"As soon as I have told your cousin. I will go down to him to-morrow after breakfast. Is it probable that I shall find him at home?"
"Yes, if you are there before ten. The hounds meet to-morrow at Cecilstown, within three miles of him, and he will not leave home till near eleven. But it is possible that he may have a house full of men with him."
"At any rate I will try. On such an occasion as this he may surely let his friends go to the hunt without him."
And then between nine and ten this interview came to an end. "Mr. Fitzgerald," said Mr. Prendergast, as he pressed Herbert's hand, "you have borne all this as a man should do. No loss of fortune can ruin one who is so well able to endure misfortune." But in this Mr. Prendergast was perhaps mistaken. His knowledge of human nature had not carried him sufficiently far. A man's courage under calamity is only tested when he is left in solitude. The meanest among us can bear up while strange eyes are looking at us. And then Mr. Prendergast went away, and he was alone.
It had been his habit during the whole of this period of his father's illness to go to Sir Thomas at or before bedtime. These visits had usually been made to the study, the room in which he was now standing; but when his father had gone to his bedroom at an earlier hour, Herbert had always seen him there. Was he to go to him now—now that he had heard all this? And if so, how was he to bear himself there, in his father's presence? He stood still, thinking of this, till the hand of the clock showed him that it was past ten, and then it struck him that his father might be waiting for him. It would not do for him now, at such a moment, to appear wanting in that attention which he had always shown. He was still his father's son, though he had lost the right to bear his father's name. He was nameless now, a man utterly without respect or standing-place in the world, a being whom the law ignored except as the possessor of a mere life; such was he now, instead of one whose rights and privileges, whose property and rank all the statutes of the realm and customs of his country delighted to honour and protect. This he repeated to himself over and over again. It was to such a pass as this, to this bitter disappointment that his father had brought him. But yet it should not be said of him that he had begun to neglect his father as soon as he had heard the story.
So with a weary step he walked up stairs, and found Sir Thomas in bed, with his mother sitting by the bedside. His mother held out her hand to him, and he took it, leaning against the bedside. "Has Mr. Prendergast left you?" she asked.
He told her that Mr. Prendergast had left him, and gone to his own room for the night. "And have you been with him all the evening?" she asked. She had no special motive in so asking, but both the father and the son shuddered at the question. "Yes," said Herbert; "I have been with him, and now I have come to wish my father good night; and you too, mother, if you intend to remain here." But Lady Fitzgerald got up, telling Herbert that she would leave him with Sir Thomas; and before either of them could hinder her from departing, the father and the son were alone together.
Sir Thomas, when the door closed, looked furtively up into his son's face. Might it be that he could read there how much had been already told, or how much still remained to be disclosed? That Herbert was to learn it all that evening, he knew; but it might be that Mr. Prendergast had failed to perform his task. Sir Thomas in his heart trusted that he had failed. He looked up furtively into Herbert's face, but at the moment there was nothing there that he could read. There was nothing there but black misery; and every face round him for many days past had worn that aspect.
For a minute or two Herbert said nothing, for he had not made up his mind whether or no he would that night disturb his father's rest. But he could not speak in his ordinary voice, or bid his father good-night as though nothing special to him had happened. "Father," said he, after a short pause, "father, I know it all now."
"My boy, my poor boy, my unfortunate boy!"