Castle Richmond Part 66

"My poor child!" said the countess, in a low tremulous voice, as though she did not intend him to hear them. "My poor unfortunate child!" Herbert as he did hear them thought of the woman in the cabin, and of her misfortunes and of her children. "Come, Patrick,"

continued the countess, "it is perhaps useless for us to say anything further at present. If you will remain here, Mr. Fitzgerald, for a minute or two, I will send Lady Clara to wait upon you;" and then curtsying with great dignity she withdrew, and the young earl scuffled out after her. "Mamma," he said, as he went, "he is determined that he will have her."

"My poor child!" answered the countess.

"And if I were in his place I should be determined also. You may as well give it up. Not but that I like Owen a thousand times the best."

Herbert did wait there for some five minutes, and then the door was opened very gently, was gently closed again, and Clara Desmond was in the room. He came towards her respectfully, holding out his hand that he might take hers; but before he had thought of how she would act she was in his arms. Hitherto, of all betrothed maidens, she had been the most retiring. Sometimes he had thought her cold when she had left the seat by his side to go and nestle closely by his sister. She had avoided the touch of his hand and the pressure of his arm, and had gone from him speechless, if not with anger then with dismay, when he had carried the warmth of his love beyond the touch of his hand or the pressure of his arm. But now she rushed into his embrace and hid her face upon his shoulder, as though she were over glad to return to the heart from which those around her had endeavoured to banish her. Was he or was he not to speak of his love? That had been the question which he had asked himself when left alone there for those five minutes, with the eloquence of the countess ringing in his ears. Now that question had in truth been answered for him.

"Herbert," she said, "Herbert! I have so sorrowed for you; but I know that you have borne it like a man."

She was thinking of what he had now half forgotten,--the position which he had lost, those hopes which had all been s.h.i.+pwrecked, his t.i.tle surrendered to another, and his lost estates. She was thinking of them as the loss affected him; but he, he had reconciled himself to all that,--unless all that were to separate him from his promised bride.

"Dearest Clara," he said, with his arm close round her waist, while neither anger nor dismay appeared to disturb the sweetness of that position, "the letter which you wrote me has been my chief comfort."

Now if he had any intention of liberating Clara from the bond of her engagement,--if he really had any feeling that it behoved him not to involve her in the worldly losses which had come upon him,--he was taking a very bad way of carrying out his views in that respect.

Instead of confessing the comfort which he had received from that letter, and holding her close to his breast while he did confess it, he should have stood away from her--quite as far apart as he had done from the countess; and he should have argued with her, showing her how foolish and imprudent her letter had been, explaining that it behoved her now to repress her feelings, and teaching her that peers'

daughters as well as housemaids should look out for situations which would suit them, guided by prudence and a view to the wages,--not follow the dictates of impulse and of the heart. This is what he should have done, according, I believe, to the views of most men and women. Instead of that he held her there as close as he could hold her, and left her to do the most of the speaking. I think he was right. According to my ideas woman's love should be regarded as fair prize of war,--as long as the war has been carried on with due adherence to the recognized law of nations. When it has been fairly won, let it be firmly held. I have no opinion of that theory of giving up.

"You knew that I would not abandon you! Did you not know it? say that you knew it?" said Clara, and then she insisted on having an answer.

"I could hardly dare to think that there was so much happiness left for me," said Herbert.

"Then you were a traitor to your love, sir; a false traitor." But deep as was the offence for which she arraigned him, it was clear to see that the pardon came as quick as the conviction. "And was Emmeline so untrue to me also as to believe that?"

"Emmeline said--" and then he told her what Emmeline had said.

"Dearest, dearest Emmeline! give her a whole heart-load of love from me; now mind you do,--and to Mary, too. And remember this, sir; that I love Emmeline ten times better than I do you; twenty times--, because she knew me. Oh, if she had mistrusted me--!"

"And do you think that I mistrusted you?"

"Yes, you did; you know you did, sir. You wrote and told me so;--and now, this very day, you come here to act as though you mistrusted me still. You know you have, only you have not the courage to go on with the acting."

And then he began to defend himself, showing how ill it would have become him to have kept her bound to her engagements had she feared poverty as most girls in her position would have feared it. But on this point she would not hear much from him, lest the very fact of her hearing it should make it seem that such a line of conduct were possible to her.

"You know nothing about most girls, sir, or about any, I am afraid; not even about one. And if most girls were frightfully heartless, which they are not, what right had you to liken me to most girls?

Emmeline knew better, and why could not you take her as a type of most girls? You have behaved very badly, Master Herbert, and you know it; and nothing on earth shall make me forgive you; nothing--but your promise that you will not so misjudge me any more." And then the tears came to his eyes, and her face was again hidden on his shoulder.

It was not very probable that after such a commencement the interview would terminate in a manner favourable to the wishes of the countess.

Clara swore to her lover that she had given him all that she had to give,--her heart, and will, and very self; and swore, also, that she could not and would not take back the gift. She would remain as she was now as long as he thought proper, and would come to him whenever he should tell her that his home was large enough for them both. And so that matter was settled between them.

Then she had much to say about his mother and sisters, and a word too about his poor father. And now that it was settled between them so fixedly, that come what might they were to float together in the same boat down the river of life, she had a question or two also to ask, and her approbation to give or to withhold, as to his future prospects. He was not to think, she told him, of deciding on anything without at any rate telling her. So he had to explain to her all the family plans, making her know why he had decided on the law as his own path to fortune, and asking for and obtaining her consent to all his proposed measures.

In this way her view of the matter became more and more firmly adopted as that which should be the view resolutely to be taken by them both. The countess had felt that that interview would be fatal to her; and she had been right. But how could she have prevented it?

Twenty times she had resolved that she would prevent it; but twenty times she had been forced to confess that she was powerless to do so.

In these days a mother even can only exercise such power over a child as public opinion permits her to use. "Mother, it was you who brought us together, and you cannot separate us now." That had always been Clara's argument, leaving the countess helpless, except as far as she could work on Herbert's generosity. That she had tried,--and, as we have seen, been foiled there also. If only she could have taken her daughter away while the Castle Richmond family were still mersed in the bitter depth of their suffering,--at that moment when the blows were falling on them! Then, indeed, she might have done something; but she was not like other t.i.tled mothers. In such a step as this she was absolutely without the means.

Thus talking together they remained closeted for a most unconscionable time. Clara had had her purpose to carry out, and to Herbert the moments had been too precious to cause him any regret as they pa.s.sed. But now at last a knock was heard at the door, and Lady Desmond, without waiting for an answer to it, entered the room. Clara immediately started from her seat, not as though she were either guilty or tremulous, but with a brave resolve to go on with her purposed plan.

"Mamma," she said, "it is fixed now; it cannot be altered now."

"What is fixed, Clara?"

"Herbert and I have renewed our engagement, and nothing must now break it, unless we die."

"Mr. Fitzgerald, if this be true your conduct to my daughter has been unmanly as well as ungenerous."

"Lady Desmond, it is true; and I think that my conduct is neither unmanly nor ungenerous."

"Your own relations are against you, sir."

"What relations?" asked Clara, sharply.

"I am not speaking to you, Clara; your absurdity and romance are so great that I cannot speak to you."

"What relations, Herbert?" again asked Clara; for she would not for the world have had Lady Fitzgerald against her.

"Lady Desmond has, I believe, seen my Aunt Letty two or three times lately; I suppose she must mean her."

"Oh," said Clara, turning away as though she were now satisfied. And then Herbert, escaping from the house as quickly as he could, rode home with a renewal of that feeling of triumph which he had once enjoyed before when returning from Desmond Court to Castle Richmond.

On the next day Herbert started for London. The parting was sad enough, and the occasion of it was such that it could hardly be otherwise. "I am quite sure of one thing," he said to his sister Emmeline, "I shall never see Castle Richmond again." And, indeed, one may say that small as might be his chance of doing so, his wish to do so must be still less. There could be no possible inducement to him to come back to a place which had so nearly been his own, and the possession of which he had lost in so painful a manner.

Every tree about the place, every path across the wide park, every hedge and ditch and hidden leafy corner, had had for him a special interest,--for they had all been his own. But all that was now over.

They were not only not his own, but they belonged to one who was mounting into his seat of power over his head.

He had spent the long evening before his last dinner in going round the whole demesne alone, so that no eye should witness what he felt.

None but those who have known the charms of a country-house early in life can conceive the intimacy to which a man attains with all the various trifling objects round his own locality; how he knows the bark of every tree, and the bend of every bough; how he has marked where the rich gra.s.s grows in tufts, and where the poorer soil is always dry and bare; how he watches the nests of the rooks, and the holes of the rabbits, and has learned where the thrushes build, and can show the branch on which the linnet sits. All these things had been dear to Herbert, and they all required at his hand some last farewell. Every dog, too, he had to see, and to lay his hand on the neck of every horse. This making of his final adieu under such circ.u.mstances was melancholy enough.

And then, too, later in the evening, after dinner, all the servants were called into the parlour that he might shake hands with them.

There was not one of them who had not hoped, as lately as three months since, that he or she would live to call Herbert Fitzgerald master. Indeed, he had already been their master--their young master.

All Irish servants especially love to pay respect to the "young masther;" but Herbert now was to be their master no longer, and the probability was that he would never see one of them again.

He schooled himself to go through the ordeal with a manly gait and with dry eyes, and he did it; but their eyes were not dry, not even those of the men. Mrs. Jones and a favourite girl whom the young ladies patronized were not of the number, for it had been decided that they should follow the fortunes of their mistress; but Richard was there, standing a little apart from the others, as being now on a different footing. He was to go also, but before the scene was over he also had taken to sobbing violently.

"I wish you all well and happy," said Herbert, making his little speech, "and regret deeply that the intercourse between us should be thus suddenly severed. You have served me and mine well and truly, and it is hard upon you now, that you should be bid to go and seek another home elsewhere."

"It isn't that we mind, Mr. Herbert; it ain't that as frets us," said one of the men.

"It ain't that at all, at all," said Richard, doing chorus; "but that yer honour should be robbed of what is yer honour's own."

"But you all know that we cannot help it," continued Herbert; "a misfortune has come upon us which n.o.body could have foreseen, and therefore we are obliged to part with our old friends and servants."

At the word friends the maid-servants all sobbed. "And 'deed we is your frinds, and true frinds, too," wailed the cook.

"I know you are, and it grieves me to feel that I shall see you no more. But you must not be led to think by what Richard says that anybody is depriving me of that which ought to be my own. I am now leaving Castle Richmond because it is not my own, but justly belongs to another;--to another who, I must in justice tell you, is in no hurry to claim his inheritance. We none of us have any ground for displeasure against the present owner of this place, my cousin, Sir Owen Fitzgerald."

"We don't know nothing about Sir Owen," said one voice.

"And don't want," said another, convulsed with sobs.

"He's a very good sort of young gentleman--of his own kind, no doubt," said Richard.