THE FITZGERALDS OF CASTLE RICHMOND.
What idea of carrying out his plans may have been prevalent in
Fitzgerald's mind when he was so defiant of the countess, it may be
difficult to say. Probably he had no idea, but felt at the spur of
the moment that it would be weak to yield. The consequence was, that
when Lady Desmond left Hap House, he was obliged to consider himself
as being at feud with the family.
The young lord he did see once again during the holidays, and even
entertained him at Hap House; but the earl's pride would not give way
an inch.
"Much as I like you, Owen, I cannot do anything but oppose it. It
would be a bad match for my sister, and so you'd feel if you were in
my place." And then Lord Desmond went back to Eton.
After that they none of them met for many months. During this time
life went on in a very triste manner at Desmond Court. Lady Desmond
felt that she had done her duty by her daughter; but her tenderness
to Clara was not increased by the fact that her foolish attachment
had driven Fitzgerald from the place. As for Clara herself, she
not only kept her word, but rigidly resolved to keep it. Twice she
returned unopened, and without a word of notice, letters which Owen
had caused to be conveyed to her hand. It was not that she had ceased
to love him, but she had high ideas of truth and honour, and would
not break her word. Perhaps she was sustained in her misery by the
remembrance that heroines are always miserable.
And then the orgies at Hap House became hotter and faster. Hitherto
there had perhaps been more smoke than fire, more calumny than sin.
And Fitzgerald, when he had intimated that the presence of a young
wife would save him from it all, had not boasted falsely. But now
that his friends had turned their backs upon him, that he was
banished from Desmond Court, and twitted with his iniquities at
Castle Richmond, he threw off all restraint, and endeavoured to enjoy
himself in his own way. So the orgies became fast and furious; all
which of course reached the ears of poor Clara Desmond.
During the summer holidays, Lord Desmond was not at home, but Owen
Fitzgerald was also away. He had gone abroad, perhaps with the
conviction that it would be well that he and the Desmonds should not
meet; and he remained abroad till the hunting season again commenced.
Then the winter came again, and he and Lord Desmond used to meet in
the field. There they would exchange courtesies, and, to a certain
degree, show that they were intimate. But all the world knew that the
old friendship was over. And, indeed, all the world--all the county
Cork world--soon knew the reason. And so we are brought down to the
period at which our story was to begin.
We have hitherto said little or nothing of Castle Richmond and its
inhabitants; but it is now time that we should do so, and we will
begin with the heir of the family. At the period of which we are
speaking, Herbert Fitzgerald had just returned from Oxford, having
completed his affairs there in a manner very much to the satisfaction
of his father, mother, and sisters; and to the unqualified admiration
of his aunt, Miss Letty. I am not aware that the heads of colleges,
and supreme synod of Dons had signified by any general expression of
sentiment, that Herbert Fitzgerald had so conducted himself as to
be a standing honour and perpetual glory to the University; but at
Castle Richmond it was all the same as though they had done so. There
are some kindly-hearted, soft-minded parents, in whose estimation
not to have fallen into disgrace shows the highest merit on the part
of their children. Herbert had not been rusticated; had not got
into debt, at least not to an extent that had been offensive to
his father's pocket; he had not been plucked. Indeed, he had taken
honours, in some low unnoticed degree;--unnoticed, that is, at
Oxford; but noticed at Castle Richmond by an ovation--almost by a
triumph.
But Herbert Fitzgerald was a son to gladden a father's heart and a
mother's eye. He was not handsome, as was his cousin Owen; not tall
and stalwart and godlike in his proportions, as was the reveller
of Hap House; but nevertheless, and perhaps not the less, was he
pleasant to look on. He was smaller and darker than his cousin; but
his eyes were bright and full of good humour. He was clean looking
and clean made; pleasant and courteous in all his habits; attached
to books in a moderate, easy way, but no bookworm; he had a gentle
affection for bindings and title-pages; was fond of pictures, of
which it might be probable that he would some day know more than
he did at present; addicted to Gothic architecture, and already
proprietor of the germ of what was to be a collection of coins.
Owen Fitzgerald had called him a prig; but Herbert was no prig. Nor
yet was he a pedant; which word might, perhaps, more nearly have
expressed his cousin's meaning. He liked little bits of learning,
the easy outsides and tags of classical acquirements, which come so
easily within the scope of the memory when a man has passed some ten
years between a public school and a university. But though he did
love to chew the cud of these morsels of Attic grass which he had
cropped, certainly without any great or sustained effort, he had no
desire to be ostentatious in doing so, or to show off more than he
knew. Indeed, now that he was away from his college friends, he was
rather ashamed of himself than otherwise when scraps of quotations
would break forth from him in his own despite. Looking at his true
character, it was certainly unjust to call him either a prig or a
pedant.
He was fond of the society of ladies, and was a great favourite with
his sisters, who thought that every girl who saw him must instantly
fall in love with him. He was goodnatured, and, as the only son of a
rich man, was generally well provided with money. Such a brother is
usually a favourite with his sisters. He was a great favourite too
with his aunt, whose heart, however, was daily sinking into her shoes
through the effect of one great terror which harassed her respecting
him. She feared that he had become a Puseyite. Now that means much
with some ladies in England; but with most ladies of the Protestant
religion in Ireland, it means, one may almost say, the very Father of
Mischief himself. In their minds, the pope, with his lady of Babylon,
his college of cardinals, and all his community of pinchbeck saints,
holds a sort of second head-quarters of his own at Oxford. And there
his high priest is supposed to be one wicked infamous Pusey, and his
worshippers are wicked infamous Puseyites. Now, Miss Letty Fitzgerald
was strong on this subject, and little inklings had fallen from her
nephew which robbed her of much of her peace of mind.
It is impossible that these volumes should be graced by any hero,
for the story does not admit of one. But if there were to be a hero,
Herbert Fitzgerald would be the man.
Sir Thomas Fitzgerald at this period was an old man in appearance,
though by no means an old man in years, being hardly more than fifty.
Why he should have withered away as it were into premature grayness,
and loss of the muscle and energy of life, none knew; unless, indeed,
his wife did know. But so it was. He had, one may say, all that a
kind fortune could give him. He had a wife who was devoted to him; he
had a son on whom he doted, and of whom all men said all good things;
he had two sweet, happy daughters; he had a pleasant house, a fine
estate, position and rank in the world. Had it so pleased him, he
might have sat in Parliament without any of the trouble, and with
very little of the expense, which usually attends aspirants for that
honour. And, as it was, he might hope to see his son in Parliament
within a year or two. For among other possessions of the Fitzgerald
family was the land on which stands the borough of Kilcommon, a
borough to which the old Reform Bill was merciful, as it was to so
many others in the south of Ireland.
Why, then, should Sir Thomas Fitzgerald be a silent, melancholy man,
confining himself for the last year or two almost entirely to his own
study; giving up to his steward the care even of his own demesne and
farm; never going to the houses of his friends, and rarely welcoming
them to his; rarely as it was, and never as it would have been, had
he been always allowed to have his own way?
People in the surrounding neighbourhood had begun to say that Sir
Thomas's sorrow had sprung from shortness of cash, and that money was
not so easily to be had at Castle Richmond now-a-days as was the case
some ten years since. If this were so, the dearth of that very useful
article could not have in any degree arisen from extravagance. It
was well known that Sir Thomas's estate was large, being of a value,
according to that public and well-authenticated rent-roll which the
neighbours of a rich man always carry in their heads, amounting to
twelve or fourteen thousand a year. Now Sir Thomas had come into the
unencumbered possession of this at an early age, and had never been
extravagant himself or in his family. His estates were strictly
entailed, and therefore, as he had only a life interest in them,
it of course was necessary that he should save money and insure
his life, to make provision for his daughters. But by a man of his
habits and his property, such a burden as this could hardly have been
accounted any burden at all. That he did, however, in this mental
privacy of his carry some heavy burden, was made plain enough to all
who knew him.
And Lady Fitzgerald was in many things a counterpart of her husband,
not in health so much as in spirits. She, also, was old for her age,
and woebegone, not only in appearance, but also in the inner workings
of her heart. But then it was known of her that she had undergone
deep sorrows in her early youth, which had left their mark upon her
brow, and their trace upon her inmost thoughts. Sir Thomas had not
been her first husband. When very young, she had been married, or
rather, given in marriage, to a man who in a very few weeks after
that ill-fated union had shown himself to be perfectly unworthy of
her.
Her story, or so much of it as was known to her friends, was this.
Her father had been a clergyman in Dorsetshire, burdened with a small
income, and blessed with a large family. She who afterwards became
Lady Fitzgerald was his eldest child; and, as Miss Wainwright--Mary
Wainwright--had grown up to be the possessor of almost perfect female
loveliness. While she was yet very young, a widower with an only boy,
a man who at that time was considerably less than thirty, had come
into her father's parish, having rented there a small hunting-box.
This gentleman--we will so call him, in lack of some other
term--immediately became possessed of an establishment, at any rate
eminently respectable. He had three hunters, two grooms, and a gig;
and on Sundays went to church with a prayer-book in his hand, and
a black coat on his back. What more could be desired to prove his
respectability?
He had not been there a month before he was intimate in the parson's
house. Before two months had passed he was engaged to the parson's
daughter. Before the full quarter had flown by, he and the parson's
daughter were man and wife; and in five months from the time of his
first appearance in the Dorsetshire parish, he had flown from his
creditors, leaving behind him his three horses, his two grooms, his
gig, his wife, and his little boy.
The Dorsetshire neighbours, and especially the Dorsetshire ladies,
had at first been loud in their envious exclamations as to Miss
Wainwright's luck. The parson and the parson's wife, and poor Mary
Wainwright herself, had, according to the sayings of that moment
prevalent in the county, used most unjustifiable wiles in trapping
this poor rich stranger. Miss Wainwright, as they all declared, had
not clothes to her back when she went to him. The matter had been got
up and managed in most indecent hurry, so as to rob the poor fellow
of any chance of escape. And thus all manner of evil things were
said, in which envy of the bride and pity of the bridegroom were
equally commingled.
But when the sudden news came that Mr. Talbot had bolted, and when
after a week's inquiry no one could tell whither Mr. Talbot had gone,
the objurgations of the neighbours were expressed in a different
tone. Then it was declared that Mr. Wainwright had sacrificed his
beautiful child without making any inquiry as to the character of
the stranger to whom he had so recklessly given her. The pity of the
county fell to the share of the poor beautiful girl, whose welfare
and happiness were absolutely ruined; and the parson was pulled to
pieces for his sordid parsimony in having endeavoured to rid himself
in so disgraceful a manner of the charge of one of his children.
It would be beyond the scope of my story to tell here of the anxious
family councils which were held in that parsonage parlour, during the
time of that daughter's courtship. There had been misgivings as to
the stability of the wooer; there had been an anxious wish not to
lose for the penniless daughter the advantage of a wealthy match;
the poor girl herself had been much cross-questioned as to her own
feelings. But let them have been right, or let them have been wrong
at that parsonage, the matter was settled, very speedily as we have
seen; and Mary Wainwright became Mrs. Talbot when she was still
almost a child.
And then Mr. Talbot bolted; and it became known to the Dorsetshire
world that he had not paid a shilling for rent, or for butcher's meat
for his human family, or for oats for his equine family, during the
whole period of his sojourn at Chevy-chase Lodge. Grand references
had been made to a London banker, which had been answered by
assurances that Mr. Talbot was as good as the Bank of England. But
it turned out that the assurances were forged, and that the letter
of inquiry addressed to the London banker had been intercepted. In
short, it was all ruin, roguery, and wretchedness.
And very wretched they all were, the old father, the young bride, and
all that parsonage household. After much inquiry something at last
was discovered. The man had a sister whose whereabouts was made out;
and she consented to receive the child--on condition that the bairn
should not come to her empty-handed. In order to get rid of this
burden, Mr. Wainwright with great difficulty made up thirty pounds.
And then it was discovered that the man's name was not Talbot.
What it was did not become known in Dorsetshire, for the poor wife
resumed her maiden name--with very little right to do so, as her kind
neighbours observed--till fortune so kindly gave her the privilege of
bearing another honourably before the world.
And then other inquiries, and almost endless search was made with
reference to that miscreant--not quite immediately--for at the moment
of the blow such search seemed to be but of little use; but after
some months, when the first stupor arising from their grief had
passed away, and when they once more began to find that the fields
were still green, and the sun warm, and that God's goodness was not
at an end.
And the search was made not so much with reference to him as to his
fate, for tidings had reached the parsonage that he was no more. The
period was that in which Paris was occupied by the allied forces,
when our general, the Duke of Wellington, was paramount in the French
capital, and the Tuileries and Champs Elysées were swarming with
Englishmen.
Report at the time was brought home that the soi-disant Talbot,
fighting his battles under the name of Chichester, had been seen and
noted in the gambling-houses of Paris; that he had been forcibly
extruded from some such chamber for non-payment of a gambling debt;
that he had made one in a violent fracas which had subsequently taken
place in the French streets; and that his body had afterwards been
identified in the Morgue.
Such was the story which bit by bit reached Mr. Wainwright's ears,
and at last induced him to go over to Paris, so that the absolute and
proof-sustained truth of the matter might be ascertained, and made
known to all men. The poor man's search was difficult and weary. The
ways of Paris were not then so easy to an Englishman as they have
since become, and Mr. Wainwright could not himself speak a word of
French. But nevertheless he did learn much; so much as to justify
him, as he thought, in instructing his daughter to wear a widow's
cap. That Talbot had been kicked out of a gambling-house in the Rue
Richelieu was absolutely proved. An acquaintance who had been with
him in Dorsetshire on his first arrival there had seen this done;
and bore testimony of the fact that the man so treated was the man
who had taken the hunting-lodge in England. This same acquaintance
had been one of the party adverse to Talbot in the row which had
followed, and he could not, therefore, be got to say that he had
seen him dead. But other evidence had gone to show that the man who
had been so extruded was the man who had perished; and the French
lawyer whom Mr. Wainwright had employed, at last assured the poor
broken-hearted clergyman that he might look upon it as proved. "Had
he not been dead," said the lawyer, "the inquiry which has been
made would have traced him out alive." And thus his daughter was
instructed to put on her widow's cap, and her mother again called her
Mrs. Talbot.
Indeed, at that time they hardly knew what to call her, or how to act
in the wisest and most befitting manner. Among those who had truly
felt for them in their misfortunes, who had really pitied them and
encountered them with loving sympathy, the kindest and most valued
friend had been the vicar of a neighbouring parish. He himself was
a widower without children; but living with him at that time, and
reading with him, was a young gentleman whose father was just dead,
a baronet of large property, and an Irishman. This was Sir Thomas
Fitzgerald.
It need not now be told how this young man's sympathies were also
excited, or how sympathy had grown into love. In telling our tale
we fain would not dwell much on the cradledom of our Meleager. The
young widow in her widow's cap grew to be more lovely than she
had ever been before her miscreant husband had seen her. They who
remembered her in those days told wondrous tales of her surprising
loveliness;--how men from London would come down to see her in the
parish church; how she was talked of as the Dorsetshire Venus, only
that unlike Venus she would give a hearing to no man; how sad she was
as well as lovely; and how impossible it was found to win a smile
from her.
But though she could not smile, she could love; and at last she
accepted the love of the young baronet. And then the father, who had
so grossly neglected his duty when he gave her in marriage to an
unknown rascally adventurer, endeavoured to atone for such neglect
by the severest caution with reference to this new suitor. Further
inquiries were made. Sir Thomas went over to Paris himself with that
other clergyman. Lawyers were employed in England to sift out the
truth; and at last, by the united agreement of some dozen men, all
of whom were known to be worthy, it was decided that Talbot was dead,
and that his widow was free to choose another mate. Another mate she
had already chosen, and immediately after this she was married to Sir
Thomas Fitzgerald.
Such was the early life-story of Lady Fitzgerald; and as this was
widely known to those who lived around her--for how could such a
life-story as that remain untold?--no one wondered why she should
be gentle and silent in her life's course. That she had been an
excellent wife, a kind and careful mother, a loving neighbour to
the poor, and courteous neighbour to the rich, all the county
Cork admitted. She had lived down envy by her gentleness and soft
humility, and every one spoke of her and her retiring habits with
sympathy and reverence.
But why should her husband also be so sad--nay, so much sadder?
For Lady Fitzgerald, though she was gentle and silent, was not
a sorrowful woman--otherwise than she was made so by seeing her
husband's sorrow. She had been to him a loving partner, and no man
could more tenderly have returned a wife's love than he had done.
One would say that all had run smoothly at Castle Richmond since the
house had been made happy, after some years of waiting, by the birth
of an eldest child and heir. But, nevertheless, those who knew most
of Sir Thomas saw that there was a peacock on the wall.
It is only necessary to say further a word or two as to the other
ladies of the family, and hardly necessary to say that. Mary and
Emmeline Fitzgerald were both cheerful girls. I do not mean that they
were boisterous laughers, that in waltzing they would tear round a
room like human steam-engines, that they rode well to hounds as some
young ladies now-a-days do--and some young ladies do ride very well
to hounds; nor that they affected slang, and decked their persons
with odds and ends of masculine costume. In saying that they were
cheerful, I by no means wish it to be understood that they were loud.
They were pretty, too, but neither of them lovely, as their mother
had been--hardly, indeed, so lovely as that pale mother was now,
even in these latter days. Ah, how very lovely that pale mother was,
as she sat still and silent in her own place on the small sofa by
the slight, small table which she used! Her hair was gray, and her
eyes sunken, and her lips thin and bloodless; but yet never shall I
see her equal for pure feminine beauty, for form and outline, for
passionless grace, and sweet, gentle, womanly softness. All her sad
tale was written upon her brow; all its sadness and all its poetry.
One could read there the fearful, all but fatal danger to which her
childhood had been exposed, and the daily thanks with which she
praised her God for having spared and saved her.
But I am running back to the mother in attempting to say a word
about her children. Of the two, Emmeline, the younger, was the more
like her; but no one who was a judge of outline could imagine that
Emmeline, at her mother's age, would ever have her mother's beauty.
Nevertheless, they were fine, handsome girls, more popular in the
neighbourhood than any of their neighbours, well educated, sensible,
feminine, and useful; fitted to be the wives of good men.
And what shall I say of Miss Letty? She was ten years older than her
brother, and as strong as a horse. She was great at walking, and
recommended that exercise strongly to all young ladies as an antidote
to every ill, from love to chilblains. She was short and dapper in
person; not ugly, excepting that her nose was long, and had a little
bump or excrescence at the end of it. She always wore a bonnet, even
at meal times; and was supposed by those who were not intimately
acquainted with the mysteries of her toilet, to sleep in it; often,
indeed, she did sleep in it, and gave unmusical evidence of her doing
so. She was not illnatured; but so strongly prejudiced on many points
as to be equally disagreeable as though she were so. With her, as
with the world in general, religion was the point on which those
prejudices were the strongest; and the peculiar bent they took was
horror and hatred of popery. As she lived in a country in which the
Roman Catholic was the religion of all the poorer classes, and of
very many persons who were not poor, there was ample scope in which
her horror and hatred could work. She was charitable to a fault, and
would exercise that charity for the good of Papists as willingly as
for the good of Protestants; but in doing so she always remembered
the good cause. She always clogged the flannel petticoat with some
Protestant teaching, or burdened the little coat and trousers with
the pains and penalties of idolatry.
When her brother had married the widow Talbot, her anger with him
and her hatred towards her sister-in-law had been extreme. But time
and conviction had worked in her so thorough a change, that she now
almost worshipped the very spot in which Lady Fitzgerald habitually
sat. She had the faculty to know and recognize goodness when she saw
it, and she had known and recognized it in her brother's wife.
Him also, her brother himself, she warmly loved and greatly
reverenced. She deeply grieved over his state of body and mind, and
would have given all she ever had, even her very self, to restore him
to health and happiness.
The three children of course she loved, and petted, and scolded;
and as children bothered them out of all their peace and quietness.
To the girls she was still almost as great a torment as in their
childish days. Nevertheless, they still loved, and sometimes obeyed
her. Of Herbert she stood somewhat more in awe. He was the future
head of the family, and already a Bachelor of Arts. In a very few
years he would probably assume the higher title of a married man of
arts, she thought; and perhaps the less formidable one of a member of
Parliament also. Him, therefore, she treated with deference. But,
alas! what if he should become a Puseyite!