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 ishigh—"
"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.
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 ofhim—"
"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 nofortune—"
"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.
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 Elysées 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!
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 thed——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.