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

"Besides the navvies only go if they like it," said the parish priest.

"And these men need not go unless they like it," said Mr. Somers. "Only with this proviso, that if they cannot manage for themselves they must fall into our way of managing for them."

"What I say, is this," said Mr. O'Leary. "Let 'em manage for 'emselves. God bless my sowl! Why we shall be skinned alive if we have to pay all this money back to Government. If Government chooses to squander thousands in this way, Government should bear the brunt. That's what I say." Eventually, Government, that is the whole nation, did bear the brunt. But it would not have been very wise to promise this at the time.

"But we need hardly debate all that at the present moment," said Mr. Somers. "That matter of the roads has already been decided for us, and we can't alter it if we would."

"Then we may as well shut up shop," said Mr. O'Leary.

"It's all very aisy to talk in that way," said Father Columb; "but the Government, as you call it, can't make men work. It can't force eight millions of the finest pisantry on God's earth—," and Father Columb was, by degrees, pushing away the seat from under him, when he was cruelly and ruthlessly stopped by his own parish priest.

"I beg your pardon for a moment, Creagh," said he; "but perhaps we are getting a little out of the track. What Mr. Somers says is very true. If these men won't work on the road—and I don't think they will—the responsibility is not on us. That matter has been decided for us."

"Men will sooner work anywhere than starve," said Mr. Townsend.

"Some men will," said Father Columb, with a great deal of meaning in his tone. What he intended to convey was this—that Protestants, no doubt, would do so, under the dominion of the flesh; but that Roman Catholics, being under the dominion of the Spirit, would perish first.

"At any rate we must try," said Father M'Carthy.

"Exactly," said Mr. Somers; "and what we have now to do is to see how we may best enable these workers to live on their wages, and how those others are to live, who, when all is done, will get no wages."

"I think we had better turn shopkeepers ourselves, and open stores for them everywhere," said Herbert. "That is what we are doing already at Berryhill."

"And import our own corn," said the parson.

"And where are we to get the money?" said the priest.

"And why are we to ruin the merchants?" said O'Leary, whose brother was in the flour-trade, in Cork.

"And shut up all the small shopkeepers," said Father Columb, whose mother was established in that line in the neighbourhood of Castleisland.

"We could not do it," said Somers. "The demand upon us would be so great, that we should certainly break down. And then where would we be?"

"But for a time, Somers," pleaded Herbert.

"For a time we may do something in that way, till other means present themselves. But we must refuse all out-door relief. They who cannot or do not bring money must go into the workhouses."

"You will not get houses in county Cork sufficient to hold them," said Father Bernard. And so the debate went on, not altogether without some sparks of wisdom, with many sparks also of eager benevolence, and some few passing clouds of fuliginous self-interest. And then lists were produced, with the names on them of all who were supposed to be in want—which were about to become, before long, lists of the whole population of the country. And at last it was decided among them, that in their district nothing should be absolutely given away, except to old women and widows,—which kindhearted clause was speedily neutralised by women becoming widows while their husbands were still living; and it was decided also, that as long as their money lasted, the soup-kitchen at Berryhill should be kept open, and mill kept going, and the little shop maintained, so that to some extent a check might be maintained on the prices of the hucksters. And in this way they got through their work, not perhaps with the sagacity of Solomon, but as I have said, with an average amount of wisdom, as will always be the case when men set about their tasks with true hearts and honest minds.

And then, when they parted, the two clergymen of the parish shook hands with each other again, having perhaps less animosity against each other than they had ever felt before. There had been a joke or two over the table, at which both had laughed. The priest had wisely shown some deference to the parson, and the parson had immediately returned it, by referring some question to the priest. How often does it not happen that when we come across those whom we have hated and avoided all our lives, we find that they are not quite so bad as we had thought? That old gentleman of whom we wot is never so black as he has been painted.

The work of the committee took them nearly the whole day, so that they did not separate till it was nearly dark. When they did so, Somers and Herbert Fitzgerald rode home together.

"I always live in mortal fear," said Herbert, "that Townsend and the priests will break out into warfare."

"As they haven't done it yet, they won't do it now," said Somers. "M'Carthy is not without sense, and Townsend, queer and intolerant as he is, has good feeling. If he and Father Columb were left together, I don't know what might happen. Mr. Prendergast is to be with you the day after to-morrow, is he not?"

"So I understood my father to say."

"Will you let me give you a bit of advice, Herbert?"

"Certainly."

"Then don't be in the house much on the day after he comes. He'll arrive, probably, to dinner."

"I suppose he will."

"If so, leave Castle Richmond after breakfast the next morning, and do not return till near dinner-time. It may be that your father will not wish you to be near him. Whatever this matter may be, you may be sure that you will know it before Mr. Prendergast leaves the country. I am very glad that he is coming."

Herbert promised that he would take this advice, and he thought himself that among other things he might go over to inspect that Clady boiler, and of course call at Desmond Court on his way. And then, when they got near to Castle Richmond they parted company, Mr. Somers stopping at his own place, and Herbert riding home alone.

On the day named by Herbert, and only an hour before dinner, Mr. Prendergast did arrive at Castle Richmond. The Great Southern and Western Railway was not then open as far as Mallow, and the journey from Dublin was long and tedious. "I'll see him of course," said Sir Thomas to Lady Fitzgerald; "but I'll put off this business till to-morrow." This he said in a tone of distress and agony, which showed too plainly how he dreaded the work which he had before him. "But you'll come in to dinner," Lady Fitzgerald had said. "No," he answered, "not to-day, love; I have to think about this." And he put his hand up to his head, as though this thinking about it had already been too much for him.

Mr. Prendergast was a man over sixty years of age, being, in fact, considerably senior to Sir Thomas himself. But no one would have dreamed of calling Mr. Prendergast an old man. He was short of stature, well made, and in good proportion; he was wiry, strong, and almost robust. He walked as though in putting his foot to the earth he always wished to proclaim that he was afraid of no man and no thing. His hair was grizzled, and his whiskers were grey, and round about his mouth his face was wrinkled; but with him even these things hardly seemed to be signs of old age. He was said by many who knew him to be a stern man, and there was that in his face which seemed to warrant such a character. But he had also the reputation of being a very just man; and those who knew him best could tell tales of him which proved that his sternness was at any rate compatible with a wide benevolence. He was a man who himself had known but little mental suffering, and who owned no mental weakness; and it might be, therefore, that he was impatient of such weakness in others. To chance acquaintances his manners were not soft, or perhaps palatable; but to his old friends his very brusqueness was pleasing. He was a bachelor, well off in the world, and, to a certain extent, fond of society. He was a solicitor by profession, having his office somewhere in the purlieus of Lincoln's Inn, and living in an old-fashioned house not far distant from that classic spot. I have said that he owned no mental weakness. When I say further that he was slightly afflicted with personal vanity, and thought a good deal about the set of his hair, the shape of his coat, the fit of his boots, the whiteness of his hands, and the external trim of his umbrella, perhaps I may be considered to have contradicted myself. But such was the case. He was a handsome man too, with clear, bright, gray eyes, a well-defined nose, and expressive mouth—of which the lips, however, were somewhat too thin. No man with thin lips ever seems to me to be genially human at all points.

Such was Mr. Prendergast; and my readers will, I trust, feel for Sir Thomas, and pity him, in that he was about to place his wounds in the hands of so ruthless a surgeon. But a surgeon, to be of use, should be ruthless in one sense. He should have the power of cutting and cauterizing, of phlebotomy and bone-handling without effect on his own nerves. This power Mr. Prendergast possessed, and therefore it may be said that Sir Thomas had chosen his surgeon judiciously. None of the Castle Richmond family, except Sir Thomas himself, had ever seen this gentleman, nor had Sir Thomas often come across him of late years. But he was what we in England call an old family friend; and I doubt whether we in England have any more valuable English characteristic than that of having old family friends. Old family feuds are not common with us now-a-days—not so common as with some other people. Sons who now hated their father's enemies would have but a bad chance before a commission of lunacy; but an old family friend is supposed to stick to one from generation to generation.

On his arrival at Castle Richmond he was taken in to Sir Thomas before dinner. "You find me but in a poor state," said Sir Thomas, shaking in his fear of what was before him, as the poor wretch does before an iron-wristed dentist who is about to operate. "You will be better soon," Mr. Prendergast had said, as a man always does say under such circumstances. What other remark was possible to him? "Sir Thomas thinks that he had better not trouble you with business to-night," said Lady Fitzgerald. To this also Mr. Prendergast agreed willingly. "We shall both of us be fresher to-morrow, after breakfast," he remarked, as if any time made any difference to him,—as though he were not always fresh, and ready for any work that might turn up.

That evening was not passed very pleasantly by the family at Castle Richmond. To all of them Mr. Prendergast was absolutely a stranger, and was hardly the man to ingratiate himself with strangers at the first interview. And then, too, they were all somewhat afraid of him. He had come down thither on some business which was to them altogether mysterious, and, as far as they knew, he, and he alone, was to be intrusted with the mystery. He of course said nothing to them on the subject, but he looked in their eyes as though he were conscious of being replete with secret importance; and on this very account they were afraid of him. And then poor Lady Fitzgerald, though she bore up against the weight of her misery better than did her husband, was herself very wretched. She could not bring herself to believe that all this would end in nothing; that Mr. Prendergast would put everything right, and that after his departure they would go on as happily as ever. This was the doctrine of the younger part of the family, who would not think that anything was radically wrong. But Lady Fitzgerald had always at her heart the memory of her early marriage troubles, and she feared greatly, though she feared she knew not