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

"Then you may take away, Biddy; I've done with it. But it's a thousand pities such a fish should have been so wasted."

The female heart of Mrs. Townsend could stand these wrongs no longer, and with a tear in one corner of her eye, and a gleam of anger in the other, she at length thus spoke out. "I am sure then I don't know what you will eat, Mr. Carter, and I did think that all you English clergymen always ate fish in Lent,—and indeed nothing else; for indeed people do say that you are much the same as the papists in that respect."

"Hush, my dear!" said Mr. Townsend.

"Well, but I can't hush when there's nothing for the gentleman to eat."

"My dear madam, such a matter does not signify in the least," said Mr. Carter, not unbending an inch.

"But it does signify; it signifies a great deal; and so you'd know if you were a family man;"—"as you ought to be," Mrs. Townsend would have been delighted to add. "And I'm sure I sent Jerry five miles, and he was gone four hours to get that bit of fish from Paddy Magrath, as he stops always at Ballygibblin Gate; and indeed I thought myself so lucky, for I only gave Jerry one and sixpence. But they had an uncommon take of fish yesterday at Skibbereen, and—"

"One and sixpence!" said Mr. Carter, now slightly relaxing his brow for the first time.

"I'd have got it for one and three," said Mr. Townsend, upon whose mind an inkling of the truth was beginning to dawn.

"Indeed and you wouldn't, Æneas; and Jerry was forced to promise the man a glass of whisky the first time he comes this road, which he does sometimes. That fish weighed over nine pounds, every ounce of it."

"Nine fiddlesticks," said Mr. Townsend.

"I weighed it myself, Æneas, with my own hands, and it was nine pounds four ounces before we were obliged to cut it, and as firm as a rock the flesh was."

"For one and sixpence!" said Mr. Carter, relaxing still a little further, and condescending to look his hostess in the face.

"Yes, for one and six; and now—"

"I'm sure I'd have bought it for one and four, fins and all," said the parson, determined to interrupt his wife in her pathos.

"I'm sure you would not then," said his wife, taking his assertion in earnest. "You could never market against Jerry in your life; I will say that for him."

"If you'll allow me to change my mind, I think I will have a little bit of it," said Mr. Carter, almost humbly.

"By all means," said Mr. Townsend. "Biddy, bring that fish back. Now I think of it, I have not half dined myself yet."

And then they all three forgot their ill humours, and enjoyed their dinner thoroughly,—in spite of the acknowledged fault as touching the lost fins of the animal.

I have said that Lord Desmond rode home from Hap House that day in a quieter mood and at a slower pace than that which had brought him thither; and in truth it was so. He had things to think of now much more serious than any that had filled his mind as he had cantered along, joyously hoping that after all he might have for his brother the man that he loved, and the owner of Castle Richmond also. This was now impossible; but he felt that he loved Owen better than ever he had done, and he was pledged to fight Owen's battle, let Owen be ever so poor.

"And what does it signify after all?" he said to himself, as he rode along. "We shall all be poor together, and then we sha'n't mind it so much; and if I don't marry, Hap House itself will be something to add to the property;" and then he made up his mind that he could be happy enough, living at Desmond Court all his life, so long as he could have Owen Fitzgerald near him to make life palatable.

That night he spoke to no one on the subject, at least to no one of his own accord. When they were alone his mother asked him where he had been; and when she learned that he had been at Hap House, she questioned him much as to what had passed between him and Owen; but he would tell her nothing, merely saying that Owen had spoken of Clara with his usual ecstasy of love, but declining to go into the subject at any length. The countess, however, gathered from him that he and Owen were on kindly terms together, and so far she felt satisfied.

On the following morning he made up his mind "to have it out," as he called it, with Clara; but when the hour came his courage failed him: it was a difficult task—that which he was now to undertake—of explaining to her his wish that she should go back to her old lover, not because he was no longer poor, but, as it were in spite of his poverty, and as a reward to him for consenting to remain poor. As he had thought about it while riding home, it had seemed feasible enough. He would tell her how nobly Owen was going to behave to Herbert, and would put it to her whether, as he intended willingly to abandon the estate, he ought not to be put into possession of the wife. There was a romantic justice about this which he thought would touch Clara's heart. But on the following morning when he came to think what words he would use for making his little proposition, the picture did not seem to him to be so beautiful. If Clara really loved Herbert—and she had declared that she did twenty times over—it would be absurd to expect her to give him up merely because he was not a ruined man. But then, which did she love? His mother declared that she loved Owen. "That's the real question," said the earl to himself, as on the second morning he made up his mind that he would "have it out" with Clara without any further delay. He must be true to Owen; that was his first great duty at the present moment.

"Clara, I want to talk to you," he said, breaking suddenly into the room where she usually sat alone o' mornings. "I was at Hap House the day before yesterday with Owen Fitzgerald, and to tell you the truth at once, we were talking about you the whole time we were there. And now what I want is, that something should be settled, so that we may all understand one another."

These words he spoke to her quite abruptly. When he first said that he wished to speak to her, she had got up from her chair to welcome him, for she dearly loved to have him there. There was nothing she liked better than having him to herself when he was in a soft brotherly humour; and then she would interest herself about his horse, and his dogs, and his gun, and predict his life for him, sending him up as a peer to Parliament, and giving him a noble wife, and promising him that he should be such a Desmond as would redeem all the family from their distresses. But now as he rapidly brought out his words, she found that on this day her prophecies must regard herself chiefly.

"Surely, Patrick, it is easy enough to understand me," she said.

"Well, I don't know; I don't in the least mean to find fault with you."

"I am glad of that, dearest," she said, laying her hand upon his arm.

"But my mother says one thing, and you another, and Owen another; and I myself, I hardly know what to say."

"Look here, Patrick, it is simply this: I became engaged to Herbert with my mother's sanction and yours; and now—"

"Stop a moment," said the impetuous boy, "and do not pledge yourself to anything till you have heard me. I know that you are cut to the heart about Herbert Fitzgerald losing his property."

"No, indeed; not at all cut to the heart; that is as regards myself."

"I don't mean as regards yourself; I mean as regards him. I have heard you say over and over again that it is a piteous thing that he should be so treated. Have I not?"

"Yes, I have said that, and I think so."

"And I think that most of your great—great—great love for him, if you will, comes from that sort of feeling."

"But, Patrick, it came long before."

"Dear Clara, do listen to me, will you? You may at any rate do as much as that for me." And then Clara stood perfectly mute, looking into his handsome face as he continued to rattle out his words at her.

"Now if you please, Clara, you may have the means of giving back to him all his property, every shilling that he ever had, or expected to have. Owen Fitzgerald,—who certainly is the finest fellow that ever I came across in all my life, or ever shall, if I live to five hundred,—says that he will make over every acre of Castle Richmond back to his cousin Herbert if—" Oh, my lord, my lord, what a scheme is this you are concocting to entrap your sister! Owen Fitzgerald inserted no "if," as you are well aware! "If," he continued, with some little qualm of conscience, "if you will consent to be his wife."

"Patrick!"

"Listen, now listen. He thinks, and, Clara, by the heavens above me! I think also that you did love him better than you ever loved Herbert Fitzgerald." Clara as she heard these words blushed ruby red up to her very hair, but she said never a word. "And I think, and he thinks, that you are bound now to Herbert by his misfortunes—that you feel that you cannot desert him because he has fallen so low. By George, Clara, I am proud of you for sticking to him through thick and thin, now that he is down! But the matter will be very difficult if you have the means of giving back to him all that he has lost, as you have. Owen will be poor, but he is a prince among men. By heaven, Clara, if you will only say that he is your choice, Herbert shall have back all Castle Richmond! and I—I shall never marry, and you may give to the man that I love as my brother all that there is left to us of Desmond."

There was something grand about the lad's eager tone of voice as he made his wild proposal, and something grand also about his heart. He meant what he said, foolish as he was either to mean or to say it. Clara burst into tears, and threw herself into his arms. "You don't understand," she said, through her sobs, "my own, own brother; you do not understand."

"But, by Jove! I think I do understand. As sure as you are a living girl he will give back Castle Richmond to Herbert Fitzgerald."

She recovered herself, and leaving her brother's arms, walked away to the window, and from thence looked down to that path beneath the elms which was the spot in the world which she thought of the oftenest; but as she gazed, there was no lack of loyalty in her heart to the man to whom she was betrothed. It seemed to her as though those childish days had been in another life; as though Owen had been her lover in another world,—a sweet, childish, innocent, happy world which she remembered well, but which was now dissevered from her by an impassable gulf. She thought of his few words of love,—so few that she remembered every word that he had then spoken, and thought of them with a singular mixture of pain and pleasure. And now she heard of his noble self-denial with a thrill which was in no degree enhanced by the fact that she, or even Herbert, was to be the gainer by it. She rejoiced at his nobility, merely because it was a joy to her to know that he was so noble. And yet all through this she was true to Herbert. Another work-a-day world had come upon her in her womanhood, and as that came she had learned to love a man of another stamp, with a love that was quieter, more subdued, and perhaps, as she thought, more enduring. Whatever might be Herbert's lot in life, that lot she would share. Her love for Owen should never be more to her than a dream.

"Did he send you to me?" she said at last, without turning her face away from the window.

"Yes, then, he did; he did send me to you, and he told me to