Castle Richmond Part 63

But now the world had fallen, the ruin had come, and they were already strong in future hopes. They had dared to look at their chaos, and found that it still contained the elements of order.

There was much still that marred their happiness, and forbade the joyousness of other days. Their poor father had gone from them in their misery, and the house was still a house of mourning; and their mother too, though she bore up so wonderfully against her fate, and for their sakes hoped and planned and listened to their wishes, was a stricken woman. That she would never smile again with any heartfelt joy they were all sure. But, nevertheless, their chaos was conquered, and there was hope that the fields of life would again show themselves green and fruitful.

On one subject their mother never spoke to them, nor had even Herbert dared to speak to her: not a word had been said in that house since Mr. Prendergast left it as to the future whereabouts or future doings of that man to whom she had once given her hand at the altar. But she had ventured to ask by letter a question of Mr. Prendergast. Her question had been this: What must I do that he may not come to me or to my children? In answer to this Mr. Prendergast had told her, after some delay, that he believed she need fear nothing. He had seen the man, and he thought that he might a.s.sure her that she would not be troubled in that respect.

"It is possible," said Mr. Prendergast, "that he may apply to you by letter for money. If so, give him no answer whatever, but send his letters to me."

"And are you all going?" asked Mrs. Townsend of Aunt Letty, with a lachrymose voice soon after the fate of the family was decided.

They were sitting together with their knees over the fire in Mrs.

Townsend's dining-parlour, in which the perilous state of the country had been discussed by them for many a pleasant hour together.

"Well, I think we shall; you see, my sister would never be happy here."

"No, no; the shock and the change would be too great for her. Poor Lady Fitzgerald! And when is that man coming into the house?"

"What, Owen?"

"Yes! Sir Owen I suppose he is now."

"Well, I don't know; he does not seem to be in any hurry. I believe that he has said that my sister may continue to live there if she pleases. But of course she cannot do that."

"They do say about the country," whispered Mrs. Townsend, "that he refuses to be the heir at all. He certainly has not had any cards printed with the t.i.tle on them--I know that as a fact."

"He is a very singular man, very. You know I never could bear him,"

said Aunt Letty.

"No, nor I either. He has not been to our church once these six months. But it's very odd, isn't it? Of course you know the story?"

"What story?" asked Aunt Letty.

"About Lady Clara. Owen Fitzgerald was dreadfully in love with her before your Herbert had ever seen her. And they do say that he has sworn his cousin shall never live if he marries her."

"They can never marry now, you know. Only think of it. There would be three hundred a year between them.--Not at present, that is," added Aunt Letty, looking forward to a future period after her own death.

"That is very little, very little indeed," said Mrs. Townsend, remembering, however, that she herself had married on less. "But, Miss Fitzgerald, if Herbert does not marry her do you think this Owen will?"

"I don't think she'd have him. I am quite sure she would not."

"Not when he has all the property, and the t.i.tle too?"

"No, nor double as much. What would people say of her if she did?

But, however, there is no fear, for she declares that nothing shall induce her to give up her engagement with our Herbert."

And so they discussed it backward and forward in every way, each having her own theory as to that singular rumour which was going about the country, signifying that Owen had declined to accept the t.i.tle. Aunt Letty, however, would not believe that any good could come from so polluted a source, and declared that he had his own reasons for the delay. "It's not for any love of us," she said, "if he refuses to take either that or the estate." And in this she was right. But she would have been more surprised still had she learned that Owen's forbearance arose from a strong anxiety to do what was just in the matter.

"And so Herbert won't go into the Church?"

And Letty shook her head sorrowing.

"aeneas would have been so glad to have taken him for a twelvemonth's reading," said Mrs. Townsend. "He could have come here, you know, when you went away, and been ordained at Cork, and got a curacy close in the neighbourhood, where he was known. It would have been so nice; wouldn't it?"

Aunt Letty would not exactly have advised the scheme as suggested by Mrs. Townsend. Her ideas as to Herbert's clerical studies would have been higher than this. Trinity College, Dublin, was in her estimation the only place left for good Church of England ecclesiastical teaching. But as Herbert was obstinately bent on declining sacerdotal life, there was no use in dispelling Mrs. Townsend's bright vision.

"It's all of no use," she said; "he is determined to go to the bar."

"The bar is very respectable," said Mrs. Townsend, kindly.

"And you mean to go with them, too?" said Mrs. Townsend, after another pause. "You'll hardly be happy, I'm thinking, so far away from your old home."

"It is sad to change at my time of life," said Aunt Letty, plaintively. "I'm sixty-two now."

"Nonsense," said Mrs. Townsend, who, however, knew her age to a day.

"Sixty-two if I live another week, and I have never yet had any home but Castle Richmond. There I was born, and till the other day I had every reason to trust that there I might die. But what does it matter?"

"No, that's true of course; what does it matter where we are while we linger in this vale of tears? But couldn't you get a little place for yourself somewhere near here? There's Callaghan's cottage, with the two-acre piece for a cow, and as nice a spot of a garden as there is in the county Cork."

"I wouldn't separate myself from her now," said Aunt Letty, "for all the cottages and all the gardens in Ireland. The Lord has been pleased to throw us together, and together we will finish our pilgrimage. Whither she goes, I will go, and where she lodges, I will lodge; her people shall be my people, and her G.o.d my G.o.d." And then Mrs. Townsend said nothing further of Callaghan's pretty cottage, or of the two-acre piece.

But one reason for her going Aunt Letty did not give, even to her friend Mrs. Townsend. Her income, that which belonged exclusively to herself, was in no way affected by these sad Castle Richmond revolutions. This was a comfortable,--we may say a generous provision for an old maiden lady, amounting to some six hundred a year, settled upon her for life, and this, if added to what could be saved and sc.r.a.ped together, would enable them to live comfortably as far as means were concerned, in that suburban villa to which they were looking forward. But without Aunt Letty's income that suburban villa must be but a poor home. Mr. Prendergast had calculated that some fourteen thousand pounds would represent the remaining property of the family, with which it would be necessary to purchase government stock. Such being the case, Aunt Letty's income was very material to them.

"I trust you will be able to find some one there who will preach the gospel to you," said Mrs. Townsend, in a tone that showed how serious were her misgivings on the subject.

"I will search for such a one at any rate," said Aunt Letty. "You need not be afraid that I shall be a backslider."

"But they have crosses now over the communion tables in the churches in England," said Mrs. Townsend.

"I know it is very bad," said Aunt Letty. "But there will always be a remnant left. The Lord will not utterly desert us." And then she took her departure, leaving Mrs. Townsend with the conviction that the land to which her friend was going was one in which the light of the gospel no longer shone in its purity.

It was not wonderful that they should all be anxious to get away from Castle Richmond, for the house there was now not a pleasant one in which to live. Let all those who have houses and the adjuncts of houses think how considerable a part of their life's pleasures consists in their interest in the things around them. When will the sea-kale be fit to cut, and when will the crocuses come up? will the violets be sweeter than ever? and the geranium cuttings, are they thriving? we have dug, and manured, and sown, and we look forward to the reaping, and to see our garners full. The very furniture which ministers to our daily uses is loved and petted; and in decorating our rooms we educate ourselves in design. The place in church which has been our own for years,--is not that dear to us, and the voice that has told us of G.o.d's tidings--even though the drone become more evident as it waxes in years, and though it grows feeble and indolent? And the faces of those who have lived around us, do we not love them too, the servants who have worked for us, and the children who have first toddled beneath our eyes and prattled in our ears, and now run their strong races, screaming loudly, splas.h.i.+ng us as they pa.s.s--very unpleasantly? Do we not love them all? Do they not all contribute to the great sum of our enjoyment? All men love such things, more or less, even though they know it not. And women love them even more than men.

And the Fitzgeralds were about to leave them all. The early buds of spring were now showing themselves, but how was it possible that they should look to them? One loves the bud because one expects the flower. The sea-kale now was beyond their notice, and though they plucked the crocuses, they did so with tears upon their cheeks.

After much consideration the church had been abandoned by all except Aunt Letty and Herbert. That Lady Fitzgerald should go there was impossible, and the girls were only too glad to be allowed to stay with their mother. And the schools in which they had taught since the first day in which teaching had been possible for them, had to be abandoned with such true pangs of heartfelt sorrow.

From the time when their misery first came upon them, from the days when it first began to be understood that the world had gone wrong at Castle Richmond, this separation from the schools had commenced. The work had been dropped for a while, but the dropping had in fact been final, and there was nothing further to be done than the saddest of all leavetaking. The girls had sent word to the children, perhaps imprudently, that they would go down and say a word of adieu to their pupils. The children had of course told their mothers, and when the girls reached the two neat buildings which stood at the corner of the park, there were there to meet them, not unnaturally, a concourse of women and children.

In former prosperous days the people about Castle Richmond had, as a rule, been better to do than their neighbours. Money wages had been more plentiful, and there had been little or no subletting of land; the children had been somewhat more neatly clothed, and the women less haggard in their faces; but this difference was hardly perceptible any longer. To them, the Miss Fitzgeralds, looking at the poverty-stricken a.s.semblage, it almost seemed as though the misfortune of their house had brought down its immediate consequences on all who had lived within their circle; but this was the work of the famine. In those days one could rarely see any member of a peasant's family bearing in his face a look of health. The yellow meal was a useful food--the most useful, doubtless, which could at that time be found; but it was not one that was gratifying either to the eye or palate.

The girls had almost regretted their offer before they had left the house. It would have been better, they said to themselves, to have had the children up in the hall, and there to have spoken their farewells, and made their little presents. The very entering those schoolrooms again would almost be too much for them; but this consideration was now too late, and when they got to the corner of the gate, they found that there was a crowd to receive them. "Mary, I must go back," said Emmeline, when she first saw them; but Aunt Letty, who was with them, stepped forward, and they soon found themselves in the schoolroom.

"We have come to say good-bye to you all," said Aunt Letty, trying to begin a speech.

"May the heavens be yer bed then, the lot of yez, for ye war always good to the poor. May the Blessed Virgin guide and protect ye wherever ye be;"--a blessing against which Aunt Letty at once entered a little inward protest, perturbed though she was in spirit. "May the heavens rain glory on yer heads, for ye war always the finest family that war ever in the county Cork!"

"You know, I dare say, that we are going to leave you," continued Aunt Letty.

"We knows it, we knows it; sorrow come to them as did it all. Faix, an' there'll niver be any good in the counthry, at all at all, when you're gone, Miss Emmeline; an' what'll we do at all for the want of yez, and when shall we see the likes of yez? Eh, Miss Letty, but there'll be sore eyes weeping for ye; and for her leddys.h.i.+p too; may the Lord Almighty bless her, and presarve her, and carry her sowl to glory when she dies; for av there war iver a good woman on G.o.d's 'arth, that woman is Leddy Fitzgerald."

And then Aunt Letty found that there was no necessity for her to continue her speech, and indeed no possibility of her doing so even if she were so minded. The children began to wail and cry, and the mothers also mixed loud sobbings with their loud prayers; and Emmeline and Mary, dissolved in tears, sat themselves down, drawing to them the youngest bairns and those whom they had loved the best, kissing their sallow, famine-stricken, unwholesome faces, and weeping over them with a love of which hitherto they had been hardly conscious.