Castle Richmond by Anthony Trollope (good story books to read .txt) 📖

that you keep hon at that work," said Mollett junior, reproachfully. "You never by any chance have a stroke of luck."

"Well, I have been unfortunate lately; but who knows what's coming? And I was deucedly sold by those fellows at the October meeting. If any chap ever was safe, I ought to have been safe then; but hang me if I didn't drop four hundred of Sir Thomas's shiners coolly on the spot. That was the only big haul I've had out of him all at once; and the most of it went like water through a sieve within forty-eight hours after I touched it." And then, having finished this pathetical little story of his misfortune, Mr. Mollett senior finished his glass of toddy.

"It's the way of the world, governor; and it's no use sighing after spilt milk. But I'll tell you what I propose; and if you don't like the task yourself, I have no hobjection in life to take it into my own hands. You see the game's so much our own that there's nothing on hearth for us to fear."

"I don't know that. If we were all blown, where should we be—"

"Why, she's your own—"

"H-h-sh, Aby. There's that confounded long-eared fellow at the keyhole, as sure as my name's Matthew; and if he hears you, the game's all up with a vengeance."

"Lord bless you, what could he hear? Besides, talking as we are now, he wouldn't catch a word even if he were in the room itself. And now I'll tell you what it is; do you go down yourself, and make your way into the hold gentleman's room. Just send your own name in boldly. Nobody will know what that means, except himself."

"I did that once before; and I never shall forget it."

"Yes, you did it once before, and you have had a steady income to live on ever since; not such an income as you might have had. Not such an income as will do for you and me, now that we both know so well what a fine property we have under our thumbs. But, nevertheless, that little visit has been worth something to you."

"Upon my word, Aby, I never suffered so much as I did that day. I didn't know till then that I had a soft heart."

"Soft heart! Oh, bother. Such stuff as that always makes me sick. If I 'ate anything, it's maudlin. Your former visit down there did very well, and now you must make another, or else, by the holy poker! I'll make it for you."

"And what would you have me say to him if I did manage to see him?"

"Perhaps I'd better go—"

"That's out of the question. He wouldn't see you, or understand who you were. And then you'd make a row, and it would all come out, and the fat would be in the fire."

"Well, I guess I should not take it quite quiet if they didn't treat me as a gentleman should be treated. I ain't always over-quiet if I'm put upon."

"If you go near that house at all I'll have done with it. I'll give up the game."

"Well, do you go, at any rate first. Perhaps it may be well that I should follow after with a reminder. Do you go down, and just tell him this, quite coolly, remember—"

"Oh, I shall be cool enough."

"That, considering hall things, you think he and you ought to—"

"Well?"

"Just divide it between you; share and share alike. Say it's fourteen thousand—and it's more than that—that would be seven for him and seven for you. Tell him you'll agree to that, but you won't take one farthing less."

"Aby!" said the father, almost overcome by the grandeur of his son's ideas.

"Well; and what of Haby? What's the matter now?"

"Expect him to shell out seven thousand pounds a year!"

"And why not? He'll do a deal more than that, I expect, if he were quite sure that it would make all things serene. But it won't; and therefore you must make him another hoffer."

"Another offer!"

"Yes. He'll know well enough that you'll be thinking of his death. And for all they do say he might pop off any day."

"He's a younger man than me, Aby, by full ten years."

"What of that? You may pop off any day too, mayn't you? I believe you old fellows don't think of dying nigh as hoften as we young ones."

"You young ones are always looking for us old ones to go. We all know that well enough."

"That's when you've got anything to leave behind you, which hain't the case with you, governor, just at present. But what I was saying is this. He'll know well enough that you can split upon his son hafter he's gone, every bit as well as you can split on him now."

"Oh, I always looked to make the young gentleman pay up handsome, if so be the old gentleman went off the hooks. And if so be he and I should go off together like, why you'd carry on, of course. You'll have the proofs, you know."

"Oh, I should, should I? Well, we'll look to them by-and-by. But I'll tell you what, governor, the best way is to make all that safe. We'll make him another hoffer—for a regular substantial family harrangement—"

"A family arrangement, eh?"

"Yes; that's the way they always manage things when great family hinterests is at stake. Let him give us a cool seven thousand a year between us while he's alive; let him put you down for twenty thousand when he's dead—that'd come out of the young gentleman's share of the property, of course—and then let him give me his daughter Hemmeline, with another twenty thousand tacked on to her skirt-tail. I should be mum then for hever for the honour of the family."

The father for a moment or two was struck dumb by the magnitude of his son's proposition. "That's what I call playing the game firm," continued the son. "Do you lay down your terms before him, substantial, and then stick to 'em. 'Them's my terms, Sir Thomas,' you'll say. 'If you don't like 'em, as I can't halter, why in course I'll go elsewhere.' Do you be firm to that, and you'll see how the game'll go."

"And you think he'll give you his daughter in marriage?"

"Why not? I'm honest born, hain't I? And she's a bastard."

"But, Aby, you don't know what sort of people these are. You don't know what her breeding has been."

"D—— her breeding. I know this: she'd get a deuced pretty fellow for her husband, and one that girls as good as her has hankered hafter long enough. It won't do, governor, to let people as is in their position pick and choose like. We've the hupper hand, and we must do the picking and choosing."

"She'd never have you, Aby; not if her father went down on his knees to her to ask her."

"Oh, wouldn't she? By heaven, then, she shall, and that without any kneeling at all. She shall have me, and be deuced glad to take me. What! she'd refuse a fellow like me when she knows that she and all belonging to her'd be turned into the streets if she don't have me! I'm clear of another way of thinking, then. My opinion is she'd come to me jumping. I'll tell you what, governor, you don't know the sex."

Mr. Mollett senior upon this merely shook his head. Perhaps the fact was that he knew the sex somewhat better than his son. It had been his fate during a portion of his life to live among people who were, or ought to have been, gentlemen. He might have been such himself had he not gone wrong in life from the very starting-post. But his son had had no such opportunities. He did know and could know nothing about ladies and gentlemen.

"You're mistaken, Aby," said the old man. "They'd never suffer you to come among them on such a footing as that. They'd sooner go forth to the world as beggars."

"Then, by G——! they shall go forth as beggars. I've said it now, father, and I'll stick to it. You know the stuff I'm made of." As he finished speaking, he swallowed down the last half of a third glass of hot spirits and water, and then glared on his father with angry, blood-shot eyes, and a red, almost lurid face. The unfortunate father was beginning to know the son, and to feel that his son would become his master.

Shortly after this they were interrupted; and what further conversation they had on the matter that night took place in their joint bedroom; to which uninviting retreat it is not now necessary that we should follow them.

 

 

CHAPTER VII. THE FAMINE YEAR.
 

They who were in the south of Ireland during the winter of 1846-47 will not readily forget the agony of that period. For many, many years preceding and up to that time, the increasing swarms of the country had been fed upon the potato, and upon the potato only; and now all at once the potato failed them, and the greater part of eight million human beings were left without food.

The destruction of the potato was the work of God; and it was natural to attribute the sufferings which at once overwhelmed the unfortunate country to God's anger—to his wrath for the misdeeds of which that country had been guilty. For myself, I do not believe in such exhibitions of God's anger. When wars come, and pestilence, and famine; when the people of a land are worse than decimated, and the living hardly able to bury the dead, I cannot coincide with those who would deprecate God's wrath by prayers. I do not believe that our God stalks darkly along the clouds, laying thousands low with the arrows of death, and those thousands the most ignorant, because men who are not ignorant have displeased Him. Nor, if in his wisdom He did do so, can I think that men's prayers would hinder that which his wisdom had seen to be good and right.

But though I do not believe in exhibitions of God's anger, I do believe in exhibitions of his mercy. When men by their folly and by the shortness of their vision have brought upon themselves penalties which seem to be overwhelming, to which no end can be seen, which would be overwhelming were no aid coming to us but our own, then God raises his hand, not in anger, but in mercy, and by his wisdom does for us that for which our own wisdom has been insufficient.

But on no Christian basis can I understand the justice or acknowledge the propriety of asking our Lord to abate his wrath in detail, or to alter his settled purpose. If He be wise, would we change his wisdom? If He be merciful, would we limit his mercy? There comes upon us some strange disease, and we bid Him to stay his hand. But the disease, when it has passed by, has taught us lessons of cleanliness, which no master less stern would have made acceptable. A famine strikes us, and we again beg that that hand may be stayed;—beg as the Greeks were said to beg when they thought that the anger of Phœbus was hot against them because his priest had been dishonoured. We so beg, thinking that God's anger is hot also against us. But, lo! the famine passes by, and a land that had been brought to the dust by man's folly is once more prosperous and happy.

If this was ever so in the world's history, it was so in Ireland at the time of which I am speaking. The country, especially in the south and west, had been brought to a terrible pass;—not as so many said and do say, by the idolatry of popery, or by the sedition of demagogues, or even mainly by the idleness of the people. The idolatry of popery, to my way of thinking, is bad; though not so bad in Ireland as in most other Papist countries that I have visited. Sedition also is bad; but in Ireland, in late years, it has not been deep-seated—as may have been noted at Ballingarry and other places, where endeavour was made to bring sedition to its proof. And as for the idleness of Ireland's people, I am inclined to think they will work under the same compulsion and same persuasion which produce work in other countries.

The fault had been the lowness of education and consequent want of principle among the middle classes; and this fault had been found as strongly marked among the Protestants as it had been among the Roman Catholics. Young men were brought up to do nothing. Property was regarded as having no duties attached to it. Men became rapacious, and determined to