HERBERT FITZGERALD IN LONDON.
On the following morning the whole household was up and dressed very
early. Lady Fitzgerald--the poor lady made many futile attempts to
drop her title, but hitherto without any shadow of success--Lady
Fitzgerald was down in the breakfast parlour at seven, as also were
Aunt Letty, and Mary, and Emmeline. Herbert had begged his mother
not to allow herself to be disturbed, alleging that there was no
cause, seeing that they all so soon would meet in London; but she
was determined that she would superintend his last meal at Castle
Richmond. The servants brought in the trays with melancholy silence,
and now that the absolute moment of parting had come the girls could
not speak lest the tears should come and choke them. It was not that
they were about to part with him; that parting would only be for a
month. But he was now about to part from all that ought to have been
his own. He sat down at the table in his accustomed place, with a
forced smile on his face, but without a word, and his sisters put
before him his cup of tea, and the slice of ham that had been cut for
him, and his portion of bread. That he was making an effort they all
saw. He bowed his head down over the tea to sip it and took the knife
in his hand, and then he looked up at them, for he knew that their
eyes were on him; he looked up at them to show that he could still
endure it. But, alas! he could not endure it. The struggle was too
much for him; he pushed his plate violently from him into the middle
of the table, and dropping his head upon his hands he burst forth
into audible lamentations.
Oh, my friends! be not hard on him in that he was thus weeping like a
woman. It was not for his lost wealth that he was wailing, nor even
for the name or splendour that could be no longer his; nor was it
for his father's memory, though he had truly loved his father; nor
for his mother's sorrow, or the tragedy of her life's history. For
none of these things were his tears flowing and his sobs coming so
violently that it nearly choked him to repress them. Nor could he
himself have said why he was weeping.
It was the hundred small things from which he was parting for ever
that thus disturbed him. The chair on which he sat, the carpet on
the floor, the table on which he leaned, the dull old picture of his
great-grandfather over the fireplace,--they were all his old familiar
friends, they were all part of Castle Richmond,--of that Castle
Richmond which he might never be allowed to see again.
His mother and sisters came to him, hanging over him, and they joined
their tears together. "Do not tell her that I was like this," said he
at last.
"She will love you the better for it if she has a true woman's heart
within her breast," said his mother.
"As true a heart as ever breathed," said Emmeline through her sobs.
And then they pressed him to eat, but it was in vain. He knew that
the food would choke him if he attempted it. So he gulped down the
cup of tea, and with one kiss to his mother he rushed from them,
refusing Aunt Letty's proffered embrace, passing through the line of
servants without another word to one of them, and burying himself
in the post-chaise which was to carry him the first stage on his
melancholy journey.
It was a melancholy journey all through. From the time that he
left the door at Castle Richmond that was no longer his own, till
he reached the Euston Station in London, he spoke no word to any
one more than was absolutely necessary for the purposes of his
travelling. Nothing could be more sad than the prospect of his
residence in London. Not that he was without friends there, for he
belonged to a fashionable club to which he could still adhere if it
so pleased him, and had all his old Oxford comrades to fall back upon
if that were of any service to him. But how is a man to walk into his
club who yesterday was known as his father's eldest son and the heir
to a baronetcy and twelve thousand a year, and who to-day is known
as nobody's son and the heir to nothing? Men would feel so much
for him and pity him so deeply! That was the worst feature of his
present position. He could hardly dare to show himself more than was
absolutely necessary till the newness of his tragedy was worn off.
Mr. Prendergast had taken lodgings for him, in which he was to remain
till he could settle himself in the same house with his mother. And
this house, in which they were all to live, had also been taken,--up
in that cheerful locality near Harrow-on-the-Hill, called St. John's
Wood Road, the cab fares to which from any central part of London are
so very ruinous. But that house was not yet ready, and so he went
into lodgings in Lincoln's Inn Fields. Mr. Prendergast had chosen
this locality because it was near the chambers of that great Chancery
barrister, Mr. Die, under whose beneficent wing Herbert Fitzgerald
was destined to learn all the mysteries of the Chancery bar. The
sanctuary of Mr. Die's wig was in Stone Buildings, immediately close
to that milky way of vice-chancellors, whose separate courts cluster
about the old chapel of Lincoln's Inn; and here was Herbert to sit,
studious, for the next three years,--to sit there instead of at the
various relief committees in the vicinity of Kanturk. And why could
he not be as happy at the one as at the other? Would not Mr. Die be
as amusing as Mr. Townsend; and the arguments of Vice-Chancellor
Stuart's court quite as instructive as those heard in the committee
room at Gortnaclough?
On the morning of his arrival in London he drove to his lodgings, and
found a note there from Mr. Prendergast asking him to dinner on that
day, and promising to take him to Mr. Die on the following morning.
Mr. Prendergast kept a bachelor's house in Bloomsbury Square, not
very far from Lincoln's Inn--just across Holborn, as all Londoners
know; and there he would expect Herbert at seven o'clock. "I will
not ask any one to meet you," he said, "because you will be tired
after your journey, and perhaps more inclined to talk to me than to
strangers."
Mr. Prendergast was one of those old-fashioned people who think that
a spacious substantial house in Bloomsbury Square, at a rent of a
hundred and twenty pounds a year, is better worth having than a
narrow, lath and plaster, ill-built tenement at nearly double the
price out westward of the Parks. A quite new man is necessarily
afraid of such a locality as Bloomsbury Square, for he has no chance
of getting any one into his house if he do not live westward. Who
would dine with Mr. Jones in Woburn Terrace, unless he had known
Mr. Jones all his days, or unless Jones were known as a top sawyer
in some walk of life? But Mr. Prendergast was well enough known
to his old friends to be allowed to live where he pleased, and he
was not very anxious to add to their number by any new fashionable
allurements.
Herbert sent over to Bloomsbury Square to say that he would be there
at seven o'clock, and then sat himself down in his new lodgings. It
was but a dingy abode, consisting of a narrow sitting-room looking
out into the big square from over a covered archway, and a narrower
bedroom looking backwards into a dull, dirty-looking, crooked street.
Nothing, he thought, could be more melancholy than such a home. But
then what did it signify? His days would be passed in Mr. Die's
chambers, and his evenings would be spent over his law books with
closed windows and copious burnings of the midnight oil. For Herbert
had wisely resolved that hard work, and hard work alone, could
mitigate the misery of his present position.
But he had no work for the present day. He could not at once unpack
his portmanteau and begin his law studies on the moment. It was about
noon when he had completed the former preparation, and eaten such
breakfast as his new London landlady had gotten for him. And the
breakfast had not of itself been bad, for Mrs. Whereas had been a
daughter of Themis all her life, waiting upon scions of the law since
first she had been able to run for a penn'orth of milk. She had been
laundress on a stairs for ten years, having married a law stationer's
apprentice, and now she owned the dingy house over the covered way,
and let her own lodgings with her own furniture; nor was she often
without friends who would recommend her zeal and honesty, and make
excuse for the imperiousness of her ways and the too great fluency of
her by no means servile tongue.
"Oh, Mrs.--," said Herbert. "I beg your pardon, but might I ask your
name?"
"No offence, sir; none in life. My name's Whereas. Martha Whereas,
and 'as been now for five-and-twenty year. There be'ant many of the
gen'lemen about the courts here as don't know some'at of me. And I
knew some'at of them too, before they carried their wigs so grandly.
My husband, that's Whereas,--you'll all'ays find him at the little
stationer's shop outside the gate in Carey Street. You'll know him
some of these days, I'll go bail, if you're going to Mr. Die; anyways
you'll know his handwrite. Tea to your liking, sir? I all'ays gets
cream for gentlemen, sir, unless they tells me not. Milk a 'alfpenny,
sir; cream tuppence; three 'alfpence difference; hain't it, sir? So
now you can do as you pleases, and if you like bacon and heggs to
your breakfastesses you've only to say the words. But then the heggs
hain't heggs, that's the truth; and they hain't chickens, but some'at
betwixt the two."
And so she went on during the whole time that he was eating, moving
about from place to place, and putting back into the places which
she had chosen for them anything which he had chanced to move; now
dusting a bit of furniture with her apron, and then leaning on the
back of a chair while she asked him some question as to his habits
and future mode of living. She also wore a bonnet, apparently as
a customary part of her house costume, and Herbert could not help
thinking that she looked very like his Aunt Letty.
But when she had gone and taken the breakfast things with her, then
began the tedium of the day. It seemed to him as though he had no
means of commencing his life in London until he had been with Mr.
Prendergast or Mr. Die. And so new did it all feel to him, so strange
and wonderful, that he hardly dared to go out of the house by himself
and wander about the premises of the Inn. He was not absolutely a
stranger in London, for he had been elected at a club before he had
left Oxford, and had been up in town twice, staying on each occasion
some few weeks. Had he therefore been asked about the metropolis
some four months since at Castle Richmond, he would have professed
that he knew it well. Starting from Pall Mall he could have gone to
any of the central theatres, or to the Parks, or to the houses of
Parliament, or to the picture galleries in June. But now in that
dingy big square he felt himself to be absolutely a stranger; and
when he did venture out he watched the corners, in order that he
might find his way back without asking questions.
And then he roamed round the squares and about the little courts, and
found out where were Stone Buildings,--so called because they are
so dull and dead and stony-hearted: and as his courage increased he
made his way into one of the courts, and stood up for a while on an
uncomfortable narrow step, so that he might watch the proceedings as
they went on, and it all seemed to him to be dull and deadly. There
was no life and amusement such as he had seen at the Assize Court in
county Cork, when he was sworn in as one of the Grand Jury. There
the gentlemen in wigs--for on the Munster circuit they do wear wigs,
or at any rate did then--laughed and winked and talked together
joyously; and when a Roman Catholic fisherman from Berehaven was
put into the dock for destroying the boat and nets of a Protestant
fisherman from Dingle in county Kerry, who had chanced to come that
way, "not fishing at all, at all, yer honour, but just souping," as
the Papist prisoner averred with great emphasis, the gentlemen of
the robe had gone to the fight with all the animation and courage
of Matadors and Picadors in a bull-ring. It was delightful to see
the way in which Roman Catholic skill combated Protestant fury,
with a substratum below of Irish fun which showed to everybody that
it was not all quite in earnest;--that the great O'Fagan and the
great Fitzberesford could sit down together afterwards with all the
pleasure in life over their modicum of claret in the barristers' room
at the Imperial hotel. And then the judge had added to the life of
the meeting, helping to bamboozle and make miserable a wretch of a
witness who had been caught in the act of seeing the boat smashed
with a fragment of rock, and was now, in consequence, being impaled
alive by his lordship's assistance.
"What do you say your name is?" demanded his lordship, angrily.
"Rowland Houghton," said the miserable stray Saxon tourist who had so
unfortunately strayed that way on the occasion.
"What?" repeated the judge, whose ears were sharper to such sounds as
O'Shaughnessy, Macgillycuddy, and O'Callaghan.
"Rowland Houghton," said the offender, in his distress; quicker,
louder, and perhaps not more distinctly than before.
"What does the man say?" said the judge, turning his head down
towards a satellite who sat on a bench beneath his cushion.
The gentleman appealed to pronounced the name for the judge's hearing
with a full rolling Irish brogue, that gave great delight through all
the court; "R-rowland Hough-h-ton, me lor-r-d."
Whereupon his lordship threw up his hands in dismay. "Oulan Outan!"
said he. "Oulan Outan! I never heard such a name in my life!" And
then, having thoroughly impaled the wicked witness, and added
materially to the amusement of the day, the judge wrote down the
name in his book; and there it is to this day, no doubt, Oulan Outan.
And when one thinks of it, it was monstrous that an English witness
should go into an Irish law court with such a name as Rowland
Houghton.
But here, in the dark dingy court to which Herbert had penetrated
in Lincoln's Inn, there was no such life as this. Here, whatever
skill there might be, was of a dark subterranean nature, quite
unintelligible to any minds but those of experts; and as for fury or
fun, there was no spark either of one or of the other. The judge sat
back in his seat, a tall, handsome, speechless man, not asleep, for
his eye from time to time moved slowly from the dingy barrister who
was on his legs to another dingy barrister who was sitting with his
hands in his pockets, and with his eyes fixed upon the ceiling. The
gentleman who was in the act of pleading had a huge open paper in
his hand, from which he droned forth certain legal quiddities of the
dullest and most uninteresting nature. He was in earnest, for there
was a perpetual energy in his drone, as a droning bee might drone who
was known to drone louder than other drones. But it was a continuous
energy supported by perseverance, and not by impulse; and seemed to
come of a fixed determination to continue the reading of that paper
till all the world should be asleep. A great part of the world around
was asleep; but the judge's eye was still open, and one might say
that the barrister was resolved to go on till that eye should have
become closed in token of his success.
Herbert remained there for an hour, thinking that he might learn
something that would be serviceable to him in his coming legal
career; but at the end of the hour the same thing was going on,--the
judge's eye was still open, and the lawyer's drone was still
sounding; and so he came away, having found himself absolutely dozing
in the uncomfortable position in which he was standing.
At last the day wore away, and at seven o'clock he found himself in
Mr. Prendergast's hall in Bloomsbury Square; and his hat and umbrella
were taken away from him by an old servant looking very much like Mr.
Prendergast himself;--having about him the same look of the stiffness
of years, and the same look also of excellent preservation and care.
"Mr. Prendergast is in the library, sir, if you please," said the old
servant; and so saying he ushered Herbert into the back down-stairs
room. It was a spacious, lofty apartment, well fitted up for a
library, and furnished for that purpose with exceeding care;--such a
room as one does not find in the flashy new houses in the west, where
the dining-room and drawing-room occupy all of the house that is
visible. But then, how few of those who live in flashy new houses in
the west require to have libraries in London!
As he entered the room Mr. Prendergast came forward to meet him,
and seemed heartily glad to see him. There was a cordiality about
him which Herbert had never recognized at Castle Richmond, and an
appearance of enjoyment which had seemed to be almost foreign to the
lawyer's nature. Herbert perhaps had not calculated, as he should
have done, that Mr. Prendergast's mission in Ireland had not admitted
of much enjoyment. Mr. Prendergast had gone there to do a job of
work, and that he had done, very thoroughly; but he certainly had not
enjoyed himself.
There was time for only few words before the old man again entered
the room, announcing dinner; and those few words had no reference
whatever to the Castle Richmond sorrow. He had spoken of Herbert's
lodging, and of his journey, and a word or two of Mr. Die, and then
they went in to dinner. And at dinner too the conversation wholly
turned upon indifferent matters, upon reform at Oxford, the state
of parties, and of the peculiar idiosyncrasies of the Irish Low
Church clergymen, on all of which subjects Herbert found that Mr.
Prendergast had a tolerably strong opinion of his own. The dinner was
very good, though by no means showy,--as might have been expected in
a house in Bloomsbury Square--and the wine excellent, as might have
been expected in any house inhabited by Mr. Prendergast.
And then, when the dinner was over, and the old servant had slowly
removed his last tray, when they had each got into an arm-chair,
and were seated at properly comfortable distances from the fire, Mr.
Prendergast began to talk freely; not that he at once plunged into
the middle of the old history, or began with lugubrious force to
recapitulate the horrors that were now partly over; but gradually he
veered round to those points as to which he thought it good that he
should speak before setting Herbert at work on his new London life.
"You drink claret, I suppose?" said Mr. Prendergast, as he adjusted a
portion of the table for their evening symposium.
"Oh yes," said Herbert, not caring very much at that moment what the
wine was.
"You'll find that pretty good; a good deal better than what you'll
get in most houses in London nowadays. But you know a man always
likes his own wine, and especially an old man."
Herbert said something about it being very good, but did not give
that attention to the matter which Mr. Prendergast thought that
it deserved. Indeed, he was thinking more about Mr. Die and Stone
Buildings than about the wine.
"And how do you find my old friend Mrs. Whereas?" asked the lawyer.
"She seems to be a very attentive sort of woman."
"Yes; rather too much so sometimes. People do say that she never
knows how to hold her tongue. But she won't rob you, nor yet poison
you; and in these days that is saying a very great deal for a woman
in London." And then there was a pause, as Mr. Prendergast sipped his
wine with slow complacency. "And we are to go to Mr. Die to-morrow, I
suppose?" he said, beginning again. To which Herbert replied that he
would be ready at any time in the morning that might be suitable.
"The sooner you get into harness the better. It is not only that you
have much to learn, but you have much to forget also."
"Yes," said Herbert, "I have much to forget indeed; more than I can
forget, I'm afraid, Mr. Prendergast."
"There is, I fancy, no sorrow which a man cannot forget; that is,
as far as the memory of it is likely to be painful to him. You
will not absolutely cease to remember Castle Richmond and all its
circumstances; you will still think of the place and all the people
whom you knew there; but you will learn to do so without the pain
which of course you now suffer. That is what I mean by forgetting."
"Oh, I don't complain, sir."
"No, I know you don't; and that is the reason why I am so anxious
to see you happy. You have borne the whole matter so well that I am
quite sure that you will be able to live happily in this new life.
That is what I mean when I say that you will forget Castle Richmond."
Herbert bethought himself of Clara Desmond, and of the woman whom he
had seen in the cabin, and reflected that even at present he had no
right to be unhappy.
"I suppose you have no thought of going back to Ireland?" said Mr.
Prendergast.
"Oh, none in the least."
"On the whole I think you are right. No doubt a family connection is
a great assistance to a barrister, and there would be reasons which
would make attorneys in Ireland throw business into your hands at an
early period of your life. Your history would give you an _éclat_
there, if you know what I mean."
"Oh, yes, perfectly; but I don't want that."
"No. It is a kind of assistance which in my opinion a man should not
desire. In the first place, it does not last. A man so bouyed up is
apt to trust to such support, instead of his own steady exertions;
and the firmest of friends won't stick to a lawyer long if he can get
better law for his money elsewhere."
"There should be no friendship in such matters, I think."
"Well, I won't say that. But the friendship should come of the
service, not the service of the friendship. Good, hard, steady, and
enduring work,--work that does not demand immediate acknowledgment
and reward, but that can afford to look forward for its results,--it
is that, and that only which in my opinion will insure to a man
permanent success."
"It is hard though for a poor man to work so many years without an
income," said Herbert, thinking of Lady Clara Desmond.
"Not hard if you get the price of your work at last. But you can
have your choice. A moderate fixed income can now be had by any
barrister early in life,--by any barrister of fair parts and sound
acquirements. There are more barristers now filling salaried places
than practising in the courts."
"But those places are given by favour."
"No; not so generally,--or if by favour, by that sort of favour which
is as likely to come to you as to another. Such places are not given
to incompetent young men because their fathers and mothers ask for
them. But won't you fill your glass?"
"I am doing very well, thank you."
"You'll do better if you'll fill your glass, and let me have the
bottle back. But you are thinking of the good old historical days
when you talk of barristers having to wait for their incomes.
There has been a great change in that respect,--for the better, as
you of course will think. Now-a-days a man is taken away from his
boat-racing and his skittle-ground to be made a judge. A little law
and a great fund of physical strength--that is the extent of the
demand." And Mr. Prendergast plainly showed by the tone of his voice
that he did not admire the wisdom of this new policy of which he
spoke.
"But I suppose a man must work five years before he can earn
anything," said Herbert, still despondingly; for five years is a long
time to an expectant lover.
"Fifteen years of unpaid labour used not to be thought too great a
price to pay for ultimate success," said Mr. Prendergast, almost
sighing at the degeneracy of the age. "But men in those days were
ambitious and patient."
"And now they are ambitious and impatient," suggested Herbert.
"Covetous and impatient might perhaps be the truer epithets," said
Mr. Prendergast with grim sarcasm.
It is sad for a man to feel, when he knows that he is fast going down
the hill of life, that the experience of old age is to be no longer
valued nor its wisdom appreciated. The elderly man of this day thinks
that he has been robbed of his chance in life. When he was in his
full physical vigour he was not old enough for mental success. He was
still winning his spurs at forty. But at fifty--so does the world
change--he learns that he is past his work. By some unconscious and
unlucky leap he has passed from the unripeness of youth to the decay
of age, without even knowing what it was to be in his prime. A man
should always seize his opportunity; but the changes of the times in
which he has lived have never allowed him to have one. There has been
no period of flood in his tide which might lead him on to fortune.
While he has been waiting patiently for high water the ebb has come
upon him. Mr. Prendergast himself had been a successful man, and his
regrets, therefore, were philosophical rather than practical. As for
Herbert, he did not look upon the question at all in the same light
as his elderly friend, and on the whole was rather exhilarated by
the tone of Mr. Prendergast's sarcasm. Perhaps Mr. Prendergast had
intended that such should be its effect.
The long evening passed away cosily enough, leaving on Herbert's mind
an impression that in choosing to be a barrister he had certainly
chosen the noblest walk of life in which a man could earn his bread.
Mr. Prendergast did not promise him either fame or fortune, nor did
he speak by any means in high enthusiastic language; he said much of
the necessity of long hours, of tedious work, of Amaryllis left by
herself in the shade, and of Neæra's locks unheeded; but nevertheless
he spoke in a manner to arouse the ambition and satisfy the longings
of the young man who listened to him. There were much wisdom in what
he did, and much benevolence also.
And then at about eleven o'clock, Herbert having sat out the second
bottle of claret, betook himself to his bed at the lodgings over the
covered way.