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

I throw away from me, because I feel that they should be yours; and I ask only in return the love of a young girl. I ask that because I feel that it should be mine. If it has gone from me—which I do not believe—it has been filched and stolen by a thief in the night. She did love me, if a girl ever loved a man; but she was separated from me, and I bore that patiently because I trusted her. But she was young and weak, and her mother was strong and crafty. She has accepted you at her mother's instance; and were I base enough to keep from you your father's inheritance, her mother would no more give her to you now than she would to me then. This is true; and if you know it to be true—as you do know, you will be mean, and dastard, and a coward—you will be no Fitzgerald if you keep from me that which I have a right to claim as my own. Not fight! Ay, but you must fight. We cannot both live here in this country if Clara Desmond become your wife. Mark my words, if that take place, you and I cannot live here alongside of each other's houses." He paused for a moment after this, and then added, "You can go now if you will, for I have said out my say."

And Herbert did go,—almost without uttering a word of adieu. What could he say in answer to such threats as these? That his cousin was in every way unreasonable,—as unreasonable in his generosity as he was in his claims, he felt convinced. But an unreasonable man, though he is one whom one would fain conquer by arguments were it possible, is the very man on whom arguments have no avail. A madman is mad because he is mad. Herbert had a great deal that was very sensible to allege in favour of his views, but what use of alleging anything of sense to such a mind as that of Owen Fitzgerald? So he went his way without further speech.

When he was gone, Owen for a time went on walking his room, and then sank again into his chair. Abominably irrational as his method of arranging all these family difficulties will no doubt seem to all who may read of it, to him it had appeared not only an easy but a happy mode of bringing back contentment to everybody. He was quite serious in his intention of giving up his position as heir to Castle Richmond. Mr. Prendergast had explained to him that the property was entailed as far as him, but no farther; and had done this, doubtless, with the view, not then expressed, to some friendly arrangement by which a small portion of the property might be saved and restored to the children of Sir Thomas. But Owen had looked at it quite in another light. He had, in justice, no right to inquire into all those circumstances of his old cousin's marriage. Such a union was a marriage in the eye of God, and should be held as such by him. He would take no advantage of so terrible an accident.

He would take no advantage. So he said to himself over and over again; but yet, as he said it, he resolved that he would take advantage. He would not touch the estate; but surely if he abstained from touching it, Herbert would be generous enough to leave to him the solace of his love! And he had no scruple in allotting to Clara the poorer husband instead of the richer. He was no poorer now than when she had accepted him. Looking at it in that light, had he not a right to claim that she should abide by her first acceptance? Could any one be found to justify the theory that a girl may throw over a poor lover because a rich lover comes in the way? Owen had his own ideas of right and wrong—ideas which were not without a basis of strong, rugged justice; and nothing could be more antagonistic to them than such a doctrine as this. And then he still believed in his heart that he was dearer to Clara than that other richer suitor. He heard of her from time to time, and those who had spoken to him had spoken of her as pining for love of him. In this there had been much of the flattery of servants, and something of the subservience of those about him who wished to stand well in his graces. But he had believed it. He was not a conceited man, nor even a vain man. He did not think himself more clever than his cousin; and as for personal appearance, it was a matter to which his thoughts never descended; but he had about him a self-dependence and assurance in his own manhood, which forbade him to doubt the love of one who had told him that she loved him.

And he did not believe in Herbert's love. His cousin was, as he thought, of a calibre too cold for love. That Clara was valued by him, Owen did not doubt—valued for her beauty, for her rank, for her grace and peerless manner; but what had such value as that to do with love? Would Herbert sacrifice everything for Clara Desmond? would he bid Pelion fall on Ossa? would he drink up Esil? All this would Owen do, and more; he would do more than any Laertes had ever dreamed. He would give up for now and for ever all title to those rich lands which made the Fitzgeralds of Castle Richmond the men of greatest mark in all their county.

And thus he fanned himself into a fury as he thought of his cousin's want of generosity. Herbert would be the heir, and because he was the heir he would be the favoured lover. But there might yet be time and opportunity; and at any rate Clara should not marry without knowing what was the whole truth. Herbert was ungenerous, but Clara still might be just. If not,—then, as he had said before, he would fight out the battle to the end as with an enemy.

Herbert, when he got on to his horse to ride home, was forced to acknowledge to himself that no good whatever had come from his visit to Hap House. Words had been spoken which might have been much better left unspoken. An angry man will often cling to his anger because his anger has been spoken; he will do evil because he has threatened evil, and is ashamed to be better than his words. And there was no comfort to be derived from those lavish promises made by Owen with regard to the property. To Herbert's mind they were mere moonshine—very graceful on the part of the maker, but meaning nothing. No one could have Castle Richmond but him who owned it legally. Owen Fitzgerald would become Sir Owen, and would, as a matter of course, be Sir Owen of Castle Richmond. There was no comfort on that score; and then, on that other score, there was so much discomfort. Of giving up his bride Herbert never for a moment thought; but he did think, with increasing annoyance, of the angry threats which had been pronounced against him.

When he rode into the stable-yard as was his wont, he found Richard waiting for him. This was not customary; as in these latter days Richard, though he always drove the car, as a sort of subsidiary coachman to the young ladies to whom the car was supposed to belong in fee, did not act as general groom. He had been promoted beyond this, and was a sort of hanger-on about the house, half indoor servant and half out, doing very much what he liked, and giving advice to everybody, from the cook downwards. He thanked God that he knew his place, he would often say; but nobody else knew it. Nevertheless everybody liked him; even the poor housemaid whom he snubbed.

"Is anything the matter?" asked Herbert, looking at the man's sorrow-laden face.

"'Deed an' there is, Mr. Herbert; Sir Thomas is—"

"My father is not dead!" exclaimed Herbert.

"Oh no, Mr. Herbert; it's not so bad as that; but he is very failing,—very failing. My lady is with him now."

Herbert ran into the house, and at the bottom of the chief stairs he met one of his sisters who had heard the steps of his horse. "Oh, Herbert, I am so glad you have come!" said she. Her eyes and cheeks were red with tears, and her hand, as her brother took it, was cold and numbed.

"What is it, Mary? is he worse?"

"Oh, so much worse. Mamma and Emmeline are there. He has asked for you three or four times, and always says that he is dying. I had better go up and say that you are here."

"And what does my mother think of it?"

"She has never left him, and therefore I cannot tell; but I know from her face that she thinks that he is—dying. Shall I go up, Herbert?" and so she went, and Herbert, following softly on his toes, stood in the corridor outside the bedroom-door, waiting till his arrival should have been announced. It was but a minute, and then his sister, returning to the door, summoned him to enter.

The room had been nearly darkened, but as there were no curtains to the bed, Herbert could see his mother's face as she knelt on a stool at the bedside. His father was turned away from him, and lay with his hand inside his wife's, and Emmeline was sitting on the foot of the bed, with her face between her hands, striving to stifle her sobs. "Here is Herbert now, dearest," said Lady Fitzgerald, with a low, soft voice, almost a whisper, yet clear enough to cause no effort in the hearing. "I knew that he would not be long." And Herbert, obeying the signal of his mother's eye, passed round to the other side of the bed.

"Father," said he, "are you not so well to-day?"

"My poor boy, my poor ruined boy!" said the dying man, hardly articulating the words as he dropped his wife's hand and took that of his son. Herbert found that it was wet, and clammy, and cold, and almost powerless in its feeble grasp.

"Dearest father, you are wrong if you let that trouble you; all that will never trouble me. Is it not well that a man should earn his own bread? Is it not the lot of all good men?" But still the old man murmured with his broken voice, "My poor boy, my poor boy!"

The hopes and aspirations of his eldest son are as the breath of his nostrils to an Englishman who has been born to land and fortune. What had not this poor man endured in order that his son might be Sir Herbert Fitzgerald of Castle Richmond? But this was no longer possible; and from the moment that this had been brought home to him, the father had felt that for him there was nothing left but to die. "My poor boy," he muttered, "tell me that you have forgiven me."

And then they all knelt round the bed and prayed with him; and afterwards they tried to comfort him, telling him how good he had been to them; and his wife whispered in his ear that if there had been fault, the fault was hers, but that her conscience told her that such fault had been forgiven; and while she said this she motioned the children away from him, and strove to make him understand that human misery could never kill the soul, and should never utterly depress the spirit. "Dearest love," she said, still whispering to him in her low, sweet voice—so dear to him, but utterly inaudible beyond—"if you would cease to accuse yourself so bitterly, you might yet be better, and remain with us to comfort us."

But the slender, half-knit man, whose arms are without muscles and whose back is without pith, will strive in vain to lift the weight which the brawny vigour of another tosses from the ground almost without an effort. It is with the mind and the spirit as with the body; only this, that the muscles of the body can be measured, but not so those of the spirit. Lady Fitzgerald was made of other stuff than Sir Thomas; and that which to her had cost an effort, but with an effort had been done surely, was to him as impossible as the labour of Hercules. "My poor boy, my poor ruined boy!" he still muttered, as she strove to comfort him.

"Mamma has sent for Mr. Townsend," Emmeline whispered to her brother, as they stood together in the bow of the window.

"And