Herbert promised that he would take this advice, and
he thought himself that among other things he might
go over to inspect that Clady boiler, and of course
call at Desmond Court on his way. And then, when
they got near to Castle Richmond, they parted company,
Mr. Somers stopping at his own place, and Herbert riding
home alone.
THE FRIEND OF THE FAMILY
On the day named by Herbert, and only an hour before
dinner, Mr. Prendergast did arrive at Castle Richmond.
The Great Southern and Western Railway was not then
open as far as Mallow, and the journey from Dublin
was long and tedious. “I’ll see him
of course,” said Sir Thomas to Lady Fitzgerald;
“but I’ll put off this business till to-morrow.”
This he said in a tone of distress and agony, which
showed too plainly how he dreaded the work which he
had before him. “But you’ll come
in to dinner,” Lady Fitzgerald had said.
“No,” he answered, “not to day,
love; I have to think about this.” And he
put his hand up to his head, as though this thinking
about it had already been too much for him.
Mr. Prendergast was a man over sixty years of age,
being, in fact, considerably senior to Sir Thomas
himself. But no one would have dreamed of calling
Mr. Prendergast an old man. He was short of stature,
well made, and in good proportion; he was wiry, strong,
and almost robust. He walked as though in putting
his foot to the earth he always wished to proclaim
that he was afraid of no man and no thing. His
hair was grizzled, and his whiskers were grey, and
round about his mouth his face was wrinkled; but with
him even these things hardly seemed to be signs of
old age. He was said by many who knew him to
be a stern man, and there was that in his face which
seemed to warrant such a character. But he had
also the reputation of being a very just man; and
those who knew him best could tell tales of him which
proved that his sternness was at any rate compatible
with a wide benevolence. He was a man who himself
had known but little mental suffering, and who owned
no mental weakness; and it might be, therefore, that
he was impatient of such weakness in others.
To chance acquaintances his manners were not soft,
or perhaps palatable; but to his old friends his very
brusqueness was pleasing. He was a bachelor,
well off in the world, and, to a certain extent, fond
of society. He was a solicitor by profession,
having his office somewhere in the purlieus of Lincoln’s
Inn, and living in an old-fashioned house not far
distant from that classic spot. I have said that
he owned no mental weakness. When I say further
that he was slightly afflicted with personal vanity,
and thought a good deal about the set of his hair,
the shape of his coat, the fit of his boots, the whiteness
of his hands, and the external trim of his umbrella,
perhaps I may be considered to have contradicted myself.
But such was the case. He was a handsome man
too, with clear, bright, gray eyes, a well-defined
nose, and expressive mouth—of which the
lips, however, were somewhat too thin. No man
with thin lips ever seems to me to be genially human
at all points.
