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

thought. "Yes, he is honest and just; and what should I want better than honesty and justice?" And then, shuddering as he resolved, he did resolve that he would send for this honest and just man. He would send for him; or, perhaps better still, go to him. At any rate, he would tell him the whole truth of his grief, and then act as the cold, just man should bid him.

But he need not do this yet—not quite yet. So at least he said to himself, falsely. If a man decide with a fixed decision that his tooth should come out, or his leg be cut off, let the tooth come out or the leg be cut off on the earliest possible opportunity. It is the flinching from such pain that is so grievously painful.

But it was something to have brought his mind to bear with a fixed purpose upon these things, and to have resolved upon what he would do, though he still lacked strength to put his resolution immediately to the proof.

Then, later in the evening, his son came and sat with him, and he was able in some sort to declare that the worst of that evil day had passed from him. "I shall breakfast with you all to-morrow," he said, and as he spoke a faint smile passed across his face.

"Oh! I hope you will," said Herbert; "we shall be so delighted: but, father, do not exert yourself too soon."

"It will do me good, I think."

"I am sure it will, if the fatigue be not too much."

"The truth is, Herbert, I have allowed this feeling to grow upon me till I have become weak under it. I know that I ought to make an exertion to throw it off, and it is possible that I may succeed."

Herbert muttered some few hopeful words, but he found it very difficult to know what he ought to say. That his father had some secret he was quite sure; and it is hard to talk to a man about his secret, without knowing what that secret is.

"I have allowed myself to fall into a weak state," continued Sir Thomas, speaking slowly, "while by proper exertion I might have avoided it."

"You have been very ill, father," said Herbert.

"Yes, I have been ill, very ill, certainly. But I do not know that any doctor could have helped me."

"Father—"

"No, Herbert; do not ask me questions; do not inquire; at any rate, not at present. I will endeavour—now at least I will endeavour—to do my duty. But do not urge me by questions, or appear to notice me if I am infirm."

"But, father,—if we could comfort you?"

"Ah! if you could. But, never mind, I will endeavour to shake off this depression. And, Herbert, comfort your mother; do not let her think much of all this, if it can be helped."

"But how can it be helped?"

"And tell her this: there is a matter that troubles my mind."

"Is it about the property, father?"

"No—yes; it certainly is about the property in one sense."

"Then do not heed it; we shall none of us heed it. Who has so good a right to say so as I?"

"Bless you, my darling boy! But, Herbert, such things must be heeded—more or less, you know: but you may tell your mother this, and perhaps it may comfort her. I have made up my mind to go to London and to see Prendergast; I will explain the whole of this thing to him, and as he bids me so will I act."

This was thought to be satisfactory to a certain extent both by the mother and son. They would have been better pleased had he opened his heart to them and told them everything; but that it was clear he could not bring himself to do. This Mr. Prendergast they had heard was a good man; and in his present state it was better that he should seek counsel of any man than allow his sorrow to feed upon himself alone.

 

 

CHAPTER X. THE RECTOR OF DRUMBARROW AND HIS WIFE.
 

Herbert Fitzgerald, in speaking of the Rev. Æneas Townsend to Lady Clara Desmond, had said that in his opinion the reverend gentleman was a good man, but a bad clergyman. But there were not a few in the county Cork who would have said just the reverse, and declared him to be a bad man, but a good clergyman. There were others, indeed, who knew him well, who would have declared him to be perfect in both respects, and others again who thought him in both respects to be very bad. Amidst these great diversities of opinion I will venture on none of my own, but will attempt to describe him.

In Ireland stanch Protestantism consists too much in a hatred of Papistry—in that rather than in a hatred of those errors against which we Protestants are supposed to protest. Hence the cross—which should, I presume, be the emblem of salvation to us all—creates a feeling of dismay and often of disgust instead of love and reverence; and the very name of a saint savours in Irish Protestant ears of idolatry, although Irish Protestants on every Sunday profess to believe in a communion of such. These are the feelings rather than the opinions of the most Protestant of Irish Protestants, and it is intelligible that they should have been produced by the close vicinity of Roman Catholic worship in the minds of men who are energetic and excitable, but not always discreet or argumentative.

One of such was Mr. Townsend, and few men carried their Protestant fervour further than he did. A cross was to him what a red cloth is supposed to be to a bull; and so averse was he to the intercession of saints, that he always regarded as a wolf in sheep's clothing a certain English clergyman who had written to him a letter dated from the feast of St. Michael and All Angels. On this account Herbert Fitzgerald took upon himself to say that he regarded him as a bad clergyman: whereas, most of his Protestant neighbours looked upon this enthusiasm as his chief excellence.

And this admiration for him induced his friends to overlook what they must have acknowledged to be defects in his character. Though he had a good living—at least, what the laity in speaking of clerical incomes is generally inclined to call a good living, we will say amounting in value to four hundred pounds a year—he was always in debt. This was the more inexcusable as he had no children, and had some small private means.

And nobody knew why he was in debt—in which word nobody he himself must certainly be included. He had no personal expenses of his own; his wife, though she was a very queer woman, as Lady Clara had said, could hardly be called an extravagant woman; there was nothing large or splendid about the way of living at the glebe; anybody who came there, both he and she were willing to feed as long as they chose to stay, and a good many in this way they did feed; but they never invited guests; and as for giving regular fixed dinner-parties, as parish rectors do in England, no such idea ever crossed the brain of either Mr. or Mrs. Townsend.

That they were both charitable all the world admitted; and their admirers professed that hence arose all their difficulties. But their charities were of a most indiscreet kind. Money they rarely had to give, and therefore they would give promises to pay. While their credit with the butcher and baker was good they would give meat and bread; and both these functionaries had by this time learned that, though Mr. Townsend might not be able to pay such bills himself, his friends would do so, sooner or later, if duly pressed. And therefore the larder at Drumbarrow Glebe—that was the name of the parish—was never long empty, and then again it was never long full.

But neither Mr. nor Mrs. Townsend were content to bestow their charities without some other object than that of relieving material wants by their alms. Many infidels, Mr. Townsend argued, had been made believers by the miracle of the loaves and fishes; and therefore it was permissible for him to make use of the same means for drawing over proselytes to the true church. If he could find hungry Papists and convert them into well-fed Protestants by one and the same process, he must be doing a double good, he argued;—could by no possibility be doing an evil.

Such being the character of Mr. Townsend, it will not be thought surprising that he should have his warm admirers and his hot detractors. And they who were inclined to be among the latter were not slow to add up certain little disagreeable eccentricities among the list of his faults,—as young Fitzgerald had done in the matter of the dirty surplices.

Mr. Townsend's most uncompromising foe for many years had been the Rev. Bernard M'Carthy, the parish priest for the same parish of Drumbarrow. Father Bernard, as he was called by his own flock, or Father Barney, as the Protestants in derision were delighted to name him, was much more a man of the world than his Protestant colleague. He did not do half so many absurd things as did Mr. Townsend, and professed to laugh at what he called the Protestant madness of the rector. But he also had been an eager, I may also say, a malicious antagonist. What he called the "souping" system of the Protestant clergyman stank in his nostrils—that system by which, as he stated, the most ignorant of men were to be induced to leave their faith by the hope of soup, or other food. He was as firmly convinced of the inward, heart-destroying iniquity of the parson as the parson was of that of the priest. And so these two men had learned to hate each other. And yet neither of them were bad men.

I do not wish it to be understood that this sort of feeling always prevailed in Irish parishes between the priest and the parson even before the days of the famine. I myself have met a priest at a parson's table, and have known more than one parish in which the Protestant and Roman Catholic clergymen lived together on amicable terms. But such a feeling as that above represented was common, and was by no means held as proof that the parties themselves were quarrelsome or malicious. It was a part of their religious convictions, and who dares to interfere with the religious convictions of a clergyman?

On the day but one after that on which the Castle Richmond ladies had been thrown from their car on the frosty road, Mr. Townsend and Father Bernard were brought together in an amicable way, or in a way that was intended to be amicable, for the first time in their lives. The relief committee for the district in which they both lived was one and the same, and it was of course well that both should act on it. When the matter was first arranged, Father Bernard took the bull by the horns and went there; but Mr. Townsend, hearing this, did not do so. But now that it had become evident that much work, and for a long time, would have to be performed at these committees, it was clear that Mr. Townsend, as a Protestant clergyman, could not remain away without neglecting his duty. And so, after many mental struggles and questions of conscience, the parson agreed to meet the priest.

The point had been very deeply discussed between the rector and his wife. She had given it as her opinion that priest M'Carthy was pitch, pitch itself in its blackest turpitude, and as such could not be touched without defilement. Had not all the Protestant clergymen of Ireland in a body, or, at any rate, all those who were worth anything, who could with truth be called Protestant clergymen, had they not all refused to enter the doors of the National schools because they could not do so without sharing their ministration there with papist priests; with priests of the altar of Baal, as Mrs. Townsend called them? And should they now yield, when, after all, the assistance needed was only for the body—not for the soul?

It may be seen from this that the lady's mind was not in its nature logical; but the extreme absurdity of her arguments, though they did not ultimately have the desired effect, by no means came home to the understanding of her husband. He thought that there was a great deal in what she said, and almost felt that he was yielding to instigations from the evil one; but public opinion was too strong for him; public opinion and the innate kindness of his own heart. He felt that at this