"My dear madam, anything will suffice," said Mr. Carter, somewhat pretentiously. And anything would have sufficed. Had they put before him a mess of that paste of which I have spoken he would have ate it and said nothing,--ate enough of it at least to sustain him till the morrow.

But things had not come to so bad a pa.s.s as this at Drumbarrow parsonage; and, indeed, that day fortune had been propitious;--fortune which ever favours the daring. Mrs. Townsend, knowing that she had really nothing in the house, had sent Jerry to waylay the Lent fishmonger, who twice a week was known to make his way from Kanturk to Mallow with a donkey and panniers; and Jerry had returned with a prize.

And now they sat down to dinner, and lo and behold, to the great surprise of Mr. Carter, and perhaps also to the surprise of the host, a magnificent turbot smoked upon the board. The fins no doubt had been cut off to render possible the insertion of the animal into the largest of the Drumbarrow parsonage kitchen-pots,--an injury against which Mr. Townsend immediately exclaimed angrily. "My goodness, they have cut off the fins!" said he, holding up both hands in deep dismay. According to his philosophy, if he did have a turbot, why should he not have it with all its perfections about it--fins and all?

"My dear aeneas!" said Mrs. Townsend, looking at him with that agony of domestic distress which all wives so well know how to a.s.sume.

Mr. Carter said nothing. He said not a word, but he thought much.

This then was their pretended poorness of living! with all their mock humility, these false Irishmen could not resist the opportunity of showing off before the English stranger, and of putting on their table before him a dish which an English dean could afford only on gala days. And then this clergyman, who was so loudly anxious for the poor, could not repress the sorrow of his heart because the rich delicacy was somewhat marred in the cooking. "It was too bad,"

thought Mr. Carter to himself, "too bad."

"None, thank you," said he, drawing himself up with gloomy reprobation of countenance. "I will not take any fish, I am much obliged to you."

Then the face of Mrs. Townsend was one on which neither Christian nor heathen could have looked without horror and grief. What, the man whom in her heart she believed to be a Jesuit, and for whom nevertheless, Jesuit though he was, she had condescended to cater with all her woman's wit!--this man, I say, would not eat fish in Lent! And it was horrible to her warm Irish heart to think that after that fish now upon the table there was nothing to come but two or three square inches of cold bacon. Not eat turbot in Lent! Had he been one of her own sort she might have given him credit for true antagonism to popery; but every inch of his coat gave the lie to such a supposition as that.

"Do take a bit," said Mr. Townsend, hospitably. "The fins should not have been cut off, otherwise I never saw a finer fish in my life."

"None, I am very much obliged to you," said Mr. Carter, with sternest reprobation of feature.

It was too much for Mrs. Townsend. "Oh, aeneas," said she, "what are we to do?" Mr. Townsend merely shrugged his shoulders, while he helped himself. His feelings were less acute, perhaps, than those of his wife, and he, no doubt, was much more hungry. Mr. Carter the while sat by, saying nothing, but looking daggers. He also was hungry, but under such circ.u.mstances he would rather starve than eat.

"Don't you ever eat fish, Mr. Carter?" said Mr. Townsend, proceeding to help himself for a second time, and poking about round the edges of the delicate creature before him for some relics of the glutinous morsels which he loved so well. He was not, however, enjoying it as he should have done, for seeing that his guest ate none, and that his wife's appet.i.te was thoroughly marred, he was alone in his occupation. No one but a glutton could have feasted well under such circ.u.mstances, and Mr. Townsend was not a glutton.

"Thank you, I will eat none to-day," said Mr. Carter, sitting bolt upright, and fixing his keen gray eyes on the wall opposite.

"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, aeneas; and Jerry was forced to promise the man a gla.s.s 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, aeneas, 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 a.s.sertion 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.

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII.

CONDEMNED.

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 pa.s.sed 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 n.o.bly 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 n.o.ble 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."