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Title: Maxwell Drewitt, vol. 1 of 2
A novel
Author: Mrs. J. H. Riddell
Release date: June 25, 2026 [eBook #78945]
Language: English
Original publication: Leipzig: B. Tauchnitz, 1866
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78945
Credits: Richard Tonsing and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MAXWELL DREWITT, VOL. 1 OF 2 ***
EACH VOLUME SOLD SEPARATELY.
COLLECTION
OF
BRITISH AUTHORS
TAUCHNITZ EDITION.
VOL. 809.
MAXWELL DREWITT BY F. G. TRAFFORD
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. 1.
LEIPZIG: BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ.
PARIS: C. REINWALD, 15, RUE DES SAINTS PÈRES.
_This Collection
is published with copyright for Continental circulation, but all
purchasers are earnestly requested not to introduce the volumes into
England or into any British Colony._
COLLECTION
OF
BRITISH AUTHORS.
VOL. 809.
MAXWELL DREWITT BY F. G. TRAFFORD.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
MAXWELL DREWITT.
A NOVEL.
BY
F. G. TRAFFORD,
AUTHOR OF “GEORGE GEITH,” ETC.
_COPYRIGHT EDITION._
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
LEIPZIG
BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ
1866.
_The Right of Translation is reserved._
CONTENTS
OF VOLUME I.
Page
CHAPTER I. Diamond cut Diamond 1
— II. Maxwell’s Little Game 14
— III. The Master of Kincorth 33
— IV. Coming Home 50
— V. Peacemaking 62
— VI. At the Hustings 76
— VII. The Result of the Poll 93
— VIII. Not Dead 113
— IX. Mrs. Drewitt understands 125
— X. Maxwell’s Engagements 142
— XI. Warned 158
— XII. Son and Heir 172
— XIII. Maxwell’s Improvements 187
— XIV. Next 203
— XV. Man and Beast 218
— XVI. Poor Jenny 230
— XVII. Master Harold 243
— XVIII. A Little Political Economy 260
— XIX. Durrow 278
— XX. A Little Leap 294
— XXI. Help 307
MAXWELL DREWITT.
CHAPTER I.
Diamond cut Diamond.
“Confoundedly unlucky for you, Max.”
“Truth, though you spoke it, my boy.”
Having uttered which civil reply, Mr. Maxwell Drewitt flung the fag-end
of a cigar he had been gnawing out of the window, lit another, and
commenced smoking like a chimney.
I wonder, reader, what opinion you, looking into that little
sitting-room, would be inclined to form concerning the two men who
tenanted it—what sort of character you would naturally attribute to
each—what precise road through life you might think it most probable
they would respectively follow.
That tall one lolling on the sofa will, if you ask his name, answer,
“Tim Ryan, at your service;” whilst the younger man, supposing you put
the same question to him, would first inquire, “What the deuce business
it was of yours?” and finally give in to the fact, that people did call
him Maxwell Drewitt, nephew to Archibald Drewitt, Esquire, of Kincorth,
near Duranmore, Connemara, Galway, Ireland.
It is the story of Maxwell Drewitt’s life which I am about to try to
tell, and I must ask you before we go further, to look attentively at
him, and at the man whom for lack of a better word must be called his
friend.
There they sit in the sunlight, in the parlour of Mr. Ryan’s house,
which is a long, low, two-storey, whitewashed cottage, standing a little
back from the highroad leading to Duranmore. There they are for you to
study at your leisure. Ryan fair; Drewitt dark; the former grey-eyed,
reddish haired, wide-mouthed, and eight-and-twenty; the latter nearly
six years younger, slightly made, and rather under than over the middle
height, with dark eyes, dark complexion, and regular features.
Nothing very remarkable, you think, about either of them in face, dress,
circumstances, or expression.
Perhaps you may judge that Ryan is inclined to mirth, whilst Drewitt
affects gravity; that Max has more brains than Tim, and Tim a better
temper than Max; but still, notwithstanding Ryan turns his eyes at times
in a way which is not pleasant, and although when Drewitt speaks he has
a peculiar and most ungraceful knack of not moving his lips like other
people, you see nothing evil in either face.
Look again, look steadily, and be sure. Nothing evil? No, decidedly not;
and this time you are certain of the accuracy of your observation.
All of which only proves that, spite of Lavater, faces are oftentimes
great lies. They are the paper-money of society, for which, on demand,
there frequently proves to be no gold in the human coffer.
Maxwell Drewitt’s face, at any rate, was a lie, for it told no
unpleasant tales about his character. There was nothing disagreeable in
its expression; there was no shadow of evil in his eyes, and yet the
person that knew him best perhaps on earth—his uncle—once declared, “the
man who trusted Maxwell Drewitt twice was a fool.”
He had been that fool, so it is fair to suppose him a competent judge in
the matter.
Wherever Maxwell Drewitt had been born; under whatsoever circumstances
he had been brought up; had he been the son of a bishop, or the heir of
a duke, there can be no reasonable doubt but that he would have turned
out just as bad a man, though, perhaps, a man differently bad.
With Timothy Ryan the case was different. It seemed as though Nature had
hardly been able to decide what to make of him; that she had hesitated
between an honest man and a rogue; and that while she remained
irresolute, training and nurture took the matter into their own hands,
and did the worst for him they could.
He himself was wont to declare he was as honest as he could afford to
be; and if such were the case we can only suppose that the smallness of
his capital restricted his expenditure of probity and fair dealing to
almost a minimum sum per annum.
There ensued a long pause after the two remarks I have recorded, during
which the younger man puffed the smoke of his cigar out into the summer
air, and the elder toyed with the tassels of the window-curtains and
looked forth upon Duranmore Bay.
“Confoundedly unlucky,” he at length repeated, bringing his eyes back
from the sea and the mountains, and stretching one long leg across a
neighbouring chair—“confoundedly unlucky, indeed.”
“You have made that remark three times,” answered Mr. Drewitt, “and I do
not see that it grows any less true by repetition, for which reason let
us quit talking about the matter. If I am not at Kincorth I shall be
elsewhere. We must always be someplace, Tim; on the earth, or in it.
What’s done is done, and there is no use fretting over it. When one door
is shut, another is open. The thing that has been predestined from the
beginning of time must come to pass before the end of it. Are not those
your sentiments?”
“Yes, but then we never know what has been predestined till it actually
happens; and this cursed marriage has not come off yet. Though I am a
firm fatalist, still I never leave anything for fate to do that I can do
for myself, and should advise you ditto. Can’t you scotch the wheel,
Max?”
“I? No,” replied the other.
“Nor loosen a screw, nor upset the coach matrimonial, nor—nor do
anything, my son?”
“Not a thing,” said Mr. Drewitt out of one side of his mouth.
“Could you not go to London and marry her yourself?”
“And saddle myself with a poor wife, and in due time a tribe of hungry
brats, leaving my worthy uncle at liberty to marry any one else whom he
might take it into his wise head to fancy. No thank you, Tim, I am
rather too wide awake for that. Let him bring home his young wife; I
won’t try to prevent him.”
“They say she is pretty, Max, as well as young,” remarked Mr. Ryan. “She
will wind him round her finger. There will be some stir at the old place
when she comes over.”
“Yes, the same stir there always has been,” said Maxwell Drewitt with a
malicious smile, “a rustling of bills, and clamour of duns, a rumour of
writs and dread of bailiffs. I wish the lady joy of her bargain. She
will see hundreds going out, but not a sixpence will she ever be able to
keep in her purse. She will have to pay the servants’ wages with
promises, and manage her housekeeping on credit, and turn her silk gowns
three times. She will be the scapegoat in trouble, the stay at home in
pleasure. She will have to teach Willy and Katty, and fight it out with
Sue. She will have no excitement from year’s end to year’s end, for it
is not likely she can either drink or hunt. Altogether, Mrs. Archibald
Drewitt of Kincorth will have an agreeable life of it, and if she were
the devil I pity her.”
At that Ryan looked up. “You pity her?” he repeated slowly and
doubtingly, for he knew his companion seldom pitied any but those he was
resolved should ere long require an abundance of the article from some
one. “You pity her?”
“Yes, faith,” answered the other; “I know what Kincorth has been to us;
I know what it will be to her. But hang it, Ryan, let us quit talking
about this new martyr; put a cigar in your mouth and shut up.”
“They say,” continued Mr. Ryan, unheeding his friend’s polite request,
“that your uncle intends settling Kincorth upon her.”
For a moment Maxwell Drewitt remained silent, while his face changed and
darkened; then he answered—
“Likely enough. The man’s in love, you know.”
“So he may be,” replied Ryan, “but justice is justice for all that; and
it is not justice to cut you out of the house and demesne for ever.”
“And a day,” finished the smoker; “but bless your soul, it may just as
well be decided, now that I am never to be a farthing the better for any
Drewitt living or dead, except myself. It must have come to this sooner
or later, and I say it is better sooner, than later.”
“Then how am I to be paid?” inquired the other. At which question Mr.
Maxwell Drewitt raised his eyebrows and shrugged his shoulders and
looked full in his friend’s face while he laughed aloud.
“What the devil is amusing you?” asked Ryan angrily.
“So you were waiting to be paid out of Kincorth, were you?” answered Mr.
Drewitt. “You would have been content to run barefoot till Archibald
Drewitt dropped off his shoes some fine winter morning following the
hounds, or slipped his feet out of them after a night’s hard drinking
preparatory to taking a sound sleep in Eversbeg Abbey. Laugh!—it is
enough to make a cat laugh to think of such patience.”
“I was not waiting for his death,” retorted Ryan. “I thought he would do
something for you before long—make some suitable provision for the next
heir.”
“You chanced to be damnably out in your thought, then,” replied the
younger man; “that is all the remark I have to offer on the subject.”
“Well, then, how am I to be paid?” repeated Mr. Ryan. “You owe me more
than I can afford to lose, Max, and——”
“Don’t trouble yourself to make a speech,” interrupted Drewitt, “there
is no audience; you want to know how you are to be paid. I’ll pay you.
You perhaps want to know when. Within twelve months. You may further
desire to know how, but that is my business, not yours. Now let us talk
about something else.”
“If you have not much gold, you have lots of brass,” remarked the other:
“you borrow and borrow and borrow, and then say I am not to ask a
question about repayment.”
“Are you going to dun me, Ryan?”
“I do not want to dun you; I only wish to know how I am to be paid.”
“I have told you I will pay you within twelve months from this present
hour.”
“But how? How is it possible?”
“Mr. Timothy Ryan,” broke in his friend, “there is only one way in which
a man without a pound note in his pocket can possibly pay his debts
honourably—with an ounce of lead. If you would choose that settlement
between us I can have no possible objection to such an arrangement; but
if, on the other hand, you prefer taking your principal and interest in
the coin of the realm you must wait my time, and my time is a year from
this date.”
“Have your year, then,” said the other, sulkily. “I don’t want to press
you. I only——”
“That’s right,” answered Mr. Drewitt, as his friend paused. “Now let us
talk about something else.”
“What else? The election?”
“Thank you. I hear enough about that up at the house. The very name of
it drives me away. I am sick and tired to death of the whole confounded
humbug;” and as he concluded, the young man rose from his chair, placed
a somewhat shabby hat jauntily on his head, and prepared to take his
departure.
“Stop a minute,” entreated Ryan. “You know the seat is to be contested
this time, and pretty hotly too. Sache is not going to walk over the
course as Abbott did. You are old enough to take some decided part on
your own account. Which party do you side with?”
“Really, I have never thought about the matter; but I will now. Let me
see—who is my uncle for?”
“Sache, of course.”
“Then I am for Ryan, of course,” returned Mr. Drewitt.
“May we count upon your assistance?” asked Ryan eagerly.
“I do not know,” answered the younger man. “Any good likely to come of
it?” he inquired, after a moment’s pause.
“What is your figure?” said Ryan. (Among friends, you see, reader, much
ceremony can be dispensed with.) “What is your figure?”
“That place of Lynch’s has just fallen in—that place near Eversbeg—round
the headland, I mean—between the abbey and the shore.”
“Oh, that! It is promised to Hunter, a Scotch fellow. He talked about
building a good house on it.”
“Did he? Well, talk’s cheaper than building, any day. It is a nice farm
though, and you can just mention to Waller that I like it, and that
Hunter is a Sacheite. I would take it without a fine, on lease of
Waller’s life. You might think it over. Good-bye.” And without waiting
for an answer, Mr. Drewitt strolled leisurely out of the house, and
wended his way towards home.
“It is my belief,” remarked Mr. Ryan, as he watched his visitor’s
departure, “it is my belief, Max, that you are the making of as great a
scoundrel as ever broke bread.”
And considering Mr. Timothy Ryan was a long way from being a honest man
himself, this remark may be regarded as a solemn truth, for Mr. Maxwell
Drewitt’s friend was by no means biased in his judgment, either by the
prejudices of superior virtue or by any contracted ideas as to the
number of vices requisite to form a scoundrel.
It was simply the confession of faith of a man who stuck at few things,
concerning the character of a man who stuck at none; and when he had
given utterance to his opinion in the sentence recorded, Timothy Ryan,
Esq., solicitor, felt himself wonderfully relieved, and at liberty to
retire from the window to a table covered with books and papers and
letters and deeds and leases, where he was soon up to his ears in
business.
He had not been writing for more than fifteen minutes, however, when
Maxwell Drewitt re-appeared.
He came lounging into the room with the same immoveable expression on
his countenance, and the eternal cigar between his lips—for Maxwell
Drewitt lived smoking; he did nothing without either a pipe or a weed in
his mouth, and the principal reason perhaps why he liked tobacco was,
because his uncle detested it.
“I say, Ryan,” began the young man, taking one hand out of his pocket in
order to knock the ash off his cigar, “I say, Ryan, lend me a pen and
sheet of paper, will you, for five minutes? I want to send a letter off
to-day, and it will be too late for post, I find, if I go back to
Kincorth. There, don’t disturb yourself—that will do.”
And as he concluded, the speaker pulled a chair up to the opposite end
of the table, dragged the writing materials his friend looked out,
towards him, and then, after sitting biting his nails for a few seconds,
shaded the top of the sheet with his hand, dipped his pen in the ink,
muttered an oath about the latter being so infernally thick, and began.
Busily the quill at the lawyer’s desk went scratching over the foolscap;
rapidly was line after line completed; hurriedly were erasures made and
other sentences substituted; but spite of all his hurry, Mr. Ryan
managed to keep an eye on his visitor, and tried to make out what he was
writing.
He might as well have spared himself the trouble, for even when Maxwell
did lift his hand for a moment from the top of the page to the end, that
he might finish biting his nails down to the quick, Mr. Ryan found it
impossible to read his friend’s letter upside down.
“Never mind,” he thought, “I shall know all about it one of these days.
Judging from his face, he means no good to some poor devil.”
Mr. Ryan was right, and if you, dear reader, would like to watch the
progress of Mr. Maxwell Drewitt’s little game, we can walk round to the
other end of the table, and read the epistle over his shoulder.
[PRIVATE.]
“Inchnagawn Cottage, near Duranmore,
June 11th, 18—.
“DEAR SIR,—I suppose you have heard ere this that my uncle is going to
be married to a young lady named Dyak, a daughter of Colonel Dyak, of
London, but conclude that his intention of settling Kincorth upon her
will be as new to you as it was until last night to me.
“I am sure it will seem but natural to you that I should wish to
prevent this, as you are aware that by the terms of my grandfather’s
will, my father, the elder son, was disinherited, and that my sisters
and self were consequently left dependent on the generosity, or
justice, of my uncle.
“You will at once see the effect of such a settlement. It would cut me
off for ever from all hope of possessing this portion of my
grandfather’s property; as in case of my uncle dying without issue,
Kincorth would pass absolutely to Mrs. Drewitt, who would thus be left
at liberty to contract a second marriage, and to will the house and
demesne to whom she pleased.
“Further, it would render your chances of repayment almost indefinite,
Kincorth being the gem of the property; indeed, the result of the
whole arrangement would be to place Kincorth beyond the reach of Mr.
Drewitt’s creditors; and though there is no doubt but that he would
bitterly repent his imprudence in after years, at the present moment
any remonstrance on my part would only tend to produce an estrangement
between us.
“I want nothing except what is fair, and certainly think as the lady
has no fortune of her own, that some settlement is desirable. But an
equitable settlement is one thing, and making over an entire estate to
a stranger, another.
“However, I now leave the matter entirely in your hands, to act as you
think best, _for you are the only person who can interfere with
advantage to all parties_, and shall only beg that you will in any
case consider this letter as strictly confidential.
“Trusting your health is re-established,
“I remain, dear sir,
“Yours faithfully,
“MAXWELL DREWITT.
“P.S.—I am at present staying with my friend Mr. Thomas Ryan, and
shall feel obliged by your directing me here _under cover_ to him.”
“So you have finished at last, Max?” remarked the attorney, as his
visitor commenced folding up his letter. “I think the sky must be going
to fall when you take to the quill. Surely you have not gone and done
it?”
“Gone and done what?” demanded the younger man, hurriedly.
“Put your foot in your fortune—made a fool of yourself—fallen in love.”
“Fallen in nonsense!” retorted Mr. Drewitt. “No, Tim, I’m not in love
with anybody, unless it be with myself.”
“Ah! that’s best. You will have no rivals there,” replied the lawyer,
which remark Maxwell affected not to hear.
“You are not writing love-letters, then?” persisted Mr. Ryan.
“Not I, faith; the sort of love-letters I want to fall in with are money
letters. Thank God, I am not such a fool as you are, Tim.”
“You are thankful for small mercies,” was the retort, uttered as Mr.
Drewitt reached the door. “Are you off in a huff? Well, good-bye—but
stay—when shall I see you again about the election?”
“Damn the election!” replied the young hypocrite. “Do you think I have
nothing to interest me but drunken voters and lying candidates? I’ll
come when it suits me; and besides, I have not yet made up my mind
whether I will be your man or not.”
“You had better, then, lose no time about making it up,” snapped back
Ryan; “for Sache and his people are in the field already, and we ought
to be there too.”
“That is your affair,” said Drewitt, as he passed out into the hall.
“Adieu, my dear fellow, _au revoir!_” And this time he banged the door
after him and was fairly off.
“Some day,” soliloquized the lawyer, “some day, Maxwell Drewitt, I shall
pay you out in your own coin. Some day when you stand in no need of me,
nor I of you, then we shall be equals—then we shall have many an old
score to settle. Meanwhile——”
He went back to his work, leaving the remainder of the sentence
unspoken; and as it would be but waste of time for us to follow his
thoughts, we will step out into the bright sunshine, and track Mr.
Drewitt’s indolent footsteps home.
CHAPTER II.
Maxwell’s Little Game.
Very leisurely Mr. Maxwell Drewitt lounged along, for it was part of
that young man’s creed to work rather with his head than with his body.
In that caldron he was eternally brewing something which turned out food
for him, and poison for other people.
From childhood he had been plotting and scheming, and by dint of long
thought and care and study he had finally reached almost the top step of
the ladder of hypocrisy, and was, as Ryan said, “the making of as great
a scoundrel as ever lived.”
So he went on his way very slowly, with his hands plunged in his
pockets. Kicking the small stones ruthlessly before him, he went along
the road leading to Duranmore, where, having posted his letter, he
turned aside from the regular thoroughfare and descended to the beach,
along which there was a path, though a circuitous one, home.
Sometimes he looked over the bay; but more generally he kept his eyes
riveted on the ground.
Written on the sands he saw the story of his future life traced
out—riches, prosperity, success; he beheld them all. There were
obstacles, but he crushed them; impediments, but he removed them; foes,
but he annihilated them.
“Yes, yes,” he cried at last, halting suddenly, and looking away towards
the hills that rose to heaven—“Yes, yes, Kincorth, you shall yet be
mine—you and many a fair property beside; but you in especial, because I
have sworn that neither man nor devil shall keep you from me. And shall
a woman? No, before God!”
And the veins came swelling up in his forehead as he stretched out one
clenched hand towards Kincorth, and registered his oath.
There lay his home—his home where he lived a dependent—which was his,
only so long as his uncle’s charity chose to give him the shelter of its
roof.
Look at it, reader, intently as he did, for it was destined to bring
agony unto many hearts, to curse many lives, to peril some souls.
Kincorth! there was not a lovelier spot in Ireland; and is not that
almost equivalent to saying there was not a lovelier spot in the wide
world?
Halfway up a hill stood the house, backed by dark plantations,
surrounded by woods and long belts of trees, and verdant fields and
trickling streams. It was built of the blue granite for which Galway is
noted, and some Drewitt had in other days erected a porch of black
marble, around the pillars of which wreathed roses and fuchsias and
myrtles.
There was the flower-garden, with its hedges of sweetbriar and
evergreens, with its baskets of wickerwork filled with mignonette.
There were rose-trees covered with buds, and little wild Scotch bushes
that crept close to the ground, and strewed it with a carpet of white
and yellow leaves. There were perfumed syringas, Italian broom, and
barberry-trees, and beds of tulips.
There was a fountain in the centre where the supply of water never
failed, and creepers and passionflowers and honeysuckles grew about the
inclosure at their own sweet will.
Kincorth had also its glen and waterfall, and at the top of the fall
there stood a dilapidated summer-house, from which you could see away
and away over the sea and the land. The trackless ocean and the distant
mountains, the villages and hamlets below, and the dashing water near at
hand—all were visible from this place, which was made of fir, and
ornamented with shells, and shaded with sycamore and chesnut trees.
Then there was the old entrance, built of the same dark stone as the
house, half covered with wild white roses, whilst the lodge looked
brilliant in its scarlet deckings of pyracanthus, the blossoms of which
mixed among the white buds that were straggling about everywhere, and
trying to effect an entrance even at the latticed windows.
There were holes in the roof and breakages in the wall; but trees shaded
the one, and wild flowers concealed the other; and Kincorth, with all
its dilapidations—with its ruined buildings, and trailing brambles, and
unmown grass, and unpruned trees—looked beautiful in the dancing
sunshine.
“And it was this place he wanted to settle on her, and secure from me,”
muttered Maxwell, as he entered the drive, across which the branches of
the dark trees met and formed a sort of cathedral roof; and again he
paused, and with arms folded across his chest, with his lips tightly
pressed together, and his dark brows bent down looked up at the house
once more.
Look at him now, reader. Would you like to be an obstacle in his path?
Would you care to be a thing in his way? Cannot you see he would stamp
you into the earth as he stamps his heel into the gravel? Would it not
be an awful thing to have to plead to that man for mercy?—to hear him
answer you with that mocking devil in his eyes, out of those thin,
relentless lips?
He is young now: what will he be when he is old? He is just starting on
life’s journey: what will he be when the road has been traversed—when
the world has hardened him—when experience has matured him? If you come
on to the end, you shall see what he is like when the raven hair is
gray, and the keen eyes dulled, and the devil within satisfied—you shall
see. Meantime he stands with the evening sunbeams making their way
through the trees and falling aslant on his figure, and lighting up the
green and beautiful sward and the plotting, scheming, wary man whose
heart was full of bitterness, whose soul was full of hate.
Kincorth should have been his! If primogeniture were worth anything—if
being the eldest son of the eldest son entitled a man to name and land
and houses—Maxwell Drewitt ought to have been master of Kincorth, and
Archibald should have been eking out existence somewhere else as best he
could.
What had George Drewitt done that his father should cut him off? In the
natural course George Drewitt would have succeeded Nicholas Drewitt,
Maxwell’s grandfather, save for one deadly sin which he committed. He
married a nobody, and a Roman Catholic; and though he tried to keep his
indiscretion a secret, it came finally to his father’s ears, who cut him
off with a shilling on the spot.
“I would as soon you had married the devil, sir!” thundered the old man;
and before very long poor Nicholas Drewitt found he might almost as soon
have mated with that objectionable personage as with his wife, who,
fortunately perhaps for all parties, died in giving birth to her fourth
child, leaving George Drewitt at liberty to marry again if he pleased.
But George Drewitt did not please; he lived to get his shilling
certainly, and to see his brother Archibald owner of Kincorth; he lived
to move himself and his children back as guests to the old place which
he had expected to possess; and then he quietly slipped out of this
world, leaving Maxwell and his sisters to be provided for by their
uncle, a man full of good intentions, who offered to see to them as if
they were his own boys and girls.
“I promise you, George, so long as I have sixpence they shall share it.
I swear it, and you may die happy,” he said to the dying man; who,
whether he died happy or not, accepted the promise and departed, leaving
Archibald Drewitt to perform his good intentions if he could.
It is something more than probable that the owner of Kincorth fulfilled
his promise strictly to the letter, though his own embarrassments and
wretched mismanagement made it impossible for him to carry out the
scheme he had proposed to himself in the spirit.
“I will put aside a certain amount,” he determined, “and devote it to
Maxwell’s education and to portioning his sisters.” A good resolution,
and perhaps only fair, but one which Mr. Drewitt found he could never
carry into practice.
He would have done just the same by his own children; he would have
planned all manner of good things for their benefit, and then he would
have let them grow up as he let his nephews and nieces grow
up—uneducated, untrained, unprovided for.
The curse of the Drewitts, improvidence, was on him, and the consequence
was that, though Maxwell Drewitt and his sisters had food and shelter
out of their grandfather’s property, they had little more.
Maxwell was not sent to college nor the girls to school. Ready money was
one of those things which Mr. Drewitt only knew by name; of himself he
had no acquaintance with it. That George Drewitt’s family did not grow
up idiots was attributable rather to their own natural cleverness than
to any advantages of society or education provided for them by their
uncle. Kincorth was swamped with debt. Every blade of grass, every ear
of corn, was due to some one ere ever it lifted its head above ground;
the description given to Ryan by Maxwell of the state of things at his
uncle’s was not exaggerated in the slightest, and while duns and
bailiffs besieged the old home of the Drewitts, Maxwell looked on, and
gnashed his teeth, and thought how, if _he_ had the management, Kincorth
should soon be clear of debt and the Drewitts rear their heads in the
county once again.
From his mother he had inherited a clear clever head—a head calculated
to look closely and warily after the interests of No. 1. His hospitality
would not have carried him away; his generosity would never have made
him a poorer man; and it was natural perhaps for such a temper to be
irritated with the senseless prodigality of his uncle’s _ménage_, and to
feel more angry at what Mr. Drewitt had left undone than grateful for
that which he had performed.
Above all, Maxwell Drewitt had been brought up a martyr; since boyhood
he had thought his uncle a usurper, himself the lawful heir. With that
love for the first-born which is so distinguishing a feature of the
Irish, his nurse had always regarded him as “wronged,” and had taught
him to believe himself so. We read in a very ancient book that when
Jacob put his hand on the head of Ephraim, Joseph was displeased, and
just so the mass of the poorer population, much as they liked Archibald
Drewitt, still considered that the boy had been hardly done by, and that
he was the rightful owner of all the broad acres that went sloping to
the sea.
With this idea Maxwell grew up: he had been done out of the estate by
his grandfather; he was being kept out of it by his uncle, but the day
must come when the property would revert to him. He was the heir.
Kincorth must eventually return to the only son of the eldest son—and
then—
Then all at once came the news that Mr. Drewitt was about to marry.
“And if he marry,” thought Maxwell Drewitt, as he lay awake and tossed
about from side to side of his bed; “and if he marry—and if he have
sons—where am I?”
That was the question Archibald Drewitt ought to have considered when he
adopted the children, but which he had never thought about, first or
last.
“What was to become of them?” girls who could never earn enough to buy
shoes to their feet? A young man who could ride across country—bring
down his bird—dance all night—walk all day—but who knew nothing likely
to put a guinea in his pocket—what was to become of him?—“What was to
become of them?”
I echo the question which Maxwell Drewitt put to himself as he lay
thinking out all manner of disagreeable and evil thoughts in the
darkness.
All the stories he had read and scoffed at of self-made men came into
his head. “Why should not a gentleman’s son do well too? Why should not
a Drewitt and an Irishman make money if he could? What the devil could
there be in those English people that made them seem able to turn the
very dirt under their feet to gold? Could _he_ do nothing? Was there no
El Dorado to which he might turn his steps? If he had Kincorth, could he
not make money out of it? And if he tried the same scheme with any other
place, might he not do well with that?”
And Maxwell Drewitt sprang out of bed as he thought of this, and looked
down over the trees, away and away towards Duranmore, which lay by the
sea-shore, looking dark and disconsolate in the first dawn of morning.
He looked beyond Duranmore—at something he saw in his mind’s eye, but
which certainly his outward vision could not have presented to him. “I
will have that,” he said, and he went back to bed again and fell asleep
as calmly and peacefully as a child.
From that night the young man formed his plans. Ready money he, like his
uncle, had none, and like his uncle also he was considerably in debt. He
had no property save some forty acres of freehold land that came to him
through his maternal grandfather, and which, having been let during his
minority to a farmer, were now available if Maxwell chose to give him
the usual notice. The land, however, was poor and unproductive, and
though there was a house on the ground, it had been left to go to rack
and ruin for so long a time that it was almost uninhabitable.
So far the future was unpromising enough. Poor and involved, with no
profession, with no cash in hand, with no property save a neglected
piece of barren land, value certainly not exceeding 25_l._ a-year—how
could the man push his way to fortune?
It was not a cheerful prospect for any one, but still Maxwell Drewitt
looked out over it bravely, and hour by hour, and day by day, perfected
his schemes.
He would be idle no longer—he would work, he would be a rich man, when
Archibald Drewitt was a beggar. Kincorth should NOT pass away from him.
His uncle should yet be glad to give over the whole place and receive an
allowance from his nephew. It would take him, say ten years to compass
this end, and then he would paper and paint Kincorth from garret to
cellar; he would give every old servant notice; he would keep the
gardens and grounds in such order that Kincorth should be the talk of
all the county; and when he had got his own again he would marry—he
would marry birth, money, and rank, and take his leisure under the
shadow of his vine and his fig-tree.
In the middle of this day-dream came Ryan’s announcement of his uncle’s
intention to settle Kincorth upon his wife; and it was the thought of
the possibility of such a settlement being effected that made Maxwell
Drewitt stand still as he entered the drive, and look eagerly, longingly
over Kincorth.
There came a day when he looked over it with different eyes, when the
netted sunbeams fell aslant on the figure of a bowed and broken man;
when, satiated with possession and wearied of all he had struggled and
sinned to obtain, Maxwell Drewitt walked feebly under the shadow of
those self-same trees, thinking not of this world, wherein he had laid
house to house and acre to acre, but with a terrible dread, with a
horrible affright, of that other, to which the treasures of earth may
not be carried.
But on the summer evening of which I am speaking youth was present and
age afar off. He was strong, he knew neither ache nor pain, life was all
before him, it was the spring of his year, the time of budding promise,
of fearless hope. He had no dread of anything save of Kincorth being
placed beyond his reach, and he had but little fear of that, for when he
finished his reverie, and walked on towards the house, he muttered—
“I think I have scotched that wheel. Old Turner has too tight a hold
over my good uncle to let that cock fight. I would give five pounds to
see the old fellow’s face when he reads my letter.” And Maxwell Drewitt
laughed aloud as he pictured to himself the Quaker’s consternation on
receipt of his communication.
Had Samuel Turner been anything except a “friend” he would have relieved
his mind by swearing; as it was he merely said “infamous,” and went
straight off to his solicitor.
After a consultation with that gentleman, who comforted him exceedingly,
he sent back the following reply to his young correspondent:—
“Ashton-under-Lyne, June —, 18—.
“FRIEND MAXWELL,
“Thee hast done quite right, and acted (an unusual thing for youths of
thine age and country) with sound sense and good feeling. Be satisfied
I shall do the best I can for thee and thy sisters. I grieve that thy
uncle, a sensible man, should think at his time of life of marrying a
young wife, and she a fashionable woman from London.
“Thy sincere friend,
“SAMUEL TURNER.
“If thee should turn thy attention at any time to business, I would
try to advance thy views if in my power.”
Which letter, coming to Mr. Ryan amongst a number of others, was opened
by him in mistake, and read right through by intention. He read it once,
he read it twice, and then laying it down, he said to himself, “So this
is your dodge, Maxwell Drewitt, is it?—this is the first step.” And when
Maxwell himself appeared he handed him the epistle, adding, “You are a
deal cleverer than I thought you. You will—”
“What the devil, sir, do you mean by opening my letters?” burst forth
his visitor, the blood rushing up warm and red even through his dark
complexion. “I tell you what it is, Ryan,” he went on, “for many a less
thing than this a fellow has had a bullet in his skull.”
“Hold your tongue, my son, and don’t talk like a fool,” interrupted Mr.
Ryan. “How the deuce am I to know a letter is not for me till I have
read it? On my honour I was half way through the thing before it
occurred to me there was any blunder.”
“I don’t believe you,” said Drewitt.
“For less than that many a man has been sent into kingdom-come at twelve
paces,” retorted Ryan; “but there is one blessed comfort in the affair,
which is, I don’t care whether you believe me or not. There now, boy,
sit down, and don’t make such a confounded row about the matter. Honour
among thieves, you know; and I am not going to turn informer.”
“You are an unprincipled scoundrel,” Maxwell persisted, “to open another
person’s letter.”
“Oh, for Heaven’s sake! drop the saint,” exclaimed his friend. “Maxwell
Drewitt talking about principle, and Satan reproving sin, always seem to
me to sail together in the same boat. I tell you I did NOT open the
letter of malice afore-thought. Now I have made all the apology I intend
to make, and if you do not like to take it you may leave it.”
“When a letter comes to you under cover, you cannot open it by
accident.”
“Hang the lad!” exclaimed Ryan, pettishly, “the thing did not come under
cover at all. There is the whole cursed concern.” And he flung letter
and envelope to their rightful owner, who, turning up the latter, read:
“MAXWELL DREWITT,
“Care of T. Ryan,
“Inchnagawn Cottage,
“near Duranmore, Galway, Ireland.
“What an idiot the old fellow must be. I told him as—”
“I know all you said as well as if I had seen your letter,” interrupted
Ryan. “Besides, what does it matter about my knowing you wrote to
Turner? Whenever I heard Mrs. Drewitt’s jointure was cut down, I should
have been sure you had put your foot in it somehow. Indeed, Max Drewitt,
you are a very promising young man, and your uncle has every right to be
proud of you.”
“He is proud of nothing just at present, I fancy,” answered the other,
recovering his temper at this neatly-turned compliment, and flinging
himself into a chair as he spoke. “I left him wishing all Quakers and
lawyers in the hottest of hot quarters. We send for our letters, you
know, and so get them earlier than you do; and you may depend the
opening of the bag made an uncommon fuss at Kincorth this morning.”
“Let the cat out?” suggested Mr. Ryan.
“No, faith. If it had I might have walked. As it was I had nothing but
black looks and short answers. Turner has lost no time about the affair
though, has he?”
“Trust a Quaker for that,” said Mr. Ryan.
“It seems to me,” remarked Mr. Drewitt, “that a dislike to losing money
is common to both churchmen and Quakers; but really you should see my
uncle, he is worth travelling from here to Kincorth to get a sight of.”
“What will he do now?” inquired his companion.
“How should I know? write, I suppose, to his father-in-law elect, and
tell him unforeseen circumstances, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, prevent
his fulfilling his liberal intentions; or he may try to raise money to
pay off Turner. He could scarcely do it in the time though,” added
Maxwell, reflectively.
“Scarcely,” acquiesced Ryan. “But now, I say, Max, tell me why is this
woman marrying your uncle? You declare she is young, pretty,
well-born—she can therefore scarcely be in her last wonder yet. What is
the attraction?”
“Kincorth,” sneered his visitor, pulling his chair up to the table as he
spoke, with a violence which spilt the contents of the lawyer’s tea-cup
over his hand.
“You don’t think she loves him, then?” persisted the other, as he wiped
the tea off his sleeve and wristband.
“Why, what on earth should she love him for?” asked Mr. Drewitt.
“I cannot tell—perhaps because he is frank, handsome, generous, amiable.
Although he is nearly twenty years older than you, Master Maxwell
Drewitt, I know if I were a woman, which thank heaven I am not, I should
fall in love with him sooner than with you.”
“You cannot tell what you might do if you were a woman,” answered the
youth, thus plainly complimented; “but in this case what I tell you is
true. The Colonel, her father, is poor as a church-mouse; he has this
daughter single, and no sons; his income dies with him. It follows,
therefore, that the girls must either marry or starve, and there is
Kincorth for the one who is left. A pretty little catch it sounds.
Fifteen thousand a year, with no encumbrance that she knows of, is worth
looking pretty and pleasant for, eh, Ryan?”
“In theory,” replied Ryan, “but not in fact. If they are playing such a
game it is a pity they should lose it; my creed is that whatever people
marry for, whether for love or money, or position or birth, they should
get it; and they have mistaken the cards over in England if they are
reckoning on Kincorth as a trump. Suppose, however, Max, that you are
wrong, and that this Miss Dyak is marrying your uncle not for love of
Kincorth, but for love of himself.”
“Love of folly!” was the civil answer. “Why, man, you are turning
spooney all at once.”
“No I am not,” said Ryan. “Mr. Drewitt is still very handsome; he is a
thoroughbred Irish gentleman, just the sort to take a girl’s fancy.
Everywhere but at Kincorth he is as lively and talkative as a boy. I do
not see why she should not love him; and if she do, God help her!”
“And wherefore?” demanded his visitor, who was employing himself in
cramming hot buttered toast down his throat—“and wherefore?”
“Because love is too valuable and scarce a commodity to be wasted,”
answered the lawyer, oracularly; “and further, if Miss Dyak be a woman
who can love, she will probably feel inclined to do her duty, and if she
do her duty, why God help her again, I say.”
“You mean with Sue?” This was interrogative.
“I mean with everything: all is wrong at Kincorth—master, nephew,
nieces, servants, labourers, tenants, everything!”
“I’d soon make all right if I had the management,” remarked Maxwell.
“Old maids’ children and bachelors’ wives,” sneered Ryan.
“I keep every soul about the place in order when my uncle is away,”
returned the other, hotly. “I should like to see the man that would
disobey my orders if I were master. I’d undertake to tame any dog,
horse, or woman in a week. But what is the matter with you, Ryan, you
are as white as a sheet?”
Mr. Ryan did not answer: he got up and walked to the window; after
standing there for a minute he came back and reseated himself at the
table.
“What ails you?” persisted his companion, “are you not well?”
“No, I am not,” was the reply. “I feel as weak as a cat at times, and if
I were standing in the biggest room at Kincorth I should seem
suffocating when the fit takes me. I don’t intend to work at home at all
for the future, and I wish you would come and see me at the office,
after Monday next, when you want to see me.”
“Upon my soul, you are civil. I like that,” said his visitor. “Why do
you want me to call at the office? Why do you not want me to come here?”
“Because I want my house to be my home after this week,” was the reply.
“You are going to be married!” exclaimed Mr. Drewitt. “Saul is among the
prophets.”
“I wish I were married,” answered the lawyer, “if only for my poor
little sister’s sake. She is coming back to me now her aunt is dead, and
I must shift for her as best I can. That is the reason I want you to
call at the office. Do you understand?”
“You are afraid I might fall in love with her, I suppose,” laughed
Maxwell.
“No; but I am afraid, nothing being impossible, of her falling in love
with you, and,” went on Mr. Ryan, speaking rapidly and, I might almost
add, fiercely, “as you and I know one another so well that we need not
stand on ceremony, I may say that although I do not pretend to be either
a very good or a very scrupulous man, I had rather put the child in her
grave than give her to you.”
“I do not know what may be the fashion in your rank,” said Maxwell
Drewitt, “but in ours we do not consider it the thing to refuse our
sisters till they are asked for, and I shall certainly never ask you for
yours. It is all very well for me to know you, but Miss Bourke is a
different affair altogether. When I take to running in double harness it
shall be with something more thoroughbred. Tit for tat is fair play.
Never look so cross about being hit back, man. Let us get to business. I
am your man throughout the election—at least I think I am; and if you
like, whenever my uncle leaves for England, I will go canvassing.”
“How many voters can you insure?” asked Ryan, “because if you can bring
nobody but yourself, I don’t know that you will be of much use.”
“Bless my heart, how independent we are all of a sudden!” exclaimed
young Drewitt. “Shall I go and tell Pryor’s committee you think me a
bird not worth catching? How would it be with Waller’s agency then? What
have you got to say to that?”
“Simply what I said before—a single voter is not worth the having, even
though he be a Drewitt. How many can you bring with you?” And the pair
looked straight into one another’s eyes as Ryan finished.
Two dogs might have looked in the same way before flying, with hungry
teeth, each at the throat of his fellow, but the two men drew off. If
Drewitt had not changed his tone there would have been a quarrel, but
the young man spied danger, and answered quietly enough—
“That depends on the cash. I can bribe where you could not. I can get
refractory fellows out of the way. I can do lots of things if you make
it worth my while. In short, I will do anything you please, on two
conditions.”
“There was only one the other day,” remarked the lawyer.
“There are two now, though,” was the reply. “First, the farm, which I
suppose we may call settled; next, I must second Pryor.”
“Why——”
“I have a crow to pluck with Sache, and I can then have it out with
him,” answered Mr. Drewitt. “Even you have no idea how much I can help
you if I choose. Pitted against me, my uncle has no chance. He is an
intruder—a man who has no earthly right to be at Kincorth. He has
brought me up as his heir until now, and now he takes a young wife to
himself, so as to cut me out for ever. On principle I am opposing him.
Contrary to my own interests I am leaving the old ship of the Drewitts.
If he would only turn me out of the house it would be the best thing
possible for the Liberal party. Would not it be capital for us? Heavens!
what fools people are, and what humbug they will swallow!”
Having concluded which complimentary speech relative to the
understandings of his fellows, the young man stuffed his hand into his
coat pocket, and produced thence a book, which Ryan seized eagerly.
“There are their voters,” remarked his friend, “and a precious job I had
to get it. There you have them all—dead, doubtful, and certain. Now how
many of our own dead can we personate, and how many of their doubtfuls
can we get?”
“That depends greatly on you; but are we not losing time most
needlessly? Sache and Munks and Marsden and Tooley and your uncle have
been hard at work for days past, and here are we, with all the landed
interests against us, doing nothing—literally nothing.”
“True; but when once I do start I won’t let the grass grow under my
feet. There has been many an election at Duranmore, but this will cap
everything. I hear my uncle is going to bring the new mistress of
Kincorth home right away, and there are to be election balls and dinners
and Heaven knows what besides, up at the old place. I should have
thought the excitement of marrying ought to have been enough for him,
without any extra fuss; but Archibald Drewitt is like no other human
being on earth.”
“There is not a man in the county much better liked at any rate,”
remarked Mr. Ryan, drily. “I wish we had him on our side.”
“Stuff!” exclaimed Maxwell; “can’t you take the book and let us get to
business?”
“It is impossible to refuse a request urged with such politeness,”
answered the lawyer, moving over to his writing-table, indistinctly
catching, as he did so, Maxwell Drewitt’s comment, which was, “Damn your
politeness.”
CHAPTER III.
The Master of Kincorth.
Archibald Drewitt, Esq., of Kincorth, was born a mistake. He said so
himself, and therefore there can be no discourtesy in my repeating the
observation. Whether different circumstances and a different training
might have rectified nature’s error, it is hard to say. Circumstances
and training did nothing for him, and accordingly a mistake he remained
to the end of the chapter.
“Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel;” that was the pleasant
programme sketched out for him. “Unstable as water, he did not excel,”
and he made everybody who had the misfortune to be connected with him,
miserable in consequence.
“Unstable as water!” Good heavens! how could a man, not, to be a bad
man, have more said in his dispraise!
Unstable as water, his purposes flowed backwards and forwards
perpetually. With youth, health, ample means, fair talents, he started
at six-and-twenty with as fair prospects of happiness as need to be
possessed by any man. Life was before him,—life with its objects, its
pleasures, its duties; but the duties he never fulfilled, the pleasures
he never tasted, the objects he never attained. At twenty-seven
existence seemed a vast conception; at forty-one it was an unfinished,
unsatisfactory, miserable failure.
God deliver us, friends, from such a result! God grant that, when the
noon of our life comes, it may find some work finished, some duty
discharged, so that as the sorrowful sunset draws near—as the darkening
twilight and the darker night approach, we may be able to look back on
the bright mid-day hours without tears of anguish, without the bitterest
thought humanity knows, of having lost time, which, even with all
eternity before us, we may never retrieve—never—for ever!
Unstable as water, the force with which the current of his feelings
hurried him along to an object one moment, was only equalled by the
violence of the flood by which he was distracted from it the next.
Over the sea of life he floated—a boat without a rudder, a mariner
without a star—tossed hither and thither by every wave of passion, by
every caprice and impulse. Almost continually he kept within sight of
the promised land of peace and comfort and content; but never once, ah!
never, did he manage to touch its shores.
Always planning, never executing. Always commencing, never completing.
Always borrowing, never repaying. Always thinking, never acting. Always
proposing, never performing, he spent the whole of his boyhood, manhood,
and age in sending down lost opportunities and good intentions to that
place which is paved with the one and roofed with the other.
It was not, I need scarcely add, that he meant to break his word or
intended to disappoint any living being; it was merely that his theory
proved better than his practice, that purposing and promising to do
everything he finished, like many another, by doing nothing.
Unstable as water, there was not a trait in his character but was
counteracted by some diametrically opposite peculiarity. He was not
religious, yet he was superstitious and bigoted. He hated the Roman
Catholics, yet he was always asking the priest to dinner; he was
prodigal, but still gave little away; he was impatient, yet bore
disappointment as calmly as a philosopher; he was popular, yet always at
feud with some one. He was by turns energetic and indolent, kind and
harsh, forbearing and provoking. His abstract ideas on the subject of
obedience were excellent, yet his servants and nieces ran counter to his
orders before his face. He was a stickler for birth and blood, yet he
supported with heart and soul Mr. Sache—a parvenu, and blackguard. He
was honourable, yet he could never pay a debt to the day; his bills had
always to be lifted by a friend, the interest on his mortgages was
always falling behind, somebody was for ever suffering through, or being
embarrassed by him. He loved punctuality, yet he could not keep an
appointment to the hour. He was never out of hot water, yet he looked as
well and happy as though care and duns and anxiety were meat and drink
to him. He never had a settled plan, yet he would not adopt any other
person’s scheme. He was for ever asking advice and never following it;
in brief, Maxwell Drewitt described his uncle to a nicety when he said
that he was “consistent in nothing except his inconsistency.”
But notwithstanding all his faults, Archibald Drewitt was better liked
than many a better man. He had such frank, gracious manners; he was such
a thorough gentleman in his ideas, his appearance, his bearing; he had
such a knack of turning a compliment, of saying pleasant things as if he
meant them, of implying that the man to whom he was talking at the
moment was his friend of friends—his friend beyond all other friends,
that it was impossible to resist him, as impossible to remain cold and
calculating in his presence, as it is for ice to keep from thawing in
the sun. Let a creditor be ever so angry, an interview with Mr. Drewitt
satisfied him. Those who had made vows concerning paper lent their name
to the owner of Kincorth; even Samuel Turner, an Englishman, a Quaker,
and a merchant, who, for his sins, had once enjoyed the hospitality of
the Irish gentleman, did bills for him, and was wont to lie awake whole
nights wondering how they were to be met, till Mr. Drewitt cut the knot
of his perplexity by a long and pathetic letter setting forth how that
he could not take up the bill, stating why he could not do so,
explaining when he should have money in abundance, and imploring Mr.
Turner meanwhile to do what was needful under the circumstances. “Please
renew,” was the burden of Mr. Drewitt’s everlasting song, a burden with
which many business men are conversant; but very few business men meet
with such correspondents as fell to the lot of the owner of Kincorth.
If was entirely his own fault getting into debt, but people forgot that
and pitied him for it.
There never was a man who drew so largely on the sympathies and purses
of his friends, and yet his cheques never came back dishonoured. Liking
was not the word to express the feeling Mr. Drewitt inspired in those
with whom he came in contact. He was loved, he was idolized, and yet he
left no track of good deeds behind him as he walked through life. Even
his charity, which consisted in letting every tramp who listed walk into
the kitchen at Kincorth, and drink a basin of milk, or toss off a glass
of poteen, before he trudged away with his wallet full of broken
victuals, was as purposeless and as useless as every other action of his
life. He helped no man who was helping himself; it was not the
struggling tradesman, the hard-working labourer who benefited by Mr.
Drewitt’s careless open-handedness; rather, it was the worthless
vagabond, the lazy idle beggar, who fattened on the waste and profusion
of Kincorth.
Open house to all comers: covers for a score if a score liked to drop
in; great sirloins of beef, fish as fine as ever swam in the sea, wine
of the best, whisky of the strongest, brandy that had never paid the
king a halfpenny, claret that was in the same predicament; “cead mille
failthe!” uttered in a rich soft Irish brogue—this was the order of
things in the parlour; whilst in the kitchen there was a bit and a sup
for all who chose to claim hospitality; for hungry dogs and for hungry
men and women. There was the heat of the piled-up turf fire for the lame
and halt who stood looking over the half door, muttering, “God save all
here!” There was the cup of tea for the deaf and dumb, who, by reason of
their misfortunes, were considered able to read the fortunes of others,
and who kept all the maids from their work by prophesying in signs and
gestures the advent of certain husbands, probable journeys, possible
misfortunes.
If the prayer of the poor avail, Archibald Drewitt should have been a
happy man; for never a day passed over without “God bless him” being
repeated thirty or forty times. To be sure, the lips that blessed would
have cursed even more volubly had help been refused; but the help never
was refused. It was _but_ a handful of meal, _but_ a plate of broken
meat, _but_ the bag of potatoes, _but_ the screw of tea, _but_ the
blessing lightly earned, the curse readily averted; and still Archibald
Drewitt did not prosper, still the property went like the house, like
the grounds, like the porter’s lodge, like the entrance—to rack and
ruin.
“Would you grudge the craturs a bite to keep life in them?” asked one of
the old servants one day when Maxwell Drewitt had made some remark
concerning the number of beggars he saw about the place.
“I’d make the rascals work and earn it,” he answered.
“Yer grandfather, God rest his sowl! would niver have made a spache like
that about poor done men,” she replied. “There was many a one thought he
had done wrong,—I thrust he is now in glory—in passing by his eldest son
to lave the place to the masther; but there is one thing sure and
certain, that it is a blessing for the poor you did not get it, Masther
Maxwell.”
“The poor had best make the most of their blessing then while it lasts,”
remarked the young man; “for a man cannot go on feeding a county for
ever, and my uncle is making ducks and drakes of Kincorth as fast as he
knows how.”
“Well, Masther Maxwell, it’s not for you to be saying anything about who
he feeds.”
“Because he has fed me, I suppose; because he has kept me like the
beggars in poverty and idleness,” remarked Maxwell. “I owe him no thanks
for that, Nannie, rather the reverse.”
“I always heard that Nicholas Drewitt was a terribly wise old gentleman,
but I am sure of it now,” answered Nannie.
“Well, do you be a wise old woman,” recommended Mr. Drewitt, junior,
“and make a purse for yourself and keep it; for I swear to you, Nannie,
that if ever I am owner of Kincorth I’ll clear it of all the vermin that
are eating the heart out of the corn now.”
And with this Maxwell Drewitt turned on his heel and walked away,
thinking, “If ever it do come to me it will be valueless, and I—I would
have kept it together; I would have made Kincorth something worth
talking about. Curse him,” said the young man stopping suddenly. “Curse
him for a fool!”
It was hard. His uncle ought either to have cast him off or provided for
him suitably. The very beggars had almost as much good of the estate as
he, and they had no claim on Kincorth as he had—a claim in equity though
not in law.
Why did the man want to marry now? Had he not been in love fourteen
years before? and was not one love enough for such a temperament for
life? Had he not been jilted? Had he not stood with the muzzle of a
pistol touching his forehead, when his brother found him? and did not
the pistol miss fire? and had not the pair a fight for the weapon, which
ended in George Drewitt knocking the owner of Kincorth down and sending
for a doctor to bleed him till he fainted?
“I wish he would take the same notion again,” thought Maxwell, “and that
I had the loading. He would not fall in love a third time;” and the
young man sneered bitterly as he remembered his father’s weakness in
interfering to save the life that stood between him and Kincorth, as he
thought of all the oaths Archibald Drewitt had sworn when the fever
passed away about dividing the estate, about giving his brother a share,
about all he would do for the children, about how he would never marry,
never look with love on the face of any woman again, but live single,
and bring up Maxwell and his sisters as though they were his own son and
daughters.
If an amiable man does us a wrong we hate him fifty times more than if
he were as black as Erebus—hate him because the world joins issue with
us on the question. Had Archibald Drewitt been like Maxwell Drewitt,
nephew and uncle could have fought the matter out on equal social
grounds; but as it was society could never be made to believe that
Archibald Drewitt could be wrong, for which reason Maxwell Drewitt hated
him.
It was hard. I can imagine no cross harder to bear than that of a man
like Maxwell Drewitt placed in Maxwell Drewitt’s position.
In England such a position would have been bad enough; in England, where
any one with courage, and industry, and cleverness, may eventually make
his way; but in Ireland, in Connemara, in a country where trade is
looked down upon, where work is ignominy, where there are but two
classes—the very rich who do nothing, and the very poor who do as little
as they can help, my reader, think of it!—think of a gentleman beggar—of
a man who had all the instincts of his class—who looked upon a merchant
as an inferior being—who had been brought up to no profession—whose
proud stomach could never have brooked the idea of business—who laughed
scornfully at Samuel Turner’s well-meant postscript—who would have tried
to keep up the name and the property and the family dignity,—and who was
still a pauper.
Think of it. He was hardly done by, and all the more hardly, perhaps,
because Kincorth belonged to an interloper—to one of those younger sons
who, since the time of the patriarchs, have been continually putting the
noses of elder sons out of joint.
Never a Drewitt before had thought of making money; but Maxwell was
determined to make it now. He was born in advance of his age; the men of
thirty years ago did not think much of draining, of subsoils, of
top-dressing, of the rotation of crops, and for that matter indeed to
look at Connemara now, one would think that the men of the present day
thought as little of these matters as their predecessors.
Once Maxwell had visited England—once he had seen corn growing, where
for centuries previously nothing had thriven save rushes and reeds and
wild fowl. He had asked how the change was effected, how the morass was
turned into a garden, the wilderness into a fruitful plain; and while
his host told him he thought of Galway—thought of the rushes and the
bogs there—thought as only an Irishman can think of his native country,
and of the best way of bettering his condition.
In England, too, he saw smiling cottages, well-fed men and women,
children with clothes on their back and shoes to their feet. Again he
asked for information, and again he was told that these men, who were
better clad than the best tenants who reluctantly came to Kincorth in
May and November, were not landholders, only labourers.
“That is it,” thought Maxwell Drewitt, then only a lad; “the small farms
are the curse of Ireland. Our tenants ought to be our labourers—that is
it.”
And he went back, Irish like, making fun of the English for having a
good dinner, and yet scorning his countrymen for being contented with
potatoes and salt. It is the Irishman of thirty years ago and more I am
talking about, remember. It is not to be supposed the Irishman of 1865
bears more than the faintest family resemblance to him.
At any rate, the individual whose story I am telling detested the
English as English, and yet was willing to learn a lesson out of their
book of prosperity. He liked the flesh-pots, but he hated the country.
He loved the wealth, but he could not stand the accent. He could have
horsewhipped the first Irish peasant he saw shrinking out of the way of
his galloping horse, and yet he thought the English too independent.
“Look at England,” he would say in Ireland, and yet in his heart, while
he was in England, he loved Irish ways and Irish manners best.
He thought of those great English farmers riding their thoroughbreds,
sending their daughters to boarding-schools, walking to church beside
their wives, who were dressed in silks and merinos, and then he looked
into Irish hovels, where the owner of the soil—owner so far as paying
his rent can make a man so—never knew what it was to eat an egg laid by
his own hens, to taste butter made from his own cows’ milk, year after
year.
“It is all wrong,” concluded Maxwell Drewitt; “these men ought to be
labourers: they ought to be eating fat bacon and drinking strong ale
like the English. How _do_ the English make money as if it was to be
picked up by the road side? Give Galway to them and in twenty years they
would be advertising villa sites—villa sites”—and the young man looked
away towards the mountains and smiled to think how soon the Cockneys
could spoil Connemara.
“But they would live like fighting cocks out of it—they would,” finished
Maxwell Drewitt; “and it is a burning shame and a crying disgrace that
the Irish cannot do the same.”
“We do very well as we are, Max,” said his uncle, when he propounded
these heretical doctrines to him. “Let well alone. The Almighty never
intended us to be like England or he would not have given us such an
iron-bound coast. The country is different and the people are different
and our ways are different. If you put shoes and stockings on the
children they would limp along the roads. If you washed their faces and
sent them to school they would cry their eyes out. If you put Davy Blake
into an English farmhouse and told his wife she must keep it clean, they
would be wretched. Each nation goes through the centuries its own way,
as each man travels to heaven by a different road. Many a person has
tried to mend us, and many a person has come to grief. Stick to your
horse across country, Maxwell, and leave the rights and wrongs of
Ireland to those whose business it is to study them.”
Admirable advice doubtless, and kindly meant; but then the giver was a
man whose way had been made for him, and the receiver had to try and
make his own way as best he could. And gold mines were not common in
that part of the country. Money was not lying under foot as it was
reported to be in London; where, however, Colonel Dyak had not improved
his opportunities any more than Mr. Archibald Drewitt had improved his,
in Connemara.
No two men ever travelled to the dogs at so equal a pace as the
Englishman about town and the Irish country gentleman. They went by
different roads, but their destination was the same: and yet each looked
up to the other, and while Dyak thought Drewitt was rolling in wealth,
Drewitt considered Dyak an individual without a care.
They had met after a fashion common enough in Galway. Colonel Dyak went
there to fish, and Mr. Drewitt coming across him one day, on the shores
of one of the innumerable lakes, asked him to dinner.
And Colonel Dyak accepted the invitation, and ate Mr. Drewitt’s mutton
and drank his claret, and rode his horses every day for six weeks; at
the end of which time he insisted on carrying his host back to London
with him.
Nothing loth, Mr. Drewitt went over twice, and the second time he
returned to Kincorth it was as an engaged man; who by way of bettering
his prospects had asked a young and portionless woman to cast in her lot
with his.
There was one kind of wife who might have saved both him and Kincorth. A
wife with a clear head and a strong will, able to carry things with a
high hand—clever and active and determined and economical withal, would
have queened it at the old place and kept the mortgaged acres together;
but, as a matter of course, Miss Dyak was gentle and loving and
trusting—a woman perfectly incompetent to fight out any battle—a woman
with a sweet placid face—with calm, thoughtful eyes—with smooth, glossy
hair—with a soft, white, satiny skin—with a low voice—with timid,
caressing manners—with no head to plan; but with a heart to be broken.
It is hard for me to write about her—hard for me to go on from this
point and tell of the storms and rain that fell upon that drooping
head—of the trials and crosses that bowed that poor heart before she lay
down to sleep the only really peaceful slumber our poor humanity knows.
She was not the wife for Mr. Drewitt, and Mr. Drewitt was not the
husband for her; but notwithstanding that, they chose to take one
another for better or for worse.
There was no better to the matter, however—it was all worse; it was like
everything Archibald Drewitt did or proposed to do—a mistake.
Colonel Dyak was charmed with the match, and delighted with his
son-in-law elect. He had enjoyed himself greatly at Kincorth. He knew
Mr. Drewitt’s horses were capital. He had landed salmon twelve pounds
weight. The lakes in Galway were alive with fish: the mountains were
covered with game.
“A fine country, I believe,” remarked one of his club acquaintance to
him. “Magnificent scenery, they tell me—monstrous properties—capable of
being improved to any extent.”
Whereupon Colonel Dyak broke ground.
“A fine country! Why, sir, there is not an Englishman breathing knows
what a country it is; there is not a Londoner would believe in such
scenery being within five hundred miles of him unless he saw it.
Mountains! I couldn’t tell you how high they are. Lakes! God only knows
how many hundred lakes I saw in one day. Harbours! why the coast is a
succession of front doors facing America. Rivers! if you turned the
Thames the other way, and made it run from Yorkshire south, it would not
be half so fine as the Shannon. Fuel! you can’t imagine what a
magnificent fire turf makes. Land! there are thousands upon thousands of
acres that have never been turned up by a plough. Labour! eightpence to
tenpence a day in the summer, sixpence to eightpence in the winter.
Society! I never was among a more jovial set of people in my life. Ay,
that is a country! with building materials lying by the wayside, with
granite roads, with marble quarries, silver mines, rock and mountain and
lake and sea. You must come to Galway with me sometime and judge for
yourself.”
“I should like to go greatly,” was the reply. “I am curious to know why
such a country should not prosper.” And the little Londoner took snuff,
and then adjusted his double eye-glasses, thinking doubtless that he
could solve the problem, which is about as dark as the Sphinx, in a
scamper through Ireland.
That is one of the beauties of Ireland, I may here remark. Everybody
imagines, when he begins the pleasing study of her manifold sorrows, of
her excessive poverty, that he has got hold of the right end of the
stick at last; that he has hit on the word with which in some remote age
the puzzle was locked so carefully that no one has ever been able to
open it since; and led on by this delusion, he proceeds triumphantly
only to discover that the riddle seems to have no solution, that all
arguments about the sister island work in a circle, and return to the
same point in the end.
Colonel Dyak, however, was a man who did not trouble himself with
questions of this kind. He took things as he found them: if they were
well, he was pleased; if they were ill, he trusted they would right
themselves in time; and if they did not right themselves, it still was
no business of his; and he felt something more than satisfied with the
match his daughter proposed to herself, although her intended husband’s
property was situated in Ireland; in a country the nonprosperity whereof
puzzled the wise head of his club acquaintance.
Good fishing, good shooting, good hunting could not, however, quite
reconcile Mrs. Dyak to the idea of Agnes throwing herself away upon a
commoner, and that commoner a man unable to make satisfactory marriage
settlements upon her.
“If she _must_ marry,” remarked the eldest daughter, who, on the
strength of having secured a baronet, took upon herself airs in the
family cabinet—“if she _must_ marry a baronet, why did she not make sure
that he was a rich one?”
“But your papa says, my love,” put in Mrs. Dyak, mildly, “that Mr.
Drewitt’s income is fifteen thousand a year.”
“More likely fifteen hundred,” answered Lady Ebbutt.
“And he settles an estate of I think it is two thousand acres on Agnes,”
went on Mrs. Dyak, not heeding her daughter’s remark.
“Depend upon it the estate is a mountain, mamma,” said the baronet’s
wife.
“Well, Bertha, whether it is a mountain or not we cannot help ourselves
in the matter now. Agnes and her papa have set their minds on the match;
and indeed, my dear, I may tell you in confidence, that as we could not
have afforded another season in town, it is a great blessing Aggy has
made a choice. For we must go abroad, and what chance would there be of
her marrying abroad, tell me that?”
But Lady Ebbutt declined to gratify her mother’s desire: she only
observed that she thought it would be better for her parents to reside
in Ireland rather than on the Continent.
“Papa would like it of all things,” she finished.
“I should not,” answered Mrs. Dyak, and the conversation dropped.
Thus the marriage was finally agreed to by all the parties interested.
As a matter of course Mrs. Dyak protested against it, and maintained for
some time sufficient coolness of demeanour to impress Mr. Drewitt with a
due sense of the honour Miss Dyak had conferred upon him by accepting
his hand, and the very moderate settlement that accompanied it; but in
the end Mrs. Dyak gracefully gave way; and in a very fashionable church,
and attended by a little crowd of bridesmaids, Archibald Drewitt and
Agnes Dyak were made man and wife.
It was a very gay wedding. There were plenty of grand people in the
church: there was no lack of fashionable guests at the breakfast.
Everything was in the best style. It was Colonel Dyak’s last shot, and
he did not spare the powder. Any one might have thought his yearly
income something enormous. Even Mr. Drewitt wondered how it happened
that behind such a marriage feast there should be no marriage
settlement, little dreaming that if there had been, Miss Dyak would
never have been permitted to marry a man who lived in Ireland, who had
no house in London, or even in Dublin, who never resided abroad for any
part of the year, and whose estates were embarrassed to such an extent
that only two or three people had other than the faintest idea which
part of his property belonged to him and which to his mortgagees.
It was a nice fate, truly, that Agnes Dyak was robed that morning, all
in pure white, to go out to meet.
“Who shall say that human sacrifices have ceased to be offered in
Britain?” whispered one cynical bachelor to his neighbour, when the pair
joined hands and took one another till death should part them. “Who
shall say there are no victims slain on the horns of the altar now?” And
the speaker laughed, and his friend laughed, and the friend said the
idea was “devilish good,” and the speaker thought in his heart that he
had put it rather neatly, while both forgot how true many words spoken
in jest may be; and neither imagined that when Agnes Drewitt walked down
the long aisle a wife, she was walking on, at the same time, to endure
her martyrdom.
CHAPTER IV.
Coming Home.
When a man goes a-wooing, he does not, as a rule, turn the worst side of
his affairs out for the inspection of his ladye love and his ladye
love’s family. Rather on the contrary: he is apt to throw a little
_couleur de rose_ over his prospects, and to insist that all whom the
matter may concern shall view the landscape through that medium, instead
of by any truer light.
This had been Mr. Drewitt’s policy, at all events. He had kept his
advantages in the foreground—his drawbacks well in the rear. He intended
to reform Kincorth, so what use could there be in talking about its
previous state of wretched mismanagement? He was quite determined to
make a radical change with regard to Maxwell and his sisters; so why,
when the Drewitts’ soiled linen was all going straight off to the
laundress, should he trouble himself to wash it in London, in the sight
of the enemy?
“Only let me get this election business over,” thought Mr. Drewitt, “and
I will send the two younger girls to school, and try if I cannot buy or
beg Maxwell a commission. Susan is my greatest difficulty. I wish to
heaven somebody would marry her. I might manage a small portion.”
Alas! and alas! for the good intentions unfulfilled, for the faithful
promises broken, for the debt of gratitude that had now become
burdensome, for the trust he had broken, for the noble plans he had
never carried out.
Is there nothing pitiful to you, my reader, in the picture of this
middle-aged man, whose work remained for ever undone, who had planned in
youth to reap such abundant harvests, but who stood now, in the very
prime and summer of his age, with the spring crops still unsown, with
the fields of his life bare and barren, with the broad lands of
opportunity still untilled, with his Lord’s talents still
unemployed—still bringing in no interest against the day when his
accounts would be required of him?
If we miss the seed time, what shall we even think of casting into the
ground when our neighbours’ wheat is ripening? Even such poor intentions
as Mr. Drewitt now muttered to himself, in lieu of those great honest
designs that he had once promised to work out for the benefit of his
brother’s children. Half his wealth, all his influence, all his care,
had come to a vague commission for Maxwell, a possible school for
Wilhelmina and Kathleen, and an uncertain fortune for the _bête noir_ of
the establishment, Susan Drewitt.
It was all wrong together—the time had not been redeemed, the seed had
not been sown, the talent had not been put out at usury—it was all
wrong; and so Archibald Drewitt found when the harvest time arrived, and
there was no grain for the gathering.
But in those bright sunshiny days, when he brought home his bride, the
summer sun was gladdening the earth, the autumn was afar off; and cursed
with that peculiar temperament which always believes that “the future is
the time to mend,” Archibald Drewitt made himself happy in the present,
and still permitted his wife to view her future prospects through the
medium of that stained glass to which I have already referred.
She knew, of course, that Maxwell and his sisters resided at Kincorth;
and if there was anything unpleasant to hear about them she would become
acquainted with it soon enough, seeing that she was travelling home as
fast as a very indifferent pair of post horses could take her.
Maxwell had been right. London is a long distance from Galway now, and
in the days of which I am writing it was further still.
It had cost Mr. Drewitt some ready money to get to London at all, and
although he was the bridegroom, it had cost him more to get married.
Elsewhere the fact has been stated that coin of the realm and Mr.
Drewitt were comparative strangers—adding all of which together, the
result arrived at is that a bridal tour was beyond his means, that he
could only do what he did do, viz., bring home his wife with as little
delay as possible.
We read that when Elijah the Tishbite fled from the wrath of Jezebel he
journeyed into the wilderness, and travelled thence forty days and forty
nights, till he came to that cave in Horeb where his wanderings ended.
In the wilderness, on the mountain, the queen’s anger was impotent to
hurt him—towards those fastnesses, the hand of that “cursed woman” was
stretched out in vain.
When, in the after-time, Agnes Drewitt heard the story of the prophet
recited, she always fancied that from all the haunts of men, from all
the towns and cities in which Baal was worshipped, Elijah must have fled
to a country like Connemara, where, beside lonely lakes, the plover
whistles and the bittern cries, where desolation reigns supreme, where
there is a solitude which may be heard, a silence which has a voice.
Under the shadow of those never-ending mountains they travelled on;
beside those interminable lakes the road wound in and about. Away to the
left were hills without end; to the right the blue conical mountains
reared their heads towards heaven. In the valley—which has no end, but
runs between chains of mountain, the commencement of which lies so far
behind that one forgets when a view of any extent of level land was last
obtained—in the valley, I say, the very genius of desolation appeared to
Mrs. Drewitt to have taken up his abode.
Here were no smiling fields, no neat farmhouses, no cows luxuriating in
pleasant pastures, no gentlemen’s seats, no hedges, no gardens, no
homesteads. Mile after mile stretched away the valley; no turn in the
road brought with it a change of scene; and often, as the road turned,
far as the valley extended, nothing met the eye save lonely lakes and
swiftly-flowing streams, thousands of acres of bog land, thousands more
of moor, where a few sheep and a few ponies grazed at will among the
blocks of granite and the huge boulders, that, becoming detached from
the mountain side, had fallen through the centuries, and still lay where
they had fallen.
Lakes where water-lilies float, where the tall reeds grow
sparingly—lakes, the shores of which are bog and moorland—lakes that for
number are well-nigh countless, that are desolate, and solitary beyond
all power of description; rivers that wind not between wooded banks, or
in deep beds of their own digging, but that crawl on in the summer over
stone and granite, and that in winter spread wide as they like over
moorland and bog, carrying with them detached fragments of rock, which
seem in the arms of the mighty flood to be borne lightly as feathers,
away and away! A country without wood, without a house; a country where
it seemed out of place, out of keeping, to meet a living being. This was
what Agnes Drewitt saw as the post-horses laboured up the hills, or were
lashed into a weary canter down them; this was the strange land which
she was entering as a pilgrim and a stranger, wherein she was going to
try to make her home.
It is all very well to travel through these Irish Highlands. The kingdom
of Connemara is a grand kingdom, and the guide-books do not exaggerate
when they call its scenery solemn and sublime; but it is one thing to
visit a country and another to reside in it. The young Englishwoman
looked out with dread and dismay on those over-shadowing mountains, on
those endless lakes that looked stern and desolate even with the
summer’s sun shining down upon them.
The wilderness Elijah fled through could not have been more lonely than
Connemara; the cave at the mouth whereof he stood while the strong wind
passed by, and the earthquake shook the hills, and the fire flashed
before him, might have been in just such a mountain as any of those that
frowned upon her.
Ahab’s wrath was powerless to touch the prophet there; the king’s writ,
she had heard, was not worth a halfpenny in the land through which she
was travelling; and Mrs. Drewitt was just thinking of this saying, and
wondering what such a savage country would be like when winter’s frosts
covered the ground, when winter’s rains and snows swelled the
torrents,—when suddenly, the road taking a sharp curve, the view
changed—the bogs and the lakes and the mountains were left behind, and
the sea burst upon her view.
How shall words ever give even the faintest idea of the exquisite beauty
and peace of that summer’s evening scene? How can pen and ink ever tell
how green looked the grassy knolls that lay down by the shore; how fair
were the islands in Duranmore Bay; how soft, and rich, and mellow the
golden light that lay on wood and water, that steeped the trees and fell
in great patches on the hill sides? With what a glad sound of welcome
the “sweet chimes of the waves” sung their low song in the stranger’s
ear! “From Newfoundland and from Labrador,” as has been happily said,
they had come “to mingle their voice in harmony,” on that sea-beat
shore; and Agnes Drewitt fancied she knew what they were telling her,
and listened to their melody with an answering music swelling in her
breast.
It was like heaven bursting upon her view; it was like light after
darkness; it was like liberty after slavery; it was like everything her
fancy had painted—her heart desired; it was beautiful—it was perfect;
and Agnes Drewitt, young, impressionable, imaginative, basked in the
loveliness and the sunshine, and was happy.
On one of the roads through Connemara there is a stone bearing the
singular statement that from there it is twenty-one miles to Hell.
Where the Hell referred to may be—whether in this world or the next—I am
unable to tell; but I am sure had Mrs. Drewitt been intrusted with the
preparation of a table of distances she would have called Duranmore
heaven, and given it as the ultimate destination of all tourists in
Galway.
That sweet bay! those soft green hills! those grand headlands! seemed
beautiful—thrice beautiful, after the bleak desolation, the utter
loneliness of the wilderness through which she had passed; and she
leaned forward in the carriage and strained her eyes over the landscape,
while she said—
“How exquisite! How perfect!”
“That is Kincorth,” said Mr. Drewitt, pointing to the northern side of
the bay. “That is Kincorth,” and he sighed as he spoke.
From sea, from hill, from wood, from mountain Agnes Drewitt withdrew her
eager gaze, to turn towards her husband and inquire the meaning of that
sigh. She was a clinging creature, reader, a woman who could not bear
the sight of unhappiness, the sound of woe; she was a loving woman, who
could not endure that her husband should have a care or a sorrow hidden
from her.
Why did he sigh? Was he tired? Was he ill? Was he unhappy? And the
little hand stole out to clasp his, and the sweet eyes turned towards
him full of a ready sympathy.
“Unhappy!” he answered, carried away by one of those impulses he was as
impotent as a child to control. “Unhappy! I have never been happy
before. I never knew the meaning of the word till I saw you. I never
felt peace, perfect peace till I sat thus, with your hand clasped in
mine. If I sighed it was because I felt at last happy and contented—as
one takes a long, deep breath, when sitting down, after a weary journey,
to rest. Do you understand me, darling? Life has been that journey, and
you are the rest to me.”
She did not understand him then, though she comprehended his meaning
perfectly afterwards. She did not know that instead of bringing her home
to comfort and bless her, he was bringing her home to comfort and bless
him.
A slight, fragile thing she was, yet strong enough for this poor, weak,
unstable creature to lean against and feel secure. From that day forth
she was to be the crutch and he the cripple; she the rock and he the
billow; she the nest and he the bird. Maxwell Drewitt had sketched the
outline of her future life to perfection; but he had not been equally
accurate in calling her choice mercenary, her marriage an interested
one.
She had elected to cast her lot with Archibald Drewitt because she loved
him; and loving him, she would have gone through fire and water for his
sake.
It is strange that such men are able to secure such wives; but it is not
more strange than that the most unselfish of men draw so often viragos
out of the matrimonial lottery.
We hear a great deal about the balance of power; is this the balance
(matrimonially) of good and evil?
After his little lament about having found life’s paths rough and
dreary, Mr. Drewitt became both talkative and cheerful, and discoursed
concerning the improvements he purposed effecting, concerning the
alterations he intended making.
“Next year,” he said, “I will rebuild the porter’s lodge; and you shall
draw me a pretty design for one.”
In her heart Agnes thought that a new lodge ought to be erected at once;
but she had sense enough not to say so, and merely remarked that the
creepers and climbers which covered the damp walls and the broken roof
were extremely picturesque.
Irish picturesqueness, however, could not make up to this stranger from
a wealthier land for the absence of all comfort, for the ruined walls,
for the unmown grass, for the unrolled gravel, for the unswept walks.
The place, as Maxwell Drewitt in his pride thought he could keep it,
would have suited Mrs. Drewitt a vast deal better than Kincorth, as it
was.
Within the gates, under the arching trees, the old feeling of loneliness
and desolation came upon her once more, and she shivered she scarcely
knew why; and Mr. Drewitt wrapped her shawl more closely round her,
while he whispered tenderly—
“Welcome home, my darling; welcome home.”
They were on the very threshold of home now; but no one came forth to
greet her. The hall door stood wide, but no servant was there—no
relation, no living thing to meet the woman who, with that lonely
feeling growing stronger every moment, walked into the house which she
never left for any other habitation until she passed from under its
roof-tree in middle age, with children beside her, with youth behind
her, wearing widow’s weeds for the husband of her choice, old before her
time, with wrinkles across her forehead, with silver threads sprinkled
through her rich dark hair.
When I come to tell you of how she left Kincorth, I would ask you to
remember how she entered it—how she stood in the hall while the driver
brought in the luggage and her husband fee’d him handsomely with almost
the last money in his purse, how she followed Mr. Drewitt as he flung
open the door of room after room to find each in succession empty, how
she sat down finally in a little breakfast parlour and watched her
husband first pull the bell till he broke it, and then go to the
kitchens personally, to summon assistance.
In the distance she heard him rating and raging and cursing and swearing
as she had never heard any one rate and rage and curse and swear before;
and then the tempest lulled as suddenly as it had arisen, and Mr.
Drewitt returned, followed by Nannie, who, curtseying reverentially to
her new mistress, at once broke the ice with,
“It’s welcome home ye are, ma’am, and shure an’ we did not expec’ ye for
a couple of hours yit, Mr. Maxwell said—”
“Show your mistress her room, Nannie,” interrupted Mr. Drewitt, “and
I’ll see to the trunks being taken up. And Agnes, my darling,” he
murmured, while Nannie, who was “up to the manœuvres of new-married
folks,” discreetly left the room, “if the house seems cold to you just
at first, don’t be vexed; they did not mean it, they did not know.”
She lifted her sweet face to his, but she did not raise her eyes, for
they were full of tears, and she did not want him to see that they were
so. It was all mightily unlike the coming home she had so foolishly
pictured to herself. No friendly hands stretched out towards her! no
warm Irish words of welcome! But she would not let that discourage her:
she would be brave, she would be strong, and do her duty.
She made this vow to herself with her husband’s kiss warm on her lips.
And she was strong, she did do her duty, and she had her reward.
“An’ shure, ma’am, an’ it’s myself is heartily glad to see a mistress
comin’ home till the ould place,” remarked Nannie, as she assisted Mrs.
Drewitt to change her dress and unpack her boxes, and put some portion
of their contents in order. “The lonely dissolate place this has been,
the Lord knows, wantin’ a lady to keep things straight and genteel. An’
ye have come all the way from London, I hear; and it’s a terrible big
place, they tells me. I hope ye won’t be feelin’ lonesome here, ma’am;
for though it is a fine country—God bless it!—ye’ll know it strange and
solitary like at first.”
At that Agnes Drewitt gave way, and she stooped her head for a minute
while her tears fell fast as rain. Then she recovered herself and said—
“It is strange and solitary; you are right. You have put what I was
feeling into words for me; but it is a fine country, and I will love it
for my husband’s sake, and I will love its people too, if they will let
me.”
“They would be mighty queer people if they did not love ye back, my
lady,” answered Nannie, in all sincerity; “so don’t fret, ma’am, but
just give them the pleasant word and the bright smile and they’ll come
to like you so well they’ll forget you’re not Irish.”
Having administered which piece of comfort Nannie proceeded with her
folding and straightening, and Mrs. Drewitt bathed the traces of tears
from her cheeks preparatory to returning to the room where she had left
her husband.
Mr. Drewitt was not there, however, when she descended; but she met in
his stead a young man who, with his hat on his head, and his hands
buried deep in his pockets, was whistling to himself that loveliest of
all the Irish airs—Cushla ma cree.
At sight of Mrs. Drewitt he pulled his hands out of his pockets, took
his hat off his head, and introduced himself to her as Maxwell Drewitt.
“And these are my sisters,” he added, as three girls came trooping into
the room.
“And consequently my nieces,” finished Mrs. Drewitt, kissing them all
round; an attention the young ladies seemed to regard as altogether
superfluous and ill-timed.
“Does she know who we are really?” thought Maxwell Drewitt, as he saw
Mrs. Drewitt’s glance resting first on his sisters’ shabby dresses, and
then reverting to her own rich attire. “Does she know I ought to be
master here—that I am the eldest son of the eldest son? or can she fancy
we are pauper dependents on the bounty of her husband? I will take care
she does not long remain in a state of blissful ignorance about that
matter.”
And he did take care; before three days he had found opportunity to tell
her the whole story; before three days he had opened the skeleton-closet
at Kincorth, and anatomized its contents for her benefit.
“It is very hard for them, and it is very hard for me,” argued poor Mrs.
Drewitt; “but I will try to do my duty by them—and by everybody about
the place. I will—I will—I will.”
CHAPTER V.
Peacemaking.
Doing one’s duty (a charming phrase in the abstract, doubtless) is
usually much less agreeable in practice than in theory, seeing that it
generally involves annoying oneself, and displeasing other people.
No credit attaches to it, because after all we have only done what we
ought to have done; duty goes to bed weary and rises early; duty darns
stockings and turns its dresses; duty does needlework, and pricks its
fingers in the process; duty tends the sick and humours the fretful;
duty gives to the poor, and goes about clad in the garments of humility;
and for many and many a long day—perhaps until, there being no more
duties to be performed in this world, it betakes itself to the next—duty
has the felicity of receiving all the kicks of which society is so
liberal, while halfpence and silver and gold are showered upon those who
do not go in for duty at all, but simply for pleasure.
There is nothing so hard to discharge, satisfactorily, as our duty;
there is nothing for which we get so little thanks. It is like work
looked down upon as a vulgar virtue: and yet when the small sums that go
to make up life’s great account come to be cast out, duty and work may
be found to have borne good interest; though the one has oftentimes
seemed to our eyes but as the toil of the ant, and the other but useless
labour, but misspent energy.
Shall we say for all this, however, that the weakest among us is right
to drift with the stream—to make no effort to stem its torrent? Would it
have been better for Mrs. Drewitt to have never attempted to mend the
ways of that wretched Irish household?
She never achieved a great deal, but she did something. After all it is
not given to many women to accomplish much, and she tried her best; and,
as I have said before, in the long run she had her reward.
During the first few weeks of her residence at Kincorth the
establishment was in a state of anarchy, for was not the election coming
on, and did not an election always upset everything?
Gentlemen from Dublin—gentlemen from England—gentlemen from the remotest
parts of the country came to Kincorth the moment Mr. Drewitt’s return
was announced, and took up their quarters there.
It was breakfast all the morning—it was luncheon all the day—it was
dinner all the night—it was noise and confusion and excitement from one
sunrise to another.
Canvassing was about the last work Mrs. Drewitt was fitted for, but out
canvassing she had to go, with the Honourable Mrs. Munks and the
Countess of Popingham.
There was not a description of bribery she did not see practised.
“I am hungry,” Lady Popingham would say, with her arch Irish face
lighted up by a very intelligible smile; and she would go into a baker’s
shop in Duranmore and ask for a bun.
“You’re for Pryor?” she would remark—her mouth full of new bread, and
her small fingers fiddling with half her purchase—“You’re for Pryor.”
“Well, I am not quite determined, my lady. They were in here the other
day, and were bidding uncommon high; but your ladyship understands that
I never did sell my vote, and I never will.”
“That is honest and independent, is it not, Mrs. Drewitt?” observed the
Countess. “I suppose you will not consider it bribery though to ask you
to a ball, Mr. Rorke? There is to be one over at Kincorth to-morrow
night, and Mrs. Drewitt will be very glad to see you there.”
And with that Lady Popingham left her unfinished bun on the counter, and
the baker said he would come and bring “the wife.”
“And we may count on you, Mr. Rorke,” remarked the Countess, from the
doorstep; “you would rather give your vote to us than sell it to Mr.
Pryor.” At which observation the man laughed and the lady laughed, and
the bread was swept into the till, and the Conservatives could count one
more on their side.
It is not in flesh and blood to be near a contested election and not to
become interested in it; and before long Mrs. Drewitt found herself
doing what she could to secure voters and to please their wives. She
danced with the men—she danced with that identical baker—and had for her
_vis-à-vis_ Lady Marsden and a Duranmore butcher. She invited a hundred
frieze-coated men into the drawing-room and sang for them till she was
hoarse. She ordered some thousands of yards of blue ribbon, and paid for
it herself; and she and Lady Popingham and Mrs. Munks made it up into
rosettes for future use.
Mrs. Drewitt had expected her nieces to assist her in the work; but
Susan, for self and fellows, flatly declined to do anything of the kind.
“If we wear anything we shall wear red,” she said. “Our brother is for
Mr. Pryor; and we are for Mr. Pryor too.”
At this Mrs. Drewitt drew back astounded.
“Do you mean,” she said, “that Maxwell and Mr. Drewitt are on different
sides?”
“Our mother was a Roman Catholic,” explained Miss Drewitt; “and it is
only right that Maxwell should remember that, and vote accordingly.”
“If it were not for landlord terrorism,” put in Wilhelmina—she was
usually called Willy—“no one who was not for the Catholics would ever be
returned in Ireland.”
“The very servants about the house are all for Pryor,” added Susan,
“only they would be discharged if they were to say so.”
“And Maxwell was telling us that if you had been wise you would not have
taken so active a part in the canvassing, because it will set the poor
people against you,” capped Wilhelmina.
“But I only did it to please your uncle, and he is liked by every one.”
“Perhaps so,” answered Miss Drewitt, with a sneer; “but at any rate _he_
is not English.”
“And that makes a difference, you think?”
“That makes all the difference, I know.”
And Miss Susan Drewitt drew up her tall figure and looked down upon her
aunt, who was at least half a head shorter, as she made this pleasant
remark.
“It’s just beyond me, childer,” said Nannie to them one day, “till
understand what delight ye can find in making that craythur’s life a
burden till her; she has not a bit the same look in her face she had
when she came here first.”
“She had no business to come here at all,” answered Miss Drewitt.
“Ireland for the Irish, as Maxwell says: we want no strangers here.”
“But shure and it’s most of all because she is a stranger that ye ought
to be good till her, so that she might not always be fretting for the
country and the friends she has left behind her. Why can’t ye make it
up, young ladies, and live agreeable? See, now, how Miss Kathleen has
taken to her.”
“You are an old hypocrite, Nannie,” returned Miss Drewitt. “You and Miss
Kathleen both like Mrs. Drewitt for the sake of what she gives you.”
“Now may I niver, Miss Susan! may I niver die in my bed if the
mistress—God grant her a long life!—ever give me more than ‘Thank ye,
Nannie,’ or ‘If ye plaze.’ Miss Kathleen has I know got many a thing
from her; but I mind hearing you, Miss Susan, tell your aunt, when she
wanted you to get that illigant blue silk let down and wear it yourself,
that your brother would not allow you to wear any person’s cast-off
gowns, ye did; and ye knew she had never had that same silk on her back;
and she went away to her own room and cried so pitiful! I’d have gone in
and told her never to heed what you said, for that nobody did, only I
was afraid she might be angry.”
“Well, I tell you what, Nannie,” said Willy, at this juncture; “if you
get her to give me that new riding-habit she brought over with her, I’ll
be friends, for I am rather sick of war.”
“If you take it you are quits with me,” remarked her sister.
“There is no chance of your giving me a riding-habit, Sue,” retorted the
other, “and I do want one so badly; Loo Munks is so proud of hers from
Dublin, and it is nothing like such a beauty as Mrs. Drewitt’s. Ask her,
Nannie, like a good old soul, which you’re not, and see if she will give
it to me.”
“Give it to you! she would cut the hair off her head and give it away if
she thought it could pleasure you; but I won’t ask, faith I won’t, for
she has only the one, and it’s meself hopes to see her riding with the
masther over to Tully Kill whenever the hunting begins again.”
“Then I will ask her,” said Wilhelmina; and she was rushing into the
drawing-room to prefer her request, when the sound of angry voices and
loud speaking frightened her back.
It was Mr. Drewitt and Maxwell having it out concerning the
election—concerning Maxwell’s canvass of Colonel Vervensoe’s tenantry.
“He was over here himself this morning,” said Mr. Drewitt
“It was not likely he would come over as anybody else,” remarked
Maxwell.
“Don’t mock me, sir,” shouted out the owner of Kincorth. “Keep your
insolence for other people, for d—n me if I’ll stand it. And I won’t
stand your interference, either, You shall not tamper with our voters.
Vote for Pryor yourself if you like, and be hanged to you; but don’t try
to get up a party against me, I advise you.”
“I was not aware you were going to stand,” observed Maxwell, coolly.
“You know I am for Sache, at any rate,” retorted Mr. Drewitt, “and you
know you turned round to Pryor without ever telling me your intention,
without ever saying a word to put me on my guard. And now listen to
this: Colonel Vervensoe swears that if ever he finds you about his house
again, he will horsewhip you; and he is a man to keep his promise.”
“He had better not try to horsewhip me,” said Maxwell, slowly, “not if
he values his life; for so sure as he attempts it, I’ll break every bone
in his body.”
“He is a stronger man than you.”
“Is he?”
“And he declares he will not have his tenantry tampered with, or endure
any man dangling after his wife.”
“He must speak to Lady Emmeline about that. If she likes me to canvass
with her, I shall certainly do it, and I shall do my best to get Geoffry
Pryor returned, if the devil himself tried to stop me.”
“You shall not.”
“I shall;” and Maxwell turned to leave the room, but Mr. Drewitt
prevented him.
“Look here, Maxwell,” he said, “it is time you and I came to an
understanding.”
“Oh! Archibald,” implored Mrs. Drewitt, “do not say any more while you
are angry—do not speak while you are irritated. If Maxwell thinks Mr.
Pryor ought to get in, why should he not canvass for him? I am certain
you are wrong in this matter, love; I am, indeed.”
“You know nothing about it, Agnes; you are talking on subjects you do
not understand,” said her husband; while Maxwell, with a grave bow,
thanked her for her interference, but remarked he and his uncle had
argued out many a point before, and settled many a dispute, without the
help of a third party.
Which speech was intended to cut two ways—to make Mr. Drewitt more angry
than he was, and to send Mrs. Drewitt out of the room.
It did neither. Mrs. Drewitt would not go, because she felt her presence
was some restraint upon both, and Mr. Drewitt calmed down in a moment,
and said, “I see what you are driving at, Maxwell, but you may as well
save yourself the trouble, for I will not turn you out of the house.”
“There are more ways of killing a dog than hanging him,” answered
Maxwell, “and it is possible to make a place so confoundedly
uncomfortable for a man that he may leave it of his own accord. We need
not quarrel any more, sir,” he went on, his face hardening and setting
as he spoke, “for I shall leave Kincorth without being shown to the
door.”
“You shall not leave Kincorth,” said Mr. Drewitt, forgetting his anger
in the rush of memories that came swelling up in his heart. “Vote for
whom you like, I’ll say nothing more to you about it. I may have been
wrong. Don’t go away like this. You shall not go, Maxwell;” and as he
spoke, he laid a detaining hand on his nephew’s arm.
Maxwell shook it off scornfully.
“It is not in the power of any man to make another stay in hell,” he
answered; “and for many a long day Kincorth has been like hell to me.
You have my father’s property, but you shan’t have my father’s son as
well;” and with that Maxwell walked past his uncle, and out of the
apartment.
“Agnes, stop him, talk to him, don’t let him go,” said Mr. Drewitt; and
only too glad of the order, his wife ran up to her nephew’s room, at the
door of which she knocked gently.
“Who is there?” asked Maxwell.
“It is I,” she answered; “let me in, Maxwell—let me speak to you. I have
something particular to say; I have, indeed.”
“Is my uncle with you?” he inquired.
“No, I am here alone; there is no one with me; let me in, Maxwell, do——”
He unlocked the door, and held it open for her to pass in; then he
bolted and locked it, putting the key in his pocket; after which he
placed the only chair the apartment boasted for her to sit on, and
shutting a box he had just commenced packing, he sat down himself, and
waited patiently for her to commence.
All round the room Mrs. Drewitt’s glance wandered. She had often been in
it before, and done her best to make it more comfortable for its
occupant; but now it seemed to her to look more bare and wretched than
ever, and she wondered whether she had done right in letting Maxwell
keep his den, instead of insisting on his occupying some of the spare
chambers on the first floor.
Those spare chambers had been full of guests almost ever since her own
arrival, so that she need scarcely have blamed herself in the matter;
but Mrs. Drewitt was one of those women who always magnify their own
shortcomings, and she could have burst out crying to think Maxwell was
going, and she should never have a chance of doing better for him than
that.
He half guessed what she was thinking about, and said:
“You have done as much for it as could be done, but it is not a very
first-rate bedchamber. In the winter time the rain comes in there, and
there, and there, and the wind blows the candle out, and it is damp, and
cold, and wretched. Till you came—well, you know what it was when you
came, and I see what it is now. Don’t think I blame my uncle for things
like this, though,” he added hastily, “or that I am so effeminate as to
care for them. I only regret the years I have wasted here. I only
reproach my uncle for having let me live here in idleness when he knew
the day must come that I would have to turn out from even this shelter
and earn my living as I could.”
“But you will not go,” she pleaded; “your uncle told me to ask you to
stay. We will do what we can for you, only remain—only—only—remain.”
And she stretched out her hands imploringly towards Maxwell, who sat
with his hands clasped tightly together and his head bent down, for a
moment silent after she had ceased speaking. Then he answered:
“Because you ask me, I would remain if I could; but I cannot. Mr.
Drewitt thinks that he and I might make up this quarrel; and so,
perhaps, we might. But if we healed this sore, it would only break out
in a fresh place to-morrow. I am too old now for there to be peace
between us,” he went on fiercely. “He ought either never to have
undertaken to do anything for us, or he ought to have done it. If he had
given me even a chance of earning my living, I would have worked and
slaved to make myself and my sisters independent. It could not have been
a great expense had he put me through college; but he never could afford
to send me to Trinity—could not afford with Kincorth, and Analore, and
twenty other nice little properties beside! When he came into this
estate he had, if you believe me, Mrs. Drewitt, eight thousand a year
clear—I think there was a mortgage on the place, which brought the
rent-roll down to eight thousand—but a man may live on eight thousand a
year,” finished Maxwell Drewitt, bitterly. “It is a long way off
starvation that.”
“If he has been imprudent,” remarked Mrs. Drewitt, “he is sorry for that
imprudence; if he has never done anything for you, it is not too late
for him to mend his error now. I am not saying, Maxwell, remember, that
he has acted rightly—indeed, I am afraid he has been very wrong; but he
has done wrong without intending it, and if you stay, he can try to make
reparation.”
“He has not the means now,” answered Maxwell; “if he had the will he has
not the power. He is mortgaged up to his ears. There is nothing free,
excepting Kincorth, and Kincorth will have to be pawned to provide funds
to pay for the expenses of this election and a few other extravagances
in which he has lately been indulging. I have waited long enough—I have
waited and I have hesitated; but now I will take my pack on my back and
go to seek my fortune.”
“But you will not go at once,” she said. “You will stay and see—you will
not part in anger when you do leave. Your uncle is dreadfully grieved,
and, Maxwell, you were insolent! You ought not to have tried his
patience as you did.”
“A beggar has only one weapon, and it is hard if he may not use that,”
replied the young man. “No,” he continued, “I must either go now or
never—”
“Let it be never, then,” she interrupted; but Maxwell shook his head.
“Mrs. Drewitt,” he said, “I put it to your own sense. Can I stay here?
Would it be well for me to do so? Would it be wise—would it be manly?
Would you like to see any one you cared for, occupying the dependent
position I fill? Would you not bid him rather go out and work—earn his
bread, rather than have it given to him?”
“Perhaps so,” she assented; “but I would have no one go in anger. Your
uncle was saying something about thinking you might like a commission,
Maxwell. Should you like it? My father might be able to get you one; or
if not, I am positive my brother-in-law could obtain some government
appointment for you, in England or the colonies. Should you care for
that?”
“No, thank you, Mrs. Drewitt,” answered Maxwell; “an officer without
private means is only a pauper in uniform; and besides, to be frank,” he
went on, “I would rather take no favour from your family.”
“You dislike me so much, I suppose,” she said, a little flush coming up
into her face. She had never been disliked before, and it hurt her to
think she could only make enemies, let her try her best to gain friends.
“You dislike me so much.”
“Not personally,” he replied. “I only dislike you as being Mr. Drewitt’s
wife.”
“But what difference can being his wife make?” she asked.
“I cannot tell you that now,” he said, “but perhaps I may some day. What
I can tell you at this moment,” he proceeded, suddenly returning to the
question at issue, “is, that I wish to leave Kincorth at once, on
account of the election. My uncle wants me to stop for a similar reason.
He thinks it will damage his canvassing if—”
“If people imagine you and he have quarrelled,” finished Mrs. Drewitt,
as he paused and hesitated. “Then, Maxwell, was he right? Were you
trying to provoke him to tell you to leave the house?”
There was a moment’s hesitation, but then Maxwell Drewitt said boldly—
“You may as well know me for what I am at once. I was wanting him to
turn me out. As he is too wise to do that, I am going to turn myself
out. You look shocked. You begin to see that there may be things in
heaven and earth undreamed of in your hitherto very limited philosophy;
but in the future, when you are thinking what a sinner I am, remember
that I have had no opportunity of becoming a saint. Life has not been a
bed of roses to me. The teachings I have listened to have not always
been such as the regenerate hear in church. As time goes by you will
come to understand what kind of a home Kincorth has been to us, and then
judge us if you like. You will do what you can for the girls, I know,
till I am able to take them from you.”
“Don’t go, Maxwell,” entreated Mrs. Drewitt, and there was a sick, dead
feeling about her heart as she spoke. “Don’t go; let us try all together
to make a better use of your life; let us live in peace and unity, as
such near relations should.”
“Did Esau live at peace with Jacob?” asked Maxwell, who was weary of the
discussion. “Was Ishmael suffered to remain after the new heir was born?
Do you suppose Lazarus, living on the crumbs that fell from Dives’
table, had a friendly feeling towards the men who fared sumptuously
every day? If Solomon had not slain Adonijah, would Adonijah ever have
ceased troubling his brother? Can you remember an instance where the
disinherited loved the man who inherited? Is it not better for us to
live apart in peace, than under the same roof at war?”
“I wish I were a better peacemaker,” she said.
“If an angel came down from heaven, unless indeed he were the angel of
death,” said Maxwell, with an emphasis on the latter part of his
sentence which was not quite intelligible to his auditor, “he could not
keep me in Kincorth now. It will not take me long to pack my clothes, I
have not so many of them, and then I mean to go. Tell my uncle I thank
him for wanting me to stay all the same, but I would rather travel my
own road, and that leads me out of Kincorth.”
Having finished which explicit speech, Mr. Maxwell Drewitt unlocked the
door, and held it open for his aunt to pass out, as he had held it open
for her to pass in.
CHAPTER VI.
At the Hustings.
Mr. Drewitt and his nephew did not part quite as friends, and yet to the
eye of the world they did not part as enemies. Finding his wife’s
intervention useless, the owner of Kincorth, though grievously wounded
and worsted, let matters take their course. Had the quarrel originated
in anything else than the election, Mr. Drewitt would have felt its
consequences more bitterly than was the case. He could not have let his
dead brother’s only son leave Kincorth in such a fashion had a question
of politics not been raised between them; but as it was so it was.
Maxwell had done what his father would not have done—helped a man’s wife
to tamper with his tenantry; and if he liked to go, and if nothing could
hinder his going, why, he must do so, and take the consequences.
“He will be glad enough to come back when the election is over,” thought
Mr. Drewitt; but in this idea he was wrong. Maxwell had made up his mind
by very slow degrees to moving; but once made up it would have been
impossible to induce him to return.
He and his uncle had often had quarrels before, and Maxwell had
frequently hinted that if pushed too far he might leave Kincorth
altogether.
On one of these occasions Mr. Drewitt had told him he might go to the
devil if he chose, and Maxwell had retorted that his uncle had taken
precious good care he should not travel post at any rate.
Between such near relations little amenities of this kind meant nothing,
or next to nothing; but now the case was different. With no great
provocation, the young man had elected to leave Kincorth, and could not
be persuaded to remain in it.
If he repented of his choice at any future period, Kincorth was free to
him still. Meantime, as he sowed he must reap, and Kincorth could do
without him.
Supposing Archibald Drewitt ever reasoned out the question, it is very
likely he did it in somewhat the preceding fashion; but truth was, he
had little time for thinking. He was so taken up with the election—he
had such hosts of people to see—he was so eternally occupied, that he
had no leisure to observe things which did not, however, escape his
wife’s observation.
She saw her husband was not quite so popular as formerly. She perceived
that the lower orders were looking coldly on her; she heard indirectly
that the Liberals were making way; she understood that Maxwell’s
departure was being made a party question; she learnt that many laid the
blame of the fracas on her; when she passed through the tents that were
erected on the lawn, where the populace got drunk _au discrétion_ at her
husband’s expense, she heard muttered remarks on the subject of English
pride, and outlandish airs, and “interlopers.”
The election had seemed good fun at first; if it had done nothing else,
it had served to divert her attention from household grievances, from
domestic shortcomings; but now, when she laid her aching head on her
pillow, she sighed for the peace and the happiness of her father’s
house, and prayed for the contest to be well over.
Then, as in the future, Mrs. Drewitt had to fight out her fight alone.
From the first hour in which she set foot in her husband’s house she
kept her trials to herself; she made up her mind not to worry him about
trifles, and before long she came to the conclusion it would be quite as
well not to worry him about great things either.
Unstable as water! Who would entrust a pearl of great price to the
mercies of the stream, to the keeping of a river?—and yet this was
precisely what this poor soul had done all unwittingly. Her love was her
pearl; her happiness was her sole treasure; and she had cast both at the
feet of a man who, never having done well for himself, was never likely
to do well for her.
Unstable as water! the streamlet ran by; unstable as water! the waves
came and went, and ebbed and flowed, and she keeping up a brave face
through the day, cried herself to sleep at night.
She never saw her husband except in the middle of a crowd of voters or
else at the end of a long dinner-table. The house was crammed with
visitors. Sorely against her will she had even to move Kathleen to
Maxwell’s old room, and give the girl’s bedchamber to a bachelor guest.
“It is always like this in the hunting season, aunty; don’t mind about
me,” said Kathleen. “I have had to sleep many and many a night on the
floor, because they sat up so late it was no use trying to get a sofa;
on the floor with nothing but a blanket under me, and hard work to get
that. Maxwell did not like being turned out constantly, so he came up
here at last. When will he be back, aunty darling?”
“After the election, I hope, Kathie,” answered Mrs. Drewitt, as she
kissed the girl and bade her good-night. “After the election.”
“I wish it was over,” sighed Kathleen.
She did not wish it over more than her aunt, who firmly believed that
the contest never would have an end, for the minutes seemed to be like
days, and the days like years.
But at last the nomination day came round, and both parties girt up
their loins and prepared for war.
It was a fine morning, “God bliss it,” as the country people remarked
one to another: no better weather could have been desired for the
nomination of candidates. That was going to be a great day for
Connemara, at least for that portion of it in which we are at present
more particularly interested. The right of the Earl of Popingham to
return his nominee was going to be fiercely disputed; there was going to
be, at last, a thoroughly well-contested election. Hurrah! hurrah!
hurrah! and caps and hats went flying up in the air, and “Three cheers
for Sache,” and “None o’ that, but three times three with a will, boys,
for Pryor,” re-echoed through the usually quiet streets of Duranmore.
Hurrah! and huzza! and hooroo! Who would not yell and cheer and shout
till he was black in the face?—for had every public-house not been open
to the populace for weeks past? and was not every “free and independent”
drunk? and had not each man amongst them who was wavering in the least
pocketed his five, or ten, or twenty pounds? and was not Irish
enthusiasm and Irish excitement worked up by whiskey and party feeling
to fever-point on that glorious August morning when Geoffry Pryor was to
be seconded by Maxwell Drewitt?
The town was fuller than a fair; the electors were drunker than
fiddlers; the canvassers were busier than ever; the candidates were in
an agony of suspense; the windows opposite the hustings were crowded
with ladies; the inn-yards were a sight to behold, crammed full of
carriages. There were opposition bands playing, and flags waving, and
ribbons fluttering, and people jostling, and boys shouting, and women
screaming, and children being crushed to pieces, and police plunging
through the crowd. Two companies of horse occupied one side of the
market-place, ready to charge the populace at a moment’s notice; and,
altogether, Duranmore was a great and cheering sight, for in the days of
which I am now writing elections were no child’s play. Lives were lost,
men trampled under foot, ridden down by the soldiers, kicked, stoned,
cudgelled. Heads were cracked, limbs broken. Donnybrook, at its worst,
was a peaceable sort of scene in comparison to an Irish election at its
best, where men of station and of standing sacrificed fortune,
character, position, truth, honour, honesty, their fellow-creatures’
happiness, and, in many cases, their fellow-creatures’ lives, to return
for their representative in Parliament perhaps as great a vagabond as
ever cheated the sheriff.
Duranmore and West Connemara was, for various reasons, considered by the
landlord interest in that part of Ireland a stronghold of considerable
importance; and the interest of the approaching contest consisted in the
fact that it was to be a kind of fight for independence. Was the seat
virtually to belong to the Earl of Popingham, or not? Were the Roman
Catholics going to let the sworn enemy of their church return his
nominee again?
The priests had been busy; the priests had their crow to pluck with the
Earl, and were going to make the election expensive to him at any rate.
Whilst the landlords threatened ejection from their holdings, the
priests threatened exclusion from heaven. While the Earl of Popingham
said, “Vote for Sache—or notice at November,” the proprietors of snug
little locations in the next world whispered, “Vote for Pryor—or
everlasting damnation.”
It was a nice fix for men to be placed in. Starvation in this world, or
hell fire in the next—a lively prospect either way; so cheerful that we
can scarcely wonder that in many cases the tenants preferred facing the
danger which was furthest off, and chose rather to fall into the hands
of the devil than into those of their landlord.
It is of many and many a year ago I am talking, I pray you bear in mind.
If the landed proprietors of those days were not unexceptionable, their
successors have doubtless made all up to the generation of tenants that
pay rents now; and as it is not very graceful to cut down into old
sores, I will only add, there was not a place in the United Kingdom
where party feeling ran so high, where bribes were so heavy, where such
an amount of virulence and animosity was displayed, as it was in that
out-of-the-way corner of the earth where two fit and proper candidates
were about to contest the honour of representing the people in
Parliament.
As a matter of course, there had always hitherto been some fight made,
and equally perhaps of course the nominee had always heretofore won; but
on this occasion the claims seemed more nearly equal than had ever been
the case before, for it was well known that young Mr. Waller of Eversbeg
had deserted his late father’s principles and gone over to the enemy;
and it was reported that—instigated thereto and encouraged therein by
Lady Emmeline Vervensoe and Mr. Maxwell Drewitt—the Vervensoe tenantry
had turned restive on a papistical question, and were intending to vote
according to the dictates of their unenlightened consciences for once.
Altogether, Duranmore was a great and glorious sight.
It was enough to make any one madly in love with our representative
system, and with the way seats in Parliament are secured, to see the
spectacle the town presented.
For a month the place had been drunk—not figuratively, but literally—for
weeks men had not been men, but rather casks full of spirits: they drank
till they were blind, and then slept till they could see. The whole town
and all the inhabitants thereof smelt of whiskey; every free and
independent was in a state of greater or lesser incapability; every
barmaid was frightfully active; every servant went about like a walking
ribbon-shop; every wife was on the look-out for money: if the husbands
were drunk, that was no reason why business should be neglected.
They would see to the votes when the time came; meanwhile they would
take care of the notes.
Towards the last there was no attempt to do the thing under the rose;
gentlemen and ladies went about buying votes—not begging them—not even
going through the ceremony of appearing to believe open bribery could
be, as the Countess of Popingham said, “hurtful to their sensitive
feelings.”
Rents were forgiven; fines remitted; leases promised; farms let on
advantageous terms; money was cheerfully paid for getting voters out of
the way; personation fees ran high—in short, neither side left a stone
unturned, or a trick untried, likely to prove beneficial to what they
were severally pleased to call the “good cause.”
To be strictly impartial, there was not a toss up between them.
“If you had shaken the Tories and Whigs up in a bag together,” remarked
Ryan afterwards, “I do not know which would have come out first.”
There were no clean hands among either party; no man was so free of
blame that he could have thrown stones at his opponent. The game had
been a tremendously expensive one; and “whoever wins, the people get the
stakes,” said Mr. Timothy Ryan regretfully.
What a gay sight the town presented! The windows of every house
commanding a view of the hustings were full of women—young, well-born,
beautiful—who exhibited red or blue ribbons, according to the side they
affected.
The fair Sacheites, headed by the Countess of Popingham, Mrs. Munks,
Lady Marsden, Mrs. Hickman, Mrs. Drewitt, and a bevy of other county
notables took possession of the assembly room, which chanced to be Lord
Marsden’s property; whilst conspicuous among the ladies in the Liberal
interest, who occupied the Court-house, appeared in white dress and red
ribbons the still beautiful though somewhat _passée_ Lady Emmeline
Vervensoe, who having openly deserted her husband’s colours, had gone
about canvassing, in company with Mr. Waller and Maxwell Drewitt, to the
intense mortification of her husband and the extreme scandal and disgust
of the Popingham faction.
Lady Emmeline had come of great people; she was an heiress in her own
right, she had condescended to marry a commoner; further, she was a
poetess and had written some very charming lines to the cuckoo, and a
few verses of a highly laudatory character concerning Duranmore Bay—for
all these reasons Lady Emmeline did as she pleased, and suffering no one
to say her nay, sat on the opposition benches, smiling in conscious
loveliness, the observed of all observers.
The town was like a garden; every flower-bed for miles round having been
rifled of its treasures to deck the houses, horses, and hustings.
Triumphal arches of red and white dahlias, long festoons of evergreens
relieved by flowers formed of blue calico and tied with floating
ribbons, branches of oak, sycamore, and elm, yards of ivy, hearts,
stars, mottoes formed of every imaginable flower hung fading in the sun.
Blue flags and red flags danced in the light breeze; the opposition
bands played at one and the same time Garry Owen and God save the King;
full-length caricatures of Sache and Pryor were exhibited on every
available yard of wall; election ballads were chanted at the extremest
pitch of the human voice; there were drums, there were horns, there were
Jew’s harps, there were penny whistles, there was every imaginable
instrument, there was every imaginable noise.
Sache’s supporters drove into town, their servants dressed in blue and
silver liveries, and their carriages decorated with blue hammer-cloths,
edged with silver lace. Pryor’s friends—for the most part young
bachelors who affected different opinions from those their fathers had
held—came galloping into the market square with their saddles and
bridles ornamented in red and gold.
Such splendour! such misery! such evidences of wealth! such signs of
poverty! such sleek, well-groomed, gaily-caparisoned horses! such
under-fed, dirty, half-clothed men and women!
Ah! reader, how can I ever hope to show you the violent contrasts that
were presented to view within so small a space—contrasts that would have
been shocking, had they not been ludicrous also?
The candidates were so spruce, the constituents were so shabby; the hats
of the first were faultless, the head-gear of the latter wretched: the
blue or red colours of the gentry showed to advantage over glossy
broadcloth, over snowy waistcoats; the rosettes of the electors were
pinned on tattered garments, that had been patched and patched till they
were like unto the coat of many colours that brought Joseph so much
ill-will.
But though poor, they were merry; they were, as the Earl of Popingham
said, perpetrating an execrable pun, “full of spirits;” and fuller of
whiskey than they had ever been of food, laughing, jeering, jesting,
yelling, shouting, they shoved and pushed and fought their way up
towards the hustings.
Mr. Sache was not popular among the lower orders, and he knew it. He was
no hero—morally and physically he was a coward; and though he had drunk
brandy enough to have, as Lord Marsden contemptuously told him, brought
colour into the cheeks of a corpse, yet when he appeared on the hustings
he looked the very embodiment of terror and despair.
Gazing down upon the sea of upturned faces, listening to the jeers and
menaces of the crowd, in mortal dread of dead cats, rotten cabbages, and
still more rotten eggs, he thought a seat in Parliament hardly worth
passing through such an ordeal to gain.
“What the deuce brought me here?” he said to Mr. Munks, and his lips
were white and his body all of a tremble while he spoke.
“What the deuce brought you here, is it?” asked Mr. Munks; “why, we did,
and damned idiots we have been, I consider, for our pains. But now you
are here, there is no help for the matter; and if you show the white
feather, by —— I’ll shoot you dead!”
And then Mr. Munks faced round on young Waller of Eversbeg, who was
mocking Mr. Sache, and laughing at the creditable figure cut by the
Conservative candidate; turned round, and asked him how _he_ would like
to have his account settled, “in cold steel or hot lead?”
Whereupon Mr. Waller demanded if Mr. Munks wanted to make his will.
“Because,” he went on, “Ryan can draw you out a draft, and Mr. Pryor
would give an opinion on it, and I dare say make no charge under the
circumstances.”
“Get to business—get to business, Munks,” whispered Mr. Drewitt,
impatiently, “for heaven’s sake let us have it over;” and thus exhorted,
Mr. Munks, whenever the cheering and groaning consequent upon the
appearance of the candidates had in some measure subsided, commenced,
“Gentlemen——”
“Three groans, my boys, and don’t listen to him. Hiss——” and there came
a storm of yells and hisses and execrations, accompanied by a smart
shower of missiles, most of which fortunately fell short of the target.
“Gentlemen,” again essayed Mr. Munks, who, whatever other virtues he
lacked, certainly was game to the backbone. “Gentlemen——”
“Who raised the rints last half——?”
“Who broke the leases?”
“Who put Dick Benton to the dure?”
“Who took the roof off the Widdy Martin, and her down in the favar?”
“Och! ye murthering villain.”
“Och! ye blackguard thafe.”
“Put a praty in yer ugly mouth; here’s one for ye.”
“Gentlemen——”
“Hould yer tongue.”
“He couldn’t do it. He’d slobber his chin.”
“Gentlemen, I beg to——”
“Beg of somebody, then, that doesn’t know ye.”
“Och, can’t ye let the man spake? Shure his wife never lets him have the
chance at home.”
“Go away and send up Betty!”
“In her ridin’-habit!”
“That she is goin’ to be buried in!”
“Come, come, my lads, this won’t do!” yelled out Ryan, in a stentorian
voice, which was distinctly audible even above the din. “Fair play is a
jewel. Never refuse to listen to anybody. Hear Mr. Munks—you don’t know
what he may be going to promise you.”
“Talk’s chape!” shouted out a refractory voter. “Fine words butther no
parsnips!”
“Ye can’t boult the dure wid a boiled carrot!”
“Be quiet, will you!” vociferated Ryan, “and attend to the gentleman’s
speech;” and thus exhorted the crowd permitted Mr. Munks to commence.
He said he hoped they would return Mr. Sache, that he was no stranger,
but a resident in the neighbourhood, and known to every one of them.
“A d——d sight too well!” hiccupped a tipsy tailor; at which remark the
hubbub began again with twenty times greater vigour than ever.
Hissing, yelling, hooting, cheering, cries of “Go on, Munks!” “Go in and
win!” “Speak up, man!” “Make haste or you’ll be late!” “Are you afraid
of Betty? Lord, man, we won’t let her touch you here!” with peals of
laughter and volleys of oaths, compelled Mr. Munks finally to give up in
despair.
“It is of no use,” he exclaimed; “they won’t listen to us; there is a
conspiracy; the crowd is packed.”
On this Maxwell Drewitt came hurriedly forward. “If you won’t hear Mr.
Munks,” he cried, “hear my uncle. We are on opposite sides, but I am
sure he will tell you a great deal you would not willingly miss. Now
three cheers for Archibald Drewitt, who never defrauded the poor man
yet! Cheer like Irishmen, and not like a set of over-fed, beer-drinking
Saxons. Cheer, you rascals, cheer!”
Thus exhorted, the rascals did cheer, till they were hoarse, for
Archibald Drewitt, for Maxwell Drewitt for Waller and for Pryor; but
somehow Mr. Sache’s seconder did not seem much elated by the applause.
Pushing his nephew aside, he said, the moment a lull in the tempest
permitted his words to be heard——
“I need no one to claim a hearing from me. I am not afraid of your
refusing any request of mine. You will give a patient hearing to your
old friend Archibald Drewitt—(tremendous cheering and cries of ‘That we
will!’) We are old acquaintances, and do not need to be introduced to
one another by anybody. We have not always agreed about politics, it is
true, but we have agreed to disagree. Some amongst you go with me, and
others do not; but to one and all my advice is—Return Mr. Sache! [Uproar
and yells of ‘No, we won’t!’] Yes, gentlemen, you will. He is as honest
a man as you’ll find. [Interruption, and a remark that ‘Honest men must
be scarce!’] Yes, my friends, I admit that they are scarce, and for that
very reason you ought not to let Mr. Sache slip through your fingers. He
will do you justice in Parliament! [Great confusion.] He knows your
wants, and you know his principles. [‘To be very bad!’] He is a
gentleman who will never deceive you.” [‘No, faith, we know him too well
to let him do that. He was cut out for a gentleman, but the devil ran
away with the patthern!’] And then came another burst of yelling,
hissing, and fighting.
“Now, now, my friends,” said Mr. Drewitt, “I asked you for a peaceable
hearing, and I thought you would have done that much for me. It is not
so often I make a speech that you should interrupt me when I do. Just
give me five minutes to tell you why you should return Mr. Sache, and I
will promise not to detain you longer. [A prolonged howl, and cries of
‘We want to hear nothing about him.’] Very likely; but I want to tell
you something about him. His political views are sound; if you do not
approve of them, it is not because they are bad, but because you cannot
see what is good for you. He is an Irishman, has an interest in the
soil, loves the country of his birth, will speak up for your rights——”
“Arrah! hear that. The man can’t say boo to a goose. Him spake up!” And
ironical cheers and perfect shrieks of laughter drowned the remainder of
Mr. Drewitt’s sentence.
“Well, gentlemen,” he resumed, when a partial lull enabled his words to
be heard, “I suppose if I appeared before you a candidate for the honour
of representing you in Parliament, instead of trying to second Mr.
Munks’s statement, that Mr. Sache is a fit and proper person to fill
that office—in that case also, I suppose, you would refuse to hear a
syllable I had to say?”
“No, we would not; we’d return you and send you up to London flying.
Propose yourself, Archibald Drewitt, and we’ll second you. Hurrah!”
He had them on the hip now, and pushed his advantage.
“Then it is to Mr. Sache himself and not to his political principles you
object. They cannot but be to your liking, because you say you would
have me for your member, and my views are identical with his. My
friends, you are acting at this minute much like children who strike a
hard table when they have knocked themselves. You think you will hurt us
by returning Mr. Pryor, and in reality you will only hurt yourselves.
Mr. Sache wishes to serve you; but as you do not happen to like him, you
cheer and shout for a man who will not serve you at all. Mr. Pryor, a
very estimable young gentleman no doubt, is not fitted to be your
representative. What interest has he in the country? Though an Irishman,
I believe, by descent, he is yet English by birth, education, and
residence. He is a stranger, a lawyer, a mere boy.”
“Fifty times betther man than Sache, the dirty spalpeen! We won’t hear a
word against Pryor. We’ll gag the first that cheers for the hardhearted
landlord.” Which speech being accepted as a challenge, gave rise to a
regular shindy, that diversified and enlivened the proceedings. Heads
were cracked, shillelaghs waved, lips cut, an arm or two broken: the
police had finally to interfere to restore order, and then Mr. Waller
came to the front, and was greeted with tumultuous acclamations from the
one side and by hisses, groans, cabbagestalks, bad eggs, and rotten
fruit from the Sacheites.
“Gentlemen.”
“Three cheers for Lady Emmeline! Three times three!”
And Lady Vervensoe, who had drawn public attention to herself by waving
a crimson scarf out of the window, now rose and bowed right and left to
the crowd in acknowledgment of their compliment.
With her white dress and red ribbons, with her chip hat and plume of red
feathers, her grace and beauty, she created quite a furore; and during
the excitement attendant on this demonstration Mr. Waller managed to
move the election of his cousin, Mr. Pryor, as a fit and proper person
to represent Duranmore and West Connemara in Parliament.
“It is my turn now,” whispered Maxwell Drewitt to Ryan. And he came
forward, and leaning over the rails, and jauntily holding in his left
hand a brand new hat, began—
CHAPTER VII.
The Result of the Poll.
“Electors of Duranmore and West Connemara—for I am not going to call
you, for a purpose, gentlemen, which you are not, nor friends, because I
see a good many faces below there which belong to my enemies—but
Electors of Duranmore and West Connemara. I want you to listen to what I
have got to tell you about the way elections have been previously
managed in this part of the country, and of how we intend that they
shall be managed in future——”
Cheers from the Reds, hisses from the Blues.
“For shame, Maxwell Drewitt!” cried one.
“Siding against your uncle.”
“Is it to the likes of you we’re going to listen, do you think?”
“Go home, boy! out o’ that”
“Home is it?” shouted another; “has he not been turned out of the only
one he ever knew?” And at the words Archibald Drewitt turned sick.
“Isn’t it himself ought to be at the ould place now instead of them that
owns it?”
“No, it is not,” answered Maxwell Drewitt, whose face was scarlet, but
not with pain. “It is not; Archibald Drewitt came into Kincorth fairly.
Long may he keep it!”
“Ye wish it, don’t ye Max?” cried some one among the crowd. And then
there came shrieks of laughter and cheers and hisses.
“Make it up with him, man; it’s not too late yet.”
“Why didn’t ye quarrel till he married?”
“Why could ye not have let somebody else put in the spake for Pryor?”
“Because I wanted to tell you what nobody else will tell you: because my
family affairs have nothing to do with anybody in Duranmore: because I
see no reason why I should wear my uncle’s political opinions, if they
do not chance to fit me, any more than his clothes. Conservatism is
stationary. Liberalism is progressive. Toryism may suit those who have
had their way made for them, but those who have to make their way for
themselves see that the Whigs have the best of the argument.
“I am now in the same boat with the poorest man amongst you. He wants to
rise, so do I; he wants to make money, so do I; he does not want to be
ground under the carriage wheels of the upper ten thousand, neither do
I. We are all of one mind in this matter; we want butter to our bread,
and ham and eggs to our breakfast, and clothes to our backs, and good
roofs over our heads, and something to lay by against old age. Here is a
man to get what we desire for us. Three cheers for Geoffry Pryor.”
And the people cheered, and the people shouted, while Maxwell Drewitt
took breath; and some cried out that it was all true, and others told
him to go home—that he was a humbug, and that they would have nothing to
do with him.
“Am I a humbug?” he yelled, almost cracking his voice in his efforts to
make himself heard. “Am I a humbug? If I am, then humbugging must be a
devilishly unprofitable trade. And as long as you have chosen to
introduce this subject, I may say that I have given you as good proofs
as any man can, that, let my principles seem bad or the reverse in your
eyes, I at least have adopted them in sincerity of heart—with integrity
of purpose. All of you know that I had not much to give up, but still I
have given up the little I had, and stand before you a man who, having
relinquished everything for what he conscientiously believes to be the
good of his country, has a right to claim from you, at any rate, a calm
and impartial hearing.”
“Go on, Max; we’re listening.”
“We’re as quiet as mice in a meal bag.”
“Go on, man. Go on, go on, go on.”
“I know I am not so popular as my uncle,” began Maxwell.
Cries of “Yes, yes, you are.” “No you are not.” “Finish your speech, the
schoolmaster could not have laid it off better. Who wrote it for ye,
Max?” “Go on, and don’t keep us here all day. Go on, go on.” And the
crowd shouted and yelled and laughed, and Maxwell cursed the crowd in
his heart while he proceeded.
“I am going on, if you will let me. I was saying that I know I am not so
popular as my uncle.”
“We mind that. Ye said it afore.”
“He is a man who deserves all the love and respect you can give him, and
I am sorry we should stand this day on opposite sides.”
“Why don’t ye go over till him then? He’s near enough to ye.”
“Why don’t I go over to him? That brings me to the point I was wanting
to reach. Let me ask you a few questions, and give you honest answers to
them, and then you will see if you can still blame me for deserting the
‘Dirty Blues.’
“Do you want to have a man of family representing you in Parliament?
Yes. Then surely Mr. Sache cannot be your member!
“Do you want a gentleman? Mr. Sache can lay no claim to such a
distinction!
“Do you want a person clever and fluent, able to lay your grievances
before Parliament, and insist on their being redressed? Alas! my
fellow-electors, Mr. Sache is no orator!
“Do you want a man of mind, capable of grasping facts, of comprehending
the necessities and wishes of his fellows? Mr. Sache is not possessed of
a second idea; his only one, and that a very small one indeed, being
himself!
“Do you desire to do credit to yourselves by sending a good man, an
independent man, a man of talent and character, into the British Senate?
If you do, you must never return Mr. Sache!
“Do you want a man—handsome, energetic, fearless? Look at your would-be
member, voters of Duranmore—electors of West Connemara—look at your
landlords’ nominee! Look at the poor, frightened, incapable creature
your tyrants want to compel you to select, and say if I, Maxwell
Drewitt, were not right to choose a more energetic leader—one able and
willing to battle out your cause against the United Kingdom, and to
state your grievances to the world. Look at him, I say, and cheer that
poltroon if you dare!”
It was probably the very audacity of this address which had kept his
audience silent, for whenever Maxwell Drewitt, with hand stretched out
towards Mr. Sache, with finger pointed at him, paused for a moment in
his speech, there burst out upon the air such a tumult of laughing,
cursing, joking, yelling, cheering, hissing, shouting, that the
unfortunate object of the younger Drewitt’s tirade looked wholly
stupefied and bewildered.
Lady Emmeline was so delighted that she clapped her little hands
together with might and main; she waved her eternal scarf over the heads
of the multitude, and flung a bouquet towards Maxwell, which, falling
short of the hustings, was caught by a man, who took off his battered
and brimless hat, and said, “Thank ye kindly, my lady.”
If anything had been wanting to make Colonel Vervensoe boil over, this
would have settled the matter. Absolutely quivering with rage, he shook
his fist in young Drewitt’s face, and threatened him with condign
punishment on the spot.
“Only lay a finger on me,” said Maxwell, “and I pitch you head foremost
into the crowd, who will soon make mincemeat of you. Stand back, sir,
stand back!”
“If you say another word, Maxwell, you shall never darken my doors
again,” foamed Mr. Drewitt.
“Time enough for you to shut your doors when I show my face at them,”
retorted Maxwell. “Be quiet,” he shouted, addressing the electors, “for
I have still to tell you how your members have been returned hitherto.
By bribery and corruption—by threats and intimidation—by turning the
screw on poor men, who had, for the sake of their families, to put pride
and self-respect and independence, ay, and common honesty in their
pockets. You have been treated like slaves instead of like Irishmen. Why
was O’Shane not successful? Because honest men were put out of the way,
while rogues voted in their names; because refractory electors were
kidnapped and carried off to Arran and Achill, and in one or two cases
even to America; because men were made drunk and stripped naked, and
left without a stitch to their backs, till the polling was over; because
dead men were brought to life again; because tenants were threatened
with expulsion; because Government posts were promised to the sons of
the shopkeepers and small gentry; because the landlords formed a league
against the men who enable them to live; because there was not an atom
of honour or honesty amongst the friends and supporters of your
taskmasters’ nominee.”
“Maxwell, I command you to be silent!” exclaimed Mr. Drewitt.
“My uncle commands me to be silent,” persisted the young man, “but my
conscience commands me to speak. As a boy I saw these things done, and
held my peace; as a man I remember what I saw, and choose my side
accordingly.
“How does the Earl of Popingham expect to win this election? By
intimidation, by dead cats, such as this” (and he dexterously caught one
by the tail, and pitched it back in the face of the man who had thrown
it at him), “by the strong arm, by the might of rank, and power of
money, and the majesty and omnipotence of landlordism. The things which
have been done by the Conservatives are almost past my telling.
Popingham’s pets are among you now with orders to keep the reds back
from the polling booths; they are wearing red rosettes; but you will be
able to pick them out for all that when the time comes. As I rode into
town this morning a lad told me Marsden had offered him half-a-crown to
pelt the reds, but that he was willing to pelt Marsden himself for
eighteenpence. Will you have this, fellow-countrymen? It only requires a
vigorous effort on your part to free yourselves from the yoke. A long
pull, and a strong pull, and a pull altogether, and we will stand a
respectable and independent body of electors, with a better man than any
lordling’s nominee representing us in Parliament.” And amidst a Babel of
cheering, groaning, clapping, and hissing, Maxwell concluded his speech.
“Now, Sache,” whispered Lord Marsden.
“I have not a word to say. I—I couldn’t do it.”
“But you shall do it,” said Mr. Munks. And he and Mr. Drewitt shoved him
up to the front of the hustings.
What he said, however, or whether he ever said anything, nobody had the
slightest idea. His speech appeared in the county paper, but it was
generally supposed that the reporter wrote it himself.
He had the worst of the day’s storm. Imprecations were shouted out
against him. He was pelted, insulted, reviled. “How much does the Earl
give you?” asked one wag.
“Doesn’t the divil take care of his own, Sache?”
“Why don’t you speak up like a man?”
“Couldn’t they have got anybody betther than you?”
“Abbott wouldn’t do their dirty work any longer.”
“And it’s betther to sup with a cutty than want a spoon.”
“Spake up, man, spake up.”
“They’ll niver pay ye for the job if ye don’t work for yer money.”
“Go out o’ that.”
“Betther be a coward than a corp, Sache.”
“Ye dirty blackguard.”
“Who ate up Dan Joyce’s crock o’ butther?”
“Who counts the very chickens as they’re chipping the shell?”
“Let him alone, can’t ye? What’s the use of pouring water on a drownded
rat?”
“Don’t look so scared, Sache; niver howl till ye’re hurt.”
“We won’t hear ye; we’ll bate ye black and blue. Go out o’ that or there
won’t be an egg left in Duranmore.”
“How do ye like it?”
“Do like the women: say no and take it” And at every sentence there
arose a howl, and then came a shower of dirt and filth of all
description.
“I never heard anything to equal this,” said Mr. Pryor to his cousin.
“You’ll have to run the gauntlet in a minute or two,” answered Mr.
Waller.
“It’s good for the tailors, that’s one comfort,” observed Maxwell
Drewitt.
“We want Pryor: go back and send out Pryor. Take him away, Munks, he’s
no credit till ye. I wondher ye’d be seen out with him. We’re run short
o’ eggs, and we’ll have to fall to the pavin’ stones next. Take him out
o’ that. Pryor, Pryor; three cheers for Pryor, and three more for
Butler, and a good one for Waller, and keep your best and longest for
Lady Emmeline.”
“Are you going to give me a hearing, my friends?” asked Geoffry Pryor,
coming forward as Mr. Sache, who by this time presented a pitiable
spectacle, drew back.
“No we’re not. Yes we are. Ye’ll be served worse than he was. Why did ye
put on your best coat? ye might as well take it off and give it to me.
It ’ud look mighty purty turned up wid yellow. See that now!”
“An there’s a flower for your buttonhole.”
“Have ye nearly done?” he demanded.
“No, we havn’t begun. Why don’t ye go on? Ye’re as bad as Sache.”
“Had you not better hear me first, and then speak yourselves
afterwards?”
“No, we hadn’t.”
“Shall I not speak at all?”
“If it’s any pleasure till ye, ye may.” And then the people laughed and
cheered and shouted, and Geoffry Pryor went on to tell them how they
were an oppressed and injured race; how justice had never been done to
them; how the English knew nothing of the way in which the Irish lived;
how everything was wrong in the management of the country; how he
pledged himself to advocate the poor man’s right; how he would miss no
opportunity of letting the English know of their manifold grievances.
“Every labourer is worthy of his hire,” proceeded Mr. Pryor, “and the
man who tills the ground should eat of its produce: you ought to have
your land at such a rent that you can live off it, and not starve on it.
Politically I am a thorough reformer; in religion I am for letting every
man go to heaven his own road; and, in conclusion, I can only say, if
you return me I shall try to serve you faithfully; if you do not return
me I shall try to be content. I would entreat each man among you to vote
according to his conscience: not for Sache or Pryor, not for red or
blue, but for the right and the principle that is in him. And whatever
the result of the contest may be, Mr. Sache,” he added, turning towards
his opponent, “I hope we shall be enemies only in public, never in
private life; and I should like, though I suppose such a proceeding is
not usual on the hustings, to shake hands with you in token that ours is
an amiable warfare.”
And Mr. Pryor stretched out his hand to Mr. Sache, who had been, he
felt, roughly dealt with. Perfectly stupified, however, with brandy and
terror; bespattered from head to foot, with his cheek cut, and one eye
closed up, Lord Popingham’s nominee made no movement to take his
opponent’s offered hand till he was pushed forward by Mr. Drewitt, who,
having lost patience with everybody, was in no very gentle or forbearing
mood.
“The show of hands is in favour of the Reds,” he said to Mr. Munks. “We
must demand a poll.”
And a poll was demanded accordingly; but the result was the same as the
sheriff had declared the show of hands to be, viz., in favour of Geoffry
Pryor.
In the days of which I am writing there was no earthly reason why an
election should not have lasted for ever. Government had not then put
any limit to the period over which the innocent amusement of breaking
heads should extend. On the contrary: as there was but one town in each
county or portion of a county returning a separate member where votes
could be legally polled, government seemed rather to have erred on the
side of humouring the popular taste a little too far, than of
considering it too little. Those were the palmy days of electioneering;
those were the days of delightful uncertainty—of charming fluctuation.
You were getting on to-day—you were far behind to-morrow; from hand to
hand the political ball went tossing; now the Tories had it—now the
Whigs. Now it was all up with the Reds—now the Blues had not a chance.
As for trade! nobody even tried to transact any business while the
election lasted, unless, indeed, the owners of public-houses and the
landlords of hotels.
They took the business of the town and did it. If you had not a pair of
shoes in the world, do you think any cobbler in the parish had leisure
to attend to your wants? Was the rain pouring in through your roof, or
your house falling down; were the spokes in the wheels of your gig
rattling like castanets, or every pane of glass in your windows smashed?
If you were not a glazier, wheelwright, bricklayer, or slater yourself,
why, windows, and wheels, and houses, and roofs must remain as they were
till the members were returned—till the free and independent were sober
and hungry once again.
It was carnival time—a time not of sweetmeats and bouquets, but of
whiskey and fighting, of rotten eggs and blackthorn shillelaghs; a time
when family feuds were established that would last rival houses for
life, and be handed down as heirlooms to their posterity; when even
sober men—sober and discreet—lost their heads and got drunk with
political excitement; when wrongs were done that never could be righted
subsequently; when words were spoken that never could be forgotten; when
insults were uttered that could never be forgiven.
If the elections of those days were relics of the “good old times,” we
may fervently thank our stars that such times have passed away for ever.
Canvassing had seemed to Mrs. Drewitt a sufficiently weary season; but
what was canvassing to making sure of the promised votes, to keeping the
electors up to the mark?
Mr. Drewitt worked himself into a state of frenzy, and he and Colonel
Vervensoe and Mr. Munks and Lord Marsden and the Earl of Popingham, and
a host of other influential Blues, went about the country like so many
madmen, hunting up voters and bringing them to the polling-booth _nolens
volens_.
If anything had been wanting to egg the Blues on to greater exertions,
Maxwell Drewitt’s speech would have proved a whip powerful enough to
lash them to fury.
If Mr. Sache were not returned, every tenant should be ejected—every man
who had a vote sent adrift; the cottages should be unroofed; the land
might remain untilled; children might starve; women might die! From time
immemorial have not the innocent suffered with the guilty? has not the
house of Ahab always suffered for the sin of Ahab, from the time of
Elijah until now.
Most of the landlords were kindly men—not proud, not uncourteous, not
unfeeling; but they were like the rest of us, weak on one point, and
that point was politics. There is a savage in most which only requires
waking to be dangerous. Spite of all our civilization we are forced at
times to admit we must have come originally of a rude stock, that we are
closer to Jael, that we are nearer to Jehu than we would willingly
confess.
The most delicate taste cannot distinguish between port and sherry in
the dark; and in the same manner there is a mental darkness in which the
tenderest conscience fails to discern the difference between right and
wrong.
That was the state to which politics reduced men in the days of which I
am writing; that is the state to which politics would reduce men now but
for the extra vigilance of civilization, but for the coolness and
calmness of the fourth estate, which will have none of it, which insists
on pouring light in on darkness, of calling a spade a spade, let the
implement so named be used by peer or peasant.
With the landlords I have mentioned the case was different—the savage
was roused in them: blinded by passion, they stood, with the noon-day
sun shining on them, in darkness.
It had become a question of might _versus_ right—of lord against serf—of
Protestant against Catholic—of “You shall” against “I shall not;” and
such a question can never be solved except by the result of the battle
of man against man.
I am not advocating one side or another. God knows,—God who knows all
things—that though the profession of each was different, there was not,
long ago, a turn of the scale in favour of either Whig or Tory. Drewitt
of Kincorth would have served his own father with notice to quit had his
father voted against Sache. Waller of Eversbeg would have ejected every
man on his estate had every man not chanced to want to return Pryor.
There was no choice between them. It was war to the knife on both sides:
and when war of any kind is being waged, men are not apt to be too
particular.
Day by day the fight got fiercer, the combatants angrier. In the race
each side strained every nerve for victory: all stratagems were
allowed—all tricks were resorted to. It was a Derby where every man was
trying to bribe his neighbour’s jockey; where he was slyly trying to
loosen his girths, to unbuckle his bridle, to lame the favourite. It was
a boat-race where people strove not only to row their best, but
endeavoured to prevent others rowing at all. If you can fancy a
three-mile heat, with the riders standing in their stirrups and lashing
one another back; if you can imagine a rowing-match where, when hard
run, the crew rose up and battered their opponents with their oars; if
you can picture a battle without any order or regularity; if you can
crowd into your mental canvas everything hopelessly unfair, dishonest,
brutal, mean, you may perhaps form some idea of Duranmore during the
time which elapsed between the nomination and the return.
There was many a purse filled—there was many a spirit broken. Many a man
thought of the children at home, and the tract of wretched land that he
had done his miserable best to till; thought of how the children would
cry for want of their potatoes; thought of the empty pot, of the lonely
hill side, of the deserted cabin; and voted against his conscience. His
opinions might not be right—more than probable they were all wrong—but
they were not more wrong than those held by many of his betters; and his
betters were able to vote as they liked, while he had to vote for the
man he detested.
“If the masther ’ud just let me be, ma’am,” said one poor fellow to Mrs.
Drewitt, “it’s meself ’ud niver go to the poll at all at all. I’d vote
for Mr. Pryor if I could; but as it’s not plazing to Mr. Drewitt, I’d
rayther not vote for aither.”
He had been artful, this uneducated Irishman: he had thought to get at
the soft side of Mr. Drewitt through his wife; and Mrs. Drewitt herself
imagined that so reasonable a request might be granted.
“He will never force Byrne to vote against his conscience,” argued Mrs.
Drewitt.
Wouldn’t he though? Mr. Drewitt soon showed his wife the reverse of the
picture; and the reverse was not pretty.
Byrne should vote or give up his lot.
“Then,” said Byrne, “I will give up my lot; but if I do I’ll vote for
Pryor.”
And he did.
After that Mr. Drewitt desired his wife not to allow any of his tenants
to speak to her on the subject of the election. He knew she did not go
with him in his ideas; that in fact she was getting perfectly bewildered
with the strife of contending opinions; for which reasons he bade her
send all reluctant voters to him.
“I understand them, and you do not,” he said. “I know how to manage
them; and they think they can manage you.” And thus, happily for
herself, Mrs. Drewitt was withdrawn from the political arena, and only
permitted to look on at the fray.
What a fray it was!
“I have not been in bed for a week,” said Maxwell Drewitt to Mr. Waller,
on the morning which was to decide the result.
“Nor have I,” answered the owner of Eversbeg; “but to-day will, I hope,
repay us for all.”
That was what the Blues were saying as well. They were sanguine of
success also; so sanguine, that Mrs. Munks, and Lady Marsden, and a
number of other ladies—Mrs. Drewitt amongst them, by her husband’s
special desire—took possession of the Assembly Room, to hear the
earliest tidings concerning the winner.
Not to be behind on such an occasion, Lady Emmeline and her staff
occupied the opposition benches. She and Colonel Vervensoe had not
spoken to one another for a month previously, and it was currently
reported that if Mr. Pryor got in he would never speak to her again. If,
on the other hand, Mr. Sache were returned, people believed that she
would never speak to her husband.
There can be no doubt that the attitude assumed by this lady added
greatly to the excitement of the election. In the Hickman family brother
was against brother; among the Drewitts uncle and nephew were bitter
opponents; but all this was nothing to husband and wife openly
supporting different sides.
It was the flavouring to the soup; the sauce to the fish; the lemon to
the punch. Without that element the election would have been, to a great
extent, like other elections: as it was, in the memory of the oldest
inhabitant there had never been such fun in Duranmore.
On the last day of the poll the town presented a perfectly indescribable
scene of riot, misery, and contention.
Everything which had made the nomination rather a grand affair, tended
to make the final combat wretched and squalid.
The wreaths were faded, the evergreens had turned brown, the arches were
partly broken down, the flowers were dead, the banners were torn, the
rosettes were crumpled and soiled, the instruments of the respective
bands having been used as weapons of offence and defence had come to
grief, the leading men on both sides looked worn-out and jaded, the
voters had hardly a whole coat among them; they were tired of fighting,
they were weary of being dragged hither and thither, they had passed
through every known stage of drunkenness, and many of them were by this
time in a state of sickly sobriety.
Altogether the ball had lasted too long: the soldiers, the police, the
musicians, the voters, the candidates—all were alike exhausted. No one
seemed so bright as on the first day, excepting the ladies; and even
some of them looked a little drooping.
Not so Lady Emmeline, however: whether she slept well or rouged well it
is not for me to say, but the colour in her face was brilliant as the
dye of her scarf.
“If we do not win I shall die,” were her parting words to Maxwell
Drewitt.
“We shall win,” was his last answer. Every half-hour he despatched a
messenger to tell her the state of the poll: every half-hour Geoffry
Pryor’s chances seemed to brighten, while the anxiety of the Sacheites
increased.
As the day wore on and the excitement became more intense, rioting
began, and the fighting and pushing which had hitherto been confined to
the neighbourhood of the polling-booth, spread through the crowd, till
the row became general.
There could be no mistake about the matter now. The affair was growing
serious, the people were getting earnest and dangerous. The Reds were
cudgelling the Blues, and the Blues were paying back the Reds with
interest. The authorities were beginning to be alarmed. There was a yell
for the military, and every soldier settled himself more firmly in his
saddle, and gathered up his reins, while he waited for the order to
charge. Every spectator was holding his or her breath, waiting for “what
next?” when suddenly a piercing scream rang out over the heads of the
crowd, and a cry of “Save him!” issued from the windows of the Assembly
Room.
For a moment the play of shillelaghs ceased in the centre of the
market-place square, and Geoffry Pryor, in the very heart of that
surging, seething mass of human beings, could just distinguish two men
struggling over a voter.
The fellow’s coat was torn off his back, and Maxwell Drewitt, with his
head bare, with clenched teeth, and with his face flushed and furious,
was dragging him by one arm, while Mr. Drewitt was tugging him away by
the other. The elder and more powerful man seemed to be getting the best
of it, when, quick as thought, a stick whizzed through the air and came
down on Mr. Drewitt’s skull. He dropped on the instant, and as he
dropped there was a rush of the rabble to one side, and right over his
body rode a company of hussars.
Then the light left Geoffry Pryor’s eyes; a deathlike sickness came over
him, and he fainted away.
The whole scene, which it has taken me so long to describe, was acted
out almost in a second; and next moment eager hands were raising the
owner of Kincorth from the ground.
“My God, he’s dead!”
“Och, docther, dear, say that the life’s not out of him!”
“Bleed him, docther darlint.”
“For the sake of the blessed Vargin, lift him aisy.”
“Oh, swate father! what is this at all at all?”
“Keep the craythur back. Shure it’s the young wife he married only the
other day.”
But Agnes Drewitt would not be kept back. Unmindful of the crowd,
heedless of danger or difficulty, she made her way towards the knot
collected round her husband.
“Doctor,” she said, “you must bring him back to me. He is not dead: tell
me he is not dead.”
“Carry him to my house. I can do nothing here,” was all the answer he
made; but he pulled Mrs. Drewitt forcibly from her husband’s side, and
keeping her hand in his, followed close behind.
The doctor’s house was not fifty yards distant, but to Agnes Drewitt it
seemed fifty miles.
The mob closed up again as they passed through, and, as in some terrible
dream, she heard loud shouts and continuous yells and oaths and threats
and curses.
Very vaguely it seemed to her as though she had crossed into a frightful
eternity in which the tumult of earth was still distinctly audible.
Behind her lay the great battle-field of the contested election, where
her husband had fought for what he thought the right so gallantly and so
long. To her it was all gone and past: gone with its excitement, its
sorrow, its shock, its trouble.
She felt stupified, she felt stunned. As she crossed the threshold of
the doctor’s house, she scarcely heard a prolonged howl of anger and
disappointment that rent the summer air.
“What’s that?” cried Lady Emmeline, starting up; but next moment she sat
back in her seat, clenching her hands together and beating her little
foot in impotent rage against the floor.
“It’s lost! it’s all over!” she shrieked out. And she was right. At the
eleventh hour every one of the tenants she had promised Mr. Pryor were
marched up to the polling-booth by her husband, where they recorded
their votes for Mr. Sache.
They turned the fate of the day.
“That settles it!” muttered Ryan, with a fearful oath; and he was right,
for Geoffry Pryor was beaten, and the Earl of Popingham’s nominee had
won!
CHAPTER VIII.
Not Dead.
If there be one thing under heaven for which more than another the lower
order of Irish have a passion, it is for offering medical advice; and
accordingly, whenever the eager crowd who had hustled and shoved their
way after the “body,” as they called Mr. Drewitt, beheld him safely
deposited on Doctor Sheen’s bed, they opened fire on that gentleman in a
style which set at defiance the knowledge of Apothecaries’ Hall, and
might have made the whole College of Surgeons stand aghast.
“Lay him down there,” growled the doctor. “Gently, gently—do you
hear?—and not as if he was a sack of potatoes: and now be off, everyone
of you; I don’t want you here.”
“But, Doctor dear——”
“Open an artery. Och! see if the blood’ll come. Sweet father, what’ll we
do at all—at all? Musha—oh! Wirrastrue.”
“Jist touch him in the arm”—improved another—“a bit above the
elbow—where Sergen Brabsen—long life till him—put the lance in me and
brought me back after I died of the squinazy.”
“Could ye not put a dhrop o’ spirit down his throat, Docthor darlint?”
suggested a fourth; “it might lift his heart again.”
“Do, an’ may the heavens be yer bed: we’ll dhrink ye’re health night and
day, an’——”
“Come, be off!” interrupted Doctor Sheen. “I can’t do with you crowding
about me, yelling enough to pull the house down.”
“If ye’d put a feather till his nose,” broke forth the first speaker
with greater vehemence than ever, “I can catch one of the hens in a
minit, or let me hould a bit av a lookin’ glass afore his mouth.”
“An’ fit his arm straight in place: see how it hings.”
“An’ look if the skull’s knocked in entirely, an’ pick out the broken
bits afore they get down intil his brains.”
“Pick them up with the pincers, and then join them cleverly.”
“An’ sen’ for ould Peggy Magore; shure she has dhrinks made out o’ herbs
that would entice a corpse to speak, if it could only be made to swally
them.”
“An’ docthor, wouldn’t ye let his head down a bit?”
“An’ lift his feet on a pillow?”
“And feel if there’s a ticking in either of his heels?”
Which last speech bearing, as it did, on the idea that before death a
pulse may be felt in the heel, produced such a wailing and mourning—such
laments over the man who had been taken from them—such tributes to his
virtues—such regrets for his untimely end—that at length Doctor Sheen
fairly lost his patience, and shoving the loudest of the talkers out of
the room, and ordering the rest to follow, he locked and double-locked
the door, and found himself alone with his patient, Mrs. Drewitt, and
his assistant.
Without, there was noise and riot and shouting and fighting: within,
there was silence like the grave: without was life; within, the shadow
of the angel of death.
No one in the room spoke a word while Doctor Sheen felt Mr. Drewitt’s
pulse, opened his coat, waistcoat, and shirt, and placed his hand on his
heart; but when at last he looked up doubtfully, Mrs. Drewitt said—
“Doctor, he shall not die?”
“Very well, ma’am,” answered the doctor, and pressed his fingers on Mr.
Drewitt’s wrist once more.
Then Doctor Sheen whispered something in the assistant’s ear, to which
the assistant replied:
“No, only stunned.”
“Do you think so?”
“I am sure of it,” answered the other; “haven’t I had dozens of them
here just as bad?”
“But not with that,” said Doctor Sheen, still speaking in so low a tone
that his words could not reach Mrs. Drewitt, and pointing as he spoke to
Mr. Drewitt’s head, “but not with that.”
“And what’s that?” inquired the assistant contemptuously; “he’ll be all
right again in a week;” and he took the injured arm, and began
manipulating it, as though he were playing a tune on a piano.
“There you are,” he said. “Harder, sir, harder; his pulse is not in his
skin; give him time, there’s no hurry; he’s coming as fast as he can.
Now I’d give five shillings,” added the young man, stepping back and
surveying Mr. Drewitt, “I’d give five shillings to know where he has
been.”
“Where who has been?” asked Mrs. Drewitt, turning her face, which was
wet with tears, towards the speaker.
“Where your husband has been, ma’am; all our anatomy won’t teach us
that; it’s a good quarter of an hour since he went away, and he is only
coming back again now—here he is,”—and as he said the word Mr. Drewitt
opened his eyes.
With a little cry of thanksgiving his wife fell on her knees beside him.
She had been afraid to say she feared before; but now the very excess of
her joy proved how great had been her previous dread.
“I will be quiet,” she said, as Doctor Sheen tried to draw her from the
room; “I will be quiet—you need not be afraid of me again—I won’t say a
word you may trust me, indeed—indeed you may.”
“I am going to set his arm,” persisted Doctor Sheen, “and see to this
cut in his head, and——”
“And there is no one so fit to stay here as I am,” she interposed
eagerly: “you would wish me to remain, you would like me to be near
you—would not you, Archy?”—and she looked into the scarcely conscious
eyes half hidden by a weight of heavy eyelid while she waited for an
answer.
Archibald Drewitt could not answer her; she had not been accustomed to
illness, poor soul, or she might have known better than to expect it;
but he made a vain effort to turn towards her—a faint attempt to move
his uninjured arm and clasp her hand in his.
It was too much; a more ghastly pallor came over his face, the eyelids
closed again, and——
“He’s dead! he’s dead!” exclaimed his wife, starting up and endeavouring
to throw herself on the body, but Mr. Murphy prevented this.
“Dead, ma’am!” he said, still keeping a firm hand on her shoulder:
“dead, ma’am! he’s worth a dozen dead ones yet. Now—now”—and Mr. Murphy
patted her back, apparently under the delusion that she was a baby
choking—“do be reasonable and just leave him to us. He’s not dead, and
isn’t going to die. So far as this goes, he may live to bury you;” and
without any more ceremony the young man walked Mrs. Drewitt out of the
room, and sat her down in the surgery, where he left her alone, after
having procured for her a well-thumbed copy of “Clarissa Harlowe,” which
would, he said, “serve to divert her mind.”
“And keep yourself easy, ma’am,” he finished, “for Mr. Drewitt will be
about again, in no time.”
“You should be more careful, Murphy,” remarked Doctor Sheen that same
night, when he and his assistant were seated together over their
respective tumblers of punch. “I did not exactly like your saying to
Mrs. Drewitt that her husband might bury her. Some of the English don’t
take those kind of things.”
“Well, wasn’t I right?” demanded the other; “mayn’t he bury her? isn’t
he going on as well as a man could go on? and won’t he live to have sons
of his own, please God, and keep Maxwell out of the estate?”
“He has been here three times this evening to ask after him,” said
Doctor Sheen, reflectively.
“And did he seem sorry when he heard it was for Kincorth, and not for
the Abbey, his uncle was bound?”
“No, he seemed glad.”
“Did he now?”
“And he says he did not strike the blow.”
“Who ever thought he did? He had not a stick in his hand at all.”
“His aunt did not know that, for she went on at him, and he could not
edge in a word till she was tired; but then he began, and told her this,
that, and the other, till he got round her completely: she’s as soft as
salve, and she begged his pardon, and they are now as thick as thieves.
Oh! faith,” added the Doctor, “and it’s Master Maxwell Drewitt that can
wile the bird off a bush when he likes. It’s a wonderful tongue he has:
to hear him sometimes, you would think butter could not melt in his
mouth.”
“And to hear him at others you would know cheese would not choke him,”
said Mr. Murphy, who had his own reasons for disliking Maxwell.
“Still it’s a great pity of the young fellow,” said Doctor Sheen, mixing
himself another tumbler of punch, “for he ought to have had Kincorth.”
“It would have been a greater pity of other people if he had had it,”
remarked Mr. Murphy; in which opinion, however, he chanced to be wrong.
No man could have done worse for other people than Archibald Drewitt,
who, spite of Mr. Murphy’s hopeful predictions, lay between life and
death for more than a month at Doctor Sheen’s, during which time the
house was besieged with visitors and inquiries.
“You must pull him through, Sheen,” said the Earl of Popingham. “We
cannot afford to lose Mr. Drewitt.”
“You need never show your face at the Hall again if he is not able to
ride to the first meet this season,” chimed in Colonel Vervensoe, while
Mr. Pryor, Mr. Waller, and all the Reds were, if possible, more eager in
their anxiety, more impatient for good tidings, than the Blues.
“But he will get through it, won’t he, Murphy?” asked Mr. Waller one day
when he had met Doctor Sheen’s assistant on the road near Eversbeg, and
insisted on taking him up to the house for lunch. “There is no fear now,
is there?”
“No; he is out of danger; that is, he is out of danger now, so far as we
know. He will do, if he takes care of himself. His arm is the worst; we
can’t make a good job of that at all. It was a beautiful case, and a
splendid fracture; but it will never be a good arm again.”
“Will it hinder his hunting?” asked young Waller, who thought anything
that stopped a man’s course across country the most grievous misfortune
possible.
“Hinder his hunting? Is it the like of that would keep Mr. Drewitt back,
do you think? If that was all, couldn’t he ride with the bridle in his
teeth, like a gentleman I knew down in Tipperary? You may believe me or
not, Mr. Waller, just as you like,” proceeded Mr. Murphy; “but he had
neither arms nor legs, and yet he hunted as regularly as you do.”
“I’d go from here to there to see him,” was Mr. Waller’s only reply.
“And, indeed, it’s himself would make you welcome,” answered Mr. Murphy;
“that is, if he’s alive; there was not a funnier fellow nor a harder
drinker in the county.”
“My cousin was round seeing Mr. Drewitt the other day,” remarked Mr.
Waller.
“Yes, but he did not see him,” said the assistant. “He had a long talk
with Mrs. Drewitt. We’re glad of anybody that will keep her out of the
sick room; and Mr. Pryor wanted to get speech with some of them.”
“Yes,” said the other, “he was going back to London, and wished to
express his regret and all the rest of it. Upon my conscience, I never
was so frightened in my life. He went down—Pryor, I mean—as if he had
been shot. Fainted dead away.”
“He ought to take three tumblers of punch every night going to bed,”
observed Mr. Murphy; “it would strengthen his nervous system.”
“He was delighted with Mrs. Drewitt—came home here in perfect raptures
about her. She did not strike me as being anything remarkable.”
“Miss Susan Drewitt is a handsome woman,” answered Mr. Murphy; “but Mrs.
Drewitt is more of a woman—do you understand me, sir? She has not much
spirit, but she has a sweet temper. She is pretty, to my taste; and for
a woman, I consider her uncommonly sensible—uncommonly,” and Mr. Murphy
drained a bumper to her health, after which he suddenly recollected that
Dr. Sheen would be expecting him, and rose to take his departure.
“When do you think of moving him?” asked Mr. Waller.
“In about a week’s time, if he goes on well,” said Mr. Murphy. “We are
to have down a mighty easy carriage from Lord Marsden’s, and I think it
won’t hurt him. It must be uncomfortable for Mrs. Drewitt staying at Dr.
Sheen’s, though we do our best; and this much I’ll say for her,” added
Mr. Murphy, “that an easier-pleased or an easier-served lady I would
never wish to see. She makes no fuss and she gives no trouble, and, for
my own part, I wish she was to live in the house for ever.”
As for Mrs. Drewitt herself, she was Mr. Murphy’s friend for life. What
she would have done without him during that illness she never knew. He
did not seem to know the meaning of the word despondency.
“It was a doctor’s business to cure, to be sure it was. When a doctor
could not cure, send for the nurse, and a coffin, and a lawyer to make
the will; but till Mrs. Drewitt saw the lawyer, at any rate, she ought
not to give way.”
He went up to Kincorth for her. He did her errands; he posted her
letters; he kept watch while she slept; he told her stories; he listened
to her while she talked about England.
“That’s the place I’d like to go to,” he said. “What chance has a man in
a place like this? a man that is a man, I mean, and has any push in him.
What do you see in a place like this, but broken heads and fever, and
children being born, and old men and women dying? Except, may be, an odd
case of cancer, middle-aged people never die of any out-of-the-way
disease. A child could prescribe for them. And as for work, ma’am,
nobody in London would credit it! Doctor Sheen is the dispensary doctor,
you know. Well, if we were earning ten thousand a year each out of it,
there could not be more expected from us. They come in the middle of the
night here, and ring—ring—ring, just as if one ought to be standing
behind the door waiting to answer it, and then, ‘It’s the misthress is
taken ill, and ye’re to come at wanst,’ and then we’ve to go through the
rain and the snow and the wind to find the woman. ‘Sorry to have given
us the thrubble, but when she sint she was very bad, entirely.’ I’d like
well to go to London, I would. Perhaps I might be there before I’d die.”
“But you must remember, Mr. Murphy,” Mrs. Drewitt was wont to say, “that
the streets are not paved with gold there, though I know many country
people imagine they are.”
“True, ma’am; but they must be full of patients. I have always fancied
that there must be some place on the face of God’s earth where, if men
are willing to work hard, they may gather abundantly; but let that place
be where it will, it is not Duranmore.”
All of which set Mrs. Drewitt thinking, and wondering more and more what
Maxwell was to do. Would he come back to Kincorth, she marvelled? Would
her entreaties avail now? After what had happened, would he listen to
her? Give her the opportunity and she would try. And Maxwell gave her
the opportunity by asking if he could assist her in any way when she was
removing his uncle to Kincorth.
“Can I help—may I help?” he said eagerly; but Mrs. Drewitt answered—
“I am afraid to let him see you for the present. I do not wish to speak
to him about you; about the election, I mean, for a little while. But I
should like you to return to Kincorth. I know he will be glad, when he
is better, to hear you are under the same roof with him. I can take so
much on my own responsibility, Maxwell; and I do take it, and ask you
most earnestly to come back to us once more.”
“I have started on my road,” he said, “and I may not retrace my steps;
but I thank you all the same. Whenever he is strong enough to see me,
tell me to come, and I will come to Kincorth, though not to stay there.”
“I wish there was not any Kincorth standing between us,” answered Mrs.
Drewitt, very truthfully, “and that we could all live at peace
together.”
“Perhaps we may, some day,” was Maxwell’s reply. He was thinking of the
vow he had made to himself, of the time when he was to be rich and his
uncle poor.
Would there be peace then? When the tables were turned—when he was the
benefactor, could he afford to let bygones be bygones; could he then be
generous enough to say, let there be peace between us at last?
That was what he was wondering while Mrs. Drewitt stood silent and
looked in his face, and marvelled what made its expression change so
swiftly and vary so often.
There came a day when she knew all, when she hated Maxwell more than he
had ever hated his uncle; when she spurned his proffered kindnesses,
when there was war waged between them, war to the death, which ended but
with life.
Had anyone told Mrs. Drewitt then that she could ever learn to prefer
strife to peace, she would have declared it was impossible; and yet as
time went by the impossible grew possible, and the possible came to
pass.
But at that early stage of her married life Mrs. Drewitt had no strong
interests blinding her, no feeling in favour of this person or against
that, warping her judgment and leading her astray.
She loved her husband, who owned Kincorth; she was sorry for Maxwell,
who did not own it; but at the same time Mr. Drewitt, whom she loved,
was master for life, while his nephew had not a penny.
Reverse the cases, and how would Mrs. Drewitt have felt? That, my
reader, is what we shall find out when the tale of the years is
completed—when the story of the years is told.
CHAPTER IX.
Mrs. Drewitt understands.
It was winter—winter on the grand sea-coast—winter among those
everlasting hills; and Agnes Drewitt came to understand how the season
might be more endurable in the country than in London; came to see how
the breakers dashing on the rocks—how the waves rolling up on the
shore—how the mountains covered with snow—how the swelling streams, and
the roaring torrents might be less monotonous and depressing than the
fine perspective of a London street, or the exhilarating spectacle of a
yellow fog.
She was beginning to like Kincorth. Home—be it ever so homely, ever so
lonely, ever so uncomfortable—has a great charm for a woman like Mrs.
Drewitt; and though her lot was in many respects not an enviable one,
still she was becoming reconciled to it. She was growing to know the
people and to like them; she was contriving how to get her household
into more orderly ways. She had talked with her husband, and got him to
consent to see Maxwell. Altogether, on the particular afternoon of which
I am speaking, Mrs. Drewitt did not feel unhappy.
She was going out for a walk, a long walk, all by herself; and after
long confinement to the house, after constant attendance on an invalid,
the idea of fresh air, of a little pilgrimage beside Duranmore Bay, all
round Eversbeg Head, and so on nearly to Eversbeg Abbey, did not prove
unpleasant.
She had been rather a prisoner since her arrival in Ireland, and freedom
seemed sweet. She had never been round Eversbeg Head, which she could
see so plainly from her bedroom windows. She had never been very near
the Atlantic, for she did not call Duranmore Bay the Atlantic; and she
wanted to dip her hand in it for once, and write to her sister, “I have
touched the great ocean.” She longed to stand on some point of land
whence she could see thousands and thousands of miles away. She had some
vague notion, I fancy, of getting a glimpse of America; but be this as
it may, she intensely enjoyed the idea of the walk, and meant to make
the most of it.
“There is a much nearer way you know, Auntie,” said Kathleen, “thrau the
road by Eversbeg Head; but if you wish to get a good view of the
Atlantic, you must go by the coast. It is not a nice clear day, though.
You ought to have seen it in fine weather.”
“Oh! I think it a lovely day,” answered Mrs. Drewitt, and as she walked
along, while the wind drove the clouds before her, she repeated to
herself that it was lovely—that she had never enjoyed anything so much
in all her life before.
The election had long been over. Mr. Sache and his family were in
Dublin, and the “Castle,” as he somewhat pompously called his house—a
building all wings and turrets and loopholes and weathercocks—was left
in charge of servants.
Duranmore had subsided into its state of normal dullness. Fishermen
mended their nets, labourers went about their accustomed work, the
shopkeepers did their usual small amount of business. There was no more
fighting in the streets, the public-houses were emptied of the crowds of
drunken men that had once filled them full to overflowing. The Earl and
Countess of Popingham were in France, Lord Marsden in Rome, Mr. and Mrs.
Munks in London, and thus Mrs. Drewitt had, after a fashion, the country
to herself, to enjoy thoroughly and completely, if she liked.
And she did like. She loved to look at the mountains with the clouds
flying fast over them as though hurrying, hurrying away. She loved the
wild hills, the distant ravines, the rivers that came bounding down from
the far-off heights and went rushing to the sea. She loved the bay when
the waters were dark like the sky, when the waves came up towards
Duranmore, that was now so quiet and orderly. She loved to pause and
look at the whitewashed cottages, at the pretty, picturesque children,
who hung their curly heads abashed as the lady passed by. She loved the
salutation of the country people, some of whom “made bould to ask her
how the masther was.” She was not a stranger among strangers now. She
was taking root in the soil, and learning to love the very shamrocks in
the grass.
She left Duranmore behind her, and still went on. Spite of recent rains
the granite road was hard and dry beneath her feet. Above her head the
high wind drove the clouds before it. “You are going to England,” she
thought, “but I do not wish to be travelling there with you now.” The
western breeze blew a colour into her cheeks, and disarranged her hair,
and lifted her veil, and kissed her sweet face caressingly.
“I love the wind,” she thought; “it is fresh and pure, and it comes from
travelling over the great sea, instead of bringing the taint of large
cities on its breath;” and she turned, even while she was thinking this,
round Eversbeg Head, and the wide Atlantic and the full force of the
western breeze burst upon her at once.
Thousands of miles! Millions upon millions of tossing billows! Oh! thou
great God Almighty! who can look across the restless ocean and not think
of Thee! Who can forget, while standing by the sea and watching the
great waters come thundering upon the shore, that Thou hast set bounds
to the waters and said, “Here shall thy proud waves be stayed”—who,
looking over the trackless expanse of ocean, but must feel that all
unseen the feet of the Most High have traversed it?
When we see this work of the Lord, His wonders in the deep; when we
perceive how at His command the floods arise, and how at His word the
storm ceases; when we remember that though the waves of the sea are
mighty and rage horribly, still that the Lord God who dwelleth on high
is mightier; when we think that he holds the waters in the hollow of his
hand, do we not seem for a moment, amid raging tempests and foaming
billows, to catch a glimpse of the Infinite? Looking over the waste of
waters, does not our weak mortality appear able to grasp for an instant
the idea of immortality? Can we not imagine that no material horizon
bounds our view—that we are gazing away and away across the ocean into
eternity?
Thousands of miles, friends! Which of us has not at one time or other
let his heart go free over the waters? Who has not stood by the shore
silent, while his inner self—his self that never talks save to his God
and his own soul—has gone out from his body and tossed with the billows,
and answered the sullen roar of the waters, and risen and sunk with the
waters as they rose and fell, rose and fell, and felt the breaking of
the foam, the sobbing plash of the great ocean, as it rolls up on the
sands and over the rocks and stones and shells of earth, while depth
calleth unto depth and the giant floods clap their hands together?
And oh! with what a terrible sadness does that second self come back to
us! It has been out listening to strange voices, hearing strange sounds,
learning solemn truths. It has been out on the billows, on the foam,
among the spray and the clouds and the tempest—out and away to the very
confines of the invisible world. It has been restless like the ocean,
and it comes back to be set within the bounds of flesh; it has been
free, and behold it must return to chains and fetters; it has been
telling of its troubles to the ocean, and the ocean has lifted up its
mighty arms and mourned out its sorrowful reply.
Mourning—mourning—never silent, never still—now lashing itself up into
fury—now tossing hither and thither as it seems to us without plan or
purpose; now wave following after wave, as man follows after man in the
ranks of a vast army; now flinging its waters on the shore—now striving
to climb the steep sides of some rugged rock; fretting itself as we fret
ourselves—moaning as we moan—toiling as we toil—restless as we are; now
receding—now advancing—but never at peace; in its strong moods wild and
tumultuous—in its calmest moments stirred by the ground swell, ruffled
by the lightest breeze!
Well may man love this deep, inexplicable, unfathomable ocean, for as it
through the ages has gone on sobbing and mourning and struggling, so man
through the years of his life goes mourning and struggling too.
Some thoughts like these passed through Mrs. Drewitt’s mind as she stood
at the base of Eversbeg Head, and looked out over the Atlantic. She had
never seen anything like it before; the ocean had never filled her heart
and saddened it till now.
Though not much of a traveller, she had, like most people, known the sea
in its quieter aspect. She had visited Brighton; she had been to
Hastings; she had seen the flat Norfolk coast, and beheld the mud banks
in the Essex Hundreds; but the sea in any of the places I have mentioned
was not like the sea that broke over the rocky headlands of the wild
West; neither was the desolate shore she stood on like unto the
civilized shores she was once familiar with, where bathing boxes were
drawn up on the shingle, and men and women walked upon the parade, and
the bare windows of lodgings to let looked out above the calm blue
waters.
An unromantic lady—middle-aged, shall we say—and with no particular
beauty of face or figure, who pursues the even tenour of her unexciting
life, is of the same genus, doubtless, as Lady Macbeth, Joan of Arc, or
Mary Queen of Scots. Naturalists would declare them to be all women
together; but then they were different women, and not much alike, we may
suppose, in personal appearance.
It is thus with the sea: we have now the respectable matron, and anon
the queen of tragedy; we have the smooth face, the well-established
conventionalities; the world’s customs in one place, in another we have
anger and passion, and wild beauty and rugged grandeur; and, above all,
thousands of miles of ocean, millions of tossing billows.
She had never seen anything like it—never seen such a sea under such a
sky before; never seen a vessel out before in rough weather; never
thought to look upon such an expanse of angry waters as now met her
view.
She turned and looked towards Kincorth. There, secure on the hill-side,
it stood in its tranquil beauty; she looked further north still, towards
Duranmore Point, and saw it gloomy and impassable, stretching out into
the sea. Far and far out she could tell where the sunken rocks lay—she
knew by the sheets of white, foam that broke upon them; to her left, on
the other side of Eversbeg Bay, she saw a low green hill—green even
under that wintry sky, which looked calm and tranquil, though the wild
waves were dashing round and about it. Up the bays the water rolled dark
and sullen, but still calm by comparison with what they looked out to
seaward.
Among the billows a ship was labouring and striving, and when Mrs.
Drewitt reluctantly pursued her onward way, she left it making with
caution for Duranmore Bay, putting in there out of the way of the coming
storm.
“‘And so He bringeth them into the haven where they would be,’” murmured
Mrs. Drewitt, as she neared her own destination.
Did she ever forget her first view of the great Atlantic, do you
imagine, my reader? Did the stormy ocean, those foaming billows, those
restless waves ever fade out of her memory as the years went by?
When she passed, in a far different place, to the haven which God had
appointed for her, was not the roar of those mighty waters still in her
ears? did she not feel like that reeling vessel, weary of the struggle
with the winds and the waves? and was she not glad to turn into any
harbour where she might be at rest?
Thinking of the boundless Atlantic, she continued on her way, till she
came to a tract of poor, barren land, on the very edge of Eversbeg Bay,
which tract of land was Maxwell Drewitt’s sole inheritance.
A child whom she met on the way gladly turned back and showed Mrs.
Drewitt which was Headlands Cottage.
Headlands Cottage! Headlands Hovel would have been nearer the mark, she
thought, as she knocked with her knuckles at the door, which, for a
wonder in that description of house, was shut.
Maxwell Drewitt answered her summons in person, and requested her to
enter his poor habitation with all the courtesy of a grand seigneur.
The cabin—for it was nothing better than a cabin—contained but two
rooms, in one of which Maxwell slept, whilst he lived, read, ate, wrote,
and planned in the other.
He had an old woman who came in and “did for him,” so he explained to
his aunt, and who, being at that present moment in a kitchen which he
had extemporized out of a cow-shed, would be happy to make Mrs. Drewitt
a cup of tea if she wished for it.
“But in any case,” finished Maxwell, “I will tell her to bring it in;”
and he left the room to do so, while Mrs. Drewitt looked round at her
leisure.
There was a blazing turf fire on the hearth, and near the fire stood a
common deal table covered with books, papers, and plans. The apartment
boasted two chairs, and Mrs. Drewitt occupied one of them.
The floor was of earth, swept clean; the walls were whitewashed; the
roof was unceiled, and between the blackened rafters she could see the
thatch. Besides the table and chairs, the room boasted no other
furniture of any kind, sort, or description, except a writing-desk and a
hair trunk. The walls were decorated with pistols, guns, riding-whips,
and fishing-rods. It was in a place like this Maxwell Drewitt had
elected to make his first start in life, and Mrs. Drewitt could not help
admiring him for it.
I wish I were able to sketch that room for you. I should like to show
how the firelight fell on Maxwell’s dark face; how the shadows lay on
the floor while the gloom of the winter evening gathered, deepened and
deepened, out of doors.
There was no false pride about Maxwell Drewitt. He had that virtue, at
any rate. If the king had called, in passing, the young man would have
felt no shame about receiving royalty in the only house he owned; and
for this reason Mrs. Drewitt found that it was impossible for her to
speak about the place in which she found him. She could as soon have
remonstrated with an Indian on the inconvenience of living in a wigwam
as she could have talked to her nephew concerning his abode.
It was his, and he was a gentleman, and he had chosen it for himself.
She had no more right to come there and pity him for his earthen floor
and his scant furniture than royalty would have to find fault with the
dinner-service at Kincorth.
Headlands Cottage was Maxwell Drewitt’s castle, and being his castle,
Mrs. Drewitt respected it.
“She had come to speak to him about many things,” she said. “First of
all, your uncle is much better—almost well again, thank God, and he is
able and wishful to see you. I thought, perhaps, you would come back
with me this evening,” she hesitated; “but in case you were unable to do
so, I told one of the men to walk a little way on this side Duranmore to
meet me.”
“I have an appointment for this evening,” answered Maxwell, “but I will
walk back with you as far as the lodge gates.”
“And when will you come to Kincorth?” she asked.
“To-morrow, if it be convenient to you,” he said.
“As if any time were inconvenient!” she exclaimed; “as if I should not
be only too glad to see you back there, for good and all, I mean.”
“I have got so far on my road,” he replied, “I am not likely to try
another now.”
“But, Maxwell,” she inquired, “what are you going to do? Forgive me if I
seem impertinent; but how are you going to live? Do you mean to stay
here? What do you purpose doing for money?”
“I purpose to work for it,” he answered, “and I mean to obtain it. I
know you only ask what my plans are, out of kindness, and I, therefore,
cannot consider any question impertinent. You must not, however, think
me rude if I reply that men are not like women; they do not act from
impulse; they do not commence to build without counting the cost; they
do not start on a journey without knowing something of the land towards
which they are travelling. To speak more plainly still, I did not leave
Kincorth without sketching out a plan for my own future, and I mean to
perfect that plan if I can. When I have perfected it, you shall see the
result. Meantime, be satisfied,” he added, with a smile. “I have food, I
have raiment. I have a roof to cover me, and I have a fire at which to
warm myself withal. More than this,” he went on, “it is all mine own;
that is, mine, so long as I pay my rent punctually. If you came round
Eversbeg you must have passed some land which is mine without paying
rent at all, and in another year I mean to have it in my own hands. This
farm joins my land, so I have my territories close together, and there
is a small house on my freehold which, when once Blake gives up
possession, I mean to have put into thorough repair, and where I hope
you will come and see my improvements.”
“Then you never mean to return to Kincorth?” she said. “Never?”
He looked at her, and then he looked into the fire, and then he flung on
a few more peats before he answered—
“I may, perhaps, but you ought not to wish me to do so.”
“Why?” she asked; and as he only laughed in reply, she went on. “You
always speak in riddles, Maxwell. What do you mean?”
“You really wish to know?”
“I do; of course I do.”
“Then I will tell you before you go. Now, what else did you want to
speak to me about?”
“About your sisters—about twenty things. First about your sisters. They
are a great care to me, Maxwell. I do not know what I ought to do. I do
not know if I can do anything.”
“What is the particular emergency?” inquired Maxwell.
“Their position is not what it ought to be,” she explained, “and I
cannot make it different. If Susan and Wilhelmina would do their parts,”
she continued, “things might be better; but they seem to take a delight
in thwarting all my plans. Wilhelmina rides from morning till night. She
visits with people your uncle does not seem to know and that I have
never seen. She will not read or practice, or improve herself in any
way: and as for Susan—” but here Mrs. Drewitt paused.
“Well, what about Susan?” he asked.
“There is a Captain Ellenham who is always about the house,” said his
aunt; “always with Susan,” and she stopped again.
“He is possibly in love with her,” remarked Maxwell, with a smile,
“though it does not say much for his taste.”
“But if he were in love with her,” argued Mrs. Drewitt, “should he not
want to see her uncle, to see me, to ascertain how her family were
likely to receive him? There is a secrecy about it which puzzles me. I
do not wish to speak to your uncle, but I thought that you—”
“I do not wish to have anything to do with Susan’s affairs,” answered
Maxwell, shortly; “I think my uncle is the proper person to interfere.”
“And Wilhelmina?”
“Wilhelmina will not hurt, unless she gets her neck broken some of these
days.”
“And Kathleen?”
“What about Kathleen?” asked Maxwell, raising his head and looking at
Mrs. Drewitt.
“Nothing, only your uncle wants her to be sent to school: now, Maxwell,
ought I to let her go? I can teach her all she needs to learn; I can see
to her when she is ill; and she is such a comfort to me, I am so fond of
her—so fond!”
“But still, would it not be better for her to go to school?” asked
Maxwell. “Would the companionship of girls of her own age not be
desirable? would the early hours, the regularity, the whole discipline
of a school not be good for her? If Susan and Willy had been sent away
they might have been different to what they are. You will never have
time to attend to Kathie. Altogether, if my uncle be willing to pay for
her, it is best she should go.”
“You think so?”
“I do.”
“But she is so delicate.”
“She will be stronger out of Galway.”
“And we are so fond of each other.”
“That is quite another matter,” said Maxwell, and then, to his
amazement, Mrs. Drewitt began to cry.
His decision was different to what she had expected it would be, and she
and Kathleen had agreed to abide by that decision.
“I feel certain,” he said, “that you would rather do what is best for
Kathleen’s future than what you and she would like in the present. I
think it is a good thing for her to go to school, but of course that is
a matter for you and my uncle to settle.”
“It is for you to settle,” answered Mrs. Drewitt, “and she shall go to
school. Now, about another thing, Maxwell. What kind of a woman is Lady
Emmeline Vervensoe?”
“You know almost as much of her as I do,” was his reply; “you saw her at
the election. You may judge from that very much what she is.”
“She has been often over to Kincorth lately,” said his aunt, “she seems
to wish to be very intimate with me; she is very kind and very
attentive, but your uncle does not like her much, and—”
“It is not to be expected he would like her after the part she took
against Mr. Sache,” laughed Maxwell. “So far as I know, Lady Emmeline
has not any harm about her; she is much wiser, in my opinion, than Mrs.
Munks, and she is a great deal prettier. I think you would get on very
well together, and that you might find her a pleasant acquaintance. Does
my uncle not wish you to visit her?”
“He is very great friends with Colonel Vervensoe, you know,” answered
Mrs. Drewitt; “but we cannot have him, at least I do not like having
him, without his wife, and I thought I would ask you about Lady
Emmeline.”
“There is nothing against her, if that is what you mean,” Maxwell
replied: “she is perfectly and unexceptionably proper, although she did
wear a red scarf at the election and canvass her husband’s tenantry. But
then, really they are as much her tenants as his. She has more money
than he, and gives it to him freely enough, I believe. I have not seen
her these two months.”
“So she told me,” remarked Mrs. Drewitt; “she was asking me where you
were and what you were doing.”
“How very kind!” laughed Maxwell. “I should have thought so
insignificant a person far beneath her ladyship’s notice,” and Maxwell
laughed again.
“I must go now,” said Mrs. Drewitt, rising to depart; “it is getting
dusk, and Kathie will be uneasy. Now do not think of coming with me,
Patrick is certain to be somewhere on the road; I left a message for
him.”
“You must not deny me the pleasure of being your escort for all that,”
answered Maxwell, and the two left the heat of the blazing turf-fire and
walked back together by the nearer road to Kincorth. As they walked they
talked—about Ireland, about her scenery, about her people, about her
wrongs, about her want of prosperity. Then Mrs. Drewitt told her nephew
how fond she was getting of the country, and spoke enthusiastically of
the view from Eversbeg Head; and pleased, almost in spite of himself, by
her admiration for his native land, Maxwell began to wish they could be
good friends—that no Kincorth stood between them.
“Tell me,” she said, as they parted, “why you think I ought not to wish
you back at Kincorth. I can imagine that you might be a great comfort to
me and a great help to your uncle.”
“If I tell you, I am afraid you will be angry,” he answered.
“Angry! you are jesting. What is the reason?”
For a moment Maxwell hesitated, then he said—
“Do you remember my saying once that I did not dislike you for yourself,
but only for being my uncle’s wife?”
“Perfectly; but I hope you do not dislike me now for that.”
“No, not for that,” was the slow reply; “not for that, exactly, but it
is not in flesh and blood—at least it is not in my flesh and blood—to
feel any great amount of attachment for a woman whose children will keep
me out of Kincorth for ever.”
She never answered him by a word. In the twilight he could see her turn
first red and then white: he could see enough in her face to assure him
his guess had been correct, and that there was an heir coming to inherit
Kincorth, its woods, its lawns, its streamlets.
Never hence by the strength of his own right hand, by the power of his
own work, by the force of his own industry, might the lands of his
ancestors return to him. The son of a younger son would possess
Kincorth; while he, the son of the eldest son, was earning his bread in
his barren farm by the desolate sea-shore.
As for Mrs. Drewitt, she re-entered Kincorth a different woman to that
she had left its gates. She understood her position now. She knew at
last why Maxwell and his two elder sisters detested her.
“Not for myself, but because of the sons I may have,” she thought; and
it seemed to her that everything which was strong and evil in her weak
and tender nature sprung to life and prompted her to do battle for the
sake of her still unborn child.
Had he measured her character accurately, would Maxwell have spoken to
her as he did? I doubt it—doubt whether willingly he would have turned
her friendship into enmity, and taught her to guard the inheritance of
her children with a jealous watchfulness.
It was not for herself—it was for no benefit she ever expected to have
out of the property that Mrs. Drewitt vowed Maxwell Drewitt should never
own Kincorth—never if she had a living son.
Who can sow good grain as fast as the Evil One can plant tares? who can
learn to cleave to the right, even in twenty times the space which it
takes him to adopt the wrong? In the garden of Eden the serpent speedily
beguiled Eve into eating of the tree; but through all the centuries that
have passed, with their sorrow, away since then, the Maker of the
universe has never been able to induce his children to cast that evil
and cursed fruit from them.
A moment for the one—thousands of years for the other. An instant sows
the seed—the labour of a lifetime will not eradicate the noxious plant
the seed produces. We are strong for evil; we are weak for good. We are
frail; we are erring. God have mercy upon us! for even the best man and
the best woman proves, when put to the test, to be but a miserable
sinner.
CHAPTER X.
Maxwell’s Engagements.
After leaving Mrs. Drewitt at the entrance to Kincorth, Maxwell slowly
retraced his steps to Duranmore, thinking, thinking as he walked. He had
never done thinking about his plans, his projects, his schemes, his
hopes.
As a man strives to perfect an invention, as he meets every mechanical
difficulty, as he seeks to understand what natural law is standing in
the way of his success—so Maxwell Drewitt worked out the design of his
own future painfully and laboriously.
It is one thing to sketch out a picture, and another to fill it in; one
thing to draw a house, and another to build it; one thing to say I will
do this or that, and quite another to accomplish the project.
It is easy to plan; it is hard to finish. We can dream dreams, sitting
in the firelight or lying on the green hill’s side, but if we would make
those dreams realities, we must work hard and think hard; we must think
till our brains are weary, we must work through the years for success.
The lives of all famous men repeat the same story, but the hearts of
most young people reject it with impatient scorn.
They want the harvest and the seed-time to come together. It seems to
them awful not to be able to gather till the autumn, to have to toil
before they eat. Seeing the height to which others have climbed, they
refuse to believe that the ascent can be so difficult. The successes
which genius and labour have found it the most difficult to compass look
to the eyes of inexperience easy and commonplace.
Can anything go more smoothly along the lines than engine and tender and
carriages and trucks? Can anything be simpler, more natural, more
prosaic than a railway train? and yet, oh! friends, how many a man’s
thoughts are concentrated there! how many a man’s work has combined
together to make up the sum total which you see!
It is thus with everything in life, be it small or be it great—the
result seems to bear no proportion to the labour expended to produce it.
Time, thought, industry—we must give all these before, weary and worn,
we can hope to reach the goal of such success as our souls desire. We
must do what Maxwell Drewitt did—spare no pains, repine at no hardships,
grumble at no obstacles on the road.
And yet there was one thing he lacked if he desired to compass such
success as might not only give him competence and station, but happiness
and content.
He was labouring for riches and position, but he forgot that, even in
this world, riches and position, though much, are not everything. What
are the daintiest viands, the choicest wines, to the man who can bring
no appetite to table? What are lands and houses, what are fields and
trees, if the eyes that look over them are dim with weeping, heavy with
care?
“Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it.
Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.
“It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread
of carefulness.”
I wonder how many young men believe these words to be true? I wonder how
many, walking in the dim light through which all, rich or poor, must one
day pass, would be able to say it was false?
The words which we listen to with careless ears at one time of our
lives, thinking they were addressed solely to men who spent their
strength for nought and disquieted themselves in vain thousands of years
since, we come finally to understand hold a meaning within them which is
and will be eternally true this year and next, and through all the years
that are to come—true for the man who is toiling for fame, for the
merchant who is heaping up wealth, for the woman who is labouring to
secure a good position, as it was for Maxwell Drewitt walking though the
gathering darkness by the shore of Duranmore Bay.
He was planning, plotting, scheming. He had youth, strength, hope,
resolution. There was no reason why he should not have made a good thing
of life, a good thing for himself and for others, save this—that in the
city of his heart he would not suffer that sentinel of the
Lord—conscience—to keep watch; that he was selfish, unprincipled,
unfeeling; that he did not care whether the car of his progress crushed
men and women under his wheels; that he was overconfident in himself;
that he believed, if we exhaust the matter completely, man to be
stronger than his Maker—the creature, than the Creator.
I am not attempting to write a religious novel, I am not trying to
interleave my book with sermons, but there is no author who can tell the
story of a man’s life truly, and not speak of the mistakes he made, of
the errors he committed.
If it be but an extract out of the volume of existence that we profess
to give—but the account of this one’s love-making, of the disappointment
of his friend—if we stop short when we find the record becoming
troublesome to ourselves, or likely to prove displeasing to our readers,
we may dispense with much minutiæ which is indispensable when we are
tracing a human being’s footsteps from the cradle to the grave.
When we take a man’s life, and write his biography, indifferently it may
be, but still as well as we are able, we must tell where he went wrong,
and how that wrong brought forth bitter fruit in the future. We must
tell not only of the crimes of which the law of the land takes
cognizance, but also of those other transgressions which are not
punished with fine or imprisonment, but by the heavy hand of the Lord
God himself. It is useless to try to tell a story and be bound to steer
clear of this matter of eternal truth, of eternal justice. I might as
well lay down my pen at once were the subject beyond a novelist’s
province; for the sum total of Maxwell Drewitt’s mistake in life was,
that he thought the will of man paramount—that—as many a reader will
scoff over the few last pages—he scoffed at the idea of retribution, of
repentance.
He built his house, but the Lord had no hand in it; he made his fortune,
but the blessing of God was not upon it; he became a prosperous man, but
the day came when he acknowledged with bitterness that prosperity is not
always happiness.
In the spring-time of youth he reared his life’s edifice on the sands;
when the winter came—the winter with its storms, its rain, its snows,
its frosts—he saw the work of years scattered to the four winds of
heaven.
It was just; but it was terrible. To me there is something too mournful
for words to utter in the idea of that man walking on through the
darkness—planning, plotting, scheming—for the end that I shall yet have
to tell. Strong to work, willing to labour, independent enough to
achieve, he had yet the seeds of ultimate failure in him—he was walking
on blindly to meet his doom.
As he walked along, with the wind raising the hair from his forehead, he
was thinking—how Kincorth should yet be his—how the day would come when
his homeward steps would lead him thither, and not away from its gates;
and he was thinking of something else, too—of something he was going to
meet that very night—of a girl he had tried to make love him, and not
without success.
He passed Ryan’s cottage slowly, passed it and stopped to listen; then
he leaped over the ditch that divided the lawyer’s little meadow from
the road, and made his way round to the place where his friend’s hay was
stacked. A stream went brawling by to the sea, and beside the stream
Jenny Bourke was waiting for him—poor little girl! poor foolish child!
From the hour Ryan warned Maxwell Drewitt off this ground, Maxwell vowed
to win her heart. He did not know then whether she were pretty or ugly,
sweet or sour, able to take care of herself or guileless as an infant;
but it was all one to Maxwell. He would pay Ryan out, let his sister be
what she pleased. He knew he was handsome; he knew he was a favourite
with women; he knew he could soon make the girl fond of him. When he saw
her he discovered something more—that the girl made him care for her. He
had not quite contemplated this possibility, and it complicated matters
a little; but the fact was so, nevertheless.
The only woman Maxwell Drewitt ever loved was Jenny Bourke; and the
reason that he loved her was probably because she was so diametrically
opposite to himself.
When he lay a-dying he thought of her; and thought then, what I believe
to be true, that a prettier creature than Jenny Bourke never walked on
the face of God’s earth—pretty and soft and gentle; and faithful to him,
at any rate. Oh! sweet Jenny Bourke! why did you ever go out to meet
such a man? why did you disobey your brother’s commands? why did you lay
your lovely face on his breast, and say that it was long since you had
seen him—long that he had kept away?
Fair, sweet Jenny! there was never a rose in the kingdom lovelier, never
a lily purer, when Maxwell Drewitt first cast his dark eyes upon you.
Let me try to sketch the face he saw—the saucy piquante face that, in
the time of his tribulation, in the time of his wealth, in the hour of
death, was still framed in his memory.
Would she appear before him in the day of judgment, I wonder? Maxwell
Drewitt said not. He said, as solemnly as he said he believed he was
dying, that Jenny Bourke would be true to him in the next world as she
had been in this, and that she would never turn informer.
Dark-brown hair; clear white and red complexion; large eyes, that now
seemed brown, now grey, now black—eyes that varied with the light, with
her thoughts, with her feelings, with her words; lips that were as red
as cherries; teeth white and even, but not too small; a somewhat short
nose;—these were the features; but then it was not her features, it was
the expression of her face; so joyous, so innocent, so pure!
I do not know how a man could ever make such a woman cry and forget
seeing her tears. I cannot imagine how Maxwell Drewitt, fair and false,
and hypocritical and remorseless though he was, could ever take such a
girl to his heart and teach her to nestle there, knowing all the time he
never intended to marry her; that the hour must come when he would have
to cast her out from her abiding-place.
“I thought you never were coming,” she said, with her sweet Irish voice,
soft and low and plaintive as music over the waters—as the low wind
sighing among the trees. “I thought you had forgotten me—that I never
was to see you again—that—”
He stopped her words with kisses; but she laughingly released herself,
and went on.
“That you were caring more for the grand ladies you are so intimate with
than for me.”
“As if any one of them could compare with you,” he answered; “as if
there were any creature on earth equal to you. How many hundred times am
I to tell you that I love you, and you only; that you are dearer to me
than life or station or anything else in the world? But you say these
things to try my temper,” he added; “you say them to make me contradict
you—to make me punish you,” and he kissed brow and cheeks and lips till
Jenny’s face was as red as a rose; till she was glad that the darkness
hid her blushes from his admiring gaze.
“I cannot come out to meet you again,” she said at length, timidly and
hesitatingly.
“Nonsense, Jenny; there is no such word as cannot in the whole of love’s
dictionary.”
“Well, will not then, if you like that better,” she answered, more
firmly. “Indeed, indeed,” went on the girl, “I cannot deceive Timothy
any longer; I am getting that I am afraid to look him straight in the
face; that I dread every sentence he speaks; that I am frightened of
every question he puts. Let us part,” and as she made this terrible
suggestion Jenny began to sob. “Let us part if you cannot have me tell
Timothy; if you will not speak to him yourself.”
“The first day I ever saw you, Jenny, what did your brother say to you
after I left the house?” But Jenny remained mute.
“Did he not tell you, to keep out of my way; to give me no
encouragement; to show me no favour? Did not he tell you that, although
I might be a fit acquaintance for him, I was none for you? that I was a
bad man; a bad nephew; a bad brother; a bad friend? Did he not give me
the worst character you ever heard given to an unfortunate fellow out of
favour with fortune? Did not he do all this? I know he did, Jenny; I
know it as well as if I had been sitting in the parlour listening to
him.”
“Maybe you were near it,” suggested Jenny.
“No, I was not; but he spoke those words, or something very like those
words, to me before you ever came to Duranmore. He said, ‘I had rather
put the child in her grave than give her to you.’ That was his summing
up. I hear it tingling in my ears yet.”
“I wonder you ever looked near me after that!” remarked Jenny.
“Ah, Jenny!” said Maxwell Drewitt, “who could ever see you and not look
after you?” and the young man stole his arm round her waist, and drew
her nearer to him—nearer still.
“But if he knew the way things were now, don’t you think he might change
his mind?” she coaxed. “If he thought that you—that I—”
“If he thought you loved me, is that it, Jenny?” he finished. “No, that
would make no difference; it would only make him bitterer. I am a poor
man you see, dear; and a poor man is always a bad man: you must take
patience and wait a while. When I am able to drive here in my carriage
and ask him to give me his sister, he will then perhaps beg me to step
inside; but till then I must see you as I have seen you, on the quiet.”
“I cannot go on with it,” she said. “It is not right; and I have heard
that good can never come out of evil.”
“If it be wrong,” he answered, “let the punishment fall on me.”
“But oh!” said the girl, “we must each bear the burden of our own
faults.”
“When we come to faults, it will be time enough to discuss that
question,” he impatiently retorted.
“It is wrong, though,” she persisted.
“If you think it wrong then you do not love me,” he said. “You are not
willing to suffer anything for my sake; you are ready to desert me
because I am poor and in difficulties. Had I been still at Kincorth I
should not have been forced to beg so hard for so small a favour; but
let us part, Miss Bourke, as you wish all to be at an end between us. I
cannot force you against your will. Give me one kiss, Jenny, and bid me
good-bye. I am used to being scurvily treated. I will go back to my
wretched home, and forswear love for ever. One more—forgive me, it is
the last time. Now, good-bye. Let me go.”
But Jenny would not let him go; she hung about him, she sobbed, she
asked forgiveness, she told him how she should die if he left her in
anger, left her in grief.
He knew her every mood, her every thought almost, and he could manage
her as easily as he might a child. She had her little qualms of
conscience every now and then about her brother; she had her little fits
of strength when she made all kinds of resolutions and declared her
intention of keeping to them; she had her instincts too, which perhaps
warned her that in concealment there is mostly danger—that though stolen
waters may be sweet they are generally unwholesome; she had her hours of
sadness, her times of bitter self-reproach;—but Maxwell had long known
how to deal with her in every mood: he was her master and she his slave;
and the end of all such conversations invariably was that Jenny promised
to be guided by her lover’s advice; to do what he told her; to meet him
when he asked her; to keep the fact of their engagement secret.
He called it an engagement, but whether he wilfully deceived her or
resolutely blinded himself it would be hard to say: Jenny Bourke
implicitly believed that he would marry her whenever he had enough money
to do so, and her only trouble was lest her brother should withhold his
consent.
As for Maxwell’s intentions! He was very fond of Jenny, and that is all
he ever told even to himself.
He was very fond of the girl: all the worse for her. That love was the
whole of her life: it was then but a part, a small part, of his. He had
other aims, other objects, other wishes. He had plans into which she
never entered, projects of which she formed no part: there were whole
days when he never thought of her, or at least never thought save
casually. There was not an hour, there was not a minute, when Jenny did
not think of him.
When they parted after a few such stolen minutes as those I have spoken
of, he could put her out of his memory, he could thrust her out of his
head, he could forget the sweet face, the pleading voice, the twining
arms, the clinging manner, and turn him to his plots and his schemes
again; nay, he could do more—he could part with the sister and go to
meet the brother; he could make an appointment with Ryan likely to keep
him out of the way while he talked to Jenny, and then he would tell some
lie to account for being late, and be as mild and gentle as a south wind
during their interview.
There are not many men in the world, more particularly not many of
Maxwell’s age, with consciences so elastic as to permit such stretches
as these. It is not usual even for Christians to seethe the kid in its
mother’s milk, and I fancy there are few who would like to think that
they had offered a man hospitality to the end that they might
clandestinely make love to his sister. Human nature, though not at all
times over-nice or over-particular, will turn squeamish occasionally
about trifles; and if Maxwell Drewitt had been at all like other people
it must have cut him a little to think, after he left Jenny, that her
brother was waiting for him at Headlands Cottage, wondering where the
deuce Maxwell could have got to.
“Had to see madam home,” was that young gentleman’s explanation. “I
think I must be a devilishly nice sort of fellow when ladies take to
visiting me in an elegant mansion like this,” and Maxwell threw himself
into one of the two chairs his ménage boasted, and after expressing a
hope that Ryan had seen to the kettle, began to rattle on about Mrs.
Drewitt’s visit, about her pressing invitation to Kincorth.
“I suppose you will soon go back to the old place now, then,” suggested
Mr. Timothy Ryan; “you must be pretty well tired of this,” and the
lawyer glanced contemptuously round the cabin.
“I would thank you not to sneer at my house,” answered Maxwell; “I hope
to have a better some day, but it is the best I have at present.”
“Just so,” argued Ryan; “and as I was saying, you must be pretty well
tired of it.”
“You should think! well, you are not me, that is the whole thing.”
“But are you not tired?” asked Ryan.
“No; I have not even thought of being tired yet. Time enough for that
when I see a better place to go to; time enough for that when I have
made my fortune!”
“And how the devil,” asked Mr. Timothy Ryan, “do you propose making your
fortune here?”
“I mean to set up a private still,” answered Maxwell; “I mean to turn
alchemist; I intend to discover the philosopher’s stone.”
“You have your work cut out then,” was the reply.
“I mean to make the howling wilderness a smiling plain,” went on
Maxwell, unheeding the interruption; “I mean to see corn growing where
corn has never grown before; I mean to live in advance of my age and to
make money in Connemara.”
“You won’t make much,” said Ryan, by way of encouragement.
“That depends,” answered Maxwell: “meanwhile, the certainty before us is
punch. Let us drink that and be happy,” and he pushed the whiskey-bottle
over to Ryan, with the remark that the contents had never paid the King
a halfpenny.
“It is all the better for that,” remarked Ryan; “but, not to seem
personal, here’s ‘Long life to him.’”
“Amen,” said Maxwell Drewitt, and the two men took a pull at the punch
together.
“And here’s to ‘Ireland: long life to her,’” observed the lawyer.
“Amen,” repeated Maxwell, and the pair emptied their glasses.
“Don’t spare the potheen,” urged Maxwell; “don’t make the creature so
weak that it won’t be able to get into your mouth. Remember the good old
Irish receipt for making punch: first the sugar, then the whiskey, and
then every drop of water after that spoils it.”
“So it may, but I have to get home to-night,” remarked Ryan.
“The more reason you should recruit your strength for the walk,”
observed Mr. Drewitt.
“So you won’t go back to Kincorth,” said Ryan, after a pause devoted to
whiskey and water.
“No; I am better off here. I have food and shelter in this cabin—as I
suppose you would call it. At Kincorth, excepting a horse, I had nothing
but the run of my teeth. I had no chance of making money; I had no
feeling of independence. In Headlands Cottage, on the contrary, ‘I am
monarch of all I survey, and my right there is none to dispute.’ I have
land; I have a house; I have bog beyond Eversbeg, I have sea-wreck on
the shore. I have a future; I have hope; I see my way. I mean yet to be
a rich man. When you, Mr. Timothy Ryan, my worthy creditor, are blacking
your fingers over deeds of settlement and iniquitous wills, I, at
present your humble debtor, will be a great man; able to make your heart
glad by appointing you agent to my estates. Mix again, man. We shall
have many a talk in years to come about this old cottage, about these
winter nights.”
And Maxwell laughed, and the turf-fire—the bright upheaped turf-fire
shone on his dark face; and Mr. Ryan, looking around the room, wondered
what made the young man so merry; what he could see in his prospects or
his surroundings to inspire him with such hopes.
“I confess,” he said, at length, “that I do not see how you are to do
it.”
“My friend,” answered Mr. Maxwell Drewitt, “do you know anything of the
science of agriculture?”
“No further than that it reluctantly pays rent,” was the reply.
“Do you know anything of the rotation of crops?”
“I have not the faintest idea what you are talking about,” answered the
lawyer.
“Do you know anything of the nature of soils?” persisted his host.
“No more than I know of Arabic,” was the reply.
“Have you ever thought much about manures?”
“Damn it, I am not a farmer.”
“Well, I am; and I have thought about manures; I have studied the nature
of soils; I can tell you all about the rotation of crops; and I mean to
make money. I mean to turn up these grass lands, that grow nothing but
moss and rushes. I mean to manure them; I mean to crop them. Harder than
ever you read to be a lawyer, I have been reading to be a farmer. Pryor
has been very good; he has sent me over books about soils. Turner is a
trump; he has introduced me to an eminent English agriculturist with
whom I correspond. I have ploughed and sowed half my farm already; I
shall get the remainder ploughed, so that the frost, if any frost come,
may eat into the ground. I have collected sea-weed. I intend to keep
stock after this year. The great mistake in Ireland is the neglect of
stall-feeding. I mean to try it. If you exhaust the secret of England’s
prosperity, it is beer, beef, and manure; and I think I ought, as a
simple matter of justice, to have put manure first. Let us see what
sea-weed and stall-feeding will do in Connemara—what perseverance and
resolution can effect anywhere.”
“I hope I shall not see you ruined,” was the reply.
“A beggar cannot be ruined,” said Maxwell, calmly; and the conversation
reverted to general subjects, till Mr. Ryan rose to take his leave, when
Maxwell lighted him to the door and out into the night with a dip
candle.
“Wishing it was wax for your sake,” he said, with a laugh; and then he
went back to his sitting-room, and remained there reading and writing
and thinking for a couple of hours.
Next day he paid his promised visit to Kincorth.
“You will stay for dinner?” said Mrs. Drewitt, whose manner was, as
Maxwell noticed, colder than usual.
“Do, Maxwell,” urged Kathleen.
“Of course he will,” chimed in Mr. Drewitt.
“Thank you,” said Maxwell, “but I am engaged—that is, I have an
engagement.”
“You have always engagements now,” pouted his sister.
“Shows what a great man I am,” answered her brother, as he left to keep
another appointment with Jenny Bourke—pretty, trustful, foolish Jenny!
CHAPTER XI.
Warned.
In the days of which I am writing there were two kinds of lawyer extant
in Ireland—the wholly disreputable and the eminently respectable.
Among the disreputable every kind and description of man might be found,
providing he was decidedly clever and not over-scrupulous; the
respectable, on the contrary, were mostly of one pattern, men of
standing, having characters to lose, who were socially quite on an
equality with their clients, and who were as far above the stock
attorney of Irish novelists as an honest merchant is above a swindling
adventurer.
The worst of the respectable lawyers was that they were a little slow;
the best of the disreputable lot was that they were decidedly sharp and
shrewd.
Drawn as a rule from the lower middle class, the latter had all the
quickness of the lower orders of Irish society, all their acuteness of
perception, all their rapidity of jumping to conclusions. In guerilla
warfare the regular army had no chance with them; they were down on a
point of law like a terrier on a rat; they had every Act of Parliament
at their fingers’ ends; they were perfect scourges in court; they were
the terror of witnesses, the detestation of magistrates. If there were a
flaw in your title, woe betide you if one of them got scent of it. They
were clever, well up in law, impertinent, impudent, vulgar; they were
always talking about the people’s rights; always for the man who had
shot his landlord or his landlord’s bailiff from behind a hedge; always
against the Crown; always in favour of the Roman Catholics and against
the Protestants.
Unless a landlord had very dirty work indeed on hand he seldom left his
family solicitor to seek advice from one of these gentlemen; and it was
rarely indeed that any of them so far deserted his original flag as to
serve under the enemy. In politics they were Liberals; in religion much
the same. As a rule, they had been articled without the regular fee, and
came into the profession by the back stairs. They were the hope of the
vagabond population; they were the deliverers of many a man from the
grievous terrors of the law; they fought so long as there was a rag of a
chance left to them. If ever they got very rich they settled into men
who upheld the constitution and the government; but so long as they
remained poor—and that was generally for ever, because they spent as
recklessly as they earned easily—they were for the people: for the women
who went about barefooted; for the men who lounged through life with
their coat-tails trailing the ground, with their battered hats worn on
one side, with their hands in their pockets, and short pipes in their
mouths.
Of this class Timothy Ryan was a favourable specimen. He might not have
much principle, but he had a heart. He was known to forgive men their
costs, though he was also known to have done many a thing which his best
friends could scarcely consider honest. He was not a hard agent, though
he was certainly not an honest man. His conscience had never stood in
his way, but his feelings had. He was immensely popular with the lower
orders, but he had not the entrée into any of the gentlemen’s houses in
the neighbourhood, except into that of Waller of Eversbeg, whose agent
he was, and to whose table he was often invited.
For the rest, he had little society save Mr. Murphy, Dr. Sheen’s
assistant; the parish priest, and a retired sea captain who lived on the
Duranmore side of Eversbeg Head. With Maxwell Drewitt, whom he had known
for years, his intimacy was entirely of a business character, and yet
Ryan was proud of the acquaintanceship, such as it was. He felt it gave
him a certain standing knowing a Drewitt of Kincorth, even although that
Drewitt had not the remotest chance of ever owning Kincorth. He knew he
owed Waller’s agency—a tremendous lift for him—to Maxwell having brought
the owner of Eversbeg into Inchnagawn Cottage to shelter during a storm;
he was well aware young Drewitt could benefit him still more if he
chose; for all of which reasons, Ryan cultivated Maxwell; whilst, for
various sufficient reasons of his own, Maxwell cultivated Ryan.
Jenny Bourke was Ryan’s half-sister. They were children of the same
mother; Mrs. Ryan having changed her name for that of Bourke within two
years of her first husband’s death.
Of the Ryans’ union there had been many sons: one, Timothy, the eldest,
settled at Duranmore as a lawyer; another ran away to sea; a third
enlisted; a fourth emigrated; and so at last poor Mrs. Bourke departed
this life in despair of ever seeing them reunited, and left her only
daughter to the care of her sister and to the guardianship of Timothy.
As for Mr. Bourke, he had long before deserted his wife and married a
younger and more attractive-looking woman in England; indeed, rumour
said that Mrs. Ryan was by no means his first essay in matrimony. He had
a way of winning widows and securing their little fortunes, and then
disappearing like a flash of lightning.
Some people declared Bourke was not his name at all; but be this as it
may, Jenny had never been called by any other, and she never hoped to be
called by any other, unless indeed it might some day happen that Maxwell
were able to make her his wife.
Mr. Murphy had something more than a liking for the girl, but Jenny
turned her coldest shoulder on the assistant when he called.
“It’s that blackguard Maxwell at his tricks again,” thought Mr. Murphy;
“I am sure he sees her somehow:” but Mr. Murphy was a wise man and kept
his own counsel. He did not frighten Jenny by spreading a net in her
sight, but he drew back and watched who threw the crumbs, he felt
confident, the girl came down to pick up.
“I’ve my eye on you, my boy,” he would remark to himself when he met
young Mr. Drewitt and exchanged bows with him; “I have my eye on you.
Give you rope enough and you will run it into a noose for yourself, or I
am greatly mistaken. Good-morning, sir; fine weather this for the
country.” And he would ride off on his rough pony, while Maxwell trudged
over the Connemara roads on foot.
His uncle had offered him leave to take a couple of horses out of the
stable at Kincorth, but Maxwell declined the gift.
“Not one of them shall give me a lift up,” he said to Ryan, and Ryan
applauded his spirit even while he wondered at it.
“Where the deuce does he get the money from?” considered the lawyer:
“where can he get it? for a man is not able to live for nothing, even in
a cabin; and he pays wages, and buys implements, and hires horses, and
draws sea-weed. I should like to know who is backing him. Can it be
Turner? It is not impossible.”
And Maxwell took every pains to foster this idea, and to make Mr. Ryan
think not only that Turner was backing him, but also that Mr. Waller and
Mr. Pryor were willing to help him in his endeavours.
In reality, however, he did not for many a long day receive the
slightest assistance from any of his male acquaintances, whether Irish
or English.
It was Lady Emmeline Vervensoe who helped him into the saddle; it was
Lady Emmeline who, when she heard he had left Kincorth with the
intention of trying to push his way on in the world, gave him a
considerable sum of money, saying significantly as she pressed it into
his hand: “Secret service money for the election; you need not give me
any account of it, Mr. Drewitt.” And Mr. Drewitt did not give her any
account, and when he found that his farming operations required more
capital he asked her ladyship to make him a further advance.
He and Colonel Vervensoe had never healed up their old wound. So they
passed each other when they met without speaking, and Maxwell was never
by any chance now asked up to Cragantlet, even in the hunting season.
But yet the servants at Cragantlet knew that Mr. Drewitt of “The
Headlands,” as he was beginning to call his new property, occasionally
rode up to the house when Colonel Vervensoe was from home; and a man who
was in the habit of attending Lady Emmeline when she drove in her
phaeton, or rode out on horse-back, could have told tales of many a
meeting, not accidental, between the pair.
There was nothing wrong in the affair; there was no breaking of the
seventh commandment, nor idea of breaking it; but still Lady Emmeline
liked Maxwell so much, and Maxwell found her ladyship so extremely
useful, that neither thought of discontinuing the acquaintance
altogether.
To be strictly truthful, however, the young man had thought at one time
of persuading her ladyship to go off with him—not because being his
neighbour’s wife made her seem any nicer in his eyes, but simply because
her husband had insulted him, and she had a large fortune.
I am afraid, seeing Lady Emmeline was not over-prudent, had Maxwell been
sure the game was worth the candle, that he would not have proved
over-scrupulous in the matter; but as it was, Maxwell had a long head,
and a clear head, and he reflected that, if he ran away with Colonel
Vervensoe’s wife, that gallant officer would either shoot him or ruin
him.
Her ladyship, at a certain price, might not be dear; but her ladyship,
with a bullet in some part of his body, or with heavy damages from the
Ecclesiastical Courts, was quite another matter.
Mr. Maxwell Drewitt thought that game not worth the candle, and so
abandoned it, and accordingly Lady Emmeline Vervensoe’s character was as
safe in his keeping as though she had been as ugly as one of the witches
in Macbeth or as repulsive as Sycorax.
Nevertheless, it was her money that ploughed his fields, paid his
labourers, bought his seed; and, to do Maxwell Drewitt justice, no money
was ever more judiciously laid out.
He was prudent, he was economical, he did not encroach on her kindness;
he knew when to hold back his hand and say “enough.”
He required money and she lent it to him—gave it to him, she said but
Maxwell preferred the other way of putting it. Once he had got the
start, however, he worked manfully to keep it: he wanted to show Lady
Emmeline, and to convince himself, out of what small beginnings even an
Irishman may make a fortune; and so he laboured on, bringing first one
piece of land and then another under cultivation, till people finally
began to talk of Maxwell Drewitt as a wonder, and to marvel how he did
it; while pretty Jenny Bourke thought within herself, “He will soon be
rich enough to ask Timothy for me now;” but she never ventured to say
this to him again, although she still stole out to meet him, either by
the stream, or on the shore, or up in the mountain gorge that lay at the
back of Inchnagawn Cottage.
“That is a mighty nice walk on a summer’s evening,” remarked Mr. Murphy,
pointing up this gorge, as he and Mr. Ryan stood looking inland one fine
morning in June.
“Is it?” said the attorney, carelessly.
“I like to listen to your innocent talk,” replied Mr. Murphy. “‘Is it?’
he says, just as simple as a lamb.”
“Well, is it?” repeated Mr. Ryan. “How should I know anything about the
place; I never was up the stream in my life!”
“Never were out with any young woman either, I suppose?”
“I have not been this many a year, at any rate,” returned the other.
“The only girl I ever was to say sweet on was not sweet on me; and
somehow I never fancied another since.”
“Well, it is mighty queer,” remarked Mr. Murphy.
“What is queer?” asked his friend.
“Why, the lies men will tell when women and money are concerned. It was
no later ago than last night that I followed a pair of lovers from the
top of the gorge down to that big rock; you see it there, don’t you?”
“Yes. You followed them; what then?”
“Why then, Mr. Timothy Ryan, as I did not want to be seen, I stopped
behind that lump of granite and watched; and I saw them in the darkness
come down, down, down. The young woman wore a light dress; and I am
positive that dress, at any rate, went round your haystacks and in by
the back gate.”
“You did not think it was me, Murphy?” said Ryan; but his voice sounded
hoarse as he asked the question.
“You in the light dress? in course not; but if the man wasn’t you, who
was he?”
“You are sure you had not been drinking?”
“I’ll swear it for you, if you like.”
“And you are certain you were not mistaken?”
“Sure and certain.”
“The man was not as tall as I am?”
“He might not have been.”
“Was he anything like Maxwell Drewitt?” inquired Ryan.
“They could have passed for twins,” replied Mr. Murphy.
“That’s enough, Murphy, thank you,” said Ryan, and he drew a long, deep
breath. “It’s warm to-day,” he observed, lifting his hat off his head,
and letting the light wind fan his temples. “I must be getting towards
Duranmore now,” he added abruptly; “are you going to walk that way?”
“I can walk any way,” was the reply. “Trade is mighty dull just now.
There has not been a child born this week, I think; and only one
accident, and he was carried home dead as a doornail. It’s a cursed
place at the best of times,” proceeded Mr. Murphy; “but the like of it
this June nobody would credit. I have made up all our calomel into pills
and powders, just for want of something to do; and I have been trying
how much nux vomica I could take without bringing on tetanus, for the
sake of whiling away the time. I don’t think there is another such hole
in the entire of Great Britain or Ireland. Whenever my mother dies, and
she can’t last long, poor old girl, I shall cut Ireland altogether, and
make for London. That’s the place, my boy—that’s the chance for men like
me.”
And Mr. Murphy rattled on after this fashion all the way to Duranmore,
leaving it quite optional with his companion whether he answered him or
not.
Ryan elected not to answer him, and not to speak till they were shaking
hands at the door of his office in the High Street; then he said—
“They did not see you, did they?”
“Does a corpse see the sexton when he is shovelling the mould in on the
top of him, do you think?” asked Mr. Murphy.
And with that they parted.
For many a night afterwards Mr. Ryan kept watch; many a time he
pretended to go away from home, and kept guard in the gorge, in the
twilight, in the starlight, in the moonlight—all in vain.
He would not speak to his sister nor to Maxwell. He bided his time, and
he waited without result until one evening when he was returning, a day
sooner than he had expected to be back, from an outlying portion of Mr.
Waller’s property, among the wildest part of the Joyce country.
There he had bought a new horse, a young, handsome creature, bay with
black legs, leaving in exchange his old white mare and a not
unreasonable number of pound-notes.
He was proud of his new purchase: it had a long easy trot, and had
brought him by bridlepaths up hilly roads, through lonely valleys,
thirty Irish miles without turning a hair; and he was so careful of this
good steed that he stopped at the top of the hill above Eversbeg in
order to lead him down the steep descent.
With his arm passed through the bridle and his hand on the horse’s
glossy neck, Mr. Ryan paused at a turn of the road, and looked at the
view spread out before him.
Nestling at the foot of the hill, huddled up among its woods, stood
Eversbeg, and nearer to him still were the ruins of Eversbeg Abbey. He
could see the pointed windows half concealed by ivy; he could see the
grave-stones and the crosses and the monuments; he could see away over
Eversbeg Bay, out to the great Atlantic; and he could discern, like a
speck in the distance, Maxwell Drewitt’s cottage lying away near
Eversbeg Head.
There was a great hush and calm over everything—over the sea and the
land, the mountains and the valleys—and Ryan could not help feeling
subdued by that virtue of stillness, by that calm which seems oftentimes
to follow the sun’s setting, as though nature were lying quiet ere
falling to sleep for the night.
After this pause he went on, descending the hill by a winding road,
which soon shut out from his view Eversbeg and the Abbey and the
Atlantic, but brought him at a sharp turn within sight of Kincorth and
Duranmore and Duranmore Bay, which was more like a lake than like an arm
of the sea, and his own white cottage close to the shore, where Jenny
would not be expecting his return.
As he thought of this, Ryan pulled up short. He had twisted his hand in
his horse’s mane, he had lifted his left foot half way up to the
stirrup, but on the instant he unwound his fingers from among the coarse
black hair, and stood beside his steed, while the animal lifted up its
head and looked out over the bay, too, as though he had been a
Christian.
While he stood irresolute, Ryan saw a man leave the shore road, and,
after looking round, follow the course of the stream I have spoken of as
flowing at the back of Inchnagawn Cottage.
It was Maxwell Drewitt. Though it was getting dusk, though there was a
considerable distance between them, still Mr. Ryan recognized the man he
had been waiting for.
When there are not a dozen gentlemen within a circuit of twenty miles it
is not easy to mistake the identity of any of them, and Ryan felt that
he was not deceived—Maxwell Drewitt was going up the stream to meet
Jenny, and he might catch them yet; and he would catch them, “he would,
by——.”
He flung the reins to a lad who stood at a cabin-door by the wayside,
and bidding him take care of the horse, Ryan left the main road and
dashed down what remained of the hill, across bog and river, among
brambles and heather, home. He had his riding-whip in his hand, and
involuntarily he shortened his hold of it as he drew nearer—nearer
still.
Every now and then he stopped, for there was a noise in his ears like
the raging of distant waters. It was his passion—it was the tumult in
his breast which sounded to him as the roar of the sea.
He came on—on; he gained the high road; he stole round by the back of
his own house; and there, by the stream, were the pair still talking.
“Timothy!” shrieked Jenny—and she had reason: in a moment he held
Maxwell by the collar, and showered down blows upon him.
“Villain! scoundrel! coward!” he said, and he literally ground his teeth
with rage.
“Hands off, fool!” shouted Maxwell, and he clasped his own round Ryan’s
throat.
There was an awful struggle for a moment, but then Maxwell tripped his
opponent up, and putting his knee on his chest, tore the whip out of his
grasp, and sent it flying among the weeds and rashes that grew on the
other side the stream.
“Who is villain, scoundrel, coward now?” he asked, with a sneer; with
his face black with rage, with the veins in his forehead swelled, with
the devil that was in him looking out of his eyes. “Who is a spy and a
listener? I won’t thrash you, because you are her brother; I won’t shoot
you, because you are not worth the trouble; but I’ll leave you to think
what you have made by this move;” and Maxwell released his adversary,
picked up his hat, which had fallen to the ground, and saying to Miss
Bourke, “I will see you another time, Jenny,” was about to walk off,
when Ryan called out, “Stop!”
“You shall never see her to speak to again. Only let me catch you near
the house—only let me hear of Jenny ever looking to the side of the
street where you walk, and I will shoot you like a dog.”
“Have you finished?” asked Maxwell; “because in that case I may wish you
good-morning.” And he lifted his hat to Jenny, whose face was as white
as the cottage walls, and was gone.
Within a week Ryan took a house in Duranmore next door to his office,
and moved his furniture and himself and his sister away from the pretty
cottage by the shore.
But the waves came rolling up the bay for all that: though there was no
human ear to listen to their music, they still rippled over the stones
and sand—the shutters of the cottage-windows were closed and fastened,
but the fuchsias bloomed the same as ever—no Jenny now stood by the
stream, singing her love songs, dreaming her love fantasies, but the
stream went dancing over the stones to the sea none the less
joyously—there were none to look up at the everlasting hills, but the
summer’s sun shone on them, and the winter’s snows lay on them, as the
sun had shone and the snow had lain since the beginning of time.
CHAPTER XII.
Son and Heir.
Meanwhile there had been changes at Kincorth, such changes as the birth
of a son and the management of a careful and educated woman were likely
to produce; but the greatest change of all had perhaps been that wrought
in Mrs. Drewitt herself, who, looking back twelve months, could not help
marvelling if the Agnes Drewitt who sat nursing her child in her bedroom
at Kincorth were the same with the new-made wife who had wept bitter
tears in that self-same chamber, who had grieved over Maxwell, who had
wanted to keep him in the house at any sacrifice, at any cost.
Since those early days, Mrs. Drewitt had grown very jealous for her
son’s inheritance, very watchful over the interests of her baby. Maxwell
had opened her eyes and taught her to discern between good and evil; and
with all a woman’s quickness of perception she had seen that there would
be war between her children and the children of the elder brother; that
Maxwell wanted the estate, and was resolved some day to have it.
“But he shan’t, darling, shall he?” and Mrs. Drewitt kissed every one of
her son’s toes in succession as though he had been a pope.
There is no accounting for tastes, or otherwise one might wonder at the
fancy mothers have for this form of refreshment. Pink and plump and
pretty the creature’s toes looked peeping from under the long white
robe, but there was no earthly reason why she should have kissed them
for all that.
She did perform the ceremony, nevertheless, rapturously, and then she
lifted her eyes and looked out over the waving woods and the sunny
fields that went sloping towards the sea.
It was a fair property. I have said what Maxwell thought of it as he
stood gazing up at Kincorth on the summer’s afternoon when you, dear
reader, were introduced to him, and it was perhaps natural that Mrs.
Drewitt longed a little greedily to secure it for her boy.
Women nursing babies are all alike. They think nothing good enough for
the new king, and they expect every created being to fall down and adore
the autocrat as they do.
Women whose children are growing up get, as a rule, more sensible and
fairer dealing year by year. They see their white crows throwing out
black feathers, they begin to understand that other people have children
too, and that the meadow-lands of existence cannot be kept clear so that
their young lambs may browse over them undisturbed.
But a baby!—there is so much left to the imagination about a baby. It
may grow up to be as handsome as Apollo, as wise as Solomon, as eloquent
as Demosthenes, as just as Aristides, as holy as George Herbert.
It is so delightful to be able to sit in the sunlight, as Mrs. Drewitt
was doing, nursing a two months’ old monarch, and picture for him a
reign long, glorious, and triumphant. If mothers did not mercifully
forget these dreams, how could they ever live and face the downfall of
all these airy castles? How could they bear to see their sons and
daughters grow up, not as the polished corners of the temple, but
sometimes no better than other folks’ sons and daughters—oftentimes much
worse?
A baby!—a monarch, a pope, a little god, a lord mayor for a year and a
day, and then another lord mayor rides in gilded coach to fortune, and
inhabits his brother’s grand chateaux en Espagne.
The king is dead, long live the king! and autocrat No. 2, No. 3, No. 4,
as the case may be, appears on the daïs for the household generally to
bow down before and worship.
A baby!—well, well, Maxwell Drewitt had been a baby once, and perhaps
his mother dreamed such dreams for him as Mrs. Drewitt of Kincorth was
doing for her baby now.
There are some things in nature which we shall never understand on this
side eternity, and one of them, I think, is, why having a child born to
her should make a woman unjust for the time being.
I know there will be an outcry of indignation at this assertion; but it
is true for all that. Beyond her baby, a woman has at first no sympathy.
Nay, I go further, and say she has no liking save for those who serve,
honour, and obey her Moloch.
There are men who are worse than women in this matter, but not many,
thank God! If there were, the shop of the world might be shut up, and
human nature would have to retire from business altogether.
Her baby!—there came a day when Mrs. Drewitt turned from her first
allegiance and worshipped another baby. All her life long she was
somewhat of an idolater, and her gods did nothing for her, as is the way
with the gods we rear for ourselves—only brought trouble and sorrow to
that gentle breast.
But sitting in the sunshine, kissing the fat toes of her first-born,
Mrs. Drewitt was happy, and she was all the happier perhaps because she
felt no sorrow for the man whom the birth of her son cut out from
Kincorth for ever.
If we exhaust the matter, the young mother thought in her heart it ought
to be a pleasure for Maxwell to stand out of the way of the new king’s
progress; and as she felt sure it was no pleasure to him to do anything
of the kind, she began to entertain a very sincere dislike for her
husband’s nephew.
Holding her baby from her at arms’ length—laughing when it laughed,
clasping it to her heart, touching its little fingers, its little hands,
its meaningless face, with a delight ever strange and ever new—something
even in that happy moment came over Mrs. Drewitt that made the tears
start into her eyes, and caused her face to change and sadden under the
sunlight.
She was sorry that she did not feel sorry for Maxwell, that she did not
like him, that she was not so glad to see him as formerly, that she
could not care for Susan and Wilhelmina. She had resolved to do her
duty, and this was the end of it. Human nature is stronger than duty,
and it was impossible for Mrs. Drewitt to help her feelings. The child
she had brought into this world was nearer to her than any other
person’s children could be.
It was natural she should long to secure Kincorth for the baby—that she
should dislike any one who seemed to stand in antagonism to her son.
The child had changed her, and it was the consciousness of this change
having taken place that made Mrs. Drewitt’s eyes fill full of tears.
As for Mr. Drewitt, he had received the new arrival just as such a man
usually does receive such donations—ecstatically!
To have heard him talk, any stranger might have thought that Mr. Drewitt
only held the property in trust until his son should come of age. If his
bailiff spoke to him about cutting down a tree, he hesitated. He would
grant no lease for more than seven years.
The expenses must be curtailed, the household expenditure retrenched.
His agent must see that the rents were paid more punctually. When Brian
came of age it would not do for him to find the tenants all in arrear.
He trusted those girls would marry, or that if they did not, Maxwell
would have them to live with him. “I must try to make him an allowance
for their maintenance till they all come of age, when I can perhaps
manage to settle a certain sum on each,” said Mr. Drewitt to his wife.
“I should not like Brian to marry one of them, and if they grow up
together who knows what might happen?”
Who indeed? but meantime the state of mind in which Mr. Drewitt went
about the house, and walked round the shrubberies, and exchanged
greetings with his friends, and answered the congratulations of his
acquaintances, was involved and ridiculous beyond description.
“It is a far cry to Loch Awe,” Maxwell observed drily, when Wilhelmina
told him, with shrieks of laughter, how her uncle was doing everything
with an eye to the pleasure and advancement of the young heir. “What
kind of a creature is it?”
“What kind of creatures are all babies?” inquired Miss Susan Drewitt,
scornfully. “Though to be sure, to hear the way they go on about it,
anybody might imagine it was not a baby at all, but an angel. Nannie
says it is like its papa, and the doctor says it is like its mamma; but
for my part, I think it is a cross between a star-fish and a lobster.”
“You really ought to be in the house with uncle,” remarked Wilhelmina.
“He won’t let a window be open for fear of the brat catching cold. He
won’t let any stranger touch it for fear the said stranger should have
any dreadful and communicable disease. He was going to put Mr. Murphy
out of the hall-door, the other day, because the poor man said, after
uncle had quite worn him out, ‘Tut, tut, tut, Mr. Drewitt, the egg is
all very well, but it is not worth the cackling you make over it.’ I
really thought I would have died, Maxwell. I had to put the whole of my
pocket-handkerchief into my mouth, or I should have laughed outright.
“‘Sir!’ says my uncle, and he drew himself up like a grenadier.
“‘You need not be offended, Mr. Drewitt,’ says Murphy. I do love that
man, it is so hard to put him out of countenance. ‘A hen with only one
chicken always makes ten times the fuss she would if she had a good
clutch to go about with; and by the time you have a dozen, I’m thinking
you won’t be caring so much whether a few of them should catch some
infection or not. Excuse a jest, sir, it is only my way. The baby is a
fine baby. I don’t know that ever I saw a handsomer.’
“And as he said that he looked over at me, and you know, Maxwell, what
his looks are.”
“He is an impudent scoundrel,” remarked her brother. “If I hear of him
looking at you at all, I will wring his neck for him—and glad of the
excuse too,” added Maxwell, _sotto voce_.
“You never saw a man make such an idiot of himself in your life,” said
Susan, laying a true Hibernian emphasis on the last word in her
sentence. “He ought to build a little chapel and have a shrine made, and
let people only look at the brat from a distance. And that reminds me,
Maxwell—do you know Kathie has never gone back to school yet? She is not
well enough to go, Sheen says, and my uncle wanted her to keep away from
the heir, seeming to think it might be something of consumption, and
that the young gentleman would take it from her.”
“And Kathie cried, till I told her she was a greater idiot than uncle
and a bigger baby than the heir,” put in Wilhelmina. “Mrs. Drewitt would
not listen to such nonsense, though; she said Kathie should be with her
and Brian if she liked. That is one thing I will say for Mrs.
Drewitt—that she is good to Kathie. Give the devil his due, her own
mother could not be better to her.”
“But do you think Kathie ill, seriously ill, I mean?” asked Maxwell: if
the young man had ever loved any of his own flesh and blood, it was
Kathie, and he put the question anxiously.
“Well, you know she never was strong—she was always, as Nannie says, the
‘crowl’ among us,” answered Wilhelmina, who looked both strong and
handsome, and had a rich colour in her cheeks with walking to Headlands
Cottage; “she ought not to have gone to school, and it was not with Mrs.
Drewitt’s good will she went, but you and uncle would have it. You know
it was your doing, Maxwell, and she got a cold, and the cold got worse,
and you should see for yourself how she looks.”
“What are they doing for her?” he inquired.
“Dr. Sheen has sent her some medicine, and Mrs. Drewitt tries to coax
her to eat,” Wilhelmina replied; while Susan added—
“I think they have an idea of sending her abroad. I am sure I heard some
one talk of letting her spend the winter with the Dyaks, if money for
her travelling expenses could be raised.”
Then Maxwell Drewitt rose up, walked across the room, took a cigar out
of a paper lying on the table, lit it, and began to smoke. When he had
puffed away for a little time he said—
“Kathie shall not go to the Dyaks. I won’t have my sister eating the
bread of a dependent in the house of any of Mr. Drewitt’s relations. If
she needs a milder climate I will find somebody to take charge of her,
and I will find the money too, which the great people up at Kincorth
seem to think a thing so devilishly hard to raise.”
“That’s right, Maxwell. Go it,” exclaimed Wilhelmina, clapping her
hands. “Send us all abroad, and come yourself—we’d make our fortunes at
_rouge-et-noir_. Wouldn’t it be capital sport?”
“You seem to think so, at any rate,” remarked Susan, shortly.
“And you—ten thousand pardons. I forgot. You would not like to leave——”
“Whom?” asked Maxwell, as his sister stopped abruptly.
“The baby, I suppose,” laughed Wilhelmina; whereupon Maxwell made some
remark about the baby which did not sound like a blessing.
“What the deuce is their fancy for calling the young beggar Brian?” he
inquired. “Is it Brian Boroïhme they have gone back to, or is it some of
her people, or what?”
“There was a good Drewitt once,” answered Wilhelmina; “at least, so
tradition says, though I believe there is not a syllable of truth in the
story. There was a good Drewitt once—good and wise, and his name was
Brian. There is a long rigmarole about him on some old stone in the
abbey, and Nannie told Mrs. Drewitt a great history about what grand
people the Drewitts were in his day, and about what a pious man he was,
and how he repaired the abbey, and how he planted that huge yew-tree in
the churchyard, and that hollow ash, and that rotten beech on the lawn
at Kincorth. And Nannie told her, too, how a child always strains after
the person it is called after, and how luck follows names, and worked
her up to such a pitch finally, that nothing would do her but the young
gentleman must be called Brian—and accordingly Brian he is—Brian
Archibald. It is not an easy name to make fun out of; so all I can do is
to call him Brin Baldy. It’s a pretty conceit, is not it? as Lady
Emmeline would say, and it has the great advantage of being
unintelligible. I have ventured to talk about Brin Baldy to Susan before
uncle, and he had not the remotest idea of whom I was talking.”
“I shall come up to see Kathie,” said Maxwell, when his sister stopped—a
little irrelevantly it is true, but still in consequence of some train
of thought he had been pursuing during her sentence.
“I am sure _we_ ought to be grateful,” remarked Susan. “Get up and make
a courtesy, Willy.”
Which Willy accordingly did, observing, at the same time, she thought
somebody ought to come and see Kathie, and rouse her up.
“Talk about peaches! You should have seen the peaches the Countess gave
me the other day to take home to Kathie,” she went on; “they were as
big—oh! as big as Susan’s head—four times as big as any I ever saw grow
at Kincorth, and do you think she would touch them?—not a bit of it.
“‘You little ungrateful wretch!’ I said, ‘and I have brought them all
the way from Laddenwell home for you, and it was as much as I could do
to keep from eating them on the road. You _shall_ take them!’
“So she took one, and tried to swallow it, but she did not like peaches,
she told me.
“‘Will you have grapes, then?’ I asked her, but she would not have
grapes. At last I worried out of her what she could eat, and what do you
think it was, Maxwell? I will give you six guesses.”
“Don’t be childish, Willy; go on.”
“Crabs!” exclaimed that young lady. “Now you know crabs are things uncle
can’t bear the sight of, and that he thinks nobody else ought to be able
to bear the sight of either; so I had to get one smuggled up for her.
But when it came, would she touch it? I don’t know what to do with
Kathie,” finished Wilhelmina, in despair.
“She ought to take a good canter every day of her life,” said Susan,
“and keep out of the nursery. There is nothing the matter with Kathie
except the mopes.”
“Do you know what your mother died of, Susan?” asked Maxwell, a little
sternly.
“She died when Kathie was born. I suppose it was of that,” answered Miss
Drewitt.
“She would not have died of that if she had not been in a decline
beforehand,” said Maxwell; “and from what you say, I’m afraid it is
consumption Kathie has got. I will come up and see her,” he repeated. “I
will walk back with you.”
When Maxwell passed through Duranmore, on his way from Kincorth to
Eversbeg, he stopped at Dr. Sheen’s, and not finding that gentleman at
home, spoke to Mr. Murphy about his sister’s health.
“Had not you better step round when the doctor is within?” asked the
assistant.
“I have got something else to do than dance up and down from Eversbeg
here, after him or anybody else,” answered Maxwell, with that
graciousness of manner which distinguished his treatment of any one he
considered beneath him in station.
“It is not my place to talk about Doctor Sheen’s patients,” persisted
Mr. Murphy.
“What the devil is the use of your getting on in this way to me? She is
my sister, and I must know, and I will know, what is the matter with
her.”
“And how should I know what is the matter with her?” demanded the other.
“Sure we never know for certain what is wrong with man, woman, or child,
unless we open them, and I suppose you don’t want me to do that?”
“Will you tell me, as far as you do know, what ails my sister, or not?
If you do not choose to do so, I must take her to somebody who will.”
“I would rather you would ask Dr. Sheen. I am only his assistant, and I
have not had his experience; and to be plain, the doctor and I don’t
agree about the case. Ask him; or if you like, I will tell him to write
to you.”
“I want your opinion,” persisted Maxwell. “All you say I shall consider
as spoken to me confidentially, if you wish, only tell me exactly what
you think is wrong with Kathleen.”
“I do believe you are fond of her,” said Mr. Murphy, with a vague wonder
in his voice.
“What the deuce is it to you whether I am or not? Tell me your opinion,
without beating about the bush any longer.”
“Do you want me to tell you the truth or a lie?”
“I want the truth, whatever the truth may be,” was the answer.
“Because,” went on Mr. Murphy, “there’s many a one says he wants to hear
the truth, and then is angry at the man who tells it to him.”
“Whatever you think, out with it,” exclaimed Maxwell, impatiently.
“Your sister is very far from strong.”
“I can see that without the help of any doctor’s eyes,” answered the
young man; “but is she likely to get worse? Will the medicine she is
taking cure her?”
“Doctor Sheen thinks it will,” was the reply.
“But what do you think, Mr. Murphy?”
“I consider Miss Kathie to be in a very bad way,” said the assistant.
“Will it be life or death?” asked Maxwell.
“Don’t ask me. What is the use of it? Sure you know yourself.”
For a minute there was silence—for a minute the thought of the only
enemy that in youth a man like Maxwell Drewitt is afraid to face cowed
him. Then he said:
“Would a warmer climate, Mr. Murphy——”
“Save her, I suppose you mean. You can try it.”
Slowly and reluctantly, Maxwell turned to go.
“One thing more, Mr. Murphy,” he said. “Was the cold she caught at
school the cause of this?”
“If she had not caught a cold there she would have caught it some place
else,” was the answer. “You can’t keep a person shut up in a band-box
for ever; and the fire was always ready laid in her, to be kindled some
chilly winter’s morning. But people invariably like to attribute disease
to accident: they think if they could guard themselves against that they
would be immortal,” added Mr. Murphy.
Maxwell went out into the air. He walked home round by Eversbeg Head,
from whence he had a view over the wide Atlantic, looking under the
summer’s sky like a glassy lake. He saw the ships going past with their
white sails shining and glistening in the sun; he beheld the ocean at
peace with man—the land kissed softly and gently by the waves; he saw
his own fields looking rich and cultivated, in the warm glow of the
afternoon light;—but there was a sorrow in his heart, the memory of
which the peaceful scene could not chase away.
Many a feeling which passes through our breasts to-day we forget
to-morrow; we fear, and with a new sunrise the dread is gone. We settle
down to think: something comes to prevent our doing so, and the
impression made, fades away and is forgotten.
Could Maxwell Drewitt have stereotyped in his memory all the feelings
which saddened him when he stood, that day, looking out over the great
Atlantic, I think—I believe—he would have gone through the rest of his
life a better man.
But as it was, they were merely as words spoken to the air—as letters
traced on the sand.
The next wind of passion bore them far beyond his reach and his
recollection; the next wave of life, rushing up on the shore of his
existence, obliterated their meaning.
Life and death, friends—life and death!—are these two not ever walking
through this world hand in hand together?
The tide that brings a fresh soul into existence on its flow, bears a
pale corpse out to the great sea as it ebbs.
There was a child born—there was a girl dying: there was a son and heir,
over whose birth exulting parents rejoiced—there was an orphan waiting
to rejoin her father and mother also.
There was life in the boy, who crowed and shrieked in the nursery: there
was death in Kathleen, who walked about the grounds and through the
rooms at Kincorth—who had learned her last lessons, who was never to go
back to school any more—who was never to have lovers, never to be
married—never to be anything except a slight, dark-eyed, loveable,
delicate girl—who cooed and fondled the baby as long as she had strength
to do it, and who delighted in the newcomer, even although he did cut
Maxwell out from the property.
“And Maxwell was always kinder to me than he was to anybody,” sighed
Kathie to Mrs. Drewitt; “I wish he was out of that cottage—I wish he was
back at Kincorth!”
But when her wish was fulfilled, when Maxwell did return to Kincorth, I
think it was best for Kathleen that she could not see him there—that she
had then been sleeping for twenty years in Eversbeg Abbey, away from all
the sinful jealousies and wicked passions which make the world so often
seem only like a battle-field, where man stands up to war against man.
CHAPTER XIII.
Maxwell’s Improvements.
Three years passed away—slowly enough, for in a place like Duranmore
time’s flight is never very rapid; and during the course of those three
years the novelty of having a son had worn off, and Mr. Drewitt cut down
trees, and renewed leases, and took fines, and raised money without the
slightest reference to his heir’s interests. In the house matters were
better managed; out-of-doors, worse. Every day the property was going
more surely to the dogs; every day money seemed more difficult to be
had, more impossible to be kept.
When Brian lay in his cradle, Mr. Drewitt proposed building a house on
the farm he had settled on his wife before her marriage. “It will
increase the value of the place,” he said; “and if I live till Brian
grow up and marry, he can reside there and be independent of us
altogether; while, on the other hand, should you, dearest, ever have to
leave Kincorth, it would be a home for you.”
All in vain Mrs. Drewitt remonstrated. All in vain she entreated him to
wait, observing that it would surely be time enough to build a house for
Brian’s wife when Brian was put into jacket and trousers. She pointed
out that money was not very plentiful; that workmen would have to be
paid; that somebody must live in the house if it were finished; and that
it would be a continual expense and worry.
Mr. Drewitt overbore all her objections. He insisted that the thing,
being proper to be done, should be done at once; that a dower-house
ought immediately to be erected; that the expense would be nothing, the
advantages incalculable; and straightway he had granite quarried and
drawn to the farm, chose a site, set labourers to dig at the
foundations, and neglected every other concern of his life in order to
ride over each day and see how the work progressed.
“Where are you drawing those stones to?” Maxwell asked one of his
uncle’s men who was driving a cart and horse across the hills.
“To Analore, yer honour,” was the answer.
“What for?” pursued the young man.
“To build a house for Masther Brian. The masther is greatly taken on
with the notion entirely.”
“Fools build houses,” thought Maxwell, “and, my God, what a fool he is!”
Twelve months afterwards Maxwell rode over to Analore, and tying his
horse to a gate walked leisurely up the hill to see how Brian’s castle
was getting on. Analore lay inland; it was, as Lady Ebbutt had said, a
mountain: the farm was nothing more than a sheep-run. Nature had not
made it a garden, and Art had left Nature’s handiwork alone. Over the
short grass Maxwell picked his way: there were boulders, there were
brambles, there was bog, there was morass—Maxwell rounded them all,
still keeping up the hill to the site Mr. Drewitt had chosen.
It was a winter’s morning, bright, clear, and bracing; but there was
nothing of elasticity in Maxwell’s step—nothing youthful about his
movements.
Every now and then he stopped and looked about him; not that the place
was unfamiliar, for the young man knew every rood of his uncle’s
property much better than his uncle did himself. He was scrutinising the
land professionally; he surveyed it as a jockey might a horse. He was
contrasting it with Headlands, and thinking he had made a mistake in
choosing a farm by the sea. He dug up the turf with the heel of his
shoe, and taking a piece of the earth in his hand examined it minutely.
“Curse him!” said Mr. Maxwell Drewitt as he threw the mould away, “this
soil is better than mine,” and he pursued his walk up the hill, thinking
while he walked, till he reached the place where Mr. Drewitt had thought
to build his house.
It was a lovely site. “A property in such a situation, within twenty
miles of London, would be worth a king’s ransom; the view alone would be
a fortune,” thought Maxwell, while he looked over lake and valley, over
gorge and mountain, and then he laughed, to see nothing but the
foundations built up, no sign of bricklayer or labourer at hand. There
were cartloads of granite on the ground; there were heaps of sand and
marks of where mortar had been mixed; there was the earth that they dug
out of the foundations wheeled away on one side, and in this state the
edifice was left.
“If he had given this to me instead of settling it on her; if he had
said, ‘Maxwell, you have been hardly done by, and it is not much I can
give you, but there is Analore, take it, for you and your heirs for
ever;’ if he had made it over by any binding legal document and helped
me to raise a thousand pounds upon it, or lent me a thousand himself, as
he might readily have done, I should not have cared to call the king my
cousin,” were the thoughts that chased one another through Maxwell
Drewitt’s mind. “I could have built a house of those boulders; I could
have drained this land; I could have grown potatoes here till the ground
was fit for oats; I could have made a fortune out of the place, and so
might he, if he were not what he is—a purposeless idiot, a thickheaded
ass.”
All the world over, the man who has got hold of a new idea abuses the
man who sticks to the old: in Ireland, as in England, the man of
business hates the man of pleasure; the worker detests the idler.
Mr. Drewitt might be a fool, an ass, an idiot; in some things, indeed, I
am afraid he was all three; but had Maxwell been born to a great estate,
he would scarcely have seen his uncle’s shortcomings so clearly; he
would not have looked so closely after soils himself.
Give a property to a man whose eyes have once been opened and he can see
clearly enough how to improve it; but till necessity has sharpened their
inventions, I think few people notice everything which is lying within
their ken. It was his uncle’s marriage that sharpened Maxwell Drewitt,
that enabled him to see exactly to what extent the rent-roll of Kincorth
might be increased.
“If it were clear to-morrow it would be worth fifteen thousand a year;
increase those mortgages, and I could make it worth forty thousand a
year.” This was Maxwell’s calculation as he sat on a great stone,
looking over the lake, and the valley, and the distant mountains. “I
must try to get some land in this neighbourhood, and so make the most of
my rights of sea-weed,” was the practical conclusion he arrived at ere
he left Analore.
“A man like this deserved to succeed,” I hear some say at this juncture;
and my answer is, “He did succeed—he did lay house to house and acre to
acre.” He gained all that he set out determined to achieve, and if he
did not secure the great prize, towards which all human efforts
aim—happiness—it was only because, thinking he should find it in wealth
and position, in lands, in smiling fields, in verdant pastures, he
strove to become the owner of these good things, and of these only.
Knowing what need Ireland has of such men, fresh from the sight of her
wretched poverty, her miserable management, her forlorn condition, I
could almost wish I had chosen a different hero, and taken a better man
to show what energy and perseverance may do for an individual as well as
for a people.
There are such in Connemara; there are little oases, formed by their
industry and talent, in the wilderness; there are gardens in the desert;
there are resting-places where the tired mind and the weary heart may
sit down and take refreshment, seeing what even one man has been able to
effect. Kincorth is one of these; but the mind that saw what Kincorth
might be made has long ceased to fret itself with schemes, to vex itself
over disappointment; while the man who owns Kincorth now is grave beyond
all mortal comprehension.
Let me go on with my story, friends, for I must not write of the end
yet.
All the plans of Mr. Drewitt’s life came to nothing, like the
dower-house at Analore. All the good he purposed died in the birth, all
the reforms he intended were never carried out.
The road to ruin was the one he voluntarily chose in youth, and he
always lacked strength of mind enough to turn back at any stage of his
journey and try to make for fortune.
For a time Mrs. Drewitt endeavoured to mend matters, urging him to look
his affairs boldly in the face, and not to allow them to get more and
more involved; but before she had been married two years she, too,
learned that speaking was useless, and contented herself with entreating
that he would not mortgage the house and demesne of Kincorth; that he
would endure any inconvenience, practise any economy, rather than
jeopardize _the_ inheritance of their son.
Mr. Drewitt promised, and then broke his promise, comforting himself
exceedingly the while by thinking that his wife need never know he had
done so.
Mortgaging in one class is very like pawning in another. Money is
wanted, and a few thousands can easily enough be raised. Money is
needed, and it is only a step to the three balls.
But in either case it is the repayment that proves difficult, and with
Mr. Drewitt repayment was simply impossible. Still on—on—along the road
to ruin he pursued his way, riding his hacks, keeping his hunters,
making guests welcome, running into debt recklessly as he travelled.
There was plenty of good company taking the same journey with the owner
of Kincorth.
His was no isolated case—no exception to a general rule—only perhaps
there were few who, while beggaring themselves, made so little show of
wealth as he—few who seemed to do so small an amount of good, either to
their families or to their friends, as this weak, amiable, purposeless,
loveable Archibald Drewitt, who put down his misfortunes to every cause
save the real one, who shifted the blame to any man’s shoulders rather
than carry it himself.
Much as she loved her husband, Mrs. Drewitt could not be blind to his
shortcomings; she could not avoid seeing that different management might
have produced different results.
She heard how well Maxwell was doing, and asked his uncle whether he
could not reclaim some portion of his own land likewise.
“If I had started unencumbered as he has done,” replied Mr. Drewitt,
with a sigh, “things might have been very different; but I have been in
debt from the first. I had a heavy establishment to keep up. I had those
children to maintain.”
And the owner of Kincorth spoke in a tone of such sincere self-pity that
Mrs. Drewitt had no courage left to remind him of the fact of his having
started with eight thousand a-year clear, spite of the mortgages. She
held her peace, and Mr. Drewitt still continued traversing the road that
for him could have but one end.
Three years passed away. Kathie was dead, Susan had eloped, Wilhelmina
rode as fast, as far, and as fearlessly as ever. There was another child
at Kincorth—a daughter named after its paternal grandmother, Geraldine.
There was a third infant coming, and Mrs. Drewitt’s face was beginning
already to tell tales of sorrow and anxiety. Poor lady! four years of
married life, of an irregular household, of a dissatisfied family, of
regret, of sickness, of struggle, had rubbed some of the beauty of youth
off her countenance, had altered and saddened her expression.
She had mourned for Kathleen, she had wept over the girl in the watches
of the night; she had kept her with her so long as human love and human
care could avail; and when at length Kathleen floated out from the river
to the sea, Mrs. Drewitt watched her as she drifted towards the great
ocean with eyes dimmed by crying, with a heart bowed down by grief.
Though she had her baby, though she did now own that great and powerful
king, still she missed the friendship and the companionship of the girl
who had taken to her so kindly.
She had never feared to talk to Kathie about her perplexities, her
difficulties, and now she knew that through the years to come she must
live entirely without sympathy, and without assistance.
If anything had been wanting to fill her cup of sorrow at that time, a
remark of Maxwell’s, which through the officiousness of an acquaintance
came to her ears, would have caused it to overflow.
He said what he knew to be false, that if Kathie had been properly
attended to when she first returned from school, she need not then be
lying in Eversbeg Abbey.
It was not true; and Mrs. Drewitt herself chanced to be aware that no
care or attention could have saved Kathie at any stage of her disease;
but the blow went home for all that.
She reproached herself; she thought she had not noticed Kathie’s malady
so soon as she might; she remembered that she had mistaken the flush on
her cheeks for strength—the brightness of her eyes for health.
She knew she had been taken up with herself and the baby; for a time she
remembered she felt so ill that exertion of any kind was a trouble; and
then she was so happy about the birth of her son, that she did not pay
much attention to any one save the young autocrat.
She had put the boy first (this was what she thought), and, being her
own, she ought to have seen to poor motherless Kathie, even before
thinking of her child. Heaven help her!—many a time that winter the baby
went a little to the wall, while the sick girl was nursed and tended.
If Maxwell had exhausted all his ingenuity in trying to make her
wretched, he could not have succeeded better.
She had been selfish, she had been absorbed, and it was wrong for her to
be either, though nothing could have saved Kathie, though no help of man
could have averted the decree of death.
She and Mr. Drewitt had both been foolish. She, gentle soul, could see
it all clearly enough when the idol had been taken down from its
pedestal, when its father ceased to consider its future prospects every
moment in the day, when she found life had its duties, though she was a
mother—when she discovered that even a baby may usurp too much
attention, and lead with its fat toes, with its plump legs, with its
soft, yielding body, with its clenched fists, with its meaningless face,
its unseasonable grief, and its maniacal merriment, the wisest parent
into temptation every day.
Poor Kathie! Mrs. Drewitt mourned for her as no one of her own flesh and
blood sorrowed.
Maxwell was busy with his schemes; Susan was full of her lover; Willy
thought the house dull, and lived as much out of it as possible; Mr.
Drewitt had his own anxieties and troubles, and besides, he said “he
always expected Kathie to follow her mother.”
Mrs. Drewitt alone, did not forget the girl, but thought of her when the
winter snows were on the ground, when the February rains deluged the
earth, when the spring flowers were blooming and the summer splendour
glorifying the hills. Nothing could be quieter than Eversbeg Abbey,
nothing more beautiful, more peaceful, and Kathie always longed for
peace and quietness.
It was best so—it was best.
The birds built their nests in the ivy that grew over the window beneath
which the vault of the Drewitts lay. They went twittering in and out,
chirping and singing all the day, from early morning till late at night.
The sheep came in over the broken wall, and browsed at will among the
graves, undisturbed by resident or stranger. The ferns grew among the
old walls, and the grass was long and rank in the hollows between the
tombs. Nettles tall and luxuriant flourished where the priest had once
performed mass, where the worshippers had once knelt before the altar.
There was no roof to the Abbey, save the sky. The once perfect arches of
doors and windows were falling to decay. The evening wind lightly
stirred the leaves of the ivy. In the stillness the ripple of the waves
upon the shore could be distinctly heard, and it was in this quiet
nook—quiet and neglected, desolate and beautiful—that Kathie, with her
hands folded on her breast, slept among her kindred, far beyond the
reach of sorrow or regret.
One trouble drives away the memory of another, and Susan’s elopement
proved even a greater trial to Mrs. Drewitt then Kathie’s death. She
knew where the one was, but did not know what had become of the other.
She only felt that the evil she was unable to avert had come at last.
She had spoken to Susan, to Maxwell, to Mr. Drewitt, and behold the end
was an empty room one morning, and a note from Miss Drewitt, stating
that as anything seemed preferable to remaining at Kincorth, she had
determined to cast her lot with the only man who loved her.
“What lot has she chosen, Maxwell, what lot?” asked poor Mrs. Drewitt,
as with blanched face she showed this note to her nephew, and entreated
him to trace his sister and bring her back.
“Would she stay, do you think?” asked Maxwell. “Could you or I, or
anybody living, keep Susan here if she made up her mind to go away? But
I will follow them to Dublin. I will see whether they are married, and
if not, he shall marry her.”
But the fugitives were gone to England, and at Liverpool Maxwell lost
all traces of them. He could not devote his life to running after his
sister. He had not the time, he had not the money, he had not the
inclination.
“As Susan had sown she must reap,” he remarked to Mrs. Drewitt, and he
went back to his farm by the shore.
What more could be done for Susan was done by Mrs. Drewitt, who wrote to
her brother-in-law, Sir Everard Ebbutt, begging him to ascertain Captain
Ellenham’s antecedents, and to give her tidings of her niece, if
possible. Further, she asked him not to mention the matter to his wife.
Sir Everard lost no time in replying to this letter. To begin with, he
stated that Captain Ellenham could not have married Miss Drewitt,
because he had at that moment a wife and three children living in
London. Further, Captain Ellenham’s regiment having been ordered abroad,
it was more than probable Susan had gone abroad with him. Should he
obtain any further information he would let her know.
“It is a blessing she has gone abroad. I hope she will die there!” was
Maxwell’s only remark when Mrs. Drewitt communicated these particulars
to him. “And if ever I come across that fellow, I will shoot him.
Meantime it will be as well to say to every one that they are married.”
Having summed up the duty of the family in which explicit sentence,
Maxwell dropped the subject, and never, of his own free will, mentioned
his sister afterwards.
He was building a house at the time on the piece of barren land that had
come to him from his grandfather, and he paid particular attention to
the masons during the whole of the summer following Kathie’s death.
“A bare staring place,” Mr. Drewitt told his wife, “that it made him
feel cold even to look at. What a pity for him not to have chosen a
better site! It is a good house too;” and then he asked Maxwell why he
had not selected some finer position, somewhere on the side of a hill,
and where there was more of a view.
“Beggars cannot afford to be choosers,” answered the younger man;
“besides, wait a while, sir, and you will not call my choice so bad a
one. Further, remember the land I am laying money out on now is _my
own_, and that I am not in a position to both build and buy.”
“But money can always be raised, you know,” suggested Mr. Drewitt.
“Can it?” was the reply. “That is not my opinion, and I hope you will
never find reason to alter yours.”
This little rap ended the conversation. It is not easy to talk with a
man who has always the last word and the best word; and besides, it
suddenly occurred to Mr. Drewitt that the house at Analore was not two
feet above the ground, and that perhaps Maxwell might inquire why he did
not raise money to finish it.
“He must be excessively clever, I think,” sighed Mrs. Drewitt, when she
heard in the following spring how Maxwell was buying young trees from
Waller of Eversbeg, and planting them round his new abode.
“They won’t live—they can’t live; it is impossible,” said Mr. Drewitt,
who, although he did not exactly grudge Maxwell his success, still
thought that such innovations ought not to be encouraged by Providence.
“They cannot live; consider the sea-breeze—the exposed situation.”
And Mrs. Drewitt, of course, was of her husband’s opinion. Maxwell had
made a mistake at last; the trees could do no good. But the trees throve
for all that. Maxwell had considered the matter before ever Mr. Drewitt
thought of it. He had a south aspect; he was well sheltered from the
north and east; he knew that the woods surrounding Eversbeg must have
been planted by some one, and he thought he would risk something at any
rate, and make the experiment.
There is many a lovely place across the water, many a sweet nook in the
Green Isle, but I doubt whether in its way—which, of course, is not a
grand way, but only very quiet and enchanting—the tourist could chance
to see a prettier spot than “Headlands” at this day.
If you row across the bay from the little fishing village of Eversbeg,
you see the house built of granite lying among the trees. The lawn
slopes quite down to the edge of the shore, while the woods, spreading
out like a semicircle, enclose this piece of green, which is soft as
velvet. Down almost to high-water mark the plantations extend, and when
the tide is in the willow, and the birch, and the spruce-fir droop their
branches over the tide. See it on a fine day, when the bay resembles an
opal; when the new-mown grass appears in the distance to be an emerald
set in a darker band of green; when the rugged headland shows dark and
steep against the calm unruffled ocean; when there is hardly a ripple on
the sea, when there is scarcely the lightest breeze stirring among the
treetops; when the little fishing village nestling on the side of
Eversbeg Point looks white and picturesque in the bright sunlight; when
the mountains look higher and nearer than usual, and rear their great
heads towards the sky; when the ruins of Eversbeg Abbey appear close at
hand; when the fresh-shorn sheep are climbing the hill-sides; when no
sound breaks the stillness save the plash of the oars as the rowers pull
across the bay, and the drip drip of the water from the blades, as they
hold them above the sea and float gently towards the shore;—see it thus,
I say, and you can well fancy you have beheld fairyland. It is a place
you cannot bear to leave—that you turn back and look at with an
indescribable emotion—that you wave your adieu to with the tears filling
your eyes, though you could not give a reason why or wherefore.
Maxwell Drewitt found it a wilderness—this is the paradise he left it.
Think of that as you lean over the stern, and the rowers bear you away
from the garden of Eden, and think, also, if you had such a nest on
earth you might find it hard to leave the world, and that, perhaps, it
is best for you to own nothing so perfect, so exquisite of its kind.
Headlands is too beautiful—that is all any person can say. It seems too
charming to be real; and when you have left Eversbeg behind you, and are
travelling away towards Oughterard through the valley of desolation,
through the land of a thousand Dead Sea lakes, you come gradually to
believe that “Headlands” was a dream—that such a place never
existed—that the lawn does not slope down to the glassy sea—that the
trees do not overhang the water—that Maxwell Drewitt never planted the
ground at all, but that it remains barren and sterile to this very day.
Nevertheless that modern garden of Eden lies in Connemara, on the shores
of the wide Atlantic; within sight of its tremendous billows, of its
restless waves. Eversbeg Bay is much more open than Duranmore, which
almost resembles a lake. On the north side of Duranmore stands Kincorth,
well sheltered from all breezes save the south, high up on the hill, the
house conspicuous for miles; on the north side of Eversbeg, lying low by
the shore, is the modest mansion Maxwell reared for himself in the days
when he was a poor and a struggling man.
The trees grew and spread out their branches, the land improved and
began to pay him well.
While difficulties increased at Kincorth, everything grew smoother and
easier at Headlands; and yet one difficulty had arisen in Maxwell
Drewitt’s path.
Colonel Vervensoe was dead; and Lady Emmeline, by consequence, was left
a widow.
It took Maxwell a few days to realize the difference that this fact
might make in his position; and then he drew back his breath and paused,
asking himself, “What next?”
CHAPTER XIV.
Next.
If the fact of Lady Emmeline being Colonel Vervensoe’s wife, and
unattainable, had not enhanced her charms in Maxwell Drewitt’s eyes, the
fact of her being Colonel Vervensoe’s widow, and available, rendered her
less desirable still.
There had been a time, indeed, as previously mentioned, when the young
man hesitated about running away with her, and settled not to do so; but
then his future looked dark in the extreme—now it was bright and
hopeful.
If only Colonel Vervensoe had remained at Cragantlet, as any other
Christian would, instead of dying at such an unlucky crisis!
“It seems as if he had almost done it to spite me,” muttered Maxwell;
and the young man cursed his neighbour for having departed this life at
all.
In former days Lady Emmeline’s loan to Maxwell had smoothed matters for
him; but four years after that loan complicated his difficulties, and
made him walk round and round Eversbeg Head, and round Eversbeg Bay,
asking himself as he kicked the stones before him, What next—what next?
The financial crisis which troubled Maxwell was this:—
Suppose he did not marry Lady Emmeline—her ladyship would be certain to
ask for repayment. He could not mortgage to repay, because his land was
mortgaged to its full value already. Suppose he offered to marry her,
and that they kept the engagement secret, and that he never fulfilled
his promise?
Before he was well out of his difficulties, somebody else would marry
Lady Emmeline—she was sure to leave Connemara, because the next heir
would require possession of Cragantlet; and if she went to Dublin or
London, how long was it probable she would remain a widow? Suppose he
did marry her—he would get fortune and position, but then he would also
get a wife.
“That is the devil of it!” said Maxwell Drewitt, with that charming
frankness which characterized all his mental conversations. “That is the
devil of it!” and he hesitated and waited on, while Lady Emmeline grew
kinder and kinder; and, free at last to follow the bent of her
inclination, absolutely forced money on the man who could have sworn at
her for ever having lent him any.
He had his own ideal of a wife, and Lady Emmeline did not come up to it.
He had an ideal the reality of which was not unlike Jenny Bourke, if
Jenny Bourke had been rich, and well-born, and accomplished.
It is not fair to contrast twenty and forty-four—the bloom of youth and
the bloom of rouge—the charms of purity and innocence and the graces of
fashion and affectation; but, on the other hand, poverty can bear no
comparison with wealth, low birth with long pedigree.
He could not marry Jenny. Were he as rich as Crœsus, as great a man as
the Duke of Leinster, Maxwell felt it would be impossible for him to
marry Ryan’s sister and remain in Connemara.
There are some things which to some men are impossible, and a low match
was one of these to Maxwell Drewitt. No love, no beauty, no truth, no
devotion could reconcile him to that.
Though he had lived in a cabin, though he would not have minded working
like a common labourer to achieve an object, still Maxwell Drewitt was
as proud as Lucifer; and for the blood of his wife, of the mother of his
children, not to be of the regulation colour and quality, was a thing
terrible to contemplate.
He could not marry Jenny Bourke—poor Jenny! And Maxwell Drewitt’s dark
eyes grew darker as he thought of the girl who loved him, who was
staying single for his sake, who managed, spite of all her brother’s
precautions, sometimes to see him; who had got pale, poor child! pale
and thin, because of that hope deferred which maketh the heart sick.
He could not marry Jenny, but he could marry Lady Emmeline; and he could
have her Connemara property, which lay among the mountains beyond
Cragantlet, and her money to improve his own properties.
He could buy, he could drain, he could till; in imagination he saw corn
waving where the sheep now browsed. He could be wealthy and independent;
he could soon be almost as great a man as the Earl of Popingham. He
could pay out everybody who had ever been insolent to him. He could take
up the mortgages on his uncle’s estates; he could make Headlands the
wonder of Galway, the admiration of strangers, a place to be proud of
himself. He could do all this if he married Lady Emmeline; but then,
when he had done all, he should not be able to get rid of her: that was
the devil of it, that was where the shoe pinched.
“But then,” reflected Maxwell, “hang it! a man cannot have everything in
life; and if he gets the best thing he must be content. Isn’t it better
to satisfy one’s ambition than one’s love? If we fulfil our ambition,
the gratification remains; if we gratify our love, the pleasure is
transient. Anyhow, I am not called upon to make a choice, because,
though I do love Jenny, I still cannot marry her—could not if there were
no Lady Emmeline in existence. Hang marriage! it is like going through
life with a halter round one’s neck. It is the most terrible ‘must’ in
existence, because we seem to have some choice in it, and have, as a
rule, nobody but ourselves to blame if it turn out ill. All experience
is against it—all proverbs are against it. ‘Next after single a good
wife’s best;’ but the single is better than the good wife. ‘Better marry
late or never.’ I don’t think that is true. I fancy it must be better to
marry young or never. I wish I had not to decide; and yet, after all,
many a man would consider himself a deuced lucky fellow to be standing
in my shoes. Success has spoiled me. I would have married her four years
ago and welcome. Oh! Jenny, I wish I had never seen you.” And Maxwell
Drewitt crossed his arms on the table, and leaning his head on them,
thought this problem out—this wonderful problem of not loving a woman
well enough to marry her, and yet of loving her so much that it made the
idea of marrying another hateful to him.
He could not make up his mind; he grew restless, he became soured; he
would ride halfway to Cragantlet, and then turn back again. He was so
young to sell himself for money; but yet such a chance might never come
in his way again. Lady Emmeline had been thought a catch for Colonel
Vervensoe. What would she be therefore for Maxwell Drewitt? It was
folly, it was nonsense, it was midsummer madness; and the young man
began to visit regularly at Cragantlet, which the courtesy of the next
heir had left at Lady Emmeline’s disposal for twelve months till she
should form her future plans. Mr. Maxwell Drewitt had his own opinion
about this next heir—a distant relative of the late proprietor—which was
not favourable. He thought he wanted to marry Lady Emmeline himself, and
perhaps so did the widow, for after a time she began playing off Dolf
Vervensoe against Max Drewitt. Dolf often came down to see to the
management of the estates, and people soon commenced talking (they talk
and chatter in Connemara the same as in any country village), and saying
that Lady Emmeline would not have to leave Cragantlet at all except to
be married.
“She can go to Dublin and buy her trousseau, and get it all over there,”
laughed Mrs. Munks, a little bitterly, for Cragantlet was a fine
property, and the Honourable Mrs. Munks had daughters.
“But surely,” suggested Mrs. Drewitt, “she would not marry so soon after
her husband’s death?”
“He has been dead a year nearly,” was the reply, “and I dare say Mr.
Vervensoe would let her keep Cragantlet another for the sake of her
fortune; besides, is there any person on earth who could say for certain
what Lady Emmeline would or would not do? Louisa, my dear,” went on Mrs.
Munks, turning to her second daughter, “do you remember that funny
Scotch song Miss Macpherson so amused us with the other evening? Talking
of Lady Emmeline puts me in mind of it. Something about a widow; don’t
you recollect?”
“Oh, I know,” exclaimed Miss Munks, holding up her riding-habit while
she walked across the room, for as usual the mother and daughter had
galloped over to Kincorth; “at least, I know the song you mean. I think
I can repeat the last two verses, though of course it would be
impossible for me to say the words anything like Miss Macpherson.”
“Good gracious! Miss Macpherson! You should hear her talk, Mrs.
Drewitt,” exclaimed Mrs. Munks, who spoke with a fine brogue fresh as
the day it was imported from the county of Cork.
Mrs. Drewitt vaguely wondered whether Miss Macpherson’s Scotch accent
_could_ be any worse than Mrs. Munks’ Irish, while Miss Louisa began:
“‘Tam withered like a sickly flower that frae its stalk does fa’,
And in a twelvemonth after that puir Pate was ta’en awa’;
And as I laid him in his kist and closed his glazèd e’e,
I wonder’t if the yirth contained a lanelier thing than me.
“‘Noo I’m a waefu’ widow left, a’ nicht I sich and grane,
And aften in my musin’ moods when sitting here my lane,
There’s ae thing I’ll confess to you, ‘bout whilk I’m sair perplext,
I aften wonder, Janet, noo, whose lassie I’ll be next.’”
“For my part,” concluded Miss Louisa, “I wonder that while there are
more women than men in the world, widows are allowed to marry at all—I
do indeed.”
“There was a time when I thought if Colonel Vervensoe died, another
person would try for Lady Emmeline, and try successfully; but it appears
I was mistaken,” said Mrs. Munks.
“Who was that other person?” asked Mrs. Drewitt, being naturally curious
on the subject, for where there are few neighbours, even the quietest
woman cannot help being interested in their affairs.
“My dear, you are far too sly,” answered Mrs. Munks. “You know as well
as I do;” and when Mrs. Drewitt declared and protested that she did not
know, that she had not the faintest idea of whom her visitor was
speaking, Mrs. Munks only laughed the more, and declared it would be
better for her not to enlighten such pristine innocence.
“Lady Emmeline never did flirt with any one you remember, and
consequently there can be no person whom her marrying Mr. Adolphus
Vervensoe will disappoint,” went on Lady Emmeline’s friend. “Colonel
Vervensoe never did forbid any gentleman the house—never cut any
acquaintance of yours when he met him.”
“You surely do not mean Maxwell!” exclaimed Mrs. Drewitt. “Why he is
young enough to be her son.”
“Exactly so; and he is not rich either; while Mr. Vervensoe—is forty,
though he has Cragantlet. Still I fancy your nephew will be
disappointed. We have met him often of late riding in that direction.
Have not we, Louisa?”
“Yes, mamma,” answered Louisa, who would have said “yes,” even if her
mamma had stated a falsehood. “But if you remember he told us he was
looking after some land that was for sale.”
“A man must say something,” remarked Mrs. Munks. “In my opinion, Lady
Emmeline will do best to marry Mr. Vervensoe.”
“I think so decidedly,” said Mrs. Drewitt, “if she marry at all. But
from what Lady Emmeline dropped the other day about her future plans I
should think she meant to remain a widow.”
“Time will show,” was Mrs. Munks’ reply. And time did show, for Maxwell
Drewitt proposed that very same evening, was accepted by Lady Emmeline,
and rode home to Headlands an engaged man.
The die was cast; the game played out. He had won a wife: he had made
his fortune.
In after days it was one of Maxwell Drewitt’s favourite remarks that “a
man may get anything he wants in life if he be only willing to pay high
enough for it.”
Was he thinking then of the price he had paid for his wealth, of the
exchange he had made for position? Who can tell? Who ever knew for
certain what pleased or troubled Maxwell Drewitt, until that great
sorrow came which clouded with darkness the evening of his life?
One fact was sure, however, viz., that when the young man finally chose
to sell himself for money, to follow ambition and eschew love, he flung
his last chance of making a better thing of existence away for ever. But
he had set out to conquer fortune, and he gained the day. He had decided
that such a prize as Lady Emmeline might never cross his path again, and
he determined to secure it while within his reach. He would continue to
live at Headlands, and he would beautify and improve his property. He
would farm Lady Emmeline’s estate, and add acre to acre, and thousand to
thousand, till, when Kincorth did come to him, as come it should,
Drewitt would be a name worth talking about.
Better than ever the Martins were known, the Drewitts should be
remembered. They had not sprung from any trooper of the merciless
“Protector;” they had not kept their estates by currying favour with any
king. The English papers should tell how a man—poor, disinherited,
well-born—worked his way back to fortune, unassisted by his family,
unhelped by patronage. Tourists would come and wonder to see, in the
midst of that wild region, smiling fields and waving woods, and neat
cottages and blooming gardens.
They would go back and speak of what one individual had effected. He
should have to give evidence on parliamentary committees: when he grew
very, very rich, perhaps he would go up to Parliament himself. He could
reclaim mile after mile of barren country. He would drain and cultivate
the bogs; he would do away with the loose stone walls which divided the
land when any division was attempted into about half-acre plots; he
would plant trees up the mountains—there was no reason why trees should
not grow among those fastnesses that he could understand; he would
change the aspect of Connemara. Did he think of possessing the whole of
it? Had he any vision about all Galway one day having but one landlord,
and that landlord’s name being Drewitt?
He reduced the 1,566,354 acres Galway contains into hundreds, and after
deducting a certain portion for lake and mountain, calculated how long
it would take to bring them under cultivation. He thought how useful
those lakes would be for watering cattle, for purposes of irrigation; he
ran over the best sites for towns and villages; he saw, in fancy, ships
putting into each secure harbour; he saw the mines worked, the quarries
filled with well-paid labourers, the country prosperous, the people
warmly clad and sufficiently fed. He was doubtful whether Mayo ought not
to figure in his programme too. As he rode out of Cragantlet gates he
gave the rein to his imagination, and bid it conjure up before him fame,
wealth, success. He held the bridle loosely in his hand, letting it lie
on his horse’s neck, while he reflected on what he had just done, and on
what fruit that act might bring forth for him.
“Gold begets gold,” they say; that was what Maxwell hoped it might.
“Money makes money” is oftentimes a great truth. Maxwell trusted it
would prove a great truth in his case.
The kingdoms of this world and the glory thereof seemed to spread out
before Maxwell’s mind when he thought of what he had achieved on little,
when he considered what he might effect with much.
The kingdoms of this world were around him—there was land to be
cultivated—there were the resources of nature to be developed—there were
the hidden riches of the country to be brought to light. There was fuel
to be had for the cutting—fish for the catching—cattle for the
rearing—corn for the growing—wealth for the hand of industry to gather
in. There were barren wastes to clothe with verdure—there were hills to
plant with trees—there was granite to build houses—there was a land to
be peopled—there was a people to elevate and civilize.
It was all very fine; nay, it was more, it was glorious; and yet, as the
moon sailed out from behind a bank of watery clouds and shone over the
country this man was traversing, a feeling of loneliness, of desolation,
of misery came upon him which he could neither explain nor analyze.
There were the tremendous mountains, there the bare, solitary-looking
lakes; far as his eye could see across the valley, nothing met his view
but water, and stone, and bog: there were hills lying dark, and silent,
and sullen in the distance. Above his head was a cloudy sky, where the
moon kept wandering in and out like a troubled spirit. Now his way was
dark, now light: now the moon shone clear on the lake, and the road, and
the mountains, and then, again, she played fantastic tricks with the
stunted bushes—with the huge boulders. She would lay a white trap along
the highway and up the mountain-side, at which Maxwell’s horse would shy
frightened; she would dance on the ripples of the waters; she would
thrust her full face out of window, as it seemed, and stare down at the
earth, and then she would plunge behind the fringed curtains of the
night, and be invisible for a time again, after which she would come
shyly forth and gaze upon the man who rode slowly and alone through that
desolate portion of God’s fair earth.
Is it not necessary for a person to be very sensitive or very poetical
for a scene like this to produce a profound impression upon him. An
individual who has not an amazingly warm heart can yet feel something
stir within him when he looks upon a fine picture; and those who have
lived in the country all their lives are as susceptible to the
influences of nature’s varying moods as though her every change was
fresh to their comprehension.
All his life Maxwell Drewitt had loved scenery as he loved his country.
All his life the sun, and the wind, and the snow, and the frost, and the
sea, and the mountains had talked to him as they oftentimes fail to
speak to a better man; and now, as the moon shone with a fitful
brightness over the landscape, as her cold light fell on the breast of
the lonely waters, as the clouds rolled up and shrouded the mountains in
darkness, as the eternal hills returned his eager glance with a hard
unsympathising gaze, as they looked with stony eyes down upon him as
they had looked on others who had gone under their shadow sighing or
singing, laughing or weeping—as he paused and listened to the dash and
flow of the waters, as he heard the whistle of the plover and the cry of
the curlew, some voice through the still night spoke as clearly and
distinctly to Maxwell Drewitt’s soul as the “Preacher,” who tried all
things, and pronounced them vanity of vanities, tells the same tale to
us.
Most probably Maxwell Drewitt had never read Ecclesiastes. If he had, he
would certainly not have recollected any portion of it; and yet it was
the same story as that told so many thousand years ago by the great king
of Israel, which the night, and the clouds, and the moonlight, and the
mountains were whispering prophetically in his ear—
“I made me great works; I builded me houses; I planted me vineyards: I
gathered me also silver and gold, and whatsoever mine eyes desired I
kept not from them, I withheld not my heart from any joy.
“Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and _behold
all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the
sun. Yea, I hated all my labour which I had taken under the sun: because
I should leave it unto the man that shall be after me._”
“It is a desolate place,” thought Maxwell. “It gives a man the blues!”
and he struck his heel against his horse’s flank, and the animal sprang
forward along the hard road, and the flints flashed fire as the iron
hoofs dashed over them. He passed by lonely lakes, round the base of
steep rocks, over bridges beneath which the mountain streams brawled
noisily among the stones. He passed by silent cabins, by unroofed
cottages, by deserted hearthstones gleaming white and bare in the
moonlight; by a lonely chapel, by a forsaken-looking graveyard, where
the tombs were covered with moss, where the crosses were black with
weather, wind, and age.
On, on, he rode, and as he rode he sung, either to encourage his horse
or to reassure himself, that cheerful ballad which recounts the loves of
King Connor and the fair Kathleen, and the sad fate of the latter:—
“‘The castle portal stood grimly wide,
None welcomed the king from that weary ride,
For dead, in the light of the dawning day,
The pale sweet form of the welcomer lay
Who had yearned for his voice while dying.’
“While dying!” hummed Maxwell, and the words brought him within sight of
Eversbeg.
There was the sea, the fair, calm open sea, with the moonlight sleeping
in it as peacefully as if he had not seen the same light wandering about
the hills and through the valleys he had just left. There was Eversbeg
Abbey, where poor Kathie had been lying dead this many a day. There was
Eversbeg Head, round which Mrs. Drewitt had walked when she came to
speak to him about Susan and Kathie and Lady Vervensoe.
There was the cabin where he had received her, where they had sat beside
the turf-fire talking; there were the woods of Kincorth high up on the
other side of Duranmore Bay, and there close down by the bay was his own
place, which he meant to convert into the garden of Erin. Was he
sorrowful when he came in sight of all these things? My reader, no! the
dark hour had passed away, and Maxwell Drewitt was a man of the world,
in the world, loving the world once more.
He was glad to have done with uncertainty, to have settled his future
past recall, to feel no more hesitation, to have laid down a course to
which he meant to adhere.
He was glad; he had done well: he should do better. It was a good match.
He knew half the county would say what a capital thing he had done for
himself. He knew many a man would gnash his teeth with rage when he
heard of Drewitt having carried off the prize.
Altogether, Mr. Maxwell Drewitt was a contented man; and yet, as he came
along the road that led down towards the bay, he stopped his horse for a
moment, and strained his eyes away to a little cottage gleaming white
and ghostly in the moonlight.
It was a deserted cottage now, and he had made it so. There was no Jenny
waiting for him by the stream or up the ravine. She had long been living
with her brother in Duranmore, and many suitors had sought her hand in
vain.
“She will marry now,” was the idea that passed through Maxwell’s mind;
and then, with a pang of remorse, he added, “Poor Jenny!”
CHAPTER XV.
Man and Beast.
There is a great pathos about the life of a common man, about the story
of any one whose wishes are moderate, whose pleasures are limited, whose
hopes are small, whose way through existence is along the river instead
of across the sea, adown the valley rather than over the mountains; and
for this reason that little deserted cottage close by Duranmore Bay,
looking white and ghostly in the moonlight, was as pitiful an object as
Maxwell Drewitt’s eyes could have rested on.
No person knew better how Ryan had loved that cottage; how he had
delighted in the look out over the bay, in the view up the ravine. He
had seen him pacing beside the stream and superintending the mowing of
his little crop of hay. He remembered the various articles of additional
furniture with which Ryan had adorned the rooms in honour of Jenny’s
arrival; how he had planted creepers by the porch, and nailed
trellis-work together for the honeysuckle and the clematis to clamber
over; how he had laid out his little garden sloping towards the south,
and filled it with London-pride and lavender, with red daisies and
hepaticas, with cabbage roses and sweet Williams, with daffodils, and
pinks, and southernwood, and tulips, and gentianallas, and all the
common flowers which are so beautiful in their homely simplicity and
sweetness.
As a man plants and sows and beautifies for his wife that is to be, so
Ryan, knowing that dream could return no more, that love could never
come back again with its freshness, planted and sowed and beautified for
the young sister who was going to make his house a home for him at last.
All this Maxwell Drewitt remembered. He recollected also what a
different man Ryan seemed after his sister’s return; how much more
comfortable he appeared to be; how he used to hurry home from Duranmore
to his little cottage; how busy he was wont to make himself with spade,
and rake, and hoe.
The simple pleasures of a common life came back to Maxwell’s memory
separately and singly with the power of a curse. He had driven Ryan away
from Inchnagawn; it was he who had laid the garden waste; he who had
broken down the trellis-work and left the cottage desolate.
As regarded the horsewhipping, he and Ryan had long been even; for
Maxwell had worked on and till he got Waller’s agency withdrawn from
Ryan and given to a _protégé_ of Mr. Samuel Turner.
He had made no secret of this to the lawyer, for he knew for his
sister’s sake Mr. Ryan would make no complaint of unfairness to Mr.
Waller.
“You’ll spy again, Ryan, will you?” he asked.
“Yes, and thrash you again if I catch you meddling with her,” was the
spirited reply.
At which answer Maxwell laughed.
“I owe you a good turn for your interference, though I have done you a
bad one for meddling in my affairs. But for you, I really think I should
have married Miss Bourke.”
“I am greatly obliged for the intended condescension,” said Ryan.
“You would have been more obliged to me for the actual condescension, I
suppose?” suggested Maxwell.
“I told you once I would rather put Jenny in her coffin than give her to
you,” answered the other.
“Nonsense,” retorted young Drewitt; “you only said that because you
thought I never would ask her honourably.”
“Repeat that sentence—I wish you would repeat it,” said Ryan, facing
round on his tormentor, who, however, declined to oblige him.
“You understood my meaning well enough. I need not go over the ground
again. You are wrong. There was a time when I loved your sister very
much; when—when I might have made a lady of her. But you cured me of my
folly; and I vowed then to be revenged. I am revenged. Let bygones be
bygones.”
The pair had never ceased to be on speaking terms. Maxwell was too wise
and Ryan too careful to permit the little world of Duranmore to imagine
there was any open rupture between them.
They nodded in the street, they shook hands when they met in a room;
only Ryan did not go to Headlands, and Maxwell never entered Ryan’s
office in Duranmore. Ryan never ceased keeping a watchful eye on Jenny,
and Maxwell carried his pebble in his pocket, and turned it every now
and then, biding his time.
He had sworn to be revenged, and he was revenged. Did that fact comfort
him now, as he looked down on Inchnagawn, lying white and silent in the
moonlight?
This man had owned no wide acres, no fine park, no great house. He had
but a little patch of land, and behold he was cast out of it! He had
been doing very well, and all at once the ground was cut from below his
feet. Every man over whom Maxwell had any influence left him and went to
the opposition lawyer. Poor Ryan’s conduct had not in all cases been
above fear and above reproach; and Maxwell, having once been his
confidant, fought and killed him with his own weapons.
He had almost to commence again, and there were times when he thought of
leaving Duranmore altogether, and seeking his fortune elsewhere.
That was what Maxwell wanted to make him do. He wished to see the back
of Mr. Timothy Ryan, and of his sister also.
It was the old story of the poor man and his ewe lamb over again. Ryan
had not much, but what he had Maxwell took from him. Maxwell was gaining
great possessions; but, like Ahab, he longed for the vineyard of Naboth
the Jezreelite as well.
Besides, Ryan knew too much of him and of his affairs, and he desired to
be rid of his former friend. When you have made all the use you can of a
weapon, it is as well to break it, so that the steel may not prove
dangerous in other hands. That was what Maxwell wanted to do. He wished
to get Ryan out of his way, and he had not stood over-nice about
compassing his end.
Was it pleasant for him to remember these things as he rode slowly
homeward under the moonlight? Was there nothing pathetic even to him in
Ryan’s worn face, in Jenny’s pale cheeks?
“If she will marry Connor,” was the conclusion Mr. Maxwell Drewitt
arrived at that night, “I will try to push him on; but I cannot do
anything for her brother. He must leave Duranmore.”
And Jenny at that very moment was lying awake in the moonlight,
thinking, with the tears in her eyes, of him; whilst Ryan was sitting in
his office, facing his affairs and cogitating concerning ways and means.
Maxwell could have made them both happy, had he chosen; but he elected
not to make them happy, and fell asleep contented.
There had been many minor changes in Duranmore during the four years I
have spoken of. There was an opposition doctor in the town, and another
attorney. A queer old bachelor had taken up his quarters, for a
permanency apparently, at the “Marsden Arms.” Mr. Murphy was gone to
London, from which place he sent occasionally notes of rare and
exquisite cases to Dr. Sheen, who, not having the same enthusiasm for
his profession, thought that the “good old way” seemed best after all.
“I cannot help fancying,” he wrote back on one occasion to his late
assistant, “that the operation you mention (laryngotomy) must have been
excruciatingly painful to the patient.”
“No doubt it was,” replied Mr. Murphy, in dudgeon; “but, good God, sir,
consider how interesting!”
“That is all very true,” remarked Dr. Sheen to Mr. Murphy’s successor,
“but I never was fond of diseases out of the common;” which was all the
more fortunate for Dr. Sheen, as he did not meet with many singular
cases amongst his patients, and could not have cured them if he had.
The most out-of-the-way ailment he ever had to puzzle over was that of
an old lady named Connor, who lived with her son in the cottage near
Eversbeg Head (on the Duranmore side), which, at the time Mrs. Drewitt
first beheld the Atlantic, was tenanted by a retired sea captain.
Mrs. Connor’s complaint was gastric carcinoma—a disease which was, in
those days, to the faculty precisely what an unclassified animal or a
strange fish proves to the naturalist. Mr. Murphy would have been
enchanted with the case, but not so Doctor Sheen.
To Mrs. Connor herself it seemed as terrible an affliction as could have
been laid upon her. She found nothing interesting or entertaining in the
matter. It was dying by inches. It was sinking in the ocean with help
all around. It was wasting off the face of the earth under the influence
of a disease more depressing than consumption, and equally hopeless—a
disease of which science could give no account—for which skill could
prescribe no remedy.
There were no alternations in this ailment—no days of hope, no times of
relief. It was like hiring a hearse, and driving by slow stages to the
grave. It was not life; it was not death; but it was dying, day after
day, week after week, month after month, with starvation for the end.
Starvation, though she had plenty of nourishment, and was able to eat. A
disease as strange and inexplicable to the spectator as perplexing to a
doctor; a disease for which there was no cure but death, no palliation
but patience; in which there was no stay, no pause—which picked the
flesh off her bones, and pinched her cheeks, and exhausted her strength,
and tried her temper—which it was hard to bear alone in that solitary
cottage by the sea-shore.
Her son could not stay with her all the day. He had to be away from
early in the morning till six o’clock in the evening, at the marble
quarries, where he was a kind of overseer, and both mother and son
consequently felt very grateful when Jenny Bourke took her needlework in
her hand, and went to pass a few hours at Duranmore Cottage.
She was quiet and sad enough in these days, it is true; but she seemed
none the less sweet and loveable for that. She would sing her plaintive
songs, and talk to the old lady about her ailments, and lead her out in
the sunshine round by Eversbeg Head, or up towards the mountains where
the marble quarries were; and poor Mrs. Connor took kindly to the girl,
and prayed her when she was gone to try and love Dennis, and become in
due time his wife.
But Jenny only shook her head.
It was a few days after Maxwell’s night ride home from Cragantlet that
Jenny and Mrs. Connor climbed to the top of Eversbeg Head—no great
ascent after all—and sat them down there.
The summer’s sun was shining over the scene—over the wide Atlantic, over
Duranmore and Eversbeg Bays, over the old Abbey, and over the Headlands,
towards which Jenny’s eyes turned longingly.
She had not seen Maxwell for some time, and she loved him. How much?
More than Dennis Connor loved her; more than Jenny could ever love any
one again.
The two women sat side by side, each busy with her own thoughts. Mrs.
Connor was gazing over the fair earth, upon which she should so soon
have to close her eyes. Jenny was looking at Maxwell’s home and wishing
she could see him.
Jenny was a good little soul, and she had a kind heart beating in her
breast; and she was very sorry for Mrs. Connor, and very glad to help
her to while away the time; but, yet, Jenny was not quite disinterested.
Duranmore Cottage was not a great distance from Headlands, and she could
sometimes catch a glimpse of Maxwell.
She caught a glimpse of him on the day in question when he came with a
new horse Lady Emmeline had sent him along the avenue from his house.
The drive was rough and the horse intractable. So Maxwell led him up to
the main road, accompanied on his way so far by a couple of his men, who
were curious to see the animal in harness.
The creature had been used to the saddle, and rebelled against the
indignity of a vehicle. He had been used likewise to jib, but a pair of
spurs prevented much harm coming of that habit, so long as he had a
rider on his back. With a conveyance behind him, however, the case was
different; and the moment Maxwell jumped into his tax-cart and touched
the animal with his whip the brute began to back.
All this Jenny, from her seat among the grass and the heather, was able
to see, and she could see also Maxwell shouting and gesticulating,
although she could not hear what he said.
“Take his head, Lynch, and lead him on a bit,” Mr. Drewitt ordered.
But leading him on proved a matter beyond Lynch’s capability, for which
reason Maxwell began flogging the creature unmercifully.
A jibbing horse being one of those circumstances which tries a man’s
temper too much, is, I think, one of those struggles which a woman ought
never to see; but Jenny, being on the height above the Headlands, could
not help seeing, and neither could Mrs. Connor, for that matter.
“What a wretch—what a brute!” exclaimed the old lady indignantly.
“If the horse won’t go on, what is he to do?” demanded Jenny, ready to
do battle for Maxwell, though she could have run down the hill and
prayed him to cease beating the creature for her sake.
For all the good flogging did, Maxwell might as well have flogged one of
the granite pillars against which Lady Emmeline’s present had backed the
tax-cart, and after he had lashed the thong off his whip the young man
sprang with a curse to the ground, and, taking the reins short in his
hand, tugged and tore at the horse’s mouth like a madman. And the more
he tore the bit the higher the brute lifted his head, while he lowered
his hind quarters and backed as well as he was able.
It was a trial of brute strength now. There was no skill, no
horsemanship, no science in the matter; it was whose will should be
fiercest, whose power greatest.
As I have said before, a man is not to be judged by his conduct towards
a jibbing horse; but yet to the outsider—to the spectator whose temper
is not tried, whose blood is not up, whose strength is not defied—the
struggle between an unreasoning animal with a bit in his mouth, with
harness on his back, with a conveyance behind him, and a man free to go,
free to think, free to act, always seems cowardly and terrible.
With her breath coming thick and short, Jenny watched the combat. A
woman cannot bear these kind of struggles, perhaps because she knows
that in the hands of man she is oftentimes but as a creature having a
bit in her mouth herself.
Which would win? Maxwell turned his whip in his hand and struck the
horse with the butt-end again and again, with such force that Jenny
could hear the blows, and feel each stroke go through her own tender
heart.
He sent for a heavy cart-whip and showered blows on the animal with
that. His men took each a wheel and shoved, while he kicked and damned
and flogged.
“That man is a perfect devil!” said Mrs. Connor, solemnly.
“Let us go, oh, let us go!” cried Jenny, rising; but still fascinated,
she stood still and watched.
Then she saw that which through all her after life it made her turn sick
and faint to remember—Maxwell stoop and scoop up a handful of gravel off
the road.
“Get up,” he said to one of the men, and the man jumped in and took the
reins.
“Lash him on,” continued Maxwell, and he handed the fellow the whip.
Then Maxwell thrust the gravel up the animal’s nostrils, rubbing the
small sharp stones into the quivering flesh; and while the creature, mad
with pain, sprang forward, he leaped to his seat, and taking both reins
and whip, kept flogging the horse far as Jenny’s eyes could follow him.
“I think, Mrs. Connor, I will go home,” she said, when she had walked in
silence back to Duranmore Cottage, and helped Mrs. Connor off with her
shawl and settled her in her chair by the window. “I think that horse
has made me feel a little ill.”
Mrs. Connor looked into the girl’s face as she said this, and saw there
what she never told to Dennis, or Jenny, or any human being; only she
sat for a long time after Jenny left her, crying all alone.
Meanwhile Jenny walked back to Duranmore, heartsick, faint, and weary,
and when she was near her own door she was met by Mrs. Sheen, the
doctor’s wife—for among other changes, Dr. Sheen had taken unto himself
a wife—who said:
“How pale you look, Miss Bourke! What is wrong with you?”
“I have walked too far in the heat, Mrs. Sheen,” answered Jenny. “I sat
out in the sun with poor Mrs. Connor, and it has made me feel faint.”
“It is no wonder Mr. Connor is fond of you,” replied Mrs. Sheen, with a
knowing look; “but you must not overdo the thing, my dear. Even for his
sake you must not.”
“I do not know what you mean at all,” answered Jenny; but she blushed up
to the roots of her hair, nevertheless.
“I did not mean anything, of course,” explained Mrs. Sheen; “and talking
of marriages—have you heard the news?”
“News! I did not know there was ever any news in Duranmore,” said Jenny.
“There is news now, at any rate,” was the reply. “Mr. Maxwell Drewitt is
going to be married to Lady Emmeline Vervensoe.”
The houses danced up and down before Jenny’s eyes, and the street went
round and round.
“Will you tell me all about it to-morrow?” she asked, while she felt
blindly about for the wall, and held on by a window-sill. “I feel so
sick and faint now, Mrs. Sheen.”
“Had not I better bid the Doctor come round and see you?” said the lady;
but Jenny answered:
“It is only the heat. I shall be well to-morrow.”
Then she walked into the house and ran up the staircase, and locked
herself into her own room, where she fell on the floor in a dead swoon.
CHAPTER XVI.
Poor Jenny.
It was on a Monday that Maxwell Drewitt proposed to Lady Emmeline, and
on the following Friday he was coming along the road leading from
Eversbeg to Duranmore, when he met a palefaced, large-eyed girl, who
told him she wanted to speak to him.
“Not now, Jenny,” he said. “I am going up to a party at Kincorth. Wait
for a day or two.”
“If I wait any longer I shall die,” she answered. “I must speak to you.
Timothy is away, and I have been watching for you all the afternoon. Let
me ask you something now, and then go to your party if you like.”
“We cannot stand talking on the road here, Jenny,” he answered, “but I
tell you what,” he added, seeing the look of despair in her poor tearful
eyes: “meet me at twelve, in the summer-house at the top of the fall
(you know the summer-house). I will be there.”
“Upon your honour?” she asked.
“Upon my soul,” he replied, and the pair parted. She walked forward to
Mrs. Connor’s, and he went on to Kincorth.
It was a quiet party, given in honour of Maxwell’s engagement. The
Drewitts did not think well of the match, and for that reason they were,
perhaps, a little over-anxious to be cordial to Lady Emmeline.
It was a good thing for Maxwell, Mr. and Mrs. Drewitt agreed; and yet
Mrs. Drewitt knew a younger woman would have appeared to her better.
Such a union was likely to give Maxwell all he had lost through his
father’s unlucky marriage, but still it seemed unnatural to see so young
a man selling himself for money.
Nevertheless, the Drewitts were bound to be pleased: the head of the
family was expected to hold out the right hand of fellowship to Lady
Emmeline, and Mr. and Mrs. Drewitt had accordingly driven over to
Cragantlet and invited the widow to a very quiet party in honour of the
event.
On account of Lady Emmeline’s bereavement dancing would have been
improper, but, looking towards her impending marriage, music was
permissible.
It was a musical party therefore—that is, dinner and music. Only very
intimate friends on both sides were invited, such as the Munks and
Marsdens and Hickmans and Dolf Vervensoe, who began at once to pay
marked attentions to Laura Munks, which attentions caused the heart of
her honourable mother to leap for joy.
Miss Macpherson came with the Munks. Mrs. Drewitt had asked her to come,
greatly on account of her musical attainments, which would, that poor
lady hoped, cause the evening to go off all the more pleasantly.
Lady Emmeline was in great force: she put on her deepest mourning, and
flourished her widest hem-stitched pocket-handkerchief. She kissed Mrs.
Drewitt and Wilhelmina, and Master Brian and Miss Geraldine, and pressed
Mr. Drewitt’s hand with emotion.
And Mr. Drewitt pressed Lady Emmeline’s, and the pair had a little
private conversation in the embrasure of one of the drawing-room
windows; and Mr. Drewitt wept, and Lady Emmeline wept, and the two
exchanged sentiments of regard and vows of eternal friendship.
To do the poetess justice, she did not care one straw about money. Give
her Maxwell, and she was indifferent to filthy lucre. Had he owned
Kincorth fifty times over she could not have been fonder of him. It is
pitiful to think how far good looks go with women: how much better she
liked this handsome young fellow than she had ever cared for her
far-honester husband.
Well-a-day, well-a-day! so the world goes, and so the world will go till
the Millennium.
Of all the company, Maxwell himself was, I think, the most
uncomfortable.
A man takes kindly enough to having honours thrust upon him, but he
feels awkward when a select party is invited to see the process.
Besides, though he loved money he hated marriage; and, above all, was
there not a poor soft-hearted little girl crying her eyes out for his
sake?
Poor child! poor Jenny! She was in his memory all that evening. He could
not see Lady Emmeline for thinking of her when the widow spoke; and as
for Miss Macpherson, there were some people whom Maxwell always
detested, and Miss Macpherson was one of them; for this was part of the
song that terrible Scotchwoman elected to sing with a pathos utterly
indescribable, while Maxwell Drewitt stood beside his aunt, digging his
nails into his flesh, and cursing the poet who wrote the words and the
woman who sung them with all his heart and soul and strength.
Was ever a more mournful song penned, reader, than that from which Miss
Macpherson selected four sorrowful verses? Four verses, sorrowful and
beautiful. Here they are:—
“My head is like to rend, Willie,
My heart is like to break;
I’m wearin’ aff my feet, Willie,
I’m dyin’ for your sake:
Oh! lay your cheek to mine, Willie,
Your hand upon my head;
Oh! say ye’ll think on me, Willie,
When I am cold and dead.
“It’s vain to comfort me, Willie,
Sair grief maun hae its will;
But let me rest upon your breast,
To sab and greet my fill;
Let me sit on your knee, Willie,
Let me shed by your hair,
And look into the face, Willie,
I never may see mair.
“I’m weary o’ this warld, Willie,
And sick wi’ all I see;
I canna live as I hae lived,
Or be as I should be;
But fauld into your heart, Willie,
The heart that still is thine,
And kiss ance mair the white, white cheek
Ye said was red lang syne.
“The lav’rock in the lift, Willie,
That lilts far ower our heid,
Will sing the morn as merrilie
Aboun the clay cauld deid;
And this green turf we’re sittin’ on,
Wi’ dewdrops shimmerin’ sheen,
Will hap the heart that luvit thee
As warld has seldom seen.”[A]
Footnote A:
The whole of this ballad is to be found in a curious collection of
Scotch songs entitled “Whistle Binkie.” The book is somewhat rare, and
I do not chance to have it by me at the moment; but I believe the
verses quoted above were written by Motherwell; and I know that they,
as well as the “King’s Ride,” referred to on page 215 (the name of the
author of which I am unable to learn), have recently been most
charmingly set to music by Miss Elizabeth Philp.
After the manner of all Scotch poems, the original was of great length.
If Maxwell had heard the whole of it I think he would have sacrificed
Miss Macpherson in his uncle’s drawing-room.
How long that evening seemed! How unendurable! How intolerable it was to
listen to the chitter-chatter of a dozen female tongues! How plainly he
could see the rouge on Lady Emmeline’s cheeks! How he hated the
affectation of her manners! How sick the little flutter she pretended to
feel made him! How he wished to heaven he could break Dolf Vervensoe’s
head for his sly allusions, for his meaning looks!
Miss Macpherson sang, and Mrs. Drewitt sang, and Laura Munks sang, and
Lady Emmeline was induced to “join in.”
Then they had tea handed round, and the card-tables were brought out,
and the old stagers played whist, while the young people flirted, and
Lady Emmeline sat talking demurely to Mr. Drewitt, and Maxwell walked
from window to window looking forth at the view on which the moon was
just rising. It must be getting on for twelve he knew by that, and
thinking of Jenny, he went across to Lady Emmeline, and after leaning
over the back of her chair and whispering a few compliments in her ear,
reminded her how late it was getting.
“You will come with me as far as Eversbeg,” she suggested; but Maxwell
told her he thought of remaining at Kincorth for the night, upon which
she rose to go.
“Time has passed so pleasantly, Mrs. Drewitt,” said Lady Emmeline, “that
I had not the least idea of the hour.” And the widow, after a tender
farewell of the Drewitt family, swept down to her carriage, attended by
Maxwell and his uncle.
Her departure was the signal for the remainder of the party to disperse;
and accordingly, with a great clattering of horses’ hoofs, and banging
to of carriage doors, and putting up of carriage steps, the guests drove
off, and left Kincorth quiet and lonely in the moonlight.
Then Maxwell bade Mrs. Drewitt good-night, and took his hat, spite of
Mr. Drewitt’s entreaties for him to stay.
“Thank you, no,” answered Maxwell, “I cannot remain. I told Lady
Emmeline I thought I should, but I forgot then that a man said he would
come to me to-morrow morning at seven about some stock, and I should not
care to have to walk over from here so early as all that comes to.
Good-night, sir.”
“Good-night, Maxwell, and I wish you every happiness. I think you have
made a most prudent choice,” finished Mr. Drewitt, wringing his nephew’s
hand; which piece of commendation elicited the remark, “D—n my choice
and your thoughts too,” from Maxwell, as he walked down the drive.
When he had got well among the trees he left the gravelled walk, and
made his way through the plantations to the glen mentioned in an early
chapter.
Many a time he and Jenny had met in that glen during the last two years,
for it was a lonely place where strangers were sure never to intrude,
and where the family rarely penetrated. At the very top of the glen
stood the ruined summer-house, going fast to wreck and decay. The roof
let in the wet, the floor was damp and grass-grown, the seats were
broken and crazy. It was nearly a mile away from the mansion, and as
solitary and deserted a spot for a meeting of the kind as can well be
imagined.
As he climbed up the steep path which led to it from the glen, Maxwell,
looking at the summer-house perched on the very top of the waterfall,
saw a woman leaning against the rustic pillars that formed the entrance.
“You are late,” she said; “I thought you were not going to come;” and
she dropped back the shawl she had put over her head, and the white sad
face was lifted appealingly to his in the moonlight.
“Have I ever disappointed you, Jenny?” he asked, and he kissed her cold
lips while the girl clung to him in a kind of passionate despair.
“They told me you were going to be married,” she whispered; “it is not
true? tell me it is not true.”
If there had been any use in telling her a lie he would have done it;
but he knew it must come to this sooner or later, and so he held his
peace, and turned aside his head.
“Why don’t you look at me?” she cried; “why don’t you answer?” And then,
in her extremity, she fell on her knees before him, and prayed him say
it was false, it was not true.
He lifted her from the ground, and took her in his arms, and held her to
his heart, and kissed her over and over again; but still he said
nothing, while she kept moaning out—
“It’s not true! You never could be so fond of me, and marry another
woman.”
“If I were married to twenty women I could never be so fond of one of
them as I am of you,” he answered.
“But you are not going to be married? Say it was an untruth they told
me—say so, for God’s sake!”
“What can it matter, Jenny?” he replied. “I will never love any one as I
love you. I swear that.”
“But you promised to marry _me_!” Jenny broke out, tearing herself from
his embrace, and facing him as he stood silent and pale in the
moonlight. “You swore that to me. You said whenever you had money enough
you would marry me, and that then, when we were married, Timothy would
soon come round. You did, you know you did! and if it was a lie, God
pardon you, Maxwell Drewitt, and God help me!”
She sank to the earth once more, not kneeling this time, but crouching,
with her hands covering her face, with her head bent forward on her lap,
crying—crying, oh! so terribly.
And the moonlight lay on tree and ocean and field—on Duranmore down by
the shore, on the great mountains, and the smaller hills.
“You will marry me, Maxwell?” she sobbed at last, and she seized his
hands in hers, and covered them with tears and kisses. “You cannot mean
to desert me after all. You cannot leave me to face the world’s scorn. I
would do my best to please you. I would never ask to go out with you to
any place, or to be your equal, or to know your concerns. Only marry me,
for the love of God!”
“I told you before,” he answered huskily, “that I can never love any
woman but you; and as long as I love you, what does it matter whether I
am married or single?”
“Maybe it does not matter to you,” she said; “but to me—to me——”
“You will marry somebody else, Jenny, and look back upon all this as a
foolish dream—a foolish happy dream.”
“It’s a dream that’s mighty like reality,” she answered. “I wish it was
a dream!” went on the girl, passionately. “I wish that I could wake now
and know that all that has passed was only a dream! If I could go back
to what I was when I first met you, I’d die happy. I wouldn’t care that
this was my last night on earth.”
“Jenny—Jenny!” he remonstrated.
“I’m thinking that the water down by there looks mighty quiet,” she
continued, looking with her great sorrowful eyes away to the sea. “If I
could get anybody to row me out far enough that I’d never come ashore,
I’d drown myself. Timothy would be sorry, but he would not be half as
sorry as he will be if I don’t do it.”
Maxwell could not bear this. He made her get up, and drew her back to
the firmest of the seats, and sat down beside her, and laid the poor
tired head on his breast and tried to comfort her. There had been a time
when his lightest caress made Jenny’s heart leap with joy; but nothing
he could say or do would comfort her now. “Marry me, marry me!” she kept
crying, and she twined her arms round his neck and told him how their
sin had found them out; how it was because she knew she could keep their
secret no longer that she wanted him to save her from shame.
For a minute, Maxwell sat stunned; a sickening remorse came over him.
Her child!—and she was little more than a child when he first met her.
Her child!—Maxwell knew now the reason of her pale thin cheeks, of her
unusual importunity, of her longing look towards the quiet sea.
“Oh! Jenny, Jenny, I wish we had never seen one another,” he cried out
at last; “I wish I had never looked at your pretty face, my darling!”
“And it’s I that wish I had never seen you!” she answered, “or that I
had died before this ever came to pass; before I ever was the bad girl I
have been, and brought trouble and disgrace on the one that knew you
better than I did. What are you going to do now?” she demanded, with a
sudden access of indignation. “Are you going to marry me or leave
me?—going to desert me or shelter me from the storm? You will marry me,
Maxwell, won’t you? Now that you know all, you will not forsake me?”
And she put her “cheek against his cheek,” and took his hand and held it
upon her heart, while she begged him to have mercy, while she craved him
to have pity, in tones that Maxwell Drewitt remembered at his dying
hour.
But she did not know with whom she had to deal. The very reason she
assigned would have been powerful enough to prevent Maxwell fulfilling
his promise. Should the finger of scorn be pointed at him?—should the
purity of his wife be questioned? He would as soon have thought of
marrying the vilest of women as of mating with Jenny now. And he had
brought her to this, with his lying words, with his false tongue, with
his fair promises! He had found her young and guileless and loving, and
she was sitting now with the moonlight streaming on her pale face,
ruined and betrayed. That was a pleasant memory for him when “the door
of the house came to be shut,” when the noise of the outer world sounded
no longer in his ears, when there was no future of life stretching out
before him—but only silence, and sickness, and recollection in the
darkened chamber, in the lonely room.
“Would he marry her?”
No. But Maxwell was at immense pains to explain why he could not do so:
how he was very, very poor; how he was only marrying Lady Emmeline for
her money; how he would always spare enough for Jenny; how, though
another woman might own his name, no one but Jenny should own his heart.
He tried to work upon her feelings; he tried to get her to be
self-sacrificing for the sake of the love she bore him. “You would not
like to see me struggling for bread all my days?” he finished: “you
would not like to ruin me and keep me poor till the end of my life?”
“You ought to have thought about that before you ruined me,” she
answered. “You talk to me as if money could give me back what I have
lost, when I would cheerfully beg my bread from door to door if only I
could be what I once was; if I only could!”
“But, Jenny,” he answered, “why should you be ruined at all? There’s a
man who would marry you to-morrow—Connor. Marry him, and then——”
He stopped in his sentence, for the girl rose up at his words and looked
him in the face. She unwound his arm from about her, she put his hand
away from her face, she lifted her head from his shoulder and stood in
the moonlight staring at the man she loved with an incredulous surprise.
“And it’s that you want me to do?” she said. “And it’s your child you
would have me pass off on him as his?—and that’s the way you think
you’ll get rid of me? But you’re mistaken; you’re wrong this time. I’ll
tell Timothy; I’ll tell Lady Emmeline; I’ll tell your uncle, and I’ll
see if there isn’t one of them will have me righted. Marry Dennis! Oh!
Father of Heaven, what is this at all, at all?” and she rushed out of
the summer-house and down the glen, sobbing as she went.
He picked up her shawl and followed her. It did not take much pleading
on his part to make her promise that she would not fulfil her
threat—that she would not go and blazon her wrongs about.
She blazed up into a passion one moment, but was calm the next.
“I will do well for you, Maxwell,” she said, “though you have done ill
for me. I will keep your secret, if it kill me. I will be faithful to
you, though you have been false to me. I won’t have any money; but I
won’t drown myself: I promise you, and I don’t break my word. Let me
pass you. Don’t kiss me again—don’t; you belong to another woman now,
and I hope—I do hope she will make you as happy as I would have tried to
do!”
“I cannot let you go, Jenny,” he said. “I love you, and you only,
still.” And he kissed her as he never kissed another on earth, with
passionate tenderness, with a hungry affection, with a despairing
remorse—kissed her while the tears ran down her white cheeks, and the
stream trickled at their feet, and the roar of the waterfall sounded in
their ears, and the trees stirred their branches in the light wind which
went rustling and murmuring among the trees.
Then he wrapped the shawl which she wore for disguise, like the country
people, gently about her, and pulled it over her head. And thus they
parted, so far as meeting and loving and trusting was concerned, for
ever.
It is not in all cases parting to be separated from those we love by
absence or death, by distance or the grave.
There are worse partings than those on the deck of the outward-bound
ship, or by the dying beds of the dear ones we have walked with through
years—worse partings, between two who may yet hear each other’s voices,
and touch each other’s hands, and look in each other’s faces, day after
day.
CHAPTER XVII.
Master Harold.
There was little change in Connemara—in the general aspect of the
country I mean—and yet the suns of sixteen summers had risen and set
upon the mountains since Maxwell Drewitt rode home from Cragantlet under
the moonlight—since, under the moonlight also, Jenny Bourke accepted the
sorrow that was inevitable, and went away through the night, crying
silently.
There were the mountains, grand and stern and rugged as ever; there were
the desolate lakes, the dreary bogs, the huge boulders, the endless
bays, the rocky headlands, the grassy promontories washed by the wide
ocean.
To look at the country, any one might have thought only a new day had
dawned upon the earth; and it was a new day indeed, but one twenty years
after that summer afternoon when you, reader, first looked into the
parlour of Inchnagawn Cottage, and heard Maxwell Drewitt and Timothy
Ryan talking about the new mistress who was coming home to Kincorth.
What are twenty years, when all is said and done, but as an hour in the
life of the great hills? Twenty years! Man frets and troubles himself
through the third portion of almost his longest day, and the hills look
on silently. Twenty years! Others come and go, are born and die, marry
and have children, strive and plan, harass themselves, laugh and weep,
rejoice and mourn, while the hills remain unchanged.
Twenty years! The mountains and the lakes and the ocean were the
same—but the people! Ah! dear reader, no one but God in Heaven may ever
know what the Irish suffered between the summer’s day on which this
story opened and the summer’s day on which I take up my pen once more.
It was a lovely afternoon, towards the latter end of June. There had
been rain in the early morning, but towards twelve o’clock the clouds
dispersed, the sun broke out, and now, as the mail-coach, bound to
arrive at Duranmore at five o’clock, stopped to change horses at
Calgillan, ten miles distant, the traveller could not have desired a
more beautiful day for his journey, or a finer country for his eyes to
wander over. Fine, not with cultivation, but by nature. Grand with
hills—well-wooded here and there too—with waterfalls dashing down the
mountain-sides, with rapid rivers pursuing their course onward to the
sea. The road leading from Calgillan to Duranmore was far the most
picturesque approach to the little town which could have been selected,
and it was because of its beauty that two English gentlemen chose it for
their route.
The younger of these two men had never visited Ireland before; the elder
had been in Connemara twenty years previously, when he stood for
Duranmore and lost the day. Henry Pryor was coming back, after all those
years, to look at a property which was for sale near Duranmore, and if
he liked, to buy it.
Whilst he remained in Connemara he was going to be the guest of Maxwell
Drewitt, Esq., of the Headlands; and Maxwell Drewitt, Esq., had kindly
offered to extend his hospitality to Mr. Francis Gyton, whose father was
principal in the great firm of Gyton, Lark, Munday, Hatfield and
Company, Austinfriars, London.
Mr. Gyton, senior, was a millionaire—Mr. Gyton, junior, was rather a
fast young man, who went down to the City and “looked in” at the office
as seldom as he could help, whose health required continual absences
from town, and who, consequently, the moment he heard his uncle intended
visiting Ireland, offered to accompany him.
Calgillan was not a town, merely a straggling village lying among the
hills, and Mr. Gyton employed himself during the time that was occupied
in taking the tired horses out and putting the fresh horses to in making
depreciating remarks concerning the country and its inhabitants
generally. He saw nothing picturesque except the short petticoats of the
women.
“Like ballet girls, by Jove!” finished Mr. Gyton, who pronounced Jove
Jauve, and surveyed Irish society through an eyeglass.
“You never saw a ballet girl half so pretty,” answered a young lad who
had travelled with them for the last thirty miles, and who now stood
with his hands in his pockets leaning against the wall of Joyce’s Hotel.
“And how do you know anything about the matter?” asked Mr. Gyton,
laughing, for he had been tormenting and chaffing the boy all the way,
“you never saw a ballet girl in your life.”
“I don’t want to see one,” retorted the other, sulkily; “but I know our
women are prettier than the English women for all that, and our country
is finer than England. You have no mountains like those where you came
from;” and he pointed away towards the “Twelve Pins,” which are the Alps
of Connemara.
“No; our mountains are twenty times higher,” said Mr. Gyton, laughing
again.
“I could take you to a place where you might count a hundred lakes below
you,” went on the boy.
“Mill-ponds,” observed the other.
“And you have no such fish in England as we have at our very doors.”
“Ah! you never tasted whitebait, my boy.”
“We’re ready now, gentlemen, if you please,” said the guard at this
juncture, and all the passengers clambered up into their seats.
“There’s a team!” Mr. Gyton leaned back from the box to whisper to the
young Irish lad; “why, there’s not a coachman in England would sit
behind four such sorry nags.”
“You never saw such a turn-out, at any rate,” answered the boy.
“He’s right, sir,” interposed the driver. “Master Harold’s right. You
might travel England and Ireland through, and never meet with such a
turn-out again.”
“The horses are as thin as whipping-posts, and the harness is falling to
pieces; but I should have thought that no such uncommon sight on this
side the channel,” replied Mr. Gyton.
“But we know—we know better, don’t we, Master Harold?” chuckled the
coachman, bringing his whip down cleverly on the off leader’s flank as
he spoke.
“Yes, Doyle, we know,” answered the boy, and the pair laughed in chorus.
“What is remarkable about the turn-out?” asked Mr. Pryor, who had for
some time been watching Master Harold with considerable interest.
“There is nothing remarkable; they’re trying to humbug us, that is all,”
said his nephew.
“Bet you five to one,” retorted the boy, sharply.
“Done. Who is to hold the stakes?”
“He may,” agreed Master Harold, pointing to Mr. Pryor, “and he shall be
umpire.” And with that the lad pulled out five shillings, and placed
them in Mr. Pryor’s hand.
Mr. Gyton laughed till he almost fell off the coach, while he laid down
his stake.
“Now go ahead,” he said; “what is there so remarkable about Pharaoh’s
lean kine?”
“Why, there are four horses—you see them; and here is Billy Doyle who
drives them—you see him; and the five have only one eye among them, and
that is Billy’s. Did you ever see anything like that in England?—did you
now?”
“Fairly beaten, Frank,” said his uncle.
“Done, by Jupiter!” exclaimed the young man about town. “Here, sir, take
your money.”
“Give it to Bill—I don’t want it,” said the lad, contemptuously; and he
folded his hands tightly together, and looked away towards the “Twelve
Pins” with as lordly an expression as though he owned them and the
hundred lakes he had spoken of into the bargain.
“But they can’t go,” began Mr. Gyton, who considered Master Harold far
too good fun to be left in peace. “Poor things! they seem as if they
hadn’t one leg among them—as if they were lame as well as blind. They
are tired already. Do you call such animals horses in this part of the
country?”
“If I was sitting where you are,” retorted the lad, “I would show you
whether they could go or not.”
“Perhaps you will take the box seat,” suggested Mr. Gyton, with a
delighted chuckle.
“I will if you’ll let me.”
“Don’t, Frank, do not,” entreated Mr. Pryor. “You are carrying the joke
too far,” he added, in a lower tone; “you do not understand the Irish.
Remain where you are.”
But Mr. Gyton would not take his uncle’s advice. They were at the very
foot of a hill which rose up before them steep and straight like the
wall of a house. “I mean to walk up here,” he said, “and if you like at
the top to take my place and the ribbons, you are welcome to both.”
“I did not see you offer to drive,” remarked the boy. “Are you not used
to it?”
“Not to driving such cattle as the creatures you call horses. A good
English thoroughbred now, or something of that kind.”
“Oh, indeed!” said Harold, and they walked on in silence.
“Coachman, I say, coachman,” exclaimed Mr. Gyton, when they reached the
top of the hill, “this young gentleman is going to take my place and the
reins, and means to break all our necks. Keep your one eye on him.”
“I won’t need, sir. Master Harold is as good a whip as ye’d find betwixt
this and the Shannon; ay, and faith an’ there’s not a leap a horse could
take that it’s himself couldn’t go over with him.”
“I’d like to see him on the back of an English hunter,” laughed Mr.
Gyton.
“And damn me if I would not like to put _you_ on the back of my father’s
chestnut Madcap; you’d be precious soon off, I’m thinking,” Harold
turned round to answer.
“Take care, Frank, take care,” urged Mr. Pryor, but his nephew was
incorrigible.
“Is the chestnut anything like our blind team, which you are driving so
beautifully?” he asked.
“No, she is not; but our team could go faster than perhaps you would
like to travel,” retorted the boy.
“Try me,” was the reply.
“Don’t, for Heaven’s sake!” entreated Mr. Pryor; but, before the words
were well out of his lips, Harold had knotted up the reins, flung them
on the horses’ necks, and, with an hoorah and a whoop, lashed them
forward down the hill.
“Now for Hell or Duranmore,” gasped the coachman, while the insides
screamed, and every outside passenger held on for his life.
“Can Irish horses go now?” hissed out the boy, turning round to his
tormentor, as the coach went swaying and rocking down the hill.
Every moment the pace increased. Doyle seized the whip, but he could not
stop Harold shouting and hallooing, and as the horses felt the vehicle
gaining on them they galloped, blind though they were, faster and faster
still.
The collars tightened, and the haime chains were strained to their
utmost, as the creatures drew further away from one another in their
frantic endeavours to get loose.
From side to side—bumping, tossing, rolling—the coach went flying down
the incline. If one of the horses had fallen it would have been all over
with the passengers; but hot iron had never touched the hoofs of those
four blind steeds, and they were sure-footed as goats.
Down the hill they went; the mountains seemed to be spinning along with
them. Duranmore and the Bay were now up, now down—now in the depths of
the earth, now on the top of Eversbeg Head—but at last the level was
safely reached, and the bays, after galloping along for a while, stopped
of their own accord.
“It’s not your fault, Master Harold, that there’s one of us left alive.
If the craythurs had not been blind it is hard to say when we would have
pulled up,” remarked Doyle, as he descended from his perch and
unfastened the reins, and soothed and patted the frightened and panting
animals, that stood with their nostrils quivering, with their flanks
white with foam.
“Is it your misfortune, Bill?” asked the lad, swinging himself to the
ground. “I’ll send for the kit;” and then he looked coolly up to Mr.
Gyton, and hoped he had enjoyed his drive. “It was not the distance, I
suppose, so much as the pace?” he suggested, and lifting his cap to the
two gentlemen, he turned along the road leading towards Kincorth.
“Who is that—that lunatic?” asked Mr. Gyton, when the coachman resumed
his seat on the box.
“That, sir,” answered the man, whose cheeks and nose were blanched as
white as though whiskey had never reddened them, “is Masther Harold
Drewitt; and I am free to say that a bigger divil niver run.”
“Any relation to Mr. Drewitt, of Kincorth?” inquired Mr. Pryor.
“His youngest son,” was the reply; and uncle and nephew exchanged
glances.
“They sent him to school to quiet him down a bit; but faith I think he’s
come back worse than he went.”
“Send a goose to Dover, and a goose will come over,” remarked Mr. Gyton.
“A goose!” repeated the coachman. “It’s not much of a goose there is
about Masther Harold. It’s more of the cloven foot than the web that’s
inside his boots; an’ it’s a pity, for a kinder-hearted, more spirity,
freer-spoken young gentleman there’s not in Connemara. But they tell me
it’s the mother has spoiled him entirely; an’ a nice lady she is, too,
and homely-like in her ways, for a foreigner.”
“Foreigner!” echoed Mr. Pryor, in surprise.
“Well, English then, like yourself, sir; shure it’s all one. The masther
married her in London, I think it was—and well spoken of she is by rich
and poor. Only they do say it’s she spoils Masther Harold: though some
think he would not have been so wild a divil if he had not been so much
at the Headlands: that’s his cousin’s place, sir, Mr. Maxwell Drewitt,
and a clever gintleman he is. He’s made a sight of money, and gives
plenty of employment.”
“We are going to the Headlands,” remarked Mr. Gyton, demurely.
“See that now!—well, as I was saying, you are going to see a clever
gintleman. What he has in his head nobody would credit; and as for land,
I could not tell all he bought up in the Estates Court. All that fine
farm, that lies down in the hollow after we passed Calgillan, is his;
and he has a great property, they tell me, beyond Cragantlet; that is
behind the hill there facing you: and then he has the place that used to
be Mr. Munks’, on the other side of Laddenwell Lake; and never chick nor
child to leave all to. Many a time I think about that when I see the
childer swarming in and out of the cottages of his labourers. They say
he’d give Cherryfield, the place he bought from Mr. Munks, to have a
son. It seems queer, sir, the way them things go. I suppose it’s by
favour, like kisses.”
“It will be a deucedly lucky thing for that boy if he never have any
children,” observed Mr. Gyton, thoughtfully.
“So Mr. Drewitt thinks, people do say,” answered the driver. “Maybe,
gentlemen,” he went on after a pause, “ye wouldn’t mind saying nothing
to Mr. Maxwell about Masther Harold’s tricks. It might get him into
thrubble. An’ the lad intended no harm; it’s just divilment and
contrariness.”
“Oh, we will do the young fellow no harm,” said Mr. Gyton, “though, as
you remarked, it was not his fault that our necks were not broken; and
if you take my advice you will not trust him with the ribbons again.
What _are_ you considering, uncle?” he added. “You look as grave as if
you had been retained for a bad case and got an adverse verdict.”
“I was thinking about that Master Harold,” replied Mr. Pryor, who had
neither wife nor child himself. “I was thinking about that Master
Harold. He is the very image of what Maxwell Drewitt was twenty years
ago, though there is not much resemblance now.”
“They tell me Mr. Maxwell never favoured him, sir,” dissented the
driver; “that there’s a kindly look in Master Harold’s eyes, and a soft
winning way with him, that nobody ever remembered in Mr. Maxwell; but I
ask your pardon, sir, for making so free, and Mr. Maxwell a friend of
your own too.”
“I have only seen him twice in the last twenty years,” replied Mr.
Pryor, “but I can remember very well what he was the first day we ever
met, and that boy is like him. I could not think who he reminded me of
all the way. Of course,” he added, speaking to his nephew, “Maxwell
Drewitt was a man when I first saw him, somewhere about my own age at
that time, and this Harold is but a boy; still, the turn of the head,
the tone of the voice, the features, and something in the expression,
are the same. How it carries one back!” he finished, with a sigh; “how
it carries one back! But here we are at Duranmore, and there is Mr.
Maxwell Drewitt himself.”
“Welcome once more to Connemara,” said that gentleman, shaking Mr.
Pryor’s hand as though he wanted to shake it off. “See to the luggage,
Dickson,” he added, turning to his servant, and then he asked his guests
which they would choose—to walk or drive.
“Walk, if you please,” answered Mr. Gyton. “I shall be glad to stretch
my legs after so much coaching.”
“And you?” inquired Maxwell, turning to Mr. Pryor, with a smile at the
younger man’s lead.
“Should like the walk also,” laughed Mr. Pryor. “Do you remember all the
walks we had along the bay, twenty years ago?”
“Twenty years this month,” answered Maxwell Drewitt. “They have not been
long in passing.” And the trio sauntered down the street together, while
Doyle said to Dickson—
“Whose’s them gentlemen, Barney, do ye know?”
“One of them is some Mr. Pryor,” said Dickson, “that stood for Duranmore
the time of the great election.”
“You don’t mane that?”
“Do you think I’m a liar then?” asked Dickson, who was of a taciturn
disposition and easily annoyed.
“I don’t think much of the young chap, but if that’s Mr. Pryor, I wish I
was dhriving him ivery day, and was getting his blissing in silver too.”
“Ay, faith, I believe ye. That’s the only blissing or crossing aither
you ever thrubble yerself about.”
Which remark being disagreeably true, caused Mr. Doyle to retire into
the “Marsden Arms,” where he wet Mr. Pryor’s gift with whiskey
immediately.
Meanwhile Harold, after parting with his travelling companions,
proceeded along the road which led round the north side of Duranmore
Bay, and wended his way towards home—now running, now loitering, now
pegging stones at the birds in the trees by the wayside, now cutting a
stick, now decapitating the dandelions and benweeds, which were
plentiful and in splendid bloom. He was full of life and youth and
strength and spirit. He did not seem to know what to do with himself for
very happiness, and so he would jump backwards and forward over the
ditches and swing himself up to the first branch of a tree, and then
drop lightly to the ground, in order to let off the superfluous steam.
A fine lad truly—straight and tall and well-made—with black hair, dark
eyes, white teeth, good features, and a fine open expression of face. He
was like Maxwell Drewitt, and yet he was unlike. He had Maxwell’s figure
and Maxwell’s face, but he had not Maxwell’s impassiveness of muscle,
his command of countenance, his steely self-possession.
A fine lad—one whom his mother idolised and his father adored. No other
autocrat had come to reign after him; and the love and thought and
devotion bestowed on Harold as a baby were bestowed on Harold likewise
when he was a boy.
Brother and sister and servants were all alike—all yielded their wills
to Harold. It was an understood thing in the household that Master
Harold could think no wrong, that Master Harold was not to be crossed,
that whatever Master Harold desired was to be done for him immediately.
Brian had for so long a time given place to Harold that no person
remembered the time when Brian was anybody. The eldest born was to have
Kincorth, and the younger was to reign over all hearts in consequence.
No one ever seemed to think such an arrangement harsh or unjust until
the boys grew up, but then people began to remark that Mrs. Drewitt’s
entreaty—
“Do, Brian. Now cannot you let him have it? remember he is the
youngest,” was heard too often for much good to come of such training.
The best horse in the stable, the best fishing-rod, the best gun, had to
be relinquished in Harold’s favour without a murmur; and, perhaps, I
cannot say more in praise of Brian Drewitt than that he never murmured
at this favouritism; that he accepted his lower seat without a word.
At the gate of Kincorth the brothers ran up against each other.
“I was coming to meet you, Haro,” said Brian, passing his arm through
his brother’s. “I meant to have been at the cross-roads in good time. Is
the coach early, or am I late?”
“Both, I should say,” answered Harold. “The coach was early, for I
drove; and you are late, for some reason best known to yourself.”
“I had to fetch Doctor Sheen to see papa,” was the reply. “He’s often
ill now. I sometimes think Sheen does not know what is the matter with
him.”
“Sheen is a fool!” remarked Master Harold. “Why don’t you have old
Barnes? But doctors are no use, are they now?”
“I don’t know,” sighed Brian; “but I wish somebody would do him some
good.”
“What ails him?” asked Harold; “is it the same old pain?”
“I believe so,” answered Brian, and the pair walked on a little way in
silence.
“I tell you what,” at last broke out the younger brother; “if I were
mamma I’d take him to Dublin; I would not stand Sheen’s duffing about
any longer. The fellows there could soon find out all about him, and
he’d be ready for the hunting if they set him up at once.”
“Harold——”
“Yes, Brian.”
“Sometimes I am afraid that nothing will set him up.”
“Do you mean, you think he is going to die?” Harold asked, with a
gradual crescendo.
“I hope not—but——”
“You are as bad as old Sheen,” retorted Harold. “Die—why should he die?
he is ten years younger than Sheen himself, and he’s twenty years
younger than old Mrs. Waller—Waller’s grandmother I mean. Why you might
as well talk about you or me dying as of him.”
“Don’t say anything to mamma.”
“_I_ would be ashamed to repeat such folly,” answered Harold, with a
swagger; “but I shall tell her to take him to Dublin, and to have done
with Sheen.”
“I wish she could. She was wishing herself she had money to pay some
eminent physician for coming down.”
“Money—there you go again—money! It is all nonsense our being short of
money. Haven’t we this, and haven’t we that, and haven’t we hundreds and
thousands and millions of acres beside?” asked Harold.
“What is the use of acres if they are all mortgaged?” demanded Brian.
“What is the use of land if we can make nothing out of it?”
“I declare, Brian, if you go on like that I will turn straight back to
school; you are the most confounded old croak I ever heard; and I have
got such a lark I want to tell you about. I galloped the horses down
Calgillan Pass, and nearly frightened the wits out of two English
fellows, who thought Doyle’s team had no blood in them. They shouted for
me to stop: the younger fellow prayed and cursed alternately: the
insides were screeching like pigs a-killing. Old Doyle could not get the
reins, for I had pitched them on the horses’ necks, and I gave it to
them with the whip as long as he left it with me. Didn’t I, just? and
didn’t they go? We came down the hill with never a drag on, at the rate
of about forty miles an hour; and then I hoped they had enjoyed their
drive. Serve them right!—teach them to abuse Ireland again.”
“You’ll get your neck broken some day to a certainty, Harold,” said
Brian, gravely.
“Well, it can only be broken once, that is a comfort,” answered Harold.
“And did the harness hold?—did no accident happen?”
“Devil an accident.”
“What did Doyle say?”
“He was frightened to death—thought we were all going to hell, I
believe—old humbug! He was trembling for his half-crowns I suspect. I
hope they won’t give him a halfpenny! Shall I tell mamma? Yes, I will,
for it would put her all of a shake. No, I won’t, because she would send
word to Doyle never to let me drive again. There she is at the hall-door
waiting for us;” and both sons started off to reach her.
“Beaten, Brian,” said Harold, disengaging himself from his mother’s
arms, and wiping her kisses away with his coat-sleeve. He could not bear
her to kiss him. He did not think it looked manly; he was afraid of
anybody calling him a “Molly Coddle,” and he considered the correct
thing would have been for Mrs. Drewitt to shake hands with him and say,
“How are you, Harold?” instead of “hugging and kissing,” as the young
gentleman put it.
A natural enough sentiment for his age and disposition; and yet, do not
be quite so energetic about the matter, Harold. Let the twining arms
hold you, and the loving kisses remain, for those arms cannot clasp you
always—those kisses cannot be given twice.
There is no need to be ashamed of a mother’s love, boy; no need to
wonder if any one be looking at that clinging paroxysm of affection.
Do not turn your eyes from her to see if the servants have beheld your
meeting; for you will never find another on the wide earth to love you
like her. No one hereafter will lie awake at nights wondering how it is
faring with you: no one will ever think of you in the days to come as
she does now: no one in that vague future stretching away before you
will ever feel her entire world bound up and centered in you.
Do not thrust her love aside, boy; you will stand in grievous want of it
yet: do not wipe her kisses off your lips; the day is coming when you
will lay your head on her breast and pray for another—and another yet.
Her love may be foolish, but it is foolish only because she thinks too
much of you.
As man is born of woman, so man in his bitterest extremity turns back to
woman; and ere many years passed over, Harold asked to listen to no
voice beside his mother’s, to look in no other face save hers, to hold
no hand except that which had so often caressed him in vain.
He found comfort in the love which was unselfish in its selfishness; he
sought shelter in a heart he had well-nigh broken; while she, poor soul!
while she——?
If Mrs. Drewitt loved him too much, she was punished; if she were
unjust, justice was done; if she sowed the wind, she reaped the
whirlwind; if she made an idol of him, he showed her his feet of clay;
if she spoiled him, she repented her of it; if she mourned, the Lord
God, in his own good time, brought consolation to her!
CHAPTER XVIII.
A little Political Economy.
The breakfast-room at Headlands faced the east, and from the large
bay-window you could see, over the trees which grew down to the sea,
Eversbeg Abbey and Eversbeg House, the mountains where the marble was
quarried, and the Twelve Pins far away in the distance.
“Lovely! exquisite!—perfectly enchanting!” exclaimed Mr. Pryor, looking
for the twentieth time away from his tea and toast, from his ham and
eggs, to the view before him. “It is not reality, Mr. Drewitt; we must
be in fairyland!”
“Never saw anything more charming put on the stage,” capped Mr. Gyton;
at which remark his host laughed a little scornfully.
“Frank and I do not generally agree in our opinions,” observed Mr.
Pryor; “but on the present occasion I confess I think he is right. I
never saw anything more charming on the stage nor in a picture, which is
about the same thing. On the stage, as in a picture, the best part of a
scene is given to us, and all the worst is excluded. What we get is
perfect of its kind, without blemish, without spot; and this scene is
perfect; we could wish nothing more, we could do with nothing less.”
“An unconscious plagiarism from Moore,” remarked Lady Emmeline from
behind the tea-urn, with an engaging titter. She had had a pleasant life
of it during the fifteen years of her second experiment in matrimony;
but experience had not made her any more sensible.
“Indeed!” said Mr. Pryor; “I was not aware.”
“Of course not—I am sure not,” replied Lady Emmeline, who prided herself
on the extent of her reading. “So few people know the little poem to
which I refer, It begins”—and Mr. Drewitt’s wife coughed affectedly and
tapped with her fingers on the table-cloth, and said, “Oh dear! how does
it begin? ‘To kneel—’ no; ‘To keep—’ no—how is this?—‘To weep—’”
“To damn,” suggested her husband, and Mr. Gyton grew quite red in the
face with his efforts to keep from laughing.
“‘To sigh, yet feel no pain,’” said Lady Emmeline, with a swan-like
movement of her lean neck; “‘to weep, yet scarce know why’—the lines I
referred to are towards the end—
“To feel that we adore with such refined excess,
That though the heart would burst with more, it could not live with
less.
“This is love,” and Lady Emmeline shut her eyes and repeated the
remainder of the poem to herself.
“Well, it may be,” remarked Mr. Drewitt; “I confess I am no judge; but
it sounds to me much more like folly. What is your opinion, Mr. Gyton?”
“Mine?” exclaimed that young gentleman. “I know nothing about it. The
fact is, love is not in my way. Ask my uncle; he’s a shocking flirt.”
“Oh, fie!” said Lady Emmeline, looking immensely pleased for all that.
“Defend yourself, Mr. Pryor, from such a frightful accusation.”
“Conscious innocence——” murmured Mr. Pryor.
“Needs no advocate,” finished his nephew. “What a compliment to your
clients!”
“I have come here, Frank, to forget my clients,” answered the other.
“Let me enjoy my holiday; let me imagine I am in Paradise without a
serpent near me.”
“If the garden of Eden had been in Ireland,” said Lady Emmeline, “poor
Eve would never have been beguiled into eating the apple.”
“My experience of Eves would lead me to a different opinion,” remarked
Mr. Pryor. “I do not think the absence of serpents would have secured
the safety of the fruit.”
“How terribly ungallant!” observed his hostess.
“How terribly true!” added her husband.
“And besides,” finished Mr. Gyton, “St. Patrick was not born for a few
years after Eve’s petty larceny.”
“It is a sad thing,” said Mr. Pryor, addressing his host, “that so fine
a country should not be more prosperous. I cannot understand the reason
why Ireland is so far behind England at the present day. You have soil,
climate, labour, fuel, canals, navigable rivers. It is a perfect puzzle
to me.”
“You are wrong in some of your premises,” answered Maxwell Drewitt; “we
have not soil, nor climate, nor efficient labour. Of course a soil can
be made, and bogs can be drained; but these things require capital, and
Ireland has no capital. If we had your climate and your capital we could
do anything.”
“But there must be money in Ireland,” Mr. Pryor persisted.
“There is money in the North, I suppose,” answered Maxwell,
indifferently; “though even there I should say great capitalists are
almost unknown; and there may be a few pound-notes in Dublin; but, as a
whole, there is no money in Ireland, for this reason—that all the money
made in Ireland is spent out of it; that rents are not returned to the
soil, but squandered in England and on the Continent. We never had many
resident gentry, and there are fewer resident gentry now than ever.
Since the famine, this part of the country, at any rate, has been like
the Deserted Village. People have purchased in the Encumbered Estates
Court who have never seen their properties, and are never likely to see
them.”
“Surely, however, the Encumbered Estates Court has done good?”
“I ought to say nothing against it, at any rate,” answered Maxwell, with
a smile, “for I have bought to great advantage in it.”
“I am sure I thought at one time he was going to buy all Connaught,”
said Lady Emmeline, languidly.
“Things will be better now, though,” remarked Mr. Pryor, after
acknowledging Lady Emmeline’s observation.
“Will they? What makes you think so?” asked his host.
“The famine must have taught the Irish not to depend on potatoes,”
interrupted Mr. Gyton.
“Would a murrain teach the English not to depend on beef and mutton?”
demanded Mr. Drewitt.
“Certainly not; but beef and mutton are not potatoes, are they?”
“Potatoes were beef and mutton to the Irish,” answered the owner of the
Headlands.
“And, good heavens! how can you expect a country to prosper whose people
are satisfied with that cursed root, as Cobbett called the potato?”
asked Mr. Gyton.
“The people here are not at all averse to butchers’ meat,” Maxwell
replied, coolly; “only it is sometimes true philosophy to be satisfied
with what one can get.”
“_Quand on n’a pas_——” began Lady Emmeline, but her husband cut
ruthlessly across her little observation.
“There is no man living,” he went on, “can tell what the cause of
Ireland’s misery may be, or where the best remedy for that misery is to
be found. I thought at one time I had got to the bottom of the matter.
After twenty years’ consideration I have arrived at the conclusion that
I know nothing about it. Every fact in the country is contradicted by
some other fact.”
“But surely the reduction of the superabundant population——” began Mr.
Pryor.
“My dear sir, as you came through the country, did you see any traces of
there ever having been a superabundant population in Connemara?” broke
in Mr. Drewitt. “I hear a great deal of talk about the blessings of the
potato blight, and the good done by emigration, but I confess I cannot
trace the blessing or see the good.”
“Potatoes could not, however, be a desirable article to form the sole
diet of an entire population,” persisted Mr. Pryor.
“They were quite as good as yellow meal,” retorted Maxwell Drewitt, “and
a precious sight more palatable. I really should like to have some clear
explanation of the benefits this blight has showered down upon us,” he
continued; “for, so far as I can see, it has only reduced our population
a couple of millions and brought Indian corn to our doors. Is yellow
meal beef and mutton? is yellow meal bread and butter? is Indian-meal
porridge a richer diet than potatoes and salt?”
“But wages must be higher,” argued Mr. Pryor.
“Possibly they may be a little,” answered the other; “But certainly
provisions are higher also. Potatoes are dearer, oaten meal is dearer,
all the necessaries of life to the mass of the population are much
dearer. It is not the potato blight or emigration that has, in my
opinion, caused the slight rise in wages, but simply that money is not
of the same value as formerly. No terrible calamity has fallen on the
whole of England during the last few centuries, and yet an ox used to be
sold for fewer shillings than it now fetches in pounds. I repeat what I
said at first: plague, pestilence, and famine have done Ireland no good.
What will do Ireland good remains yet to be seen.”
“You have mounted him on his hobby now, Mr. Pryor,” said Lady Emmeline,
“and if you do not take him out he will not get down to-day;” which hint
being sufficiently intelligible, Mr. Pryor asked his host to show him
his improvements, and Mr. Gyton gladly accepted an invitation from Lady
Emmeline to accompany her over to Kincorth.
Mr. Gyton thought her Ladyship “awful value,” as he told Harold
confidentially, while he considered her husband confoundedly slow.
“A demmed blue-book,” was Mr. Gyton’s irreverent conclusion; “a perfect
table of confounded statistics.” And Harold laughed and vowed he would
tell his cousin what Mr. Gyton said; while Mr. Gyton was inwardly
thinking he had never seen, in all his life, a prettier girl than
Geraldine Drewitt.
Meanwhile Mr. Pryor and Maxwell Drewitt walked by the shore, conversing
as they loitered along.
“I should like to understand why this country cannot be made to
prosper,” repeated Mr. Pryor, pausing at last and looking with
thoughtful eyes across the bay. “We in England imagined Ireland’s
difficulties were over; but now, when I come back here, I see no change.
I see the same dress, the same wretched cabins, the same dunghills, the
same weeds. Excepting your place, I see no improvement anywhere. Tell me
what your idea is of the matter? as a thinking man you must have formed
some opinion on the subject.”
“I have not,” was Maxwell’s reply. “I am as far at sea as ever. If you
told me that unless I could give a clear account of the cause of
Ireland’s misery, and suggest some means of bettering her condition, I
should be hung to-morrow morning—I must either string together a parcel
of lies, or go to the gallows. I know no more than an infant where the
evil lies, though I know where it does not lie. Ireland has nothing to
complain of from England now. The English helped us nobly through the
famine, though only about a quarter of that help reached the poor. We
are fairly taxed, fairly governed. The unprosperous man never likes the
prosperous. If Ireland does not like England, it is only because England
is the rich lady, and Ireland the poor. Grievances are all rubbish: very
well on the hustings, perhaps, or in a newspaper leader, but absurd when
one talks sober, sorrowful earnest. I am sorry to see my country limping
along, but I cannot see where the shoe pinches for all that.”
“You are satisfied, then, the population was not excessive?”
“It was not excessive for the country, though it probably is still
excessive for the capital in the country. A dozen servants may not be
too much for one house; but if there be no money to feed and pay them,
what then?”
“That is precisely what political economists say!”
“I beg your pardon, political economists say there were too many people
for the soil. You have only to use your eyes to see that view is
erroneous, at any rate. The population of London, which is about half
that of the whole of Ireland, is not too great for London, because you
can employ your population and pay them. Here we could employ our
population, but not pay them. Do you see what I mean?”
“Yes, you want capital; but if capital comes to Ireland, you shoot its
bodily representative.”
“I have not been shot.”
“But you are Irish, and you are popular.”
“No,” said Maxwell Drewitt, slowly. “No, I am not popular, but I have
been cautious. I loved my life, and I took care of it. I have tried to
be just. I have made no distinction between Catholic and Protestant. I
have never evicted a tenant. I have given employment. I have assisted
the poor. I have fed the starving. And yet,” he added, “I am not
popular. Explain it how you will.”
Mr. Pryor thought about what the coachman had said, but wisely held his
peace.
“There is my uncle,” proceeded Maxwell, “who has mortgaged and wasted,
beggared his tenantry and himself, ruined his tradespeople and
encouraged pauperism, been a furious bigot and an intolerant Tory. He is
liked better than I am. People would rather run a mile for a word from
him than go across the street for a shilling from me. I cannot be blind,
Mr. Pryor; these are the facts which puzzle me about Ireland—which I
shall go to my grave and never understand.”
“How is your uncle?” asked Mr. Pryor.
“But middling,” was the reply. “Middling in mind, body, and estate. As
for the latter, it is going to the dogs. Nothing can save Kincorth. If
he lives long enough he will have to leave it, and God help the man who
has it after him.”
“Why?” inquired Mr. Pryor.
“Because an angel from heaven would not give satisfaction there now. If
you bring a new mistress home to a disorderly household, what is the
consequence? That the household hates the new mistress who wishes to put
things to rights a little. For the same reason, Kincorth would hate a
new master.”
“But tenants are surely not like servants? They stand in a different
position to their landlord to what a servant does to his master, and a
good landlord must be felt by them to be a blessing.”
“True—but there you come round the screw in the Irish character: they
like to be benefited, it is true, but they must be benefited in their
own way. They love to have their rents remitted, rents lowered; but they
cannot endure a man who wants them to improve their land and take more
out of it; who wishes them to help him and themselves at the same time.
I have made my money, not by my tenants, but by my labourers. There is
not a man who pays me rent that has bettered himself or me to the value
of sixpence. If I had to begin again I would not buy an estate that had
tenants on it; because if you evict them you are likely to get a bullet
through your head, and if you let them stay it is endless worry and
trouble. Besides, there is a something very shocking—look at the matter
how you will—in sending a whole colony adrift. A man used to a farm of
his own will not become a labourer; and over and above that, the Irish
attachment for place is strong to a degree inconceivable to an English
mind. If you took a small house from an Englishman and gave him a better
he would be contented I suppose?”
“He would be a great idiot if he were not,” answered Mr. Pryor.
“Well, an Irishman would not be contented. Where he is planted he grows:
he is like a cat; he loves the walls he has been accustomed to. If you
take the roof off he will still kindle his fire on the old hearthstone,
and sit there with nothing but the sky above him, cursing the men who
have, as he calls it, brought him and his ‘to the world.’”
“But what are people to do?”
“Let the tenants stay, as I have done; or, better still, buy the waste
land and reclaim it. I would turn no man out in this country, because it
is better for him to live poorly off his own labour rather than live
poorly by begging. The thing is this—if you turn a man out he will not
work, and he will neither let you or anybody else till his land;
therefore the land is useless, and he is a burden. That is the state of
the country at present; but if capital were introduced into Ireland, if
our waste ground were ploughed, if our cattle were properly fattened, if
the people were taught to eat beef and mutton, if they could be made to
love luxury, if they could be induced to wear shoes and stockings, and
to live in any house better than a pig-stye—if, in one word, they could
be civilised, I think in another hundred years things might be better. I
only think, remember, because Ireland is a hopeless problem to me at
present. Had I had English tenants to deal with, had I had to work with
any class of human beings that wanted to rise in the world, I could have
money in handfuls. I declare to you, Mr. Pryor, I could.”
“As it is you have not done amiss, I think,” said the other.
“I have done nothing to what I might have done,” was the reply;
“nothing. I might have owned the whole tract of country that lies
between here and Bennebeola. Land was to be had in this neighbourhood at
one time almost for the asking; and if I could have got hands to farm
it, and a market for my produce, I should have been as rich as
Rothschild. With me it was not the want of capital so much as the want
of immediate return for capital and the perfect impossibility of
obtaining labour. Even starvation could not induce men who had owned
little patches of land to do a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay.
They tired of it; tired of having my bailiffs after them, of being
compelled to turn up the ground in earnest. My ways were contrary to
their ways, my determination to their prejudices. They could not bear
improvement: they saw in it just what the North American Indians saw in
civilisation, the downfall of their dynasty of dirt, laziness, and
letting things alone.”
“And so you had to give up.”
“So I had to draw in my hand. I had stretched my arm out further almost
than I could draw it back; and I do not mind telling you that there was
a time when, what with poor’s rates and beggars, and capital bringing
back no return, I was almost ruined. Look here, Mr. Pryor,” he added;
“at that very time I could have found work for every able-bodied man in
this part of the country. I could not get labourers enough. It was then
I tried Ireland: then all my old ideas were overset: then I _began_ to
understand that the English were right about us—‘that the fault was in
ourselves.’”
“And you think so still?”
“I do. I cannot tell you where the fault lies, or what the fault is, but
it is in us. I have heard Englishmen talking about friends of
theirs—capital fellows, honest, clever, and so forth, who yet could not
get on, and wondering what the reason might be. Well, Ireland is as
great an enigma; she cannot get on. If her sons and daughters go to
England or America they can push their way up, but they will not push
here. We are alike in all ranks. There is my uncle at Kincorth, and
there is his poorest tenant: they cling together, and love one another,
because their ways are the same, their ideas are identical. They are
both thoroughly Irish: they do not see the use of ‘taking so much
trouble,’ of ‘being so particular.’ What their ancestors did is surely
good enough for them; and so where the rushes grew a hundred years ago,
they are growing still: where the dungheap was piled in their
grandfather’s time, it stands fouling the air to this present day.”
“But you have done so much! I cannot understand _your_ talking in this
manner.”
“I have done much; but mark you, if I were dead to-morrow, and an Irish
gentleman took this place, in twelve month’s time the lawn would be
turned into grazing, and the weeds would be growing beside the drive. I
go to England and I see velvet lawns, and clean, well-rolled walks. I
come back here and I pay a visit to any house in the neighbourhood—to
Lord Marsden’s, or your cousin’s, or any gentleman’s residence—and up to
their very hall-doors the grass is half-a-foot long, and the gravel cuts
my boots, and the weeds grow lank and luxuriant. If the gentry kept
their places in the same order as the English, our labourers would find
employment about our gardens and pleasure-grounds alone. But we are all
alike,” finished Maxwell, bitterly; “all—all alike.”
“You are all alike in one thing, at any rate,” answered Mr. Pryor; “in
your detestation of trade: you do not consider buying and selling cattle
and farm produce trading; but you hate mills, factories, shopkeepers,
and merchants.”
“Till they are rich enough,” replied Maxwell; “wherein I think we only
follow your English lead. You do not recognize traders as equals till
they are millionaires.”
“Fairly hit,” laughed his guest.
“And as the Irish think more of caste than of comfort, they would
rather, as a rule, live on a little, and be gentlemen, than earn much,
and sink in the social scale.”
“But as money goes on depreciating in value; as small incomes, I mean,
buy less and less each year; as birth becomes of less importance, and
money, and what money can buy—education—of more, that prejudice will
vanish.”
“It may—but it will take a long time first,” was the answer.
“To me,” went on Mr. Pryor, “love of pleasure and indifference to
luxuries seem the curse of the country. To do as little work, to live on
as little money as possible, appears to be the aim and object of every
man, woman, and child I meet. It makes it a pleasant country to travel
in; but I should not care to live in it all the year round.”
“Do you remember,” asked Maxwell, with a cold smile, “how you were going
to right all Ireland’s wrongs when you stood for Duranmore? Do you
think, if you had got in, you could have done any good for us?”
“No,” answered Mr. Pryor, “I do not; and I know it was a capital thing
for me, being beaten. I lost nearly all my money after I got back to
London; and what I should have done, had I been returned, I really
cannot imagine. As it was, I turned to my profession with a will; and I
have made nearly as good a thing of law as you have of farming.”
“For which reason—and because you are too rich, too prosperous, too
happy—you want to come to Ireland to be shot?”
“I hope not! If I buy Durrow Park, I shall take your advice and not
evict a solitary tenant. I will regard the parents as so many
encumbrances, but endeavour to teach the children better ways.”
“You had better not present them with shoes and stockings,” counselled
Maxwell.
“Why? would that be interfering with the liberty of the subject?” asked
Mr. Pryor.
“And there is a Holy Well in Durrow Park, to which, whenever there is a
‘station’ appointed, about ten thousand people will flock: you had best
not meddle with that.”
“Anything else?” inquired Mr. Pryor.
“Well, yes; there are a number of fishermen living under Durrow Cliff
who claim the sea-weed as theirs: it would not be wise for you to have
any dispute with them.”
“What more?”
“There is a right of way across what is called the ten-acre field, and
the inhabitants of Durrow village take their donkeys through the grounds
at all hours of the day and night.”
“Any other advantages?”
“Durrow Cliff is full of caves: you must never explore them; and should
you hear suspicious sounds round the coast in the calmest night, you
must conclude it is the Atlantic breaking on the rocks. If you are wise,
you will be kept in brandy free. Many a keg is left outside the
dining-room window at the Headlands; and as for potheen, I know a place
up among the hills where some of the natives gather mountain dew in such
quantities that I could almost set up a public-house with the presents
that find their way to me. The constabulary officer sometimes says my
whiskey tastes wonderfully like potheen; but I always assure them it is
sent to me by a friend in the North.
“‘Bushmills?’ suggests Captain Ford, mixing himself another tumbler.
“‘Somewhere thereabouts,’ I answer; and between us we empty the
decanter. There is a still on the Durrow property, and if you see any
smoke rising without apparent reason, you had better attribute it to a
volcano.”
“Have you exhausted your catalogue of drawbacks?”
“No,” replied Maxwell; “there was a fellow ejected by the late
proprietor, who has vowed to burn the house down over the head of the
first man who gets his lot.”
“What do you mean by a lot?” interrupted Mr. Pryor.
“A lot,” answered Maxwell, “is so much land let by the piece instead of
by the acre; perhaps a tract of waste ground containing one hundred
acres of morass, rock, granite and brambles, will let for, say five
pounds a year. Molloy’s case was a hard one, if his story is to be
believed. Three years running he reared three pigs to pay his rent, and
three years running his pigs died; only one out of the nine lived to be
killed, and the price of that one he offered to Mr. Carford, who refused
to take it.
“‘All or none,’ he said, and Molloy was ejected. Now, if you buy Durrow,
take my advice and give Molloy back his house. He is living there on the
hearthstone, like hundreds of others in Ireland. Roof his house for him,
and give him a potato-garden, and an acre or two of common land for his
pigs to run over.”
“But would not that look as if I were afraid?”
“If you had turned him out it would; as you did not turn him out, it
will only make things pleasant for your agent.”
“On the whole, I think I shall not care about buying Durrow. I tell you
a place I should like, if it were in the market—Kincorth.”
Maxwell’s face changed.
“Kincorth will not be for sale, I fancy,” he remarked.
“I thought you said Mr. Drewitt would have to leave it?”
“So he will; but the mortgagees are likely to take possession.”
“Then he is mortgaged?”
“Mortgaged?” repeated Maxwell. “Swamped would be a better word, Mr.
Pryor. He has never paid a shilling of interest these four years, and
there were arrears then.”
“The place could not have been mortgaged for anything like its value,”
remarked the other.
“I believe it was not, in the first instance,” answered Maxwell; and Mr.
Pryor looked him straight in the face.
“I suppose I must not guess who will ultimately take possession of
Kincorth,” said Mr. Pryor, a little significantly.
“You can if you like,” answered Maxwell. “Most probably I shall. I
bought up the mortgages long ago.
“It is a pity!” exclaimed the other, “for your uncle was a thorough
gentleman, and his wife a charming creature.”
“Of course, if I am obliged to foreclose, I shall not require them to
leave Kincorth,” said Maxwell, loftily.
“You will do the same by them as you have done by your other tenants, I
suppose,” remarked Mr. Pryor.
“If they allow me,” was the reply; and the two walked on for a minute or
two in silence, while Mr. Pryor thought that perhaps none of the tenants
had found Mr. Maxwell Drewitt very pleasant to deal with, spite of his
worldly wisdom.
“You will, I am sure, consider our conversation as confidential,” said
Maxwell, after a pause.
“Most assuredly. I have no right to speak about your business at all.”
“Not that it matters much,” thought Maxwell, “for the pear is nearly
ripe.”
CHAPTER XIX.
Durrow.
Mr. Pryor had said he should not care for Durrow Park, but when he rode
over there, accompanied by Maxwell Drewitt, his nephew, and Mr. Waller,
he altered his opinion, and thought that, despite its drawbacks, Durrow
would be a very pleasant residence for a couple of months in the year.
“Non-resident again,” remarked Maxwell, laughing, while Mr. Gyton
inquired—
“How the deuce he could expect a man to stay away from London any
longer?
“More especially in such a hole as this, with only one post a day; with
no railway-station within fifty miles; with no telegram nearer than
fifty miles, also; with no books, no newspapers, no society. And a
bachelor, too,” finished Mr. Gyton.
“That is his own fault, I suppose,” remarked Maxwell Drewitt, “if it be
a fault; but I should rather call it a virtue.”
“Well said,” cried Mr. Waller, who was terribly under the influence of
petticoat government at home.
“For my part, I consider a bachelor one of the most enviable beings
under the sun,” went on Maxwell: “he can go as he likes, come as he
likes. He is free as air, and yet knows that he can settle down whenever
he pleases into husbandhood.”
“It is not so easy to settle down—at least, not to find any one to
settle down with at my age,” answered Mr. Pryor.
“Why, you cannot be more than a year or two my senior; and if I were
single to-morrow I could have my pick of a dozen—ay, and pretty girls,
too.”
“I wish you would introduce me to some of them,” remarked Mr. Pryor.
“I am too much your friend,” replied Maxwell; “far be it from me to lead
you up to the trap and help you to snap the spring on yourself. Wedlock
is a padlock,” added the owner of the Headlands. “Not that I ought to
speak against it, for my marriage made me; and my wife never had a will
of her own, so far as I heard of; but for an independent man to
marry—for a man like yourself, for instance—it is folly.”
“Drewitt is going to turn preacher, and expound the Gospel according to
St. Paul,” said Mr. Waller.
“I shall hold you up as an example of a sinner’s end then,” retorted
Maxwell.
“Hang it, man, you need not be so confoundedly personal!” observed Mr.
Waller, whose domestic discomforts were too well known for him to
attempt concealment. “It is not everybody knows how to marry so well, or
manage a wife so well when he is married, as yourself.”
Maxwell looked away from his companions over the ocean, and a thought
came across his mind that he had not married so very well after all.
He had given his youth—his liberty—all chances of happy love, for money;
and now he could not get rid of his wife—could not get rid of that old,
rouged, affected, ugly woman, who was jealous of every look he cast in
the direction of those who were younger and prettier than herself; who
had no homely graces, no fireside virtues; whom he could not even love
like a mother and value as a friend.
Forty-three and sixty—seventeen years on the wrong side. It was of this
Maxwell thought while he stood in front of Durrow House, and looked over
the Atlantic which lay like a lake below.
They were four fine-looking men. Maxwell was much the same in figure as
when we first saw him, but his face was more set and hardened; the lines
were deeper, the look in his eyes was darker. He was getting a little
bald, that is, the once-luxuriant hair was thinner, more especially
about his temples, and his whiskers were turning grey. He was the
oldest-looking man of the party, though Mr. Pryor was a year his senior;
but then Mr. Pryor’s life had not been so hard a one, and his heart was
younger too.
Mr. Pryor’s face was one that his sister said “it rested her to look
at,” so calm, so trustworthy, so good. Maxwell Drewitt had lived twice
as fast as this London barrister, and would be old twice as soon.
Some idea of this kind came into Mr. Waller’s mind, apparently, for he
said—
“I wish I looked as young as you do, Geoffry. I wish you could give me
the secret of wearing so well and keeping so handsome:” at which remark
Maxwell Drewitt turned round and laughed.
“I know what you are laughing at,” went on Mr. Waller; “you are thinking
that one must be handsome before one can keep handsome. That is the
worst of being clever, Drewitt; it makes a man so devilishly sharp and
disagreeable: but, now, do look at Pryor; there was not so much
difference between us twenty years ago, and yet——”
“There is all the difference now—is that what you would say?” asked
Maxwell. “If it be, perhaps there has been all the difference in the
twenty years too; in how the twenty years has been passed. You have
drunk hard, I have worked hard, while he has been addressing an
attentive court or lounging in an easy-chair. It is the pace that kills,
Waller, more than years.”
“As for pace,” muttered Mr. Waller, but a dangerous look in Maxwell’s
face stopped him.
“We can but live,” said the latter, hastily; “if we grow old soon, we
have lived much, that is all any one can make of the question; and yet,”
he went on, “I think it must be a fine thing for a man in middle age to
find himself free to begin the whole drama of existence over again. Free
to settle, free to choose, free to reside in a great town; and yet,
also, free to buy a place like this and keep it for a kind of dessert to
the dinner of the year. You will buy it?” he added, turning to Mr.
Pryor. “Can you resist?—can you look upon Durrow and yet flee from such
temptation?”
“I cannot,” answered Mr. Pryor: “spite of right of way, and private
stills and smugglers, and evicted tenants, and holy wells, I must have
Durrow.”
“And we will get a jolly lot of fellows together, and come over and have
such capital sport,” finished Mr. Gyton, who had kept silence for an
unusual time.
“Thank you, Frank, you are very kind,” replied his uncle.
“And you might get my mother to matronize halfa-dozen girls; it would be
such a lark,” went on Mr. Gyton; “dancing and boating, and riding and
driving.”
“No fear of the rents of Durrow being spent off the soil,” said Mr.
Pryor, “if Frank’s programme were carried out. I should spend as much in
a couple of months as Durrow would return in a year.”
“First-rate for Connemara,” answered Maxwell.
“I will write to my mother to-night,” persisted Mr. Gyton, “and give her
a description of Durrow. It is the very place she would delight in. Let
me see, how can I describe it? Help my imagination, Mr. Drewitt.”
“Your imagination!” repeated Maxwell; “gracious heaven! there is no
imagination about the matter; it is all fact, from beginning to end.
There are the rocks, and the Atlantic, and the islands; and Durrow
stands, say a hundred feet above the sea, and the ground is level from
the house to the very edge of the cliff, which goes sheer down to the
shore. There are no trees to speak of, no shrubs, no fields; it is all
rock and mountain, and bog and morass. It is a place to make your teeth
chatter in the winter-time; but in the summer—you see for yourself,
young gentleman, what it is like now.”
“Cannot you buy the place at once, and let us all spend August here?”
asked Mr. Gyton, with enthusiasm.
“I am afraid not,” said Mr. Pryor, with a smile; “but I dare say I can
have it all ready for your mother by the spring.”
“And if you want a good fellow to manage your property and to reside in
the house while you are away, let me recommend you a deserving man. His
name is Connor; and he has been overseer at the marble quarries for
sixteen or seventeen years past.”
“What—Ryan’s brother-in-law!” exclaimed Mr. Waller, with some surprise.
“Even so; do you know anything against Connor?” demanded Maxwell, facing
sharp round on the last speaker.
“No; only you remember that you thought—that is—that Ryan himself—”
“Ryan himself is not Connor,” interrupted Maxwell; “and Mrs. Connor is a
very worthy person.”
“And pretty too,” added Mr. Waller “though she is not so young as she
used to be. By Gad! Geoffry, that was a girl! If she had been more
thoroughbred she might have married a duke. Faith, I thought she stayed
single so long waiting for some travelling prince to pick her up and
carry her off with him. She must have been thirty before she took on
with Connor; eh Drewitt?”
“I am not the parish clerk, sir,” answered Maxwell, hotly. “I do not
keep a register of births in my head;” and with this civil speech the
owner of the Headlands marched off to the edge of the cliff, where he
flung himself down on the grass, and with one hand supporting his head,
looked away and away over the sea across which white sails were glancing
in the sunshine.
“What a damnable temper Drewitt has!” remarked Mr. Waller. “I am sure it
is just wearing his body out,” and the trio turned into the house and
walked through the empty rooms, and looked at all possible views, from
all possible windows, discussing furniture and papers, and carpets and
window-curtains the while.
After a time Mr. Pryor made his escape, and rejoined his host, and the
two lay on the grass, near the edge of the cliff, talking about
Duranmore, and Kincorth and Durrow, and Ireland and England, for nearly
an hour.
“There is another thing,” said Maxwell, at last; “the last proprietor,
Mr. Carford, was a Roman Catholic, and almost supported the priest of
Durrow, besides paying tithes. Will you follow suit? I know that to
English ears such advice must sound absurd; but, after all, the few
things I have mentioned will not amount to a hundred a-year, and you
will have five hundred a-year back in comfort. You cannot civilize a
country in a day. You must give savages beads, and rum, and
looking-glasses, if you take their land from them. They cannot
understand the substance, so you must let them have the sham. I should
like to come back to life in a hundred years’ time, say about 1950, and
see Ireland then. Will there be butchers’ shops in a place like
Duranmore, where the poor people will buy scraps for their Sunday’s
dinner, as the Londoners do on Saturday night? Will yellow meal be a
tradition, and the cup of tea an institution? Will the people wash
themselves, and the women wear their flannel petticoats under their
dresses instead of round their necks? Will the bare feet be covered?
Will the children drop off their rags some night, and put on clean
cotton frocks, like English children, when they get up in the morning?
Will they comb their hair, and scrub their faces, and eat with a knife
and fork? Will the men who drive the sheep into Ballinasloe fair ever
know by experience what number of joints there are in one? Will they
ever have wooden floors? and if they have, will they keep them clean? I
wonder, Mr. Pryor, I wonder! And yet,” added Maxwell, “if that day ever
do come, Ireland will he Ireland no longer, but only a more picturesque
England—a Cumberland, in fact, across the channel.”
“On the whole, perhaps, you would not care to come back after the
hundred years,” suggested Mr. Pryor.
“Yes, I should. I should like to have my land then, and to be able to
sell it at the 1950 market price. A hundred years!—where shall we be
then? where shall we be?”
“Certainly not on the top of Durrow Cliff, talking about Ireland,”
answered Mr. Pryor, gravely. There was something about the fierce tone
of Maxwell’s question which quivered through every nerve in his body.
“Is he afraid of death?” marvelled the barrister, and even while he was
marvelling, Maxwell spoke again.
“I can remember,” he said, “when I was a boy coming across here with my
father, and walking over the very spot where we are now talking, hand in
hand with him. It was just such another day as this, warm and bright and
clear; there were vessels coming and going; the sea was blue and calm;
the fishermen were drying their nets in the sun. Well, the years have
passed since then—passed like days. I have been lying here thinking how
short a day life is after all, and wishing that we could endure through
the centuries like the mountains, or the ocean yonder.”
“It would be very sad if we could, I think,” answered Mr. Pryor.
“Do you really mean what you say? But we are so differently constituted
that one man’s meat is literally another man’s poison. To me it has
always seemed that life is so short, while there is so much to be done
in the world.”
“Ay! but by successive gangs of labourers,” replied Mr. Pryor.
“Shall we go?” asked Mr. Maxwell Drewitt, hastily springing to his feet.
“Have you seen enough of Burrow? Shall we call at Kincorth as we return,
and ask how my uncle is to-day?”
“I should like to call on Mr. Drewitt,” said the other. “The last time I
saw him he was lying on Doctor Sheen’s bed, with his pretty young wife
nursing him. I suppose twenty years has changed them both.”
“It has changed everybody excepting you, Geoffry,” exclaimed Mr. Waller,
who heard the last words. “I think you must be one of the immortals.”
“It has changed me, Harry,” was the reply, spoken sadly, though with a
smile. “Twenty years lie behind instead of before me; that is all the
difference; but, after all, that difference is considerable.”
It was a long way from Durrow to Kincorth—ten Irish miles to ride,
though probably not more than four, had the road followed the flight of
the crow.
“But what road in Connemara ever did follow the flight of the crow?”
demanded Mr. Waller; whereupon Maxwell asked what engineer could bridge
the bays, and make a way through the rocks and precipices.
“Besides,” added Mr. Gyton, “to a man not pressed for time, the windings
in and out are pretty and picturesque: but only fancy, uncle,” he said,
turning to Mr. Pryor, “how one would curse these curves and turnings if
one were riding for one’s life, or for a doctor.”
Maxwell Drewitt seemed impressed with this idea. “I never thought of
that before,” he observed; “but then, I suppose, no man ever did ride
for his life through Connemara. It would be all foot-work over the
hills.”
And yet when they rounded the base of another mountain, as they turned
another corner sharply, Maxwell pulled up.
“I cannot get that notion of yours out of my head,” he said, noticing
that the others pulled up also. “Riding for one’s life—what a strange
fancy!”
“I tell you what is a strange fancy to my mind, Drewitt—going to a sick
man’s house with six horses and two servants, like a troop of dragoons,”
exclaimed Mr. Waller.
“We need not ride up to the hall-door,” answered Maxwell; while Mr.
Pryor said—
“Well thought of, Waller; we might have had enough sense for that
ourselves.”
“But we had not, you see,” summed up Mr. Gyton, and the four rode on
abreast.
“I never pass that old ruin,” said Mr. Waller, pointing to a tower and
some walls belonging to an ancient castle lying back among the hills,
“but I think of Murphy. You remember Murphy, don’t you, Drewitt, that
used to be with Sheen?”
“I remember some fellow of that name, but what the devil had he to do
with Castle Cronach?”
“Why, there was a squireen lived at that house in the hollow, where the
honeysuckles are growing, and he had a wife who used to drink
tremendously—spent every farthing on whiskey, and sold everything she
could lay her hands on to get more. The poor fellow was almost at his
wits’ end what to do about it (she did drive him to America in the long
run), and so he went to Murphy for advice in the matter.
“‘Could the doctor give him nothing?’
“‘Is it poison you need?’ said Murphy; ‘because if it is, say so like a
man.’
“‘Of course it was not poison he wanted, but only some trifle to cure
her of drinking. Could Mr. Murphy not mix her up something?’
“‘If we could mix up anything to cure that disorder,’ says Murphy, ‘we
should be made men: but I tell you what, take home a gallon of whiskey,
and let her drink as much as she likes, and I will be round with you
before night.’
“It was in the summer-time, but not moonlight, and when the woman was
thoroughly drunk, Murphy and the husband carried her down into the
vaults of that old castle and laid her down on some boards till she
should come to.”
“I suppose she never ‘came to?’” suggested Mr. Gyton.
“Didn’t she, though? but she had a good sleep first, and when she woke
about twelve o’clock she began calling out and asking where she was.
“‘Well, you are in the vaults underneath Eversbeg Abbey, ma’am,’ Murphy
says.
“‘And how long have I been here?’ she inquired.
“‘A matter of ten or twelve months,’ he answered.
“‘Then I’m dead, in course?’ she says.
“‘As a doornail,’ wound up Murphy.
“‘And are you dead too?’
“‘Yes, ma’am.’
“‘And how long have you been here?’
“‘Somewhere about five years,’ he said.
“‘Then we are all dead?’
“‘Yes.’
“She sat down on the floor and thought the matter out a bit. Murphy said
he could not imagine what she would say next, and was just trying to
fancy, when she began—
“‘You must know the ways of his country a good deal better than me.
Where can you get a drop of good whiskey now, reasonable?’
“‘That floored me,’ Murphy finished. ‘Squire,’ said he, ‘you’d better
take your wife home; if she thinks there are whiskey-shops in Hades, it
is of no use trying to frighten her with death. Take her home and let
her live.’
“And he let her live; but she ruined him and died a beggar in Spanish
Place, in Galway.”
“I wonder what has become of Murphy?” said Maxwell, while they rode,
with loose bridles, at a slinging trot over the hard Connemara roads,
neck and neck together, hoofs keeping time, all four abreast; the
Irishmen with their feet well in their stirrups, riding only on the
snaffle, bending a little over their horses’ manes; the Englishmen
sitting more stiffly and more erect in their saddles, with only their
toes in the irons, holding both bridles equally in their hands.
There is not much in these things perhaps, but there is something, and
the grooms riding behind remarked the difference, as all Irish people
do.
“Murphy is, I hear, doing very well indeed, in London,” answered Mr.
Waller. “He was a clever fellow, a man who loved you for your ailments,
who adored a complicated case, who—”
“Murphy!” repeated Mr. Gyton; “Murphy! a Mr. Murphy was telegraphed for
once when my father met with an accident at Tunbridge Wells—an awful
curiosity—he attended him afterwards in London. I remember the man
perfectly. A long, loose fellow, with rusty hair and greenish-grey eyes,
and an astonishing brogue. Is it likely to have been the same?” he
asked, turning towards Mr. Waller.
“Had he tremendous legs and no body to speak of, arms like flails, and a
habit of turning his side to you when he spoke?”
“Yes; and there was no one place where his clothes seemed to fit him. He
was all joints, too, and he used to turn up his coat-cuffs and the
wristbands of his shirt before he felt my father’s pulse. I remember
tooling him over to the station one morning, and he kept me in screams
all the way. He used to take people’s legs off ‘In the name of God.’ We
never ceased laughing from the time he came into the house till he went
out of it. He told us lots of stories about the notions of the Irish
concerning physic—how they considered doctors liked red-haired men the
best for ‘cutting up’—how they thought rhubarb was a decoction of dead
bodies—how they believed fever came up the road in a ‘swirl’ of dust,
and entered the house where it was destined to prove fatal like a
visible simoom—how they believed in ‘possessions’—how he was told of a
spirit who threw a bad man down stairs and broke his arm, and then
called out to him, ‘I have not done with you yet.’ ‘And they went on to
recount,’ added Mr. Murphy, ‘how the spirit twisted his head round on
his shoulders, and how, for the future, whenever he walked forward, the
back of his head came first. That was a case I should like to have
attended,’ he finished. ‘I candidly confess I should.’”
“It must have been our Murphy,” said Mr. Waller; “there could not be two
of the same kind of the same name.”
“This man was born in Roscommon, wherever that may be; for I remember
him telling me the morning I went over with him to the station, that
when the examiners were asking him for a certificate of baptism, he
said—
“‘And, my God, gentlemen, do you know so little about Ireland in England
as to ask a man from the County Roscommon for a certificate of his
birth? I have heard my mother, and a decent old woman she was too as
ever brought up a family on potatoes and buttermilk, say I was born the
day Widow O’Flynn’s cow was lost in the bog, and that is all the
information I can give you on the subject.’”
“What is he, surgeon, or physician, or what?” inquired Mr. Pryor.
“Surgeon,” answered Mr. Gyton. “My mother asked him something about it,
and he said, ‘If you want a leg or an arm taken off I shall be most
happy to oblige you, ma’am; but pills and potions are out of my line
altogether.’ I had enough of physic in Connaught to last me my lifetime,
and I prescribe for nobody. Operative surgery, ma’am, is enough for me;
“_Satis supraque;_” which being freely translated, for I won’t insult a
lady of your position by supposing you understand Latin, means, ‘Lashins
and Lavins.’”
“How the devil,” demanded Maxwell Drewitt, “does such a fellow contrive
to make his way into any respectable house?”
Mr. Gyton looked at him in surprise.
“There is nothing to prevent Mr. Murphy entering any house in England,”
he answered, a little stiffly. “Perhaps the Irish are more exclusive. He
stands very well in his profession; has a very good house in one of the
West-end squares; and though he is eccentric, he is not more eccentric
than many of our first-rate men have been.”
“John Hunter, for instance, was not merely eccentric, but vulgar,”
chimed in Mr. Pryor.
“Well, Murphy was never vulgar,” said Mr. Gyton. “He never said a word
to which you could have taken exception, and then he always brought such
a cheerful face with him that he was half the cure himself.”
“Was that the person who was Dr. Sheen’s assistant at the time of the
Duranmore election?” asked Mr. Pryor, looking towards Maxwell Drewitt.
“The same; a fellow without a second coat to his back, and possessed of
no one single talent except impudence,” was the reply.
“He must have put out his capital to great advantage, then,” said the
barrister dryly, “for it to have produced such results.”
“He married well,” explained Mr. Gyton; “he married a rich old maid, who
was, I believe, the first paying patient he ever had in London, and that
gave him a lift. Anyhow,” added Mr. Gyton, “he is a rising man now.”
They had been walking their horses up a steep hill during the latter
part of this conversation, but as the young Englishman concluded his
sentence they reached the top and saw Duranmore lying in the hollow
below them. Duranmore and the road branching off to Kincorth!
“I wonder how we shall find my uncle to-day,” said Maxwell, looking at
the woods in which the house lay sheltered; “perhaps if Mr. Murphy were
here now he could cure him.”
“Is Doctor Sheen not able to do so then?” inquired Mr. Pryor.
“It would seem not,” was the answer, “for he grows worse rather than
better,” and Maxwell Drewitt, after they got to the foot of the hill,
gave his bridle a shake, and the rest taking the hint touched their
horses lightly with whip and spur, and followed him at a hand gallop
along the shore road to the entrance-gates of Kincorth.
CHAPTER XX.
A Little Leap.
A man may be very nearly ruined and yet make few signs: Mr. Drewitt was
close on the edge of the precipice, but still he uttered no cry. To have
ridden through the gates, to have passed the porter’s lodge, to have
reined in your horse and alighted at the beginning of the avenue, and to
have walked beneath those over-arching trees up to the house, no person
could have imagined the end so nigh at hand.
And yet Kincorth had virtually passed away from Archibald Drewitt and
his family. He was only now waiting for the end—only—ah, me!
He was growing old, his health was broken, his hopes were gone, but
still at times the cheery buoyant spirit of old would return to inspire
him with fresh courage.
“When the boys grow up they will see to things,” he would mutter to
himself. “Brian will be a great man yet, and Harold, God bless the boy,
he may rise to anything he likes.”
So with ruin only waiting without to enter, involved beyond all hope of
extrication, swamped with debt, harassed with duns, Archibald Drewitt
still clung to the delusion that Kincorth would never pass away from
him—that something would still turn up, that his creditors would give
him time, that his sons would save the property, and do as well for
themselves as Maxwell Drewitt had done for himself.
“You must make haste and be a man, Harold,” he was wont to say to his
youngest born, and Harold would reply—
“I am a man now, father, what would you have me do?”
Over the broad avenue the trees bent their long branches; across the
drive their arms met and intertwined. The place was lovelier than ever,
for the timber had grown and grown during the twenty years, and the
sunbeams had to steal their way through closer tracery of leaf and twig
and bough to the grass beneath. The shrubs grew luxuriantly, the flowers
were bright under the summer sky; the house itself looked gay and
cheerful, with every window reflecting back the afternoon sunshine, and
Maxwell Drewitt, as he walked up the ascent, felt already the pride of a
possessor, and pointed out the beauties of Kincorth with a certain
triumph which was intelligible enough, and sad enough, to Geoffry Pryor.
“You will be merciful, I hope,” he said in a low tone aside to Maxwell
Drewitt, “in the hour of your strength.”
“Have I not said?” was the reply, and they all passed on together.
In an arm-chair placed on the lawn before the house, an old grey-haired
man was seated so busily engaged in reading the newspaper that he took
no heed of the approaching strangers.
“Is that your uncle, Mr. Drewitt?” inquired Mr. Pryor. “Can that be he?”
“That is he,” Maxwell answered. “Twenty years have done their work with
him, have they not?”
Had they not indeed? Feeble, bent, emaciated, but still with the same
old grace of manner, with the same frank heartiness as had won his young
wife’s heart and kept her love through all those years fresh and green
as ever, Archibald Drewitt rose to meet his visitors.
“You will scarcely recollect me, sir,” said Geoffry Pryor, holding out
his hand, which the old man took cordially.
“I do not recollect you,” he answered, “but you are welcome, whoever you
may be.”
“It is Mr. Pryor, uncle,” said Maxwell, “Mr. Pryor, who stood for
Duranmore long ago; don’t you remember?”
“Yes, yes,” exclaimed Mr. Drewitt. “Yes, yes, you are coming over to buy
Durrow, I hear: but have a care, sir, have a care. Ireland is not what
it used to be. The old families are ruined, and the fresh owners are not
gentlemen, and the people have acquired new-fangled notions, and the
breed of horses is deteriorating, and our best tenants are gone to
America. Ah! well, it was God’s will I suppose, and we ought not to
grumble; but an old man finds such changes hard to bear. Won’t you come
in, Mr. Pryor? Maxwell, show Mr. Pryor the way.”
But Geoffry Pryor declined Maxwell’s guidance, and remained behind with
Mr. Drewitt, who walked feebly towards the house.
“I am not so young as I used to be,” he remarked, “and the famine was a
terrible affliction to us owners of property as well as to the poor. I
know it aged me a dozen years,” he said, taking Mr. Pryor’s proffered
arm and leaning on it as he walked. “And so you are the young fellow who
gave us so much trouble twenty years ago? Ah! the last election was a
tame affair—there are no elections now like what there used to be.”
They were by this time in the drawing-room, and Mr. Pryor left his
companion for a moment while he spoke to Mrs. Drewitt.
Would he have recognized her? Certainly not; and looking at her hair,
which had threads of grey in it; at her eyes, which were not so bright
as they had been; at her hands, which were plump no longer, but thin and
worn; at her face, which was wrinkled and altered—Mr. Pryor turned
coward for the moment, and wished he had never come back to Duranmore to
see such changes as these.
But there were other changes, and not disagreeable ones either: there
were the boys, unborn when he stood for Duranmore, tall, strong, and
handsome; and there was Geraldine! I had better say at once that Mr.
Pryor fell in love with the girl on the spot, and so save myself any
lengthened description of his state of mind.
“Is not she pretty, uncle?” asked Mr. Gyton, the first opportunity he
found of putting the question. “Is not she pretty?”
“Pretty!” echoed Mr. Pryor; “she is perfection.” And so I think
Geraldine was; perfect in every womanly grace, in every womanly beauty,
yet not so handsome as Harold, who never left Maxwell’s side for a
moment, but stood beside his chair, talking to him, laughing with him,
and evidently longing for the invitation which his cousin at last gave.
“You will come back with us to dinner? You can ride Trumpeter, and
Dickson shall walk.”
“I have got my own horse, thank you,” returned the young king, with a
grand air of proprietorship. “I can have the saddle put on Madcap in
five minutes.”
“What!” exclaimed Mr. Maxwell Drewitt; “do you ride Madcap now?”
“Yes, my father says he is never likely to want her again. I say Max,”
and here the boy lowered his voice to a whisper, “do you think he is so
very bad?”
“Not a bit of it. His life is good enough for twenty years yet. If you
are coming with us,” he added in a louder tone, “you had better tell
them to bring round your horse. We did not know how ill you might be,
sir” (this to his uncle), “and so left our nags at the lodge.”
“I am better to-day, thank God,” answered Mr. Drewitt, “much better. I
have been ill, but it is nothing to signify, nothing.”
“I think, Harold, you ought not to go down to the Headlands this
evening,” said Mrs. Drewitt, gently, as the boy passed her on his way
out to the stables, “and I hope you will not in any case ride that
hunter.”
“Pooh! Agnes,” exclaimed her husband, “what can that signify? Harold
could ride any horse I ever saw, and the exercise will do him good.”
“But he will be out so late,” urged Mrs. Drewitt.
“You cannot get all boys to come home like young chickens at sundown,”
said Maxwell, scornfully. “Go and get your horse, Harold. I am sure your
mother is too wise a woman to wish to keep both her sons tied to her
apron-strings.”
But still Harold hesitated.
“There is no danger, my dear, indeed there is not,” said Mr. Drewitt;
and then his wife added, “You may go, Harold,” but she spoke the words
with a sigh.
“Are you not coming with us too?” asked Mr. Pryor, addressing the elder
brother.
“I have not been asked,” was the reply.
“But your cousin surely——”
“Does not want me,” interrupted Brian, and Mr. Pryor was silenced.
“You will come and dine with us?” said Mr. Drewitt to his visitor,
holding Mr. Pryor’s hand almost affectionately in his own. “Agnes, my
dear, these gentlemen will fix a day. It had best be soon, before I have
another attack. You will see to it, Maxwell; you will let us know?”
“Yes, sir, I will let you know,” answered Maxwell; and then he muttered
something about not thinking it had been so late, and that Lady Emmeline
would be expecting them, as an excuse for hastening their departure.
“I will see you to your horses,” said Brian, gravely, taking up his hat;
and while Harold went cantering off over the grass, the elder brother
walked down the drive, talking to Mr. Pryor as he went.
As a matter of habit he felt the horses’ girths, as a matter of habit
also he patted the horses’ necks, as a matter of courtesy he waited till
each man was in his saddle, till Harold had joined the party and was
expatiating in the most boastful manner concerning the fine points of
the young mare he was riding; then Brian laid his hand on Maxwell’s rein
and detained him for a moment.
“Well, Master Brian, and what can I do for you?” asked Maxwell, with a
sneer.
“I want to know, sir,” and Brian’s hold of the rein grew tighter; “I
want to know how you dare speak to my mother as you do.”
“You are ruffling up your feathers early, young gentleman,” retorted his
cousin.
“Birds who have feathers have sometimes also spurs,” was the reply.
“When a bird’s spurs are too sharp to serve our purpose, we cut them,”
answered Maxwell. “Let me pass, boy,” he added, angrily. “Let me rejoin
my guests.”
“One second,” said Brian; but Maxwell wrenched his hand off the bridle,
and striking his horse with his heel, for he wore no spurs, galloped on
to overtake his companions.
“It does not matter now,” Brian said to himself, as he stood looking
after his cousin; “I can wait.”
And you had but to see Brian Drewitt to feel sure he could wait from
boyhood to manhood—from youth to age, till the hour of his revenge came.
Meantime Harold was leading the way towards Eversbeg. He could scarcely
hold the chesnut to any reasonable pace, and, even as it was, the brute
went dancing and curvetting about the road like a mad thing; and as she
danced and kicked and curvetted, Harold turned round in his saddle, and
laughed back at his companions for very pride and happiness.
“He rides splendidly,” said Mr. Gyton, whose equestrian performances
were as nothing compared with those of this wild Irish lad.
“So he may,” answered Maxwell; “he rode from the time he walked or
thereabouts, I think. I can remember seeing Harold riding his father’s
hunters barebacked round the field when he was so little, a man had to
lift him up to his seat. The boy never knew fear. I have found him many
a time among the horses’ feet in the stable, hugging them, and they
never put a hoof on him. That is what makes a man a rider. I’ll be bound
now Harold could manage that devil just as well without saddle or
stirrup, with nothing on her but a surcingle, and nothing in her mouth
but a common bit. Harold!” he shouted, and Harold rode back, while the
mare kicked her best and laid her ears flat on her neck because he would
not give her her head and let her make for Kincorth as though she were
running a race.
“Would you take the mare over that hedge and fence at the Headlands
barebacked?”
For a moment the boy looked grave. He held the reins in one hand while
he put the other behind him on the saddle, and so leaned round towards
his cousin.
“It’s a stiff leap, Max,” he said.
“I know that. Do you think she is able for it? I should like to show
those gentlemen what an Irish horse can do.”
“I should not like anything to happen to her, you know,” remarked
Harold. “I only got her yesterday.”
“If anything happens to her you shall have Trumpeter,” said his cousin.
“It is not that—it is not that,” the boy said hesitatingly; “but I think
she can do it, Max, don’t you?” and he brightened up.
“Do it—of course she can; but will you do it barebacked?”
“If Madcap can go over it, I can,” was the answer; but Geoffry Pryor
broke in—
“I would not see you do it for any money if it be that ditch and hedge
beyond the gardens; don’t attempt it, Harold. I am sure you could stick
on, and I am sure the mare could take the leap; but still—”
“Still what?” demanded Harold.
“Accidents will happen,” was the reply, and the pair looked at each
other for a moment, Harold manifestly wavering.
“So they may riding along the Queen’s highway,” said Maxwell.
“Do you really wish him to take such a leap?” Mr. Pryor inquired; and
Maxwell answered coolly, “I do not like to see a boy a milksop.”
“I’m not a milksop, at any rate,” burst out Harold; “we’ll show them how
we can take our fences, won’t we, old girl?” and the boy patted the
mare’s neck, which she arched as consciously and proudly as though she
knew what her rider said.
“Isn’t she a beauty—isn’t she, now?” Harold said, addressing Mr. Gyton.
“My father was offered two hundred and fifty guineas for her the other
day and would not take it. Think of that.”
“Have you found a gold mine anywhere about Kincorth?” asked Maxwell,
sharply.
“Not that I know of; why do you ask?”
“I thought you must have done, when your father could refuse a sum like
that for a horse.”
“He said he would rather I had her,” answered the lad; but the colour
came into his cheeks, and unless Geoffry Pryor were greatly mistaken,
the tears into his eyes, as he pulled Madcap to one side, and let
Maxwell get on in front.
“I think the Irish are the strangest sort of people under the sun,”
decided the lawyer; and he worked away at this puzzle of race and
constitution and temperament till they arrived at the Headlands.
“Are you not going to see the leap?” asked Maxwell Drewitt, noticing
that he turned to enter the house.
“Thank you, no,” he replied; “if anything happened to the boy, I could
never look his mother in the face again.”
“Nonsense!” retorted Maxwell, “nothing can or will happen; he was only
afraid of the mare; and if she should make a mess of it, without saddle
or stirrups he is safe enough. Come along; he will take the fence anyhow
now, and you may as well be there to see fair play.”
In his heart Geoffry Pryor wanted to see that leap taken; he wished to
know if the boy would flinch—if his heart would fail.
This problem of weakness and strength, of timidity and courage,
interested him immensely; and accordingly he suffered himself to be
persuaded, and walked down with Maxwell to the field, where Harold was
already cantering the mare up and down to quiet her for the leap.
I wish I could bring that summer scene before you, my reader, as Geoffry
Pryor often recalled it to himself when he was back in London hard at
work among his briefs.
There was the smooth, soft turf; there was the calm blue bay; there was
the village of Eversbeg and the evening sun shining down upon it; there
were the fast-growing trees Maxwell had planted, standing still and
quiet in the rich, warm light; there was the house, covered with
climbers and creepers, with ivy and honeysuckle, with roses and myrtles;
there were the gardens, well sheltered from the north and east; and for
foreground there was the hedge and ditch, over which Master Harold
Drewitt purposed taking his new possession.
“Had not you better think twice about it, Harold?” asked Mr. Pryor,
laying his hand kindly on the boy’s shoulder.
“We Irish,” said the lad, “leap twice before we think once,” and he
flung himself out of the saddle and began to unbuckle the girths.
“Bring a cloth,” Maxwell ordered; but Harold said, “No, I would rather
have her without. Never mind, Dickson.”
Then he took off his coat and waistcoat, and tossed his cap down beside
them.
“Give me a hand, Max,” he said, and next minute was on Madcap’s back.
“Now, madam, show your breeding,” and he went at the leap full swing.
Anything more perfect than the boy’s riding Mr. Pryor had never seen. He
sat that horse as though he were part of her, and yet there was no
stiffness, no tightening of the bridle, no gripping of her sides with
his knees: as easily as a bird on the wing goes through the air Harold
flew past on Madcap; and as he neared the leap, Mr. Pryor involuntarily
held his breath.
“Damn her!” said Maxwell Drewitt, heartily, for the mare refused the
fence.
Once again Harold put her at it, and once again she swerved.
“Give me your whip, Max,” he cried, while Mr. Pryor implored him to give
in.
“We see what you can do,” he went on, “and we will take what she can do
for granted.”
“I must take her over now,” Harold answered.
“Why must you?” asked Mr. Pryor; but the boy was out of hearing.
“Because she would never be worth a curse again if he let her master him
once,” Maxwell explained.
On they came for the third time, the sun shining on the chesnut’s glossy
coat, and Harold’s black hair streaming in the wind caused by his own
rapid passage through the air. On they came, the mare with her nostrils
distended—with her eyes like fire—with her tail straight out behind
her—with her hoofs, as she bounded along, scarcely touching the
grass—the boy riding lightly and easily as ever, with his left hand low
on her neck, with his right hand resting on his thigh, while he swept
past the spectators. Then all in a moment he tightened his rein, struck
her smartly with his feet, gave her one blow with the whip, and lifted
her to the leap. The creature rose so high that Mr. Pryor thought she
never could come down again; and as she rose she went, it seemed to him,
straight through the air as though she were flying. Her forefeet were
doubled under her, her hind quarters were stretched out almost on a
level with her body, and she lighted on the grass on the other side the
hedge as safely as though she had been a greyhound.
“I would not see that done again for fifty pounds,” exclaimed Mr. Pryor,
while they walked into the next field, where Harold, dismounted already,
was standing beside the mare.
“Bravo!” said Maxwell, clapping the boy on the back; “but you took too
much out of her, less height would have done.”
“Just try to leap it yourself,” retorted the boy, and Mr. Pryor noticed
that both horse and rider were reeking—that the mare was wet and
trembling, and that the perspiration was standing in beads on Harold’s
forehead.
“Will you take her back over it now?” asked Maxwell, but the lad
answered—
“No, thank you. I never felt afraid before, and I never want to feel
afraid again.”
He slipped his arm through the bridle, and walked Madcap half a dozen
yards from the hedge, when he tossed the reins towards Mr. Waller.
“Take her quick,” he said, and before any one could reach him he threw
up his hands in the air as if to steady himself, and fell all in a heap
on the ground.
“He has more spirit than strength,” remarked Maxwell philosophically,
but he knelt down, and, not without some show of tenderness, lifted the
boy’s head and bade one of his men run in and get some whiskey.
“He will never make old bones,” added the owner of the Headlands, and
there was something in his words and the way he spoke them that
astonished Mr. Pryor.
“Is he fond of the lad?” thought the barrister, and he looked curiously
at his host, who was still kneeling on the sward, and holding Harold’s
head against his breast. “Is he really fond of the lad?” but there was
nothing in Maxwell Drewitt’s expression to favour such a supposition.
He was looking out over the sea, as if he saw something of which Mr.
Pryor knew nothing standing out against the horizon. And with his mind’s
eye he did see something—Harold’s double—his own son.
CHAPTER XXI.
Help.
The negotiations for Durrow went on apace, and still Mr. Pryor remained
at the Headlands, a welcome guest to Lady Emmeline—a guest not so
welcome, perhaps, to her husband. For Mr. Maxwell Drewitt could not be
blind to the fact that the barrister did in some matters join issue with
him; that he belonged rather to the Kincorth party; that he rather
affected the Kincorth interest. “It is Bryan and Geraldine together,”
Maxwell decided, and Maxwell was right. Brian and Geraldine and Mr.
Pryor’s own eyes caused the barrister to suspect that nature had
forgotten an important item when she made Maxwell Drewitt.
“My cousin is totally heartless,” Brian said one morning when he and Mr.
Pryor were walking by a near cut across the hills from Kincorth to
Durrow, “and for that reason I am quite in earnest concerning myself. I
desire to get some employment; to be ready for the evil day when it
comes.”
“What makes you think an evil day is coming?” asked Mr. Pryor.
“There was a person told me,” answered Brian. “Four years ago, Mr.
Pryor, when I was only fifteen. I got a warning. I was told to learn
diligently; to be on my guard against bad company; to keep my eyes open
and my mouth shut; for that Maxwell Drewitt had made up his mind to own
Kincorth, and that I should have to turn out and earn my bread some day.
I am not going to tell you who warned me,” added Brian; “but I took the
advice. I have tried to learn. I have kept my eyes open, and I know
Maxwell means to do us harm if he can.”
“Why should he do you harm?”
“Why? Because, as he says, we have been idle while he has worked;
because we have sat with our hands folded while he has been toiling and
struggling; because my grandfather willed Kincorth away from the elder
brother and left it to his younger son; because my father married and
had children; because he hates us,” finished Brian Drewitt, “as I hate
him.”
Mr. Pryor turned and looked at the boy as he spoke these last words.
There was a something more terrible than any passion could have been in
the stern restraint of Brian’s manner; in the strong curb he seemed to
put on himself—on his words, on his gestures. There was no fury—no
outbreak of rage—no outburst of violent indignation. He spoke of
hate—sullenly, calmly—without a change of colour; without a variation in
his voice.
“Why do you hate him?” inquired Mr. Pryor.
“Because I do. That is not a very civil answer, you will say, and yet it
is the best I can give you. Why I hate him I feel; but I could not
explain what I feel, except that I know he wants to grind me under his
foot as I grind this gravel,” and Brian stamped his heel upon the
ground; “but he shall never have the chance, I swear.”
“But for a young man of property——” argued Mr. Pryor.
“I am not a young man of property,” the youth replied. “Have you really
no idea how we are actually situated? Do not mention it to my mother,
because she thinks that Kincorth is clear, at any rate; but Kincorth is
mortgaged, like everything else. We have not an acre of land that is not
owned by strangers, and I am quite confident if anything were to happen
to my father, and that the mortgagees sold the estates, Maxwell would
buy them all, and then where should we be?”
“Where should you be whoever bought them?” asked his companion. “It
would not matter whether he or Queen Victoria bought them so long as
they were sold.”
“No; only so far as this, that perhaps one could do something with other
people, while one could not with him. For instance, I might be agent to
anybody else, but I would not serve Maxwell. I wish, Mr. Pryor,” added
the boy, for though he looked so manly, he was but nineteen after all;
“I do wish I had known you were going to buy Durrow, for I would have
asked you to give me the agency until I saw how it was going to be with
my poor father.”
“I have promised it to Connor,” said Mr. Pryor, regretfully.
“I know you have, and Maxwell recommended him to you. Mr. Waller told me
that,” went on Bryan; “but I should have suspected it anyhow, for he
knew I wanted something to do, and thought he would be beforehand with
me; but I will make my way in spite of him, if he were ten times as rich
as he is.”
“May I ask you something, Brian; and will you answer my question
honestly? Why is there such bad blood between you and your cousin?”
“I told you before I should never be able to make you understand,” was
the reply. “We have never had a quarrel, and yet we have never been
friends. He does not treat my mother as I like. He is trying to take
Harold from us, and he is a bad man—a bad, heartless man, without a
conscience.”
“How do you make out that he is a bad man? I knew him before you were
born. He was poor then; but he has worked hard since, and earned great
possessions. Is there any crime in that?”
“No; but there is harm in the way he has got rich. You do not like
usurers in England. You do not like people who take advantage of their
neighbours’ necessities. Well, Maxwell is a usurer. He has got a
‘backer,’ I think you call it, in Liverpool or London, or some of those
great towns, where you come from, who lets him have as much capital as
he wants; and then when they make a good hit they share the spoil.
Maxwell got lots of properties into his hands that way during the
famine. Gentlemen were hard up and wanted an advance; then he let the
interest drop behind, and wanted principal, and interest, and compound
interest, just in a day. He never bought Mr. Munks’ place, nor that
enormous estate he has in the Joyce county. He foreclosed on both, or
rather his agent did it for him. He has a man who does all his dirty
work cheap—a lawyer, called Ryan.”
“Surely that is the name of Mrs. Connor’s brother?”
“Yes, he is Mrs. Connor’s brother; but that is nothing against either
Connor or his wife, and you are safe enough in letting Maxwell’s
_protégé_ have the agency; for even if his man were not honest, my
cousin would try no tricks with _you_.”
“Go on—what were you saying about Ryan?”
“He has Ryan under his thumb somehow, and can make him do just what he
pleases. It appears that at one time they were great friends: that at
the time when you stood for Duranmore——”
“I remember a young lawyer who was always with your cousin—a clever,
artful dog I thought him. Is that the Ryan you are talking about?”
“The very same. Ryan had Mr. Waller’s agency for a long time, until, in
fact, he displeased Maxwell somehow or other, and then everything went
wrong with him. He lost his agency and his clients, and finally went as
clerk to a new attorney who came to Duranmore. Whatever happened then I
cannot tell you; but he got into some trouble, either through drinking
or want of money, which Maxwell saw him out of. From that time on, Ryan
has been back in business on his own account, and is Maxwell’s
factotum.”
“I am afraid, Brian,” said Mr. Pryor, “that you are a sad gossip.”
“If I am, it is only about one man,” was the answer; “and sometimes I
fancy,” here the lad lowered his voice, “that it is really he who has
got the mortgage over Kincorth, and if it be——”
“If it be—what then?” demanded Mr. Pryor.
“Why the place will not be ours even during my father’s lifetime,”
finished Brian; “let alone afterwards.”
“But supposing—even supposing he have lent money on the property, it
would do him no good to turn you out; it surely would answer his purpose
much better to let you all remain.”
“As dependents on him! thank you, Mr. Pryor. No one belonging to me
shall ever eat his bread, if I have any say in the matter.”
“But would it not be wise to keep on good terms with him? Would it not
be less galling to take an obligation from him than from a stranger?
Your father provided for him. It would be a simple matter of justice if
he were to provide for you.”
“Ay; but my father had the property, remember, that ought to have
belonged to Maxwell’s father; that is the cause of all his ill-will
towards us; and from what I can hear he had nothing but his keep out of
the place, just as we have never had anything that with better
management we ought to have had. He told my mother that he disliked her,
not for herself, but for being the mother of the future owner of
Kincorth. I can remember quite well, about ten years ago, Harold—he was
a little fellow then—saying to him one day in a passion, ‘Go home, go
home, this is not your home,’ and Maxwell made the remark, ‘And it won’t
be yours either, my boy, when I come back.’ No later than Friday last I
spoke to him about letting Harold take that leap on Madcap, and he told
me—I repeat his words, Mr. Pryor—‘to hold my blasted tongue, and not
presume to speak to my betters.’”
“And you——”
“I am waiting, Mr. Pryor.”
There was a long pause while they stood together on the top of the hill
resting. Everything on earth and in heaven looked peaceful and serene.
There were no clouds in the sky, there were no billows on the ocean. You
would have thought that for very sympathy, the heart of man would in
such a place have throbbed quietly through its allotted time, untroubled
by jealousy, undisturbed by passion.
And yet here, of all places in which he had ever set his foot, it seemed
to Mr. Pryor that men’s passions were strongest—that their hate was
fiercest. He had heard such stories of cruelty—of vengeance—of
heartburnings—of envy—of unforgiveness, that had he not heard likewise
histories of patience—of devotion—of constancy—of faithfulness—of
endurance, and of love, he might have thought he was not on earth at
all, but in hell; and now here, with the blue mountains looking calmly
down upon them, with the great sea stretching away for thousands and
thousands of miles at their feet, with the beauties of nature all
around, and a great silence, an intense stillness, pervading the scene,
was this boy nursing up his wrath likewise against a coming day.
“I am waiting,” and Brian’s face never changed, his eye never dropped
under Mr. Pryor’s scrutiny.
“You are thinking,” said the youth, when his companion’s glance at last
came back from the ocean and rested once again on his face, “that I am a
fool; that if Maxwell does not do all I want him to do, it will be a
short shrift and a long sleep with one or other of us; but you are
mistaken. I would not hurt his body. I would not thrash him. I would not
even put a bullet through him; but I would make him feel. There is an
old epigram,” he proceeded, “that I read lately and learned by heart,
because it put me in mind of Maxwell. I wonder if you know it,” and he
repeated:—
“Death threw his dart at Bindon’s heart,
But how was he astounded,
When from the part, as with a start,
The weapon quite rebounded:
‘Ho! ho!’ quoth Death, and drew his breath,
‘My slaughtering arm you mock at;
But here’s a blow shall lay you low,’
And smote him through the pocket.”
“Then your idea is to injure him pecuniarily?”
“If he do not alter his manners to my mother; if he encourage Harold in
drinking, gambling, and all kinds of folly, as he has done hitherto; and
if he vents any more of his temper upon me—yes; because I know that
Maxwell’s only vulnerable point is money.”
“Brian,” began Mr. Pryor, and the lad looked surprised at the change in
his companion’s tone—“Brian, you are laying up great trouble for
yourself. You are preparing an awful curse for your future days. You are
nourishing a viper and hugging it to your breast: when it comes to life,
it will bite you worse than it will ever bite him. Put all these
thoughts and fancies out of your head, boy. At your age the cup should
be sweet, not bitter. Whatever your cousin may have done—whatever he may
be, it is not to you he will have to answer for his misdeeds; but you
will have to answer for yours, Brian; and for sins, too, if you do not
crush this hate out of your heart and turn, before it is too late.”
“What can I do? What would you have me do?”
“I would have you go on your way, and not ever cast your eyes on his——”
“But he will not let me go on my own way. Look here.” And Brian pulled a
couple of letters out of his pocket. “There is an old Quaker who has
been very good to my father. I thought I would write and ask his advice,
and tell him I wanted to work, as the properties were so much involved;
and that if he could find anything to do I would work hard and try to be
worth my salary. Here is his first letter. You see how kind—how
encouraging. Here is his second. Just time enough between, you perceive,
for him to write to Maxwell and get back his answer. You will say I do
not know he wrote to Maxwell or that my cousin said anything about me;
but I am as sure his fingers have spoiled my pie as that I am living.”
“You did not reply to the first letter.”
“No. I was waiting to see how my father would be after that last
attack.”
“It seems strange,” remarked Mr. Pryor.
“No, it does not seem strange to a person who knows Maxwell as I do,”
and Brian folded up the letters again, and put them back in his pocket.
“What makes you want so much to get to England?” asked the barrister,
after a pause.
“Because there is no way in which a man can make money here.”
“Your cousin has made money here. Why not have a turn at some of your
waste lands, and do as well as he has done?”
“He never would have done so well but for his wife; and I would not
marry an old woman. No, not if she was hung with diamonds. Besides, it
is not often Connemara sees an heiress, even if I were inclined to try
my luck.”
“But supposing, now, Kincorth were your own, could you not make a living
out of it?”
“If it were clear of debt?”
“No. Suppose it were mortgaged to close upon its present value, could
you do no better for yourself than your father has done?”
“I would make a try to do better anyhow.”
“Would you work? Would you put your shoulder to the wheel, and cut down
the expenses, and be brave, as your cousin was, disregarding
appearances?”
“Whatever a man could do, that I would do,” was the answer.
“But you are not a man yet,” said Mr. Pryor, with a smile.
“Am I not? I wonder when I shall be one then,” was the reply.
Mr. Pryor stood still—he was looking back through the years and trying
to remember what he was at Brian’s age in the days before he came over
in compliance with the wishes of a certain very wealthy and influential
relative to contest Duranmore.
He had not a care in the world at nineteen. Life was to him fairyland—to
be young was to be happy. He had never had a sorrow in his life, save
about his lessons at school or his examinations at college. He could
look back and see himself as he was then. He could look back at himself,
as though at another person. He could see the lad with his fair
hair—with his happy, frank face—with his little airs of dandyism—with
his cheerfulness, his hopefulness, his _insouciance_—and contrasting
that picture with this, his heart bled for this poor lad, to whom the
cares of life had come so soon, on whose shoulders the burden of
existence was pressing already so heavily—who had to think for father,
mother, sister, brother, and be tender and careful for all.
Brian’s face was still smooth as a girl’s, but he was a man for all
that—and as a man, Mr. Pryor addressed him.
“My boy,” he said, “I will talk to you now as if you were thirty-nine
instead of nineteen. If you will do all you say, if you will be a good
lad and give up the next ten years of your life to work, putting your
cousin out of your thoughts, and making up your mind to pursue one
certain course irrespective of him and his concerns, I will help you in
this matter. Have you sufficient influence with your father to get him
to give you the management of the estate?”
“I think so, if nobody puts it into his head that I am wanting to take
the whole property from Harold.” And for the first time during the
conversation, Brian’s lip trembled.
“Do you mean to say any one has ever raised such a question?”
“Yes: Maxwell told me once that probably my father would do like the
rest of the Drewitts—cut me out for his favourite son; and he has tried
to make Harold dissatisfied about my being the eldest. But Harold does
not care who has the place as long as he rides the hunters. If he had
been fond of money, or greedy, Maxwell would have made him hate me long
ago.”
Geoffry Pryor was a man who, as a rule, did not swear, but he could not
help uttering an oath then.
“I am that fellow’s guest,” he thought, “but hang me if it is fair or
honest for me to eat his salt now!” And he made up his mind that he
would get pressing letters from London, and return thither as soon as
possible.
“Will you take the matter into consideration, and see if it be possible
for you to assume the reins?” he said.
“If I promise you to drive, I will get the reins somehow,” was the
reply; “only tell me how you mean to help me—only show me how I can save
Kincorth, and give my mother some ease, and keep my father free from
anxiety, and I will work—never fear—I will work.”
“I will advance money to pay off the present mortgage, and be your
creditor myself; and whatever sum, in moderation, you require to work
the estate satisfactorily, you shall have.”
Three times Brian Drewitt made an effort to speak, and three times the
words would not come. Then he held out his hand to his benefactor, and
the tears he could no longer keep back rolled down his cheeks,
separately, singly, one by one.
It was not weeping—it was not excitement, the barrister had never seen
anything like it before, and he was never likely to see anything like it
in the future; for in the hour of his blackest trouble—in the time of
his worst agony—in the day of his deepest remorse—Mr. Pryor never saw
Brian Drewitt’s eyes wet again.
His kindness wrung tears out of them once, but grief could not open
those fountains, which seemed thenceforth dried up for ever.
Brian Drewitt’s wife may have seen him cover his face, and heard him sob
aloud, but I, who can only follow his footsteps to a certain point, know
no more than this, that the only sign of human feeling Geoffry Pryor
ever saw him evince, was when he stood on the heights near Durrow,
grasping his hand as though he held it in a vice, while the big tears
fell from his young eyes, one by one.
END OF VOL. I.
PRINTING OFFICE OF THE PUBLISHER.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
February 1887.
Tauchnitz Edition.
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
● Fixed typos; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.
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