Castle Richmond

by Anthony Trollope

  CHAPTER XXXIII.

  THE LAST STAGE.

  On the day before his departure for London, Herbert Fitzgeraldonce more got on his horse--the horse that was to be no longer hisafter that day--and rode off towards Desmond Court. He had alreadyperceived how foolish he had been in walking thither through the mudand rain when last he went there, and how much he had lost by hissad appearance that day, and by his want of personal comfort. So hedressed himself with some care--dressing not for his love, but forthe countess,--and taking his silver-mounted whip in his glovedhand, he got up on his well-groomed nag with more spirit than he hadhitherto felt.

  Nothing could be better than the manner in which, at this time,the servants about Castle Richmond conducted themselves. Most ofthem--indeed, all but three--had been told that they must go; and inso telling them, the truth had been explained. It had been "found,"Aunt Letty said to one of the elder among them, that Mr. Herbert wasnot the heir to the property, and therefore the family was obligedto go away. Mrs. Jones of course accompanied her mistress. Richardhad been told, both by Herbert and by Aunt Letty, that he had betterremain and live on a small patch of land that should be providedfor him. But in answer to this he stated his intention of removinghimself to London. If the London air was fit for "my leddy and MissLetty," 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 andblessings, and strove one beyond another how they might best servethe ladies of the family to the end. "I'd lose the little fingersoff me to go with you, Miss Emmeline; so I would," said one poorgirl,--all in vain. If they could not keep a retinue of servants inIreland, it was clear enough that they could not keep them in London.

  The groom who held the horse for Herbert to mount, touched his hatrespectfully as his young master rode off slowly down the avenue, andthen went back to the stables to meditate with awe on the changeswhich had happened in his time, and to bethink himself whether or nohe could bring himself to serve in the stables of Owen the usurper.

  Herbert did not take the direct road to Desmond Court, but went roundas though he were going to Gortnaclough, and then turning away fromthe Gortnaclough road, made his way by a cross lane towards Cladyand the mountains. He hardly knew himself whether he had any objectin this beyond one which he did not express even to himself,--that,namely, of not being seen on the way leading to Desmond Court. Butthis he did do, thereby riding out of the district with which he wasmost thoroughly acquainted, and passing by cabins and patches ofnow deserted land which were strange to him. It was a poor, bleak,damp, undrained country, lying beyond the confines of his father'sproperty, which in good days had never been pleasant to the eye,but which now in these days--days that were so decidedly bad, wasanything but pleasant. It was one of those tracts of land which hadbeen divided and subdivided among the cottiers till the fields haddwindled down to parts of acres, each surrounded by rude low banks,which of themselves seemed to occupy a quarter of the surface of theland. The original landmarks, the big earthen banks,--banks so largethat a horse might walk on the top of them,--were still visibleenough, showing to the practised eye what had once been the fieldsinto which the land had been divided; but these had since beenbisected and crossected, and intersected by family arrangements,in which brothers had been jealous of brothers, and fathers oftheir children, till each little lot contained but a rood or two ofavailable surface.

  This had been miserable enough to look at, even when those roods hadbeen cropped with potatoes or oats; but now they were not cropped atall, nor was there preparation being made for cropping them. They hadbeen let out under the con-acre system, at so much a rood, for thepotato season, at rents amounting sometimes to ten or twelve poundsthe acre; but nobody would take them now. There, in that electoraldivision, the whole proceeds of such land would hardly have paid thepoor rates, and therefore the land was left uncultivated.

  The winter was over, for it was now April, and had any tillage beenintended, it would have been commenced--even in Ireland. It was thebeginning of April, but the weather was still stormy and cold, andthe east wind, which, as a rule, strikes Ireland with but a lighthand, was blowing sharply. On a sudden a squall of rain came on,--oneof those spring squalls which are so piercingly cold, but which aresure to pass by rapidly, if the wayfarer will have patience to waitfor them. Herbert, remembering his former discomfiture, resolved thathe would have such patience, and dismounting from his horse at acabin on the road-side, entered it himself, and led his horse inafter him. In England no one would think of taking his steed into apoor man's cottage, and would hardly put his beast into a cottager'sshed without leave asked and granted; but people are more intimatewith each other, and take greater liberties in Ireland. It isno uncommon thing on a wet hunting-day to see a cabin packedwith horses, and the children moving about among them, almost asunconcernedly as though the animals were pigs. But then the Irishhorses are so well mannered and good-natured.

  The cabin was one abutting as it were on the road, not standing backupon the land, as is most customary; and it was built in an angleat a spot where the road made a turn, so that two sides of it stoodclose out in the wayside. It was small and wretched to look at,without any sort of outside shed, or even a scrap of potato-gardenattached to it,--a miserable, low-roofed, damp, ragged tenement, aswretched as any that might be seen even in the county Cork.

  But the nakedness of the exterior was as nothing to the nakednessof the interior. When Herbert entered, followed by his horse, hiseye glanced round the dark place, and it seemed to be empty ofeverything. There was no fire on the hearth, though a fire on thehearth is the easiest of all luxuries for an Irishman to acquire, andthe last which he is willing to lose. There was not an article offurniture in the whole place; neither chairs, nor table, nor bed, nordresser; there was there neither dish, nor cup, nor plate, nor eventhe iron pot in which all the cookery of the Irish cottiers' menageis usually carried on. Beneath his feet was the damp earthen floor,and around him were damp, cracked walls, and over his head was theold lumpy thatch, through which the water was already dropping; butinside was to be seen none of those articles of daily use which areusually to be found in the houses even of the poorest.

  But, nevertheless, the place was inhabited. Squatting in the middleof the cabin, seated on her legs crossed under her, with nothingbetween her and the wet earth, there crouched a woman with a childin her arms. At first, so dark was the place, Herbert hardly thoughtthat the object before him was a human being. She did not move whenhe entered, or speak to him, or in any way show sign of surprisethat he should have come there. There was room for him and his horsewithout pushing her from her place; and, as it seemed, he might havestayed there and taken his departure without any sign having beenmade by her.

  But as his eyes became used to the light he saw her eyes gleamingbrightly through the gloom. They were very large and bright as theyturned round upon him while he moved--large and bright, but with adull, unwholesome brightness,--a brightness that had in it none ofthe light of life.

  And then he looked at her more closely. She had on her some rag ofclothing which barely sufficed to cover her nakedness, and the babywhich she held in her arms was covered in some sort; but he couldsee, as he came to stand close over her, that these garments were butloose rags which were hardly fastened round her body. Her rough shorthair hung down upon her back, clotted with dirt, and the head andface of the child which she held was covered with dirt and sores. Onno more wretched object, in its desolate solitude, did the eye of manever fall.

  In those days there was a form of face which came upon the suffererswhen their state of misery was far advanced, and which was a suresign that their last stage of misery was nearly run. The mouth wouldfall and seem to hang, the lips at the two ends of the mouth would bedragged down, and the lower parts of the cheeks would fall as thoughthey had been dragged and pulled. There were no signs of acute agonywhen this phasis
of countenance was to be seen, none of the horridsymptoms of gnawing hunger by which one generally supposes thatfamine is accompanied. The look is one of apathy, desolation, anddeath. When custom had made these signs easily legible, the poordoomed wretch was known with certainty. "It's no use in life meddlingwith him; he's gone," said a lady to me in the far west of the southof Ireland, while the poor boy, whose doom was thus spoken, stood bylistening. Her delicacy did not equal her energy in doing good,--forshe did much good; but in truth it was difficult to be delicate whenthe hands were so full. And then she pointed out to me the signs onthe lad's face, and I found that her reading was correct.

  The famine was not old enough at the time of which we are speakingfor Herbert to have learned all this, or he would have known thatthere was no hope left in this world for the poor creature whom hesaw before him. The skin of her cheek had fallen, and her mouth wasdragged, and the mark of death was upon her; but the agony of wantwas past. She sat there listless, indifferent, hardly capable ofsuffering, even for her child, waiting her doom unconsciously.

  As he had entered without eliciting a word from her, so might he havedeparted without any outward sign of notice; but this would have beenimpossible 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 glassybright eyes. "Yer honour's welcome thin." But she did not attempt tomove, nor show any of those symptoms of reverence which are habitualto the Irish when those of a higher rank enter their cabins.

  "You seem to be very poorly off here," said Herbert, looking roundthe bare walls of the cabin. "Have you no chair, and no bed to lieon?"

  "'Deed no," said she.

  "And no fire?" said he, for the damp and chill of the place struckthrough to his bones.

  "'Deed no," she said again; but she made no wail as to her wants, anduttered no complaint as to her misery.

  "And are you living here by yourself, without furniture or utensilsof any kind?"

  "It's jist as yer honour sees it," answered she.

  For a while Herbert stood still, looking round him, for the woman wasso motionless and uncommunicative that he hardly knew how to talkto her. That she was in the lowest depth of distress was evidentenough, and it behoved him to administer to her immediate wantsbefore he left her; but what could he do for one who seemed to be soindifferent to herself? He stood for a time looking round him till hecould see through the gloom that there was a bundle of straw lying inthe dark corner beyond the hearth, and that the straw was huddled up,as though there were something lying under it. Seeing this he leftthe bridle of his horse, and stepping across the cabin moved thestraw with the handle of his whip. As he did so he turned his backfrom the wall in which the small window-hole had been pierced, sothat a gleam of light fell upon the bundle at his feet, and he couldsee that the body of a child was lying there, stripped of everyvestige of clothing.

  For a minute or two he said nothing--hardly, indeed, knowing how tospeak, and looking from the corpselike woman back to the lifelikecorpse, and then from the corpse back to the woman, as though heexpected that she would say something unasked. But she did not say aword, 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 thatit was not yet stone cold. The child apparently had been about fouryears old, while that still living in her arms might perhaps be halfthat age.

  "Was she your own?" asked Herbert, speaking hardly above his breath.

  "'Deed, yes!" said the woman. "She was my own, own little Kitty." Butthere 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 lowerdown upon her haunches, she put up to her forehead the hand withwhich she had supported herself on the floor--the hand which was notoccupied with the baby, and pushing back with it the loose hairs fromher 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 totalk; but it appeared at last that Mike was her husband, and thathaving become a cripple through rheumatism, he had not been able towork on the roads. In this condition he and his should of course havegone into a poor-house. It was easy enough to give such advice insuch cases when one came across them, and such advice when givenat that time was usually followed; but there were so many who hadno advice, who could get no aid, who knew not which way to turnthemselves! This wretched man had succeeded in finding some one whowould give him his food--food enough to keep himself alive--for suchwork as he could do in spite of his rheumatism, and this work tothe last he would not abandon. Even this was better to him thanthe poor-house. But then, as long as a man found work out of thepoor-house, his wife and children would not be admitted into it. Theywould 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, andat the same time send his wife and children to be supported on therates. But in some cases, such as this, it pressed very cruelly.Exceptions were of course made in such cases, if they were known: butthen it was so hard to know them!

  This man Mike, the husband of that woman, and the father of thosechildren, alive and dead, had now gone to his work, leaving his homewithout one morsel of food within it, and the wife of his bosomand children of his love without the hope of getting any. And thenlooking closely round him, Herbert could see that a small basin orbowl 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 grainsof uncooked Indian corn-flour--the yellow meal, as it was called.Her husband, she said at last, had brought home with him in hiscap a handful of this flour, stolen from the place where he wasworking--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 foodwhich had sustained her, or rather had not sustained her, sinceyesterday morning--her and her two children, the one that was livingand the one that was dead.

  Such was her story, told by her in the fewest of words. And then heasked her as to her hopes for the future. But though she cared, asit 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 thanthat, and would not even raise her voice to ask for alms when hepitied her in her misery. But with her the agony of death was alreadyover.

  "And the child that you have in your arms," he said, "is it notcold?" And he stood close over her, and put out his hand and touchedthe baby's body. As he did so, she made some motion as though toarrange the clothing closer round the child's limbs, but Herbertcould see that she was making an effort to hide her own nakedness. Itwas 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 torelieve her from her embarrassment.

  "Cowld," she muttered, with a vacant face and wondering tone ofvoice, as though she did not quite understand him. "I suppose she iscould. 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 thechild, though it gave from time to time a low moan that was almostinaudible, lay still in her arms, with its big eyes staring intovacancy.

  He felt that he was stricken with horror as he remained there in thecabin with the dying woman and the naked corpse of the poor deadchild. But what was he to do? He could not go and leave them withoutsuccour. The woman had made no plaint of her suffering, and had askedfor nothing; but he felt that it would be impossible to abandon herwithout offering her relief; nor was it possible that he should leavethe body of the child in that horribly ghastly state. So he took fr
omhis pocket his silk handkerchief, and, returning to the corner of thecabin, spread it as a covering over the corpse. At first he did notlike to touch the small naked dwindled remains of humanity from whichlife had fled; but gradually he overcame his disgust, and kneelingdown, he straightened the limbs and closed the eyes, and folded thehandkerchief round the slender body. The mother looked on him thewhile, shaking her head slowly, as though asking him with all thevoice that was left to her, whether it were not piteous; but of wordsshe still uttered none.

  And then he took from his pocket a silver coin or two, and tenderedthem to her. These she did take, muttering some word of thanks, butthey caused in her no emotion of joy. "She was there waiting," shesaid, "till Mike should return," and there she would still wait, eventhough 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 shallmove you and the other one into the workhouse." She thanked him oncemore with some low muttered words, but the promise brought her nojoy. And when the succour came it was all too late, for the motherand 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 awhile both himself and Clara Desmond. Whatever might be the extentof his own calamity, how could he think himself unhappy after whathe had seen? how could he repine at aught that the world had donefor him, having now witnessed to how low a state of misery a fellowhuman being might be brought? Could he, after that, dare to considerhimself unfortunate?

  Before he reached Desmond Court he did make some arrangements forthe poor woman, and directed that a cart might be sent for her, sothat she might be carried to the union workhouse at Kanturk. But hisefforts in her service were of little avail. People then did notthink much of a dying woman, and were in no special hurry to obeyHerbert'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'sdone 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 nothave sufficed to prolong her life one day. Her doom had been spokenbefore Herbert had entered the cabin.