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

Herbert Fitzgerald and Aunt Letty did endeavour to keep up some conversation with Mr. Prendergast; and the Irish famine was, of course, the subject. But this did not go on pleasantly. Mr. Prendergast was desirous of information; but the statements which were made to him one moment by young Fitzgerald were contradicted in the next by his aunt. He would declare that the better educated of the Roman Catholics were prepared to do their duty by their country, whereas Aunt Letty would consider herself bound both by party feeling and religious duty, to prove that the Roman Catholics were bad in everything.

"Oh, Herbert, to hear you say so!" she exclaimed at one time, "it makes me tremble in my shoes. It is dreadful to think that those people should have got such a hold over you."

"I really think that the Roman Catholic priests are liberal in their ideas and moral in their conduct." This was the speech which had made Aunt Letty tremble in her shoes, and it may, therefore, be conceived that Mr. Prendergast did not find himself able to form any firm opinion from the statements then made to him. Instead of doing so, he set them both down as "Wild Irish," whom it would be insane to trust, and of whom it was absurd to make inquiries. It may, however, be possibly the case that Mr. Prendergast himself had his own prejudices as well as Aunt Letty and Herbert Fitzgerald.

On the following morning they were still more mute at breakfast. The time was coming in which Mr. Prendergast was to go to work, and even he, gifted though he was with iron nerves, began to feel somewhat unpleasantly the nature of the task which he had undertaken. Lady Fitzgerald did not appear at all. Indeed, during the whole of breakfast-time and up to the moment at which Mr. Prendergast was summoned, she was sitting with her husband, holding his hand in hers, and looking tenderly but painfully into his face. She so sat with him for above an hour, but he spoke to her no word of this revelation he was about to make. Herbert and the girls, and even Aunt Letty, sat solemn and silent, as though it was known by them all that something dreadful was to be said and done. At last Herbert, who had left the room, returned to it. "My father will see you now, Mr. Prendergast, if you will step up to him," said he; and then he ran to his mother and told her that he should leave the house till dinner-time.

"But if he sends for you, Herbert, should you not be in the way?"

"It is more likely that he should send for you; and, were I to remain here, I should be going into his room when he did not want me." And then he mounted his horse and rode off.

Mr. Prendergast, with serious air and slow steps, and solemn resolve to do what he had to do at any rate with justice, walked away from the dining-room to the baronet's study. The task of an old friend is not always a pleasant one, and Mr. Prendergast felt that it was not so at the present moment. "Be gentle with him," said Aunt Letty, catching hold of his arm as he went through the passage. He merely moved his head twice, in token of assent, and then passed on into the room.

The reader will have learnt by this time, with tolerable accuracy, what was the nature of the revelation which Sir Thomas was called upon to make, and he will be tolerably certain as to the advice which Mr. Prendergast, as an honest man, would give. In that respect there was no difficulty. The laws of meum and tuum are sufficiently clear if a man will open his eyes to look at them. In this case they were altogether clear. These broad acres of Castle Richmond did belong to Sir Thomas—for his life. But after his death they could not belong to his son Herbert. It was a matter which admitted of no doubt. No question as to whether the Molletts would or would not hold their tongue could bear upon it in the least. Justice in this case must be done, even though the heavens should fall. It was sad and piteous. Stern and hard as was the man who pronounced this doom, nevertheless the salt tear collected in his eyes and blinded him as he looked upon the anguish which his judgment had occasioned.

Yes, Herbert must be told that he in the world was nobody; that he must earn his bread, and set about doing so right soon. Who could say that his father's life was worth a twelvemonth's purchase? He must be told that he was nobody in the world, and instructed also to tell her whom he loved, an Earl's daughter, the same tidings; that he was nobody, that he would come to possess no property, and that in the law's eyes did not possess even a name. How would his young heart suffice for the endurance of so terrible a calamity? And those pretty girls, so softly brought up—so tenderly nurtured; it must be explained to them too that they must no longer be proud of their father's lineage and their mother's fame. And that other Fitzgerald must be summoned and told of all this; he on whom they had looked down, whom the young heir had robbed of his love, whom they had cast out from among them as unworthy. Notice must be sent to him that he was the heir to Castle Richmond, that he would reign as the future baronet in those gracious chambers. It was he who could now make a great county lady of the daughter of the countess.

"It will be very soon, very soon," sobbed forth the poor victim. And indeed, to look at him one might say that it would be soon. There were moments when Mr. Prendergast hardly thought that he would live through that frightful day.

But all of which we have yet spoken hardly operated upon the baronet's mind in creating that stupor of sorrow which now weighed him to the earth. It was none of these things that utterly broke him down and crushed him like a mangled reed. He had hardly mind left to remember his children. It was for the wife of his bosom that he sorrowed.

The wife of his bosom! He persisted in so calling her through the whole interview, and, even in his weakness, obliged the strong man before him so to name her also. She was his wife before God, and should be his to the end. Ah! for how short a time was that! "Is she to leave me?" he once said, turning to his friend, with his hands clasped together, praying that some mercy might be shown to his wretchedness. "Is she to leave me?" he repeated, and then sank on his knees upon the floor.

And how was Mr. Prendergast to answer this question? How was he to decide whether or no this man and woman might still live together as husband and wife? Oh, my reader, think of it if you can, and put yourself for a moment in the place of that old family friend! "Tell me, tell me; is she to leave me?" repeated the poor victim of all this misery.

The sternness and justice of the man at last gave way. "No," said he, "that cannot, I should think, be necessary. They cannot demand that." "But you won't desert me?" said Sir Thomas, when this crumb of comfort was handed to him. And he remembered as he spoke, the bloodshot eyes of the miscreant who had dared to tell him that the wife of his bosom might be legally torn from him by the hands of another man. "You won't desert me?" said Sir Thomas; meaning by that, to bind his friend to an obligation that, at any rate, his wife should not be taken from him.

"No," said Mr. Prendergast, "I will not desert you; certainly not that; certainly not that." Just then it was in his heart to promise almost anything that he was asked. Who could have refused such solace as this to a man so terribly overburthened?

But there was another point of view at which Mr. Prendergast had looked from the commencement, but at which he could not get Sir Thomas to look at all. It certainly was necessary that the whole truth in this matter should be made known and declared openly. This fair inheritance must go to the right owner and not to the wrong. Though the affliction on Sir Thomas was very heavy, and would be equally so on all the family, he would not on that account, for the sake of saving him and them from that affliction, be justified in robbing another person of what was legally and actually that other person's property. It was a matter of astonishment to Mr. Prendergast that a conscientious man, as Sir Thomas certainly was, should have been able to look at the matter in any other light; that he should ever have brought himself to have dealings in the matter with Mr. Mollett. Justice in the case was clear, and the truth must be declared. But then they must take good care to find out absolutely what the truth was. Having heard all that Sir Thomas had to say, and having sifted all that he did hear, Mr. Prendergast thoroughly believed, in his heart of hearts, that that wretched miscreant was the actual and true husband of the poor lady whom he would have to see. But it was necessary that this should be proved. Castle Richmond for the family, and all earthly peace of mind for that unfortunate lady and gentleman were not to be given up on the bare word of a scheming scoundrel, for whom no crime would be too black, and no cruelty too monstrous. The proofs must be looked into before anything was done, and they must be looked into before anything was said—to Lady Fitzgerald. We surely may give her that name as yet.

But then, how were they to get at the proofs—at the proofs one way or the other? That Mollett himself had his marriage certificate Sir Thomas declared. That evidence had been brought home to his own mind of the identity of the man—though what was the nature of that evidence he could not now describe—as to that he was quite explicit. Indeed, as I have said above, he almost refused to consider the question as admitting of a doubt. That Mollett was the man to whom his wife had been married he thoroughly believed; and, to tell the truth, Mr. Prendergast was afraid to urge him to look for much comfort in this direction. The whole manner of the man, Mollett, had been such as to show that he himself was sure of his ground. Mr. Prendergast could hardly doubt that he was the man, although he felt himself bound to remark that nothing should be said to Lady Fitzgerald till inquiry had been made. Mr. Mollett himself would be at Castle Richmond on the next day but one, in accordance with the appointment made by himself; and, if necessary, he could be kept in custody till he had been identified as being the man, or as not being the man, who had married Miss Wainwright.

"There is nobody living with you now who knew Lady Fitzgerald at—?" asked Mr. Prendergast.

"Yes," said Sir Thomas, "there is one maid servant." And then he explained how Mrs. Jones had lived with his wife before her first marriage, during those few months in which she had been called Mrs. Talbot, and from that day even up to the present hour.

"Then she must have known this man," said Mr. Prendergast.

But Sir Thomas was not in a frame of mind at all suited to the sifting of evidence. He did not care to say anything about Mrs. Jones; he got no crumb of comfort out of that view of the matter. Things had come out, unwittingly for the most part, in his conversations with Mollett, which made him quite certain as to the truth of the main part of the story. All those Dorsetshire localities were well known to the man, the bearings of the house, the circumstances of Mr. Wainwright's parsonage, the whole history of those months; so that on this subject Sir Thomas had no doubt; and we may as well know at once that there was no room for doubt. Our friend of the Kanturk Hotel, South Main Street, Cork, was the man who, thirty years before, had married the child-daughter of the Dorsetshire parson.

Mr. Prendergast, however, stood awhile before the fire balancing the evidence. "The woman must have known him," he said to himself, "and surely she could tell us whether he be like the