fist to go wid yer, and think nothing about the wages."
+
+He was to start very early, and his packing was all completed that
+night. "I do so wish we were going with you," said Emmeline, sitting
+in his room on the top of a corded box, which was to follow him by
+some slower conveyance.
+
+"And I do so wish I was staying with you," said he.
+
+"What is the good of staying here now?" said she; "what pleasure can
+there be in it? I hardly dare to go outside the house door for fear I
+should be seen."
+
+"But why? We have done nothing that we need be ashamed of."
+
+"No; I know that. But, Herbert, do you not find that the pity of the
+people is hard to bear? It is written in their eyes, and meets one at
+every turn."
+
+"We shall get rid of that very soon. In a few months we shall be
+clean forgotten."
+
+"I do not know about being forgotten."
+
+"You will be as clean forgotten,--as though you had never existed.
+And all these servants who are now so fond of us, in three months'
+time will be just as fond of Owen Fitzgerald, if he will let them
+stay here; it's the way of the world."
+
+That Herbert should have indulged in a little morbid misanthropy on
+such an occasion was not surprising. But I take leave to think that
+he was wrong in his philosophy; we do make new friends when we lose
+our old friends, and the heart is capable of cure as is the body;
+were it not so, how terrible would be our fate in this world! But we
+are so apt to find fault with God's goodness to us in this respect,
+arguing, of others if not of ourselves, that the heart once widowed
+should remain a widow through all time. I, for one, think that the
+heart should receive its new spouses with what alacrity it may, and
+always with thankfulness.
+
+"I suppose Lady Desmond will let us see Clara," said Emmeline.
+
+"Of course you must see her. If you knew how much she talks about
+you, you would not think of leaving Ireland without seeing her."
+
+"Dear Clara! I am sure she does not love me better than I do her. But
+suppose that Lady Desmond won't let us see her! and I know that it
+will be so. That grave old man with the bald head will come out and
+say that 'the Lady Clara is not at home,' and then we shall have to
+leave without seeing her. But it does not matter with her as it might
+with others, for I know that her heart will be with us."
+
+"If you write beforehand to say that you are coming, and explain that
+you are doing so to say good-bye, then I think they will admit you."
+
+"Yes; and the countess would take care to be there, so that I could
+not say one word to Clara about you. Oh, Herbert! I would give
+anything if I could have her here for one day,--only for one day."
+But when they talked it over they both of them decided that this
+would not be practicable. Clara could not stay away from her own
+house without her mother's leave, and it was not probable that her
+mother would give her permission to stay at Castle Richmond.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+HERBERT FITZGERALD IN LONDON.
+
+
+On the following morning the whole household was up and dressed very
+early. Lady Fitzgerald--the poor lady made many futile attempts to
+drop her title, but hitherto without any shadow of success--Lady
+Fitzgerald was down in the breakfast parlour at seven, as also were
+Aunt Letty, and Mary, and Emmeline. Herbert had begged his mother
+not to allow herself to be disturbed, alleging that there was no
+cause, seeing that they all so soon would meet in London; but she
+was determined that she would superintend his last meal at Castle
+Richmond. The servants brought in the trays with melancholy silence,
+and now that the absolute moment of parting had come the girls could
+not speak lest the tears should come and choke them. It was not that
+they were about to part with him; that parting would only be for a
+month. But he was now about to part from all that ought to have been
+his own. He sat down at the table in his accustomed place, with a
+forced smile on his face, but without a word, and his sisters put
+before him his cup of tea, and the slice of ham that had been cut for
+him, and his portion of bread. That he was making an effort they all
+saw. He bowed his head down over the tea to sip it and took the knife
+in his hand, and then he looked up at them, for he knew that their
+eyes were on him; he looked up at them to show that he could still
+endure it. But, alas! he could not endure it. The struggle was too
+much for him; he pushed his plate violently from him into the middle
+of the table, and dropping his head upon his hands he burst forth
+into audible lamentations.
+
+Oh, my friends! be not hard on him in that he was thus weeping like a
+woman. It was not for his lost wealth that he was wailing, nor even
+for the name or splendour that could be no longer his; nor was it
+for his father's memory, though he had truly loved his father; nor
+for his mother's sorrow, or the tragedy of her life's history. For
+none of these things were his tears flowing and his sobs coming so
+violently that it nearly choked him to repress them. Nor could he
+himself have said why he was weeping.
+
+It was the hundred small things from which he was parting for ever
+that thus disturbed him. The chair on which he sat, the carpet on
+the floor, the table on which he leaned, the dull old picture of his
+great-grandfather over the fireplace,--they were all his old familiar
+friends, they were all part of Castle Richmond,--of that Castle
+Richmond which he might never be allowed to see again.
+
+His mother and sisters came to him, hanging over him, and they joined
+their tears together. "Do not tell her that I was like this," said he
+at last.
+
+"She will love you the better for it if she has a true woman's heart
+within her breast," said his mother.
+
+"As true a heart as ever breathed," said Emmeline through her sobs.
+
+And then they pressed him to eat, but it was in vain. He knew that
+the food would choke him if he attempted it. So he gulped down the
+cup of tea, and with one kiss to his mother he rushed from them,
+refusing Aunt Letty's proffered embrace, passing through the line of
+servants without another word to one of them, and burying himself
+in the post-chaise which was to carry him the first stage on his
+melancholy journey.
+
+It was a melancholy journey all through. From the time that he
+left the door at Castle Richmond that was no longer his own, till
+he reached the Euston Station in London, he spoke no word to any
+one more than was absolutely necessary for the purposes of his
+travelling. Nothing could be more sad than the prospect of his
+residence in London. Not that he was without friends there, for he
+belonged to a fashionable club to which he could still adhere if it
+so pleased him, and had all his old Oxford comrades to fall back upon
+if that were of any service to him. But how is a man to walk into his
+club who yesterday was known as his father's eldest son and the heir
+to a baronetcy and twelve thousand a year, and who to-day is known
+as nobody's son and the heir to nothing? Men would feel so much
+for him and pity him so deeply! That was the worst feature of his
+present position. He could hardly dare to show himself more than was
+absolutely necessary till the newness of his tragedy was worn off.
+
+Mr. Prendergast had taken lodgings for him, in which he was to remain
+till he could settle himself in the same house with his mother. And
+this house, in which they were all to live, had also been taken,--up
+in that cheerful locality near Harrow-on-the-Hill, called St. John's
+Wood Road, the cab fares to which from any central part of London are
+so very ruinous. But that house was not yet ready, and so he went
+into lodgings in Lincoln's Inn Fields. Mr. Prendergast had chosen
+this locality because it was near the chambers of that great Chancery
+barrister, Mr. Die, under whose beneficent wing Herbert Fitzgerald
+was destined to learn all the mysteries of the Chancery bar. The
+sanctuary of Mr. Die's wig was in Stone Buildings, immediately close
+to that milky way of vice-chancellors, whose separate courts cluster
+about the old chapel of Lincoln's Inn; and here was Herbert to sit,
+studious, for the next three years,--to sit there instead of at the
+various relief committees in the vicinity of Kanturk. And why could
+he not be as happy at the one as at the other? Would not Mr. Die be
+as amusing as Mr. Townsend; and the arguments of Vice-Chancellor
+Stuart's court quite as instructive as those heard in the committee
+room at Gortnaclough?
+
+On the morning of his arrival in London he drove to his lodgings, and
+found a note there from Mr. Prendergast asking him to dinner on that
+day, and promising to take him to Mr. Die on the following morning.
+Mr. Prendergast kept a bachelor's house in Bloomsbury Square, not
+very far from Lincoln's Inn--just across Holborn, as all Londoners
+know; and there he would expect Herbert at seven o'clock. "I will
+not ask any one to meet you," he said, "because you will be tired
+after your journey, and perhaps more inclined to talk to me than to
+strangers."
+
+Mr. Prendergast was one of those old-fashioned people who think that
+a spacious substantial house in Bloomsbury Square, at a rent of a
+hundred and twenty pounds a year, is better worth having than a
+narrow, lath and plaster, ill-built tenement at nearly double the
+price out westward of the Parks. A quite new man is necessarily
+afraid of such a locality as Bloomsbury Square, for he has no chance
+of getting any one into his house if he do not live westward. Who
+would dine with Mr. Jones in Woburn Terrace, unless he had known
+Mr. Jones all his days, or unless Jones were known as a top sawyer
+in some walk of life? But Mr. Prendergast was well enough known
+to his old friends to be allowed to live where he pleased, and he
+was not very anxious to add to their number by any new fashionable
+allurements.
+
+Herbert sent over to Bloomsbury Square to say that he would be there
+at seven o'clock, and then sat himself down in his new lodgings. It
+was but a dingy abode, consisting of a narrow sitting-room looking
+out into the big square from over a covered archway, and a narrower
+bedroom looking backwards into a dull, dirty-looking, crooked street.
+Nothing, he thought, could be more melancholy than such a home. But
+then what did it signify? His days would be passed in Mr. Die's
+chambers, and his evenings would be spent over his law books with
+closed windows and copious burnings of the midnight oil. For Herbert
+had wisely resolved that hard work, and hard work alone, could
+mitigate the misery of his present position.
+
+But he had no work for the present day. He could not at once unpack
+his portmanteau and begin his law studies on the moment. It was about
+noon when he had completed the former preparation, and eaten such
+breakfast as his new London landlady had gotten for him. And the
+breakfast had not of itself been bad, for Mrs. Whereas had been a
+daughter of Themis all her life, waiting upon scions of the law since
+first she had been able to run for a penn'orth of milk. She had been
+laundress on a stairs for ten years, having married a law stationer's
+apprentice, and now she owned the dingy house over the covered way,
+and let her own lodgings with her own furniture; nor was she often
+without friends who would recommend her zeal and honesty, and make
+excuse for the imperiousness of her ways and the too great fluency of
+her by no means servile tongue.
+
+"Oh, Mrs.--," said Herbert. "I beg your pardon, but might I ask your
+name?"
+
+"No offence, sir; none in life. My name's Whereas. Martha Whereas,
+and 'as been now for five-and-twenty year. There be'ant many of the
+gen'lemen about the courts here as don't know some'at of me. And I
+knew some'at of them too, before they carried their wigs so grandly.
+My husband, that's Whereas,--you'll all'ays find him at the little
+stationer's shop outside the gate in Carey Street. You'll know him
+some of these days, I'll go bail, if you're going to Mr. Die; anyways
+you'll know his handwrite. Tea to your liking, sir? I all'ays gets
+cream for gentlemen, sir, unless they tells me not. Milk a 'alfpenny,
+sir; cream tuppence; three 'alfpence difference; hain't it, sir? So
+now you can do as you pleases, and if you like bacon and heggs to
+your breakfastesses you've only to say the words. But then the heggs
+hain't heggs, that's the truth; and they hain't chickens, but some'at
+betwixt the two."
+
+And so she went on during the whole time that he was eating, moving
+about from place to place, and putting back into the places which
+she had chosen for them anything which he had chanced to move; now
+dusting a bit of furniture with her apron, and then leaning on the
+back of a chair while she asked him some question as to his habits
+and future mode of living. She also wore a bonnet, apparently as
+a customary part of her house costume, and Herbert could not help
+thinking that she looked very like his Aunt Letty.
+
+But when she had gone and taken the breakfast things with her, then
+began the tedium of the day. It seemed to him as though he had no
+means of commencing his life in London until he had been with Mr.
+Prendergast or Mr. Die. And so new did it all feel to him, so strange
+and wonderful, that he hardly dared to go out of the house by himself
+and wander about the premises of the Inn. He was not absolutely a
+stranger in London, for he had been elected at a club before he had
+left Oxford, and had been up in town twice, staying on each occasion
+some few weeks. Had he therefore been asked about the metropolis
+some four months since at Castle Richmond, he would have professed
+that he knew it well. Starting from Pall Mall he could have gone to
+any of the central theatres, or to the Parks, or to the houses of
+Parliament, or to the picture galleries in June. But now in that
+dingy big square he felt himself to be absolutely a stranger; and
+when he did venture out he watched the corners, in order that he
+might find his way back without asking questions.
+
+And then he roamed round the squares and about the little courts, and
+found out where were Stone Buildings,--so called because they are
+so dull and dead and stony-hearted: and as his courage increased he
+made his way into one of the courts, and stood up for a while on an
+uncomfortable narrow step, so that he might watch the proceedings as
+they went on, and it all seemed to him to be dull and deadly. There
+was no life and amusement such as he had seen at the Assize Court in
+county Cork, when he was sworn in as one of the Grand Jury. There
+the gentlemen in wigs--for on the Munster circuit they do wear wigs,
+or at any rate did then--laughed and winked and talked together
+joyously; and when a Roman Catholic fisherman from Berehaven was
+put into the dock for destroying the boat and nets of a Protestant
+fisherman from Dingle in county Kerry, who had chanced to come that
+way, "not fishing at all, at all, yer honour, but just souping," as
+the Papist prisoner averred with great emphasis, the gentlemen of
+the robe had gone to the fight with all the animation and courage
+of Matadors and Picadors in a bull-ring. It was delightful to see
+the way in which Roman Catholic skill combated Protestant fury,
+with a substratum below of Irish fun which showed to everybody that
+it was not all quite in earnest;--that the great O'Fagan and the
+great Fitzberesford could sit down together afterwards with all the
+pleasure in life over their modicum of claret in the barristers' room
+at the Imperial hotel. And then the judge had added to the life of
+the meeting, helping to bamboozle and make miserable a wretch of a
+witness who had been caught in the act of seeing the boat smashed
+with a fragment of rock, and was now, in consequence, being impaled
+alive by his lordship's assistance.
+
+"What do you say your name is?" demanded his lordship, angrily.
+
+"Rowland Houghton," said the miserable stray Saxon tourist who had so
+unfortunately strayed that way on the occasion.
+
+"What?" repeated the judge, whose ears were sharper to such sounds as
+O'Shaughnessy, Macgillycuddy, and O'Callaghan.
+
+"Rowland Houghton," said the offender, in his distress; quicker,
+louder, and perhaps not more distinctly than before.
+
+"What does the man say?" said the judge, turning his head down
+towards a satellite who sat on a bench beneath his cushion.
+
+The gentleman appealed to pronounced the name for the judge's hearing
+with a full rolling Irish brogue, that gave great delight through all
+the court; "R-rowland Hough-h-ton, me lor-r-d."
+
+Whereupon his lordship threw up his hands in dismay. "Oulan Outan!"
+said he. "Oulan Outan! I never heard such a name in my life!" And
+then, having thoroughly impaled the wicked witness, and added
+materially to the amusement of the day, the judge wrote down the
+name in his book; and there it is to this day, no doubt, Oulan Outan.
+And when one thinks of it, it was monstrous that an English witness
+should go into an Irish law court with such a name as Rowland
+Houghton.
+
+But here, in the dark dingy court to which Herbert had penetrated
+in Lincoln's Inn, there was no such life as this. Here, whatever
+skill there might be, was of a dark subterranean nature, quite
+unintelligible to any minds but those of experts; and as for fury or
+fun, there was no spark either of one or of the other. The judge sat
+back in his seat, a tall, handsome, speechless man, not asleep, for
+his eye from time to time moved slowly from the dingy barrister who
+was on his legs to another dingy barrister who was sitting with his
+hands in his pockets, and with his eyes fixed upon the ceiling. The
+gentleman who was in the act of pleading had a huge open paper in
+his hand, from which he droned forth certain legal quiddities of the
+dullest and most uninteresting nature. He was in earnest, for there
+was a perpetual energy in his drone, as a droning bee might drone who
+was known to drone louder than other drones. But it was a continuous
+energy supported by perseverance, and not by impulse; and seemed to
+come of a fixed determination to continue the reading of that paper
+till all the world should be asleep. A great part of the world around
+was asleep; but the judge's eye was still open, and one might say
+that the barrister was resolved to go on till that eye should have
+become closed in token of his success.
+
+Herbert remained there for an hour, thinking that he might learn
+something that would be serviceable to him in his coming legal
+career; but at the end of the hour the same thing was going on,--the
+judge's eye was still open, and the lawyer's drone was still
+sounding; and so he came away, having found himself absolutely dozing
+in the uncomfortable position in which he was standing.
+
+At last the day wore away, and at seven o'clock he found himself in
+Mr. Prendergast's hall in Bloomsbury Square; and his hat and umbrella
+were taken away from him by an old servant looking very much like Mr.
+Prendergast himself;--having about him the same look of the stiffness
+of years, and the same look also of excellent preservation and care.
+
+"Mr. Prendergast is in the library, sir, if you please," said the old
+servant; and so saying he ushered Herbert into the back down-stairs
+room. It was a spacious, lofty apartment, well fitted up for a
+library, and furnished for that purpose with exceeding care;--such a
+room as one does not find in the flashy new houses in the west, where
+the dining-room and drawing-room occupy all of the house that is
+visible. But then, how few of those who live in flashy new houses in
+the west require to have libraries in London!
+
+As he entered the room Mr. Prendergast came forward to meet him,
+and seemed heartily glad to see him. There was a cordiality about
+him which Herbert had never recognized at Castle Richmond, and an
+appearance of enjoyment which had seemed to be almost foreign to the
+lawyer's nature. Herbert perhaps had not calculated, as he should
+have done, that Mr. Prendergast's mission in Ireland had not admitted
+of much enjoyment. Mr. Prendergast had gone there to do a job of
+work, and that he had done, very thoroughly; but he certainly had not
+enjoyed himself.
+
+There was time for only few words before the old man again entered
+the room, announcing dinner; and those few words had no reference
+whatever to the Castle Richmond sorrow. He had spoken of Herbert's
+lodging, and of his journey, and a word or two of Mr. Die, and then
+they went in to dinner. And at dinner too the conversation wholly
+turned upon indifferent matters, upon reform at Oxford, the state
+of parties, and of the peculiar idiosyncrasies of the Irish Low
+Church clergymen, on all of which subjects Herbert found that Mr.
+Prendergast had a tolerably strong opinion of his own. The dinner was
+very good, though by no means showy,--as might have been expected in
+a house in Bloomsbury Square--and the wine excellent, as might have
+been expected in any house inhabited by Mr. Prendergast.
+
+And then, when the dinner was over, and the old servant had slowly
+removed his last tray, when they had each got into an arm-chair,
+and were seated at properly comfortable distances from the fire, Mr.
+Prendergast began to talk freely; not that he at once plunged into
+the middle of the old history, or began with lugubrious force to
+recapitulate the horrors that were now partly over; but gradually he
+veered round to those points as to which he thought it good that he
+should speak before setting Herbert at work on his new London life.
+
+"You drink claret, I suppose?" said Mr. Prendergast, as he adjusted a
+portion of the table for their evening symposium.
+
+"Oh yes," said Herbert, not caring very much at that moment what the
+wine was.
+
+"You'll find that pretty good; a good deal better than what you'll
+get in most houses in London nowadays. But you know a man always
+likes his own wine, and especially an old man."
+
+Herbert said something about it being very good, but did not give
+that attention to the matter which Mr. Prendergast thought that
+it deserved. Indeed, he was thinking more about Mr. Die and Stone
+Buildings than about the wine.
+
+"And how do you find my old friend Mrs. Whereas?" asked the lawyer.
+
+"She seems to be a very attentive sort of woman."
+
+"Yes; rather too much so sometimes. People do say that she never
+knows how to hold her tongue. But she won't rob you, nor yet poison
+you; and in these days that is saying a very great deal for a woman
+in London." And then there was a pause, as Mr. Prendergast sipped his
+wine with slow complacency. "And we are to go to Mr. Die to-morrow, I
+suppose?" he said, beginning again. To which Herbert replied that he
+would be ready at any time in the morning that might be suitable.
+
+"The sooner you get into harness the better. It is not only that you
+have much to learn, but you have much to forget also."
+
+"Yes," said Herbert, "I have much to forget indeed; more than I can
+forget, I'm afraid, Mr. Prendergast."
+
+"There is, I fancy, no sorrow which a man cannot forget; that is,
+as far as the memory of it is likely to be painful to him. You
+will not absolutely cease to remember Castle Richmond and all its
+circumstances; you will still think of the place and all the people
+whom you knew there; but you will learn to do so without the pain
+which of course you now suffer. That is what I mean by forgetting."
+
+"Oh, I don't complain, sir."
+
+"No, I know you don't; and that is the reason why I am so anxious
+to see you happy. You have borne the whole matter so well that I am
+quite sure that you will be able to live happily in this new life.
+That is what I mean when I say that you will forget Castle Richmond."
+
+Herbert bethought himself of Clara Desmond, and of the woman whom he
+had seen in the cabin, and reflected that even at present he had no
+right to be unhappy.
+
+"I suppose you have no thought of going back to Ireland?" said Mr.
+Prendergast.
+
+"Oh, none in the least."
+
+"On the whole I think you are right. No doubt a family connection is
+a great assistance to a barrister, and there would be reasons which
+would make attorneys in Ireland throw business into your hands at an
+early period of your life. Your history would give you an _eclat_
+there, if you know what I mean."
+
+"Oh, yes, perfectly; but I don't want that."
+
+"No. It is a kind of assistance which in my opinion a man should not
+desire. In the first place, it does not last. A man so bouyed up is
+apt to trust to such support, instead of his own steady exertions;
+and the firmest of friends won't stick to a lawyer long if he can get
+better law for his money elsewhere."
+
+"There should be no friendship in such matters, I think."
+
+"Well, I won't say that. But the friendship should come of the
+service, not the service of the friendship. Good, hard, steady, and
+enduring work,--work that does not demand immediate acknowledgment
+and reward, but that can afford to look forward for its results,--it
+is that, and that only which in my opinion will insure to a man
+permanent success."
+
+"It is hard though for a poor man to work so many years without an
+income," said Herbert, thinking of Lady Clara Desmond.
+
+"Not hard if you get the price of your work at last. But you can
+have your choice. A moderate fixed income can now be had by any
+barrister early in life,--by any barrister of fair parts and sound
+acquirements. There are more barristers now filling salaried places
+than practising in the courts."
+
+"But those places are given by favour."
+
+"No; not so generally,--or if by favour, by that sort of favour which
+is as likely to come to you as to another. Such places are not given
+to incompetent young men because their fathers and mothers ask for
+them. But won't you fill your glass?"
+
+"I am doing very well, thank you."
+
+"You'll do better if you'll fill your glass, and let me have the
+bottle back. But you are thinking of the good old historical days
+when you talk of barristers having to wait for their incomes.
+There has been a great change in that respect,--for the better, as
+you of course will think. Now-a-days a man is taken away from his
+boat-racing and his skittle-ground to be made a judge. A little law
+and a great fund of physical strength--that is the extent of the
+demand." And Mr. Prendergast plainly showed by the tone of his voice
+that he did not admire the wisdom of this new policy of which he
+spoke.
+
+"But I suppose a man must work five years before he can earn
+anything," said Herbert, still despondingly; for five years is a long
+time to an expectant lover.
+
+"Fifteen years of unpaid labour used not to be thought too great a
+price to pay for ultimate success," said Mr. Prendergast, almost
+sighing at the degeneracy of the age. "But men in those days were
+ambitious and patient."
+
+"And now they are ambitious and impatient," suggested Herbert.
+
+"Covetous and impatient might perhaps be the truer epithets," said
+Mr. Prendergast with grim sarcasm.
+
+It is sad for a man to feel, when he knows that he is fast going down
+the hill of life, that the experience of old age is to be no longer
+valued nor its wisdom appreciated. The elderly man of this day thinks
+that he has been robbed of his chance in life. When he was in his
+full physical vigour he was not old enough for mental success. He was
+still winning his spurs at forty. But at fifty--so does the world
+change--he learns that he is past his work. By some unconscious and
+unlucky leap he has passed from the unripeness of youth to the decay
+of age, without even knowing what it was to be in his prime. A man
+should always seize his opportunity; but the changes of the times in
+which he has lived have never allowed him to have one. There has been
+no period of flood in his tide which might lead him on to fortune.
+While he has been waiting patiently for high water the ebb has come
+upon him. Mr. Prendergast himself had been a successful man, and his
+regrets, therefore, were philosophical rather than practical. As for
+Herbert, he did not look upon the question at all in the same light
+as his elderly friend, and on the whole was rather exhilarated by
+the tone of Mr. Prendergast's sarcasm. Perhaps Mr. Prendergast had
+intended that such should be its effect.
+
+The long evening passed away cosily enough, leaving on Herbert's mind
+an impression that in choosing to be a barrister he had certainly
+chosen the noblest walk of life in which a man could earn his bread.
+Mr. Prendergast did not promise him either fame or fortune, nor did
+he speak by any means in high enthusiastic language; he said much of
+the necessity of long hours, of tedious work, of Amaryllis left by
+herself in the shade, and of Neaera's locks unheeded; but nevertheless
+he spoke in a manner to arouse the ambition and satisfy the longings
+of the young man who listened to him. There were much wisdom in what
+he did, and much benevolence also.
+
+And then at about eleven o'clock, Herbert having sat out the second
+bottle of claret, betook himself to his bed at the lodgings over the
+covered way.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+HOW THE EARL WAS WON.
+
+
+It was not quite at first that the countess could explain to her son
+how she now wished that Owen Fitzgerald might become her son-in-law.
+She had been so steadfast in her opposition to Owen when the earl
+had last spoken of the matter, and had said so much of the wickedly
+dissipated life which Owen was leading, that she feared to shock the
+boy. But by degrees she brought the matter round, speaking of Owen's
+great good fortune, pointing out how much better he was suited for
+riches than for poverty, insisting warmly on all his good qualities
+and high feelings, and then saying at last, as it were without
+thought, "Poor Clara! She has been unfortunate, for at one time she
+loved Owen Fitzgerald much better than she will ever love his cousin
+Herbert."
+
+"Do you think so, mother?"
+
+"I am sure of it. The truth is, Patrick, you do not understand your
+sister; and indeed it is hard to do so. I have also always had an
+inward fear that she had now engaged herself to a man whom she did
+not love. Of course as things were then it was impossible that she
+should marry Owen; and I was glad to break her off from that feeling.
+But she never loved Herbert Fitzgerald."
+
+"Why, she is determined to have him, even now."
+
+"Ah, yes! That is where you do not understand her. Now, at this
+special moment, her heart is touched by his misfortune, and she
+thinks herself bound by her engagement to sacrifice herself with him.
+But that is not love. She has never loved any one but Owen,--and who
+can wonder at it? for he is a man made for a woman to love."
+
+The earl said nothing for a while, but sat balancing himself on the
+back legs of his chair. And then, as though a new idea had struck
+him, he exclaimed, "If I thought that, mother, I would find out what
+Owen thinks of it himself."
+
+"Poor Owen!" said the countess. "There is no doubt as to what he
+thinks;" and then she left the room, not wishing to carry the
+conversation any further.
+
+Two days after this, and without any further hint from his mother,
+he betook himself along the banks of the river to Hap House. In his
+course thither he never let his horse put a foot upon the road, but
+kept low down upon the water meadows, leaping over all the fences,
+as he had so often done with the man whom he was now going to see.
+It was here, among these banks, that he had received his earliest
+lessons in horsemanship, and they had all been given by Owen
+Fitzgerald. It had been a thousand pities, he had thought, that Owen
+had been so poor as to make it necessary for them all to discourage
+that love affair with Clara. He would have been so delighted to
+welcome Owen as his brother-in-law. And as he strode along over the
+ground, and landed himself knowingly over the crabbed fences, he
+began to think how much pleasanter the country would be for him if he
+had a downright good fellow and crack sportsman as his fast friend at
+Castle Richmond. Sir Owen Fitzgerald of Castle Richmond! He would be
+the man to whom he would be delighted to give his sister Clara.
+
+And then he hopped in from one of Owen's fields into a small paddock
+at the back of Owen's house, and seeing one of the stable-boys about
+the place, asked him if his master was at home.
+
+"Shure an' he's here thin, yer honour;" and Lord Desmond could hear
+the boy whispering, "It's the young lord hisself." In a moment Owen
+Fitzgerald was standing by his horse's side. It was the first time
+that Owen had seen one of the family since the news had been spread
+abroad concerning his right to the inheritance of Castle Richmond.
+
+"Desmond," said he, taking the lad's hand with one of his, and
+putting the other on the animal's neck, "this is very good of you. I
+am delighted to see you. I had heard that you were in the country."
+
+"Yes; I have been home for this week past. But things are all so at
+sixes and sevens among us all that a fellow can't go and do just what
+he would like."
+
+Owen well understood what he meant. "Indeed they are at sixes and
+sevens; you may well say that. But get off your horse, old fellow,
+and come into the house. Why, what a lather of heat the mare's in."
+
+"Isn't she? it's quite dreadful. That chap of ours has no more idea
+of condition than I have of--of--of--of an archbishop. I've just
+trotted along the fields, and put her over a ditch or two, and you
+see the state she's in. It's a beastly shame."
+
+"I know of old what your trottings are, Desmond; and what a ditch
+or two means. You've been at every bank between this and Banteer as
+though you were going for a steeplechase plate."
+
+"Upon my honour, Owen--"
+
+"Look here, Patsey. Walk that mare up and down here, between this
+gate and that post, till the big sweat has all dried on her; and then
+stick to her with a whisp of straw till she's as soft as silk. Do you
+hear?"
+
+Patsey said that he did hear; and then Owen, throwing his arm over
+the earl's shoulder, walked slowly towards the house.
+
+"I can't tell you how glad I am to see you, old boy," said Owen,
+pressing his young friend with something almost like an embrace. "You
+will hardly believe how long it is since I have seen a face that I
+cared to look at."
+
+"Haven't you?" said the young lord, wondering. He knew that
+Fitzgerald had now become heir to a very large fortune, or rather the
+possessor of that fortune, and he could not understand why a man who
+had been so popular while he was poor should be deserted now that he
+was rich.
+
+"No, indeed, have I not. Things are all at sixes and sevens as you
+say. Let me see. Donnellan was here when you last saw me; and I was
+soon tired of him when things became serious."
+
+"I don't wonder you were tired of him."
+
+"But, Desmond, how's your mother?"
+
+"Oh, she's very well. These are bad times for poor people like us,
+you know."
+
+"And your sister?"
+
+"She's pretty well too, thank you." And then there was a pause.
+"You've had a great change in your fortune since I saw you, have you
+not?" said the earl, after a minute or two. And there it occurred to
+him for the first time, that, having refused his sister to this man
+when he was poor, he had now come to offer her to him when he was
+rich. "Not that that was the reason," he said to himself. "But it was
+impossible then, and now it would be so pleasant."
+
+"It is a sad history, is it not?" said Owen.
+
+"Very sad," said the earl, remembering, however, that he had ridden
+over there with his heart full of joy,--of joy occasioned by that
+very catastrophe which now, following his friend's words like a
+parrot, he declared to be so very sad.
+
+And now they were in the dining-room in which Owen usually lived, and
+were both standing on the rug, as two men always do stand when they
+first get into a room together. And it was clear to see that neither
+of them knew how to break at once into the sort of loving, genial
+talk which each was longing to have with the other. It is so easy to
+speak when one has little or nothing to say; but often so difficult
+when there is much that must be said: and the same paradox is equally
+true of writing.
+
+Then Owen walked away to the window, looking out among the shrubs
+into which Aby Mollett had been precipitated, as though he could
+collect his thoughts there; and in a moment or two the earl followed
+him, and looked out also among the shrubs. "They killed a fox exactly
+there the other day; didn't they?" asked the earl, indicating the
+spot by a nod of his head.
+
+"Yes, they did." And then there was another pause. "I'll tell you
+what it is, Desmond," Owen said at last, going back to the rug and
+speaking with an effort. "As the people say, 'a sight of you is good
+for sore eyes.' There is a positive joy to me in seeing you. It is
+like a cup of cold water when a man is thirsty. But I cannot put the
+drink to my lips till I know on what terms we are to meet. When last
+we saw each other, we were speaking of your sister; and now that we
+meet again, we must again speak of her. Desmond, all my thoughts
+are of her; I dream of her at night, and find myself talking to her
+spirit when I wake in the morning. I have much else that I ought to
+think of; but I go about thinking of nothing but of her. I am told
+that she is engaged to my cousin Herbert. Nay, she has told me so
+herself, and I know that it is so. But if she becomes his wife--any
+man's wife but mine--I cannot live in this country."
+
+He had not said one word of that state of things in his life's
+history of which the country side was so full. He had spoken of
+Herbert, but he had not alluded to Herbert's fall. He had spoken of
+such hope as he still might have with reference to Clara Desmond;
+but he did not make the slightest reference to that change in his
+fortunes--in his fortunes, and in those of his rival--which might
+have so strong a bias on those hopes, and which ought so to have
+in the minds of all worldly, prudent people. It was to speak of
+this specially that Lord Desmond had come thither; and then, if
+opportunity should offer, to lead away the subject to that other one;
+but now Owen had begun at the wrong end. If called upon to speak
+about his sister at once, what could the brother say, except that she
+was engaged to Herbert Fitzgerald?
+
+"Tell me this, Desmond, whom does your sister love?" said Owen,
+speaking almost fiercely in his earnestness. "I know so much of you,
+at any rate, that whatever may be your feelings you will not lie to
+me,"--thereby communicating to the young lord an accusation, which he
+very well understood, against the truth of the countess, his mother.
+
+"When I have spoken to her about this she declares that she is
+engaged to Herbert Fitzgerald."
+
+"Engaged to him! yes, I know that; I do not doubt that. It has been
+dinned into my ears now for the last six months till it is impossible
+to doubt it. And she will marry him too, if no one interferes to
+prevent it. I do not doubt that either. But, Desmond, that is not the
+question that I have asked. She did love me; and then she was ordered
+by her mother to abandon that love, and to give her heart to another.
+That in words she has been obedient, I know well; but what I doubt is
+this,--that she has in truth been able so to chuck her heart about
+like a shuttlecock. I can only say that I am not able to do it."
+
+How was the earl to answer him? The very line of argument which
+Owen's mind was taking was exactly that which the young lord himself
+desired to promote. He too was desirous that Clara should go back to
+her first love. He himself thought strongly that Owen was a man more
+fitted than Herbert for the worshipful adoration of such a girl as
+his sister Clara. But then he, Desmond, had opposed the match while
+Owen was poor, and how was he to frame words by which he might
+encourage it now that Owen was rich?
+
+"I have been so little with her, that I hardly know," he said. "But,
+Owen--"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"It is so difficult for me to talk to you about all this."
+
+"Is it?"
+
+"Why, yes. You know that I have always liked you--always. No chap was
+ever such a friend to me as you have been;" and he squeezed Owen's
+arm with strong boyish love.
+
+"I know all about it," said Owen.
+
+"Well; then all that happened about Clara. I was young then, you
+know,"--he was now sixteen--"and had not thought anything about it.
+The idea of you and Clara falling in love had never occurred to me.
+Boys are so blind, you know. But when it did happen--you remember
+that day, old fellow, when you and I met down at the gate?"
+
+"Remember it!" said Owen. He would remember it, as he thought, when
+half an eternity should have passed over his head.
+
+"And I told you then what I thought. I don't think I am a particular
+fellow myself about money and rank and that sort of thing. I am as
+poor as a church mouse, and so I shall always remain; and for myself
+I don't care about it. But for one's sister, Owen--you never had a
+sister, had you?"
+
+"Never," said Owen, hardly thinking of the question.
+
+"One is obliged to think of such things for her. We should all go to
+rack and ruin, the whole family of us, box and dice,--as indeed we
+have pretty well already--if some of us did not begin to look about
+us. I don't suppose I shall ever marry and have a family. I couldn't
+afford it, you know. And in that case Clara's son would be Earl of
+Desmond; or if I died she would be Countess of Desmond in her own
+right." And the young lord looked the personification of family
+prudence.
+
+"I know all that," said Owen; "but you do not suppose that I was
+thinking of it?"
+
+"What; as regards yourself. No; I am sure you never did. But, looking
+to all that, it would never have done for her to marry a man as
+poor as you were. It is not a comfortable thing to be a very poor
+nobleman, I can tell you."
+
+Owen again remained silent. He wanted to talk the earl over into
+favouring his views, but he wanted to do so as Owen of Hap House, not
+as Owen of Castle Richmond. He perceived at once from the tone of
+the boy's voice, and even from his words, that there was no longer
+anything to be feared from the brother's opposition; and perceiving
+this, he thought that the mother's opposition might now perhaps also
+be removed. But it was quite manifest that this had come from what
+was supposed to be his altered position. "A man as poor as you were,"
+Lord Desmond had said, urging that though now the marriage might be
+well enough, in those former days it would have been madness. The
+line of argument was very clear; but as Owen was as poor as ever, and
+intended to remain so, there was nothing in it to comfort him.
+
+"I cannot say that I, myself, have so much worldly wisdom as you
+have," said he at last, with something like a sneer.
+
+"Ah, that is just what I knew you would say. You think that I am
+coming to you now, and offering to make up matters between you and
+Clara because you are rich!"
+
+"But can you make up matters between me and Clara?" said Owen,
+eagerly.
+
+"Well, I do not know. The countess seems to think it might be so."
+
+And then again Owen was silent, walking about the room with his hands
+behind his back. Then after all the one thing of this world which
+his eye regarded as desirable was within his reach. He had then been
+right in supposing that that face which had once looked up to his so
+full of love had been a true reflex of the girl's heart,--that it
+had indicated to him love which was not changeable. It was true that
+Clara, having accepted a suitor at her mother's order, might now be
+allowed to come back to him! As he thought of this, he wondered at
+the endurance and obedience of a woman's heart which could thus give
+up all that it held as sacred at the instance of another. But even
+this, though it was but little flattering to Clara, by no means
+lessened the transport which he felt. He had had that pride in
+himself, that he had never ceased to believe that she loved him.
+Full of that thought, of which he had not dared to speak, he had
+gone about, gloomily miserable since the news of her engagement with
+Herbert had reached him, and now he learned, as he thought with
+certainty, that his belief had been well grounded. Through all that
+had passed Clara Desmond did love him still!
+
+But as to this overture of reconciliation that was now made to him;
+how was he to accept it or reject it? It was made to him because he
+was believed to be Sir Owen Fitzgerald of Castle Richmond, a baronet
+of twelve thousand a year, instead of a poor squire, whose wife
+would have to look narrowly to the kitchen, in order that food in
+sufficiency might be forthcoming for the parlour. That he would
+become Sir Owen he thought probable; but that he would be Sir Owen of
+Hap House and not of Castle Richmond he had firmly resolved. He had
+thought of this for long hours and hours together, and felt that he
+could never again be happy were he to put his foot into that house
+as its owner. Every tenant would scorn him, every servant would hate
+him, every neighbour would condemn him; but this would be as nothing
+to his hatred of himself, to his own scorn and his own condemnation.
+And yet how great was the temptation to him now! If he would consent
+to call himself master of Castle Richmond, Clara's hand might still
+be his.
+
+So he thought; but those who know Clara Desmond better than he did
+will know how false were his hopes. She was hardly the girl to have
+gone back to a lover when he was rich, whom she had rejected when he
+was poor.
+
+"Desmond," said he, "come here and sit down;" and both sat leaning on
+the table together, with their arms touching. "I understand it all
+now I think; and remember this, my boy, that whomever I may blame,
+I do not blame you; that you are true and honest I am sure; and,
+indeed, there is only one person whom I do blame." He did not say
+that this one person was the countess, but the earl knew just as well
+as though he had been told.
+
+"I understand all this now," he repeated, "and before we go any
+further, I must tell you one thing; I shall never be owner of Castle
+Richmond."
+
+"Why, I thought it was all settled!" said the earl, looking up with
+surprise.
+
+"Nothing at all is settled. To every bargain there must be two
+parties, and I have never yet become a party to the bargain which
+shall make me owner of Castle Richmond."
+
+"But is it not yours of right?"
+
+"I do not know what you call right."
+
+"Right of inheritance," said the earl, who, having succeeded to his
+own rank by the strength of the same right enduring through many
+ages, looked upon it as the one substantial palladium of the country.
+
+"Look here, old fellow, and I'll tell you my views about this. Sir
+Thomas Fitzgerald, when he married that poor lady who is still
+staying at Castle Richmond, did so in the face of the world with the
+full assurance that he made her his legal wife. Whether such a case
+as this ever occurred before I don't know, but I am sure of this that
+in the eye of God she is his widow. Herbert Fitzgerald was brought up
+as the heir to all that estate, and I cannot see that he can fairly
+be robbed of that right because another man has been a villain.
+The title he cannot have, I suppose, because the law won't give it
+him; but the property can be made over to him, and as far as I am
+concerned it shall be made over. No earthly consideration shall
+induce me to put my hand upon it, for in doing so I should look upon
+myself as a thief and a scoundrel."
+
+"And you mean then that Herbert will have it all, just the same as it
+was before?"
+
+"Just the same as regards the estate."
+
+"Then why has he gone away?"
+
+"I cannot answer for him. I can only tell you what I shall do. I dare
+say it may take months before it is all settled. But now, Desmond,
+you know how I stand; I am Owen Fitzgerald of Hap House, now as I
+have ever been, that and nothing more,--for as to the handle to my
+name it is not worth talking about."
+
+They were still sitting at the table, and now they both sat silent,
+not looking at each other, but with their eyes fixed on the wood.
+Owen had in his hand a pen, which he had taken from the mantelpiece,
+and unconsciously began to trace signs on the polished surface
+before him. The earl sat with his forehead leaning on his two hands,
+thinking what he was to say next. He felt that he himself loved the
+man better than ever; but when his mother should come to hear all
+this, what would she say?
+
+"You know it all now, my boy," said Owen, looking up at last; and as
+he did so there was an expression about his face to which the young
+earl thought that he had never seen the like. There was a gleam in
+his eye which, though not of joy, was so bright; and a smile round
+his mouth which was so sweet, though full of sadness! "How can she
+not love him?" said he to himself, thinking of his sister. "And now,
+Desmond, go back to your mother and tell her all. She has sent you
+here."
+
+"No, she did not send me," said the boy, stoutly,--almost angrily;
+"she does not even know that I have come."
+
+"Go back then to your sister."
+
+"Nor does she know it."
+
+"Nevertheless, go back to them, and tell them both what I have told
+you; and tell them this also, that I, Owen Fitzgerald of Hap House,
+still love her better than all that the world else can give me;
+indeed, there is nothing else that I do love,--except you, Desmond.
+But tell them also that I am Owen of Hap House still--that and
+nothing more."
+
+"Owen," said the lad, looking up at him; and Fitzgerald as he glanced
+into the boy's face could see that there was that arising within his
+breast which almost prevented him from speaking.
+
+"And look, Desmond," continued Fitzgerald; "do not think that I shall
+blame you because you turn from me, or call you mercenary. Do you
+do what you think right. What you said just now of your sister's--,
+well, of the possibility of our marriage, you said under the idea
+that I was a rich man. You now find that I am a poor man; and you may
+consider that the words were never spoken."
+
+"Owen!" said the boy again; and now that which was before rising in
+his breast had risen to his brow and cheeks, and was telling its tale
+plainly in his eyes. And then he rose from his chair, turning away
+his face, and walking towards the window; but before he had gone two
+steps he turned again, and throwing himself on Fitzgerald's breast,
+he burst out into a passion of tears.
+
+"Come, old fellow, what is this? This will never do," said Owen. But
+his own eyes were full of tears also, and he too was nearly past
+speaking.
+
+"I know you will think--I am a boy and a--fool," said the earl,
+through his sobs, as soon as he could speak; "but I can't--help it."
+
+"I think you are the dearest, finest, best fellow that ever lived,"
+said Fitzgerald, pressing him with his arm.
+
+"And I'll tell you what, Owen, you should have her to-morrow if it
+were in my power, for, by heaven! there is not another man so worthy
+of a girl in all the world; and I'll tell her so; and I don't care
+what the countess says. And, Owen, come what come may, you shall
+always have my word;" and then he stood apart, and rubbing his eyes
+with his arm tried to look like a man who was giving this pledge from
+his judgment, not from his impulse.
+
+"It all depends on this, Desmond; whom does she love? See her alone,
+Desmond, and talk softly to her, and find out that." This he said
+thoughtfully, for in his mind "love should still be lord of all."
+
+"By heavens! if I were her, I know whom I should love," said the
+brother.
+
+"I would not have her as a gift if she did not love me," said Owen,
+proudly; "but if she do, I have a right to claim her as my own."
+
+And then they parted, and the earl rode back home with a quieter pace
+than that which had brought him there, and in a different mood. He
+had pledged himself now to Owen,--not to Owen of Castle Richmond, but
+to Owen of Hap House--and he intended to redeem his pledge if it were
+possible. He had been so conquered by the nobleness of his friend,
+that he had forgotten his solicitude for his family and his sister.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+A TALE OF A TURBOT.
+
+
+It would have been Owen Fitzgerald's desire to disclaim the
+inheritance which chance had put in his way in absolute silence, had
+such a course been possible to him. And, indeed, not being very well
+conversant with matters of business, he had thought for a while that
+this might be done--or at any rate something not far different from
+this. To those who had hitherto spoken to him upon the subject, to
+Mr. Prendergast, Mr. Somers, and his cousin, he had disclaimed the
+inheritance, and that he had thought would have sufficed. That Sir
+Thomas should die so quickly after the discovery had not of course
+been expected by anybody; and much, therefore, had not been thought
+at the moment of these disclaimers;--neither at the moment, nor
+indeed afterwards, when Sir Thomas did die.
+
+Even Mr. Somers was prepared to admit that as the game had been
+given up,--as his branch of the Fitzgeralds, acting under the advice
+of their friend and lawyer, admitted that the property must go
+from them--even he, much as he contested within his own breast the
+propriety of Mr. Prendergast's decisions, was fain to admit now that
+it was Owen's business to walk in upon the property. Any words which
+he may have spoken on the impulse of the moment were empty words.
+When a man becomes heir to twelve thousand a year, he does not give
+it up in a freak of benevolence. And, therefore, when Sir Thomas had
+been dead some four or five weeks, and when Herbert had gone away
+from the scene which was no longer one of interest to him, it was
+necessary that something should be done.
+
+During the last two or three days of his life Sir Thomas had executed
+a new will, in which he admitted that his son was not the heir to his
+estates, and so disposed of such moneys as it was in his power to
+leave as he would have done had Herbert been a younger son. Early in
+his life he himself had added something to the property, some two or
+three hundred a year, and this, also, he left of course to his own
+family. Such having been done, there would have been no opposition
+made to Owen had he immediately claimed the inheritance; but as he
+made no claim, and took no step whatever,--as he appeared neither by
+himself, nor by letter, nor by lawyer, nor by agent,--as no rumour
+ever got about as to what he intended to do, Mr. Somers found it
+necessary to write to him. This he did on the day of Herbert's
+departure, merely asking him, perhaps with scant courtesy, who was
+his man of business, in order that he, Mr. Somers, as agent to the
+late proprietor, might confer with him. With but scant courtesy,--for
+Mr. Somers had made one visit to Hap House since the news had been
+known, with some intention of ingratiating himself with the future
+heir; but his tenders had not been graciously received. Mr. Somers
+was a proud man, and though his position in life depended on the
+income he received from the Castle Richmond estate, he would not make
+any further overture. So his letter was somewhat of the shortest, and
+merely contained the request above named.
+
+Owen's reply was sharp, immediate, and equally short, and was carried
+back by the messenger from Castle Richmond who had brought the
+letter, to which it was an answer. It was as follows:--
+
+
+   Hap House, Thursday morning, two o'clock.
+
+(There was no other date; and Owen probably was unaware that his
+letter being written at two P.M. was not written on Thursday
+morning.)
+
+   Dear Sir,
+
+   I have got no lawyer, and no man of business; nor do I
+   mean to employ any if I can help it. I intend to make no
+   claim to Mr. Herbert Fitzgerald's property of Castle
+   Richmond; and if it be necessary that I should sign any
+   legal document making over to him any claim that I may
+   have, I am prepared to do so at any moment. As he has got
+   a lawyer, he can get this arranged, and I suppose Mr.
+   Prendergast had better do it.
+
+   I am, dear sir,
+   Your faithful servant,
+
+   OWEN FITZGERALD of Hap House.
+
+
+And with those four or five lines he thought it would be practicable
+for him to close the whole affair.
+
+This happened on the day of Herbert's departure, and on the day
+preceding Lord Desmond's visit to Hap House; so that on the occasion
+of that visit, Owen looked upon the deed as fully done. He had put
+it quite beyond his own power to recede now, even had he so wished.
+And then came the tidings to him,--true tidings as he thought,--that
+Clara was still within his reach if only he were master of Castle
+Richmond. That this view of his position did for a moment shake him I
+will not deny; but it was only for a moment: and then it was that he
+had looked up at Clara's brother, and bade him go back to his mother
+and sister, and tell them that Owen of Hap House was Owen of Hap
+House still;--that and nothing more. Clara Desmond might be bought at
+a price which would be too costly even for such a prize as her. It
+was well for him that he so resolved, for at no price could she have
+been bought.
+
+Mr. Somers, when he received that letter, was much inclined to doubt
+whether or no it might not be well to take Owen at his word. After
+all, what just right had he to the estate? According to the eternal
+and unalterable laws of right and wrong ought it not to belong to
+Herbert Fitzgerald? Mr. Somers allowed his wish on this occasion
+to be father to many thoughts much at variance from that line of
+thinking which was customary to him as a man of business. In his
+ordinary moods, law with him was law, and a legal claim a legal
+claim. Had he been all his life agent to the Hap House property
+instead of to that of Castle Richmond, a thought so romantic would
+never have entered his head. He would have scouted a man as nearly a
+maniac who should suggest to him that his client ought to surrender
+an undoubted inheritance of twelve thousand a year on a point of
+feeling. He would have rejected it as a proposed crime, and talked
+much of the indefeasible rights of the coming heirs of the new heir.
+He would have been as firm as a rock, and as trenchant as a sword in
+defence of his patron's claims. But now, having in his hands that
+short, pithy letter from Owen Fitzgerald, he could not but look at
+the matter in a more Christian light. After all was not justice,
+immutable justice, better than law? And would not the property be
+enough for both of them? Might not law and justice make a compromise?
+Let Owen be the baronet, and take a slice of four or five thousand,
+and add that to Hap House; and then if these things were well
+arranged, might not Mr. Somers still be agent to them both?
+
+Meditating all this in his newly tuned romantic frame of mind Mr.
+Somers sat down and wrote a long letter to Mr. Prendergast, enclosing
+the short letter from Owen, and saying all that he, as a man of
+business with a new dash of romance, could say on such a subject.
+This letter, not having slept on the road as Herbert did in Dublin,
+and having been conveyed with that lightning rapidity for which the
+British Post-office has ever been remarkable--and especially that
+portion of it which has reference to the sister island,--was in Mr.
+Prendergast's pocket when Herbert dined with him. That letter, and
+another to which we shall have to refer more specially. But so much
+at variance were Mr. Prendergast's ideas from those entertained by
+Mr. Somers, that he would not even speak to Herbert on the subject.
+Perhaps, also, that other more important letter, which, if we live,
+we shall read at length, might also have had some effect in keeping
+him silent.
+
+But in truth Mr. Somers' mind, and that of Mr. Prendergast, did not
+work in harmony on this subject. Judging of the two men together by
+their usual deeds and ascertained character, we may say that there
+was much more romance about Mr. Prendergast than there was about
+Mr. Somers. But then it was a general romance, and not one with
+an individual object. Or perhaps we may say, without injury to
+Mr. Somers, that it was a true feeling, and not a false one. Mr.
+Prendergast, also, was much more anxious for the welfare of Herbert
+Fitzgerald than that of his cousin; but then he could feel on behalf
+of the man for whom he was interested that it did not behove him to
+take a present of an estate from the hands of the true owner.
+
+For more than a week Mr. Somers waited, but got no reply to his
+letter, and heard nothing from Mr. Prendergast; and during this time
+he was really puzzled as to what he should do. As regarded himself,
+he did not know at what moment his income might end, or how long
+he and his family might be allowed to inhabit the house which he
+now held: and then he could take no steps as to the tenants; could
+neither receive money nor pay it away, and was altogether at his
+wits' ends. Lady Fitzgerald looked to him for counsel in everything,
+and he did not know how to counsel her. Arrangements were to be made
+for an auction in the house as soon as she should be able to move;
+but would it not be a thousand pities to sell all the furniture if
+there was a prospect of the family returning? And so he waited for
+Mr. Prendergast's letter with an uneasy heart and vexation of spirit.
+
+But still he attended the relief committees, and worked at the
+soup-kitchens attached to the estate, as though he were still the
+agent to Castle Richmond; and still debated warmly with Father
+Barney on one side, and Mr. Townsend on the other, on that vexatious
+question of out-door relief. And now the famine was in full swing;
+and, strange to say, men had ceased to be uncomfortable about
+it;--such men, that is, as Mr. Somers and Mr. Townsend. The cutting
+off of maimed limbs, and wrenching out from their sockets of smashed
+bones, is by no means shocking to the skilled practitioner. And dying
+paupers, with "the drag" in their face--that certain sign of coming
+death of which I have spoken--no longer struck men to the heart. Like
+the skilled surgeon, they worked hard enough at what good they could
+do, and worked the better in that they could treat the cases without
+express compassion for the individuals that met their eyes. In
+administering relief one may rob five unseen sufferers of what would
+keep them in life if one is moved to bestow all that is comfortable
+on one sufferer that is seen. Was it wise to spend money in
+alleviating the last hours of those whose doom was already spoken,
+which money, if duly used, might save the lives of others not yet
+so far gone in misery? And so in one sense those who were the best
+in the county, who worked the hardest for the poor and spent their
+time most completely among them, became the hardest of heart, and
+most obdurate in their denials. It was strange to see devoted women
+neglecting the wants of the dying, so that they might husband their
+strength and time and means for the wants of those who might still be
+kept among the living.
+
+At this time there came over to the parish of Drumbarrow a young
+English clergyman who might be said to be in many respects the very
+opposite to Mr. Townsend. Two men could hardly be found in the
+same profession more opposite in their ideas, lives, purposes, and
+pursuits;--with this similarity, however, that each was a sincere,
+and on the whole an honest man. The Rev. Mr. Carter was much the
+junior, being at that time under thirty. He had now visited Ireland
+with the sole object of working among the poor, and distributing
+according to his own judgment certain funds which had been collected
+for this purpose in England.
+
+And indeed there did often exist in England at this time a
+misapprehension as to Irish wants, which led to some misuses of the
+funds which England so liberally sent. It came at that time to be
+the duty of a certain public officer to inquire into a charge made
+against a seemingly respectable man in the far west of Ireland,
+purporting that he had appropriated to his own use a sum of twelve
+pounds sent to him for the relief of the poor of his parish. It had
+been sent by three English maiden ladies to the relieving officer
+of the parish of Kilcoutymorrow, and had come to his hands, he then
+filling that position. He, so the charge said,--and unfortunately
+said so with only too much truth,--had put the twelve pounds into
+his own private pocket. The officer's duty in the matter took him to
+the chairman of the Relief Committee, a stanch old Roman Catholic
+gentleman nearly eighty years of age, with a hoary head and white
+beard, and a Milesian name that had come down to him through
+centuries of Catholic ancestors;--a man urbane in his manner, of the
+old school, an Irishman such as one does meet still here and there
+through the country, but now not often--one who above all things was
+true to the old religion.
+
+Then the officer of the government told his story to the old Irish
+gentleman--with many words, for there were all manner of small
+collateral proofs, to all of which the old Irish gentleman listened
+with a courtesy and patience which were admirable. And when the
+officer of the government had done, the old Irish gentleman thus
+replied:--
+
+"My neighbour Hobbs,"--such was the culprit's name--"has undoubtedly
+done this thing. He has certainly spent upon his own uses the
+generous offering made to our poor parish by those noble-minded
+ladies, the three Miss Walkers. But he has acted with perfect honesty
+in the matter."
+
+"What!" said the government officer, "robbing the poor, and at such a
+time as this!"
+
+"No robbery at all, dear sir," said the good old Irish gentleman,
+with the blandest of all possible smiles; "the excellent Miss
+Walkers sent their money for the Protestant poor of the parish of
+Kilcoutymorrow, and Mr. Hobbs is the only Protestant within it." And
+from the twinkle in the old man's eye, it was clear to see that his
+triumph consisted in this,--that not only he had but one Protestant
+in the parish, but that that Protestant should have learned so little
+from his religion.
+
+But this is an episode. And nowadays no episodes are allowed.
+
+And now Mr. Carter had come over to see that if possible certain
+English funds were distributed according to the wishes of the
+generous English hearts by whom they had been sent. For as some
+English, such as the three Miss Walkers, feared on the one hand that
+the Babylonish woman so rampant in Ireland might swallow up their
+money for Babylonish purposes; so, on the other hand, did others
+dread that the too stanch Protestantism of the church militant in
+that country might expend the funds collected for undoubted bodily
+wants in administering to the supposed wants of the soul. No such
+faults did, in truth, at that time prevail. The indomitable force of
+the famine had absolutely knocked down all that; but there had been
+things done in Ireland, before the famine came upon them, which gave
+reasonable suspicion for such fears.
+
+Mr. Townsend among others had been very active in soliciting aid
+from England, and hence had arisen a correspondence between him and
+Mr. Carter; and now Mr. Carter had arrived at Drumbarrow with a
+respectable sum to his credit at the provincial bank, and an intense
+desire to make himself useful in this time of sore need. Mr. Carter
+was a tall, thin, austere-looking man; one, seemingly, who had
+macerated himself inwardly and outwardly by hard living. He had a
+high, narrow forehead, a sparse amount of animal development, thin
+lips, and a piercing, sharp, gray eye. He was a man, too, of few
+words, and would have been altogether harsh in his appearance had
+there not been that in the twinkle of his eye which seemed to say
+that, in spite of all that his gait said to the contrary, the cockles
+of his heart might yet be reached by some play of wit--if only the
+wit were to his taste.
+
+Mr. Carter was a man of personal means, so that he not only was not
+dependent on his profession, but was able--as he also was willing--to
+aid that profession by his liberality. In one thing only was he
+personally expensive. As to his eating and drinking it was, or might
+have been for any solicitude of his own, little more than bread
+and water. As for the comforts of home, he had none, for since his
+ordination his missions had ever been migrating. But he always
+dressed with care, and consequently with expense, for careful
+dressing is ever expensive. He always wore new black gloves, and
+a very long black coat which never degenerated to rust, black
+cloth trousers, a high black silk waistcoat, and a new black hat.
+Everything about him was black except his neck, and that was always
+scrupulously white.
+
+Mr. Carter was a good man--one may say a very good man--for he gave
+up himself and his money to carry out high views of charity and
+religion, in which he was sincere with the sincerity of his whole
+heart, and from which he looked for no reward save such as the godly
+ever seek. But yet there was about him too much of the Pharisee.
+He was greatly inclined to condemn other men, and to think none
+righteous who differed from him. And now he had come to Ireland with
+a certain conviction that the clergy of his own church there were men
+not to be trusted; that they were mere Irish, and little better in
+their habits and doctrines than under-bred dissenters. He had been
+elsewhere in the country before he visited Drumbarrow, and had shown
+this too plainly; but then Mr. Carter was a very young man, and it is
+not perhaps fair to expect zeal and discretion also from those who
+are very young.
+
+Mrs. Townsend had heard of him, and was in dismay when she found that
+he was to stay with them at Drumbarrow parsonage for three days. If
+Mr. Carter did not like clerical characters of her stamp, neither
+did she like them of the stamp of Mr. Carter. She had heard of him,
+of his austerity, of his look, of his habits, and in her heart she
+believed him to be a Jesuit. Had she possessed full sway herself in
+the parish of Drumbarrow, no bodies should have been saved at such
+terrible peril to the souls of the whole parish. But this Mr. Carter
+came with such recommendation--with such assurances of money given
+and to be given, of service done and to be done,--that there was no
+refusing him. And so the husband, more worldly wise than his wife,
+had invited the Jesuit to his parsonage.
+
+"You'll find, Aeneas, he'll have mass in his room in the morning
+instead of coming to family prayers," said the wife.
+
+"But what on earth shall we give him for dinner?" said the husband,
+whose soul at the present moment was among the flesh-pots; and indeed
+Mrs. Townsend had also turned over that question in her prudent mind.
+
+"He'll not eat meat in Lent, you may be sure," said Mrs. Townsend,
+remembering that that was the present period of the year.
+
+"And if he would there is none for him to eat," said Mr. Townsend,
+calling to mind the way in which the larder had of late been emptied.
+
+Protestant clergymen in Ireland in those days had very frequently
+other reasons for fasting than those prescribed by ecclesiastical
+canons. A well-nurtured lady, the wife of a parish rector in the
+county Cork, showed me her larder one day about that time. It
+contained two large loaves of bread, and a pan full of stuff which I
+should have called paste, but which she called porridge. It was all
+that she had for herself, her husband, her children, and her charity.
+Her servants had left her before she came to that pass. And she was a
+well-nurtured, handsome, educated woman, born to such comforts as you
+and I enjoy every day,--oh, my reader! perhaps without much giving of
+thanks for them. Poor lady! the struggle was too much for her, and
+she died under it.
+
+Mr. Townsend was, as I have said, the very opposite to Mr. Carter,
+but he also was a man who could do without the comforts of life, if
+the comforts of life did not come readily in his way. He liked his
+glass of whisky punch dearly, and had an idea that it was good for
+him. Not caring much about personal debts, he would go in debt for
+whisky. But if the whisky and credit were at an end, the loss did not
+make him miserable. He was a man with a large appetite, and who took
+great advantage of a good dinner when it was before him; nay, he
+would go a long distance to insure a good dinner; but, nevertheless,
+he would leave himself without the means of getting a mutton chop,
+and then not be unhappy. Now Mr. Carter would have been very unhappy
+had he been left without his superfine long black coat.
+
+In tendering his invitation to Mr. Carter, Mr. Townsend had explained
+that with him the _res angusta domi_, which was always a prevailing
+disease, had been heightened by the circumstances of the time; but
+that of such crust and cup as he had, his brother English clergyman
+would be made most welcome to partake. In answer to this, Mr. Carter
+had explained that in these days good men thought but little of
+crusts and cups, and that as regarded himself, nature had so made him
+that he had but few concupiscences of that sort. And then, all this
+having been so far explained and settled, Mr. Carter came.
+
+The first day the two clergymen spent together at Berryhill, and
+found plenty to employ them. They were now like enough to be in want
+of funds at that Berryhill soup-kitchen, seeing that the great fount
+of supplies, the house, namely, of Castle Richmond, would soon have
+stopped running altogether. And Mr. Carter was ready to provide
+funds to some moderate extent if all his questions were answered
+satisfactorily. "There was to be no making of Protestants," he said,
+"by giving away of soup purchased with his money." Mr. Townsend
+thought that this might have been spared him. "I regret to say,"
+replied he, with some touch of sarcasm, "that we have no time for
+that now." "And so better," said Mr. Carter, with a sarcasm of a
+blunter sort. "So better. Let us not clog our alms with impossible
+conditions which will only create falsehood." "Any conditions are out
+of the question when one has to feed a whole parish," answered Mr.
+Townsend.
+
+And then Mr. Carter would teach them how to boil their yellow meal,
+on which subject he had a theory totally opposite to the practice
+of the woman employed at the soup-kitchen. "Av we war to hocus it
+that, yer riverence," said Mrs. Daly, turning to Mr. Townsend, "the
+crathurs couldn't ate a bit of it; it wouldn't bile at all, at all,
+not like that."
+
+"Try it, woman," said Mr. Carter, when he had uttered his receipt
+oracularly for the third time.
+
+"'Deed an' I won't," said Mrs. Daly, whose presence there was pretty
+nearly a labour of love, and who was therefore independent. "It'd be
+a sin an' a shame to spile Christian vittels in them times, an' I
+won't do it." And then there was some hard work that day; and though
+Mr. Townsend kept his temper with his visitor, seeing that he had
+much to get and nothing to give, he did not on this occasion learn to
+alter his general opinion of his brethren of the English high church.
+
+And then, when they got home, very hungry after their toil, Mr.
+Townsend made another apology for the poorness of his table. "I am
+almost ashamed," said he, "to ask an English gentleman to sit down to
+such a dinner as Mrs. Townsend will put before you."
+
+"And indeed then it isn't much," said Mrs. Townsend; "just a bit of
+fish I found going the road."
+
+"My dear madam, anything will suffice," said Mr. Carter, somewhat
+pretentiously. And anything would have sufficed. Had they put before
+him a mess of that paste of which I have spoken he would have ate it
+and said nothing,--ate enough of it at least to sustain him till the
+morrow.
+
+But things had not come to so bad a pass as this at
+Drumbarrow parsonage; and, indeed, that day fortune had been
+propitious;--fortune which ever favours the daring. Mrs. Townsend,
+knowing that she had really nothing in the house, had sent Jerry to
+waylay the Lent fishmonger, who twice a week was known to make his
+way from Kanturk to Mallow with a donkey and panniers; and Jerry had
+returned with a prize.
+
+And now they sat down to dinner, and lo and behold, to the great
+surprise of Mr. Carter, and perhaps also to the surprise of the host,
+a magnificent turbot smoked upon the board. The fins no doubt had
+been cut off to render possible the insertion of the animal into the
+largest of the Drumbarrow parsonage kitchen-pots,--an injury against
+which Mr. Townsend immediately exclaimed angrily. "My goodness,
+they have cut off the fins!" said he, holding up both hands in deep
+dismay. According to his philosophy, if he did have a turbot, why
+should he not have it with all its perfections about it--fins and
+all?
+
+"My dear Aeneas!" said Mrs. Townsend, looking at him with that agony
+of domestic distress which all wives so well know how to assume.
+
+Mr. Carter said nothing. He said not a word, but he thought much.
+This then was their pretended poorness of living! with all their mock
+humility, these false Irishmen could not resist the opportunity of
+showing off before the English stranger, and of putting on their
+table before him a dish which an English dean could afford only on
+gala days. And then this clergyman, who was so loudly anxious for
+the poor, could not repress the sorrow of his heart because the
+rich delicacy was somewhat marred in the cooking. "It was too bad,"
+thought Mr. Carter to himself, "too bad."
+
+"None, thank you," said he, drawing himself up with gloomy
+reprobation of countenance. "I will not take any fish, I am much
+obliged to you."
+
+Then the face of Mrs. Townsend was one on which neither Christian
+nor heathen could have looked without horror and grief. What, the
+man whom in her heart she believed to be a Jesuit, and for whom
+nevertheless, Jesuit though he was, she had condescended to cater
+with all her woman's wit!--this man, I say, would not eat fish in
+Lent! And it was horrible to her warm Irish heart to think that after
+that fish now upon the table there was nothing to come but two or
+three square inches of cold bacon. Not eat turbot in Lent! Had he
+been one of her own sort she might have given him credit for true
+antagonism to popery; but every inch of his coat gave the lie to such
+a supposition as that.
+
+"Do take a bit," said Mr. Townsend, hospitably. "The fins should not
+have been cut off, otherwise I never saw a finer fish in my life."
+
+"None, I am very much obliged to you," said Mr. Carter, with sternest
+reprobation of feature.
+
+It was too much for Mrs. Townsend. "Oh, Aeneas," said she, "what are
+we to do?" Mr. Townsend merely shrugged his shoulders, while he
+helped himself. His feelings were less acute, perhaps, than those
+of his wife, and he, no doubt, was much more hungry. Mr. Carter
+the while sat by, saying nothing, but looking daggers. He also was
+hungry, but under such circumstances he would rather starve than eat.
+
+"Don't you ever eat fish, Mr. Carter?" said Mr. Townsend, proceeding
+to help himself for a second time, and poking about round the edges
+of the delicate creature before him for some relics of the glutinous
+morsels which he loved so well. He was not, however, enjoying it
+as he should have done, for seeing that his guest ate none, and
+that his wife's appetite was thoroughly marred, he was alone in his
+occupation. No one but a glutton could have feasted well under such
+circumstances, and Mr. Townsend was not a glutton.
+
+"Thank you, I will eat none to-day," said Mr. Carter, sitting bolt
+upright, and fixing his keen gray eyes on the wall opposite.
+
+"Then you may take away, Biddy; I've done with it. But it's a
+thousand pities such a fish should have been so wasted."
+
+The female heart of Mrs. Townsend could stand these wrongs no longer,
+and with a tear in one corner of her eye, and a gleam of anger in the
+other, she at length thus spoke out. "I am sure then I don't know
+what you will eat, Mr. Carter, and I did think that all you English
+clergymen always ate fish in Lent,--and indeed nothing else; for
+indeed people do say that you are much the same as the papists in
+that respect."
+
+"Hush, my dear!" said Mr. Townsend.
+
+"Well, but I can't hush when there's nothing for the gentleman to
+eat."
+
+"My dear madam, such a matter does not signify in the least," said
+Mr. Carter, not unbending an inch.
+
+"But it does signify; it signifies a great deal; and so you'd know if
+you were a family man;"--"as you ought to be," Mrs. Townsend would
+have been delighted to add. "And I'm sure I sent Jerry five miles,
+and he was gone four hours to get that bit of fish from Paddy
+Magrath, as he stops always at Ballygibblin Gate; and indeed I
+thought myself so lucky, for I only gave Jerry one and sixpence. But
+they had an uncommon take of fish yesterday at Skibbereen, and--"
+
+"One and sixpence!" said Mr. Carter, now slightly relaxing his brow
+for the first time.
+
+"I'd have got it for one and three," said Mr. Townsend, upon whose
+mind an inkling of the truth was beginning to dawn.
+
+"Indeed and you wouldn't, Aeneas; and Jerry was forced to promise the
+man a glass of whisky the first time he comes this road, which he
+does sometimes. That fish weighed over nine pounds, every ounce of
+it."
+
+"Nine fiddlesticks," said Mr. Townsend.
+
+"I weighed it myself, Aeneas, with my own hands, and it was nine
+pounds four ounces before we were obliged to cut it, and as firm as a
+rock the flesh was."
+
+"For one and sixpence!" said Mr. Carter, relaxing still a little
+further, and condescending to look his hostess in the face.
+
+"Yes, for one and six; and now--"
+
+"I'm sure I'd have bought it for one and four, fins and all," said
+the parson, determined to interrupt his wife in her pathos.
+
+"I'm sure you would not then," said his wife, taking his assertion in
+earnest. "You could never market against Jerry in your life; I will
+say that for him."
+
+"If you'll allow me to change my mind, I think I will have a little
+bit of it," said Mr. Carter, almost humbly.
+
+"By all means," said Mr. Townsend. "Biddy, bring that fish back. Now
+I think of it, I have not half dined myself yet."
+
+And then they all three forgot their ill humours, and enjoyed their
+dinner thoroughly,--in spite of the acknowledged fault as touching
+the lost fins of the animal.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+
+CONDEMNED.
+
+
+I have said that Lord Desmond rode home from Hap House that day in a
+quieter mood and at a slower pace than that which had brought him
+thither; and in truth it was so. He had things to think of now much
+more serious than any that had filled his mind as he had cantered
+along, joyously hoping that after all he might have for his brother
+the man that he loved, and the owner of Castle Richmond also. This
+was now impossible; but he felt that he loved Owen better than ever
+he had done, and he was pledged to fight Owen's battle, let Owen be
+ever so poor.
+
+"And what does it signify after all?" he said to himself, as he rode
+along. "We shall all be poor together, and then we sha'n't mind it so
+much; and if I don't marry, Hap House itself will be something to add
+to the property;" and then he made up his mind that he could be happy
+enough, living at Desmond Court all his life, so long as he could
+have Owen Fitzgerald near him to make life palatable.
+
+That night he spoke to no one on the subject, at least to no one of
+his own accord. When they were alone his mother asked him where he
+had been; and when she learned that he had been at Hap House, she
+questioned him much as to what had passed between him and Owen; but
+he would tell her nothing, merely saying that Owen had spoken of
+Clara with his usual ecstasy of love, but declining to go into the
+subject at any length. The countess, however, gathered from him
+that he and Owen were on kindly terms together, and so far she felt
+satisfied.
+
+On the following morning he made up his mind "to have it out," as
+he called it, with Clara; but when the hour came his courage failed
+him: it was a difficult task--that which he was now to undertake--of
+explaining to her his wish that she should go back to her old lover,
+not because he was no longer poor, but, as it were in spite of his
+poverty, and as a reward to him for consenting to remain poor. As
+he had thought about it while riding home, it had seemed feasible
+enough. He would tell her how nobly Owen was going to behave to
+Herbert, and would put it to her whether, as he intended willingly
+to abandon the estate, he ought not to be put into possession of the
+wife. There was a romantic justice about this which he thought would
+touch Clara's heart. But on the following morning when he came to
+think what words he would use for making his little proposition, the
+picture did not seem to him to be so beautiful. If Clara really loved
+Herbert--and she had declared that she did twenty times over--it
+would be absurd to expect her to give him up merely because he was
+not a ruined man. But then, which did she love? His mother declared
+that she loved Owen. "That's the real question," said the earl to
+himself, as on the second morning he made up his mind that he would
+"have it out" with Clara without any further delay. He must be true
+to Owen; that was his first great duty at the present moment.
+
+"Clara, I want to talk to you," he said, breaking suddenly into the
+room where she usually sat alone o' mornings. "I was at Hap House the
+day before yesterday with Owen Fitzgerald, and to tell you the truth
+at once, we were talking about you the whole time we were there. And
+now what I want is, that something should be settled, so that we may
+all understand one another."
+
+These words he spoke to her quite abruptly. When he first said that
+he wished to speak to her, she had got up from her chair to welcome
+him, for she dearly loved to have him there. There was nothing
+she liked better than having him to herself when he was in a soft
+brotherly humour; and then she would interest herself about his
+horse, and his dogs, and his gun, and predict his life for him,
+sending him up as a peer to Parliament, and giving him a noble wife,
+and promising him that he should be such a Desmond as would redeem
+all the family from their distresses. But now as he rapidly brought
+out his words, she found that on this day her prophecies must regard
+herself chiefly.
+
+"Surely, Patrick, it is easy enough to understand me," she said.
+
+"Well, I don't know; I don't in the least mean to find fault with
+you."
+
+"I am glad of that, dearest," she said, laying her hand upon his arm.
+
+"But my mother says one thing, and you another, and Owen another; and
+I myself, I hardly know what to say."
+
+"Look here, Patrick, it is simply this: I became engaged to Herbert
+with my mother's sanction and yours; and now--"
+
+"Stop a moment," said the impetuous boy, "and do not pledge yourself
+to anything till you have heard me. I know that you are cut to the
+heart about Herbert Fitzgerald losing his property."
+
+"No, indeed; not at all cut to the heart; that is as regards myself."
+
+"I don't mean as regards yourself; I mean as regards him. I have
+heard you say over and over again that it is a piteous thing that he
+should be so treated. Have I not?"
+
+"Yes, I have said that, and I think so."
+
+"And I think that most of your great--great--great love for him, if
+you will, comes from that sort of feeling."
+
+"But, Patrick, it came long before."
+
+"Dear Clara, do listen to me, will you? You may at any rate do as
+much as that for me." And then Clara stood perfectly mute, looking
+into his handsome face as he continued to rattle out his words at
+her.
+
+"Now if you please, Clara, you may have the means of giving back to
+him all his property, every shilling that he ever had, or expected
+to have. Owen Fitzgerald,--who certainly is the finest fellow that
+ever I came across in all my life, or ever shall, if I live to five
+hundred,--says that he will make over every acre of Castle Richmond
+back to his cousin Herbert if--" Oh, my lord, my lord, what a scheme
+is this you are concocting to entrap your sister! Owen Fitzgerald
+inserted no "if," as you are well aware! "If," he continued, with
+some little qualm of conscience, "if you will consent to be his
+wife."
+
+"Patrick!"
+
+"Listen, now listen. He thinks, and, Clara, by the heavens above me!
+I think also that you did love him better than you ever loved Herbert
+Fitzgerald." Clara as she heard these words blushed ruby red up
+to her very hair, but she said never a word. "And I think, and he
+thinks, that you are bound now to Herbert by his misfortunes--that
+you feel that you cannot desert him because he has fallen so low. By
+George, Clara, I am proud of you for sticking to him through thick
+and thin, now that he is down! But the matter will be very difficult
+if you have the means of giving back to him all that he has lost, as
+you have. Owen will be poor, but he is a prince among men. By heaven,
+Clara, if you will only say that he is your choice, Herbert shall
+have back all Castle Richmond! and I--I shall never marry, and you
+may give to the man that I love as my brother all that there is left
+to us of Desmond."
+
+There was something grand about the lad's eager tone of voice as he
+made his wild proposal, and something grand also about his heart. He
+meant what he said, foolish as he was either to mean or to say it.
+Clara burst into tears, and threw herself into his arms. "You don't
+understand," she said, through her sobs, "my own, own brother; you do
+not understand."
+
+"But, by Jove! I think I do understand. As sure as you are a living
+girl he will give back Castle Richmond to Herbert Fitzgerald."
+
+She recovered herself, and leaving her brother's arms, walked away to
+the window, and from thence looked down to that path beneath the elms
+which was the spot in the world which she thought of the oftenest;
+but as she gazed, there was no lack of loyalty in her heart to the
+man to whom she was betrothed. It seemed to her as though those
+childish days had been in another life; as though Owen had been her
+lover in another world,--a sweet, childish, innocent, happy world
+which she remembered well, but which was now dissevered from her by
+an impassable gulf. She thought of his few words of love,--so few
+that she remembered every word that he had then spoken, and thought
+of them with a singular mixture of pain and pleasure. And now she
+heard of his noble self-denial with a thrill which was in no degree
+enhanced by the fact that she, or even Herbert, was to be the gainer
+by it. She rejoiced at his nobility, merely because it was a joy to
+her to know that he was so noble. And yet all through this she was
+true to Herbert. Another work-a-day world had come upon her in her
+womanhood, and as that came she had learned to love a man of another
+stamp, with a love that was quieter, more subdued, and perhaps, as
+she thought, more enduring. Whatever might be Herbert's lot in life,
+that lot she would share. Her love for Owen should never be more to
+her than a dream.
+
+"Did he send you to me?" she said at last, without turning her face
+away from the window.
+
+"Yes, then, he did; he did send me to you, and he told me to say that
+as Owen of Hap House he loved you still. And I, I promised to do his
+bidding; and I promised, moreover, that as far as my good word could
+go with you, he should have it. And now you know it all; if you care
+for my pleasure in the matter you will take Owen, and let Herbert
+have his property. By Jove! if he is treated in that way he cannot
+complain."
+
+"Patrick," said she, returning to him and again laying her hand on
+him. "You must now take my message also. You must go to him and bid
+him come here that I may see him."
+
+"Who? Owen?"
+
+"Yes, Owen Fitzgerald."
+
+"Very well, I have no objection in life." And the earl thought that
+the difficulty was really about to be overcome. "And about my
+mother?"
+
+"I will tell mamma."
+
+"And what shall I say to Owen?"
+
+"Say nothing to him, but bid him come here. But wait, Patrick; yes;
+he must not misunderstand me; I can never, never, never marry him."
+
+"Clara!"
+
+"Never, never; it is impossible. Dear Patrick, I am so sorry to
+make you unhappy, and I love you so very dearly,--better than ever,
+I think, for speaking as you do now. But that can never be. Let
+him come here, however, and I myself will tell him all." At last,
+disgusted and unhappy though he was, the earl did accept the
+commission, and again on that afternoon rode across the fields to Hap
+House.
+
+"I will tell him nothing but that he is to come," said the earl
+to himself as he went thither. And he did tell Owen nothing else.
+Fitzgerald questioned him much, but learned but little from him. "By
+heavens, Owen," he said, "you must settle the matter between you, for
+I don't understand it. She has bid me ask you to come to her; and now
+you must fight your own battle." Fitzgerald of course said that he
+would obey, and so Lord Desmond left him.
+
+In the evening Clara told her mother. "Owen Fitzgerald is to be here
+to-morrow," she said.
+
+"Owen Fitzgerald; is he?" said the countess. She hardly knew how to
+bear herself, or how to interfere so as to assist her own object; or
+how not to interfere, lest she should mar it.
+
+"Yes, mamma. Patrick saw him the other day, and I think it is better
+that I should see him also."
+
+"Very well, my dear. But you must be aware, Clara, that you have been
+so very--I don't wish to say headstrong exactly--so very _entetee_
+about your own affairs, that I hardly know how to speak of them. If
+your brother is in your confidence I shall be satisfied."
+
+"He is in my confidence; and so may you be also, mamma, if you
+please."
+
+But the countess thought it better not to have any conversation
+forced upon her at that moment; and so she asked her daughter for no
+further show of confidence then. It would probably be as well that
+Owen should come and plead his own cause.
+
+And Owen did come. All that night and on the next morning the poor
+girl remained alone in a state of terrible doubt. She had sent for
+her old lover, thinking at the moment that no one could explain to
+him in language so clear as her own what was her fixed resolve. And
+she had too been so moved by the splendour of his offer, that she
+longed to tell him what she thought of it. The grandeur of that offer
+was enhanced tenfold in her mind by the fact that it had been so
+framed as to include her in this comparative poverty with which Owen
+himself was prepared to rest contented. He had known that she was not
+to be bought by wealth, and had given her credit for a nobility that
+was akin to his own.
+
+But yet, now that the moment was coming, how was she to talk to him?
+How was she to speak the words which would rob him of his hope, and
+tell him that he did not, could not, never could possess that one
+treasure which he desired more than houses and lands, or station and
+rank? Alas, alas! If it could have been otherwise! If it could have
+been otherwise! She also was in love with poverty;--but at any rate,
+no one could accuse her now of sacrificing a poor lover for a rich
+one. Herbert Fitzgerald would be poor enough.
+
+And then he came. They had hitherto met but once since that
+afternoon, now so long ago--that afternoon to which she looked back
+as to another former world--and that meeting had been in the very
+room in which she was now prepared to receive him. But her feelings
+towards him had been very different then. Then he had almost forced
+himself upon her, and for months previously she had heard nothing of
+him but what was evil. He had come complaining loudly, and her heart
+had been somewhat hardened against him. Now he was there at her
+bidding, and her heart and very soul were full of tenderness. She
+rose rapidly, and sat down again, and then again rose as she heard
+his footsteps; but when he entered the room she was standing in the
+middle of it.
+
+"Clara," he said, taking the hand which she mechanically held out, "I
+have come here now at your brother's request."
+
+Her name sounded so sweet upon his lips. No idea occurred to her that
+she ought to be angry with him for using it. Angry with him! Could it
+be possible that she should ever be angry with him--that she ever had
+been so?
+
+"Yes," she said. "Patrick said something to me which made me think
+that it would be better that we should meet."
+
+"Well, yes; it is better. If people are honest they had always better
+say to each other's faces that which they have to say."
+
+"I mean to be honest, Mr. Fitzgerald."
+
+"Yes, I am sure you do; and so do I also. And if this is so, why
+cannot we say each to the other that which we have to say? My tale
+will be a very short one; but it will be true if it is short."
+
+"But, Mr. Fitzgerald--"
+
+"Well, Clara?"
+
+"Will you not sit down?" And she herself sat upon the sofa; and he
+drew a chair for himself near to her; but he was too impetuous to
+remain seated on it long. During the interview between them he was
+sometimes standing, and sometimes walking quickly about the room; and
+then for a moment he would sit down, or lean down over her on the
+sofa arm.
+
+"But, Mr. Fitzgerald, it is my tale that I wish you to hear."
+
+"Well; I will listen to it." But he did not listen; for before she
+had spoken a dozen words he had interrupted her, and poured out upon
+her his own wild plans and generous schemes. She, poor girl, had
+thought to tell him that she loved Herbert, and Herbert only--as a
+lover. But that if she could love him, him Owen, as a brother and a
+friend, that love she would so willingly give him. And then she would
+have gone on to say how impossible it would have been for Herbert,
+under any circumstances, to have availed himself of such generosity
+as that which had been offered. But her eloquence was all cut short
+in the bud. How could she speak with such a storm of impulse raging
+before her as that which was now strong within Owen Fitzgerald's
+bosom?
+
+He interrupted her before she had spoken a dozen words, in order that
+he might exhibit before her eyes the project with which his bosom was
+filled. This he did, standing for the most part before her, looking
+down upon her as she sat beneath him, with her eyes fixed upon the
+floor, while his were riveted on her down-turned face. She knew it
+all before--all this that he had to say to her, or she would hardly
+have understood it from his words, they were so rapid and vehement.
+And yet they were tender, too; spoken in a loving tone, and
+containing ever and anon assurances of respect, and a resolve to be
+guided now and for ever by her wishes,--even though those wishes
+should be utterly subversive of his happiness.
+
+"And now you know it all," he said, at last. "And as for my cousin's
+property, that is safe enough. No earthly consideration would induce
+me to put a hand upon that, seeing that by all justice it is his."
+But in this she hardly yet quite understood him. "Let him have what
+luck he may in other respects, he shall still be master of Castle
+Richmond. If it were that that you wanted--as I know it is not--that
+I cannot give you. I cannot tell you with what scorn I should regard
+myself if I were to take advantage of such an accident as this to rob
+any man of his estate."
+
+Her brother had been right, so Clara felt, when he declared that Owen
+Fitzgerald was the finest fellow that ever he had come across. She
+made another such declaration within her own heart, only with words
+that were more natural to her. He was the noblest gentleman of whom
+she had ever heard, or read, or thought.
+
+"But," continued Owen, "as I will not interfere with him in that
+which should be his, neither should he interfere with me in that
+which should be mine. Clara, the only estate that I claim is your
+heart."
+
+And that estate she could not give him. On that at any rate she was
+fixed. She could not barter herself about from one to the other
+either as a make-weight or a counterpoise. All his pleading was in
+vain; all his generosity would fail in securing to him this one
+reward that he desired. And now she had to tell him so.
+
+"Your brother seems to think," he continued, "that you still--;" but
+now it was her turn to interrupt him.
+
+"Patrick is mistaken," she said, with her eyes still fixed upon the
+ground.
+
+"What. You will tell me, then, that I am utterly indifferent to you?"
+
+"No, no, no; I did not say so." And now she got up and took hold of
+his arm, and looked into his face imploringly. "I did not say so.
+But, oh, Mr. Fitzgerald, be kind to me, be forbearing with me, be
+good to me," and she almost embraced his arm as she appealed to him,
+with her eyes all swimming with tears.
+
+"Good to you!" he said. And a strong passion came upon him, urging
+him to throw his arm round her slender body, and press her to his
+bosom. Good to her! would he not protect her with his life's blood
+against all the world if she would only come to him? "Good to you,
+Clara! Can you not trust me that I will be good to you if you will
+let me?"
+
+"But not so, Owen." It was the first time she had ever called him
+by his name, and she blushed again as she remembered that it was so.
+"Not good, as you mean, for now I must trust to another for that
+goodness. Herbert must be my husband, Owen; but will not you be our
+friend?"
+
+"Herbert must be your husband!"
+
+"Yes, yes, yes. It is so. Do not look at me in that way, pray do not;
+what would you have me do? You would not have me false to my troth,
+and false to my own heart, because you are generous. Be generous to
+me--to me also."
+
+He turned away from her, and walked the whole length of the long
+room; away and back, before he answered her, and even then, when he
+had returned to her, he stood, looking at her before he spoke. And
+she now looked full into his face, hoping, but yet fearing; hoping
+that he might yield to her; and fearing his terrible displeasure
+should he not yield.
+
+"Clara," he said; and he spoke solemnly, slowly, and in a mood unlike
+his own,--"I cannot as yet read your heart clearly; nor do I know
+whether you can quite so read it yourself."
+
+"I can, I can," she answered quickly; "and you shall know it
+all--all, if you wish."
+
+"I want to know but one thing. Whom is it that you love? And,
+Clara--," and this he said interrupting her as she was about to
+speak. "I do not ask you to whom you are engaged. You have engaged
+yourself both to him and to me."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Fitzgerald!"
+
+"I do not blame you; not in the least. But is it not so? as to that I
+will ask no question, and say nothing; only this, that so far we are
+equal. But now ask of your own heart, and then answer me. Whom is it
+then you love?"
+
+"Herbert Fitzgerald," she said. The words hardly formed themselves
+into a whisper, but nevertheless they were audible enough to him.
+
+"Then I have no further business here," he said, and turned about as
+though to leave the room.
+
+But she ran forward and stopped him, standing between him and the
+door. "Oh, Mr. Fitzgerald, do not leave me like that. Say one word
+of kindness to me before you go. Tell me that you forgive me for the
+injury I have done you."
+
+"Yes, I forgive you."
+
+"And is that all? Oh, I will love you so, if you will let me;--as
+your friend, as your sister; you shall be our dearest, best, and
+nearest friend. You do not know how good he is. Owen, will you not
+tell me that you will love me as a brother loves?"
+
+"No!" and the sternness of his face was such that it was dreadful to
+look on it. "I will tell you nothing that is false."
+
+"And would that be false?"
+
+"Yes, false as hell! What, sit by at his hearth-stone and see you
+leaning on his bosom! Sleep under his roof while you were in his
+arms! No, Lady Clara, that would not be possible. That virtue, if it
+be virtue, I cannot possess."
+
+"And you must go from me in anger? If you knew what I am suffering
+you would not speak to me so cruelly."
+
+"Cruel! I would not wish to be cruel to you; certainly not now, for
+we shall not meet again; if ever, not for many years. I do not think
+that I have been cruel to you."
+
+"Then say one word of kindness before you go!"
+
+"A word of kindness! Well; what shall I say? Every night, as
+I have lain in my bed, I have said words of kindness to you,
+since--since--since longer than you will remember; since I first knew
+you as a child. Do you ever think of the day when you walked with me
+round by the bridge?"
+
+"It is bootless thinking of that now."
+
+"Bootless! yes, and words of kindness are bootless. Between you and
+me, such words should be full of love, or they would have no meaning.
+What can I say to you that shall be both kind and true?"
+
+"Bid God bless me before you leave me."
+
+"Well, I will say that. May God bless you, in this world and in the
+next! And now, Lady Clara Desmond, good-bye!" and he tendered to her
+his hand.
+
+She took it, and pressed it between both of hers, and looked up
+into his face, and stood so while the fast tears ran down her face.
+He must have been more or less than man had he not relented then.
+"And Owen," she said, "dear Owen, may God in his mercy bless you
+also, and make you happy, and give you some one that you can love,
+and--and--teach you in your heart to forgive the injury I have done
+you." And then she stooped down her head and pressed her lips upon
+the hand which she held within her own.
+
+"Forgive you! Well--I do forgive you. Perhaps it may be right that we
+should both forgive; though I have not wittingly brought unhappiness
+upon you. But what there is to be forgiven on my side, I do forgive.
+And--and I hope that you may be happy." They were the last words that
+he spoke; and then leading her back to her seat, he placed her there,
+and without turning to look at her again, he left the room.
+
+He hurried down into the court, and called for his horse. As he stood
+there, when his foot was in the stirrup, and his hand on the animal's
+neck, Lord Desmond came up to him. "Good-bye, Desmond," he said. "It
+is all over; God knows when you and I may meet again." And without
+waiting for a word of reply he rode out under the porch, and putting
+spurs to his horse, galloped fast across the park. The earl, when he
+spoke of it afterwards to his mother, said that Owen's face had been
+as it were a thundercloud.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX.
+
+FOX-HUNTING IN SPINNY LANE.
+
+
+I think it will be acknowledged that Mr. Prendergast had said no word
+throughout the conversation recorded in a late chapter as having
+taken place between him and Herbert Fitzgerald over their wine, which
+could lead Herbert to think it possible that he might yet recover his
+lost inheritance; but nevertheless during the whole of that evening
+he held in his pocket a letter, received by him only that afternoon,
+which did encourage him to think that such an event might at any rate
+be possible. And, indeed, he held in his pocket two letters, having a
+tendency to the same effect, but we shall have nothing now to say as
+to that letter from Mr. Somers of which we have spoken before.
+
+It must be understood that up to this time certain inquiries had
+been going on with reference to the life of Mr. Matthew Mollett,
+and that these inquiries were being made by agents employed by Mr.
+Prendergast. He had found that Mollett's identity with Talbot had
+been so fully proved as to make it, in his opinion, absolutely
+necessary that Herbert and his mother should openly give up Castle
+Richmond. But, nevertheless, without a hope, and in obedience solely
+to what he felt that prudence demanded in so momentous a matter,
+he did prosecute all manner of inquiries;--but prosecuted them
+altogether in vain. And now, O thou most acute of lawyers, this new
+twinkling spark of hope has come to thee from a source whence thou
+least expectedst it!
+
+_Quod minime reris Graia pandetur ab urbe._
+
+And then, as soon as Herbert was gone from him, crossing one leg over
+the other as he sat in his easy chair, he took it from his pocket and
+read it for the third time. The signature at the end of it was very
+plain and legible, being that of a scholar no less accomplished than
+Mr. Abraham Mollett. This letter we will have entire, though it was
+not perhaps as short as it might have been. It ran as follows:--
+
+
+   45 Tabernacle row London.
+   April--1847.
+
+   Respectit Sir--
+
+   In hall them doings about the Fitsjerrals at Carsal
+   Richmon I halways felt the most profound respict for you
+   because you wanted to do the thing as was rite wich was
+   what I halways wanted to myself only coodent becase of the
+   guvnor. "Let the right un win, guvnor," said I, hover hand
+   hover again; but no, he woodent. And what cood the likes
+   of me do then seeing as ow I was obligated by the forth
+   comanment to honor my father and mother, wich however if
+   it wasent that she was ded leving me a horphand there
+   woodent av been none of this trobbel. If she ad livd Mr.
+   Pindargrasp Ide av been brot hup honest, and thats what I
+   weps for. But she dide and my guvnor why hes been a gitten
+   the rong side of the post hever sins that hunfortunate
+   day. Praps you knows Mr. Pindargrasp what it is to lose a
+   mother in your herly hinfantsey. But I was at the guvnor
+   hovers and hovers agin, but hall of no yuse. "He as
+   stumpt hoff with my missus and now he shall stump hup the
+   reddy." Them was my guvnors hown words halways. Well, Mr.
+   Pindargrasp; what does I do. It warnt no good my talking
+   to him he was for going so confounedly the rong side of
+   the post. But I new as how Appy ouse Fitsjerral was the
+   orse as ort to win. Leestways I thawt I new it, and so you
+   thawt too Mr. Pindargrasp only we was both running the
+   rong cent. But what did I do when I was so confounedly
+   disgusted by my guvnor ankring after the baronnites money
+   wich it wasnt rite nor yet onest. Why I went meself to
+   Appy ouse as you noes Mr. Pindargrasp, and was the first
+   to tel the Appy ouse gent hall about it. But wat dos he
+   do. Hoh, Mr. Pindargrasp, I shal never forgit that faitel
+   day and only he got me hunewairs by the scruf of the nek
+   Im has good a man as he hevery day of the week. But you
+   was ther Mr. Pindargrasp and noes wat I got for befrindin
+   the Appy ouse side wich was agin the guvnor and he as brot
+   me to the loest pich of distress in the way of rino seein
+   the guvnor as cut of my halowence becase I wint agin his
+   hinterest.
+
+   And now Mr. Pindargrasp I ave a terrible secret to
+   hunraffel wich will put the sadel on the rite orse at last
+   and as I does hall this agin my own guvnor wich of corse
+   I love derely I do hope Mr. Pindargrasp you wont see me
+   haltoogether left in the lerch. A litel something to go
+   on with at furst wood be very agrebbel for indeed Mr.
+   Pindargrasp its uncommon low water with your umbel servant
+   at this presant moment. And now wat I has to say is
+   this--Lady Fits warnt niver my guvnors wife hat all becase
+   why hed a wife alivin has I can pruv and will and shes
+   alivin now number 7 Spinny lane Centbotollfs intheheast.
+   Now I do call that noos worse a Jews high Mr. Pindargrasp
+   and I opes youll see me honestly delt with sein as how I
+   coms forward and tels it hall without any haskin and cood
+   keep it all to miself and no one coodent be the wiser only
+   I chews to do the thing as is rite.
+
+   You may fine out hall about it hall at number 7 Spinny
+   lane and I advises you to go there immejat. Missus Mary
+   Swan thats what she calls herself but her richeous name
+   his Mollett--and why not seein who is er usban. So no more
+   at presence but will com foward hany day to pruv hall this
+   agin my guvnor becase he arnt doing the thing as is rite
+   and I looks to you Mr. Pindargrasp to see as I gits someat
+   ansum sein as ow I coms forward agin the Appy ouse gent
+   and for the hother party oos side you is a bakkin.
+
+   I ham respictit Sir
+   Your umbel servant to command,
+
+   ABM. MOLLETT.
+
+
+I cannot say that Mr. Prendergast believed much of this terribly long
+epistle when he first received it, or felt himself imbued with any
+great hope that his old friend's wife might be restored to her name
+and rank, and his old friend's son to his estate and fortune. But
+nevertheless he knew that it was worth inquiry. That Aby Mollett
+had been kicked out of Hap House in a manner that must have been
+mortifying to his feelings, Mr. Prendergast had himself seen; and
+that he would, therefore, do anything in his power to injure Owen
+Fitzgerald, Mr. Prendergast was quite sure. That he was a viler
+wretch even than his father, Mr. Prendergast suspected,--having been
+led to think so by words which had fallen from Sir Thomas, and being
+further confirmed in that opinion by the letter now in his hand.
+He was not, therefore, led into any strong opinion that these new
+tidings were of value. And, indeed, he was prone to disbelieve them,
+because they ran counter to a conviction which had already been
+made in his own heart, and had been extensively acted on by him.
+Nevertheless he resolved that even Aby's letter deserved attention,
+and that it should receive that attention early on the following
+morning.
+
+And thus he had sat for the three hours after dinner, chatting
+comfortably with his young friend, and holding this letter in his
+pocket. Had he shown it to Herbert, or spoken of it, he would have
+utterly disturbed the equilibrium of the embryo law student, and
+rendered his entrance in Mr. Die's chambers absolutely futile. "Ten
+will not be too early for you," he had said. "Mr. Die is always in
+his room by that hour." Herbert had of course declared that ten would
+not be at all too early for him; and Mr. Prendergast had observed
+that after leaving Mr. Die's chambers, he himself would go on to the
+City. He might have said beyond the City, for his intended expedition
+was to Spinny Lane, at St. Botolph's in the East.
+
+When Herbert was gone he sat musing over his fire with Aby's letter
+still in his hand. A lawyer has always a sort of affection for a
+scoundrel,--such affection as a hunting man has for a fox. He loves
+to watch the skill and dodges of the animal, to study the wiles by
+which he lives, and to circumvent them by wiles of his own, still
+more wily. It is his glory to run the beast down; but then he would
+not for worlds run him down, except in conformity with certain laws,
+fixed by old custom for the guidance of men in such sports. And the
+two-legged vermin is adapted for pursuit as is the fox with four
+legs. He is an unclean animal, leaving a scent upon his trail, which
+the nose of your acute law hound can pick up over almost any ground.
+And the more wily the beast is, the longer he can run, the more
+trouble he can give in the pursuit, the longer he can stand up before
+a pack of legal hounds, the better does the forensic sportsman love
+and value him. There are foxes of so excellent a nature, so keen in
+their dodges, so perfect in their cunning, so skilful in evasion,
+that a sportsman cannot find it in his heart to push them to their
+destruction unless the field be very large so that many eyes are
+looking on. And the feeling is I think the same with lawyers.
+
+Mr. Prendergast had always felt a tenderness towards the Molletts,
+father and son,--a tenderness which would by no means have prevented
+him from sending them both to the halter had that been necessary, and
+had they put themselves so far in his power. Much as the sportsman
+loves the fox, it is a moment to him of keen enjoyment when he puts
+his heavy boot on the beast's body,--the expectant dogs standing
+round demanding their prey--and there both beheads and betails him.
+"A grand old dog," he says to those around him. "I know him well. It
+was he who took us that day from Poulnarer, through Castlecor, and
+right away to Drumcollogher." And then he throws the heavy carcass
+to the hungry hounds. And so could Mr. Prendergast have delivered up
+either of the Molletts to be devoured by the dogs of the law; but he
+did not the less love them tenderly while they were yet running.
+
+And so he sat with the letter in his hand, smiling to think that the
+father and son had come to grief among themselves; smiling also at
+the dodge by which, as he thought most probable, Aby Mollett was
+striving to injure the man who had kicked him, and raise a little
+money for his own private needs. There was too much earnestness in
+that prayer for cash to leave Mr. Prendergast in any doubt as to
+Aby's trust that money would be forthcoming. There must be something
+in the dodge, or Aby would not have had such trust.
+
+And the lawyer felt that he might, perhaps, be inclined to give some
+little assistance to poor Aby in the soreness of his needs. Foxes
+will not do well in any country which is not provided with their
+natural food. Rats they eat, and if rats be plentiful it is so far
+good. But one should not begrudge them occasional geese and turkeys,
+or even break one's heart if they like a lamb in season. A fox will
+always run well when he has come far from home seeking his breakfast.
+
+Poor Aby, when he had been so cruelly treated by the "gent of Appy
+ouse," whose side in the family dispute he had latterly been so
+anxious to take, had remained crouching for some hour or two in
+Owen's kitchen, absolutely mute. The servants there for a while felt
+sure that he was dying; but in their master's present mood they did
+not dare to go near him with any such tidings. And then when the
+hounds were gone, and the place was again quiet, Aby gradually roused
+himself, allowed them to wash the blood from his hands and face, to
+restore him to life by whisky and scraps of food, and gradually got
+himself into his car, and so back to the Kanturk Hotel, in South Main
+Street, Cork.
+
+But, alas, his state there was more wretched by far than it had
+been in the Hap House kitchen. That his father had fled was no more
+than he expected. Each had known that the other would now play some
+separate secret game. But not the less did he complain loudly when he
+heard that "his guvnor" had not paid the bill, and had left neither
+money nor message for him. How Fanny had scorned and upbraided him,
+and ordered Tom to turn him out of the house "neck and crop;" how he
+had squared at Tom, and ultimately had been turned out of the house
+"neck and crop,"--whatever that may mean--by Fanny's father, needs
+not here to be particularly narrated. With much suffering and many
+privations--such as foxes in their solitary wanderings so often
+know--he did find his way to London; and did, moreover, by means of
+such wiles as foxes have, find out something as to his "guvnor's"
+whereabouts, and some secrets also as to his "guvnor" which his
+"guvnor" would fain have kept to himself had it been possible. And
+then, also, he again found for himself a sort of home--or hole
+rather--in his old original gorse covert of London; somewhere among
+the Jews we may surmise, from the name of the row from which he
+dated; and here, setting to work once more with his usual cunning
+industry,--for your fox is very industrious,--he once more attempted
+to build up a slender fortune by means of the "Fitsjerral" family.
+The grand days in which he could look for the hand of the fair
+Emmeline were all gone by; but still the property had been too good
+not to leave something for which he might grasp. Properly worked, by
+himself alone, as he said to himself, it might still yield him some
+comfortable returns, especially as he should be able to throw over
+that "confouned old guvnor of his."
+
+He remained at home the whole of the day after his letter was
+written, indeed for the next three days, thinking that Mr.
+Prendergast would come to him, or send for him; but Mr. Prendergast
+did neither the one nor the other. Mr. Prendergast took his advice
+instead, and putting himself into a Hansom cab, had himself driven to
+"Centbotollfs intheheast."
+
+Spinny Lane, St. Botolph's in the East, when at last it was found,
+was not exactly the sort of place that Mr. Prendergast had expected.
+It must be known that he did not allow the cabman to drive him up to
+the very door indicated, nor even to the lane itself; but contented
+himself with leaving the cab at St. Botolph's church. The huntsman in
+looking after his game is as wily as the fox himself. Men do not talk
+at the covert side--or at any rate they ought not. And they should
+stand together discreetly at the non-running side. All manner of
+wiles and silences and discretions are necessary, though too often
+broken through by the uninstructed,--much to their own discomfort.
+And so in hunting his fox, Mr. Prendergast did not dash up loudly
+into the covert, but discreetly left his cab at the church of St.
+Botolph's.
+
+Spinny Lane, when at last found by intelligence given to him at the
+baker's,--never in such unknown regions ask a lad in the street, for
+he invariably will accompany you, talking of your whereabouts very
+loudly, so that people stare at you, and ask each other what can
+possibly be your business in those parts. Spinny Lane, I say, was not
+the sort of locality that he had expected. He knew the look of the
+half-protected, half-condemned Alsatias of the present-day rascals,
+and Spinny Lane did not at all bear their character. It was a street
+of small new tenements, built, as yet, only on one side of the
+way, with the pavement only one third finished, and the stones in
+the road as yet unbroken and untrodden. Of such streets there are
+thousands now round London. They are to be found in every suburb,
+creating wonder in all thoughtful minds as to who can be their
+tens of thousands of occupants. The houses are a little too good
+for artisans, too small and too silent to be the abode of various
+lodgers, and too mean for clerks who live on salaries. They are as
+dull-looking as Lethe itself, dull and silent, dingy and repulsive.
+But they are not discreditable in appearance, and never have that
+Mohawk look which by some unknown sympathy in bricks and mortar
+attaches itself to the residences of professional ruffians.
+
+Number seven he found to be as quiet and decent a house as any in
+the row, and having inspected it from a little distance he walked up
+briskly to the door, and rang the bell. He walked up briskly in order
+that his advance might not be seen; unless, indeed, as he began to
+think not impossible, Aby's statement was altogether a hoax.
+
+"Does a woman named Mrs. Mary Swan live here?" he asked of a
+decent-looking young woman of some seven or eight and twenty, who
+opened the door for him. She was decent looking, but poverty stricken
+and wan with work and care, and with that heaviness about her which
+perpetual sorrow always gives. Otherwise she would not have been ill
+featured; and even as it was she was feminine and soft in her gait
+and manner. "Does Mrs. Mary Swan live here?" asked Mr. Prendergast in
+a mild voice.
+
+She at once said Mrs. Mary Swan did live there; but she stood with
+the door in her hand by no means fully opened, as though she did not
+wish to ask him to enter; and yet there was nothing in her tone to
+repel him. Mr. Prendergast at once felt that he was on the right
+scent, and that it behoved him at any rate to make his way into
+that house; for if ever a modest-looking daughter was like an
+immodest-looking father, that young woman was like Mr. Mollett
+senior.
+
+"Then I will see her, if you please," said Mr. Prendergast, entering
+the passage without her invitation. Not that he pushed in with
+roughness; but she receded before the authority of his tone, and
+obeyed the command which she read in his eye. The poor young woman
+hesitated as though it had been her intention to declare that Mrs.
+Swan was not within; but if so, she had not strength to carry out her
+purpose, for in the next moment Mr. Prendergast found himself in the
+presence of the woman he had come to seek.
+
+"Mrs. Mary Swan?" said Mr. Prendergast, asking a question as to her
+identity.
+
+"Yes, sir, that is my name," said a sickly-looking elderly woman,
+rising from her chair.
+
+The room in which the two had been sitting was very poor; but
+nevertheless it was neat, and arranged with some attention to
+appearance. It was not carpeted, but there was a piece of drugget
+some three yards long spread before the fireplace. The wall had been
+papered from time to time with scraps of different coloured paper, as
+opportunity offered. The table on which the work of the two women was
+lying was very old and somewhat rickety, but it was of mahogany; and
+Mrs. Mary Swan herself was accommodated with a high-backed arm-chair,
+which gave some appearance of comfort to her position. It was now
+spring; but they had a small, very small fire in the small grate,
+on which a pot had been placed in hopes that it might be induced
+to boil. All these things did the eye of Mr. Prendergast take in;
+but the fact which his eye took in with its keenest glance was
+this,--that on the other side of the fire to that on which sat Mrs.
+Mary Swan, there was a second arm-chair standing close over the
+fender, an ordinary old mahogany chair, in which it was evident that
+the younger woman had not been sitting. Her place had been close to
+the table-side, where her needles and thread were still lying. But
+the arm-chair was placed idly away from any accommodation for work,
+and had, as Mr. Prendergast thought, been recently filled by some
+idle person.
+
+The woman who rose from her chair as she declared herself to be Mary
+Swan was old and sickly looking, but nevertheless there was that
+about her which was prepossessing. Her face was thin and delicate and
+pale, and not hard and coarse; her voice was low, as a woman's should
+be, and her hands were white and small. Her clothes, though very
+poor, were neat, and worn as a poor lady might have worn them. Though
+there was in her face an aspect almost of terror as she owned to
+her name in the stranger's presence, yet there was also about her a
+certain amount of female dignity, which made Mr. Prendergast feel
+that it behoved him to treat her not only with gentleness, but also
+with respect.
+
+"I want to say a few words to you," said he, "in consequence of a
+letter I have received; perhaps you will allow me to sit down for a
+minute or two."
+
+"Certainly, sir, certainly. This is my daughter, Mary Swan; do you
+wish that she should leave the room, sir?" And Mary Swan, as her
+mother spoke, got up and prepared to depart quietly.
+
+"By no means, by no means," said Mr. Prendergast, putting his hand
+out so as to detain her. "I would much rather that she should remain,
+as it may be very likely that she may assist me in my inquiries. You
+will know who I am, no doubt, when I mention my name; Mr. Mollett
+will have mentioned me to you--I am Mr. Prendergast."
+
+"No, sir, he never did," said Mrs. Swan.
+
+"Oh!" said Mr. Prendergast, having ascertained that Mr. Mollett was
+at any rate well known at No. 7 Spinny Lane. "I thought that he might
+probably have done so. He is at home at present, I believe?"
+
+"Sir?" said Mary Swan senior.
+
+"Your father is at home, I believe?" said Mr. Prendergast, turning to
+the younger woman.
+
+"Sir?" said Mary Swan junior. It was clear at any rate that the women
+were not practised liars, for they could not bring themselves on the
+spur of the moment to deny that he was in the house.
+
+Mr. Prendergast did not wish to be confronted at present with Matthew
+Mollett. Such a step might or might not be desirable before the
+termination of the interview; but at the present moment he thought
+that he might probably learn more from the two women as they were
+than he would do if Mollett were with them.
+
+It had been acknowledged to him that Mollett was living in that
+house, that he was now at home, and also that the younger woman
+present before him was the child of Mollett and of Mary Swan the
+elder. That the young woman was older than Herbert Fitzgerald, and
+that therefore the connection between Mollett and her mother must
+have been prior to that marriage down in Dorsetshire, he was sure;
+but then it might still be possible that there had been no marriage
+between Mollett and Mary Swan. If he could show that they had been
+man and wife when that child was born, then would his old friend Mr.
+Die lose his new pupil.
+
+"I have a letter in my pocket, Mrs. Swan, from Abraham Mollett--" Mr.
+Prendergast commenced, pulling out the letter in question.
+
+"He is nothing to me, sir," said the woman, almost in a tone of
+anger. "I know nothing whatever about him."
+
+"So I should have supposed from the respectability of your
+appearance, if I may be allowed to say so."
+
+"Nothing at all, sir; and as for that, we do try to keep ourselves
+respectable. But this is a very hard world for some people to live
+in. It has been very hard to me and this poor girl here."
+
+"It is a hard world to some people, and to some honest people,
+too,--which is harder still."
+
+"We've always tried to be honest," said Mary Swan the elder.
+
+"I am sure you have; and permit me to say, madam, that you will find
+it at the last to be the best policy;--at the last, even as far as
+this world is concerned. But about this letter--I can assure you that
+I have never thought of identifying you with Abraham Mollett."
+
+"His mother was dead, sir, before ever I set eyes on him or his
+father; and though I tried to do my--" and then she stopped herself
+suddenly. Honesty might be the best policy, but, nevertheless, was it
+necessary that she should tell everything to this stranger?
+
+"Ah, yes; Abraham's mother was dead before you were married," said
+Mr. Prendergast, hunting his fox ever so craftily,--his fox whom he
+knew to be lying in ambush up stairs. It was of course possible that
+old Mollett should slip away out of the back door and over a wall. If
+foxes did not do those sort of things they would not be worth half
+the attention that is paid to them. But Mr. Prendergast was well on
+the scent; all that a sportsman wants is good scent. He would rather
+not have a view till the run comes to its close. "But," continued
+Mr. Prendergast, "it is necessary that I should say a few words to
+you about this letter. Abraham's mother was, I suppose, not exactly
+an--an educated woman?"
+
+"I never saw her, sir."
+
+"She died when he was very young?"
+
+"Four years old, sir."
+
+"And her son hardly seems to have had much education?"
+
+"It was his own fault, sir; I sent him to school when he came to me,
+though, goodness knows, sir, I was short enough of means of doing so.
+He had better opportunities than my own daughter there; and though I
+say it myself, who ought not to say it, she is a good scholar."
+
+"I'm sure she is,--and a very good young woman too, if I can judge by
+her appearance. But about this letter. I am afraid your husband has
+not been so particular in his way of living as he should have been."
+
+"What could I do, sir? a poor weak woman!"
+
+"Nothing; what you could do, I'm sure you did do."
+
+"I've always kept a house over my head, though it's very humble, as
+you see, sir. And he has had a morsel to eat and a cup to drink of
+when he has come here. It is not often that he has troubled me this
+many years past."
+
+"Mother," said Mary Swan the younger, "the gentleman won't care to
+know about, about all that between you and father."
+
+"Ah, but it is just what I do care to know."
+
+"But, sir, father perhaps mightn't choose it." The obedience of women
+to men--to those men to whom they are legally bound--is, I think,
+the most remarkable trait in human nature. Nothing equals it but the
+instinctive loyalty of a dog. Of course we hear of gray mares, and of
+garments worn by the wrong persons. Xanthippe doubtless did live, and
+the character from time to time is repeated; but the rule, I think,
+is as I have said.
+
+"Mrs. Swan," said Mr. Prendergast, "I should think myself dishonest
+were I to worm your secrets out of you, seeing that you are yourself
+so truthful and so respectable." Perhaps it may be thought that
+Mr. Prendergast was a little late in looking at the matter in this
+light. "But it behoves me to learn much of the early history of your
+husband, who is now living with you here, and whose name, as I take
+it, is not Swan, but Mollett. Your maiden name probably was Swan?"
+
+"But I was honestly married, sir, in the parish church at Putney, and
+that young woman was honestly born."
+
+"I am quite sure of it. I have never doubted it. But as I was
+saying, I have come here for information about your husband,
+and I do not like to ask you questions off your guard,"--oh, Mr.
+Prendergast!--"and therefore I think it right to tell you, that
+neither I nor those for whom I am concerned have any wish to bear
+more heavily than we can help upon your husband, if he will only come
+forward with willingness to do that which we can make him do either
+willingly or unwillingly."
+
+"But what was it about Abraham's letter, sir?"
+
+"Well, it does not so much signify now."
+
+"It was he sent you here, was it, sir? How has he learned where we
+are, Mary?" and the poor woman turned to her daughter. "The truth is,
+sir, he has never known anything of us for these twenty years; nor we
+of him. I have not set eyes on him for more than twenty years,--not
+that I know of. And he never knew me by any other name than Swan, and
+when he was a child he took me for his aunt."
+
+"He hasn't known then that you and his father were husband and wife?"
+
+"I have always thought he didn't, sir. But how--"
+
+Then after all the young fox had not been so full of craft as the
+elder one, thought Mr. Prendergast to himself. But nevertheless, he
+still liked the old fox best. There are foxes that run so uncommonly
+short that you can never get a burst after them.
+
+"I suppose, Mrs. Swan," continued Mr. Prendergast, "that you have
+heard the name of Fitzgerald?"
+
+The poor woman sat silent and amazed, but after a moment the daughter
+answered him. "My mother, sir, would rather that you should ask her
+no questions."
+
+"But, my good girl, your mother, I suppose, would wish to protect
+your father, and she would not wish to answer these questions in a
+court of law."
+
+"Heaven forbid!" said the poor woman.
+
+"Your father has behaved very badly to an unfortunate lady whose
+friend I am, and on her behalf I must learn the truth."
+
+"He has behaved badly, sir, to a great many ladies," said Mrs. Swan,
+or Mrs. Mollett as we may now call her.
+
+"You are aware, are you not, that he went through a form of marriage
+with this lady many years ago?" said Mr. Prendergast, almost
+severely.
+
+"Let him answer for himself," said the true wife. "Mary, go up
+stairs, and ask your father to come down."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL.
+
+THE FOX IN HIS EARTH.
+
+
+Mary Swan the younger hesitated a moment before she executed her
+mother's order, not saying anything, but looking doubtfully up into
+her mother's face. "Go, my dear," said the old woman, "and ask your
+father to come down. It is no use denying him."
+
+"None in the least," said Mr. Prendergast; and then the daughter
+went.
+
+For ten minutes the lawyer and the old woman sat alone, during which
+time the ear of the former was keenly alive to any steps that might
+be heard on the stairs or above head. Not that he would himself
+have taken any active measures to prevent Mr. Mollett's escape,
+had such an attempt been made. The woman could be a better witness
+for him than the man, and there would be no fear of her running.
+Nevertheless, he was anxious that Mollett should, of his own accord,
+come into his presence.
+
+"I am sorry to keep you so long waiting, sir," said Mrs. Swan.
+
+"It does not signify. I can easily understand that your husband
+should wish to reflect a little before he speaks to me. I can forgive
+that."
+
+"And, sir--"
+
+"Well, Mrs. Mollett?"
+
+"Are you going to do anything to punish him, sir? If a poor woman may
+venture to speak a word, I would beg you on my bended knees to be
+merciful to him. If you would forgive him now I think he would live
+honest, and be sorry for what he has done."
+
+"He has worked terrible evil," said Mr. Prendergast solemnly. "Do you
+know that he has harassed a poor gentleman into his grave?"
+
+"Heaven be merciful to him!" said the poor woman. "But, sir, was not
+that his son? Was it not Abraham Mollett who did that? Oh, sir, if
+you will let a poor wife speak, it is he that has been worse than his
+father."
+
+Before Mr. Prendergast had made up his mind how he would answer her,
+he heard the sound of footsteps slowly descending upon the stairs.
+They were those of a person who stepped heavily and feebly, and it
+was still a minute before the door was opened.
+
+"Sir," said the woman. "Sir," and as she spoke she looked eagerly
+into his face--"Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that
+trespass against us. We should all remember that, sir."
+
+"True, Mrs. Mollett, quite true;" and Mr. Prendergast rose from his
+chair as the door opened.
+
+It will be remembered that Mr. Prendergast and Matthew Mollett
+had met once before, in the room usually occupied by Sir Thomas
+Fitzgerald. On that occasion Mr. Mollett had at any rate entered the
+chamber with some of the prestige of power about him. He had come
+to Castle Richmond as the man having the whip hand; and though his
+courage had certainly fallen somewhat before he left it, nevertheless
+he had not been so beaten down but what he was able to say a word or
+two for himself. He had been well in health and decent in appearance,
+and even as he left the room had hardly realized the absolute ruin
+which had fallen upon him.
+
+But now he looked as though he had realized it with sufficient
+clearness. He was lean and sick and pale, and seemed to be ten years
+older than when Mr. Prendergast had last seen him. He was wrapped in
+an old dressing-gown, and had a night-cap on his head, and coughed
+violently before he got himself into his chair. It is hard for any
+tame domestic animal to know through what fire and water a poor fox
+is driven as it is hunted from hole to hole and covert to covert. It
+is a wonderful fact, but no less a fact, that no men work so hard
+and work for so little pay as scoundrels who strive to live without
+any work at all, and to feed on the sweat of other men's brows. Poor
+Matthew Mollett had suffered dire misfortune, had encountered very
+hard lines, betwixt that day on which he stole away from the Kanturk
+Hotel in South Main Street, Cork, and that other day on which he
+presented himself, cold and hungry and almost sick to death, at the
+door of his wife's house in Spinny Lane, St. Botolph's in the East.
+
+He never showed himself there unless when hard pressed indeed, and
+then he would skulk in, seeking for shelter and food, and pleading
+with bated voice his husband right to assistance and comfort. Nor was
+his plea ever denied him.
+
+On this occasion he had arrived in very bad plight indeed: he had
+brought away from Cork nothing but what he could carry on his body,
+and had been forced to pawn what he could pawn in order that he might
+subsist And then he had been taken with ague, and with the fit strong
+on him had crawled away to Spinny Lane, and had there been nursed by
+the mother and daughter whom he had ill used, deserted, and betrayed.
+"When the devil was sick the devil a monk would be;" and now his
+wife, credulous as all women are in such matters, believed the
+devil's protestations. A time may perhaps come when even-- But
+stop!--or I may chance to tread on the corns of orthodoxy. What I
+mean to insinuate is this; that it was on the cards that Mr. Mollett
+would now at last turn over a new leaf.
+
+"How do you do, Mr. Mollett?" said Mr. Prendergast. "I am sorry to
+see you looking so poorly."
+
+"Yes, sir. I am poorly enough certainly. I have been very ill since
+I last had the pleasure of seeing you, sir."
+
+"Ah, yes, that was at Castle Richmond; was it not? Well, you have
+done the best thing that a man can do; you have come home to your
+wife and family now that you are ill and require their attendance."
+
+Mr. Mollett looked up at him with a countenance full of unutterable
+woe and weakness. What was he to say on such a subject in such a
+company? There sat his wife and daughter, his veritable wife and
+true-born daughter, on whom he was now dependent, and in whose hands
+he lay, as a sick man does lie in the hands of women: could he deny
+them? And there sat the awful Mr. Prendergast, the representative
+of all that Fitzgerald interest which he had so wronged, and who up
+to this morning had at any rate believed the story with which he,
+Mollett, had pushed his fortunes in county Cork. Could he in his
+presence acknowledge that Lady Fitzgerald had never been his wife? It
+must be confessed that he was in a sore plight. And then remember his
+ague!
+
+"You feel yourself tolerably comfortable, I suppose, now that you are
+with your wife and daughter," continued Mr. Prendergast, most
+inhumanly.
+
+Mr. Mollett continued to look at him so piteously from beneath his
+nightcap. "I am better than I was, thank you, sir," said he.
+
+"There is nothing like the bosom of one's family for restoring one to
+health; is there, Mrs. Mollett;--or for keeping one in health?"
+
+"I wish you gentlemen would think so," said she, drily.
+
+"As for me, I never was blessed with a wife. When I am sick I have to
+trust to hired attendance. In that respect I am not so fortunate as
+your husband; I am only an old bachelor."
+
+"Oh, ain't you, sir?" said Mrs. Mollett; "and perhaps it's best so.
+It ain't all married people that are the happiest."
+
+The daughter during this time was sitting intent on her work, not
+lifting her face from the shirt she was sewing. But an observer might
+have seen from her forehead and eye that she was not only listening
+to what was said, but thinking and meditating on the scene before
+her.
+
+"Well, Mr. Mollett," said Mr. Prendergast, "you at any rate are not
+an old bachelor." Mr. Mollett still looked piteously at him, but said
+nothing. It may be thought that in all this Mr. Prendergast was more
+cruel than necessary, but it must be remembered that it was incumbent
+on him to bring the poor wretch before him down absolutely on his
+marrow-bones. Mollett must be made to confess his sin, and own that
+this woman before him was his real wife; and the time for mercy had
+not commenced till that had been done.
+
+And then his daughter spoke, seeing how things were going with him.
+"Father," said she, "this gentleman has called because he has had a
+letter from Abraham Mollett; and he was speaking about what Abraham
+has been doing in Ireland."
+
+"Oh dear, oh dear!" said poor Mollett. "The unfortunate young man;
+that wretched, unfortunate, young man! He will bring me to the grave
+at last--to the grave at last."
+
+"Come, Mr. Mollett," said Mr. Prendergast, now getting up and
+standing with his back to the fire, "I do not know that you and I
+need beat about the bush much longer. I suppose I may speak openly
+before these ladies as to what has been taking place in county Cork."
+
+"Sir!" said Mr. Mollett, with a look of deprecation about his mouth
+that ought to have moved the lawyer's heart.
+
+"I know nothing about it," said Mrs. Mollett, very stiffly.
+
+"Yes, mother, we do know something about it; and the gentleman may
+speak out if it so pleases him. It will be better, father, for you
+that he should do so."
+
+"Very well, my dear," said Mr. Mollett, in the lowest possible voice;
+"whatever the gentleman likes--only I do hope--" and he uttered a
+deep sigh, and gave no further expression to his hopes or wishes.
+
+"I presume, in the first place," began Mr. Prendergast, "that this
+lady here is your legal wife, and this younger lady your legitimate
+daughter? There is no doubt I take it as to that?"
+
+"Not--any--doubt--in the world, sir," said the Mrs. Mollett, who
+claimed to be so de jure. "I have got my marriage lines to show, sir.
+Abraham's mother was dead just six months before we came together;
+and then we were married just six months after that."
+
+"Well, Mr. Mollett; I suppose you do not wish to contradict that?"
+
+"He can't, sir, whether he wish it or not," said Mrs. Mollett.
+
+"Could you show me that--that marriage certificate?" asked Mr.
+Prendergast.
+
+Mrs. Mollett looked rather doubtful as to this. It may be, that much
+as she trusted in her husband's reform, she did not wish to let him
+know where she kept this important palladium of her rights.
+
+"It can be forthcoming, sir, whenever it may be wanted," said Mary
+Mollett the younger; and then Mr. Prendergast, seeing what was
+passing through the minds of the two women, did not press that matter
+any further.
+
+"But I should be glad to hear from your own lips, Mr. Mollett, that
+you acknowledge the marriage, which took place at--at Fulham, I think
+you said, ma'am?"
+
+"At Putney, sir; at Putney parish church, in the year of our Lord
+eighteen hundred and fourteen."
+
+"Ah, that was the year before Mr. Mollett went into Dorsetshire."
+
+"Yes, sir. He didn't stay with me long, not at that time. He went
+away and left me; and then all that happened, that you know of--down
+in Dorsetshire, as they told me. And afterwards when he went away on
+his keeping, leaving Aby behind, I took the child, and said that I
+was his aunt. There were reasons then; and I feared-- But never mind
+about that, sir; for anything that I was wrong enough to say then
+to the contrary, I am his lawful wedded wife, and before my face he
+won't deny it. And then when he was sore pressed and in trouble he
+came back to me, and after that Mary here was born; and one other, a
+boy, who, God rest him, has gone from these troubles. And since that
+it is not often that he has been with me. But now, now that he is
+here, you should have pity on us, and give him another chance."
+
+But still Mr. Mollett had said nothing himself. He sat during
+all this time, wearily moving his head to and fro, as though the
+conversation were anything but comfortable to him. And, indeed, it
+cannot be presumed to have been very pleasant. He moved his head
+slowly and wearily to and fro; every now and then lifting up one hand
+weakly, as though deprecating any recurrence to circumstances so
+decidedly unpleasant. But Mr. Prendergast was determined that he
+should speak.
+
+"Mr. Mollett," said he, "I must beg you to say in so many words,
+whether the statement of this lady is correct or is incorrect. Do you
+acknowledge her for your lawful wife?"
+
+"He daren't deny me, sir," said the woman, who was, perhaps, a little
+too eager in the matter.
+
+"Father, why don't you behave like a man and speak?" said his
+daughter, now turning upon him. "You have done ill to all of us;--to
+so many; but now--"
+
+"And are you going to turn against me, Mary?" he whined out, almost
+crying.
+
+"Turn against you! no, I have never done that. But look at mother.
+Would you let that gentleman think that she is--what I won't name
+before him? Will you say that I am not your honest-born child? You
+have done very wickedly, and you must now make what amends is in your
+power. If you do not answer him here he will make you answer in some
+worse place than this."
+
+"What is it I am to say, sir?" he whined out again.
+
+"Is this lady here your legal wife?"
+
+"Yes, sir," said the poor man, whimpering.
+
+"And that marriage ceremony which you went through in Dorsetshire
+with Miss Wainwright was not a legal marriage?"
+
+"I suppose not, sir."
+
+"You were well aware at the time that you were committing bigamy?"
+
+"Sir!"
+
+"You knew, I say, that you were committing bigamy; that the child
+whom you were professing to marry would not become your wife through
+that ceremony. I say that you knew all this at the time? Come, Mr.
+Mollett, answer me, if you do not wish me to have you dragged out of
+this by a policeman and taken at once before a magistrate."
+
+"Oh, sir! be merciful to us; pray be merciful to us," said Mrs.
+Mollett, holding up her apron to her eyes.
+
+"Father, why don't you speak out plainly to the gentleman? He will
+forgive you, if you do that."
+
+"Am I to criminate myself, sir?" said Mr. Mollett, still in the
+humblest voice in the world, and hardly above his breath.
+
+After all, this fox had still some running left in him, Mr.
+Prendergast thought to himself. He was not even yet so thoroughly
+beaten but what he had a dodge or two remaining at his service. "Am
+I to criminate myself, sir?" he asked, as innocently as a child might
+ask whether or no she were to stand longer in the corner.
+
+"You may do as you like about that, Mr. Mollett," said the lawyer; "I
+am neither a magistrate nor a policeman; and at the present moment I
+am not acting even as a lawyer. I am the friend of a family whom you
+have misused and defrauded most outrageously. You have killed the
+father of that family--"
+
+"Oh, gracious!" said Mrs. Mollett.
+
+"Yes, madam, he has done so; and nearly broken the heart of that poor
+lady, and driven her son from the house which is his own. You have
+done all this in order that you might swindle them out of money for
+your vile indulgences, while you left your own wife and your own
+child to starve at home. In the whole course of my life I never came
+across so mean a scoundrel; and now you chaffer with me as to whether
+or no you shall criminate yourself! Scoundrel and villain as you
+are--a double-dyed scoundrel, still there are reasons why I shall not
+wish to have you gibbeted, as you deserve."
+
+"Oh, sir, he has done nothing that would come to that!" said the poor
+wife.
+
+"You had better let the gentleman finish," said the daughter. "He
+doesn't mean that father will be hung."
+
+"It would be too good for him," said Mr. Prendergast, who was now
+absolutely almost out of temper. "But I do not wish to be his
+executioner. For the peace of that family which you have so brutally
+plundered and ill used, I shall remain quiet,--if I can attain my
+object without a public prosecution. But, remember, that I guarantee
+nothing to you. For aught I know you may be in gaol before the night
+is come. All I have to tell you is this, that if by obtaining a
+confession from you I am able to restore my friends to their property
+without a prosecution, I shall do so. Now you may answer me or not,
+as you like."
+
+"Trust him, father," said the daughter. "It will be best for you."
+
+"But I have told him everything," said Mollett. "What more does he
+want of me?"
+
+"I want you to give your written acknowledgment that when you
+went through that ceremony of marriage with Miss Wainwright in
+Dorsetshire, you committed bigamy, and that you knew at that time
+that you were doing so."
+
+Mr. Mollett, as a matter of course, gave him the written document,
+and then Mr. Prendergast took his leave, bowing graciously to the two
+women, and not deigning to cast his eyes again on the abject wretch
+who crouched by the fire.
+
+"Don't be hard on a poor creature who has fallen so low," said Mrs.
+Mollett as he left the room. But Mary Mollett junior followed him to
+the door and opened it for him. "Sir," she said, addressing him with
+some hesitation as he was preparing to depart.
+
+"Well, Miss Mollett; if I could do anything for you it would gratify
+me, for I sincerely feel for you,--both for you and for your mother."
+
+"Thank you, sir; I don't know that there is anything you can do for
+us--except to spare him. The thief on the cross was forgiven, sir."
+
+"But the thief on the cross repented."
+
+"And who shall say that he does not repent? You cannot tell of his
+heart by scripture word, as you can of that other one. But our
+Lord has taught us that it is good to forgive the worst of sinners.
+Tell that poor lady to think of this when she remembers him in her
+prayers."
+
+"I will, Miss Mollett; indeed, indeed I will;" and then as he left
+her he gave her his hand in token of respect. And so he walked away
+out of Spinny Lane.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI.
+
+THE LOBBY OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.
+
+
+Mr. Prendergast as he walked out of Spinny Lane, and back to St.
+Botolph's church, and as he returned thence again to Bloomsbury
+Square in his cab, had a good deal of which to think. In the first
+place it must be explained that he was not altogether self-satisfied
+with the manner in which things had gone. That he would have made
+almost any sacrifice to recover the property for Herbert Fitzgerald,
+is certainly true; and it is as true that he would have omitted no
+possible effort to discover all that which he had now discovered,
+almost without necessity for any effort. But nevertheless he was not
+altogether pleased; he had made up his mind a month or two ago that
+Lady Fitzgerald was not the lawful wife of her husband; and had come
+to this conclusion on, as he still thought, sufficient evidence. But
+now he was proved to have been wrong; his character for shrewdness
+and discernment would be damaged, and his great ally and chum Mr.
+Die, the Chancery barrister, would be down on him with unmitigated
+sarcasm. A man who has been right so frequently as Mr. Prendergast,
+does not like to find that he is ever in the wrong. And then, had his
+decision not have been sudden, might not the life of that old baronet
+have been saved?
+
+Mr. Prendergast could not help feeling this in some degree as he
+drove away to Bloomsbury Square; but nevertheless he had also the
+feeling of having achieved a great triumph. It was with him as with a
+man who has made a fortune when he has declared to his friends that
+he should infallibly be ruined. It piques him to think how wrong he
+has been in his prophecy; but still it is very pleasant to have made
+one's fortune.
+
+When he found himself at the top of Chancery Lane in Holborn, he
+stopped his cab and got out of it. He had by that time made up his
+mind as to what he would do; so he walked briskly down to Stone
+Buildings, and nodding to the old clerk, with whom he was very
+intimate, asked if he could see Mr. Die. It was his second visit to
+those chambers that morning, seeing that he had been there early in
+the day, introducing Herbert to his new Gamaliel. "Yes, Mr. Die is
+in," said the clerk, smiling; and so Mr. Prendergast passed on into
+the well-known dingy temple of the Chancery god himself.
+
+There he remained for full an hour, a message in the meanwhile having
+been sent out to Herbert Fitzgerald, begging him not to leave the
+chambers till he should have seen Mr. Die; "and your friend Mr.
+Prendergast is with him," said the clerk. "A very nice gentleman is
+Mr. Prendergast, uncommon clever too; but it seems to me that he
+never can hold his own when he comes across our Mr. Die."
+
+At the end of the hour Herbert was summoned into the sanctum, and
+there he found Mr. Die sitting in his accustomed chair, with his body
+much bent, nursing the calf of his leg, which was always enveloped in
+a black, well-fitting close pantaloon, and smiling very blandly. Mr.
+Prendergast had in his countenance not quite so sweet an aspect. Mr.
+Die had repeated to him, perhaps once too often, a very well-known
+motto of his; one by the aid of which he professed to have steered
+himself safely through the shoals of life--himself and perhaps some
+others. It was a motto which he would have loved to see inscribed
+over the great gates of the noble inn to which he belonged; and
+which, indeed, a few years since might have been inscribed there
+with much justice. "Festina lente," Mr. Die would say to all those
+who came to him in any sort of hurry. And then when men accused him
+of being dilatory by premeditation, he would say no, he had always
+recommended despatch. "Festina," he would say; "festina" by all
+means; but "festina lente." The doctrine had at any rate thriven with
+the teacher, for Mr. Die had amassed a large fortune.
+
+Herbert at once saw that Mr. Prendergast was a little fluttered.
+Judging from what he had seen of the lawyer in Ireland, he would have
+said that it was impossible to flutter Mr. Prendergast; but in truth
+greatness is great only till it encounters greater greatness. Mars
+and Apollo are terrible and magnificent gods till one is enabled to
+see them seated at the foot of Jove's great throne. That Apollo, Mr.
+Prendergast, though greatly in favour with the old Chancery Jupiter,
+had now been reminded that he had also on this occasion driven
+his team too fast, and been nearly as indiscreet in his own rash
+offering.
+
+"We are very sorry to keep you waiting here, Mr. Fitzgerald," said
+Mr. Die, giving his hand to the young man without, however, rising
+from his chair; "especially sorry, seeing that it is your first day
+in harness. But your friend Mr. Prendergast thinks it as well that we
+should talk over together a piece of business which does not seem as
+yet to be quite settled."
+
+Herbert of course declared that he had been in no hurry to go away;
+he was, he said, quite ready to talk over anything; but to his mind
+at that moment nothing occurred more momentous than the nature of the
+agreement between himself and Mr. Die. There was an honorarium which
+it was presumed Mr. Die would expect, and which Herbert Fitzgerald
+had ready for the occasion.
+
+"I hardly know how to describe what has taken place this morning
+since I saw you," said Mr. Prendergast, whose features told plainly
+that something more important than the honorarium was now on the
+tapis.
+
+"What has taken place?" said Herbert, whose mind now flew off to
+Castle Richmond.
+
+"Gently, gently," said Mr. Die; "in the whole course of my legal
+experience,--and that now has been a very long experience,--I have
+never come across so,--so singular a family history as this of yours,
+Mr. Fitzgerald. When our friend Mr. Prendergast here, on his return
+from Ireland, first told me the whole of it, I was inclined to think
+that he had formed a right and just decision--"
+
+"There can be no doubt about that," said Herbert.
+
+"Stop a moment, my dear sir; wait half a moment--a just decision, I
+say--regarding the evidence of the facts as conclusive. But I was
+not quite so certain that he might not have been a little--premature
+perhaps may be too strong a word--a little too assured in taking
+those facts as proved."
+
+"But they were proved," said Herbert.
+
+"I shall always maintain that there was ample ground to induce me to
+recommend your poor father so to regard them," said Mr. Prendergast,
+stoutly. "You must remember that those men would instantly have been
+at work on the other side; indeed, one of them did attempt it."
+
+"Without any signal success, I believe," said Mr. Die.
+
+"My father thought you were quite right, Mr. Prendergast," said
+Herbert, with a tear forming in his eye; "and though it may be
+possible that the affair hurried him to his death, there was
+no alternative but that he should know the whole." At this Mr.
+Prendergast seemed to wince as he sat in his chair. "And I am sure of
+this," continued Herbert, "that had he been left to the villanies of
+those two men, his last days would have been much less comfortable
+than they were. My mother feels that quite as strongly as I do." And
+then Mr. Prendergast looked as though he were somewhat reassured.
+
+"It was a difficult crisis in which to act," said Mr. Prendergast,
+"and I can only say that I did so to the best of my poor judgment."
+
+"It was a difficult crisis in which to act," said Mr. Die, assenting.
+
+"But why is all this brought up now?" asked Herbert.
+
+"Festina lente," said Mr. Die; "lente, lente lente; always lente. The
+more haste we make in trying to understand each other, with the less
+speed shall we arrive at that object."
+
+"What is it, Mr. Prendergast?" again demanded Herbert, who was now
+too greatly excited to care much for the Chancery wisdom of the great
+barrister. "Has anything new turned up about--about those Molletts?"
+
+"Yes, Herbert, something has turned up--"
+
+"Remember, Prendergast, that your evidence is again incomplete."
+
+"Upon my word, sir, I do not think it is: it would be sufficient for
+any intellectual jury in a Common Law court," said Mr. Prendergast,
+who sometimes, behind his back, gave to Mr. Die the surname of
+Cunctator.
+
+"But juries in Common Law courts are not always intelligent. And
+you may be sure, Prendergast, that any gentleman taking up the case
+on the other side would have as much to say for his client as your
+counsel would have for yours. Remember, you have not even been to
+Putney yet."
+
+"Been to Putney!" said Herbert, who was becoming uneasy.
+
+"The onus probandi would lie with them," said Mr. Prendergast. "We
+take possession of that which is our own till it is proved to belong
+to others."
+
+"You have already abandoned the possession."
+
+"No; we have done nothing already: we have taken no legal step; when
+we believed--"
+
+"Having by your own act put yourself in your present position, I
+think you ought to be very careful before you take up another."
+
+"Certainly we ought to be careful. But I do maintain that we may be
+too punctilious. As a matter of course I shall go to Putney."
+
+"To Putney!" said Herbert Fitzgerald.
+
+"Yes, Herbert, and now, if Mr. Die will permit, I will tell you
+what has happened. On yesterday afternoon, before you came to dine
+with me, I received that letter. No, that is from your cousin, Owen
+Fitzgerald. You must see that also by-and-by. It was this one,--from
+the younger Mollett, the man whom you saw that day in your poor
+father's room."
+
+Herbert anxiously put out his hand for the letter, but he was again
+interrupted by Mr. Die. "I beg your pardon, Mr. Fitzgerald, for a
+moment. Prendergast, let me see that letter again, will you?" And
+taking hold of it, he proceeded to read it very carefully, still
+nursing his leg with his left hand, while he held the letter with his
+right.
+
+"What's it all about?" said Herbert, appealing to Prendergast almost
+in a whisper.
+
+"Lente, lente, lente, my dear Mr. Fitzgerald," said Mr. Die, while
+his eyes were still intent upon the paper. "If you will take
+advantage of the experience of gray hairs, and bald heads,"--his
+own was as bald all round as a big white stone--"you must put up
+with some of the disadvantages of a momentary delay. Suppose now,
+Prendergast, that he is acting in concert with those people in--what
+do you call the street?"
+
+"In Spinny Lane."
+
+"Yes; with his father and the two women there."
+
+"What could they gain by that?"
+
+"Share with him whatever he might be able to get out of you."
+
+"The man would never accuse himself of bigamy for that. Besides, you
+should have seen the women, Die."
+
+"Seen the women! Tsh--tsh--tsh; I have seen enough of them, young and
+old, to know that a clean apron and a humble tone and a down-turned
+eye don't always go with a true tongue and an honest heart. Women are
+now the most successful swindlers of the age! That profession at any
+rate is not closed against them."
+
+"You will not find these women to be swindlers; at least I think
+not."
+
+"Ah! but we want to be sure, Prendergast;" and then Mr. Die finished
+the letter, very leisurely, as Herbert thought.
+
+When he had finished it, he folded it up and gave it back to Mr.
+Prendergast. "I don't think but what you've a strong prima facie
+case; so strong that perhaps you are right to explain the whole
+matter to our young friend here, who is so deeply concerned in it.
+But at the same time I should caution him that the matter is still
+enveloped in doubt."
+
+Herbert eagerly put out his hand for the letter. "You may trust me
+with it," said he: "I am not of a sanguine temperament, nor easily
+excited; and you may be sure that I will not take it for more than it
+is worth." So saying, he at last got hold of the letter, and managed
+to read it through much more quickly than Mr. Die had done. As he did
+so he became very red in the face, and too plainly showed that he had
+made a false boast in speaking of the coolness of his temperament.
+Indeed, the stakes were so high that it was difficult for a young man
+to be cool while he was playing the game: he had made up his mind to
+lose, and to that he had been reconciled; but now again every pulse
+of his heart and every nerve of his body was disturbed. "Was never
+his wife," he said out loud when he got to that part of the letter.
+"His real wife living now in Spinny Lane! Do you believe that Mr.
+Prendergast?"
+
+"Yes, I do," said the attorney.
+
+"Lente, lente, lente," said the barrister, quite oppressed by his
+friend's unprofessional abruptness.
+
+"But I do believe it," said Mr. Prendergast: "you must always
+understand, Herbert, that this new story may possibly not be true--"
+
+"Quite possible," said Mr. Die, with something almost approaching to
+a slight laugh.
+
+"But the evidence is so strong," continued the other, "that I do
+believe it heartily. I have been to that house, and seen the man, old
+Mollett, and the woman whom I believe to be his wife, and a daughter
+who lives with them. As far as my poor judgment goes," and he made
+a bow of deference towards the barrister, whose face, however,
+seemed to say, that in his opinion the judgment of his friend Mr.
+Prendergast did not always go very far--"As far as my poor judgment
+goes, the women are honest and respectable. The man is as great
+a villain as there is unhung--unless his son be a greater one;
+but he is now so driven into a corner, that the truth may be more
+serviceable to him than a lie."
+
+"People of that sort are never driven into a corner," said Mr. Die;
+"they may sometimes be crushed to death."
+
+"Well, I believe the matter is as I tell you. There at any rate is
+Mollett's assurance that it is so. The woman has been residing in the
+same place for years, and will come forward at any time to prove that
+she was married to this man before he ever saw--before he went to
+Dorsetshire: she has her marriage certificate; and as far as I can
+learn there is no one able or willing to raise the question against
+you. Your cousin Owen certainly will not do so."
+
+"It will hardly do to depend upon that," said Mr. Die, with another
+sneer. "Twelve thousand a year is a great provocative to litigation."
+
+"If he does we must fight him; that's all. Of course steps will be
+taken at once to get together in the proper legal form all evidence
+of every description which may bear on the subject, so that should
+the question ever be raised again, the whole matter may be in a
+nutshell."
+
+"You'll find it a nutshell very difficult to crack in five-and-twenty
+years' time," said Mr. Die.
+
+"And what would you advise me to do?" asked Herbert.
+
+That after all was now the main question, and it was discussed
+between them for a long time, till the shades of evening came upon
+them, and the dull dingy chambers became almost dark as they sat
+there. Mr. Die at first conceived that it would be well that Herbert
+should still stick to the law. What indeed could be more conducive
+to salutary equanimity in the mind of a young man so singularly
+circumstanced, than the study of Blackstone, of Coke, and of Chitty?
+as long as he remained there, at work in those chambers, amusing
+himself occasionally with the eloquence of the neighbouring courts,
+there might be reasonable hope that he would be able to keep his mind
+equally poised, so that neither success nor failure as regarded his
+Irish inheritance should affect him injuriously. Thus at least argued
+Mr. Die. But at this point Herbert seemed to have views of his own:
+he said that in the first place he must be with his mother; and then,
+in the next place, as it was now clear that he was not to throw up
+Castle Richmond--as it would not now behove him to allow any one else
+to call himself master there,--it would be his duty to reassume the
+place of master. "The onus probandi will now rest with them," he
+said, repeating Mr. Prendergast's words; and then he was ultimately
+successful in persuading even Mr. Die to agree that it would be
+better for him to go to Ireland than to remain in London, sipping the
+delicious honey of Chancery buttercups.
+
+"And you will assume the title, I suppose?" said Mr. Die.
+
+"Not at any rate till I get to Castle Richmond," he said, blushing.
+He had so completely abandoned all thought of being Sir Herbert
+Fitzgerald, that he had now almost felt ashamed of saying that he
+should so far presume as to call himself by that name.
+
+And then he and Mr. Prendergast went away and dined together, leaving
+Mr. Die to complete his legal work for the day. At this he would
+often sit till nine or ten, or even eleven in the evening, without
+any apparent ill results from such effects, and then go home to his
+dinner and port wine. He was already nearly seventy, and work seemed
+to have no effect on him. In what Medea's caldron is it that the
+great lawyers so cook themselves, that they are able to achieve half
+an immortality, even while the body still clings to the soul? Mr.
+Die, though he would talk of his bald head, had no idea of giving
+way to time. Superannuated! The men who think of superannuation at
+sixty are those whose lives have been idle, not they who have really
+buckled themselves to work. It is my opinion that nothing seasons the
+mind for endurance like hard work. Port wine should perhaps be added.
+
+It was not till Herbert once more found himself alone that he fully
+realized this new change in his position. He had dined with Mr.
+Prendergast at that gentleman's club, and had been specially called
+upon to enjoy himself, drinking as it were to his own restoration in
+large glasses of some special claret, which Mr. Prendergast assured
+him was very extraordinary.
+
+"You may be as satisfied as that you are sitting there that that's
+34," said he; "and I hardly know anywhere else that you'll get it."
+
+This assertion Herbert was not in the least inclined to dispute. In
+the first place, he was not quite clear what 34 meant, and then any
+other number, 32 or 36, would have suited his palate as well. But he
+drank the 34, and tried to look as though he appreciated it.
+
+"Our wines here are wonderfully cheap," said Mr. Prendergast,
+becoming confidential; "but nevertheless we have raised the price of
+that to twelve shillings. We'll have another bottle."
+
+During all this Herbert could hardly think of his own fate and
+fortune, though, indeed, he could hardly think of anything else.
+He was eager to be alone, that he might think, and was nearly
+broken-hearted when the second bottle of 34 made its appearance.
+Something, however, was arranged in those intercalary moments between
+the raising of the glasses. Mr. Prendergast said that he would write
+both to Owen Fitzgerald and to Mr. Somers; and it was agreed that
+Herbert should immediately return to Castle Richmond, merely giving
+his mother time to have notice of his coming.
+
+And then at last he got away, and started by himself for a night walk
+through the streets of London. It seemed to him now to be a month
+since he had arrived there; but in truth it was only on the yesterday
+that he had got out of the train at the Euston Station. He had come
+up, looking forward to live in London all his life, and now his
+London life was over,--unless, indeed, those other hopes should come
+back to him, unless he should appear again, not as a student in Mr.
+Die's chamber, but as one of the council of the legislature assembled
+to make laws for the governance of Mr. Die and of others. It was
+singular how greatly this episode in his life had humbled him in his
+own esteem. Six months ago he had thought himself almost too good for
+Castle Richmond, and had regarded a seat in Parliament as the only
+place which he could fitly fill without violation to his nature.
+But now he felt as though he should hardly dare to show himself
+within the walls of that assembly. He had been so knocked about by
+circumstances, so rudely toppled from his high place,--he had found
+it necessary to put himself so completely into the hands of other
+people, that his self-pride had all left him. That it would in fact
+return might be held as certain, but the lesson which he had learned
+would not altogether be thrown away upon him.
+
+At this moment, as I was saying, he felt himself to be completely
+humbled. A lie spoken by one of the meanest of God's creatures had
+turned him away from all his pursuits, and broken all his hopes; and
+now another word from this man was to restore him,--if only that
+other word should not appear to be the greater lie! and then that
+there should be such question as to his mother's name and fame--as
+to the very name by which she should now be called! that it should
+depend on the amount of infamy of which that wretch had been guilty,
+whether or no the woman whom in the world he most honoured was
+entitled to any share of respect from the world around her! That she
+was entitled to the respect of all good men, let the truth in these
+matters be where it might, Herbert knew, and all who heard the story
+would acknowledge. But respect is of two sorts, and the outer respect
+of the world cannot be parted with conveniently.
+
+He did acknowledge himself to be a humbled man,--more so than he had
+ever yet done, or had been like to do, while conscious of the loss
+which had fallen on him. It was at this moment when he began to
+perceive that his fortune would return to him, when he became aware
+that he was knocked about like a shuttlecock from a battledore, that
+his pride came by its first fall. Mollett was in truth the great
+man,--the Warwick who was to make and unmake the kings of Castle
+Richmond. A month ago, and it had pleased Earl Mollett to say that
+Owen Fitzgerald should reign; but there had been a turn upon the
+cards, and now he, King Herbert, was to be again installed.
+
+He walked down all alone through St. James's Street, and by Pall Mall
+and Charing Cross, feeling rather than thinking of all this. Those
+doubts of Mr. Die did not trouble him much. He fully believed that he
+should regain his title and property; or rather that he should never
+lose them. But he thought that he could never show himself about the
+country again as he had done before all this was known. In spite of
+his good fortune he was sad at heart, little conscious of the good
+that all this would do him.
+
+He went on by the Horse Guards and Treasury Chambers into Parliament
+Street, and so up to the new Houses of Parliament, and sauntered into
+Westminster Hall; and there, at the privileged door between the lamps
+on his left hand, he saw busy men going in and out, some slow and
+dignified, others hot, hasty, and anxious, and he felt as though the
+regions to and from which they passed must be far out of his reach.
+Could he aspire to pass those august lamp-posts, he whose very name
+depended on what in truth might have been the early doings of a low
+scoundrel who was now skulking from the law?
+
+And then he went on, and mounting by the public stairs and anterooms
+found his way to the lobby of the house. There he stood with his back
+to the ginger-beer stall, moody and melancholy, looking on as men in
+the crowd pushed forward to speak to members whom they knew; or, as
+it sometimes appeared, to members whom they did not know. There was
+somewhat of interest going on in the house, for the throng was thick,
+and ordinary men sometimes jostled themselves on into the middle of
+the hall--with impious steps; for on those centre stones none but
+legislators should presume to stand.
+
+"Stand back, gentlemen, stand back; back a little, if you please,
+sir," said a very courteous but peremptory policeman, so moving the
+throng that Herbert, who had been behind, in no way anxious for a
+forward place, or for distinguishing nods from passing members, found
+himself suddenly in the front rank, in the immediate neighbourhood of
+a cluster of young senators who were cooling themselves in the lobby
+after the ardour of the debate.
+
+"It was as pretty a thing as ever I saw in my life," said one, "and
+beautifully ridden." Surely it must have been the Spring Meeting and
+not the debate that they were discussing.
+
+"I don't know much about that," said another, and the voice sounded
+on Herbert's ears as it might almost be the voice of a brother. "I
+know I lost the odds. But I'll have a bottle of soda-water. Hallo,
+Fitzgerald! Why--;" and then the young member stopped himself, for
+Herbert Fitzgerald's story was rife about London at this time.
+
+"How do you do, Moulsey?" said Herbert, very glumly, for he did not
+at all like being recognized. This was Lord Moulsey, the eldest
+son of the Earl of Hampton Court, who was now member for the River
+Regions, and had been one of Herbert's most intimate friends at
+Oxford.
+
+"I did not exactly expect to see you here," said Lord Moulsey,
+drawing him apart. "And upon my soul I was never so cut up in my life
+as when I heard all that. Is it true?"
+
+"True! why no;--it was true, but I don't think it is. That is to
+say--upon my word I don't know. It's all unsettled--Good evening to
+you." And again nodding his head at his old friend in a very sombre
+manner, he skulked off and made his way out of Westminster Hall.
+
+"Do you know who that was?" said Lord Moulsey going back to his ally.
+"That was young Fitzgerald, the poor fellow who has been done out
+of his title and all his property. You have heard about his mother,
+haven't you?"
+
+"Was that young Fitzgerald?" said the other senator, apparently more
+interested in this subject than he had even been about the pretty
+riding. "I wish I'd looked at him. Poor fellow! How does he bear it?"
+
+"Upon my word then, I never saw a fellow so changed in my life. He
+and I were like brothers, but he would hardly speak to me. Perhaps I
+ought to have written to him. But he says it's not settled."
+
+"Oh, that's all gammon. It's settled enough. Why they've given up the
+place. I heard all about it the other day from Sullivan O'Leary. They
+are not even making any fight. Sullivan O'Leary says they are the
+greatest fools in the world."
+
+"Upon my word I think young Fitzgerald was mad just now. His manner
+was so very odd."
+
+"I shouldn't wonder. I know I should go mad if my mother turned out
+to be somebody else's wife." And then they both sauntered away.
+
+Herbert was doubly angry with himself as he made his way down
+into the noble old hall,--angry that he had gone where there was
+a possibility of his being recognized, and angry also that he
+had behaved himself with so little presence of mind when he was
+recognized. He felt that he had been taken aback, that he had been
+beside himself, and unable to maintain his own dignity; he had run
+away from his old intimate friend because he had been unable to bear
+being looked on as the hero of a family tragedy. "He would go back
+to Ireland," he said to himself, "and he would never leave it again.
+Perhaps he might teach himself there to endure the eyes and voices of
+men around him. Nothing at any rate should induce him to come again
+to London." And so he went home to bed in a mood by no means so happy
+as might have been expected from the result of the day's doings. And
+yet he had been cheerful enough when he went to Mr. Die's chambers in
+the morning.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII.
+
+ANOTHER JOURNEY.
+
+
+On the following day he did go back to Ireland, stopping a night
+in Dublin on the road, so that his mother might receive his letter,
+and that his cousin and Somers might receive those written by Mr.
+Prendergast. He spent one night in Dublin, and then went on, so that
+he might arrive at Castle Richmond after dark. In his present mood he
+dreaded to be seen returning, even by his own people about the place.
+
+At Buttevant he was met by his own car and by Richard, as he had
+desired; but he found that he was utterly frustrated as to that
+method of seating himself in his vehicle which he had promised to
+himself. He was still glum and gloomy enough when the coach stopped,
+for he had been all alone, thinking over many things--thinking of
+his father's death and his mother's early life--of all that he had
+suffered and might yet have to suffer, and above all things dreading
+the consciousness that men were talking of him and staring at him. In
+this mood he was preparing to leave the coach when he found himself
+approaching near to that Buttevant stage; but he had more to go
+through at present than he expected.
+
+"There's his honour--Hurrah! God bless his sweet face that's come
+among us agin this day! Hurrah for Sir Herbert, boys! hurrah! The
+rail ould Fitzgerald 'll be back agin among us, glory be to God and
+the Blessed Virgin! Hurrah for Sir Herbert!" and then there was a
+shout that seemed to be repeated all down the street of Buttevant.
+
+But that was nothing to what was coming. Herbert, when he first heard
+this, retreated for a moment back into the coach. But there was
+little use in that. It was necessary that he should descend, and had
+he not done so he would have been dragged out. He put his foot on the
+steps, and then found himself seized in the arms of a man outside,
+and pressed and embraced as though he had been a baby.
+
+"Ugh, ugh, ugh!" exclaimed a voice, the owner of which intended to
+send forth notes of joy; but so overcome was he by the intensity of
+his own feelings that he was in nowise able to moderate his voice
+either for joy or sorrow. "Ugh, ugh, ugh! Eh! Sir Herbert! but it's I
+that am proud to see yer honour this day,--wid yer ouwn name, wid yer
+ouwn name. Glory be to God; oh dear! oh dear! And I knew the Lord'd
+niver forgit us that way, and let the warld go intirely wrong like
+that. For av you weren't the masther, Sir Herbert, as you are, the
+Lord presarve you to us, divil a masther'd iver be able to hould a
+foot in Castle Richmond, and that's God's ouwn thruth."
+
+"And that's thrue for you, Richard," said another, whom Herbert in
+the confusion could not recognize, though his voice was familiar to
+him. "'Deed and the boys had it all made out. But what matthers now
+Sir Herbert's back?"
+
+"And God bless the day and the hour that he came to us!" And then
+leaving his master's arm and coat to which he had still stuck, he
+began to busy himself loudly about the travelling gear. "Coachman,
+where's Sir Herbert's portmantel? Yes; that's Sir Herbert's hat-box.
+'Deed, an' I ought to know it well. And the black bag; yes, that'll
+be Sir Herbert's, to be sure," and so on.
+
+Nor was this all. The name seemed to run like wildfire through all
+the Buttevantians there assembled; and no sound seemed to reach our
+hero's name but that of Sir Herbert, Sir Herbert. Everybody took hold
+of him, and kissed his hand, and pulled his skirts, and stroked his
+face. His hat was knocked off, and put on again amid thousands of
+blessings. It was nearly dark, and his eyes were dazed by the coach
+lanterns which were carried about, so that he could hardly see his
+friends; but the one sound which was dinned into his ears was that of
+Sir Herbert, Sir Herbert.
+
+Had he thought about it when starting from Dublin early that morning
+he would have said that it would have killed him to have heard
+himself so greeted in the public street, but as it was he found
+that he got over it very easily. Before he was well seated on his
+car it may be questioned whether he was not so used to his name,
+that he would have been startled to hear himself designated as Mr.
+Fitzgerald. For half a minute he had been wretched, and had felt
+a disgust at poor Richard which he thought at the moment would be
+insuperable; but when he was on the car, and the poor fellow came
+round to tuck the apron in under his feet, he could not help giving
+him his hand, and fraternizing with him.
+
+"And how is my mother, Richard?"
+
+"'Deed then, Sir Herbert, me lady is surprising--very quiet-like; but
+her leddyship was always that, and as sweet to them as comes nigh her
+as flowers in May; but sure that's nathural to her leddyship."
+
+"And, Richard--"
+
+"Yes, Sir Herbert."
+
+"Was Mr. Owen over at Castle Richmond since I left?"
+
+"Sorrow a foot, Sir Herbert. Nor no one ain't heard on him, nor seen
+him. And I will say this on him--"
+
+"Don't say anything against him, Richard."
+
+"No, surely not, seeing he is yer honour's far-away cousin, Sir
+Herbert. But what I war going to say warn't agin Mr. Owen at all,
+at all. For they do say that cart-ropes wouldn't have dragged him
+to Castle Richmond; and that only yer honour has come back to yer
+own,--and why not?--there wouldn't have been any masther in Castle
+Richmond at all, at all. That's what they do say."
+
+"There's no knowing how it will go yet, Richard."
+
+"'Deed, an' I know how it 'll go very well, Sir Herbert, and so does
+Mr. Somers, God bless him! 'Twas only this morning he tould me. An',
+faix, it's he has the right to be glad."
+
+"He is a very old friend."
+
+"So is we all ould frinds, an' we're all glad--out of our skins wid
+gladness, Sir Herbert. 'Deed an' I thought the eend of the warld had
+come when I heerd it, for my head went round and round and round as I
+stood in the stable, and only for the fork I had a hould of, I'd have
+been down among the crathur's legs."
+
+And then it struck Herbert that as they were going on he heard the
+footsteps of some one running after the car, always at an equal
+distance behind them. "Who's that running, Richard?"
+
+"Sure an' that's just Larry Carson, yer honour's own boy, that minds
+yer honour's own nag, Sir Herbert. But, faix, I suppose ye'll be
+having a dozen of 'em now."
+
+"Stop and take him up; you've room there."
+
+"Room enough, Sir Herbert, an' yer honour's so good. Here, Larry, yer
+born fool, Sir Herbert says ye're to get up. He would come over, Sir
+Herbert, just to say he'd been the first to see yer honour."
+
+"God--bless--yer honour--Sir Herbert," exclaimed the poor fellow, out
+of breath, as he took his seat. It was his voice that Sir Herbert
+had recognized among the crowd, angry enough at that moment. But in
+future days it was remembered in Larry Carson's favour, that he had
+come over to Castle Richmond to see his master, contented to run the
+whole road back to Castle Richmond behind the car. A better fate,
+however, was his, for he made one in the triumphal entry up the
+avenue.
+
+When they got to the lodge it was quite dark--so dark that even
+Richard, who was experienced in night-driving, declared that a cat
+could not see. However, they turned in at the great gates without any
+accident, the accustomed woman coming out to open them.
+
+"An' is his honour there thin?" said the woman; "and may God bless
+you, Sir Herbert, and ye're welcome back to yer own; so ye are!"
+
+And then a warm large hand was laid upon his leg, and a warm voice
+sounded greeting in his ear. "Herbert, my boy, how are you? This is
+well, is it not?" It was Mr. Somers who had been waiting there for
+him at the lodge gate.
+
+Upon the whole he could not but acknowledge to himself that it was
+well. Mr. Somers got up beside him on the car, so that by this time
+it was well laden. "And how does my mother take it?" Herbert asked.
+
+"Very quietly. Your Aunt Letty told me that she had spent most of her
+time in prayer since she heard it. But Miss Letty seems to think that
+on your account she is very full of joy."
+
+"And the girls?"
+
+"Oh! the girls--what girls? Well, they must answer for themselves; I
+left them about half an hour ago, and now you hear their voices in
+the porch."
+
+He did hear the voices in the porch plainly, though he could not
+distinguish them, as the horse's feet and the car wheels rattled over
+the gravel. But as the car stopped at the door with somewhat of a
+crash, he heard Emmeline say, "There's Herbert," and then as he got
+down they all retreated in among the lights in the hall.
+
+"God bless your honour, Sir Herbert. An' it's you that are welcome
+back this blessed night to Castle Richmond." Such and such like
+were the greetings which met him from twenty different voices as
+he essayed to enter the house. Every servant and groom about the
+place was there, and some few of the nearest tenants,--of those who
+had lived near enough to hear the glad tidings since the morning.
+A dozen, at any rate, took his hands as he strove to make his
+way through them, and though he was never quite sure about it, he
+believed that one or two had kissed him in the dark. At last he found
+himself in the hall, and even then the first person who got hold of
+him was Mrs. Jones.
+
+"And so you've come back to us after all, Mr. Herbert--Sir Herbert
+I should say, begging your pardon, sir; and it's all right about my
+lady. I never thought to be so happy again, never--never--never." And
+then she retreated with her apron up to her eyes, leaving him in the
+arms of Aunt Letty.
+
+"The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of
+the Lord. Oh! Herbert, my darling boy. I hope this may be a lesson
+and a warning to you, so that you may flee from the wrath to come."
+Aunt Letty, had time been allowed to her, would certainly have
+shown that the evil had all come from tampering with papistical
+abominations; and that the returning prosperity of the house of
+Castle Richmond was due to Protestant energy and truth. But much
+time was not allowed to Aunt Letty, as Herbert hurried on after his
+sisters.
+
+As he had advanced they had retreated, and now he heard them in
+the drawing-room. He began to be conscious that they were not
+alone,--that they had some visitor with them, and began to be
+conscious also who that visitor was. And when he got himself at last
+into the room, sure enough there were three girls there, two running
+forward to meet him from the fireplace to which they had retreated,
+and the other lingering a little in their rear.
+
+"Oh, Herbert!" and "oh, Herbert!" and then their arms were thrown
+about his neck, and their warm kisses were on his cheeks--kisses not
+unmixed with tears; for of course they began to cry immediately that
+he was with them, though their eyes had been dry enough for the two
+or three hours before. Their arms were about his neck, and their
+kisses on his cheeks, I have said,--meaning thereby the arms and
+kisses of his sisters, for the third young lady still lingered a
+little in the rear.
+
+"Was it not lucky Clara was here when the news came to us this
+morning?" said Mary.
+
+"Such difficulty as we have had to get her," said Emmeline. "It was
+to have been her farewell visit to us; but we will have no more
+farewells now; will we, Clara?"
+
+And now at last he had his arm round her waist, or as near to that
+position as he was destined to get it on the present occasion. She
+gave him her hand, and let him hold that fast, and smiled on him
+through her soft tears, and was gracious to him with her sweet words
+and pleasant looks; but she would not come forward and kiss him
+boldly as she had done when last they had met at Desmond Court.
+He attempted it now; but he could get his lips no nearer to hers
+than her forehead; and when he tried to hold her she slipped away
+from him, and he continually found himself in the embraces of his
+sisters,--which was not the same thing at all. "Never mind," he said
+to himself; "his day would soon come round."
+
+"You did not expect to find Clara here, did you?" asked Emmeline.
+
+"I hardly know what I have expected, or not expected, for the last
+two days. No, certainly, I had no hope of seeing her to-night."
+
+"I trust I am not in the way," said Clara.
+
+Whereupon he made another attempt with his arm, but when he thought
+he had caught his prize, Emmeline was again within his grasp.
+
+"And my mother?" he then said. It must be remembered that he had only
+yet been in the room for three minutes, though his little efforts
+have taken longer than that in the telling.
+
+"She is up stairs, and you are to go to her. But I told her that we
+should keep you for a quarter of an hour, and you have not been here
+half that time yet."
+
+"And how has she borne all this?"
+
+"Why, well on the whole. When first she heard it this morning, which
+she did before any of us, you know--"
+
+"Oh, yes, I wrote to her."
+
+"But your letter told her nothing. Mr. Somers came down almost
+as soon as your letter was here. He had heard also--from Mr.
+Prendergast, I think it was, and Mr. Prendergast said a great deal
+more than you did."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"We thought she was going to be ill at first, for she became so very
+pale,--flushing up sometimes for half a minute or so; but after an
+hour or two she became quite calm. She has seen nobody since but us
+and Aunt Letty."
+
+"She saw me," said Clara.
+
+"Oh, yes, you; you are one of us now,--just the same as ourselves,
+isn't she, Herbert?"
+
+Not exactly the same, Herbert thought. And then he went up stairs to
+his mother.
+
+This interview I will not attempt to describe. Lady Fitzgerald had
+become a stricken woman from the first moment that she had heard that
+that man had returned to life, who in her early girlhood had come to
+her as a suitor. Nay, this had been so from the first moment that she
+had expected his return. And these misfortunes had come upon her so
+quickly that, though they had not shattered her in body and mind as
+they had shattered her husband, nevertheless they had told terribly
+on her heart. The coming of those men, the agony of Sir Thomas, the
+telling of the story as it had been told to her by Mr. Prendergast,
+the resolve to abandon everything--even a name by which she might
+be called, as far as she herself was concerned, the death of her
+husband, and then the departure of her ruined son, had, one may say,
+been enough to destroy the spirit of any woman. Her spirit they had
+not utterly destroyed. Her powers of endurance were great,--and she
+had endured, still hoping. But as the uttermost malice of adversity
+had not been able altogether to depress her, so neither did returning
+prosperity exalt her,--as far as she herself was concerned. She
+rejoiced for her children greatly, thanking God that she had not
+entailed on them an existence without a name. But for herself, as
+she now told Herbert, outside life was all over. Her children and
+the poor she might still have with her, but beyond, nothing in this
+world;--to them would be confined all her wishes on this side the
+grave.
+
+But nevertheless she could be warm in her greetings to her son. She
+could understand that though she were dead to the world he need not
+be so,--nor indeed ought to be so. Things that were now all ending
+with her were but beginning with him. She had no feeling that taught
+her to think that it was bad for him to be a man of rank and fortune,
+the head of his family, and the privileged one of his race. It had
+been perhaps her greatest misery that she, by her doing, had placed
+him in the terrible position which he had lately been called upon to
+fill.
+
+"Dearest mother, it did not make me unhappy," he said, caressing her.
+
+"You bore it like a man, Herbert, as I shall ever remember. But it
+did make me unhappy,--more unhappy than it should have done, when we
+remember how very short is our time here below."
+
+He remained with his mother for more than an hour, and then returned
+to the drawing-room, where the girls were waiting for him with the
+tea-things arranged before them.
+
+"I was very nearly coming up to fetch you," said Mary, "only that we
+knew how much mamma must have to say to you."
+
+"We dined early because we are all so upset," said Emmeline; "and
+Clara must be dying for her tea."
+
+"And why should Clara die for tea any more than any one else?" asked
+Lady Clara herself.
+
+I will not venture to say what hour it was before they separated for
+bed. They sat there with their feet over the fender, talking about
+things gone and things coming,--and there were so many of such things
+for them to discuss! Even yet, as one of the girls remarked, Lady
+Desmond had not heard of the last change, or if she had so heard, had
+had no time to communicate with her daughter upon the subject.
+
+And then Owen was spoken of with the warmest praise by them all, and
+Clara explained openly what had been the full tenor of his intended
+conduct.
+
+"That would have been impossible," said Herbert.
+
+"But it was not the less noble in him, was it?" said Clara, eagerly.
+But she did not tell how Owen Fitzgerald had prayed that her love
+might be given back to him, as his reward for what he wished to do on
+behalf of his cousin. Now, at least, at this moment it was not told;
+yet the day did come when all that was described,--a day when Owen
+in his absence was regarded by them both among the dearest of their
+friends.
+
+But even on that night Clara resolved that he should have some meed
+of praise. "Has he not been noble?" she said, appealing to him who
+was to be her husband; "has he not been very noble?"
+
+Herbert, too happy to be jealous, acknowledged that it was so.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII.
+
+PLAYING ROUNDERS.
+
+
+My story is nearly at its close, and all readers will now know how
+it is to end. Those difficulties raised by Mr. Die were all made to
+vanish; and though he implored Mr. Prendergast over and over again
+to go about this business with a moderated eagerness, that gentleman
+would not consent to let any grass grow under his heels till he had
+made assurance doubly sure, and had seen Herbert Fitzgerald firmly
+seated on his throne. All that the women in Spinny Lane had told him
+was quite true. The register was found in the archives of the parish
+of Putney, and Mr. Prendergast was able to prove that Mr. Matthew
+Mollett, now of Spinny Lane, and the Mr. Matthew Mollett then
+designated as of Newmarket in Cambridgeshire, were one and the same
+person; therefore Mr. Mollett's marriage with Miss Wainwright was
+no marriage, and therefore, also, the marriage between Sir Thomas
+Fitzgerald and that lady was a true marriage; all which things will
+now be plain to any novel-reading capacity, mean as such capacity may
+be in respect to legal law.
+
+And I have only further to tell in respect to this part of my story,
+that the Molletts, both father and son, escaped all punishment
+for the frauds and villanies related in these pages--except such
+punishment as these frauds and villanies, acting by their own innate
+destructive forces and poisons, brought down upon their unfortunate
+heads. For so allowing them to escape I shall be held by many to
+have been deficient in sound teaching. "What!" men will say, "not
+punish your evil principle! Allow the prevailing evil genius of your
+book to escape scot free, without administering any of that condign
+punishment which it would have been so easy for you to allot to them!
+Had you not treadmills to your hand, and all manner of new prison
+disciplines? Should not Matthew have repented in the sackcloth of
+solitary confinement, and Aby have munched and crunched between his
+teeth the bitter ashes of prison bread and water? Nay, for such
+offences as those did you wot of no penal settlements? Were not
+Portland and Spike Islands gaping for them? Had you no memory of
+Dartmoor and the Bermudas?"
+
+Gentle readers, no; not in this instance shall Spike Island or the
+Bermudas be asked to give us their assistance. There is a sackcloth
+harsher to the skin than that of the penal settlement, and ashes more
+bitter in the crunching than convict rations. It would be sad indeed
+if we thought that those rascals who escape the law escape also the
+just reward of their rascality. May it not rather be believed that
+the whole life of the professional rascal is one long wretched
+punishment, to which, if he could but know it, the rations and
+comparative innocence of Bermuda would be so preferable? Is he not
+always rolling the stone of Sysiphus, gyrating on the wheel of Ixion,
+hankering after the waters of Tantalus, filling the sieves of the
+daughters of Danaus? He pours into his sieve stolen corn beyond
+measure, but no grain will stay there. He lifts to his lips rich
+cups, but Rhadamanthus the policeman allows him no moment for a
+draught. The wheel of justice is ever going, while his poor hanging
+head is in a whirl. The stone which he rolls never perches for a
+moment at the top of the hill, for the trade which he follows admits
+of no rest. Have I not said truly that he is hunted like a fox,
+driven from covert to covert with his poor empty craving belly?
+prowling about through the wet night, he returns with his prey, and
+finds that he is shut out from his lair; his bloodshot eye is ever
+over his shoulder, and his advanced foot is ever ready for a start;
+he stinks in the nostrils of the hounds of the law, and is held by
+all men to be vermin.
+
+One would say that the rascal, if he but knew the truth, would
+look forward to Spike Island and the Bermudas with impatience and
+raptures. The cold, hungry, friendless, solitary doom of unconvicted
+rascaldom has ever seemed to me to be the most wretched phase of
+human existence,--that phase of living in which the liver can trust
+no one, and be trusted by none; in which the heart is ever quailing
+at the policeman's hat, and the eye ever shrinking from the
+policeman's gaze. The convict does trust his gaoler, at any rate his
+master gaoler, and in so doing is not all wretched. It is Bill Sikes
+before conviction that I have ever pitied. Any man can endure to be
+hanged; but how can any man have taken that Bill Sikes' walk and have
+lived through it?
+
+To such punishments will we leave the Molletts, hoping of the elder
+one, that under the care of those ministering angels in Spinny Lane,
+his heart may yet be softened; hoping also for the younger one that
+some ministering angel may be appointed also for his aid. 'Tis a
+grievous piece of work though, that of a ministering angel to such a
+soul as his. And now, having seen them so far on their mortal career,
+we will take our leave of both of them.
+
+Mr. Prendergast's object in sparing them was of course that of saving
+Lady Fitzgerald from the terrible pain of having her name brought
+forward at any trial. She never spoke of this, even to Herbert,
+allowing those in whom she trusted to manage those things for her
+without an expression of anxiety on her own part; but she was not the
+less thankful when she found that no public notice was to be taken of
+the matter.
+
+Very shortly after Herbert's return to Castle Richmond, it was
+notified to him that he need have no fear as to his inheritance; and
+it was so notified with the great additional comfort of an assuring
+opinion from Mr. Die. He then openly called himself Sir Herbert, took
+upon himself the property which became his by right of the entail,
+and issued orders for the preparation of his marriage settlement.
+During this period he saw Owen Fitzgerald; but he did so in the
+presence of Mr. Somers, and not a word was then said about Lady
+Clara Desmond. Both the gentlemen, Herbert and Mr. Somers, cordially
+thanked the master of Hap House for the way in which he had behaved
+to the Castle Richmond family, and in reference to the Castle
+Richmond property during the terrible events of the last two months;
+but Owen took their thanks somewhat haughtily. He shook hands warmly
+enough with his cousin, wishing him joy on the arrangement of his
+affairs, and was at first less distant than usual with Mr. Somers;
+but when they alluded to his own conduct, and expressed their
+gratitude, he declared that he had done nothing for which thanks were
+due, and that he begged it to be understood that he laid claim to no
+gratitude. Had he acted otherwise, he said, he would have deserved to
+be kicked out of the presence of all honest men; and to be thanked
+for the ordinary conduct of a gentleman was almost an insult. This he
+said looking chiefly at Mr. Somers, and then turning to his cousin,
+he asked him if he intended to remain in the country.
+
+"Oh, certainly," said Herbert.
+
+"I shall not," said Owen; "and if you know any one who will take a
+lease of Hap House for ten or twelve years, I shall be glad to find a
+tenant."
+
+"And you, where are you going?"
+
+"To Africa in the first instance," said he; "there seems to be some
+good hunting there, and I think that I shall try it."
+
+The new tidings were not long in reaching Desmond Court, and the
+countess was all alone when she first heard them. With very great
+difficulty, taking as it were the bit between her teeth, Clara had
+managed to get over to Castle Richmond that she might pay a last
+visit to the Fitzgerald girls. At this time Lady Desmond's mind was
+in a terribly distracted state. The rumour was rife about the country
+that Owen had refused to accept the property; and the countess
+herself had of course been made aware that he had so refused. But she
+was too keenly awake to the affairs of the world to suppose that such
+a refusal could continue long in force; neither, as she knew well,
+could Herbert accept of that which was offered to him. It might be
+that for some years to come the property might be unenjoyed; the rich
+fruit might fall rotten from the wall; but what would that avail to
+her or to her child? Herbert would still be a nameless man, and could
+never be master of Castle Richmond.
+
+Nevertheless Clara carried her point, and went over to her friends,
+leaving the countess all alone. She had now permitted her son to
+return to Eton, finding that he was powerless to aid her. The young
+earl was quite willing that his sister should marry Owen Fitzgerald;
+but he was not willing to use any power of persuasion that he might
+have, in what his mother considered a useful or legitimate manner.
+He talked of rewarding Owen for his generosity; but Clara would have
+nothing to do either with the generosity or with the reward. And so
+Lady Desmond was left alone, hearing that even Owen, Owen himself,
+had now given up the quest, and feeling that it was useless to have
+any further hope. "She will make her own bed," the countess said to
+herself, "and she must lie on it."
+
+And then came this rumour that after all Herbert was to be the man.
+It first reached her ears about the same time that Herbert arrived at
+his own house, but it did so in such a manner as to make but little
+impression at the moment. Lady Desmond had but few gossips, and in
+a general way heard but little of what was doing in the country.
+On this occasion the Caleb Balderston of her house came in, making
+stately bows to his mistress, and with low voice, and eyes wide
+open, told her what a gossoon running over from Castle Richmond had
+reported in the kitchen of Desmond Court. "At any rate, my lady,
+Mr. Herbert is expected this evening at the house;" and then Caleb
+Balderston, bowing stately again, left the room. This did not make
+much impression, but it made some.
+
+And then on the following day Clara wrote to her: this she did after
+deep consideration and much consultation with her friends. It would
+be unkind, they argued, to leave Lady Desmond in ignorance on such
+a subject; and therefore a note was written very guardedly, the
+joint production of the three, in which, with the expression of many
+doubts, it was told that perhaps after all Herbert might yet be the
+man. But even then the countess did not believe it.
+
+But during the next week the rumour became a fact through the
+country, and everybody knew, even the Countess of Desmond, that all
+that family history was again changed. Lady Fitzgerald, whom they had
+all known, was Lady Fitzgerald still, and Herbert was once more on
+his throne. When rumours thus became a fact, there was no longer any
+doubt about the matter. The countryside did not say that, "perhaps
+after all so and so would go in such and such a way," or that "legal
+doubts having been entertained, the gentlemen of the long robe were
+about to do this and that." By the end of the first week the affair
+was as surely settled in county Cork as though the line of the
+Fitzgeralds had never been disturbed; and Sir Herbert was fully
+seated on his throne.
+
+It was well then for poor Owen that he had never assumed the regalia
+of royalty: had he done so his fall would have been very dreadful; as
+it was, not only were all those pangs spared to him, but he achieved
+at once an immense popularity through the whole country. Everybody
+called him poor Owen, and declared how well he had behaved. Some
+expressed almost a regret that his generosity should go unrewarded,
+and others went so far as to give him his reward: he was to
+marry Emmeline Fitzgerald, they said at the clubs in Cork, and a
+considerable slice of the property was destined to give additional
+charms to the young lady's hand and heart. For a month or so Owen
+Fitzgerald was the most popular man in the south of Ireland; that is,
+as far as a man can be popular who never shows himself.
+
+And the countess had to answer her daughter's letter. "If this be
+so," she said, "of course I shall be well pleased. My anxiety has
+been only for your welfare, to further which I have been willing to
+make any possible sacrifice." Clara when she read this did not know
+what sacrifice had been made, nor had the countess thought as she
+wrote the words what had been the sacrifice to which she had thus
+alluded, though her heart was ever conscious of it, unconsciously.
+And the countess sent her love to them all at Castle Richmond. "She
+did not fear," she said, "that they would misinterpret her. Lady
+Fitzgerald, she was sure, would perfectly understand that she had
+endeavoured to do her duty by her child." It was by no means a
+bad letter, and, which was better, was in the main a true letter.
+According to her light she had striven to do her duty, and her
+conduct was not misjudged, at any rate at Castle Richmond.
+
+"You must not think harshly of mamma," said Clara to her future
+mother-in-law.
+
+"Oh no," said Lady Fitzgerald. "I certainly do not think harshly of
+her. In her position I should probably have acted as she has done."
+The difference, however, between them was this, that it was all
+but impossible that Lady Fitzgerald should not sympathize with her
+children, while it was almost impossible that the Countess of Desmond
+should do so.
+
+And so Lady Desmond remained all alone at Desmond Court, brooding
+over the things as they now were. For the present it was better that
+Clara should remain at Castle Richmond, and nothing therefore was
+said of her return on either side. She could not add to her mother's
+comfort at home, and why should she not remain happy where she was?
+She was already a Fitzgerald in heart rather than a Desmond; and
+was it not well that she should be so? If she could love Herbert
+Fitzgerald, that was well also. Since the day on which he had
+appeared at Desmond Court, wet and dirty and wretched, with a broken
+spirit and fortunes as draggled as his dress, he had lost all claim
+to be a hero in the estimation of Lady Desmond. To her those only
+were heroes whose pride and spirit were never draggled; and such a
+hero there still was in her close neighbourhood.
+
+Lady Desmond herself was a woman of a mercenary spirit; so at least
+it will be said and thought of her. But she was not altogether so,
+although the two facts were strong against her that she had sold
+herself for a title, and had been willing to sell her daughter for
+a fortune. Poverty she herself had endured upon the whole with
+patience; and though she hated and scorned it from her very soul, she
+would now have given herself in marriage to a poor man without rank
+or station,--she, a countess, and the mother of an earl; and that
+she would have done with all the romantic love of a girl of sixteen,
+though she was now a woman verging upon forty!
+
+Men and women only know so much of themselves and others as
+circumstances and their destiny have allowed to appear. Had it
+perchance fallen to thy lot, O my forensic friend, heavy laden
+with the wisdom of the law, to write tales such as this of mine,
+how charmingly might not thy characters have come forth upon the
+canvas--how much more charmingly than I can limn them! While, on the
+other hand, ignorant as thou now tellest me that I am of the very
+alphabet of the courts, had thy wig been allotted to me, I might have
+gathered guineas thick as daisies in summer, while to thee perhaps
+they come no faster than snow-drops in the early spring. It is all
+in our destiny. Chance had thrown that terrible earl in the way of
+the poor girl in her early youth, and she had married him. She had
+married him, and all idea of love had flown from her heart. All idea
+of love, but not all the capacity--as now within this last year or
+two she had learned, so much to her cost.
+
+Long months had passed since she had first owned this to herself,
+since she had dared to tell herself that it was possible even for her
+to begin the world again, and to play the game which women love to
+play, once at least before they die. She could have worshipped this
+man, and sat at his feet, and endowed him in her heart with heroism,
+and given him her soft brown hair to play with when it suited her
+Hercules to rest from his labours. She could have forgotten her
+years, and have forgotten too the children who had now grown up to
+seize the world from beneath her feet--to seize it before she herself
+had enjoyed it. She could have forgotten all that was past, and have
+been every whit as young as her own daughter. If only--!
+
+It is so, I believe, with most of us who have begun to turn the hill.
+I myself could go on to that common that is at this moment before me,
+and join that game of rounders with the most intense delight. "By
+George! you fellow, you've no eyes; didn't you see that he hadn't
+put his foot in the hole. He'll get back now that long-backed,
+hard-hitting chap, and your side is done for the next half-hour!" But
+then they would all be awestruck for a while; and after that, when
+they grew to be familiar with me, they would laugh at me because
+I loomed large in my running, and returned to my ground scant of
+breath. Alas, alas! I know that it would not do. So I pass by,
+imperious in my heavy manhood, and one of the lads respectfully
+abstains from me though the ball is under my very feet.
+
+But then I have had my game of rounders. No horrible old earl with
+gloating eyes carried me off in my childhood and robbed me of the
+pleasure of my youth. That part of my cake has been eaten, and, in
+spite of some occasional headache, has been digested not altogether
+unsatisfactorily. Lady Desmond had as yet been allowed no slice of
+her cake. She had never yet taken her side in any game of rounders.
+But she too had looked on and seen how jocund was the play; she also
+had acknowledged that that running in the ring, that stout hitting of
+the ball, that innocent craft, that bringing back by her own skill
+and with her own hand of some long-backed fellow, would be pleasant
+to her as well as to others. If only she now could be chosen in at
+that game! But what if the side that she cared for would not have
+her?
+
+But _tempus edax rerum_, though it had hardly nibbled at her heart or
+wishes, had been feeding on the freshness of her brow and the bloom
+of her lips. The child with whom she would have loved to play kept
+aloof from her too, and would not pick up the ball when it rolled
+to his feet. All this, if one thinks of it, is hard to bear. It is
+very hard to have had no period for rounders, not to be able even to
+look back to one's games, and to talk of them to one's old comrades!
+"But why then did she allow herself to be carried off by the wicked
+wrinkled earl with the gloating eyes?" asks of me the prettiest girl
+in the world, just turned eighteen. Oh heavens! Is it not possible
+that one should have one more game of rounders? Quite impossible, O
+my fat friend! And therefore I answer the young lady somewhat grimly.
+"Take care that thou also art not carried off by a wrinkled earl. Is
+thy heart free from all vanity? Of what nature is the heroism that
+thou worshippest?" "A nice young man!" she says, boldly, though in
+words somewhat different. "If so it will be well for thee; but did I
+not see thine eyes hankering the other day after the precious stones
+of Ophir, and thy mouth watering for the flesh-pots of Egypt? Was
+I not watching thee as thou sattest at that counter, so frightfully
+intent? Beware!" "The grumpy old fellow with the bald head!" she said
+shortly afterwards to her bosom friend, not careful that her words
+should be duly inaudible.
+
+Some idea that all was not yet over with her had come upon her poor
+heart,--upon Lady Desmond's heart, soon after Owen Fitzgerald had
+made himself familiar in her old mansion. We have read how that idea
+was banished, and how she had ultimately resolved that that man whom
+she could have loved herself should be given up to her own child when
+she thought that he was no longer poor and of low rank. She could not
+sympathize with her daughter,--love with her love, and rejoice with
+her joy; but she could do her duty by her, and according to her
+lights she endeavoured so to do.
+
+But now again all was turned and changed and altered. Owen of Hap
+House was once more Owen of Hap House only, but still in her eyes
+heroic, as it behoved a man to be. He would not creep about the
+country with moaning voice and melancholy eyes, with draggled dress
+and outward signs of wretchedness. He might be wretched, but he would
+still be manly. Could it be possible that to her should yet be given
+the privilege of soothing that noble, unbending wretchedness? By no
+means possible, poor, heart-laden countess; thy years are all against
+thee. Girls whose mouths will water unduly for the flesh-pots of
+Egypt must in after life undergo such penalties as these. Art thou
+not a countess?
+
+But not so did she answer herself. Might it not be possible? Ah,
+might it not be possible? And as the question was even then being
+asked, perhaps for the ten thousandth time, Owen Fitzgerald stood
+before her. She had not yet seen him since the new news had gone
+abroad, and had hardly yet conceived how it might be possible that
+she should do so. But now as she thought of him there he was. They
+two were together,--alone together; and the door by which he had
+entered had closed upon him before she was aware of his presence.
+
+"Owen Fitzgerald!" she said, starting up and giving him both her
+hands. This she did, not of judgment, nor yet from passion, but of
+impulse. She had been thinking of him with such kindly thoughts,
+and now he was there it became natural that her greeting should be
+kindly. It was more so than it had ever been to any but her son since
+the wrinkled, gloating earl had come and fetched her.
+
+"Yes, Owen Fitzgerald," said he, taking the two hands that were
+offered to him, and holding them awhile; not pressing them as a man
+who loved her, who could have loved her, would have done. "After all
+that has gone and passed between us, Lady Desmond, I cannot leave the
+country without saying one word of farewell to you."
+
+"Leave the country!" she exclaimed. "And where are you going?"
+
+As she looked into his face with her hands still in his,--for she did
+not on the moment withdraw them, she felt that he had never before
+looked so noble, so handsome, so grand. Leave the country! ah, yes;
+and why should not she leave it also? What was there to bind her to
+those odious walls in which she had been immolated during the best
+half of her life?
+
+"Where are you going?" she asked, looking almost wildly up at him.
+
+"Somewhere very far a-field, Lady Desmond," he said; and then the
+hands dropped from him. "You will understand at any rate that Hap
+House will not be a fitting residence for me."
+
+"I hate the whole country," said she, "the whole place hereabouts.
+I have never been happy here. Happy! I have never been other than
+unhappy. I have been wretched. What would I not give to leave it
+also?"
+
+"To you it cannot be intolerable as it will be to me. You have known
+so thoroughly where all my hopes were garnered, that I need not tell
+you why I must go from Hap House. I think that I have been wronged,
+but I do not desire that others should think so. And as for you and
+me, Lady Desmond, though we have been enemies, we have been friends
+also."
+
+"Enemies!" said she, "I hope not." And she spoke so softly, so
+unlike her usual self, in the tones so suited to a loving, clinging
+woman, that though he did not understand it, he was startled at
+her tenderness. "I have never felt that you were my enemy, Mr.
+Fitzgerald; and certainly I never was an enemy to you."
+
+"Well; we were opposed to each other. I thought that you were robbing
+me of all I valued in life; and you, you thought--"
+
+"I thought that Clara's happiness demanded rank and wealth and
+position. There; I tell you my sins fairly. You may say that I was
+mercenary if you will,--mercenary for her. I thought that I knew what
+would be needful for her. Can you be angry with a mother for that?"
+
+"She had given me a promise! But never mind. It is all over now. I
+did not come to upbraid you, but to tell you that I now know how it
+must be, and that I am going."
+
+"Had you won her, Owen," said the countess, looking intently into his
+face, "had you won her, she would not have made you happy."
+
+"As to that it was for me to judge--for me and her. I thought
+it would, and was willing to peril all in the trial. And so was
+she--willing at one time. But never mind; it is useless to talk of
+that."
+
+"Quite useless now."
+
+"I did think--when it was as they said in my power to give him back
+his own,--I did think;--but no, it would have been mean to look for
+payment. It is all over, and I will say nothing further; not a word.
+I am not a girl to harp on such a thing day after day, and to grow
+sick with love. I shall be better away. And therefore I am going, and
+I have now come to say good-bye, because we were friends in old days,
+Lady Desmond."
+
+Friends in old days! They were old days to him, but they were no more
+than the other day to her. It was as yet hardly more than two years
+since she had first known him, and yet he looked on the acquaintance
+as one that had run out its time and required to be ended. She would
+so fain have been able to think that the beginning only had as yet
+come to them. But there he was, anxious to bid her adieu, and what
+was she to say to him?
+
+"Yes, we were friends. You have been my only friend here I think. You
+will hardly believe with how much true friendship I have thought of
+you when the feud between us--if it was a feud--was at the strongest.
+Owen Fitzgerald, I have loved you through it all."
+
+Loved him? She was so handsome as she spoke, so womanly, so graceful,
+there was still about her so much of the charm of beauty, that he
+could hardly take the word when coming from her mouth as applicable
+to ordinary friendship. And yet he did so take it. They had all loved
+each other--as friends should love--and now that he was going she
+had chosen to say as much. He felt the blood tingle his cheek at the
+sound of her words; but he was not vain enough to take it in its
+usual sense. "Then we will part as friends," said he--tamely enough.
+
+"Yes, we will part," she said. And as she spoke the blood mantled
+deep on her neck and cheek and forehead, and a spirit came out of
+her eye, such as never had shone there before in his presence. "Yes,
+we will part," and she took up his right hand, and held it closely,
+pressed between both her own. "And as we must part I will tell you
+all. Owen Fitzgerald, I have loved you with all my heart,--with all
+the love that a woman has to give. I have loved you, and have never
+loved any other. Stop, stop," for he was going to interrupt her. "You
+shall hear me now to the last,--and for the last time. I have loved
+you with such love--such love as you perhaps felt for her, but as she
+will never feel. But you shall not say, nay you shall not think that
+I have been selfish. I would have kept you from her when you were
+poor as you are now,--not because I loved you. No; you will never
+think that of me. And when I thought that you were rich, and the head
+of your family, I did all that I could to bring her back for you. Did
+I not, Owen?"
+
+"Yes, I think you did," he muttered between his teeth, hardly knowing
+how to speak.
+
+"Indeed, indeed I did so. Others may say that I was selfish for my
+child, but you shall not think that I was selfish for myself. I sent
+for Patrick, and bade him go to you. I strove as mothers do strive
+for their children. I taught myself,--I strove to teach myself to
+forget that I had loved you. I swore on my knees that I would love
+you only as my son,--as my dear, dear son. Nay, Owen, I did; on my
+knees before my God."
+
+He turned away from her to rub the tears from his eyes, and in doing
+so he dragged his hand away from her. But she followed him, and again
+took it. "You will hear me to the end now," she said; "will you not?
+you will not begrudge me that? And then came these other tidings, and
+all that scheme was dashed to the ground. It was better so, Owen; you
+would not have been happy with the property--"
+
+"I should never have taken it."
+
+"And she, she would have clung closer to him as a poor man than ever
+she had done when he was rich. She is her mother's daughter there.
+And then--then-- But I need not tell you more. You will know it all
+now. If you had become rich, I would have ceased to love you; but I
+shall never cease now that you are again poor,--now that you are Owen
+of Hap House again, as you sent us word yourself that day."
+
+And then she ceased, and bending down her head bathed his hand with
+her tears. Had any one asked him that morning, he would have said
+that it was impossible that the Countess of Desmond should weep.
+And now the tears were streaming from her eyes as though she were a
+broken-hearted girl. And so she was. Her girlhood had been postponed
+and marred,--not destroyed and made away with, by the wrinkled earl
+with the gloating eyes.
+
+She had said all now, and she stood there, still holding his hand in
+hers, but with her head turned from him. It was his turn to speak
+now, and how was he to answer her. I know how most men would have
+answered;--by the pressure of an arm, by a warm kiss, by a promise
+of love, and by a feeling that such love was possible. And then most
+men would have gone home, leaving the woman triumphant, and have
+repented bitterly as they sat moody over their own fires, with their
+wine-bottles before them. But it was not so with Owen Fitzgerald.
+His heart was to him a reality. He had loved with all his power and
+strength, with all the vigour of his soul,--having chosen to love.
+But he would not now be enticed by pity into a bastard feeling,
+which would die away when the tenderness of the moment was no longer
+present to his eye and touch. His love for Clara had been such that
+he could not even say that he loved another.
+
+"Dear Lady Desmond," he began.
+
+"Ah, Owen; we are to part now, part for ever," she said; "speak to me
+once in your life as though we were equal friends. Cannot you forget
+for one minute that I am Countess of Desmond?"
+
+Mary, Countess of Desmond; such was her name and title. But so little
+familiar had he been with the name by which he had never heard her
+called, that in his confusion he could not remember it. And had he
+done so, he could not have brought himself to use it. "Yes," he said;
+"we must part. It is impossible for me to remain here."
+
+"Doubly impossible now," she replied, half reproaching him.
+
+"Yes; doubly impossible now. Is it not better that the truth should
+be spoken?"
+
+"Oh, yes. I have spoken it--too plainly."
+
+"And so will I speak it plainly. We cannot control our own hearts,
+Lady Desmond. It is, as you say, doubly impossible now. All the love
+I have had to give she has had,--and has. Such being so, why should I
+stay here? or could you wish that I should do so?"
+
+"I do not wish it." That was true enough. The wish would have been to
+wander away with him.
+
+"I must go, and shall start at once. My very things are packed for my
+going. I will not be here to have the sound of their marriage bells
+jangling in my ears. I will not be pointed at as the man who has been
+duped on every side."
+
+"Ah me, that I was a man too,--that I could go away and make for
+myself a life!"
+
+"You have Desmond with you."
+
+"No, no. He will go too; of course he will go. He will go, and I
+shall be utterly alone. What a fool I am,--what an ass, that by this
+time I have not learned to bear it!"
+
+"They will always be near you at Castle Richmond."
+
+"Ah, Owen, how little you understand! Have we been friends while we
+lived under the same roof? And now that she is there, do you think
+that she will heed me? I tell you that you do not know her. She is
+excellent, good, devoted; but cold as ice. She will live among the
+poor, and grace his table; and he will have all that he wants. In
+twelve months, Owen, she would have turned your heart to a stone."
+
+"It is that already I think," said he. "At any rate, it will be so to
+all others. Good-bye, Lady Desmond."
+
+"Good-bye, Owen; and God bless you. My secret will be safe with you."
+
+"Safe! yes, it will be safe." And then, as she put her cheek up to
+him, he kissed it and left her.
+
+He had been very stern. She had laid bare to him her whole heart,
+and he had answered her love by never a word. He had made no reply
+in any shape,--given her no thanks for her heart's treasure. He had
+responded to her affection by no tenderness. He had not even said
+that this might have been so, had that other not have come to pass.
+By no word had he alluded to her confession,--but had regarded her
+delusion as monstrous, a thing of which no word was to be spoken.
+
+So at least said the countess to herself, sitting there all alone
+where he had left her. "He regards me as old and worn. In his eyes
+I am wrinkled and ugly." 'Twas thus that her thoughts expressed
+themselves; and then she walked across the room towards the mirror,
+but when there she could not look in it: she turned her back upon
+it without a glance, and returned to her seat by the window. What
+mattered it now? It was her doom to live there alone for the term of
+life with which it might still please God to afflict her.
+
+And then looking out from the window her eyes fell upon Owen as he
+rode slowly down across the park. His horse was walking very slowly,
+and it seemed as though he himself were unconscious of the pace.
+As long as he remained in sight she did not take her eyes from his
+figure, gazing at him painfully as he grew dimmer and more dim in the
+distance. Then at last he turned behind the bushes near the lodge,
+and she felt that she was all alone. It was the last that she ever
+saw of Owen Fitzgerald.
+
+Unfortunate girl, marred in thy childhood by that wrinkled earl
+with the gloating eyes; or marred rather by thine own vanity! Those
+flesh-pots of Egypt! Are they not always thus bitter in the eating?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV.
+
+CONCLUSION.
+
+
+And now my story is told; and were it not for the fashion of the
+thing, this last short chapter might be spared. It shall at any rate
+be very short.
+
+Were it not that I eschew the fashion of double names for a book,
+thinking that no amount of ingenuity in this respect will make a bad
+book pass muster, whereas a good book will turn out as such though no
+such ingenuity be displayed, I might have called this "A Tale of the
+Famine Year in Ireland." At the period of the year to which the story
+has brought us--and at which it will leave us--the famine was at its
+very worst. People were beginning to believe that there would never
+be a bit more to eat in the land, and that the time for hope and
+energy was gone. Land was becoming of no value, and the only thing
+regarded was a sufficiency of food to keep body and soul together.
+Under such circumstances it was difficult to hope.
+
+But energy without hope is impossible, and therefore was there such
+an apathy and deadness through the country. It was not that they did
+not work who were most concerned to work. The amount of conscientious
+work then done was most praiseworthy. But it was done almost without
+hope of success, and done chiefly as a matter of conscience. There
+was a feeling, which was not often expressed but which seemed to
+prevail everywhere, that ginger would not again be hot in the mouth,
+and that in very truth the time for cakes and ale in this world was
+all over. It was this feeling that made a residence in Ireland at
+that period so very sad.
+
+Ah me! how little do we know what is coming to us! Irish cakes and
+ale were done and over for this world, we all thought. But in truth
+the Irish cakes were only then a-baking, and the Irish ale was being
+brewed. I am not sure that these good things are yet quite fit for
+the palates of the guest;--not as fit as a little more time will make
+them. The cake is still too new,--cakes often are; and the ale is
+not sufficiently mellowed. But of this I am sure, that the cakes and
+ale are there;--and the ginger, too, very hot in the mouth. Let a
+committee of Irish landlords say how the rents are paid now, and what
+amount of arrears was due through the country when the famine came
+among them. Rents paid to the day: that is the ginger hot in the
+mouth which best pleases the palate of a country gentleman.
+
+But if one did in truth write a tale of the famine, after that it
+would behove the author to write a tale of the pestilence; and
+then another, a tale of the exodus. These three wonderful events,
+following each other, were the blessings coming from Omniscience and
+Omnipotence by which the black clouds were driven from the Irish
+firmament. If one, through it all, could have dared to hope, and have
+had from the first that wisdom which has learned to acknowledge that
+His mercy endureth for ever! And then the same author going on with
+his series would give in his last set,--Ireland in her prosperity.
+
+Of all those who did true good conscientious work at this time, none
+exceeded in energy our friend Herbert Fitzgerald after his return to
+Castle Richmond. It seemed to him as though some thank-offering were
+due from him for all the good things that Providence had showered
+upon him, and the best thank-offering that he could give was a
+devoted attention to the interest of the poor around him. Mr. Somers
+soon resigned to him the chair at those committee meetings at
+Berryhill and Gortnaclough, and it was acknowledged that the Castle
+Richmond arrangements for soup-kitchens, out-door relief, and
+labour-gangs, might be taken as a model for the south of Ireland. Few
+other men were able to go to the work with means so ample and with
+hands so perfectly free. Mr. Carter even, who by this time had become
+cemented in a warm trilateral friendship with Father Barney and the
+Rev. Aeneas Townsend, was obliged to own that many a young English
+country gentleman might take a lesson from Sir Herbert Fitzgerald in
+the duties peculiar to his position.
+
+His marriage did not take place till full six months after the period
+to which our story has brought us. Baronets with twelve thousand a
+year cannot be married off the hooks, as may be done with ordinary
+mortals. Settlements of a grandiose nature were required, and were
+duly concocted. Perhaps Mr. Die had something to say to them, so
+that the great maxim of the law was brought into play. Perhaps also,
+though of this Herbert heard no word, it was thought inexpedient to
+hurry matters while any further inquiry was possible in that affair
+of the Mollett connection. Mr. Die and Mr. Prendergast were certainly
+going about, still drawing all coverts far and near, lest their
+fox might not have been fairly run to his last earth. But, as I
+have said, no tidings as to this reached Castle Richmond. There, in
+Ireland, no man troubled himself further with any doubt upon the
+subject; and Sir Herbert took his title and received his rents, by
+the hands of Mr. Somers, exactly as though the Molletts, father and
+son, had never appeared in those parts.
+
+It was six months before the marriage was celebrated, but during a
+considerable part of that time Clara remained a visitor at Castle
+Richmond. To Lady Fitzgerald she was now the same as a daughter, and
+to Aunt Letty the same as a niece. By the girls she had for months
+been regarded as a sister. So she remained in the house of which she
+was to be the mistress, learning to know their ways, and ingratiating
+herself with those who were to be dependent on her.
+
+"But I had rather stay with you, mamma, if you will allow me," Clara
+had said to her mother when the countess was making some arrangement
+with her that she should return to Castle Richmond. "I shall be
+leaving you altogether so soon now!" And she got up close to her
+mother's side caressingly, and would fain have pressed into her arms
+and kissed her, and have talked to her of what was coming, as a
+daughter loves to talk to a loving mother. But Lady Desmond's heart
+was sore and sad and harsh, and she preferred to be alone.
+
+"You will be better at Castle Richmond, my dear: you will be much
+happier there, of course. There can be no reason why you should come
+again into the gloom of this prison."
+
+"But I should be with you, dearest mamma."
+
+"It is better that you should be with the Fitzgeralds now; and as
+for me--I must learn to live alone. Indeed I have learned it, so you
+need not mind for me." Clara was rebuffed by the tone rather than the
+words, but she still looked up into her mother's face wistfully. "Go,
+my dear," said the countess--"I would sooner be alone at present."
+And so Clara went. It was hard upon her that even now her mother
+would not accept her love.
+
+But Lady Desmond could not be cordial with her daughter. She made
+more than one struggle to do so, but always failed. She could,--she
+thought that she could, have watched her child's happiness with
+contentment had Clara married Owen Fitzgerald--Sir Owen, as he would
+then have been. But now she could only remember that Owen was lost to
+them both, lost through her child's fault. She did not hate Clara:
+nay, she would have made any sacrifice for her daughter's welfare;
+but she could not take her lovingly to her bosom. So she shut herself
+up alone, in her prison as she called it, and then looked back upon
+the errors of her life. It was as well for her to look back as to
+look forward, for what joy was there for which she could dare to
+hope?
+
+In the days that were coming, however, she did relax something of
+her sternness. Clara was of course married from Desmond Court, and
+the very necessity of making some preparations for this festivity
+was in itself salutary. But indeed it could hardly be called
+a festivity,--it was so quiet and sombre. Clara had but two
+bridesmaids, and they were Mary and Emmeline Fitzgerald. The
+young earl gave away his sister, and Aunt Letty was there, and Mr.
+Prendergast, who had come over about the settlements; Mr. Somers
+also attended, and the ceremony was performed by our old friend Mr.
+Townsend. Beyond these there were no guests at the wedding of Sir
+Herbert Fitzgerald.
+
+The young earl was there, and at the last the wedding had been
+postponed a week for his coming. He had left Eton at Midsummer in
+order that he might travel for a couple of years with Owen Fitzgerald
+before he went to Oxford. It had been the lad's own request, and had
+been for a while refused by Owen. But Fitzgerald had at last given
+way to the earl's love, and they had started together for Norway.
+
+"They want me to be home," he had said one morning to his friend.
+
+"Ah, yes; I suppose so."
+
+"Do you know why?" They had never spoken a word about Clara since
+they had left England together, and the earl now dreaded to mention
+her name.
+
+"Know why!" replied Owen; "of course I do. It is to give away your
+sister. Go home, Desmond, my boy; when you have returned we will talk
+about her. I shall bear it better when I know that she is his wife."
+
+And so it was with them. For two years Lord Desmond travelled with
+him, and after that Owen Fitzgerald went on upon his wanderings
+alone. Many a long year has run by since that, and yet he has never
+come back to Hap House. Men of the county Cork now talk of him as one
+whom they knew long since. He who took his house as a stranger is
+a stranger no longer in the country, and the place that Owen left
+vacant has been filled. The hounds of Duhallow would not recognize
+his voice, nor would the steed in the stable follow gently at his
+heels. But there is yet one left who thinks of him, hoping that she
+may yet see him before she dies.
+
+
+
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