THE LAST STAGE.
On the day before his departure for London, Herbert Fitzgerald
once more got on his horse--the horse that was to be no longer his
after that day--and rode off towards Desmond Court. He had already
perceived how foolish he had been in walking thither through the mud
and rain when last he went there, and how much he had lost by his
sad appearance that day, and by his want of personal comfort. So he
dressed himself with some care--dressing not for his love, but for
the countess,--and taking his silver-mounted whip in his gloved
hand, he got up on his well-groomed nag with more spirit than he had
hitherto felt.
Nothing could be better than the manner in which, at this time,
the servants about Castle Richmond conducted themselves. Most of
them--indeed, all but three--had been told that they must go; and in
so telling them, the truth had been explained. It had been "found,"
Aunt Letty said to one of the elder among them, that Mr. Herbert was
not the heir to the property, and therefore the family was obliged
to go away. Mrs. Jones of course accompanied her mistress. Richard
had been told, both by Herbert and by Aunt Letty, that he had better
remain and live on a small patch of land that should be provided
for him. But in answer to this he stated his intention of removing
himself to London. If the London air was fit for "my leddy and Miss
Letty," it would be fit for him. "It's no good any more talking, Mr.
Herbert," said Richard, "I main to go." So there was no more talking,
and he did go.
But all the other servants took their month's warning with tears and
blessings, and strove one beyond another how they might best serve
the ladies of the family to the end. "I'd lose the little fingers
off me to go with you, Miss Emmeline; so I would," said one poor
girl,--all in vain. If they could not keep a retinue of servants in
Ireland, it was clear enough that they could not keep them in London.
The groom who held the horse for Herbert to mount, touched his hat
respectfully as his young master rode off slowly down the avenue, and
then went back to the stables to meditate with awe on the changes
which had happened in his time, and to bethink himself whether or no
he could bring himself to serve in the stables of Owen the usurper.
Herbert did not take the direct road to Desmond Court, but went round
as though he were going to Gortnaclough, and then turning away from
the Gortnaclough road, made his way by a cross lane towards Clady
and the mountains. He hardly knew himself whether he had any object
in this beyond one which he did not express even to himself,--that,
namely, of not being seen on the way leading to Desmond Court. But
this he did do, thereby riding out of the district with which he was
most thoroughly acquainted, and passing by cabins and patches of
now deserted land which were strange to him. It was a poor, bleak,
damp, undrained country, lying beyond the confines of his father's
property, which in good days had never been pleasant to the eye,
but which now in these days--days that were so decidedly bad, was
anything but pleasant. It was one of those tracts of land which had
been divided and subdivided among the cottiers till the fields had
dwindled down to parts of acres, each surrounded by rude low banks,
which of themselves seemed to occupy a quarter of the surface of the
land. The original landmarks, the big earthen banks,--banks so large
that a horse might walk on the top of them,--were still visible
enough, showing to the practised eye what had once been the fields
into which the land had been divided; but these had since been
bisected and crossected, and intersected by family arrangements,
in which brothers had been jealous of brothers, and fathers of
their children, till each little lot contained but a rood or two of
available surface.
This had been miserable enough to look at, even when those roods had
been cropped with potatoes or oats; but now they were not cropped at
all, nor was there preparation being made for cropping them. They had
been let out under the con-acre system, at so much a rood, for the
potato season, at rents amounting sometimes to ten or twelve pounds
the acre; but nobody would take them now. There, in that electoral
division, the whole proceeds of such land would hardly have paid the
poor rates, and therefore the land was left uncultivated.
The winter was over, for it was now April, and had any tillage been
intended, it would have been commenced--even in Ireland. It was the
beginning of April, but the weather was still stormy and cold, and
the east wind, which, as a rule, strikes Ireland with but a light
hand, was blowing sharply. On a sudden a squall of rain came on,--one
of those spring squalls which are so piercingly cold, but which are
sure to pass by rapidly, if the wayfarer will have patience to wait
for them. Herbert, remembering his former discomfiture, resolved that
he would have such patience, and dismounting from his horse at a
cabin on the road-side, entered it himself, and led his horse in
after him. In England no one would think of taking his steed into a
poor man's cottage, and would hardly put his beast into a cottager's
shed without leave asked and granted; but people are more intimate
with each other, and take greater liberties in Ireland. It is
no uncommon thing on a wet hunting-day to see a cabin packed
with horses, and the children moving about among them, almost as
unconcernedly as though the animals were pigs. But then the Irish
horses are so well mannered and good-natured.
The cabin was one abutting as it were on the road, not standing back
upon the land, as is most customary; and it was built in an angle
at a spot where the road made a turn, so that two sides of it stood
close out in the wayside. It was small and wretched to look at,
without any sort of outside shed, or even a scrap of potato-garden
attached to it,--a miserable, low-roofed, damp, ragged tenement, as
wretched as any that might be seen even in the county Cork.
But the nakedness of the exterior was as nothing to the nakedness
of the interior. When Herbert entered, followed by his horse, his
eye glanced round the dark place, and it seemed to be empty of
everything. There was no fire on the hearth, though a fire on the
hearth is the easiest of all luxuries for an Irishman to acquire, and
the last which he is willing to lose. There was not an article of
furniture in the whole place; neither chairs, nor table, nor bed, nor
dresser; there was there neither dish, nor cup, nor plate, nor even
the iron pot in which all the cookery of the Irish cottiers' menage
is usually carried on. Beneath his feet was the damp earthen floor,
and around him were damp, cracked walls, and over his head was the
old lumpy thatch, through which the water was already dropping; but
inside was to be seen none of those articles of daily use which are
usually to be found in the houses even of the poorest.
But, nevertheless, the place was inhabited. Squatting in the middle
of the cabin, seated on her legs crossed under her, with nothing
between her and the wet earth, there crouched a woman with a child
in her arms. At first, so dark was the place, Herbert hardly thought
that the object before him was a human being. She did not move when
he entered, or speak to him, or in any way show sign of surprise
that he should have come there. There was room for him and his horse
without pushing her from her place; and, as it seemed, he might have
stayed there and taken his departure without any sign having been
made by her.
But as his eyes became used to the light he saw her eyes gleaming
brightly through the gloom. They were very large and bright as they
turned round upon him while he moved--large and bright, but with a
dull, unwholesome brightness,--a brightness that had in it none of
the light of life.
And then he looked at her more closely. She had on her some rag of
clothing which barely sufficed to cover her nakedness, and the baby
which she held in her arms was covered in some sort; but he could
see, as he came to stand close over her, that these garments were but
loose rags which were hardly fastened round her body. Her rough short
hair hung down upon her back, clotted with dirt, and the head and
face of the child which she held was covered with dirt and sores. On
no more wretched object, in its desolate solitude, did the eye of man
ever fall.
In those days there was a form of face which came upon the sufferers
when their state of misery was far advanced, and which was a sure
sign that their last stage of misery was nearly run. The mouth would
fall and seem to hang, the lips at the two ends of the mouth would be
dragged down, and the lower parts of the cheeks would fall as though
they had been dragged and pulled. There were no signs of acute agony
when this phasis of countenance was to be seen, none of the horrid
symptoms of gnawing hunger by which one generally supposes that
famine is accompanied. The look is one of apathy, desolation, and
death. When custom had made these signs easily legible, the poor
doomed wretch was known with certainty. "It's no use in life meddling
with him; he's gone," said a lady to me in the far west of the south
of Ireland, while the poor boy, whose doom was thus spoken, stood by
listening. Her delicacy did not equal her energy in doing good,--for
she did much good; but in truth it was difficult to be delicate when
the hands were so full. And then she pointed out to me the signs on
the lad's face, and I found that her reading was correct.
The famine was not old enough at the time of which we are speaking
for Herbert to have learned all this, or he would have known that
there was no hope left in this world for the poor creature whom he
saw before him. The skin of her cheek had fallen, and her mouth was
dragged, and the mark of death was upon her; but the agony of want
was past. She sat there listless, indifferent, hardly capable of
suffering, even for her child, waiting her doom unconsciously.
As he had entered without eliciting a word from her, so might he have
departed without any outward sign of notice; but this would have been
impossible on his part. "I have come in out of the rain for shelter,"
said he, looking down on her.
"Out o' the rain, is it?" said she, still fixing on him her glassy
bright eyes. "Yer honour's welcome thin." But she did not attempt to
move, nor show any of those symptoms of reverence which are habitual
to the Irish when those of a higher rank enter their cabins.
"You seem to be very poorly off here," said Herbert, looking round
the bare walls of the cabin. "Have you no chair, and no bed to lie
on?"
"'Deed no," said she.
"And no fire?" said he, for the damp and chill of the place struck
through to his bones.
"'Deed no," she said again; but she made no wail as to her wants, and
uttered no complaint as to her misery.
"And are you living here by yourself, without furniture or utensils
of any kind?"
"It's jist as yer honour sees it," answered she.
For a while Herbert stood still, looking round him, for the woman was
so motionless and uncommunicative that he hardly knew how to talk
to her. That she was in the lowest depth of distress was evident
enough, and it behoved him to administer to her immediate wants
before he left her; but what could he do for one who seemed to be so
indifferent to herself? He stood for a time looking round him till he
could see through the gloom that there was a bundle of straw lying in
the dark corner beyond the hearth, and that the straw was huddled up,
as though there were something lying under it. Seeing this he left
the bridle of his horse, and stepping across the cabin moved the
straw with the handle of his whip. As he did so he turned his back
from the wall in which the small window-hole had been pierced, so
that a gleam of light fell upon the bundle at his feet, and he could
see that the body of a child was lying there, stripped of every
vestige of clothing.
For a minute or two he said nothing--hardly, indeed, knowing how to
speak, and looking from the corpselike woman back to the lifelike
corpse, and then from the corpse back to the woman, as though he
expected that she would say something unasked. But she did not say a
word, though she so turned her head that her eyes rested on him.
He then knelt down and put his hand upon the body, and found that
it was not yet stone cold. The child apparently had been about four
years old, while that still living in her arms might perhaps be half
that age.
"Was she your own?" asked Herbert, speaking hardly above his breath.
"'Deed, yes!" said the woman. "She was my own, own little Kitty." But
there was no tear in her eye or gurgling sob audible from her throat.
"And when did she die?" he asked.
"'Deed, thin, and I don't jist know--not exactly;" and sinking lower
down upon her haunches, she put up to her forehead the hand with
which she had supported herself on the floor--the hand which was not
occupied with the baby, and pushing back with it the loose hairs from
her face, tried to make an effort at thinking.
"She was alive in the night, wasn't she?" he said.
"I b'lieve thin she was, yer honour. 'Twas broad day, I'm thinking,
when she guv' over moaning. She warn't that way when he went away."
"And who's he?"
"Jist Mike, thin."
"And is Mike your husband?" he asked. She was not very willing to
talk; but it appeared at last that Mike was her husband, and that
having become a cripple through rheumatism, he had not been able to
work on the roads. In this condition he and his should of course have
gone into a poor-house. It was easy enough to give such advice in
such cases when one came across them, and such advice when given
at that time was usually followed; but there were so many who had
no advice, who could get no aid, who knew not which way to turn
themselves! This wretched man had succeeded in finding some one who
would give him his food--food enough to keep himself alive--for such
work as he could do in spite of his rheumatism, and this work to
the last he would not abandon. Even this was better to him than
the poor-house. But then, as long as a man found work out of the
poor-house, his wife and children would not be admitted into it. They
would not be admitted if the fact of the working husband was known.
The rule in itself was salutary, as without it a man could work,
earning such wages as were adjudged to be needful for a family, and
at the same time send his wife and children to be supported on the
rates. But in some cases, such as this, it pressed very cruelly.
Exceptions were of course made in such cases, if they were known: but
then it was so hard to know them!
This man Mike, the husband of that woman, and the father of those
children, alive and dead, had now gone to his work, leaving his home
without one morsel of food within it, and the wife of his bosom
and children of his love without the hope of getting any. And then
looking closely round him, Herbert could see that a small basin or
bowl lay on the floor near her, capable of holding perhaps a pint;
and on lifting it he saw that there still clung to it a few grains
of uncooked Indian corn-flour--the yellow meal, as it was called.
Her husband, she said at last, had brought home with him in his
cap a handful of this flour, stolen from the place where he was
working--perhaps a quarter of a pound, then worth over a farthing,
and she had mixed this with water in a basin; and this was the food
which had sustained her, or rather had not sustained her, since
yesterday morning--her and her two children, the one that was living
and the one that was dead.
Such was her story, told by her in the fewest of words. And then he
asked her as to her hopes for the future. But though she cared, as
it seemed, but little for the past, for the future she cared less.
"'Deed, thin, an' I don't jist know." She would say no more than
that, and would not even raise her voice to ask for alms when he
pitied her in her misery. But with her the agony of death was already
over.
"And the child that you have in your arms," he said, "is it not
cold?" And he stood close over her, and put out his hand and touched
the baby's body. As he did so, she made some motion as though to
arrange the clothing closer round the child's limbs, but Herbert
could see that she was making an effort to hide her own nakedness. It
was the only effort that she made while he stood there beside her.
"Is she not cold?" he said again, when he had turned his face away to
relieve her from her embarrassment.
"Cowld," she muttered, with a vacant face and wondering tone of
voice, as though she did not quite understand him. "I suppose she is
could. Why wouldn't she be could? We're could enough, if that's all."
But still she did not stir from the spot on which she sat; and the
child, though it gave from time to time a low moan that was almost
inaudible, lay still in her arms, with its big eyes staring into
vacancy.
He felt that he was stricken with horror as he remained there in the
cabin with the dying woman and the naked corpse of the poor dead
child. But what was he to do? He could not go and leave them without
succour. The woman had made no plaint of her suffering, and had asked
for nothing; but he felt that it would be impossible to abandon her
without offering her relief; nor was it possible that he should leave
the body of the child in that horribly ghastly state. So he took from
his pocket his silk handkerchief, and, returning to the corner of the
cabin, spread it as a covering over the corpse. At first he did not
like to touch the small naked dwindled remains of humanity from which
life had fled; but gradually he overcame his disgust, and kneeling
down, he straightened the limbs and closed the eyes, and folded the
handkerchief round the slender body. The mother looked on him the
while, shaking her head slowly, as though asking him with all the
voice that was left to her, whether it were not piteous; but of words
she still uttered none.
And then he took from his pocket a silver coin or two, and tendered
them to her. These she did take, muttering some word of thanks, but
they caused in her no emotion of joy. "She was there waiting," she
said, "till Mike should return," and there she would still wait, even
though she should die with the silver in her hand.
"I will send some one to you," he said, as he took his departure;
"some one that shall take the poor child and bury it, and who shall
move you and the other one into the workhouse." She thanked him once
more with some low muttered words, but the promise brought her no
joy. And when the succour came it was all too late, for the mother
and the two children never left the cabin till they left it together,
wrapped in their workhouse shrouds.
Herbert, as he remounted his horse and rode quietly on, forgot for a
while both himself and Clara Desmond. Whatever might be the extent
of his own calamity, how could he think himself unhappy after what
he had seen? how could he repine at aught that the world had done
for him, having now witnessed to how low a state of misery a fellow
human being might be brought? Could he, after that, dare to consider
himself unfortunate?
Before he reached Desmond Court he did make some arrangements for
the poor woman, and directed that a cart might be sent for her, so
that she might be carried to the union workhouse at Kanturk. But his
efforts in her service were of little avail. People then did not
think much of a dying woman, and were in no special hurry to obey
Herbert's behest.
"A woman to be carried to the union, is it? For Mr. Fitzgerald, eh?
What Mr. Fitzgerald says must be done, in course. But sure av' it's
done before dark, won't that be time enough for the likes of her?"
But had they flown to the spot on the wings of love, it would not
have sufficed to prolong her life one day. Her doom had been spoken
before Herbert had entered the cabin.