The Poor Clare, Page 4

  CHAPTER II.

  I NOW come to the time in which I myself was mixed up with the peoplethat I have been writing about. And to make you understand how I becameconnected with them, I must give you some little account of myself. Myfather was the younger son of a Devonshire gentleman of moderateproperty; my eldest uncle succeeded to the estate of his forefathers, mysecond became an eminent attorney in London, and my father took orders.Like most poor clergymen, he had a large family; and I have no doubt wasglad enough when my London uncle, who was a bachelor, offered to takecharge of me, and bring me up to be his successor in business.

  In this way I came to live in London, in my uncle’s house, not far fromGray’s Inn, and to be treated and esteemed as his son, and to labour withhim in his office. I was very fond of the old gentleman. He was theconfidential agent of many country squires, and had attained to hispresent position as much by knowledge of human nature as by knowledge oflaw; though he was learned enough in the latter. He used to say hisbusiness was law, his pleasure heraldry. From his intimate acquaintancewith family history, and all the tragic courses of life therein involved,to hear him talk, at leisure times, about any coat of arms that cameacross his path was as good as a play or a romance. Many cases ofdisputed property, dependent on a love of genealogy, were brought to him,as to a great authority on such points. If the lawyer who came toconsult him was young, he would take no fee, only give him a long lectureon the importance of attending to heraldry; if the lawyer was of matureage and good standing, he would mulct him pretty well, and abuse him tome afterwards as negligent of one great branch of the profession. Hishouse was in a stately new street called Ormond Street, and in it he hada handsome library; but all the books treated of things that were past;none of them planned or looked forward into the future. I workedaway—partly for the sake of my family at home, partly because my unclehad really taught me to enjoy the kind of practice in which he himselftook such delight. I suspect I worked too hard; at any rate, inseventeen hundred and eighteen I was far from well, and my good uncle wasdisturbed by my ill looks.

  One day, he rang the bell twice into the clerk’s room at the dingy officein Grey’s Inn Lane. It was the summons for me, and I went into hisprivate room just as a gentleman—whom I knew well enough by sight as anIrish lawyer of more reputation than he deserved—was leaving.

  My uncle was slowly rubbing his hands together and considering. I wasthere two or three minutes before he spoke. Then he told me that I mustpack up my portmanteau that very afternoon, and start that night bypost-horse for West Chester. I should get there, if all went well, atthe end of five days’ time, and must then wait for a packet to cross overto Dublin; from thence I must proceed to a certain town named Kildoon,and in that neighbourhood I was to remain, making certain inquiries as tothe existence of any descendants of the younger branch of a family towhom some valuable estates had descended in the female line. The Irishlawyer whom I had seen was weary of the case, and would willingly havegiven up the property, without further ado, to a man who appeared toclaim them; but on laying his tables and trees before my uncle, thelatter had foreseen so many possible prior claimants, that the lawyer hadbegged him to undertake the management of the whole business. In hisyouth, my uncle would have liked nothing better than going over toIreland himself, and ferreting out every scrap of paper or parchment, andevery word of tradition respecting the family. As it was, old and gouty,he deputed me.

  Accordingly, I went to Kildoon. I suspect I had something of my uncle’sdelight in following up a genealogical scent, for I very soon found out,when on the spot, that Mr. Rooney, the Irish lawyer, would have got bothhimself and the first claimant into a terrible scrape, if he hadpronounced his opinion that the estates ought to be given up to him.There were three poor Irish fellows, each nearer of kin to the lastpossessor; but, a generation before, there was a still nearer relation,who had never been accounted for, nor his existence ever discovered bythe lawyers, I venture to think, till I routed him out from the memory ofsome of the old dependants of the family. What had become of him? Itravelled backwards and forwards; I crossed over to France, and came backagain with a slight clue, which ended in my discovering that, wild anddissipated himself, he had left one child, a son, of yet worse characterthan his father; that this same Hugh Fitzgerald had married a verybeautiful serving-woman of the Byrnes—a person below him in hereditaryrank, but above him in character; that he had died soon after hismarriage, leaving one child, whether a boy or a girl I could not learn,and that the mother had returned to live in the family of the Byrnes.Now, the chief of this latter family was serving in the Duke of Berwick’sregiment, and it was long before I could hear from him; it was more thana year before I got a short, haughty letter—I fancy he had a soldier’scontempt for a civilian, an Irishman’s hatred for an Englishman, anexiled Jacobite’s jealousy of one who prospered and lived tranquillyunder the government he looked upon as an usurpation. “BridgetFitzgerald,” he said, “had been faithful to the fortunes of hissister—had followed her abroad, and to England when Mrs. Starkey hadthought fit to return. Both his sister and her husband were dead, heknew nothing of Bridget Fitzgerald at the present time: probably SirPhilip Tempest, his nephew’s guardian, might be able to give me someinformation.” I have not given the little contemptuous terms; the way inwhich faithful service was meant to imply more than it said—all that hasnothing to do with my story. Sir Philip, when applied to, told me thathe paid an annuity regularly to an old woman named Fitzgerald, living atColdholme (the village near Starkey Manor-house). Whether she had anydescendants he could not say.

  One bleak March evening, I came in sight of the places described at thebeginning of my story. I could hardly understand the rude dialect inwhich the direction to old Bridget’s house was given.

  “Yo’ see yon furleets,” all run together, gave me no idea that I was toguide myself by the distant lights that shone in the windows of the Hall,occupied for the time by a farmer who held the post of steward, while theSquire, now four or five and twenty, was making the grand tour. However,at last, I reached Bridget’s cottage—a low, moss-grown place: the palingsthat had once surrounded it were broken and gone; and the underwood ofthe forest came up to the walls, and must have darkened the windows. Itwas about seven o’clock—not late to my London notions—but, after knockingfor some time at the door and receiving no reply, I was driven toconjecture that the occupant of the house was gone to bed. So I betookmyself to the nearest church I had seen, three miles back on the road Ihad come, sure that close to that I should find an inn of some kind; andearly the next morning I set off back to Coldholme, by a field-path whichmy host assured me I should find a shorter cut than the road I had takenthe night before. It was a cold, sharp morning; my feet left prints inthe sprinkling of hoar-frost that covered the ground; nevertheless, I sawan old woman, whom I instinctively suspected to be the object of mysearch, in a sheltered covert on one side of my path. I lingered andwatched her. She must have been considerably above the middle size inher prime, for when she raised herself from the stooping position inwhich I first saw her, there was something fine and commanding in theerectness of her figure. She drooped again in a minute or two, andseemed looking for something on the ground, as, with bent head, sheturned off from the spot where I gazed upon her, and was lost to mysight. I fancy I missed my way, and made a round in spite of thelandlord’s directions; for by the time I had reached Bridget’s cottageshe was there, with no semblance of hurried walk or discomposure of anykind. The door was slightly ajar. I knocked, and the majestic figurestood before me, silently awaiting the explanation of my errand. Herteeth were all gone, so the nose and chin were brought near together; thegray eyebrows were straight, and almost hung over her deep, cavernouseyes, and the thick white hair lay in silvery masses over the low, wide,wrinkled forehead. For a moment, I stood uncertain how to shape myanswer to the solemn questioning of her silence.

  “Your name is Bridget Fitzgerald, I believe?”

>   She bowed her head in assent.

  “I have something to say to you. May I come in? I am unwilling to keepyou standing.”

  “You cannot tire me,” she said, and at first she seemed inclined to denyme the shelter of her roof. But the next moment—she had searched thevery soul in me with her eyes during that instant—she led me in, anddropped the shadowing hood of her gray, draping cloak, which hadpreviously hid part of the character of her countenance. The cottage wasrude and bare enough. But before the picture of the Virgin, of which Ihave made mention, there stood a little cup filled with fresh primroses.While she paid her reverence to the Madonna, I understood why she hadbeen out seeking through the clumps of green in the sheltered copse.Then she turned round, and bade me be seated. The expression of herface, which all this time I was studying, was not bad, as the stories ofmy last night’s landlord had led me to expect; it was a wild, stern,fierce, indomitable countenance, seamed and scarred by agonies