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 tomake his excuse at a Relief Committee which it would have been hisbusiness to attend. A great portion of the day he spent with hisfather, who lay all but motionless, in a state that was apparentlyhalf comatose. During all those long hours very little was saidbetween them about this tragedy of their family. Why should more besaid now; now that the worst had befallen them--all that worst, tohide which Sir Thomas had endured such superhuman agony? And thenfour or five times during the day he went to his mother, but with herhe 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 wordor two, or a softer kiss, would ask him no question. She knew thathe had learned the whole, and knew also from the solemn cloud on hisbrow that that whole must be very dreadful. Indeed we may surmisethat her woman's heart had by this time guessed somewhat of thetruth. But she would inquire of no one. Jones, she was sure, knewit all; but she did not ask a single question of her servant. Itwould be told to her when it was fitting. Why should she move in thematter?
Whenever Herbert entered her room she tried to receive him withsomething of a smile. It was clear enough that she was always glad ofhis coming, and that she made some little show of welcoming him. Abook was always put away, very softly and by the slightest motion;but Herbert well knew what that book was, and whence his mothersought that strength which enabled her to live through such an ordealas this.
And his sisters were to be seen, moving slowly about the house likethe very ghosts of their former selves. Their voices were hardlyheard; no ring of customary laughter ever came from the room in whichthey sat; when they passed their brother in the house they hardlydared to whisper to him. As to sitting down at table now with Mr.Prendergast, that effort was wholly abandoned; they kept themselveseven from the sound of his footsteps.
Aunt Letty perhaps spoke more than the others, but what could shespeak to the purpose? "Herbert," she once said, as she caught himclose by the door of the library and almost pulled him into theroom--"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 manyyears 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 hewill. 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 thatit is killing her fast. Human nature cannot bear it. For myself Icould endure anything if I were trusted." And sitting down in one ofthe high-backed library chairs she burst into a flood of tears; asight which, as regarded Aunt Letty, Herbert had never seen before.
What if they all died? thought Herbert to himself in the bitternessof the moment. There was that in store for some of them which wasworse than death. What business had Aunt Letty to talk of her misery?Of course she was wretched, as they all were; but how could sheappreciate the burden that was on his back? What was Clara Desmond toher?
Shortly after noon Mr. Prendergast was back at the house; but heslunk up to his room, and no one saw anything of him. At half-pastsix he came down, and Herbert constrained himself to sit at the tablewhile dinner was served; and so the day passed away. One more dayonly Mr. Prendergast was to stay at Castle Richmond; and then, if,as he expected, certain letters should reach him on that morning, hewas to start for London late on the following day. It may well beimagined that he was not desirous of prolonging his visit.
Early on the following morning Herbert started for a long solitarywalk. On that day Mr. Prendergast was to tell everything to hismother, and it was determined between them that her son should not bein 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 otherthings also in his mind before he went. He would reach Desmond Courtbefore he returned home that day, and let the two ladies there knowthe fate that was before them. Then, after that, they might let himknow what was to be his fate;--but on this head he would not hurrythem.
So he started on his walk, resolving to go round by Gortnaclough onhis way to Desmond Court, and then to return home from that place.The road would be more than twenty long Irish miles; but he feltthat the hard work would be of service. It was instinct rather thanthought which taught him that it would be good for him to put somestrain on the muscles of his body, and thus relieve the muscles ofhis mind. If his limbs could become thoroughly tired,--thoroughlytired so that he might wish to rest--then he might hope that for amoment he might cease to think of all this sorrow which encompassedhim.
So he started on his walk, taking with him a thick cudgel and his ownthoughts. He went away across the demesne and down into the road thatled away by Gortnaclough and Boherbue towards Castleisland and thewilds of county Kerry. As he went, the men about the place refrainedfrom speaking to him, for they all knew that bad news had come to thebig house. They looked at him with lowered eyes and with tendernessin their hearts, for they loved the very name of Fitzgerald. The lovewhich a poor Irishman feels for the gentleman whom he regards as hismaster--"his masther," though he has probably never received fromhim, in money, wages for a day's work, and in all his intercoursehas been the man who has paid money and not the man who receivedit--the love which he nevertheless feels, if he has been occasionallylooked on with a smiling face and accosted with a kindly word, isastonishing to an Englishman. I will not say that the feeling isaltogether good. Love should come of love. Where personal love existson one side, and not even personal regard on the other, there must besome mixture of servility. That unbounded respect for human grandeurcannot be altogether good; for human greatness, if the greatness beproperly sifted, it may be so.
He got down into the road, and went forth upon his journey at a rapidpace. The mud was deep upon the way, but he went through the thickestwithout a thought of it. He had not been out long before there cameon a cold, light, drizzling rain, such a rain as gradually butsurely makes its way into the innermost rag of a man's clothing,running up the inside of his waterproof coat, and penetrating by itsperseverance the very folds of his necktie. Such cold, drizzling rainis the commonest phase of hard weather during Irish winters, andthose 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 subjectbeyond the word dull. And yet at such a time one breathes the rainand again exhales it, and become as it were oneself a water spirit,assuming an aqueous fishlike nature into one's inner fibres. It mustbe acknowledged that a man does sometimes get wet in Ireland; butthen a wetting there brings no cold in the head, no husky voice, noneed for multitudinous pocket-handkerchiefs, as it does here in thisland 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 thickstick in his hand, and ever increasing his pace as he went. He wasusually a man careful of such things, but it was nothing to him nowwhether he were wet or dry. His mind was so full of the immediatecircumstances of his destiny that he could not think of smallexternal accidents. What was to be his future life in this world, andhow was he to fight the battle that was now before him? That was thequestion which he continually asked himself, and yet never succeededin answering. How was he to come down from the throne on which earlycircumstances had placed him, and hustle and struggle among the crowdfor such approach to other thrones as his sinews and shoulders mightprocure for him? If he had been only born to the struggle, he said tohimself, h
ow easy and pleasant it would have been to him! But to findhimself thus cast out from his place by an accident--cast out withthe 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 regardedas beneath him--all this was terribly sore, and the burden was almosttoo much for his strength. "I do not care for the money," he said tohimself 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 powerand 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 strongestin the hearts of all strong men; and in that desire how terrible afall 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 carrythemselves when this man of law and judgment should have gone fromthem? For himself, his course of action must depend much upon theword which might be spoken to him to-day at Desmond Court. Therewould still be a drop of comfort left at the bottom of his cup if hemight be allowed to hope there. But in truth he feared greatly. Whatthe countess would say to him he thought he could foretell; what itwould behove him to say himself--in matter, though not in words--thathe knew well. Would not the two sayings tally well together? andcould it be right for him even to hope that the love of a girl ofseventeen should stand firm against her mother's will, when her loverhimself could not dare to press his suit? And then another reflectionpressed on his mind sorely. Clara had already given up one poor loverat her mother's instance; might she not resume that lover, also ather mother's instance, now that he was no longer poor? What if OwenFitzgerald should take from him everything!
And so he walked on through the mud and rain, always swinging his bigstick. Perhaps, after all, the worst of it was over with him, when hecould argue with himself in this way. It is the first plunge into thecold water that gives the shock. We may almost say that every humanmisery will cease to be miserable if it be duly faced; and somethingis done towards conquering our miseries, when we face them in anydegree, even if not with due courage. Herbert had taken his plungeinto the deep, dark, cold, comfortless pool of misfortune; and hefelt that the waters around him were very cold. But the plunge hadbeen taken, and the worst, perhaps, was gone by.
As he approached near to Gortnaclough, he came upon one of thosegangs of road-destroyers who were now at work everywhere, earningtheir pittance of "yellow meal" with a pickaxe and a wheelbarrow. Insome sort or other the labourers had been got to their work. Gangsmenthere were with lists, who did see, more or less accurately, thatthe men, before they received their sixpence or eightpence for theirday's work, did at any rate pass their day with some sort of toolin their hands. And consequently the surface of the hill began todisappear, and there were chasms in the road, which caused those whotravelled on wheels to sit still, staring across with angry eyes, andsometimes to apostrophize the doer of these deeds with very naughtywords. The doer was the Board of Works, or the "Board" as it wasfamiliarly termed; and were it not that those ill words must havereturned to the bosoms which vented them, and have flown no further,no Board could ever have been so terribly curse-laden. To findoneself at last utterly stopped, after proceeding with great strainto one's horse for half a mile through an artificial quagmire ofslush up to the wheelbox, is harassing to the customary traveller;and men at that crisis did not bethink themselves quite so frequentlyas they should have done, that a people perishing from famine is moreharassing.
But Herbert was not on wheels, and was proceeding through the slushand across the chasm, regardless of it all, when he was stoppedby some of the men. All the land thereabouts was Castle Richmondproperty; and it was not probable that the young master of it allwould be allowed to pass through some two score of his own tenantrywithout greetings, and petitions, and blessings, and complaints.
"Faix, yer honer, thin, Mr. Herbert," said one man, standing at thebottom of the hill, with the half-filled wheelbarrow still hangingin his hands--an Englishman would have put down the barrow whilehe was speaking, making some inner calculation about the waste ofhis muscles; but an Irishman would despise himself for such loweconomy--"Faix, thin, yer honer, Mr. Herbert; an' it's yourself is asight good for sore eyes. May the heavens be your bed, for it's youis the frind to a poor man."
"How are you, Pat?" said Herbert, without intending to stop. "How areyou, Mooney? I hope the work suits you all." And then he would atonce have passed on, with his hat pressed down low over his brow.
But this could be by no means allowed. In the first place, theexcitement arising from the young master's presence was too valuableto be lost so suddenly; and then, when might again occur so excellenta time for some mention of their heavy grievances? Men whose wholeamount of worldly good consists in a bare allowance of nauseous food,just sufficient to keep body and soul together, must be excused ifthey wish to utter their complaints to ears that can hear them.
"Arrah, yer honer, thin, we're none on us very well; and how couldwe, with the male at a penny a pound?" said Pat.
"Sorrow to it for male," said Mooney. "It's the worst vittles iver aman tooked into the inside of him. Saving yer honer's presence it'sas much as I can do to raise the bare arm of me since the day I firstbegan with the yally male."
"It's as wake as cats we all is," said another, who from the wearyway in which he dragged his limbs about certainly did not himselfseem to be gifted with much animal strength.
"And the childer is worse, yer honer," said a fourth. "The male isbad for them intirely. Saving yer honer's presence, their bellies isgone away most to nothing."
"And there's six of us in family, yer honer," said Pat. "Six mouthsto feed; and what's eight pennorth of yally male among such a lot asthat; let alone the Sundays, when there's nothing?"
"An' shure, Mr. Herbert," said another, a small man with a squeakingvoice, whose rags of clothes hardly hung on to his body, "warn't Ihere with the other boys the last Friday as iver was? Ax Pat Condonelse, yer honer; and yet when they comed to give out the wages, theysconced me of--." And so on. There were as many complaints to be madeas 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 fromdiscoursing with him, if he could give them no other satisfaction.But now, on this day, with his own burden so heavy at his heart, hecould not even do this. He could not think of their sorrows; hisown 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 themoff from him, as they attempted to cling round his steps. Nothing isso powerful in making a man selfish as misfortune.
And then he went on to Gortnaclough. He had not chosen his walkto this place with any fixed object, except this perhaps, that itenabled him to return home round by Desmond Court. It was one of theplaces at which a Relief Committee sat every fortnight, and there wasa soup-kitchen here, which, however, had not been so successful asthe one at Berryhill; and it was the place of residence selected byFather Barney's coadjutor. But in spite of all this, when Herbertfound himself in the wretched, dirty, straggling, damp street of thevillage, he did not know what to do or where to betake himself. Thatevery eye in Gortnaclough would be upon him was a matter of course.He could hardly turn round on his heel and retrace his steps throughthe village, as he would have to do in going to Desmond Court,without showing some pretext for his coming there; so he walked intothe little shop which was attached to the soup-kitchen, and there hefound the Rev. Mr. Columb Creagh, giving his orders to the littlegirl behind the counter.
Herbert Fitzgerald was customarily very civil to the Roman Catholicpriests around him,--somewhat more so, indeed, than seemed good tothose very excellent ladies, Mrs. Townsend and Aunt Letty; but italways went against the grain with him to be civil to the Rev. ColumbCreagh; and on this special day it would have go
ne against thegrain with him to be civil to anybody. But the coadjutor knew hischaracter, and was delighted to have an opportunity of talking tohim, when he could do so without being snubbed either by Mr. Somers,the chairman, or by his own parish priest. Mr. Creagh had rejoicedmuch at the idea of forming one at the same council board with countymagistrates and Protestant parsons; but the fruition of his promiseddelights had never quite reached his lips. He had been like SanchoPanza in his government; he had sat down to the grand table day afterday, but had never yet been allowed to enjoy the rich dish of hisown oratory. Whenever he had proposed to help himself, Mr. Somers orFather Barney had stopped his mouth. Now probably he might be able tosay a word or two; and though the glory would not be equal to that ofmaking a speech at the Committee, still it would be something to beseen talking on equal terms, and on affairs of state, to the youngheir of Castle Richmond.
"Mr. Fitzgerald! well, I declare! And how are you, sir?" And he tookoff his hat and bowed, and got hold of Herbert's hand, shaking itruthlessly; and altogether he made him very disagreeable.
Herbert, though his mind was not really intent on the subject, askedsome question of the girl as to the amount of meal that had beensold, and desired to see the little passbook that they kept at theshop.
"We are doing pretty well, Mr. Fitzgerald," said the coadjutor;"pretty well. I always keep my eye on, for fear things should gowrong, 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, youknow. And to tell you the truth, I don't think we're altogether onthe right tack about them shops. It's very hard on a poor woman--"
Now the fact was, though the Relief Committee at Gortnaclough wasattended by magistrates, priests, and parsons, the shop there wasHerbert Fitzgerald's own affair. It had been stocked with his or hisfather's money; the flour was sold without profit at his risk, andthe rent of the house and wages of the woman who kept it came out ofhis own pocket-money. Under these circumstances he did not see causewhy Mr. Creagh should interfere, and at the present moment was notwell inclined to put up with such interference.
"We do the best we can, Mr. Creagh," said he, interrupting thepriest. "And no good will be done at such a time as this byunnecessary difficulties."
"No, no, certainly not. But still I do think--" And Mr. Creagh wasgirding up his loins for eloquence, when he was again interrupted.
"I am rather in a hurry to-day," said Herbert, "and therefore, if youplease, 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 andwalked rapidly back out of the village.
The poor coadjutor was left alone at the shop-door, anathematizing inhis heart the pride of all Protestants. He had been told that thisMr. Fitzgerald was different from others, that he was a man fond ofpriests and addicted to the "ould religion;" and so hearing, he hadresolved to make the most of such an excellent disposition. But hewas forced to confess to himself that they were all alike. Mr. Somerscould not have been more imperious, nor Mr. Townsend more insolent.
And then, through the still drizzling rain, Herbert walked on toDesmond Court. By the time that he reached the desolate-looking lodgeat the demesne gate, he was nearly wet through, and was besmearedwith mud up to his knees. But he had thought nothing of this as hewalked along. His mind had been intent on the scene that was beforehim. In what words was he to break the news to Clara Desmond andher mother? and with what words would they receive the tidings? Theformer question he had by no means answered to his own satisfaction,when, all muddy and wet, he passed up to the house through thatdesolate gate.
"Is Lady Desmond at home?" he asked of the butler. "Her ladyship isat home," said the gray-haired old man, with his blandest smile, "andso is Lady Clara." He had already learned to look on the heir ofCastle Richmond as the coming saviour of the impoverished Desmondfamily.