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Title: Maxwell Drewitt, vol. 2 of 2
A novel
Author: Mrs. J. H. Riddell
Release date: August 17, 2026 [eBook #79387]
Language: English
Original publication: Leipzig: B. Tauchnitz, 1866
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79387
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. 2 OF 2 ***
EACH VOLUME SOLD SEPARATELY.
COLLECTION
OF
BRITISH AUTHORS
TAUCHNITZ EDITION.
VOL. 810.
MAXWELL DREWITT BY F. G. TRAFFORD
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. 2.
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. 810.
MAXWELL DREWITT BY F. G. TRAFFORD.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. II.
MAXWELL DREWITT
A NOVEL.
BY
F. G. TRAFFORD,
AUTHOR OF “GEORGE GEITH,” ETC.
_COPYRIGHT EDITION._
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. II.
LEIPZIG
BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ
1866.
_The Right of Translation is reserved._
CONTENTS
OF VOLUME II.
Page
CHAPTER I. Brian’s Difficulties 1
— II. At the Dawning 14
— III. After the Funeral 26
— IV. Farewell 41
— V. The Hour of Success 53
— VI. On the Way to Durrow 68
— VII. Another Difficulty 83
— VIII. Harold in Trouble 95
— IX. An Unfortunate Likeness 113
— X. Hearing is not Believing 132
— XI. Called Home 151
— XII. Geraldine is Satisfied 161
— XIII. Country Gossip 179
— XIV. What met Brian 191
— XV. Madcap’s Last Leap 204
— XVI. After Long Years 216
— XVII. The Beginning of the End 228
— XVIII. Man’s Vengeance 239
— XIX. Through Connemara 254
— XX. Brian’s Repentance 266
— XXI. Sickness unto Death 279
— XXII. Brighter Days 285
Conclusion 300
MAXWELL DREWITT.
CHAPTER I.
Brian’s Difficulties.
Mr. Gyton returned to London with his uncle, greatly to his disgust, for
he was really enamoured of Geraldine Drewitt; “But the idea of staying
on with a blue-book and a rouge-pot without you!” he remarked to Mr.
Pryor.
“Cannot you ride?” asked the barrister.
“Over those winding roads for ever? No. Human nature demands a change.”
“Cannot you fish?”
“No. I cannot live on fried trout, and ham and eggs, and whiskey, in
those districts where fish is plentiful: add to which, that I agree with
Dr. Johnson—was not it?—who said a fishing-rod had a worm at one end and
a fool at the other.”
“Can you not superintend matters at Durrow?”
“Durrow be hanged! We will come over with a party, but till then, Durrow
sees nothing of your humble servant.”
“Can you not cultivate a friendship with Harold Drewitt?”
“Much obliged, but Mr. Harold Drewitt is a young gentleman whom I admire
much more than I like. No, uncle, I return with you to London by the
Kingston and Holyhead packet, if you please.” And Mr. Francis Gyton
locked his portmanteau determinedly.
“When shall we see you in Connemara again?” asked Lady Emmeline, with
her sweetest smile.
“Not until next summer, I fear,” answered Mr. Pryor, and his hostess
looked inconsolable.
“I wish we were going to spend the winter in London,” she said, with a
sigh; and Mrs. Gyton heard of that sigh, and asked her Ladyship to visit
London after Christmas; a visit which Lady Emmeline enjoyed greatly, and
which was most probably the happiest time she ever spent during all the
years that had passed since her marriage with Maxwell Drewitt.
As for the owner of the Headlands, he felt rejoiced exceedingly when Mr.
Pryor took his leave. The visit had not turned out according to his
anticipations.
There were several matters in which he had desired Mr. Pryor’s
co-operation and assistance, but he decided that it would be more
prudent to let those matters wait.
“Twelve months can make no material difference,” argued Mr. Maxwell
Drewitt; “and when he returns, those young people at Kincorth will be
singing to a different tune. And that reminds me I may as well call
round with Ryan, and give him instructions how to proceed.”
But on the road Maxwell met Mr. Ryan coming post haste to him.
“Look here,” said the attorney—by this time a shabby, shuffling man of
close on fifty, who smelt even at the earliest hours in the morning of
whiskey, and who would now as soon have thought of calling his employer
Max, as he would of addressing Lord Marsden as “Bob.”
There had been a time when the pair were very intimate; when they stood
very close together on Fortune’s wheel; but the wheel had gone round
since that, and carried Drewitt up and Ryan down. They were very far
apart now—far as master and man can stand—and though the attorney said
“Look here,” it was not said familiarly, but rather out of the excess of
his own astonishment, with a great anxiety to know how Mr. Drewitt would
receive the contents of the letter he held out for him to read.
Maxwell glanced over it—then he looked at Ryan.
“What the devil is the meaning of this?” he said.
“That there is a fresh hand at the helm,” was the reply. “It is that
young Brian.”
“Damn him!” said Maxwell heartily. “Had not they some clause by which,
if the interest were not paid, they could sell without power of
redemption?”
“Yes, if the interest were demanded; but the interest has not been
demanded lately.”
“And curse you for a fool; why has it not been demanded?”
“By your own order, sir; by your own order, I assure you,” said Ryan.
“You were afraid of exciting Mr. Drewitt’s apprehensions, and
consequently——”
“Mr. Archibald, you mean. I am Mr. Drewitt. I am the eldest son of the
eldest son, remember that, if you please.”
“Mr. Archibald’s apprehensions,” corrected Ryan, “and——”
“You must get to know what this means,” interrupted Maxwell. “You must
go to old Neill, and ascertain all about it.”
“I have been, sir, and Neill is quite in the dark himself. This is the
last transaction he is ever to be engaged in for them. Master Brian
requested him to write to us. Had he seen him first he says he would not
have done it. He refused to give him any further information, and begged
him to send all his father’s papers back to Kincorth.”
“What will be the next move do you expect?” asked Maxwell.
“To pay off the principal.”
“They have got a backer,” muttered Maxwell Drewitt, with a shocking
oath, “and that backer is Geoffry Pryor. Are all the papers likely to go
back, Ryan?” he asked, with a certain significance, which made the other
turn a little pale.
“Neill will not give them up till his costs are paid, and he has a
pretty tidy bill against Mr. Drewitt. He thinks also if he retains the
papers he may get back the business.”
“You keep him up to that idea,” said Maxwell; “and as for this interest,
let them pay it if they can; and the principal too, for that matter,
curse them! That young fool thinks to get the better of me. So much the
worse for him, that is all.”
And Maxwell Drewitt turned on his heel, and retraced his steps towards
the Headlands, swearing to himself as he walked along. It was a new
thing for Mr. Maxwell Drewitt to find himself worsted, and he had been
worsted here.
He thought he had but to step up to Kincorth and take possession, and
behold Kincorth was as far from him as ever.
Farther perhaps—for there was, as Mr. Ryan had said, a fresh hand at the
helm, who was evidently about to follow his cousin’s example and make
the old property valuable.
“He is ploughing, he is digging, he is sowing,” Maxwell remarked to Ryan
about three months afterwards; “where does he get the money?” and Ryan’s
thoughts ran back to a time when he had put the same question to himself
with regard to Maxwell, and wondered if this younger and better Drewitt
would be equally successful with his cousin.
“It is not likely, I suppose,” remarked Mr. Ryan, “that he will do as
well as you have done.”
“No, faith,” was the reply, “he is working in chains. If the young
beggar did not richly deserve all he gets, I should pity any one who was
trying to work under my uncle. I would rather work for the devil. He
would know his own mind; a thing Archibald Drewitt never did.”
And what Maxwell Drewitt said was true.
“But for Kincorth,” wrote Brian to Mr. Pryor, “but for the sake of the
dear old place whose roof I want to keep over the heads of my father and
mother if I am able, I could sometimes almost wish I had rented a
portion of Durrow from you, and tried my luck there. No person can
imagine how hard I find it to carry any point, or to maintain it when
carried. My father thinks I am taking too much on me, and latterly even
Harold has gone over to the enemy. I have no one with me except my
mother and Geraldine. Even my mother thought I ought to defer more to my
father’s opinions, and so I had to tell her about the mortgage. Since
then she has been with me, heart and soul, and indeed but for her I
should often have felt inclined to give up in despair. But I am in the
river now, and I do not mean to sink if I can help it. We have never got
those papers back yet from Mr. Neill. He is keeping them against his
costs, and as the papers cannot be of much importance, I think I shall
not speak again to my father on the subject till you come over. Connor
is doing wonders with Durrow. If the place were his own he could not be
working harder to increase its value. My father’s health does not
improve; on the contrary, those attacks are more frequent. I have been
urging him to go to Dublin, but he seems to think I want him out of the
way. Perhaps when you are next here you may be able to persuade him to
get some first-rate advice. My speaking seems to do more harm than
good.”
And Brian was quite right. The fact of his proposing anything made Mr.
Drewitt object to it.
“It is hard upon you Brinbaldy,” said Wilhelmina, who had married years
and years before Mr. Goldich, a man far below herself in birth and
social position. “It is hard upon you. I can remember the time when my
uncle would not cut down a tree because you might not like it; when he
was going to build a house for you at Analore; when we were not allowed
to have a door open for fear the draught might kill you, precious baby
that you were; and now all the county is talking about how badly you and
he hit it off, and how sorry he is Harold is not the eldest son.”
“If Harold could keep the property together, I am sure I wish he were
the eldest,” sighed Brian.
“Dear, dear! to think about the fuss they made over you once, and to see
how that young jack-a-napes has cut you out now. My husband says, Brian,
that if he were you, he would not let Maxwell and Harold be so much
together. He says Harold will go to the dogs entirely if he is not got
out of this neighbourhood, and that you ought to see to him.”
“Can I do everything?” asked Brian. “Am I Harold’s father? am I the
owner of Kincorth? How is it possible for me to do more than I am doing?
Do you think I am master here?”
“Well, you need not be angry at me for repeating what he says; you need
not snap me up like that for giving you good advice. Go on as you
choose, only don’t blame us if any harm happens to Harold.”
“There is no harm likely to happen to Harold,” Brian would answer; but
spite of this, as often as not he went straight off to his brother, and
entreated him to stay more at home, not to drink so much, not to mix so
freely with the lower orders, but to remember he was a Drewitt, and
being such, to keep himself to himself.
“You want to make me a sneak like yourself,” the boy retorted. “You take
too much on you; you set yourself up a great deal too high; you are not
a bit like what you used to be; you are too much of the master before
your time, as Maxwell says.”
Then calmly, and without a change of colour, Brian damned Maxwell.
“We will be quits some day,” he remarked.
“When you have made your fortune out of mangold-wurzel and your fine new
English sheep, I suppose,” taunted Harold, for the English sheep had
proved failures, and the success of the mangold was problematical.
“I would rather lose money on mangolds than take it out of my wife’s
pocket,” returned Brian; and thus they wrangled on, till oftentimes the
elder brother was sick and tired of his thankless labour—of the work
which was never done, and which, in the opinion of many people, had
better never have been attempted.
It was hard; and this lad of twenty felt the difficulty of his position
keenly. He rose early, he went to bed late, he fought hard for what he
believed to be right. He did his best to fulfil his promise to Mr.
Pryor, and yet the consequence was that, when Mr. Pryor returned to
Connemara, he found Mr. Drewitt dreadfully dissatisfied with his
son—full of complaints, full of grievances.
“It is very hard for a man to be so treated by his own child, Mr.
Pryor,” sobbed the invalid. “There is no use in my making any
suggestions. He is only twenty, and I am sixty-four; yet you would
think, to see the way he gets on, he was sixty-four instead of me. I am
sure I managed my own property for many a year before he was born, but
he ignores me completely—completely, sir.”
“I hope Brian is never disrespectful,” observed the Englishman.
“No; I cannot make any complaint on that score; he only takes his own
way; he will not be guided by me. Now there’s flax. I wanted him to sow
flax; but do you think he would do it? and I ordered the men to plant
some young trees round that piece of land he is reclaiming over by the
Point. You would hardly credit it, I suppose, but he told them to go on
ploughing, and leave the trees till another season. And those trees,
sir! when he comes to lay that down in grass he will have no shelter for
his cattle; not as much as would shade a sheep.”
Mr. Pryor took the old man’s hand kindly in his own—
“My dear Mr. Drewitt,” he began, and his heart was grieved, as he spoke
both for the father and the son. “Will you go back in your own mind
twelve months, and think of your position then—of your position now? I
know, I have good reason for knowing, that had I not advanced money—had
I not, in fact, taken the mortgages on Kincorth myself—the former
mortgagee would have foreclosed ere this; and Brian knew this as well,
and the lad is now working hard to free your property from its
incumbrances. If in all cases he does not follow your advice, I am
confident it is only because he feels that whatever returns money in the
present is of more importance than any improvements calculated to
beautify the property in the future.”
“But trees, Mr. Pryor—trees are always valuable,” persisted Mr. Drewitt.
“Not until they grow,” answered Mr. Pryor, with a smile, and that smile
weakened the force of all he had said previously.
“Of course, I know nothing,” said the old man; “of course, my opinion is
of no weight. I am your debtor, sir, and Brian sees with your eyes—and
I—I might as well be in my coffin.” Having arrived at which sensible
conclusion, Mr. Drewitt burst into tears.
All in vain, Mr. Pryor begged him to consider how hard Brian was
working, how his endeavours had caused several of Mr. Drewitt’s most
troublesome creditors to cease their persecutions, how there was
comparative comfort at Kincorth.
“Good Heavens! Mr. Drewitt, what would you have?” went on the
Englishman. “How can Brian possibly do more for you than he is doing?”
“For himself, Mr. Pryor, you mean,” answered Brian’s parent. “He thinks
the estate will come to him absolutely, when I am dead and gone. It is
not right for a son to act as if his father were already dead and
buried; and I must look out for Harold’s interests—I must see to them.”
“If you would attend to Harold’s interests in the present,” returned Mr.
Pryor, whose patience was by this time exhausted, “and insist that he
should spend his days in some profitable manner, instead of drinking,
hunting, and consorting with all kinds of bad characters, it would be
more to the purpose, I think, than exalting him over the son who is
trying his best to do his duty.”
“There you are,” interrupted Mr. Drewitt, “taking Brian’s side, of
course: it only shows me more and more that I must see to Harold—poor
lad—for who would be on his side if I and his mother were gone?”
“You are right, Mr. Drewitt,” answered Mr. Pryor; “it will be better for
you to see to Harold; it will save much heartburning on the boy’s part
and much misconception on your own. I am sorry you are so ill-advised as
to believe the interests of your two sons can for the present be
separated; but I have done: every man must manage his family and his
affairs for himself, and strangers only do more harm than good by
meddling. I am sure I have,” muttered the lawyer to himself, as he
returned slowly and thoughtfully towards Durrow.
He had not, however, gained the top of the hill above Kincorth before he
heard some one calling—
“Oh! Mr. Pryor, do stop, pray, pray do!” and stopping and looking back
he saw Geraldine flying after him.
“I have run so fast,” she panted. “I want to speak to you. I want to
talk with you so much: may I walk part of the way to Durrow?”
Might she?—part of the way?—when he would have given all Durrow to have
heard her promise to walk with him all through life.
At what age does a man’s heart cease to beat faster, I wonder, when a
pretty girl—that is, the pretty girl of his especial fancy—speaks to
him?
There was a dreadful disparity between them—a quarter of a century, or
thereabouts—which made Geoffry Pryor feel occasionally that he was mad
for thinking of such a thing.
And perhaps he was mad; but he thought about Geraldine, from morning
till night, for all that.
“I do so want to talk to you about Brian,” she began. “Home is so
wretched for him, you can have no idea, Mr. Pryor—none;” and Geraldine
lifted her soft dark eyes to the Englishman’s face to see if he were
attending to what she said. “I sometimes think he would be better away,
for poor papa seems to fancy he can do nothing right—nothing.”
“Your papa is not in a fit state of health to judge accurately on any
subject,” was the reply.
“But it is so miserable for Brian.”
“Brian is doing his duty.”
“It is so hard for him to have to be doing his duty so young,” she
answered.
“He will find it all the easier when he is old,” replied Mr. Pryor; but
there was nothing unkind in his tone, harsh though the truth might be.
“Could he not do his duty any place else?” she asked. “He tells me he
could not; that he must make a struggle to keep Kincorth; that he chose
to go into battle, and that he will not turn his back on the fray: but
still, I thought I would ask you,” finished Geraldine; and the dark eyes
were lifted to his once again, and her soft Irish voice laid an accent
at once pathetic and imploring on the “you.”
“Dear child,” answered Mr. Pryor—she seemed so young and so trustful, so
childlike and so pretty, that he would have liked to gather her in his
arms and carry her to his home, out of the way of sorrow and
trouble—“you would not have your brother a coward; he has elected to
tread a rough road, but he will reach the end some day; and you must
help, and not hinder him on his way.”
“But if you knew, Mr. Pryor; if you knew—papa is so—so jealous of him,
and Harold is the same; and everybody seems against him—every—every
one.”
“What a foolish little girl you are!” he said; and the longing grew
stronger to take such a little bundle of folly to himself for ever. “I
am not against Brian, you are not against Brian, your mamma is not
against Brian, many people are very much for Brian, and think him an
amazingly fine young fellow. Besides, he is doing right, and he will be
glad hereafter to think he did strive to keep a roof over his father’s
head. Although Mr. Drewitt does not thank him for it now, Brian will be
glad to remember at some future day how he stood between his father and
the world.”
“I wish I could be of any use,” she said, with such a wistful look in
her sweet face that Geoffry Pryor would have given more than Durrow to
touch it just once with his lips.
“You can be of use,” he answered; “you can tell Brian, whenever he is
dispirited, not to lose heart: you can tell him that the evil is only
apparent while the good is real: beyond all”—he hesitated for a moment,
and then went on—“you can tell him to be kind to, and patient and
forbearing with his father; patient as he would be if he were lying on
his death-bed; because, dear Geraldine—may I call you Geraldine?”
“Yes, anything,” she replied; “because why?”
“He will not, I fear, have to exercise his patience so long as he
would——”
“Oh! Mr. Pryor—Mr. Pryor!” and the colour faded out of her face and the
tears sprang into her eyes.
“My dear, it is true,” he said; “and that thought will make both you and
him very tender and very good.”
“Papa, my poor, poor papa:” it was all she could say; but she stretched
out her hands towards Mr. Pryor, as though in this dumb fashion she were
asking his help.
“God knows when it may be,” he went on, taking her hands, “but you must
be prepared any day, my poor child—Geraldine.”
“Mamma, mamma!” and Geraldine drew her hands away from him and covered
her face from sight; “mamma, mamma! I think I will go home now,” she
added after a pause. “I think I will go back to him: thank you, Mr.
Pryor;” and she left him crying bitterly.
CHAPTER II.
At the Dawning.
It was easy enough to see from Geraldine’s manner that although she had
never put the precarious state of her father’s health before herself
plainly, yet that she had vaguely dreaded the worst.
As a rule, our fears travel so much faster than actual danger, that
before danger absolutely appears in sight, we are well prepared for its
advent; and there was not one of Mr. Drewitt’s family, unless indeed it
might be Harold, who had not been long prepared for the worst.
Mrs. Drewitt, and Brian and Geraldine had known, for many a day, that he
could never be better. Once admit the idea that improvement is
impossible, and it is not difficult to imagine that the last change of
all is probable.
There are times when it is the truest wisdom to look upon our living as
dying; when it is well to meet the mournful truth boldly and without
disguise; when it is well to buckle on all our charity and forbearance;
to call together love, and duty, and tenderness, so that we may not pain
the departing by opposition which might be imperative for their sakes as
well as our own, were they not already at the mouth of that river where
all human leave-takings must be ended.
“If we had but known how ill he was—If we had only imagined he was
dying!”
“Had we thought he was in danger!”
How often we hear these sentences—happy only if we have never had need
to utter them ourselves!
Geoffry Pryor resolved that Geraldine should have no sorrow of this
kind. It was right for her to understand, and yet the intelligence did
not seem strange to her.
She had feared—and the fear was true—and she went down the hill towards
Kincorth, crying, as I have said, bitterly.
As she went Mr. Pryor began to marvel whether he had done right;
whether, after all, Mr. Drewitt’s case was so hopeless; but then he
remembered many an unfailing symptom which assured him that Kincorth
would soon be in want of a new master.
“And the sooner the better, say I,” was the conclusion he arrived at;
but then his conscience chid him, and he added, “though God knows best.”
As for Harold, nothing could induce him to think badly of his father’s
state.
“You told me more than a year ago he could not be cured, and he is alive
now,” he argued.
“I said I feared he never could be better, and I was right,” answered
Brian.
“Well, he may live for a hundred years yet,” was the reply. “He is
dying—you are dying—I am dying; but although we are dying we are not
near our deaths; at least I hope not,” added Harold; and he went
whistling out of the gates, to seek for more cheerful companionship
abroad.
He did not like all work and no play, not he; give him a good tumbler of
punch, a pretty country-girl for partner, and a jolly good dance up at
Regan’s—a public-house on the way to Cragantlet, where he and a lot of
other young fellows got together—and Kincorth might go hang.
“‘For I’m a fine young Irish gentleman,
All of the ancient school,’”
Master Harold would shout out as he came reeling home, arm-in-arm with
three or four more as drunk as himself; and Brian, who had never taken a
glass too much wine in his life, looked at his brother and asked
helplessly—“What can I do? what can I do?”
He never knew where to find Harold when he wanted him; and one night
when the worst, so long apprehended, had to be faced, Brian, flinging
himself on the fastest thing in the stable—Madcap—knew no more where to
go to look for his brother than if he were the greatest stranger in the
world.
“There is a dance up at Regan’s to-night, sir,” said the man who had
saddled the chesnut; “and if you’ll ride up there, I’ll cut across the
hills to Durrow, for Mr. Maxwell’s dining with Mr. Pryor, and should
Master Harold not be at Regan’s he’ll be there.”
“Which is the nearest road to Regan’s?” Brian asked, stroking the neck
of the chesnut, who was one of the most fidgety brutes a man ever
undertook to ride.
“Straight on till Cragantlet, then take the turn before you come to the
gates, and keep on about half-a-mile. He’s nearly sure to be there; but
if he’s not there, you might call at Dan Glynn’s as you’re comin’ back.”
“I’ll call there as I’m going,” was the reply; for Dan Glynn was an
individual who resided about a mile inland from Duranmore, and who was
reputed to make his living by less honest means than tilling bad land or
sending lean sheep to Ballinasloe fair for the Leinster graziers to buy
and fatten.
It was a dark night for August, but Brian knew every inch of the road,
and so for that matter did the chesnut, who brought him to the Moor Farm
in less than a quarter of an hour.
Brian rode straight up to the door and, without dismounting, rapped for
admittance with the handle of his whip.
There were no lights to be seen, there was no one stirring about the
place; but the youth knew Mr. Glynn’s habits, and not thinking these at
all sufficient reasons for supposing the household had retired to rest,
he jumped to the ground, and with whip and boots made such vigorous
onslaughts on the door as soon brought Mr. Glynn out of his bed to
inquire what the —— he wanted.
“I want my brother, Glynn; do you know where he is?”
“The Lord be good to me, it’s Mister Brian. I beg your pardon, sir, I’m
sure; I thought it was some damned gauger. No, I haven’t seen Masther
Harold, not these two days. Anything wrong, sir? can I be of any help?”
“No, thank you,” answered Brian, who had one foot already in the
stirrup. “I’ll go on to Regan’s.”
“How’s the Masther, Mister Brian?”
“Dying, Glynn,” was the reply that came back through the night, for the
chesnut was galloping down the cross road leading to Duranmore, and
Brian turned round in his saddle to shout out these words.
“Faith, then, an’ if he’s dyin’ it’s not Dan Glynn that’ll go back till
his bed, an’ sleep contint. I’ll follow the boy: shure an’ it’s at a
time like this a man stands in need of company, let him be rich or let
him be poor.” And straightway Mr. Glynn “clapped a saddle” on his black
pony Tom, and cantered away to Cragantlet in pursuit of Brian Drewitt.
Brian, meantime, had gone galloping on under the darkness. He gave the
chesnut her head, and she went tearing away as though she thought he was
riding a steeple-chase. Over those lonely roads, what did it matter?
Among those desolate hills, who cared if he rode like a fiend through
the night? The same country as Maxwell had traversed, while the moon
shone down on lake, and hill, and bog, and ravine, Brian now dashed
through without turning his eyes to right or left. He thought of his
father—of the great mystery—of how hard he had tried to do his duty—and
of how his reward was—
“Harold, Harold,” but never once, “Brian, my son.”
And now his father was going where all his eldest born had tried to
effect could benefit him no more. He would never see Kincorth clear of
debt; never know how disinterested Brian had been; never understand how
this boy-man had worked to free him from anxiety; never comprehend how
wild and reckless, how selfish and thoughtless, his favourite son was
growing up.
“It is best as it is,” thought Brian, bitterly; “better for him to die
than for Harold to break his heart!” And as he thought this, the sound
of music was borne down the lane, and he heard shouting and laughing and
the noise of the dancers’ feet as they were thumped at regular intervals
upon the earthen floor.
“Hold my horse, boy,” he shouted to an urchin standing by the open door,
and the boy ran forward and took the mare, and was about to lead her
round to the yard, when Brian stopped him.
“Don’t put her up,” he said, “I only want to speak a word inside. I
shall be out again in a minute,” and he strode into the house, a
finer-looking man than Harold was ever likely to grow to.
“Is my brother within, Mrs. Regan?” he asked of the landlady, who met
him at the door.
“Mr. Brian! an’ it’s welcome ye are, sir. Your brother? I’m not just
sure, sir; will ye step in and sit down while I see?”
“I’ll see for myself, Mrs. Regan, if you please,” answered Brian, gently
putting the landlady on one side. “You need not be afraid; I’m not going
to scold the boy; nobody is going to be angry with him, only his father
wants to see him before he dies!”
“God save us all, is he that bad, Mr. Brian?” But Brian had already
flung open the kitchen-door and was among the merrymakers.
In a moment every dancer stood still, every voice was hushed, and only
the piper who had been playing Paddy O’Rafferty went on with his tune,
unmindful of the intruder.
“Hush! Jamsie,” said one in his ear, “it is the young master;” and the
piper stopped.
Although it was summer, a tremendous turf-fire blazed on the hearth, and
collected together in the kitchen were a number of pretty young
country-girls, young farmers, labourers, and two or three gentlemen’s
sons, foremost among whom stood Harold.
There were wooden forms round the room for the convenience of the
lookers on; there was whiskey in abundance; one or two dogs lay on the
hearth, and the blind piper was accommodated with a seat in a dark
corner.
“Welcome, Brian!” shouted out Harold, boisterously; “welcome! we’ll get
you a pretty partner and drink your health with three times three.”
“Not to-night, Harold,” answered Brian. “I want you a minute; come
here;” and thinking all the time of the room in which he had left his
father, of the contrast between the one scene and the other, he led his
brother into the passage, and told him he must hurry home.
Like one listening in a dream, Harold heard all Brian said in silence.
In silence also he allowed himself to be taken out of the house into the
darkness, to the spot where the chesnut was standing.
“Don’t spare her, Harold,” said Brian, helping his brother into the
saddle; “lose no time.”
“But you, Brian—but you?” and Harold was on the ground again.
“I’ll walk back,” was the answer. “Hang it! can’t you do as I tell you
for once? Jump up; it is you he wants to see—not me.”
And Brian almost lifted his brother into his seat as he spoke.
“Are you all right now?” he asked.
“Yes, only I wish——”
Brian struck the mare on her flank, and the creature was off through the
darkness, through the night, bearing Harold towards Kincorth.
A mile after leaving Regan’s, Brian met Glynn. “Take my pony, Master
Brian,” he said; “I brought him up here on purpose, and I can send to
Kincorth for him in the morning.”
“And you, Glynn?”
“I can tramp it,” was the answer; and Brian accepted his offer; only as
he rode he wondered how much of all the respect and civility which was
accorded to him he owed to the fact of his being the eldest son, the
next heir.
“It is Harold they like,” he reflected, “and not me.”
But Brian was wrong; the country-people liked Harold much, but they
liked him better. They were fond of the free-mannered impetuous boy, but
they were fonder still of the young gentleman who was doing his best so
soon; who was out with the labourers in the morning, and was overseeing
the men, and planning this and measuring that, from sunrise to sunset.
“Doing his best to keep the ould place from the stranger,” as they
pathetically said.
It was two o’clock before Brian reached home. Glynn’s pony cast a shoe
six miles from Kincorth, and the young man had been obliged to walk him
every step of those six miles home.
“An’ ye never stopped to pick up the shoe, Master Brian,” said Nannie,
who was now stooped with age, and old and withered, regretfully. “I only
hope no harm will come of it. Won’t you eat a bite before you go up to
him? He has been asking for you.”
“For my brother, I suppose you mean,” answered Brian; “is he not with
him?”
“Yes; but it has been Brian, Brian, this last two hours. You look white
like, won’t you have a drop of something?”
“No, Nannie, not now; let me alone, like a good soul. Where is my
mother?”
“Where wud she be but wid him?” was the reply; and Brian ascended the
staircase and entered his father’s room.
There lay Mr. Drewitt, waiting for the final summons; there sat Mrs.
Drewitt, and Harold, and Geraldine, and Doctor Sheen. From side to side
the dying man tossed restlessly. “Brian, Brian!” he cried; and Brian
answered, “I am here.”
“Will you take care of your mother, Brian, and your sister, and—and
Harold?”
“I will, father,” and the young man bowed his head as though he felt
himself in the presence of something mightier than mortality.
“Will you be good to him, patient with him?”
“I will,” and Brian Drewitt took his father’s hand.
“Swear it,” murmured the dying man.
“As I hope for peace here and salvation hereafter, I swear!” said Brian.
“I have left you all,” Mr. Drewitt muttered feebly; “perhaps it is not
right—and I did not mean to do it—but you will be good to him, Brian,
you will?”
“Before God!” was the reply.
“And may He enable you to fulfil your vow!” said a voice behind him; and
Brian, looking round, saw the Rector of Duranmore, who laid a kindly
hand on his shoulder.
“My boy,” he whispered, “you have undertaken great responsibilities this
night; but God will give you strength if you ask for His help.”
And then they all knelt down, while the clergyman prayed that
intensely-pathetic prayer which is ordered, in the visitation of the
sick, for those for whom there appeareth small hope of recovery.
“Amen,” said the sick man, but there was no other Amen, only sobs from
the women and Harold, and a profound silence as regarded Brian and
Doctor Sheen.
“Amen!”—the sands in the glass had almost run out; the sun of his life
was close upon its setting; the river of his existence was flowing out
into the sea.
Amen! His day was declining; his grass withering. This man was going to
his long home, and the mourners were gathered round about him.
Amen! He could not take up his life again and make a better thing of it;
he could not go back through the years and redress the wrong, and undo
the misery he had brought on others. For him in this world there was no
future, only a barren and unprofitable past.
Amen! Throw open the shutters, and fling up the windows, that he may
look his last in the grey light of morning, over the country he has
loved so long.
“Lift me up,” he said feebly; and they raised him up that he might see
the trees standing quietly in the first blush of dawn—the sea lying
still as a glassy lake—the grand old mountains and Eversbeg’s Head.
From the far-off mountains, from the nearer hills, from the sea and the
woods, and the cold grey sky, the dying man’s eyes came back slowly to
the room where was a “sound of weeping and a noise of lamentation.”
Maxwell had come in and stood beside the bed, waiting till his uncle
should notice him. Against an old-fashioned escritoire leant Mr. Pryor,
who felt himself an intruder and a stranger in the midst of such a
scene. The Rector supported the sick man, and whispered some words of
consolation to him. He saw the end coming; he knew the moment when the
keepers of the house tremble, and the strong men bow themselves, and the
grinders cease, was close at hand; and though he could not hear what the
dying man was muttering, he yet liked to see his lips move, hoping it
was in prayer.
He looked very peaceful; his face was calm and placid; but as he brought
back his eyes from the Bennebeola mountains, from Eversbeg and the
nearer hills, his glance fell on Maxwell, who stepped closer to speak to
him.
But his uncle turned from him, and calling out “Brian—Brian!” fell
forward into the arms of his first-born.
And over his father’s grey head, which lay on his bosom, Brian looked
defiantly at his cousin. There was no man living could step between them
now; in that hour his son was closer to Archibald Drewitt than the wife
of his bosom.
As the magnet attracts iron, so the stronger nature attracts the weaker
in the hour of its most grievous need.
No man could separate the father and his child now—for still the grey
head lay on Brian’s breast, growing heavier—heavier each moment.
There was a great silence in the chamber, and then Doctor Sheen walked
round the bed, and taking one cold hand in his, felt the pulse.
It was gone—the “silver cord was loosed, and the golden bowl broken, and
the pitcher broken at the fountain, and the wheel broken at the
cistern.”
The dust had returned to the earth, and the spirit unto God who gave it.
CHAPTER III.
After the Funeral.
It was all over—another Drewitt was gone from Kincorth—another Drewitt
was about to swell that grim assemblage who lay shrouded and coffined in
Eversbeg Abbey, waiting for the judgment—and through the darkened rooms
and about the accustomed passages the family moved slowly and
mournfully. Not one was glad Archibald Drewitt had passed to his last
home—not one—child—servant—tenant—relative, unless indeed it might be
Maxwell Drewitt, who was, his wife remarked, a little more irritable
than usual, if that were possible.
Naturally Brian took the management of affairs. He ordered a hearse from
Galway, the nearest town where such a luxury was obtainable. He
despatched intimations of the death to all the gentry in the
neighbourhood; he sent hat-bands and scarfs to all the clergy,
dissenting, Roman Catholic and Protestant, within reach, (you perceive,
reader, more devolves upon the relations in Ireland than in England,)
and he saw that popular requirements were attended to in the kitchen and
servants’ hall.
Brian was not one to throw disrespect on his father’s memory by
neglecting any of the customary conventionalities, and accordingly,
while the corpse was watched up stairs by a profusion of ancient women,
in a room lighted by wax candles, whiskey was drunk _ad libitum_ in the
servants’ department, and the house slept neither by day nor by night.
There is nothing in which Ireland differs more from England than in her
observances concerning the dead; there is nothing which grates more
against English feeling than the riot and disorder of an Irish household
after a death; while the stately and undemonstrative propriety of an
establishment on this side of the water, where there is mourning for the
departed, strikes the Hibernian as cold and unfeeling.
In Kincorth the popular taste was allowed to run riot. By the lower
orders, Archibald Drewitt had been idolized; by the lower orders, his
loss was lamented exceedingly. It is possible for a vast amount of
regret to co-exist with an unlimited supply of whiskey, and Duranmore
sorrowed over Archibald Drewitt exceedingly.
As for the family, what more can I say than that they mourned—that Mrs.
Drewitt’s grief was silent, and Harold’s passionate, and Brian’s
stern—that the wife bowed down her head and wept for the husband of her
youth—that the children bewailed themselves for the father they should
never in this world see more?
All the latter and more unamiable part of Archibald Drewitt’s life was
by common consent ignored—his family, his tenantry, his dependents, and
society generally, never spoke of the man who, grey and bent, full of
fancies and of grievances, had gone about among them, but rather they
talked of the genial Irish gentleman—of the loving, gracious parent—of
the kindly, reckless master, who had dwelt with them for so long.
“An’ it’s Mr. Brian that will be the proper man to fill his shoes,”
crooned the old people over the turf-fire in the kitchen; “though he is
not so free as his father, and is quieter like, still it’s the cliver
man he’ll make, and it’s the fine place Kincorth will be yit, God bliss
it! The poor Masther had not the same sinse as his son, and he went
through a power of money too, intirely.”
“But the poor man niver was turned from his dure.”
“An’ he niver spoke a hard word to man, woman, or child.”
“An’ he was easily served.”
“An’ he had always the kind look and the pleasant smile, meet him where
you would.”
“An’ shure, it wasn’t his fault if he niver looked afther the dirty
money. He wasn’t reared to the like.”
“Ay, but it ‘ud be betther now for Mr. Brian if his father had thought
o’ them that was to come afther him.”
“Ye can’t both spend and have,” remarked one man, oracularly; “an’ it’s
no use frettin’ about the goold that can niver be brought back again. He
was good to many a poor body the time of the distress, and it will be
remimbered till him now, God rest his soul!” and the speaker crossed
himself.
Thus they talked over the turf-fire while the whiskey circulated, and
the servants, who were called away at intervals, returned to communicate
any strange piece of intelligence that had been made known to them
upstairs.
How the mistress was looking—how Master Harold was taking on—how Miss
Geraldine had fallen fast asleep on the drawing-room sofa, “tired out
wid the grief, poor thing”—how the corpse was looking more and more
beautiful—how they did say the funeral was going to be the grandest
thing ever seen in West Connemara.
Brian Drewitt had determined in his own soul that what the people said
should prove true. He would do honour to his father. No man should
whisper that a Drewitt of Kincorth went to his long home with a badge of
poverty on his coffin, though that badge had been won for himself by
years of prodigality—of reckless expenditure—of senseless profusion.
Poor they were, heaven knew—poor in consequence of his father’s bad
management; but they would scrape together enough to bury him, as he
himself might have desired, right royally—as the Drewitts had been wont
to travel to their vault in Eversbeg Abbey, down by the sea.
The fourth day was that fixed for the funeral. Like Abraham, the Irish
would lose no time about burying their dead “out of their sight.” Not
out of their memories, for there is no country in the world where the
dead are remembered longer, or mourned for more earnestly. Only out of
their sight; and this speedy interment, which so shocks and astonishes
the English, has, I think, its origin in the different customs of the
two countries with regard to the bodies of the deceased.
Till earth receives earth, the Irish never willingly leave a corpse
alone for a moment. Till the grave is closed, nothing in a house of any
kind, sort, or description, can go on as usual.
Now, human nature cannot remain with the clay, whence the soul has
departed, beyond a certain period; further, an establishment cannot sit
up for ever. Moreover, the novelty even of a death wears off. It is like
a state visit, exciting for the time, but apt to grow wearisome if long
protracted; and for all these reasons, and for many more of the same
kind, which it would take too long to mention, a “rest day, a guest day,
and a prest day,” are the utmost measure of time that a body honoured,
as is the case in Ireland, ought to intrude its presence on the family.
The prest day is a stretch of courtesy across the channel; but not to
fail in due respect, Brian accorded it to his father’s remains.
He required the time to arrange matters to his liking, and when the
morning came he had everything prepared to do honour to the man who was
going, after all these years, to lie down beside Nicholas Drewitt, and
George Drewitt, and all the long line of Drewitts who were waiting in
Eversbeg Abbey for that hour when the “heavens and the earth shall flee
away, and the sea give up her dead, and every mountain and island be
moved out of their place.”
It was a magnificent funeral; never had such a one passed through
Duranmore before. All the gentry for twenty miles round came in their
private carriages, drawn by the best horses their stables could turn
out; people who had not carriages came on cars, in dogcarts, in gigs, on
horseback. All the men who had ever paid rent to Archibald Drewitt,
though many of them had passed with his lands into the hands of
strangers, came to do honour to him now; all Maxwell Drewitt’s tenantry,
all Lady Emmeline’s, all Mr. Pryor’s, all the tradesfolk out of
Duranmore, all the fishermen, all the labourers, fell into rank behind
the black hearse, with its nodding plumes, with its four stately horses,
that led the way to Eversbeg.
Under the trees that bent their branches over the road; round the bay
where the waves came rippling up on the shore; through Duranmore—where
the dead had once made himself so busy about rival candidates, about
forgotten politics—past the cottage where Ryan had again taken up his
abode; over the hill beyond Duranmore, and down into the hollow where
the Abbey stood lonely and desolate, the funeral procession wound sadly
and slowly.
It was as fine a day as ever shone upon the earth; the sunbeams fell in
great patches on the tombstones, on the monuments, on the grass in
Eversbeg graveyard; the great mountains lifted their heads to the blue
sky grandly and unsympathizingly as ever; outside Eversbeg Bay the
Atlantic lay calm and quiet as a lake. The ivy about the east window
waved its branches as the light breeze passed by: frightened at the
incursion of such a multitude, the birds flew out with a great noise and
twitter, while the sheep bounded away like wild deer over the broken
wall and up the hill-side to a convenient distance, where they turned
and looked down upon the scene below as though it had been a spectacle
and they the spectators.
The rusty gate of the churchyard stood wide, but the hearse could not
pass through it, and the nearest of kin accordingly bore the coffin into
the centre of the ruins, preceded by the Rector of Duranmore, who walked
slowly along, telling to the sea and to the mountains, to the sunshine
and to the mourners, the one great truth that shall endure when there is
no more sea and no more sorrow—
“He that believeth in me, though he were dead yet shall he live, and
whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.”
They placed the coffin on trestles, in what had once been the centre of
the Abbey; and there, with no covering but the sky, in the midst of that
ruined church, with nettles and grass underfoot, with the elder-tree
spreading abroad its branches in the chancel, with ferns growing where
the holy water had wont to be placed, the funeral service proceeded.
Think, oh! reader, of what that service must have sounded at such a time
in such a place.
Pigmies seemed the men in comparison to the eternal hills, but yet the
Rector lifted up his voice, and declared—
“‘Lord, thou hast been our refuge from one generation to another, before
the mountains were brought forth, or ever the earth and the world were
made. Thou art God from everlasting and world without end.’”
Many a one present sobbed when that psalm was read out. As David bowed
the heart of all the men of Judah even as the heart of one man, so
almost as one man that great assemblage was moved at the words of the
sweet singer of Israel. But there were two present whose eyes never
moistened, but who looked straight at one another over the coffin, each
seemingly keeping watch on his fellow.
It was the same when they stood beside the vault; and when the Rector
said, with a perhaps unintentional emphasis—
“‘Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts,’” more than one of the
group round the grave noticed the look Brian Drewitt gave Maxwell.
“What’s up, do you suppose?” whispered Connor to Dan Glynn, who chanced
to be close at his elbow.
“I don’t know,” was the reply; “but did you not see the shove Maxwell
gave him when he went to take the right hand in the procession? I
thought coffin and all would have been over.”
“Have you any idea what it means?”
“No good,” said Dan, prophetically; and very vaguely Mr. Pryor was
thinking the same thing.
He could not imagine what had gone wrong, but he felt satisfied the day
would not pass over peaceably; and when the service was finished, when
all that man could ever do for Archibald Drewitt was accomplished, when
the living had left the dead to take his long rest under the shadow of
the hills, within sound of the great sea, the barrister, sitting in the
same carriage with the cousins, would have given much to know the
probable result of the next few hours.
“Can he have any power we know nothing of?” speculated Mr. Pryor: “have
they had any quarrel unheard of by me?” and he ran over possible and
impossible circumstances likely to account for the hostile attitude
assumed by both.
Almost in silence the four drove back to Kincorth. In one corner of the
carriage, with his back to the horses, Harold was crying. Beside him
Brian sat with his arms crossed, staring defiantly at Maxwell, who,
employed in biting his nails down to below the quick, never troubled
himself to open his lips to any one.
But as they passed through the entrance gates and up under the arching
trees to the house, Mr. Pryor noticed that Maxwell bent forward and
looked out—out over lawn and field and garden, with the air of triumph
he had noticed once before.
“What can be the meaning of it?” marvelled Mr. Pryor, but he was not
left very long in doubt.
Had Brian not been a drop’s blood to the late owner of Kincorth, Maxwell
could not more completely have ignored his existence than was the case.
“Pull up those blinds,” were the first words he spoke when he entered
the house.
“Do nothing of the kind, Robert,” said Brian, and once again he and
Maxwell exchanged glances of defiance.
“Shall I go away?” asked Mr. Pryor; “you would rather, I am sure, not
have any stranger present when the will is read?”
“No, stay, if you please,” answered Brian. “I feel as if something were
going to happen, though I have not the remotest idea what. Mr. James
Butler will read the will. Shall we get it over at once?”
They passed into the dining-room, where Mr. Butler was already seated,
with one sealed packet and several loose papers lying before him. As
Mrs. Drewitt and Geraldine entered he rose, and remained standing till
they had taken their places. For a minute afterwards indeed he stood as
if irresolute, but then drawing up his chair to the table, he said,
addressing himself to Mr. Pryor—
“I have looked, at Mr. Brian Drewitt’s desire, through all the papers
left by his late father, and can discover no trace of a will likely to
be available at the present moment. I find two or three rough drafts,
which were prepared for him by his former legal adviser, Mr. Bartholomew
Neill, none of which Mr. Neill informs me met with his approval. It
would seem as though he had intended to make some separate provision for
his younger son, but he has failed to carry out that design. An
unfortunate difference between my father and the late Mr. Drewitt
prevented our having such an intimate knowledge of his affairs as might
now be desirable. Mr. Neill has intimated that a will was made by him,
and executed by Mr. Drewitt, which will it would seem as though Mr.
Drewitt must subsequently have destroyed, as I can discover no vestige
of it.”
“What is that sealed packet there, Mr. Butler?” asked Maxwell.
“It is a will, dated on the cover, 1818, which would of course be
inoperative at the present juncture, since Mr. Drewitt’s marriage took
place fourteen years subsequently, and marriage renders all wills made
Pryor to that event null and void.”
“Not all wills, Mr. Butler,” said Mr. Pryor.
“Read this one, at all events,” broke in Brian Drewitt; and Mr. Butler
took up the packet. “But stop a moment,” he added. “Suppose it should be
of no effect; what would then be the result?”
“Just the same as though your father had died intestate.”
“And if he had died intestate?”
“You would succeed, of course.”
Across the room Brian looked defiantly at Maxwell, who returned the look
calmly and steadily.
“Had not we better proceed to business?” he said, addressing Mr. Butler.
“I shall be glad to return home as soon as possible.”
“And so shall I,” murmured Wilhelmina, thinking of her last baby.
Mr. Pryor walked across the room and seated himself beside Brian, while
Mr. Butler broke the seals, took out the enclosure, and began.
There is no need for me, reader, to weary you with the contents of that
will. It had been made shortly after Mr. Drewitt’s accession to
Kincorth, and set forth that as he, the testator, had succeeded to the
property to the exclusion of his eldest brother and his family, he
desired to restore the property to the elder branch after his death.
Never being likely to marry, (he proceeded to declare,) it was his
desire that all his estates, real and personal, should pass to his
brother; or, in the event of his brother’s decease, to Maxwell, son of
the said George Drewitt, chargeable with so-and-so and so-and-so.
It was a tremendously lengthy document, and Mr. James Butler read on
through the catalogue of estates that had now most of them passed into
other hands—wearily and rapidly.
“I should think my father must have paid for it by the foot,” he was
considering, when suddenly he turned over the last page and caught sight
of something that made him pause, and glance across at Brian.
“Go on,” said the young man; “I am attending,” and Mr. Butler went on—to
signed, sealed, and delivered, when he stopped once again.
“Is that all?” asked Mr. Pryor.
“No, there is a codicil.”
“Of what date?” inquired the barrister, rising and standing with both
hands on the table, while Maxwell’s eyes grew darker and darker, and the
veins in his forehead swelled and blackened—“of what date?”
“September 28th, 1832, more than three months after Mr. Drewitt’s
marriage.”
“What is the codicil?” said Brian.
“Read it,” suggested Mr. Pryor, and Mr. Butler read on.
When he had finished, every man present looked in the face of his
neighbour, for the codicil confirmed the will. It mentioned Mrs.
Drewitt’s jointure; all present were clear on this point, for Mr. Butler
was requested by Mr. Pryor to read it over again. Then the barrister
took the will and looked at it.
“When will Brian be of age, Mrs. Drewitt?” he asked, turning towards the
widow.
“The third of next April,” she replied.
“And what is the date of the codicil, Mr. Butler?” was his next
question.
“September the 28th, sir,” answered Mr. Butler.
Mr. Pryor went through a mental calculation, through every turn of which
Maxwell followed him.
“Did not the 28th fall on a Sunday?” he said, suddenly addressing
Maxwell; but Maxwell was not to be trapped.
“I am sure I cannot tell,” he said, and he thrust his hands into the
very bottom of his pockets.
“The best thing, it seems to me, now that we can do is to send for Mr.
Neill,” remarked Mr. Pryor.
“I doubt if he will come,” said Mr. Butler.
“Who was Mr. Drewitt’s solicitor in 1832?” asked the barrister.
“My father,” answered Mr. James Butler.
“Oh!” remarked Mr. Pryor; then he said to Mr. James Butler, “Is there
anything more to be done?” and Mr. James Butler said that there was not,
so far as he knew.
“Then we need not detain Mrs. Drewitt: all this must be very unpleasant
to her,” was Mr. Pryor’s next observation, and he held the door open for
her and her daughter to pass out.
“What does it all mean, Mr. Pryor?” she whispered. “I do not understand
it.”
“I do not exactly understand it myself yet,” he replied. “We must make
inquiries about the missing will.”
And he walked back into the dining-room, without, however, closing the
door behind him.
“I suppose we cannot do any good by standing here, looking at one
another,” he said, making a sign to Brian to remain silent, while
Maxwell marched across the apartment, and taking one hand out of his
pocket slammed to the door.
“I wish to make a remark,” he commenced, returning to his former
position. “I wish to state that this will has taken me unawares.”
“You lie!” interrupted Brian.
“I have not the slightest doubt on the point, Mr. Drewitt,” answered Mr.
Pryor. “And if such a proceeding were not illegal, I should say the best
thing you could do would be to put this will in the fire, and proceed as
though your uncle had died intestate.”
Maxwell bit his lip, but putting a curb on his temper, he proceeded—
“I shall do nothing rashly, I shall make no hasty promises. I must think
over the position in which this will places me, before committing myself
in any way. Thirty-seven years have elapsed since my father was
disinherited in favour of Brian’s father, and now, by a curious
fatality, Brian is disinherited for me. The estates were then valuable;
now, most of those estates are owned by strangers, and the property
which is left is heavily mortgaged, as no one knows better than you, Mr.
Pryor. With a large rent-roll, my uncle did nothing for us. Out of the
little his extravagance has left, I will, however, do something for his
children, if they permit me.”
“You shall never do anything for me,” retorted Brian. “I will never take
a sixpence from you; nor shall one belonging to me, if I can help it.”
“Be silent, Brian,” entreated Mr. Pryor.
“I will not be silent,” said Brian. “He has cheated us somehow; if that
other will be destroyed, he had some hand in making away with it. He has
determined for years and years and years to own Kincorth; and he has got
it. Curse you, Maxwell Drewitt! curse you, for a false-hearted,
double-faced, lying scoundrel!”
“Don’t stop so soon,” sneered Maxwell; “it is safe to insult a man in
his own house.”
“Then if it be your house, may it prove a sorrowful one to you! may you
never have an hour’s happiness in it! as you are childless, so may you
die desolate!”
“Take that, you foul-tongued young beggar,” said Maxwell, and he struck
him a back-handed blow across the mouth.
“Oh! Brian, Brian!” cried Harold, and he flew at Maxwell like a tiger.
But Maxwell put the boy aside, and holding him from him at arm’s length,
went on—
“Take your protégé with you, Mr. Pryor, out of my sight; and keep him
out of it, or I may do him an injury. Is it my fault that his father was
a fool? Is it my fault that Kincorth should come back to its rightful
owner? If Brian thinks it does not now belong to me in law, as it always
did in equity, let him contest the point. For my part, I swear that,
while I have a shilling, he shall never now own an acre of my land.”
“You have done for yourself, at any rate, Brian,” remarked Mr. Goldich,
taking the young man by the arm, and forcibly leading him out of the
room. “What an idiot you must be,” went on Mr. Maxwell Drewitt’s
brother-in-law, “not to stick up to him! because, if the other will be
destroyed—and I have not the remotest doubt in life myself but that your
father did put it in the fire when he took that notion about
Harold—where are you without his help—just tell me that?”
But Brian refused to answer that or any other question which Mr. Goldich
might feel inclined to propound.
He said, “I wish to heaven you would leave me alone!” and with this
explicit declaration separated himself from his relative at the foot of
the staircase.
Very slowly and very wearily he ascended to his own apartment, while Mr.
Goldich returned to the dining-room.
Maxwell met him in the doorway.
“You came here to hear the will read, I believe, sir,” he observed.
“Yes—with Wilhelmina,” answered Mr. Goldich.
“Then, as you have heard the will read, you and Wilhelmina can both go
home.”
“Well, I’m damned!” exclaimed Mr. Goldich; and he never put his foot
inside Kincorth again.
CHAPTER IV.
Farewell.
The first thing Maxwell Drewitt did when he got rid of his visitors was
to order a room to be prepared for his accommodation.
“And, Robert, tell Flynn to put the saddle on Madcap, and to bring her
round directly.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Give my compliments to Mrs. Drewitt, and say I shall be glad to speak
to her alone for a few minutes.”
“Yes, sir.”
And he walked up and down the room until Robert reappeared.
“Mrs. Drewitt’s compliments, sir, and she is in the breakfast-parlour.”
That was the first note of war on Mrs. Drewitt’s part; and Maxwell
accepted it as such.
Nevertheless, he repaired to the breakfast-parlour, where Mrs. Drewitt
was talking to Mr. Pryor.
“I thought,” said Maxwell, “I saw you leave with Mr. Butler.”
“I only went so far as the gate. I wished to speak to Mrs. Drewitt
before I returned to Durrow; but I have said all I had to say, and am
going directly.”
“Not on my account, I hope,” answered Maxwell, with a great accession of
civility. “I merely wanted to tell Mrs. Drewitt that I trust she will
consider Kincorth her home for the present. I have no desire to make her
position at all unpleasant. I am quite willing to meet her half-way in
any reasonable plan for the future. And if Brian will apologize for his
extraordinary conduct, I am ready to forgive and forget.”
“But I am not, Maxwell,” she answered. “You have always hated me; and
you have always hated my children. Twenty-one years ago you told me you
disliked me, and why? For twenty-one years you have been scheming and
plotting to get us out of Kincorth; and your schemes and your plots have
been successful. I cannot forget, and I cannot forgive. As if it were
not trouble enough to lose my husband, I must also see my children
beggars.” At which point Mrs. Drewitt burst into tears, and Maxwell
answered—
“When my father lost this property he accepted that loss without a
murmur. Many a one now living can tell you that. It is not half so hard
for your sons as it was for my father, for they are unencumbered, and he
was married and had a family: you have your jointure; my father had not
a sixpence. Kincorth, and the other farms and estates, which we have
usually put under one head and called Kincorth, brought in at that day
fifteen thousand a year. Without mortgages its nett value was probably
eight thousand a year. Am I stating my case fairly, Mr. Pryor?”
“I have no reason to suppose otherwise,” was the reply.
“After thirty-seven years Kincorth returns to the elder branch
absolutely valueless; so valueless that I declare to you, were it not
that it has been in the family for more generations than I could tell
you, I would let Mr. Pryor foreclose to-morrow and trouble myself with
the place no more: do you believe what I am saying?”
She made no answer, and he proceeded.
“I must ask you, Mrs. Drewitt, now, to look back to the time when you
came first to Kincorth. What had we out of the property?—food. Had we
anything else? were we well-dressed? were we well-lodged? were not we
thrust to the wall? were we not intruders and dependents in the house of
our fathers? Had we anything which a gentleman’s children had a right to
expect at the hands of the person who had supplanted that gentleman?
Many and various were the humiliations I experienced in those the early
days of my life. But I have no desire to pay back my uncle’s family in
kind. Many a long year ago, Mrs. Drewitt, you were good enough to
sympathise with me and to entreat me not to leave Kincorth—”
She made a gesture of impatience, but he disregarded it and went on.
“Since then I have succeeded; I have been prosperous; I am wealthy, and
the owner of the place where I once was little better than a servant. I
do not forget your kindness, but entreat you to remain; to consider this
house your home; to let me help you and your children as you were once
anxious to help me.”
He had made his speech, and it was not a bad one; and now he waited to
hear what effect it had produced on Mrs. Drewitt.
“Maxwell,” she answered, “I always admitted your position in life was
not what it ought to have been, until by your own industry and
cleverness you made yourself what you are. I always thought your
grandfather’s will most unjust; and even in this house, from whence my
dead husband has so lately been carried, I am not afraid to say that,
had he acted more wisely and fairly by his brother, his life would have
been a more prosperous one. But,” and here Mrs. Drewitt rose, as if she
could not find breath to speak sitting—as if in her nervous excitement
it was needful for every muscle to be strained, every limb stretched,
“my husband did not act unfairly by design, or through any premeditated
wickedness. He came honestly into Kincorth, and sure am I in my inmost
heart, Maxwell, that you have come dishonestly. I know that for
twenty-one years you have kept this end in view; and you have achieved
your object so far. When I think of my poor boy—when I think of
Brian”—and as she spoke the tears fell like rain over her altered
face—“when I think of how he has worked, of how you set his father
against him, of how you sowed dissension between him and Harold, and of
how you have destroyed every hope and plan of his life, I feel that if I
were to eat your bread it would choke me; that if I were to accept any
grace, any favour, at your hands I should be as bad as you.”
“What do you think of that, Mr. Pryor, as a civil answer to a kind
offer?” asked Maxwell.
“I will tell you by-and-by,” replied the Englishman; “meantime I think
Mrs. Drewitt will be more composed at Durrow, where she has no old
associations, where everything will be fresh and new. She is not capable
at present of appreciating your kindness, or in fact of clearly
understanding what you say; and as you are going to take up your
quarters here to-night, your aunt and cousins will accompany me back to
Durrow.”
“If they do then,” said Maxwell Drewitt, “they shall never return to
Kincorth.”
“Oh! Kincorth—dear, dear Kincorth,” broke out the widow, and she fell on
her knees, and burying her head in the sofa pillow, sobbed passionately.
“You had better leave her,” suggested Mr. Pryor, and he drew Maxwell out
of the room.
“They are a nice comfortable sort of people to have to do with, are not
they?” said Maxwell, with a forced laugh, slowly drawing on his
left-hand glove, and smoothing every wrinkle out of the kid while he
spoke. “There are not many men who would bear having their kindness
flung back in their face as I do. What do you think of the family now,
Mr. Pryor?”
“I think that they have received a great shock, following on the top of
another great shock, and that consequently every allowance ought to be
made for them, and for what they say under the circumstances.”
“And what do you think about the whole affair—about the will I mean?”
“That it must be very unpleasant for you,” was the reply.
“Well, it is: the property is not worth that,” and Maxwell snapped his
fingers, “only I am glad to have back the old place. If Brian had gone
on with his improvements it would soon have come to the hammer.”
“I cannot quite agree with you there,” answered the Englishman. He could
see the chesnut waiting for her new master, and he added, “You are going
to ride Harold’s mare?”
“Harold’s, indeed! I really was not aware.”
“I thought it was his: did his father not give her to him?”
“He said so,” answered Maxwell; “but, on the same principle, Brian might
say his father gave him Kincorth.”
“Of course; you are right. Then you are not going to confirm your
uncle’s present?”
“Give a lad like that a mare worth two hundred and fifty guineas? If you
have made your money so easily, Mr. Pryor, I have not.”
The Englishman did not press the point further. “Good-bye,” he said, “I
suppose you will not be back before we leave.”
“We! Then you really are going to adopt the entire family? Be advised—a
widow and three children is no light responsibility. Besides, you ought
really to consider _les convenances_.”
“What _convenances_?” asked Mr. Pryor, hurriedly.
“Why, the world may say one of two things—either that you are going to
marry the widow, who is only about a year or so older than yourself; or
else that you are in love with the daughter. I have long inclined to the
latter opinion myself, and I congratulate you on an arrangement which
will give you such ample opportunities of winning her young affections.”
“I am your debtor, Mr. Maxwell Drewitt.”
“Not at all; if you were so, I should be only too proud to be your
creditor.”
“You are very kind, but I prefer paying my bills as I go on. You have
asked me twice within the last ten minutes what I thought of your
position. Let me give you my answer now. If you have come into Kincorth
honestly, I think we are all dealing very hardly by you; but if you have
come into Kincorth dishonestly, then I think you have not had half your
deserts. And in either case,” added Mr. Pryor, “I must say that I
consider your manner unfortunate.”
“Our opinions with regard to each other may be identical on the latter
point,” retorted Maxwell; “but I suppose that need not hinder our being
friends in the future as we have been in the past. Good-bye for the
present,” and he held out his hand.
But Geoffry Pryor refused to take it. He bowed stiffly and walked back
across the hall to the breakfast-parlour, where he had left Mrs.
Drewitt.
“As you like, my fine fellow,” muttered the new owner of Kincorth;
“those that win may laugh.” But somehow Maxwell Drewitt did not laugh.
He looked—while he rode down the avenue and out of the gates, of that
property which was now his own for life—as unlike a person who had the
remotest intention of laughing as it is possible to conceive.
After all, the cup of prosperity is not entirely sweet. There are an
immense number of bitters in the pharmacopœia even of success.
But he had succeeded in annoying Mr. Pryor, that was one great
consolation; and if he could have imagined how desperately he had
wounded his opponent he would have been better pleased still.
To a man like Geoffry Pryor it does not matter much what the world says;
but it matters excessively what his own conscience tells him; and his
own conscience told him Maxwell had not spoken altogether falsely, for
that he should find it very sweet to have Geraldine living under the
same roof as that which covered his own head.
“I must go to Waller’s; it is the only way of cutting that knot,” he
decided; and more determined than ever that, so long as he had a shelter
to offer her, Mrs. Drewitt should not remain at Kincorth, he pressed
upon her the necessity of packing her things as soon as possible, and of
taking her departure before Maxwell returned.
“Your maid could follow with your luggage,” he suggested.
“Poor old Nannie was the only maid I could ever boast of,” answered Mrs.
Drewitt through her tears.
“Well, let Nannie put your things together, and the boys can soon find
their own; and I will send Flynn over to Durrow for the car and a light
cart. If there are any of the servants you would like to accompany you
we can make room for them at Durrow.”
“But how should I ever be able to keep servants?” she inquired.
“If you are not able to do so, I will find something for them,” he
answered.
“If I were to take one or two the rest would think I did not care for
them. I had better leave all, I had indeed.”
She was right, and Mr. Pryor could not help marvelling how so sensible a
woman had never been able to make a wiser man of the owner of Kincorth.
While he went round to the stable-yard to despatch Flynn to Durrow, she
called the servants together and told them all what they knew
beforehand—that Mr. Brian was heir no longer, that Mr. Maxwell now owned
Kincorth and everything in it.
“You must not think,” she added, for her sense of justice prevented her
saying anything to prejudice the servants against their new master, or
leaving anything unsaid which it was right they should know—“you must
not think Mr. Maxwell Drewitt is turning us out of Kincorth; on the
contrary, he offered me its hospitality for as long as I liked to
remain. It is by my own wish I leave the house I have loved so well.”
(“Ah! hear that, the craythur!” said some one in the rear.) “I could not
be happy here; and though it is very kind of Mr. Maxwell (dark faces and
lowering looks among the men), still I feel it is best for me to avail
myself of Mr. Pryor’s kindness and go to Durrow till I see what the
future may bring forth. It is so soon—” and Mrs. Drewitt paused to
recover herself—“so soon after my dear husband’s death, and altogether
so sudden and unexpected, that I cannot tell yet where I may go or what
I may do; but wherever I am—”
She paused again:—“wherever I am”—but it would not do: she put her
handkerchief to her face, and then the women crowded round her weeping
and bewailing themselves, and Mrs. Drewitt sobbed out too.
She was like a queen among them—she who had come there so lonely and
unwelcomed—and when she said, “You have been my friends; I have loved
you all,” and held out her hand for each to shake ere she departed, they
stooped down and kissed it, men and women alike, and a bitter cry of
lamentation arose to the chamber where Brian sat all alone.
He knew right well what was the meaning of it. He knew his mother and he
could be but of one mind, and that she meant to leave the house, and
leave it at once; but he did not think where she proposed going, and so
he descended the staircase and entered the drawing-room, where she and
Geraldine and Harold stood, and walked up to her.
“An’ here’s Masther Brian, ma’am; an’ it’s himself’ll be the comfort to
you from this day forth for ever.”
“An’ haven’t ye yer childer, ma’am? Shure there’s nobody living can take
them from ye: an’ wouldn’t him that has got Kincorth give Kincorth to
have any one of them for his own?”
“There’s a silver lining to ivery cloud.”
“But it’s us that’ll feel it, losing masther and misthress within the
week.”
“An’ it’s the good masther he was.”
“An’ the kind misthress you’ve been.”
“An’ the blissin’ of God will follow ye; and the prayers of the poor
have gone before ye.”
“She can’t stand it,” said Brian, huskily; “think of what she has gone
through and let her be quiet, Mother; come with me—mother darling.”
He led her through the servants, who made a way for them to pass out,
and took her to her own room, where he inquired what she meant to do,
what plan she had laid out.
Then he took the management of affairs on himself. He went and asked Mr.
Pryor what his mother was legally entitled to carry out of Kincorth, and
when Mr. Pryor told him, in strict law, only the clothes she wore, Brian
observed there would be the less packing needful.
“_He_ can send them after us if he likes,” said Brian, pointing towards
Headlands; “but she shall take nothing except what she has a clear right
to take.”
“And you, Brian?”
“I want to be alone for a while. I will walk over the hills to Durrow.”
“Let me walk with you;” and Brian saw that the Englishman was afraid of
what he might be meaning to do.
“Trust me,” he said; “I would not shoot Maxwell if there were no gallows
on earth. I am not going to seek an interview with him—upon my honour I
am not;” and Mr. Pryor was satisfied.
“Mamma wants to go all round the grounds, and would like you to go with
her,” Geraldine came whispering at this juncture. “She wants to go alone
with you,” the girl added, and Brian went.
Had Mrs. Drewitt been remaining on at Kincorth, I wonder how long a time
would have elapsed ere she set foot on lawn, in field, in garden? But
now, on the very day when the husband she had loved was laid in Eversbeg
Abbey, she walked about the place bidding to each tree and plant and
flower a sorrowful adieu.
Up the glen she went, and over a plank which was thrown across the
waterfall. She had been timid about that plank in former days, and
afraid to cross it; but now she stepped over without a helping hand.
Where the summer-house had once been she stood and looked down on the
country, speaking never a word. She plucked a leaf here and another
there; she picked up a pebble out of the stream, and pulled a fern and a
piece of moss from beside the waterfall. She went into the garden and
gathered for herself lavender, and heliotrope, and a sprig of bay, and
another of lemon verbena, a morsel of heath, a late-blooming rose, a
spray of fuchsia, two or three scarlet geraniums, and a handful of
woodruffe, and these she tied all together with a piece of ribbon, and
laid aside.
“When I am dead, Brian,” she said, “you will find those flowers
somewhere among my possessions. You will put them in my coffin. Promise
me, my son.”
“Mother, mother!” he remonstrated.
“Promise me,” she insisted, and he did as she wished.
Thus Agnes Drewitt bade farewell to Kincorth. In her heart she knew she
should tread its pleasant lawns, its shady walks, its sunny gardens, no
more for ever.
When she drove down the avenue with her children about her to the lodge,
where the way was blocked by a crowd eager to do her honour, eager to
tell her they sorrowed with her sorrow and sympathized with her
distress, she felt that, let who else would, return to Kincorth in
triumph, let who else would, come back to dwell in the familiar rooms,
to take their rest under those magnificent trees, she might return to
Kincorth no more!
CHAPTER V.
The Hour of Success.
Near the gates of Kincorth Brian separated himself from his mother, and
promising to meet her at Durrow, walked back up the avenue towards the
house. He had many things to put together—some few presents to make,
some last words to speak, ere he went out into the world to push his
fortune; and accordingly he retraced his steps slowly up the drive,
thinking of the change that twenty-four hours had wrought in his
prospects, and considering what it would be best for him to do now.
Half-way, Maxwell overtook him, and dismounting, walked with Brian to
the house, leading the chesnut, who looked distressed, as though she had
been ridden fast and far.
“I am glad to have an opportunity of talking with you alone, Brian,”
said Mr. Maxwell Drewitt. “Is there any earthly reason why we should not
be friends? why you should leave Kincorth at all?”
“I think there is,” Brian answered.
“Will you explain what you mean? Will you explain to me why there should
be ill-will between you and me any more than there was between your
father and my father?”
“Your father and my father were probably different men to what you and I
are,” was the reply. “Your father was wilfully disinherited, and he knew
why; I am disinherited by an accident, or by a fraud; you can best tell
which,” and Brian’s lip curled.
“You cannot think it other than accidental, surely,” said Maxwell.
“What I think cannot signify to you so long as you have got Kincorth,”
was the reply.
“Well now, Brian, that I have got Kincorth, will you tell me what I am
ever likely to make out of it? The mortgages, as you know, are almost
equal to its value. It is not a cheap house to keep up. More will be
expected from the owner of Kincorth than was ever looked for from the
owner of the Headlands. The place will be an expense to me, not a gain;
you must have sense enough to see that yourself.”
“Give it to me,” said Brian, grimly, “and see if I will complain.”
“Why, boy, you could never have made money out of it.”
“I should have tried,” was the reply. And there ensued a long silence,
which Maxwell broke, by saying as they approached the house—
“Shall we be friends?”
“No,” Brian answered; “for I mean to put you out of Kincorth, if I can.
If I cannot, then I mean to bide my time, and take my revenge. You need
not look so black, Mr. Maxwell Drewitt. I shall not shoot you; I shall
not come behind you in the dark and smite you under the fifth rib; but I
shall find out your weak point and hurt you there. A year or two is
nothing; I can wait: when you least look for me I shall be at your
side.”
“You are mad, Brian,” said his cousin.
“Then it is you who have made me so,” was the reply.
“Let us be friends.”
“I told you no, once; I tell you no, twice. There are places where even
you, Maxwell Drewitt, will be unable to injure me, to hinder my
succeeding; and I shall succeed yet; and I shall come back to Kincorth
yet. Let me pass, I am not going to steal anything out of the house. It
is yours now, I know, but it has not been so for long. Let me pass.”
“Can he have found another will?”—that was the thought which crossed
Maxwell’s mind, and for a moment he stood irresolute. Then he made way,
and Brian entered the house.
Before many minutes had elapsed he came down the staircase, with a bunch
of keys in his hand.
“Harold’s luggage and mine is together, and I will send over for both
to-morrow morning. Meantime, if you would like to see that we have taken
nothing belonging to you, there are the keys. Take them,” he insisted,
as Maxwell drew back, and he flung them at his cousin’s feet.
“I am going now,” the youth said, looking round him with a terrible
despair. “I am going now. Have you anything to say to me before I go?”
“Let us be friends.”
“You struck me to-day, Maxwell.”
“I am sorry for it.”
“You pushed me aside at my father’s funeral.”
“Inadvertently.”
“You have got Kincorth.”
“Accidentally.”
“For years you have been trying to put my father against me; you made
him misjudge me towards the last; you tried to frustrate all my efforts
for freeing Kincorth.”
“I thought I was acting for the best.”
“Then,” answered Brian Drewitt, “I think I am acting for the best now,
when I refuse your friendship; when I say you are a coward and a
hypocrite; when I cross this threshold, saying that at peace with you I
will never re-enter it.”
“Brian, you will repent.”
“And so will you.”
With which mutual assurances the cousins separated, and while Maxwell
took possession of his new home, Brian strode out of the house and took
the hill-path leading to Durrow.
He had to pass by the stables on his way through the plantations, and he
turned aside to speak to Flynn, who was the last man to leave the yard.
“Mr. Maxwell wants you, I think, Flynn,” he said; “and I wish to say
good-bye to the horses; so you can come back here after you have seen
him;” and with that Mr. Brian Drewitt thrust a crumpled note into the
man’s hand, remarking—
“That will pay you for your overtime.”
“I don’t need it, Masther Brian,” said Flynn. “I’d work night and day
for you, I would, if working could give you back your own.”
“Keep it,” returned Brian. “I am not poor—keep it, I can make more; only
go—go away,” and he crossed the yard and pushed open the stable-door,
and went in, closing, but not latching it after him.
“Gently, my lady,” said the youth: he had walked up the stable and
entered Madcap’s loose box. At sound of his voice, the chesnut turned
round and whinnied.
Then Brian drew a pistol out of his pocket, looked to the priming,
cocked it, and took aim.
At the moment, Madcap put her head against his breast, asking in her
mute fashion for the caress to which she was accustomed: finding no
caress given, she lifted her head and looked at him with soft and
inquiring eyes.
“I cannot do it, Chessy,” he said. “I meant to shoot you, but I must
leave you for others to ride; for others to maltreat if they will—my
beauty—my pet! It would be greater kindness for me to put it out of
anybody’s power to do this; but I cannot—I cannot;” and he put his arms
round her slender neck, and leaned his head against her shoulder, the
chesnut standing still and quiet all the time, as though she had some
human comprehension of what was the matter with him.
At last she turned her head, and began rubbing it against his breast as
usual. Brian had always petted her more than anybody else, and she in
return, though he was not her master, had been wont to follow him about
the yard and round the meadows like a dog.
“I must go now, beauty,” Brian said, and he stroked her silky coat
slowly—slowly. “Good-bye,” and thinking there was no one near to see
him, he kissed the white star on her forehead, and then stepped back and
looked at her soft wondering eyes again.
“Good-bye, Chessy—good-bye,” and he walked out of the stall, not knowing
that Flynn and his cousin were standing in the next box, which chanced
to be vacant, looking on at his leave-taking.
As he went the chesnut turned round in her stall, and followed him to
the door. She put her head over the top of it, and watched him, with her
great brown sorrowful eyes, out of the stable.
“Hasn’t she a face just like a Christian, sir?” asked Flynn, but Maxwell
never answered him.
He had come to the yard suspecting his cousin’s design the moment Flynn
said Mister Brian had told him to go to the house. He had thought to
catch the boy doing mischief, and behold! he only saw that leave-taking,
which is always so pathetic, between a man and a favourite animal.
Something about the manner of that leave-taking caused Maxwell to walk
back to the house slowly and thoughtfully. He had got Kincorth, a
valueless property, for which he had paid a tremendous price. The man
who once stood between it and him was dead, the man’s widow was gone,
the man’s children were departed likewise, and now as he passed from
room to room, he found each in succession desolate and deserted.
He ascended the staircase and entered the chamber he had occupied in the
days which were now gone and passed away for ever. He crossed the bare
floor—he threw open the window and looked out.
In the gathering twilight, the mountains seemed frowning upon him, the
trees to be sunk in gloom; and that feeling of desperate depression he
had felt for the first time as he rode home one night, years and years
before, under the moonlight, came upon him once more.
Life was then before him: where was his life now? Half gone—more than
half gone—even if he survived to that threescore years and ten beyond
which man’s strength is but labour and sorrow. The twenty-one years had
passed like a watch in the night, like a tale that was told! Twenty more
years, and he should be as old as the man whom he had seen laid that day
in Eversbeg Abbey.
For twenty-one years he had been scheming, and planning, and plotting,
and his schemes had been in the main successful—he had gained wealth,
position, houses, and lands.
Suppose he lived for twenty years more, and for twenty to the back of
that, and through the whole of the time went on adding house to house,
and acre to acre—still the twenty, and the twenty, must come to an end
at last, and where would he be then?
That was Maxwell Drewitt’s dark hour: many such had come to him lately;
for it does not require a man to have either a very sensitive
conscience, or to think much on holy things, to make such considerations
strike home to him at times.
On the contrary, as sickness seems most terrible to the strong; as pain
seems most dreadful to those who have been exempt from it; as age seems
most wretched to the young; as poverty seems most frightful to the
affluent—so the very fact of a man rarely taking courage to face this
bugbear of our common mortality is sure to make its aspect more
unendurable when it forces itself upon him.
Maxwell had heard read that morning, beside his uncle’s grave, the words
which he knew must one day be read over his own:—
“Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live, and is full
of misery. He cometh up and is cut down like a flower; he fleeth as it
were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay.” And now, without in
the least knowing that thousands and thousands of years before the same
ideas had passed through the soul of one in great distress and
tribulation, the owner of Kincorth, leaning out into the night, and
looking away to the lonely hills, was thinking precisely the same
thoughts as those to which Job in his anguish gave utterance.
“There is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again,
and that the tender branch thereof will not cease. Though the root
thereof wax old in the earth, and the stock thereof die in the ground;
yet through the scent of water it will bud, and bring forth boughs like
a plant. But man dieth, and wasteth away: yea, man giveth up the ghost,
and where is he? As the waters fail from the sea, and the flood decayeth
and dryeth up: so man lieth down, and riseth not: till the heavens be no
more, they shall not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep.”
Friends, oh! friends, is there not something unutterably mournful in the
figure of that man standing lonely, lonely as ever, in the room he had
left when a young man, so many years before? He had been solitary then,
he was solitary now; when he was lying in his grave he could not be more
alone than he felt standing there, looking out into the night.
Beyond all that he could have expected the wild dreams of his youth had
met with fulfilment. From the position of a dependent he had raised
himself to that of the first landed proprietor in the neighbourhood;
from beggary he had risen to wealth; from indigence, to prosperity and
consideration. If all Galway were not his, he owned quite enough of the
county to make the name of Drewitt a wonder to tourists—a memory in
Connemara.
There was not a house whose doors did not fly open at his approach. If
he had not effected all he had intended for the people’s good—for the
people’s advancement—that certainly was more their fault than his. He
had learned, as he assured Mr. Pryor, that a nation cannot be civilized
in a day; that a love of tidiness and of cleanliness, a desire for
luxuries, cannot be implanted in one generation, nor yet in two. He had
long comprehended that there was the same distinction between the upper
and lower classes in Ireland in the nineteenth century as existed
between lord and serf in the earlier portions of English history; not to
the extent of a power of life and death—not to the extent of a power of
oppression, or imprisonment, or disposal of the bodies of the poor; but
the same social difference. The lords lived in profusion, with a certain
wasteful magnificence, while their hinds were contented with the
coarsest fare. The lords went about in grand attire, while the serfs
were clothed meanly. Between the two classes in those days there could
have been no more distinction than there is between the rich and the
poor to the present day in Connemara; and it was this state of things
which Maxwell Drewitt at last declared to himself he was not sent into
the world to alter.
“The rice pot to the Hindoo,” he was wont to say, “the potato kish to
the Irish;” but the meal barrel and the potato kish were both better
supplied on the estates belonging to Maxwell Drewitt than on the estates
of any other man in West Connemara.
He had no cause to be greatly disappointed on that score; he had done
something for his countrymen and countrywomen, and having done as much
as he thought possible without their own co-operation, Maxwell rested
content. He loved Ireland better than he loved her sons and daughters;
but he loved himself better than Ireland.
And now having gained the summit of the hill of success, he stood on the
top looking out into the night a lonely man. Most lonely! Was this what
he had bargained for in those days of poverty and struggle? Was this the
end he had striven to reach? Was it thus he had expected to feel when
that end was compassed? Money—station—health—position: he possessed all
these, and yet the man whom he had followed to his grave that morning
was not so lonely as he.
There is a story current in Ireland about a traitor, by name Parese, who
undertook to give the Castle of Maynooth into the hands of an enemy of
the Fitzgeralds. He stipulated for a certain sum of money, but forgot to
stipulate also for his life; the consequence of which oversight resulted
in the “devil betraying the betrayer,” whose head was cut off as soon as
the reward was counted out.
Whether this tale be true or false, we need not stop to inquire, seeing
how often analogous cases must have come under the observation of all of
us; but I think that what happened to Parese happened also in a great
measure to Maxwell Drewitt. He had bargained for money and power, and
money and power he had, but nothing more.
When the bells that now hang in the tower of the church of St. Nicholas,
in Galway, were being cast, it is related that from far and from near,
men and women brought their golden brooches and rings, their precious
ornaments and their stores of silver and gold, and threw them in with
the iron, to the end that all might he fused together. And it is further
stated that the precious metals may be seen shining to this day in the
bells, and that those offerings of the faithful have caused their tones
to be peculiarly sweet and beautiful.
It is a lovely legend, and all the more lovely because it is so tenderly
suggestive, so touchingly pathetic. The men and the women who flocked to
the place where the casting went on have passed away, and their names
are forgotten on earth; but still the bells peal out the sweet music,
still their silver and their gold make the tone fuller, the notes more
exquisite.
I cannot help recalling these two stories while I think of Maxwell
standing there in the darkness, spite of all his wealth, alone—alone! He
had not bargained for happiness, thinking success would insure
happiness.
He cast no stores of love into time’s furnace on faith that he would
receive back, in some shape, principal and interest, and lo! the dark
days were advancing towards him, and there was never a one to take him
by the hand and bid him be of good cheer.
For money, he had, like Parese, sold his best friends, deserted the
woman who had trusted him, married a wife for whom he did not care; for
money he had schemed to ruin his uncle, and when his schemes failed, he
had accomplished his purpose by more dishonest means still. Money he had
elected to serve—Mammon had been his god, and, as has been cleverly
said, cent. per cent. his prophet; but a man cannot serve two masters—a
man cannot hoard all his wealth, or else spend it entirely on himself,
and still hear God’s bells making sweet music in his ears—music that
never sounds so sweet as to the sick and weary.
There was a preacher who once undertook to prove that life’s voyage
would be a pleasant one, even were there no hope of land on the other
side, nothing but the long sleep and the cold grave as a finish to each
man’s story. His theory seemed to be, that there is so much enjoyment in
the goodly company, in the lively conversation, in the health-giving
breeze, in the witty anecdote, in the daily work, as to make the journey
a desirable one in itself, without any reference to an expected haven;
and while the goodly company is around us, while the conversation never
flags, while the sky is clear and the body strong, perhaps he may be
right. I have known many who seemed to think so. Only, reader, how is it
when man has to go below; when he is lying in his narrow berth; when the
guests have dropped off one by one; when the voices of the singers are
hushed; when the evil days are come and the years draw nigh when he
shall say, “I have no pleasure in them;” when the sun and the light, and
the stars and the moon be darkened, and the clouds return after the
rain—how is it then?
Standing in the gathering night—type of that still deeper night which he
would one day have to pass through, Maxwell Drewitt was seized in the
hour of his success, in the hour of his victory, with a strange
horror—with a frightful dread. It seemed but a day to him since he was
young; it would be but a day till he was old, and then—
Maxwell closed the window, and groped his way out of the room. All in
darkness, he descended the staircase, and when he reached the hall, he
took his hat, and saying to one of the servants, “You need not wait up
for me. I shall not sleep here just at present,” walked out of the
house, and down the avenue, under the trees, past the porter’s
lodge—home.
“I do not think I shall go up to Kincorth till you can go with me,” he
said to his wife, and Lady Emmeline looked at him in amazement.
It was the first time during sixteen years she had heard him express a
wish for her companionship, and so much affection astonished her.
Further, instead of kicking her poodle out of his way with a curse,
Maxwell, thinking of that scene in the stable of which he could not get
rid, stretched his hand towards the creature, and called it by
name—“Prince—Prince!” But Prince, unused, like its mistress, to such
attentions, only crouched behind Lady Emmeline, who, pushing the dog off
the sofa, said—
“Go, Prince, there.”
“Come here, Prince,” added Maxwell, and he made a movement to stroke
him; but Prince backed from the proffered caress, and, barking and
growling, retreated under the sofa.
“Prince is not accustomed to your noticing him,” said Lady Emmeline,
apologetically, but Maxwell did not seem to hear her words. He was
walking up and down the room with his hands buried in his pockets, his
head bent down, his face looking stern and thoughtful.
“Has Mrs. Drewitt really left Kincorth?” asked Lady Emmeline after a
long pause.
“Yes, they are all gone,” he answered.
“Dear, dear; I am very sorry; poor things!”
“I do not see why the devil you should be sorry for them,” he said,
stopping in his walk; “nor why you should call them poor things. I did
not want them to go. Heaven knows, I would much rather they had stayed.
And as for their being ‘poor things,’ they cannot be a great deal poorer
than they were; and I suspect Mrs. Drewitt knew pretty well what she was
about when she went to Durrow. Pryor is sure to marry Geraldine, and
that, you may say, will be a provision for the family.”
“How very clever you are, Maxwell,” remarked Lady Emmeline, her old face
lighted up with admiration. “Who could ever have pieced that all
together as you have done? I never should; but now it is as clear as
possible. It is not exactly nice; but still one can scarcely blame
her—can one?”
“Blame her! though she has placed me in a most awkward position, I
commend her prudence. Candidly, I did not think Mrs. Drewitt had so much
sense,” and Maxwell looked as he spoke at his wife’s face, and wondered
with an unutterable astonishment how he ever came to marry such a fright
of a woman.
“And Mr. Pryor is so nice, and Geraldine so pretty,” said Lady Emmeline.
“The only drawback—” Maxwell began, but he stopped in his speech
suddenly and resumed his walk.
“Is what?” inquired his wife.
“I was wrong—there is no drawback,” said Maxwell, who did not intend to
make any remarks for the future about disparity of age, if he could
avoid doing so. He had been thinking of something he meant to ask his
wife to do for him, and to compass that object he intended to be civil
to her; civil so far as it was in his nature to be towards any one with
whom he was thrown in daily communication.
Many a taunt he had flung at her, but he would try to taunt no more. If
she fell into his plan and helped him to carry it out, he would bear
with her silliness; he would say nothing to her about their childless
hearth—about her rouge—her age—her affectation. He would command his
temper and his tongue, and do his best for her, if she would do her best
for him.
CHAPTER VI.
On the Way to Durrow.
Through the twilight Brian Drewitt pursued his way over the hills to
Durrow, keeping as near the sea as the nature of the country would
permit.
Instinctively he felt that the waters rolling on the shore, that the
plash of the waves which rose to his ears, that the noise of the ocean
washing up to the base of the cliffs calmed and comforted him.
When no human being could have quieted his heart, the voices of the
night and the murmurs of the sea came round and about him, bringing
tranquillity and repose with them.
All his plans had that day been wrecked, all his hopes had foundered. It
is no easy matter to realize the full extent of such a misfortune in a
minute, and Brian sometimes caught himself wondering about the leases,
about the grass land, about how soon the oats would be fit to reap, even
while he knew, in a dull, stupid kind of way, that the leases, the grass
lands and the oats could never more signify anything to him.
When we go out of the light we find it difficult to see clearly in the
darkness; and after the flare of excitement in which he had been living
all the day, Brian discovered that the intense stillness, the utter lull
of human passions and human wishes around him, prevented any distinct
thoughts or plans taking shape in his mind.
For a time everything seemed mixed and confused. He walked on like a
person in a dream, now thinking of one thing, now of another, until at
last, as he drew near Durrow, every incident of the past week came back
to his memory clearly and separately. When it did so, Brian Drewitt
threw himself down on the grass by the edge of the cliff—lay with his
face touching the cool earth—thinking of his past, tracing out his
future.
He thought of his father; of the coldness that had come between them; of
the way in which he had worked and struggled to free Kincorth; of how
his endeavours had fretted his parent; of how his motives had been
misunderstood, his intentions doubted; of how Harold had been preferred
to him; of how Harold had been everything, he nothing—and Brian’s heart,
as he lay and considered these things, became a perfect well of
bitterness.
But then, again, he remembered how his father’s grey head had lain on
his breast, how his father’s last action on earth had been to stretch
out his arms towards him, and Brian’s heart was softened, and grew
exceeding tender and sorrowful within him.
And the waves came rolling on the shore, slowly and gently, and the sea
washed the base of Durrow Cliffs, and it seemed as though he could hear
the voices of the great waters coming nearer and nearer, talking to him,
mourning with him, as if they too had suffered.
He recollected what his father had said about having left everything to
him. He repeated to himself the warning he had received years and years
before. He called up every word and look of Maxwell’s, and then
suspicion became certainty. Kincorth _had_ been procured by fraud;
though by what fraud Brian was unable to imagine. Which idea brought him
almost to the end of his reflections on the past, by causing him to
wonder what he should do in the future.
There, however, all seemed vague and shadowy. He could not yet tell what
he ought to do. He had no idea on what course his mother would decide.
He must talk the matter over with Mr. Pryor; and having settled so much,
Brian rose from the ground, and walked onwards for a little distance
towards the house.
Then he turned and went back to the cliff once more, where he sat down
and listened dreamily to the song which the ocean was murmuring so far
below. Heaven knows what the waves whispered to him, what message the
soft wind brought to his soul—I only can tell, that with hands clasped
over his head, with his face bowed forward on his knees, Brian hearkened
to the sermon which nature preached to him that night, taking, as we all
do, his own construction out of it.
We have, most of us, some memory of this kind—some scene that, so often
as we think of any great trouble, immediately recurs to our memory.
With one it is a forest glade, where the sunbeams pour through the
branches and make bright patterns and golden traceries on the turf
beneath; with another, it is a bare expanse of country, upon which the
winter afternoon is darkening down; with a third, it is some river
reach, where trees overhang the waters, and the grass looks green and
beautiful on the banks, and a boat or two is gliding past; while a
fourth sees in imagination the city streets all lighted up, and full of
people hurrying—hurrying away.
But sadder to my mind than all, is the memory of a sunset watched from a
lonely seashore; a sunset seen over a waste of angry waters, of roaring
billows; or a night-watch on the deck of a vessel, while the stormy
waves are lashing themselves to fury all around; or such a vigil as that
kept by Brian Drewitt, during which his soul seemed to go out of him,
and stand on the shore below, greeting the white foam as it was thrown
upon the shingle, and asking the waters questions that might only be
fitly put if the ocean washed, on one side, the sands of time, but on
the other the headlands of Eternity.
His life—it was all before him then, to make what he would out of. His
life—he had reached that point in the highway of existence where his
father had once stood, where Maxwell had once stood, where all those who
have grown to man’s estate must surely have paused for a moment to
survey their road. His life—what a much grander thing life would have
seemed to this youth had he looked out at it from the windows of
Kincorth instead of from the cliffs of Durrow! And yet, to my thinking,
it was in his power to make as good a thing of his existence one place
as another; unencumbered by a mortgaged estate, as burdened by it; free
to go where he liked, instead of being chained to one spot, and forced
to make his fortune there. For he determined to make his fortune. He
resembled Maxwell in that respect, and he resembled him, unfortunately,
in another—viz., in his resolution to win back Kincorth.
“Earth fighting for earth, earth struggling after earth, earth losing
its youthfulness, its innocence, its light-heartedness to gain earth!”
Did the wind and the waves utter no such plaint as this in his ears, as
he sat listening to their voices? Had the night, which had spoken so
plainly to Maxwell, nothing to tell Brian?
Life, oh! life—who is there that has lived, who would not go back and
try to make a better of it if he could? Who, when the last day comes,
does not think that, if he might be permitted to retrace his steps, to
stand once more on the threshold of existence, his prayer would be to
wash his hands in innocency, and to keep himself unspotted from the
world?
Stained and soiled, torn and defiled, who does not wish that he could
commence wearing the fleshy garments of our poor mortality once again,
fondly believing he could keep them out of the mire, and bring them
almost white to the end of the journey? And yet, as the instrument can
give forth no music till its strings have been played upon—as we can
never tell the quality of the gold till it comes forth from the
furnace—as we know little of our own capabilities till our strength has
been tested and tried in the battlefield of the world—so there is no
man, or woman either, who dare say that, if return were possible, a
better working out of the great problem would be probable also.
And for these reasons I do not say that Brian would have passed through
the fire scatheless had he laid out a different course to travel; though
I believe it would have made all the difference had he decided to pursue
his onward path without permitting hatred to gain dominion over
him—without letting envy and malice and all uncharitableness find
lodging in his young heart.
But yet it was scarcely Brian’s fault that he disliked his cousin so
intensely. He had drunk in that enmity with his mother’s milk; he had
fed on it from his youth upward. Mrs. Drewitt was the one to blame here.
She had been pleased to see Brian at war with Maxwell. She had done her
best to make her son hate the man who desired her son’s inheritance:
for, like all weak people, in striving only to put Brian on his guard
against his cousin’s machinations, she had overdone her part, and caused
her boy to look with suspicion on every act of his relative—to search
for some hidden meaning under every word—to listen greedily to stories
concerning Maxwell’s wickedness, Maxwell’s avariciousness, Maxwell’s
heartlessness—to consider the owner of the Headlands, in fact, as the
_bête noire_ of the county, and to believe that honey could as soon be
bitter as any act of Maxwell Drewitt’s good.
Add to this the well-meant warning which he had received, and his own
experience of his cousin, and you will see that, unless Brian Drewitt
made up his mind to leave Ireland entirely, to forget Kincorth and
Connemara, and Maxwell, and to start on a new life which should have no
sort of connexion with the past, there could be nothing between the pair
but war to the death for ever.
In his hour of triumph it might be that Brian would hold out his hand to
Maxwell, and contemptuously offer him friendship as his cousin had
offered friendship to him; but even that was scarcely likely; for in his
hates Brian was more sincere than his cousin. He was a staunch friend,
an open enemy; and if his constitution, his education, his temperament,
his country, and his misfortunes, all tended to render him implacable,
who may blame him?
It is not so easy to turn the other cheek as those who have never
received a blow on one, would have us believe. We are all rather more
apt to fight for our coat than to bestow our cloak on the thief also.
What man is there that, having Brian Drewitt’s strength of character,
would venture to say he could always keep clear of that dangerous
frontier ground where strength becomes sin?
Nevertheless, I would it were possible for me to record that the voices
of the night, the murmurs of the sea, the light wind that came down from
among the tops of the hills, taught Brian a different lesson; but alas!
when the youth arose he was the same as when he sat down; death had not
softened him, suffering had not subdued him, nature and silence had no
power to change him.
When in the after years he returned to Ireland and sat on the cliffs of
Durrow, listening to the plash of the waves, to the sighing of the wind,
he would have given all his wealth, all his influence, aye, and his life
also, if he could but have kept that sorrowful vigil once again, and
learned a different lesson out of it—if he could but have started on his
journey through the world resolved never to look back, but always
forward.
Through the years, the sea ebbed out, and the sea flowed in; through the
years, in storm and tempest, in calm and sunshine, the waves stole up on
the sands, and kissed the feet of the great rocks lovingly; through the
years, the shore-birds built their nests, and fed their young, and
winged their flight far out over the ocean, and then came back, with
pinions weary and drooping, to the land; through the years, the
fishermen dried their nets, and put out their lines, and pushed off
their boats; through the years, the ships went by, staggering among the
billows, or with their white sails glistening and shining, sped onwards
to their destined haven; through the years, the sun set, and the
darkness drew on, and the great hills hid themselves behind the curtains
of the night; through the years, the deeps never ceased calling unto one
another, now softly, now in louder tones; through the years, the youth
who had once sat and listened to them was a stranger in a strange
country, working for his daily bread.
He did not know as, at last, he walked away from the edge of the cliff,
that it would be necessary for him to leave Connemara; on the contrary,
he had some vague idea of renting a cottage for his mother, near
Analore, and of trying to make his fortune there. He knew that with
worse land Maxwell had done well, and although there was no Lady
Emmeline for him to marry, yet he thought that, with Mr. Pryor’s help,
he could, perhaps, still weather the storm.
“I must talk to him,” thought Brian, and he went up to Durrow House,
where Mrs. Connor met Brian in the hall, and informed him that his
mother and brother and sister were all gone to bed, “tired out” as Jenny
expressed it.
“And Mr. Pryor?” Brian asked.
“He is staying at Eversbeg with Mr. Waller.”
“What’s that for?” inquired the youth.
“He said he thought Mrs. Drewitt would be more comfortable if she felt
she had the house to herself,” was the reply. And then Mrs. Connor went
on to ask what he would have to eat, and brought in supper herself, and
made the boy a cup of strong coffee. Look at her as she sits in the
candlelight—would you think that from her eyes had ever fallen such
passionate tears, that she had ever pleaded so vehemently, that she had
ever loved so unavailingly, as you can remember to have been the case?
Those calm, kind eyes look now as though sorrow had never dimmed them.
Away in her girlhood, far, far back, lies the dream, and the grief, and
the sorrow, and the sin.
To such natures, to such gentle, loving women, time is very kind; he
refuses to wear channels in their cheeks, to draw lines across their
foreheads, to take away their beauty, or to destroy their power of
conferring happiness upon others; and thus Jenny was still pleasant to
look upon—pleasant, though she was young no more; though the flush of
her girlish loveliness had faded off her cheeks, though the warm
brightness of her hair was dulled, though the years that had come and
gone could not come and go without leaving traces behind them, still
Jenny was pretty still, and Brian, who liked her greatly, found her face
pleasant, as I have said, to look on.
Had she done wrong to marry? Jenny’s nature, facile as it was, had yet
set itself resolutely against marrying or giving in marriage; but time,
as it passed by, worked wonders, and Connor’s patient devotion and
enduring constancy prevailed at last. All were dead who knew her
secret—all save Maxwell and one other; and so, after ten years, she
married, and came, as we have seen, with her husband to take charge of
the great house at Durrow.
Mr. Pryor’s agency was of course immense promotion to Connor. There was
a wonderful difference between living at Durrow Park and in Duranmore
Cottage. Altogether, the Connors were rising people, greatly loved by
the poor, and much appreciated by their employer; and Brian could not
help thinking; while Jenny coaxed him to eat, and set dainty viands
before him, that the Englishman had been fortunate; that no man and no
woman could have been found in the length and breadth of Connemara
likely to suit him better.
For many a day Jenny and Brian had been friends. She it was who, seeing
the boy idling away his time, sought opportunity and occasion to give
him the caution he spoke of to Mr. Pryor; and now, when all his
struggles, all his efforts had proved of no avail, Mrs. Connor spoke
tearfully of the sorrow that had come upon them, and told the son how
deeply she grieved for his mother.
“You must be a good boy to her,” she said; “you must make up to her for
what she has lost.”
“Yes,” answered Brian, “and I mean to try and give her back what she has
lost.”
“You cannot give her back the dead,” Mrs. Connor remarked, sorrowfully.
“No; but I may give her back Kincorth,” the youth replied.
“Mr. Brian,” began Jenny, “since ever I came to Duranmore I have heard
of Kincorth—heard of it as a bone of contention, as a place about which
there had been quarrels, and broils, and heart-burnings, generation
after generation. But for Kincorth, maybe your cousin might have been a
better man: not that I have any reason to speak ill of him,” she went on
hurriedly; “for though I am afraid he did put Timothy out of Mr.
Waller’s agency, still he has stood his friend since, and he has been
very kind to Dennis; but still everybody knows, unless by chance his
wife, that Mr. Maxwell has not been a good man, which I think he might
only for Kincorth——”
“How do you make that out, Mrs. Connor?” asked Brian, pushing away his
plate as he spoke.
“You are not eating a bit,” said Jenny, piteously.
“Never mind me,” answered the young man. “You were speaking about
Maxwell: how do you think Kincorth made him what he is?”
“Why, this way,” she replied. “He always thought himself wronged, you
know, and it is not for anybody to say, Mr. Brian, that your grandfather
did the thing that was right when he passed by his own eldest son and
left all to your father. Do you think, Mr. Brian, it would have been
fair for Mr. Drewitt to cut you out for Master Harold? Would it, now?”
and Jenny’s voice grew quite earnest and pathetic as she pleaded the
cause of the man she had once loved too well.
“Putting it in that way, Mrs. Connor, I must agree with you,” he
answered; “but then it was not with Maxwell a question between brother
and brother, but between uncle and nephew. If George Drewitt had been
bitter about the matter, I must say his feelings would have seemed to me
perfectly natural, and if Harold had superseded me, perhaps I should
have felt angry too. That, however, would have been no reason why my son
should feel himself injured. There is no just cause why Maxwell should
have imagined Kincorth belonged of right to him.”
“Yes, there was, Mr. Brian,” she persisted. “Your father said he would
never marry, and then he did marry. He promised to be a father to his
brother’s children, and then——”
“Mrs. Connor, he was buried to-day; let what he did and what he left
undone be buried with him,” Brian interrupted.
“I beg your pardon,” she said, humbly, and the tears came up into her
eyes as she saw how hurt the lad was. “He was a good man and a true,
even if he did leave many a thing undone he ought to have seen to; and
all I meant to say was, that as Kincorth has been a curse and a snare to
your cousin, I hope and pray, Mr. Brian, you will never let it be either
to you. Sure there’s many a place as nice in Ireland. To my fancy, this
house, with its look-out over the sea, is heartsomer than those woods
and mountains”—poor Jenny! she shivered as she spoke—“and I think Dennis
is right in saying you are better without so large a property so heavily
mortgaged. And, indeed,” finished Jenny, “if I was a young gentleman I
would not stay in these parts at all. I would go to England, and see the
world, and make money, and come back here maybe for a month or two in
the year, as Mr. Pryor does, but no longer. For many and many a day
before I was married I used to wish I could go away. I did—I did.”
“I have not a notion what I shall do yet,” Brian answered, while he took
another cup of coffee from her. “There is one thing, however, I do
know—that wherever I go I shall always feel grateful to you for making
me what I am. But for you I do not think I should have been fit for
anything; and now I do not feel afraid of turning out into the world to
earn my bread.”
“I told you before, Mr. Brian, that your mother had been my friend once
in a time of bitter trouble, and that if at any hour of the day or night
I could serve her or hers I would get up to do it. You have no call to
feel grateful to me. There is nothing I could do for her, God knows,
that would be half enough—not half.”
“I cannot fancy your ever having had a trouble, Mrs. Connor,” said the
lad. She was the same in middle age as she had been in youth, a woman
who took men’s fancies, to whom it came easy and natural for them to
talk. “You look as if you never could have known a care.”
“Do I?” and she dropped her head forward for a moment on her hands.
“There are few who come to my time of life,” she went on, “that have not
met trouble; but there are few who, when in trouble, find such a friend
as I did in your mother. If I could have died to keep this grief from
her, Mr. Brian, I would have done it. You may think that strange now,
having both Dennis and the children to value my life for; but I would,
and it is because I love her, and because I love you for her sake, that
I bid you quit caring for Kincorth—that I want you to make her quit
caring for it too.”
Brian turned away. He could not bear to think of his mother dependent
even for a shelter on the kindness of friends, on the courtesy of
strangers.
For himself it would not have mattered, but for her—
That was the keystone of the lad’s character; that was what had made a
man of him, whilst in years he was yet a boy—love for her—love for the
mother who had not been true to her first allegiance, but who had loved
two other babies since, and her last child, Harold, most of all.
“What am I to do?” he asked after a pause; “how can I make her cease
caring for her home, for the place to which she came a wife, which she
has left a widow? Tell me, Mrs. Connor,” he added, “what made you think
so many years ago that Maxwell was determined to have Kincorth; what
induced you to warn me; I should like to know that now.”
“Well, then, you cannot know,” she replied, taking one of the candles
off the table; “for I shall not tell you. If I had to do it again, I am
not sure that I should act as I did then, though I meant my warning for
your good;” and with that Jenny stretched out her hand a little
hesitatingly towards Brian, who stooped and kissed it as though she had
been a queen. As he did so Jenny tore her hand away and broke out crying
hysterically.
“Have I offended you, Mrs. Connor?” he said, standing abashed at his
boyish gallantry; which was no impertinence, but an act of pure, and
honest homage, and liking. “I am very sorry; I never meant to vex you.
Forgive me—pray, forgive!”
“Forgive!” she cried; “what have I to forgive? only, Mr. Brian, don’t do
that again—don’t. And may God bless—and may God keep you!”
Having completed which intelligible sentence Mrs. Connor left the room,
only turning back at the door to suggest that Brian should accompany her
and see the apartment which had been prepared for him.
“Try to get some sleep,” were her parting words; and worn out in body
and in mind, Brian followed her advice, and was soon forgetful alike of
past, present, and future.
CHAPTER VII.
Another Difficulty.
“I have been considering the suggestion you made about Analore, Brian,”
Mr. Pryor said one morning, a fortnight after Mr. Drewitt’s funeral;
“but I should not advise you to commence operations there.”
“Why not?” asked Brian. He had been over to Analore, and seen the
foundations built up of the house his father had intended for his
residence, and had drawn the granite for some twenty years before. “I
think a good deal might be made of it, and with a comparatively small
outlay, too. The land is very fair—fair, of course I mean, for
Connemara; and my mother would be only too glad to let me do the best I
could with it.”
“That I supposed; but the reason I object to your doing anything with
Analore is, that it would scarcely answer your purpose, to spend your
youth, money, and time in reclaiming another person’s property. To farm
land is a very different affair from reclaiming it.”
“But my mother’s interests and mine are identical. What is best for her
must be best for me; and if I reclaim Analore it will be quite as much
to the advantage of all of us as of one.”
“We need not discuss that question,” answered Mr. Pryor, “since it has
nothing to do with the matter. What I mean is this: Analore only belongs
to your mother for life; and though I trust she will stay with us till
her hair is white, still you would not care to plough and drain and sow
and plant for your cousin’s benefit.”
“He has nothing to do with Analore. It will surely belong to me—or to
all of us after——”
“Your mother’s death. No, Brian, it will not; and it is very lucky that
before you began to delve and dig I looked into her settlement. I cannot
imagine how any lawyer could overlook the probability of her having a
family; but that it has been overlooked is certain. Analore belongs to
your mother for life, and to Maxwell afterwards. It would have belonged
to you had your father died intestate. Unless your father were swamped
with debt at the time of his marriage, and that some pressure was
brought to bear upon him, the whole affair is inexplicable; but no one
can alter the wording now, and it is for this reason I say you had
better do nothing with Analore; because, in the first place, you would
be spending your strength on another man’s property; and, in the second,
you would—supposing any one advanced money on the place—have to insure
your mother’s life to secure the lender against loss.”
“Beaten,” said Brian, “at every turn;” and the pair walked on a step or
two in silence.
“You will not tell my mother,” were the next words spoken.
“Why not? I think it is much better for your mother to understand
exactly how you are situated,” replied Mr. Pryor.
“Harold and Geraldine?” Brian said; and the Englishman understood that
he meant it would pain Mrs. Drewitt to know they would be totally
penniless.
“I have been down with Neill,” Brian went on; “but he can tell me
nothing about the missing will. He says he gave it back to my father
himself; but that he has some impression the will was returned to his
office; that is, he says, he remembers my father making some mention of
either having left it with Ryan—who was then Neill’s clerk—or of his
having intended to do so.”
“Rather vague,” remarked Mr. Pryor.
“Then I went to Ryan. ‘Upon my word, Mr. Brian,’ he said, ‘if I knew
where that will was I would tell you; but Mr. Drewitt never gave it back
to me.’
“‘Mr. Neill thinks my father said something to him about having returned
it.’
“‘Burned it—depend upon it that was what he said.’
“‘But why should he burn the one and not the other?’ I inquired.
“‘My opinion is,’ he said, ‘that he forgot all about the other, he was
so mighty keen on, just at that time, aye, and indeed for long after you
thought he had done with Mr. Neill, considering how he could leave your
brother independent of you, that it is not for me, or you, or anybody to
say what he did or what he did not do, what he thought or what he did
not think.’ And then what do you think he proposed?” asked Brian.
“I have not the remotest idea.”
“He offered to lend me five hundred pounds to work Analore. I asked him
if it was Maxwell’s; but he said every penny of it was his own that he
had made by hard work. ‘I tried to keep it, thinking my sister might
want it some day,’ he added; ‘but if you have it, she can ask for it
should she need it, and it may be of use to you now.’”
“Well, Brian?”
“Well, Mr. Pryor, I refused it, of course; but wasn’t it good of him? As
I came home, I called again on Mr. Neill, and told him what Ryan said.
‘It is very possible,’ was all I could get out of him. Then I inquired
if my father had been with him after the mortgage was transferred, and
he said, ‘Yes, often.’ ‘About leaving Harold independent of me,’ I
inquired, and Mr. Neill nodded. So I am beaten there again, you
see—beaten again.”
“What do you think of doing now?” asked Mr. Pryor.
“Of trying my old scheme. I should like to get a situation and endeavour
to push my way.”
“Right; you cannot do better than adhere to that resolution.”
“Dan Glynn offers, as you know, two hundred and fifty pounds a year for
Analore. I do not think, if I am not to farm it, that we can do better.”
“Perhaps not. What does Mr. Dan Glynn expect to make out of it?”
“Potheen, I suspect,” said Brian, laughing; “but does that signify to
us?”
“Not in the least, if he pays his rent; and at any rate it will be much
less trouble to look up one man than twenty or thirty tenants. He will
not turn the present occupiers out?”
“They are only occupiers of the ground, you know,” replied Brian; “there
is but one hut on the fifteen hundred acres, and that has the roof off
it. Glynn, however, will not send any of them adrift. He will keep them
all to help.”
“And now, with regard to this plan of your mother’s about living in
Dublin? Do you not think she had better stay on for a year, at any rate,
at Durrow? The house is there, and empty, and——”
“I think she would be happier away,” Brian interrupted. “In a house of
her own, no matter how small, she would feel more settled than she could
ever do at Durrow; and besides, Mr. Pryor, there is Harold—we must get
him away from Connemara, at all hazards.”
“He would be better away certainly, and he must do something to earn his
living; but, Brian, promise me now—promise faithfully you will not
encourage this notion of Mrs. Drewitt’s about going to law: she has not
an inch of ground to stand upon, and it would be beggary. You have no
idea how soon law runs away with money; and she could about as soon
overturn Bennobeola, as put your cousin out of Kincorth now.”
“Not even if that codicil were proved to be a forgery?”
“How could it be proved such?” asked Mr. Pryor; but Brian remained
silent, and the barrister went on.
“I will be perfectly frank with you in this matter. I believe that
codicil to be a forgery. I thought so the moment I heard it read. I
thought it because of many trivial circumstances I had noticed
previously. But you could never convert a jury to the same opinion; it
would be waste of time, of money, and of patience to attempt such a
thing. The solicitor who made the original will, and who, it is
supposed, added the codicil, has been paralyzed these six years, and has
now lost all power of speech. The witnesses are dead. It is the distance
of time, you see, that is so much against us. In law, the codicil is
perfectly regular, and what is worse, perfectly natural. Mr. Neill
explains the absence of another will; and we have no reason to suppose
that Mr. Neill speaks otherwise than truthfully. As for your father’s
talk on his death-bed about having left the place to you, the first
question would be, was he delirious at all during his last illness? and
what could Sheen answer but that he frequently wandered? It is quite one
thing, you see, to be satisfied oneself, and quite another to satisfy a
jury. For which reasons, take my advice, and leave Kincorth to its fate.
After all, the estate is not worth the trouble. Your father did not
leave it as he got it.”
Brian winced. No one let him imagine Maxwell had secured so great a
prize as he wanted to believe.
“You will go out into the world,” went on Mr. Pryor, “and make your
fortune, and forget all about Kincorth, as I have forgotten all about my
disappointment when I was beaten at Duranmore before you were born. We
will get you something to do, and you shall do it, and be a rich man
yet; richer than Maxwell, perhaps, and much happier, we will hope.”
Having uttered which sanguine expectation, Mr. Pryor mounted his horse,
and without asking Brian to accompany him, rode straight to Duranmore.
The first person he went to was Mr. James Butler, with whom he had a
long and confidential chat. Having put up his horse at the “Marsden
Arms,” he walked from The Retreat to Mr. Neill’s office in Duranmore,
and satisfied himself Mr. Neill, at any rate, was not one of the
conspirators. From Mr. Neill’s office he crossed over to Mr. Ryan’s, and
after taking the chair that was nervously handed to him, he commenced
the conversation by thanking the lawyer for his friendly offer to Mr.
Brian Drewitt, “about which offer,” he added, “I have come to speak to
you.”
“Indeed! it is very kind,” and Mr. Ryan looked as though he would have
liked to skulk round the corner of the next street and get a glass of
whiskey before proceeding to business.
“Not at all; it is only my duty. I am quite certain when you made so
liberal a proposal that you were not aware of the actual position of
affairs regarding Analore, and a five hundred pound legacy is not one
which it is safe to jeopardize. Uncles do not die every day—do they, Mr.
Ryan?” added the barrister, mercilessly following every thought which
was passing through his listener’s mind.
“He is considering now whether he told Brian it was a legacy,” thought
Mr. Pryor; while Mr. Ryan answered, vaguely, “That they did not indeed.”
“And most probably, if anything went astray with this five hundred, you
have no further expectations from your relatives?”
“None, sir, none—he was the last;” and Mr. Pryor wondered whether Mr.
Ryan had any idea of weeping.
“That is precisely what I thought: you have got five hundred pounds to
lend, but you have not got five hundred pounds to lose. Analore is not a
desirable property, therefore, for you to risk anything upon, since Mrs.
Drewitt has no power of mortgaging it.”
“What do you mean, sir?—what do you mean?” and Mr. Pryor saw at once
that his suspicion about Ryan being mixed up in this matter also, was
unfounded.
“Precisely what I say. Mrs. Drewitt has only a life interest in Analore.
At her death it reverts to Maxwell Drewitt.”
“And the children?”
“Have not a sixpence in the world.”
“The Lord help them!” exclaimed Mr. Ryan.
“He had need,” answered the other, a little bitterly, “for it would seem
that they are not likely to get much help from man. Mr. Ryan,” he went
on, “probably you know the mystery of that marriage settlement—of course
nothing can make a better or a worse of it now—but as a simple matter of
curiosity, I should like greatly to know how such an instrument came to
be drawn.”
“I was not Mr. Maxwell’s solicitor then, sir. I had nothing to do with
him then at all, I assure you, sir.”
“Of course not; and that is the reason why I ask you for information on
the subject—as a mere matter of curiosity.”
“I do not know anything about it, sir.”
“Are you quite certain? Was no pressure put on Mr. Drewitt?”
“There might have been: if there were it wasn’t by me. I was only a
beginner then. I had no good clients at all.”
“Nor any five hundred pound legacies, we may suppose, Mr. Ryan,” said
the other, with a smile. “I hope you are getting good interest.”
“I—I haven’t put it out yet—I have it in hand.”
“Then your amiable relative has died recently, I presume?”
“Within the last three months.”
“What a strange people you Irish are!” remarked the other, rising to
depart. “You get a five hundred pound legacy, offer to lend it to a mere
lad on no sufficient security, and still grudge the expense of a
hat-band to prove how sincerely you deplore the dead!”
The two men were standing and their eyes met. In a moment Mr. Pryor knew
that what he had suspected was true; and Mr. Ryan knew the Englishman
was in possession of his secret. Then Mr. Pryor said good-morning, and
was going away, but the other detained him.
“For God’s sake, Mr. Pryor,” he said, laying a hand on his shoulder,
“never mention what you are now thinking to any one. He would kill me,
he would. If ever you hear of my being found dead by the roadside, with
a bullet through me, you will know whose bullet it is; though as likely
as not some innocent man may be hung for the murder.”
“Why do you not leave the country?”
“I will if you drive me to it,” was the significant answer.
“Mrs. Drewitt intends to contest the will,” remarked Mr. Pryor.
“Does she?—then I wish her well out of her troubles,” replied Mr. Ryan.
“If need were, he’d take it from court to court for twenty years. She
has not an inch of ground; you must see that yourself. There is some law
place in London that they say it is as bad for a man to get into as for
a cat to go through hell without her claws. Well, Mrs. Drewitt will find
going to law with her nephew as bad as that, or worse.”
“And yet you have been his friend for twenty years?”
“Have I?—more fool Timothy Ryan; that is all I have got to say: but
friend or no friend can make no difference about Mrs. Drewitt. You can
just tell her in confidence, out of your own mind as it were, that those
who sup with the devil need to have a long spoon.”
The notion tickled the barrister’s fancy, and he laughed outright.
“I think Mrs. Drewitt would be greatly surprised if I did,” he said.
“Surprised or not, it is the truth I’m telling you; but I would not tell
it to you if himself wasn’t safe in Dublin at this blessed minute.”
“If he is in Dublin, he is in Duranmore as well,” answered Mr. Pryor. “I
see his chesnut mare at the door, and I see him throwing the reins to
his groom.”
“Lord save us! I think he is the devil,” murmured Ryan, nervously
shuffling among his papers. “Good-morning, sir—good-morning,” he added
aloud as his visitor reached the door.
“I beg your pardon,” said the owner of Kincorth, who was entering the
office as the Englishman left it; “your most obedient, Mr. Pryor,” and
he almost swept the floor with his hat, his mocking bow was so low and
deferential.
Without answering him by a word, Mr. Pryor bowed in acknowledgment and
passed out, while Maxwell walking straight up to Ryan, took him by the
arm.
“What brought him here?” said the great man, looking his accomplice full
in the face, as if expecting him to falter in his reply.
But desperation gave Ryan courage. “He came to inquire about Mrs.
Drewitt’s settlement.”
“What about it?”
“She has it only for her lifetime, with no remainder to her children. He
seemed to think I knew all about it, but I did not. I told him it was
the first I had heard of the matter.”
Maxwell dropped his hold of Mr. Ryan’s arm, and leaning over the back of
a chair, indulged in a long low whistle of delight.
“Better and better,” he said. “I did not know that either, Ryan. I did
not,” he repeated, noticing a look of incredulity on the lawyer’s face.
“Do you imagine I have had time to read over every paper concerning the
property since I came into possession of it? No such thing. I shall find
plenty to pay, I expect, when I do take that trouble. But if this should
prove to be correct, we may as well make her an offer for Analore. You
can write on chance, Ryan, and tell her she shall have three hundred
a-year for Analore if she likes the offer; or should she prefer to sell
her life interest, I will take the place off her hands.
“When shall I write, Mr. Drewitt?”
“To-day, if you choose—yes, better do it at once, for I should like to
have Analore,” answered Maxwell.
Acting upon which suggestion, Ryan penned a polite epistle to Mrs.
Drewitt, who at once declined the proposal.
“Having already let Analore,” she finished.
“Well, it cannot be helped,” sighed Maxwell; “and, besides, it is only
for her life.”
“Only for her life!” echoed back some mocking fiend within him: “she is
not more than two years older than you! Only for her life!—you may be
dead before her; and then, to whom will you leave Kincorth, and the
Headlands, and Cherryfield, and the property in the Joyce country, and
Analore?”
Maxwell had decided that point. There was a boy finishing his education
at a very select school in the county Wicklow, whom he meant to make his
heir, whom he intended to send to one of the English universities and
bring up in the way he should go.
There was a boy to inherit—but alas! that could not make the idea of
“passing away” at all more endurable to the man, who, though he had no
fear of God, had yet an intense horror of death.
CHAPTER VIII.
Harold in Trouble.
It was summer once again: summer twelve months after the events recorded
in the last few chapters, and Mrs. Drewitt and Brian, and Harold and
Geraldine, were living far away from Duranmore, far beyond the Connemara
Alps, far beyond sound of the great ocean that washes the headlands of
the “wild west.”
Brian had got a situation in Dublin, which however necessitated frequent
absences from home. He was working hard, and giving great satisfaction
to his employers; and Mrs. Drewitt, who had greatly crippled her income
by feeing lawyers and running after all manner of people who advised her
to dispute her husband’s will, resided with Harold and Geraldine in a
small house in the outskirts of Dublin.
From whence Harold walked into the city every morning, and sat at a desk
from nine o’clock till four; an amusement he was never weary of
grumbling about; while his mother, likewise, never wearied in
commiserating him for it.
In the present, as in the past, it was Harold she pitied, Harold she
loved; it was the bold-eyed, bright-faced boy she clung to—her youngest
born—the Benjamin of her life to her!
Such likings are natural, perhaps; but they do not generally tend to
make matters pleasanter in the family circle, and perhaps it was quite
as well that Brian’s occupation took him much from home, as otherwise he
might have had less patience than was the case with Harold’s
repinings—with Harold’s conduct.
For Harold was the same in Dublin as he had been in Connemara—wild,
reckless, dissipated. His acquaintances were none of the most desirable,
his life none of the most regular; but still the mother would not
see—the mother would not believe.
He was her darling, and nothing it was in his power to do could make him
otherwise. When he found she came to meet him in the summer afternoons,
he walked by a circuitous route home; when he found she sat up for him
at night, he came home early, went to bed with the rest of the
household, and then stole down in his stocking-soles, with his boots in
his hand, and let himself out, taking the door-key with him.
Of course their servant—who was often unfastening the shutters when
Harold reappeared—knew of these pranks; but she had never the heart to
tell his mother.
And if she had told Mrs. Drewitt, what difference could it have made?
His mother had no influence over him—none whatever. He had nothing to
say but “I will leave the house,” or “I will go and ask food and lodging
from Maxwell,” and she was silent at once.
Whenever Maxwell came to Dublin, which was not seldom, Harold always
dined with him, and always came back reeling drunk.
“Told him—I—bore—no grudge—welcome to—Madcap—poor—old—girl,” the young
rascal would hiccup out, and when induced to go to bed, he invariably
did so under protest, retiring from view between the sheets in his
boots, coat, waistcoat and trousers, and refusing to let go of Mary’s
hand—Mary was their maid-of-all work—until she promised to call him
early.
“Don’t f—get, Marish. If you’re waking—you know—call me early, Marish
dear.”
And indeed had it not been for Mary’s repeated calls, Harold could
hardly have kept his situation so long as was the case.
“Damn business—curse work!” I think that was the refrain of almost every
sentence Harold Drewitt uttered for some months after starting in the
world on his own account, and Mrs. Drewitt listened sympathetically, and
would oftentimes confide to Mary, the maid-of-all-work before honourably
mentioned, the fact, “that she thought that office was killing her poor
boy—he looked so pale, and ill, and thin since he left the country.”
Mary had her own opinions, which, seeing Master Harold was the lamb
without blemish in his mother’s eyes, she wisely kept to herself.
But even the fondest parent cannot remain blind for ever, and
accordingly there came a time when Mrs. Drewitt, instead of pitying
Harold, went up to her own room and wept; when she prayed him not to go
to the hotel where Maxwell stopped while in town; when she entreated him
to remember that by business he must live, and that to live he must
work.
“Look at Brian,” she would remark, and the injudicious speech invariably
made Harold shrug his shoulders, and declare Brian “never was fit to be
anything better than a horse in a mill, or a counting-house drudge, or a
pack-horse which he is,” finished Harold.
“Now Harold, do not say such things of Brian!” Geraldine would exclaim,
her cheeks all a-glow; and then Harold was wont to laugh and declare—
“Oh! we all know what makes you so much in love with business; don’t we,
mamma?” For which speech Mrs. Drewitt invariably pulled Master Harold
up.
In her heart, the mother did not like the way in which Mr. Gyton was
always running over from London; she wished he would either propose or
stay away; and yet, she argued, a man must have some opportunity for
making up his mind. Altogether, I cannot say that the position of the
Drewitt family was one perfectly free from care; but still time
travelled on—on—and the seasons came and went; as they will do whether
people are happy or whether people are sad.
It was summer once again, and though there is, perhaps, no town in the
three kingdoms where the country seems so near and stone walls so little
oppressive as in Dublin, still Mrs. Drewitt missed the hills, and the
valleys, and the ocean more than she would have cared to acknowledge.
She had loved Connemara, and she had no other strong ties to any part of
the earth. Mother, and father, and sister, had long been dead, and Sir
Everard Ebbutt was married again, and her sister’s children were very
aristocratic young ladies, who would scarcely have cared to acknowledge
so very unfortunate an individual for their aunt. Altogether, she
mourned greatly after Connemara; and many a time when she and Geraldine
were walking along the Monkstown Road, or pacing slowly round Stephen’s
Green, or sitting at work together in their modestly-furnished house,
the poor lady would say suddenly—“I wonder how the Twelve Pins are
looking now, Geraldine! Must not the sea seem calm seen from Durrow
cliffs to-day?”
“Yes, mamma,” Geraldine would answer, a little guiltily conscious that
she had kept one thing from her mother’s knowledge, viz., her own
refusal of Durrow and its owner.
She could have given a comfortable home for life to her mother; she
could have let her spend all the remaining days of her life among the
scenes and the people she had learned to love so much—and she refused.
Had she done right? For many days Geraldine pondered that question over
and over again, and at last took courage and referred it to her mother.
They were sitting side by side in one of the loneliest parts of the
Phœnix Park—in one of the glades where the blackberries and the brambles
grow—and in reply to a remark from Mrs. Drewitt about the quietness
being pleasant—about the place being almost as solitary as Connemara,
though so close to Dublin, Geraldine took her mother’s hand in hers, and
said—
“Mamma, I want to ask you something.”
“He has proposed”—that was Mrs. Drewitt’s first idea, as she beheld her
daughter’s face covered with blushes. “He has proposed”—the “he” having
reference to Mr. Gyton, who was at that present moment galloping as fast
as an Irish horse could take him to the Broadstone Terminus, whence he
was soon travelling, at the mild pace which seems in fashion across the
Channel by express train, to Galway.
“I wish you were coming down with me, old fellow,” he said to Harold
Drewitt, who had accompanied him to the station, and who stood with his
hands on the top of the carriage-door, looking very wretched and
disconsolate. “A run into Connemara would do you good.”
“I know that,” Harold answered, mournfully.
“Ask leave, and come down on Saturday. There is a car or something that
will bring you on from Galway to Durrow in no time; and my uncle will be
delighted. Shall I tell him to expect you?”
“I don’t see how I can get away,” hesitated the boy.
“Nonsense; come on Saturday. Remember, I shall be looking out for you.
Good-bye;” and the train steamed away from the platform, and went
leisurely onwards into the country, through which it proceeded in a
quiet, inoffensive manner, stopping at all sorts of out-of-the-way
stations, where no passengers ever seemed to get in or out; but where
there was always a knot of idlers collected to see the engine and
carriages, as if the seventh wonder of the world were taking a little
tour through Ireland.
“No need to ask where one is,” remarked Mr. Gyton to a fellow-passenger,
who chanced to be an Englishman; “battered hats, short pipes, ragged
clothes, and plenty of policemen—I beg their pardons—of the constabulary
force.”
“Fine country, though,” returned the other.
“So I am told,” answered Mr. Gyton, drily.
“And the women are so handsome! positively, walking about Dublin
yesterday I met hundreds of lovely faces!” pursued the enthusiastic
gentleman.
“The town is not large,” remarked his companion, “and it is within the
bounds of possibility that you may have met the same faces many times
over.”
“There is something in that,” considered the other.
“And then,” continued Mr. Gyton, “if you pay particular attention to the
subject, you will observe that most Irishwomen—the women who wear gloves
I mean—have a slit in those gloves; either the lady’s hands are plump,
in which case there is an aperture at the side; or her fingers are long,
in which case the nails make a way for themselves through the tips; or
the articles are of an inferior make, which causes gaps about the thumb;
or they are too small and refuse to button. I have made gloves my
study,” added the young swell, “and I never get into a railway carriage
in which there is a woman without adding to my stock of information. I
came up from Kingston yesterday morning with a young lady, and ’pon my
honour, for a long time I thought she had on mittens, she was out at
every finger down to the middle joint!” and Mr. Gyton complacently
surveyed his own well-fitting glove, towards which his companion’s
glance was directed also.
“Do you smoke?” asked the younger man at last, presenting his cigar-case
to the stranger, who, being graciously pleased to avail himself of the
offered politeness, lit one of Mr. Gyton’s prime Havannah’s, and the
pair, stretched out one on each side the carriage, smoked until they
reached Mullingar, at which point they abandoned their cigars, and
wrapping their railway rugs about them, slept on until the guard came to
collect the tickets and to inform them that “when they reached the next
station they’d be there.”
“A most original and valuable piece of information,” remarked Mr. Gyton,
yawning desperately. “Now what do you make out of that—we shall be
there? Does he mean we shall be at the next station, or at Galway?”
“The next station is Galway,” replied the other, referring to his
time-table, and failing in his sleepy condition of mind to perceive any
wit in the young man’s brilliant remarks. “I hope we shall be able to
get a bed.”
“If my memory serves me right, you can have your choice of about a
hundred,” answered Mr. Gyton, collecting his effects, and humming an
opera air softly the while.
This was the “he” to whom Mrs. Drewitt had mentally referred while
waiting for the rest of her daughter’s sentence.
“You often talk, mamma, about Connemara, about the mountains, about the
Atlantic, about those exquisite little bays, about all sorts of things,
in fact,” and Geraldine leaned back her head till it rested gently on
her mother’s shoulder as she spoke.
“Yes, love.”
“Would you like to go back there, mamma—to go back to live?” and the
evening sunbeams rested upon the pair, upon the deep mourning of mother
and child, and Mrs. Drewitt stretched out her hand towards those patches
of golden light as though she could touch and retain them.
“That would depend, Geraldine,” was the answer. “Home to me is now
wherever my children are: if you were all in Connemara, I should love
the West; as you are all in Dublin, I am learning to love it.”
“You are certain, sure, positive, mamma?” and the pretty head nestled
itself down on Mrs. Drewitt’s shoulder as well as was possible,
considering the millinery miracle, which seemed to be stuck on the top
of various rolls and twists of hair.
“Certain, love—why?”
“Because, mamma, we might all go back to Connemara—to Durrow, if I were
to marry Mr. Pryor. He asked me, and I said no; and I have been
miserable ever since—wondering, wondering, whether it was not wrong of
me, when we are so poor, and when he likes me so much.”
There was a long pause, during the continuance of which Mrs. Drewitt
held her daughter’s hand in hers, and stroked it slowly, slowly, very
tenderly and very gently. “Poor fellow,” she said at last, and Geraldine
began to cry.
“Have I done wrong, mamma? have I done wrong?”
“You do not love him, darling?”
“No, mamma.”
“You would only marry him for the sake of Durrow, and for what he might
do for me, and Harold, and Brian?”
“Yes, mamma.”
“Then, Geraldine, you have done quite right, and never vex yourself
about the matter again. Only it is a pity of him, a great pity!” And
Mrs. Drewitt took up her daughter’s hand and commenced stroking it once
more.
“I felt that, mamma,” whispered the girl, “but I could not help saying
no. I thought only of myself then; but I have cried myself to sleep many
a night since thinking about you.”
“My poor child, and I never knew anything about it,” said the mother,
sorrowfully.
“I could not tell you. I was afraid you might be vexed; I was vexed
myself, and——” Geraldine paused.
“And what, darling?”
“Oh, mamma—mamma!” that was all the confession, but it was enough. The
mother knew the daughter’s secret, and the daughter knew her mother
understood the whole business without another word being spoken.
They sat on for a few minutes longer in silence, and then they walked
home side by side still saying little, and that little having no
connexion with the subject on which they had been talking.
Mrs. Drewitt made no further remark, asked no single question; only that
night Geraldine cried herself to sleep in her mother’s arms, and until
the early dawning of the summer’s morning Mrs. Drewitt lay awake, and
thought about the husband she should see no more on earth—about the
children whose future seemed so vague and uncertain.
As for Harold, the household had not much of a life with him until he
worried permission out of his employers to grant him a holiday; then the
very same evening he started for Galway, and worked his way thence by
car and coach to Duranmore, where Mr. Pryor met him.
“Your letter and Frank’s must have crossed each other,” he said. “He
left for Dublin by the first train from Galway this morning, and wrote
begging you to meet him at Morrison’s.”
“Then we both slept at the same hotel last night, and never knew it,”
said Harold, disconsolately; “will he be long in Dublin?”
“Only a few hours. He leaves to-night for Holyhead, and is going direct
to London. His father is very ill.”
“Wasn’t it queer we should both be in Galway together, and never know
it?” repeated Harold, whose sympathies were none of the keenest, and who
would not have cared very much who lived or who died providing he had
his little comforts. Mr. Pryor, though he had known much more singular
coincidences in the course of his life, agreed that it was “queer,”
while he gave the reins into Harold’s eager hands, and let him drive
back the ten miles to Durrow within the hour.
For the sister’s sake, Mr. Pryor was very kind to Harold, though his
affection for the boy had never been overwhelming, and consequently
Harold found his stay in Connemara exceedingly pleasant, and was very
much grieved—grieved to the extent of tears when he had to leave.
“My time’s up,” he said disconsolately to Mr. Pryor.
“Is it?” remarked that gentleman, sympathetically; “you must get leave
to come and see me next summer.”
“Ay; but that is such a devilishly long time to look forward to,”
answered Harold.
“You must employ the interval in breaking yourself of a bad habit,” Mr.
Pryor observed.
“What is that?” asked Harold, quickly.
“Swearing,” was the reply.
“There is no harm in swearing—everybody swears but you.” Fancy the
feelings of a middle-aged gentleman who was obliged to bear such
speeches from a lad. “I don’t know a fellow that does not swear,” went
on Harold; “but then, to be sure, all the fellows I know are young.”
It would have done Mr. Pryor good to have pitched Master Harold over
Durrow cliff, but one cannot always do as one likes in this world, and
he refrained.
“You may think I am making fun,” resumed the boy, “but I am not: next
summer does seem a devilishly long time away—that is not swearing, it is
truth—and I sometimes feel when I am looking about me here that I am
looking for the last time—you may laugh if you like, but I do.”
“What does the lad mean?” marvelled Mr. Pryor.
“Just what I say; neither more nor less: maybe I may see Connemara
again, and maybe not; but most likely maybe not. I have gone to every
place I could think of to-day, and said good-bye. I feel that I shall
never come back—never—never—never.” And the boy twined his hand in the
branch of a tree against which he was leaning, and, resting his head on
his arm, sobbed aloud.
“Would you rather not return to Dublin at present?” asked Mr. Pryor, who
really felt impressed by Harold’s grief. “I dare say I could make it all
right with your employers.”
“No, I must go; but I feel that I am going to meet my fate, Mr. Pryor.
If nothing comes of this, try not to think me a fool; but last night,
after I had been asleep for about a couple of hours, I awoke suddenly in
a cold perspiration and shivering from head to foot. I think you might
have heard my heart beating. I was in such a horrible fright, and there
was a dread on me—a terror; what was it? tell me;” and the boy turned
towards Mr. Pryor, who thought in a moment about Maxwell’s words—
“He will never make old bones;” and it was true, poor Harold!
“You were ill,” answered the Englishman.
“I was not ill,” returned Harold, petulantly; “I was as well as you are.
I had neither ache nor pain; only I was frightened: what frightened me?”
“You had been dreaming disagreeably.”
“I had not been dreaming at all—at least if I had I do not remember
anything about it. I was wide awake in the time you could clap hands,
and thinking about death, about Eversbeg, and my father, and that Kathie
I used to hear them talking over when I was a child, Maxwell’s sister. I
have not got over it all day. Do you think me a coward? I am not a
coward; only—only it would be very hard to die and never see Connemara
again.”
“It would, Harold; but I hope and believe you will see Connemara many
times before you die. And promise me you will go (quietly by yourself,
you know, and without alarming your mother) to some good doctor in
Dublin, and tell him you are not very strong, and to give you a tonic.
Promise me,” and Mr. Pryor slipped a five-pound note into the boy’s
hand, which Harold looked at as well as tears would let him see it.
“In the night,” he began again, “I made good resolutions—I did, Mr.
Pryor. I wish I could keep to them; I wish I could quit drinking; I wish
I could quit vexing my mother. I’d like to be good. I think it must be
nice to feel good when one wakes like that in the middle of the night.”
That was the note on which Harold’s sentences began and ended. It was
the common chord of his conversation, until at last Mr. Pryor became
really anxious.
“He would not get on this way if he were in good health,” thought the
barrister, and when he parted with Harold he felt many misgivings as to
whether he ought not to go so far as Galway, at any rate, with him.
But there was an absurdity on the face of the thing which could not fail
to strike Mr. Pryor. “The boy does not want to go to work,” he thought;
“and if we make too much of him he will never be good for anything.” As
for spirits, out of doors, Harold’s were at fever-point!
“Put on your hat, man,” he said to Doyle, who, happy as a lord, was
standing flourishing an old white apology for a hat in the middle of the
High Street of Duranmore. “I have often been drunk myself.”
“And good-bye, Kitty,” he called out to the barmaid at the “Marsden
Arms;” “see that you’re married against I come back.”
“Good-bye, Maxwell,” he shouted to his cousin, who was riding by on
Trumpeter. “Take care of Madcap; I may come down some day in the hunting
season, and ask you to let me have one more ride on her.”
“And good-bye, Mr. Pryor,” he said last of all; “try not to think about
what I told you—it was folly.”
“Write to me what the doctor says, Harold,” entreated his friend. “All
right,” was the reply and the car drove off.
Far as he could see, Harold kept waving first his hat and then his
handkerchief, and it was not until the vehicle turned round the base of
the mountain, on the road to Cragantlet, and bore the boy off through
the land of a hundred lakes, that Mr. Pryor could prevail on himself to
retrace his way towards Durrow.
He could not sleep for thinking of the lad; he resolved to write to
Brian concerning him, and he worried himself almost into a fever over
the matter, while Harold was shouting out snatches of songs, and
pitching compliments to the pretty country girls as they tripped so
daintily over the grass by the wayside, and telling stories, and
plaguing the driver’s life out to let him take the reins, and eating his
supper in Galway, and lying fast asleep in one of those huge beds at the
Railway Hotel in which Finn Macoul and his whole family might find ample
accommodation.
“If you believe me, sir,” said Harold, who travelled second class, to a
fat priest, his fellow-passenger in the railway carriage the next
morning as far as Athlone, “I had to ring the bell to find myself; I
went wandering over the bed every time I woke trying to discover where
on earth I was;” and the priest took kindly to the boy, and laughed at
his light-hearted merriment, and all the way up to Dublin, Harold found
some one to talk to, some one to laugh with.
As he drove along the streets leading from Broadstone Station to
Carlisle Bridge, he chatted to the car-driver, and was, as the man
expressed it, “in great heart entirely.” “Pull up at the first shop,”
ordered Mr. Harold, “where they sell cigars; I want some;” and obedient
to the command the man pulled up at a shop in College Green, where
Harold alighted.
He picked over the cigars with the air of a connoisseur, and, selecting
three dozen of what he considered the best, threw down a pound-note in
payment. He had changed Mr. Pryor’s gift in Galway, and this pound-note
was part of the proceeds.
“I must send out for silver, sir,” said the man behind the counter, who
had never taken his eyes off Harold’s face (when Harold was not looking
at him) for a moment.
“All right,” remarked Harold.
“Sorry to keep you so long waiting,” remarked the shopkeeper, politely
handing his customer a chair.
“It is of no consequence;” but Harold was kicking his heels with
impatience for all that.
Time went on. “I think,” said the lad, “they must be quarrying that
silver.”
“Not at all,” said the shopkeeper; and at the words his messenger
re-entered the place, in company with a policeman.
“There is your prisoner,” remarked the cigar-dealer; and the policeman
laid his hand on Harold’s shoulder.
“Come along, young gentleman,” he said. “The less fuss you make, the
better.”
Advice which Harold followed by striking the policeman right between the
eyes, and then asking what the devil he meant by his cursed impudence.
“It is your cursed impudence, I think,” said the shopkeeper, “coming
here to change another of your notes.”
“I never set foot in your doors before, to my knowledge,” answered
Harold, amazed.
“Well, you have to mine, which is more to the purpose,” was the reply.
“Will you tell me what you all mean? Are you all mad?” asked Harold, who
began to feel that the affair was getting serious.
Then half a dozen people began talking at once, and all Harold could
make out as they dragged him along the streets was—
“Robbery of two thousand pounds—fifty pounds reward—assaulting a
constable in the discharge of his duty—passing the stopped notes.”
“But now look here, sir,” remarked Harold, to the inspector. “I know no
more what you are all talking about than a baby in arms. That is my name
and address; and I have just come up from Galway, where I have been
staying at Durrow Park with Mr. Geoffry Pryor.”
“You are not bound to criminate yourself,” interposed the inspector.
“What you say after this caution will be used in evidence against you.”
“Let it. I am trying to vindicate myself—though, upon my conscience, I
have not the remotest idea of the nature of the crime with which you
charge me. I tell you what it is,” he added, “you have got the wrong
bird in crib; you must have mistaken me for somebody else; before God, I
know nothing of any two thousand pounds!” he added passionately. “I
never saw so much money together in all my life—I never did!”
“If you can persuade his worship of that, it will be all the better for
you,” was the incredulous reply; and forthwith Harold was locked up, but
not before he sent this message to his mother:—
“Tell her,” he said to a policeman, “that I am in the station-house; I
have not the remotest idea why. I have done nothing. I cannot think what
you have brought me here for—unless you are all mad.”
But though the police delivered this message with tolerable accuracy,
they persisted in hunting over all his little possessions, trying to
find some trace of the missing money—of something to criminate the boy.
“You see he is innocent, you see,” Mrs. Drewitt kept saying, in her
frantic sorrow.
“Yes, ma’am, we see,” answered the police; and all through that long,
long night Geraldine and her mother kept repeating, as if to reassure
their own faith, “He is innocent! Harold could never have done a thing
like that!”
CHAPTER IX.
An Unfortunate Likeness.
Next day Harold Drewitt was brought before Mr. Boice, charged with
having on the first of August, in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred
and fifty-four, stolen two thousand pounds, the property of the Dundalk
and Drogheda Banking Company; when the following evidence was produced:—
Jeremiah Kearns having been sworn, deposed, that on the day in question
he was an up passenger by the five o’clock express train from Dundalk to
Drogheda. Had with him two thousand pounds in notes, and one thousand
pounds in gold and silver. The gold and silver was packed in a wooden
box hooped with iron; the notes he carried in a black bag. Asked the
guard not to put any one in the carriage with him, and his request was
complied with, until the train arrived at Dunleer, about eight miles
from Drogheda. At that station the guard said he would be obliged to
give him a fellow-passenger, but it was only a young gentleman going on
to Dublin. Seeing the prisoner, made no objection, and they travelled on
together to Drogheda, where the witness got out.
When he reached the Bank, he found he had lost his bag; spoke to the
car-driver about it, but the car-driver was positive no bag had been
among the luggage, nothing but a portmanteau and the box. Telegraphed at
once to Dublin to search the carriages on the arrival of the train in
Amiens-street. Telegraphed also that the guard would recollect witness’s
fellow-passenger.
Telegraphed, and sent messages to all their branches, stopping payment
of the notes.
Several of the notes had been changed by Dublin shopkeepers during the
period which had elapsed between the first and the fifteenth.
Had received a telegram from the inspector on the previous evening, and
identified the prisoner at the police-station. He was dressed
differently on the day in question, and his hair was now a little
longer, but he had no hesitation in swearing to him as the youth who had
got in at Dunleer.
Prisoner assisted him to lift the box out at Drogheda, and made a remark
to the effect that it must have something of value inside. Witness did
not suspect such a respectable-looking lad, travelling first class, and
belonging apparently to the upper ranks, of stealing his bag. He thought
he, witness, had forgotten the bag, and that if any other passengers got
in between Drogheda and Dublin, prisoner would be able to give
information concerning them. Had heard the description given by several
Dublin tradesmen of the person who had changed the notes, and identified
that description as answering to his fellow-passenger and the prisoner
at the bar.
Had no hesitation in declaring the two to be one and the same person.
Was confident he never mentioned that he was carrying money with him;
but thought the guard made some joke about there being no fear of that
young gentleman robbing him. Was in the habit of taking money from one
bank to another; the guard knew him perfectly well.
Peter Monaghan being sworn, stated, that on the night in question he was
acting as guard on the up express train, which arrived at Dundalk at
five minutes to five o’clock. Recollected Mr. Kearns getting in at that
station, and requesting him, witness, to keep the compartment he
occupied empty if possible. Knew Mr. Kearns well. At Dunleer there were
an unusual number of passengers waiting for the up train, and
consequently asked Mr. Kearns’ permission to put prisoner in the same
compartment. He was such a genteel-looking young gentleman that he
thought there could be no objection. Believed he did make some remark to
that effect, but could not be just certain. At Drogheda Mr. Kearns got
out, and bade witness good-evening. When witness collected the tickets
prisoner was in the train. When the express reached Dublin the
station-master told witness about the telegraphic message, and they both
asked the prisoner if Mr. Kearns had left a bag in the carriage.
Prisoner said, not to his knowledge—that he had not noticed any article
at all when the gentleman got out at Drogheda. Had he done so, he would
have mentioned it to him, witness, at Balbriggan. Several passengers got
into the same compartment at Balbriggan, and one lady who got in at
Drogheda travelled on to Malahide, where every one in that particular
carriage got out except the prisoner. About a mile on the Dublin side of
Malahide a black bag was found next morning by a labourer working on the
line. It must have been thrown out of the right-hand window of the
carriage, as it lay between the metals on the down line. He thought from
the young gentleman’s manner that Mr. Kearns must have taken the bag out
of the train, and lost it between the station and the Bank. Never
suspected the prisoner.
Had identified him at the station-house the previous evening, but should
not have known him in the “wide-awake” he wore. He had on a hat at
Dunleer. A hat was sent for and tried on. He was able to swear to him
then, though he had fallen away in flesh during the fortnight.
Michael Brinny, tobacconist, was then sworn and examined. Had a shop in
College Green. Recollected the first of August. Just as his shutters
were being put up on the evening of that day, prisoner came in, and
bought a pipe and some Cavendish tobacco. He had not silver enough to
pay for these articles, and so he laid down a pound-note, out of which
witness returned him twelve and threepence change. Never saw him before,
and never saw him since, until the previous afternoon, when he came to
his shop again, and purchased three dozen of cigars, offering a Bank of
Ireland one-pound note in payment.
Witness made an excuse about having to send out for change, and kept him
in conversation till his assistant fetched a policeman. Prisoner was
very violent, struck the policeman in the face, declared he did not know
what they were talking about, and gave a great deal of trouble before he
was removed to the station-house. Knew him the moment he came into the
shop, though his hair had grown longer, and his face thinner since he
changed the first note. Thought he tried to disguise his voice, and that
he spoke with more of a West of Ireland accent than when he bought the
Cavendish.
John Garvan, Daniel Laharan, Thomas Molrhany, and several other
respectable shopkeepers identified the prisoner as having made small
purchases, and changed notes at their establishments; while Barry
Croggan, who appeared with a great lump on his forehead, gave an account
of the assault committed on him by the prisoner; and stated that, but
for the assistance rendered by Mr. Brinny and his shopman, he could not
have retained his prisoner until another policeman came to help him.
In answer to all these charges, Harold, having been duly cautioned not
to criminate himself, stated that there must be some mistake; that he
never was at Drogheda in his life; that he knew nothing whatever of the
robbery, never having even heard of it till the policeman told him about
it the previous day. Very earnestly Harold protested his innocence; he
said he had not gone out of Dublin the whole summer, except for a week,
the entire of which time he had spent with Mr. Pryor, of Durrow Park.
Being asked by the magistrate if he could recollect where he was on the
first of August, he said he could not; but upon being told what day of
the week the first fell on, he declared he had spent the whole of it in
the company of Mr. Francis Gyton, who could swear to the fact.
Being requested to send for Mr. Francis Gyton, he said he did not know
where that gentleman was; which reply produced a malevolent chuckle from
the “cloud of witnesses,” and a statement from police constable Croggan
to the effect that prisoner was anything but a respectable young
gentleman, though he believed he had respectable friends. Many of
Harold’s proceedings were recounted for the magistrate’s edification;
and whilst every old sin, every mad prank, every boyish folly was
brought up in judgment against him, the lad leaned forward and covered
his face with his hands to hide the tears of shame and mortification
that he had not strength enough to keep back.
He had never been alone in any trouble before—never; and now, in the
hour of his bitterest trial, he had not a soul to speak a word in his
favour.
“If you give me time, sir,” he said at last, looking up and addressing
the magistrate, “I will be able to prove I never was near the place;
that it is all a mistake—” and then he gave a cry of joy, for Brian, who
he thought was far away from Dublin, entered the court at the moment,
and offered to find bail to any amount for his reappearance.
If he had not assaulted the officer, most probably his brother’s
application would have been listened to; but as it was, the magistrate
refused to entertain the idea even for a moment.
He could not think of accepting bail in so serious a case, he remarked,
and remanded the prisoner.
“I am innocent, Brian. I know nothing about the money. Don’t let them
take me back there!” panted out the poor lad in his terror and distress;
but Brian could do nothing except go to a solicitor and place the case
in his hands, write to Mr. Pryor, and send a telegram to London begging
that Mr. Gyton would, if possible, come back to Dublin without delay.
Then he went home, and it was the hardest day’s work Brian Drewitt ever
performed, facing his mother without Harold. Poor lady! poor mother!
though she did not believe one word of the accusation they had brought
against her youngest born, still she wept till she had no more tears
left to shed at the thought of her boy being in prison—of her darling
being dragged to the dock and tried like a common felon.
“I did all I could,” said Brian, hoarsely. “I offered to get bail, but
they refused it. I was not there time enough to get a solicitor for him,
but I have found one since. I have written to Mr. Pryor and telegraphed
for Mr. Gyton. Is there anything else you would like tried? Is there
anywhere else you would like me to go? Tell me. You have nothing to do
but say what you would wish, and I will endeavour to accomplish it,
mother.”
It would not be possible in a whole volume to describe the intense
tenderness—the womanly compassion Brian managed to put into that one
word; and as he spoke it Mrs. Drewitt went up to him and, without
speaking a sentence, flung her arms round his neck and kissed him over
and over again.
“Mother,” he said, “mother darling,” and he touched her hair, which was
growing grey, grey, and he kissed her forehead, and he let her poor
weary head lie on his breast, but her plaint was still, “Harold, Harold,
my boy, my boy!”
“I could do no more, mother,” Brian repeated, “and nobody can do
anything more for a week yet. Mr. Gyton will be over here by that time,
and then Harold is sure to be liberated at once.”
“Brian,” the dear fingers fidgeted with his neck-tie—with the studs in
his shirt, “Brian.”
“Yes, mother.”
“Where did Harold get all the money he has lately had to spend?”
“I have given him some,” answered Brian.
“But not enough. I should fear not enough.”
In a moment Brian saw where the sting lay; in an instant he perceived
that though she would not believe, still that she dreaded.
“Make your mind easy,” he answered confidently. “Wherever Harold had his
money from, it was not got dishonestly. There is some great mistake, but
I could stake my life he is as innocent as I am; whatever the world may
think, we must not turn against him—must we?”
She placed a hand on each shoulder, and looked Brian full in the face.
“You are not saying that to comfort me?” she asked. “You have no doubt
yourself?”
“Not the slightest.”
“You feel confident he was with Mr. Gyton?”
“I know he was. At least, I remember your writing to me on the evening
of the first that Mr. Gyton had passed that day through Dublin on his
way to Durrow, and that Harold had seen him off from the Broadstone
Station. Harold could not have been at Broadstone and Drogheda on the
same day; besides, he says he never was at Drogheda in his life. And
whatever his faults may be, he is neither a thief nor a liar. Make your
mind easy. It is a case of mistaken identity; but it is confoundedly
hard lines for Harold to be locked up instead of the fellow who really
did steal the notes.”
“You think they were stolen then?” said Mrs. Drewitt.
“They were certainly stolen, and by some one very like Harold; but I
have never seen anybody like Harold in my life. It is a strange
business, and we must wait with patience for the mystery to be
explained.”
“It is not easy to have patience, Brian,” remarked Mrs. Drewitt, and
then she began crying again about her boy—her poor delicate boy, while
Brian thought within himself that if the one-half he had heard during
the day concerning Harold’s mode of life were true, it was no wonder he
grew delicate, and pale, and thin.
“Not home any night till well on in the small hours, Mister Brian, as I
am a living sinner,” remarked Mary-of-all-work to him, “and dhrunk five
nights out of the six, and not at the office regular as he ought be. I’m
just telling _you_,” she finished, “for I wouldn’t like that the
misthress would hear anything of it. Dear pity her poor sowl! She thinks
the sun was made to rise and set for him.” All of which was exceedingly
agreeable information for a young man to hear who had his own way to
make in the world, and who had not found his path so far strewed at all
with roses.
“Never mind,” he thought, as he flung himself wearily on his bed, “it is
all in the day’s work, we shall find rest sometime.”
Possibly, but the day occasionally proves very long, and the rest is
frequently delayed for an unreasonable period. So Brian discovered, as
the years went on, bringing little repose with them.
The Dublin papers were posted as regularly to Kincorth as “The Times” to
Durrow, and accordingly Mr. Maxwell Drewitt had the pleasure of seeing
his cousin’s name figuring largely in a column headed,
“Robbery on the Dublin and Drogheda Railway. Arrest of the Supposed
Thief.”
“That is the end of you, Master Harold, is it?” remarked Maxwell, as he
finished reading the report. “I wish it had been Brian instead. Why,
bless my soul! he must have been caught the very day he returned from
Galway. I will go up to hear if he can prove his alibi, though I dare
swear it is a lie, and that he was not with Gyton at all. He will very
likely be transported.” Having settled Harold’s affairs in which summary
fashion, Maxwell went about the house and grounds in his usual manner,
and slept soundly, not knowing what the post was bringing to him.
He got his missive while he sat at breakfast, and opened it dreading no
evil.
“I should like to see you at once,” he read. “Come to Dublin
immediately, if possible. It is important that you should do so.”
“What can the fellow mean?” marvelled the owner of Kincorth. “What on
earth can he want?” Then all in a moment he remembered the trial, and
connected the two things together.
“My God!” he thought, “can he have been mixed up in that? Have they
mistaken the one for the other?”
He looked for the newspaper which he had put aside in his desk, and
spelled over every word of the evidence. “Thinner—hair longer—more of a
Connaught accent—did not know him till he put on a hat,” he repeated to
himself, “and they have got that other boy locked up for it.”
He put the paper away again, told his servant to pack his portmanteau,
and to order post-horses, “For I must catch the night mail from Galway
to Dublin,” he explained to the man, who did not seem to understand
things, while he invoked a hundred curses on the head of his wife, who
querulously remarked that he was always going from home.
“And always likely to do till you are out of it,” he answered, savagely.
They had been living a more wretched life than ever, lately, for Lady
Emmeline had unexpectedly turned restive, and refused to fall in with
her husband’s plans, as he had fondly hoped she would.
“Anything but that,” she said, firmly. “Anything but another woman’s
child;” and she relapsed into hysterics whenever he ventured to approach
the subject, and adopting the mode of warfare most in favour with her
sex, of digging a moat round her citadel and filling it with tears,
rendered her position alike invulnerable to threats and entreaties.
He might have known he had no chance of success with her, and by holding
his tongue have kept peace, at any rate; but he preferred trying to
compass his end, and the result was a state of domestic warfare which
caused the servants to declare emphatically that Kincorth was like hell.
“They never are but bickering and quarrelling, and snapping at one
another from morning till night,” said Lady Emmeline’s maid to a select
assemblage in the servants’ hall. “It was only this morning I heard
master saying he could wait till she was dead; and mistress answered she
would live to spite him.”
This was what marriage had done for Maxwell Drewitt and for Lady
Emmeline. He had paid his price and got the article he coveted, and this
was the result. No wonder he spent much of his time in Dublin; no wonder
his heart—for he had some human feelings, some need for human
affection—turned hopefully towards his son, whom he meant to make a
great man of one day.
A great man! Alas! already his dream castle was tottering to its
foundation. It was to prop it up and save it he hastened to Dublin,
where the first person he went to seek was a schoolmaster, grave and
discreet, who resided near that loveliest of all sea-bathing villages,
Bray.
“You wanted to speak to me, Mr. Blosse,” began Maxwell; he had travelled
all night and looked haggard and exhausted. “You wanted to speak to me.”
“Yes, Mr. Drewitt, particularly,” was the reply. “I think we might take
a walk if you are not tired. I should like to say what I have got to say
out of doors.”
“Let us go then,” and Maxwell put on his hat.
“You will have some breakfast?”
“Not any; I am ready to go if you are.”
“Will you not take a glass of wine?”
“At this hour? no, thank you, Mr. Blosse; let us go,” and he moved
nervously towards the door.
When they were once out into the open air, he turned towards his
companion inquiringly; but Mr. Blosse said, “Not yet,” and they walked
on—on to the very top of Bray Head; where, unmindful of the view,
unmindful of everything in earth, or sea, or heaven, Maxwell demanded
what was the matter; what Mr. Blosse had to say.
“That trial, Mr. Drewitt—you know the trial I mean?”
“Yes,” Maxwell answered.
“Is not the accused some relative of yours?”
“My first cousin—go on.”
“I take it for granted there must be some extraordinary likeness between
him and Arthur,” continued Mr. Blosse.
“I do not know why you should take anything of the kind for granted, Mr.
Blosse,” said Maxwell, stiffly. “I really do not.”
“The youth who is in custody did not take that money, Mr. Drewitt,”
observed Mr. Blosse, “and Arthur did; therefore I say some extraordinary
likeness must exist between them.”
He had been expecting this all along. He had hoped for nothing different
from the moment he opened his letters the previous morning. He had faced
the question as he drove past the desolate lakes, under the shadow of
the lonely hills. He had not concealed the probability of such an
announcement greeting him on his arrival at Bray; and yet now, when the
blow did fall, Maxwell felt it in every nerve of his body—in every vein
of his heart.
He did not know till then what hopes he had built on the chance of what
this handsome illegitimate flesh of his flesh and blood of his blood
might turn out. He had not realized what dreams he had cherished about
him; how he had been turning year after year more and more to this one
thing which belonged to him, which he called his own on earth, till,
standing on Bray Head, with the blue sea washing a far different strand
from that whereon he was accustomed to gaze below him, with the clear
sky above him, he heard Mr. Blosse speak words that might have been read
out of a death-warrant, judging by the effect they produced.
For a long time Maxwell stood silent; for a long time he remained
staring down on the sea, while he swallowed, drop by drop, the contents
of that bitter cup. Then when at last he could speak—when at last his
voice would answer to his will, he asked Mr. Blosse to explain
himself—to tell him all the particulars.
“Begin at the beginning,” said Maxwell, “and do not stop till you get to
the end.”
“He spent his holidays, as you know,” commenced Mr. Blosse, “partly at
Killarney, with you, and partly with one of his schoolfellows, whose
father has a property near Carlow. He was to have returned here on the
first of August; but he never made his appearance until the evening of
the third, when he stated that he had gone down with a friend to the
North, and that he had come back from Derry that day. I asked him who
his friend was? and he said an officer who was going to be married to
Grey’s sister. I knew Grey’s sister was engaged to an officer, and so I
never thought of disbelieving his story at the time, though I have since
had reason to think he did not go to Derry at all, but only to
Carlingford, in company with some not very desirable acquaintances.”
“Go on,” interrupted Maxwell. “It is the last part of the story I want
to hear. What makes you think Arthur——”
“Is the culprit? I think so—because I found the notes secreted in his
bedroom. I noticed something strange about him ever since his return,
and determined to watch his movements. I remarked that he was
perpetually making excuses to leave the library; that he was always
going upstairs; that——”
“Go on!” entreated Maxwell. “I do not want to know what you noticed; I
want to know what you found.”
“I found there was a short piece of board loose in his room, and that
these notes were under it—or, rather, not under it, but pushed far away
to one side below the sound boards. I should never have guessed it but
for his own over-anxiety. He could not rest away from the packet; he was
always fancying somebody had discovered it.”
Maxwell tried hard to keep his hands off the man who had dogged and
watched and trapped his son; and who now sat and told him—not without a
certain subdued triumph—how his sagacity had been rewarded—his trouble
repaid. He dug his nails into his flesh, and looked at his clenched
fists, with the dark look of his wicked youth gathering deeper and
deeper about his eyes.
“Go on!” he repeated; and Mr. Blosse went on.
“I had heard of the robbery,” he said; “I had listened to the story
without any great interest, as one does listen to such things, unless
there is some circumstance of special importance connected with them;
but when I saw the notes I taxed Arthur with the theft, and he confessed
all. How Mr. Kearns left the bag behind him——”
“You can stop now,” Maxwell interrupted; “you have told me all I care to
hear. Now listen to me. I know exactly all you would say, and I can
guess your questions without hearing one of them. First of all, the
money must be sent back to this precious Drogheda Banking Company.
Secondly, this boy—this Harold Drewitt—he must be cleared. He can do
that for himself, I know. Mr. Gyton did leave Dublin for Galway on the
first, and Harold was in his company all the afternoon, at any rate.
Thirdly, you want Arthur out of your house, and you want no fuss,
because you think a fuss would damage you with the parents of your other
pupils. I will take Arthur away with me; and last, but not least, you
desire a pecuniary acknowledgment from me—a suitable thank-offering for
the silence you have maintained, and will maintain, on this subject. Is
there anything which I have overlooked, Mr. Blosse?”
“Nothing. You are thoughtfulness itself,” was the reply.
“Now, you can go back to your house and leave me here for half an hour,”
said Maxwell; “at the end of that time I shall want to see Arthur.”
“But, Mr. Drewitt——”
“I know my own business, sir, and shall transact it after my own
fashion,” interrupted the owner of Kincorth, and he followed the
retreating figure with his eyes as it grew less and less in the
distance—followed it till it was mixed up among other figures, and lost
to view; then Maxwell himself descended slowly to the shore, and walking
along the beach, which was bare and dry, the tide being out, he kicked
the pebbles before him just as he had done so many years previously when
he lounged home to Kincorth by the edge of Duranmore Bay.
He had been worsted, and a man like Maxwell Drewitt does not bear such
an indignity patiently. He had longed to kick Mr. Blosse—to taunt him—to
dare him—to defy him; but he was afraid. Mr. Blosse could transport the
boy. He had father and son in his power, and he only refrained from
using that power because he thought it might injure his reputation as an
instructor of the sons of the “nobility and gentry” if it were known a
felon had come out of such an unexceptionable establishment.
“He has the ball,” reflected Maxwell, “and can make what terms he
chooses, damn him!” and at this point Mr. Drewitt lit a fresh cigar, and
walked on more slowly and leisurely than ever.
He was thinking—thinking what to do with Arthur. “I will take him to
England,” he decided. “I will put him under the care of some good
clergyman, if there is such a _rara avis_ to be found. I will try to
reform him, for he is mine, and he is all I have.”
Oh! lonely and desolate, poor and unregarded. There was something about
the departure of that pair—of that father and son, from under his roof
which touched even Mr. Blosse.
“You may depend upon me, Mr. Drewitt, you may, indeed,” were his parting
words, and he spoke them with a certain warmth of manner upon which
Maxwell’s reply fell like ice.
“I do not doubt it, Mr. Blosse, for you know it will be to your interest
to remain true to me,” and having uttered this pleasant speech, Maxwell
turned his back on Mr. Blosse, and telling the car-driver to take them
leisurely to Kingston, he and Arthur left Bray behind them.
Maxwell did not breathe freely until they reached Holyhead, and were
speeding along through the darkness to Chester. He had never reproached
his son—never spoken to him, in fact, on the subject, and he did not
mean to do so till they were safe in London. The notes were in his
possession; but he could do nothing with them for the present.
Harold was still a prisoner, and “he must remain a prisoner unless Mr.
Gyton can prove a satisfactory alibi,” thought Maxwell. “After all, he
is out of harm’s way where he is, which is more than could be said if he
were at large.” And so far Maxwell was right, for Harold had nothing to
do the whole day long except form good resolutions, and vow, and
declare, and swear he would turn over a new leaf when once he got out of
his present scrape.
He had been up again before the magistrate, but his solicitor had
procured another remand. Mr. Gyton was in the south of France with his
father, but he would return to England immediately. Mr. Pryor pledged
himself to that, and in order to make assurance doubly sure, started off
in search of his nephew. Brian grew dreadfully anxious as day after day
passed over and still brought no tidings of Mr. Gyton’s movements. He
began to feel on how slight a thread Harold’s chance of escape was
hanging. If anything happened to Frank Gyton—if he were killed in a
railway accident—if he caught a fever and died—if he could not swear to
the date—if, like Mrs. Drewitt, Geraldine, and Harold’s employers, he
had attached no definite memory to the day, or the hour, or the date,
why, then Harold would be convicted; without doubt he would be
convicted.
“And he never could live out his sentence,” thought Brian, in despair,
“and it would kill my mother; her hair is getting quite white with this
suspense, and that certainly would kill her.”
He was making some observation of the kind to the solicitor who had
undertaken Harold’s defence, when a telegram arrived from Mr. Gyton.
“Am in London,” ran the message; “shall be in Dublin to-morrow morning.”
“I hope he will,” said the lawyer; “for your brother, remember, is to be
brought up again on Thursday, and nothing can save him but a miracle or
an alibi.”
Which speech sounded anything rather than consolatory, under the
circumstances.
CHAPTER X.
Hearing is not believing.
Thursday arrived, and Harold Drewitt was again brought up on remand
before the magistrate.
He had been taken into custody on the 15th of August, and it was now the
middle of September; and as he came into court, two or three people
remarked that the air had not seemed to agree with him—that he evidently
wanted a change. “Which he is not likely to get to-day,” observed one
policeman.
“His witness is here, though, I am told,” was the reply.
“I don’t care if fifty witnesses were here, they could not bring him out
clear,” answered the other, oracularly; and, indeed, this was the
general feeling in the court. Everybody thought Harold had made a
mistake in not pleading guilty, and begging for mercy, as it was his
first offence, and the temptation had been great.
In one way the policeman was right. Mr. Gyton could clear him in law,
but Mr. Gyton could never wash him white in the estimation of the
public; and poor Harold appeared to feel this, as he looked round the
court, and saw every eye fastened on him, not compassionately, but
curiously.
He never seemed to have courage except when he glanced at Brian, who had
been faithful to him through all—faithful, as he had promised his
father, on his death-bed, that he would be to Harold.
There was the magistrate, severe and incredulous; there were some of the
directors of the Dundalk and Drogheda Banking Company, eager for
revenge; there was Mr. Jeremiah Kearns; there were all the witnesses,
mentally checking off the depositions as they were read aloud, and
thinking how impossible it was any man living could prove an alibi in
the face of such overwhelming evidence.
One or two fresh witnesses had been procured by the bank from impossible
regions of the earth: the lady who got into the carriage at Drogheda;
the passengers who had travelled from Balbriggan to Malahide;—all were
there to swear to Harold’s identity with the thief.
The lady was the only person who hesitated about the matter. She could
not swear to the prisoner being her fellow-passenger. “He was very like
him; but—”
“But what, my dear madam?” suggested the solicitor for the prosecution;
and the court waited for her reply, while the lady still hesitated.
“Pray tell us in what respect the prisoner is unlike?” suggested the
magistrate, insinuatingly; for the lady was pretty, and his worship had
eyes in his head.
There was a profound silence in the court, while the witness turned and
looked again at Harold.
Very imploringly he lifted his eyes to hers, and perhaps that settled
the matter.
“I cannot swear to the prisoner being the young gentleman with whom I
travelled from Drogheda. He is very like—but——”
“Pray proceed, we are all attention;” and the solicitor for the
prosecution struck an attitude while he waited for the rest of the
sentence.
“The young gentleman I travelled with had a slight suspicion of a
moustache and beard coming,” said the lady, desperately, “and——”
A roar of laughter, in which the magistrate himself could not help
joining, drowned the remainder of her words.
“You mean, I conclude, that the prisoner’s hirsute appendages have not
as yet made their appearance,” suggested the magistrate.
“He has likely been hungry where he was, and ate them off,” remarked
some one in the rear.
“If I hear any more indecent interruptions,” said his worship, “I will
order the court to be cleared.”
“If ye’d have it cleaned,” observed the same voice; whereupon the police
made a dive into the crowd, and seizing an old woman and a boy, hustled
them outside the door.
Meantime the solicitor for the prosecution was asking the witness, “if
she did not think it possible she was mistaken—that she had been
thinking of some one else?”
Upon which the lady got cross and said, “She was not mistaken, and that
she was not thinking of any one else;” and as nothing more could be made
of her, she was ordered to stand down.
The solicitor for the defence, when it came to his turn, said very
little about the business—as little as he could help. He remarked, that
it was clearly a case of mistaken identity, and observed that the
prisoner had been in Dublin at the very hour when the robbery was said
to have been committed. In support of which he produced Mr. Francis
Gyton, whose appearance made an impression both on the magistrate and
the court generally.
Mr. Francis Gyton being sworn, deposed, that he was a son of Mr. Gyton,
of the firm of Gyton, Lark, Munday, Hatfield, & Co., Austinfriars,
London.
“He has got fathers enough,” remarked the former speaker from among the
crowd, and the police made a fresh dive, and this time carried off in
triumph a woman who had an infant in her arms.
Mr. Gyton proceeded—Knew the prisoner Harold Drewitt very well indeed;
called at his mother’s house, and subsequently at the office of his
employers, on the first of August last. Remembered the day, because he
left London on the evening of the thirty-first of July, by the
twenty-five minutes past eight express, and crossed to Kingston by the
night mail-packet. Was only the one day in Dublin. Left the very evening
of his arrival for Galway. Slept in Galway at the Railway Hotel, and
proceeded the next day to Durrow Park, near Duranmore, the residence of
his uncle, Mr. Henry Pryor. The prisoner dined with him and accompanied
him to the railway station.
Cross-examined.—Was certain he did not stop the night at Chester. He had
a glass of very bad sherry there, and returned to the compartment he
occupied immediately. Was not left behind. Begged the solicitor for the
prosecution would recollect to whom he was speaking. Had not the
slightest idea whether it was the Ulster, Munster, Leinster, or
Connaught, he came over in. If he, the solicitor, sent down to Kingston,
very probably he could find which of those steam-vessels arrived at
Kingston from Holyhead on the morning of the first of August.
Knew they had a good passage. Could not possibly be mistaken as to
Harold’s identity, Had been acquainted with him too long for that. Was
certain he only remained in Dublin one day. Did he, the lawyer, think he
should forget his own name next? Left Broadstone by the half-past seven
train. There was one gentleman in the compartment with him. Arrived in
Galway about twelve. Had some cold beef; remembered it, because he had
never seen such a joint before, or since; and a glass of brandy and
water. Slept at the Railway Hotel. Could not recollect the number of his
room; but knew it had three windows in it, and that all of them would
open. Had never in any other house in Ireland seen a window that would
open, or a door that would shut. Was not in love with Ireland. The
solicitor for the prosecution was perfectly correct in that supposition;
but came often to Ireland to see his uncle. Had frequently been told it
was a fine country, but could not say of his own knowledge that such was
the fact.
Admitted that he liked English customs best. Did not admire Irish
peculiarities when they carried people to the length of shooting
landlords, and locking up an innocent boy for a month, on suspicion of
his having stolen a black bag from a bank clerk. Would swear fifty
times, if the solicitor wished it, that the prisoner could not have been
at Drogheda, because he was at Broadstone; and he, Mr. Gyton, supposed
that even an Irishman was unable to appear in two places at once. Had
kept none of his hotel bills; always tore up the rubbish the moment he
was outside the door; did not consider that a proof of English
extravagance, and could not see, if it were, that it had anything to do
with the matter in hand. Did not know whether the prisoner led a
respectable life or not, and was at a loss to understand what his life
signified to anybody except Mr. Harold Drewitt, and Mr. Harold Drewitt’s
friends. Had come back from France solely for the purpose of giving
evidence in this case; would have come from Jericho for that matter. Was
quite certain prisoner had dined with and accompanied him to the
Broadstone Station. Did not think it at all singular that he could
remember the name of a station while he forgot the name of a boat. Most
probably he had never indeed heard the name of the steamer. Was positive
about the date. How much oftener was the solicitor going to ask him that
question?
Henry Pryor, sworn, stated that his nephew, the last witness, arrived at
his house on the second of August, and told him he had parted with
Harold Drewitt at the Broadstone Terminus of the Midland Great Western
Railway on the preceding evening. His nephew informed him (Mr. Pryor)
that he had asked Harold to come down to Connemara, and that the boy
would endeavour to get permission to do so. Mr. Gyton was suddenly
summoned back to London, in consequence of the dangerous illness of his
father, with whom he subsequently proceeded abroad, and consequently,
when Harold Drewitt did arrive at Durrow, Mr. Gyton had left that place.
Was certain his nephew arrived in Connemara on the second, and that he
said he had not slept in Dublin, but in Galway. He had known Harold
Drewitt for two years, and believed him to be quite incapable of the
crime laid to his charge.
After which evidence, the solicitor for the defence intimated that he
did not purpose calling any other witness. It was, as he stated in the
commencement, a clear case of mistaken identity. From the first his
client had said he never travelled by the Belfast Junction, or Dublin
and Drogheda Railway, in his life, and an alibi had now been
unmistakably proved.
After a good deal of hesitation, his worship fell into this view, and
having remarked that Mr. Gyton’s evidence was irreconcilable with the
assumption of the prisoner’s guilt, and that it appeared to be a most
singular case of mistaken identity, he said that the prisoner must be
discharged.
There was, however, something in the magistrate’s manner which seemed to
imply “not guilty, but don’t do it again;” for he assured Harold he had
had a very narrow escape, advised him for the future to lead a more
regular life, and began a lecture which the prisoner cut short by
saying—
“I did not steal those notes, I know nothing about them, who stole them,
or whether they ever were stolen. I never was at Drogheda in my life,
nor at Dundalk either. I never, to my recollection, entered Mr. Brinny’s
shop before the time I went in there for those cigars, and if ever I
chance to meet the person who appears to be so like me, I will take the
value out of his bones for what he has made me suffer during the past
month.”
This indiscretion on the part of Harold was a perfect godsend to the
magistrate, who told him such language was highly improper, remarked
that he did not seem duly grateful for his escape, and finally dismissed
him with a caution.
Then the next case was called on, and Harold, to quote the newspaper
reports, left the court with his friends.
There is, perhaps, no way in which a person can be acquitted which is so
eminently unpleasant as for an acquaintance to come forward and swear
that on such a day, and at such an hour, the accused was with him in
such a place.
Of course it is better to get off in this way rather than not at all;
but an alibi always sounds too like a pretext to be perfectly
satisfactory to the public; while the released prisoner (if he be
innocent) invariably leaves the court with the comfortable idea either
that a score of people have been in league against him, or else that
there is some blackguard walking about the world wearing his face,
assuming his gait, speaking with his voice, who may be committing fifty
crimes that will, in due time, be fathered on him.
Harold Drewitt was not, however, old enough to comprehend all that a man
would have felt, had a man stood in the boy’s shoes. He knew he had got
off, and it was impossible that he should understand he had escaped
being committed for trial by the merest shave of the wheel of accident.
Had he been with any of his ordinary companions during the afternoon in
question, there can be no doubt but that the magistrate would have
pooh-poohed the evidence in the prisoner’s favour, while probably the
witnesses for the defence might have got so worried and tormented as to
narrowly escape being committed for perjury.
Mr. Gyton and Mr. Pryor were not, however, people whose testimony could
be treated with disrespect. They might be mistaken. In his heart the
magistrate thought they were; but still he had no choice but to act on
their evidence and allow Harold to leave the court with his friends;
while many people remarked—that the young fellow had been born under a
lucky planet, and that if he had been a poor boy he would have been
transported.
“He would, as sure as God made little apples,” observed one man,
indignantly elbowing his way out of the crowd; “for it’s meself knows
the dacent chap that was hung on half the ividence they brought against
this one. If he didn’t stole that money I’d be very glad to know who
did.”
That was the general feeling throughout Dublin; but Harold knew nothing
about the general feeling, and only remembering that he was free once
more, returned home on a car laughing and amusing himself as usual.
He mimicked the magistrate; he mimicked the witnesses; he mimicked the
policeman, and went rollicking about the house in the wildest spirits
imaginable.
He was as thin as a whipping-post and as pale as a corpse; but he
insisted that he was not ill, that his mother should make herself happy
about him.
“I am not ill,” he said; “not a bit ill; all I want is something to eat
and to get out into the fresh air. We shall have many a walk before the
fine weather is quite gone. There is a fortnight still left of
September. Am I to go back to the office or not?” he added, looking
towards Brian, who said—
“Your place has been filled up.”
“Has it? A good job too. There was not one of them came to speak a word
for me, and none of the fellows sent me a line or a message, though they
must have known I did not do it—mustn’t they, mother?”
“Yes, Harold.”
“We will go down for a day to Bray, and take a car on to the Dargle,
shall we, mother? I should like that. I’d like to see the purple bloom
of the heather if it’s not quite gone off, and I love the sea down
there.”
“May we go with you?” asked Mr. Pryor, and Mr. Gyton at once followed
suit, and voted that it would be nice for them to make up several little
parties and go wherever Harold chose. There was an indescribable
tenderness in the manner of all towards the boy who had been, as they
knew, so hardly done by, and who presently insisted on going as far as
Sackville Street, “Just to be sure I am free,” he laughed.
As Brian had business to attend to, and Mr. Gyton appeared a little loth
to leave Geraldine, Mr. Pryor offered to accompany Harold; and the pair
accordingly sallied forth and walked into Dublin, where the youth at
every turn met some one he knew, some one he paused involuntarily to
speak with.
But no one voluntarily spoke to him: a cold bow; a nod; a how-d’ye-do; a
reluctant shake hands. Harold could not understand it, and at last
appealed to Mr. Pryor.
“Am I not innocent? It looks almost as though they thought me guilty,
does not it?” and he drew closer to his companion, who told him—
“Not to trouble himself about it; that they would learn better in time.”
“I think,” remarked Harold, after another old acquaintance had passed
without taking the slightest notice of his salutation, “I think it is
nearly time for us to go home;” and, accordingly, they turned and went
back over Carlisle Bridge, and along Westmoreland Street, and past
College Green, and down Nassau Street, and so on to the suburb where
Mrs. Drewitt resided. As they walked along Merrion Square a
disreputable-looking fellow came up and, accosting Harold, shook him so
heartily by the hand as to threaten dislocation of his wrist.
“Glad to see you out,” he said; “thought at one time you were in Queer
Street for life: when will you be round our way?”
“I don’t know,” answered Harold, nervously feeling Mr. Pryor touch his
arm warningly. “I am not very well—that is, I have friends—that is, I am
going out of town.”
“Well, it’s about the best thing you can do till the talk has blown
over. It is a wicked world, and living’s hard work. Good-bye.”
“Who is that man, Harold?” Mr. Pryor asked a little sternly, and his
tone at once put Harold’s bristles up.
“He was a very respectable person—very indeed; but had been unfortunate
in business. His name was Grinnell, and he lived some place up near
Mountjoy Square.”
“Does he really? I should have thought some of those nice respectable
streets in the neighbourhood of St. Patrick’s would have been much more
in his way.”
Of which speech Harold refused to take any notice.
“I hope,” continued Mr. Pryor, “that you do not intend keeping up your
acquaintance with him; you are but just starting in life; you have been
extricated with considerable difficulty from a most awkward position,
And it behoves you, therefore, to be doubly careful for the future in
choosing your associates.”
Still Harold made no answer.
“I wish you would promise not to have anything more to do with people of
that description: you will ruin your own prospects, and break your
mother’s heart.”
“Hang it!” interrupted Harold, “one must speak to somebody, and he is
the only fellow who has said a civil word to me since I came out. You
must see for yourself that the ‘genteels’ have cut me; don’t you now?”
“If they have, do you think you will mend matters by taking up with all
the riff-raff who come and shake hands with you?”
“You need not call them names if they are not gentlemen,” suggested
Harold.
“I think I, or any one else who styled the person from whom we have just
parted an honest man would be calling him very much out of his name.”
“I suppose I am not good enough for you, then?” said Harold pausing.
“Nonsense, boy. I want to save you from the consequences of your own
want of firmness. You believe in everybody who says a kind word to you,
and the result is you have made intimates and associates of people with
whom you ought never to have exchanged a word. Do you not remember what
the police stated about the character of your companions—swindlers,
betting-men, drunkards, profligates, of every description? If your
mother had only heard the one-half we have heard about you, Harold, she
would be more anxious about you than she is.”
“I wonder you are not ashamed to be seen out walking with me,” said the
boy. “I am sure I am not fit company for a rich swell like you. Had not
you better take the other side of the street?” added Harold, who was by
this time worked up to a pitch of passionate fury. “We may meet somebody
else who will come between the wind and your nobility. Go on; I will
follow, if you like; it cannot be pleasant for you to feel that you are
out walking with—with—a blackguard and a thief!”
“Don’t be an idiot, Harold;” and Mr. Pryor laid a hand on the boy’s
shoulder, and led him, or, rather, pushed him, on towards home.
“I’m not an idiot,” said Harold. “I know you all think I am, and that I
do not understand anything—that I am a fool; but I am as wise as Brian,
though I may not be such an old-fashioned sneak; and I will speak to
whom I like, and go with whom I like, and visit whom I like, without
consulting anybody.”
“You are resolved to be independent, at any rate,” observed Mr. Pryor.
“Yes, I am. I mean to stick by the friends who stick by me——”
“Would you think me impertinent if I ventured to remind you, I and my
nephew have tried to be your friends?” said the barrister.
“I know you have; I know why, too; because Maxwell told me something
long ago. It is not because you like me, it isn’t. Nobody likes me; and
now you are going to set my mother against me, and tell her every little
thing I have ever done.”
Having completed which dreadful picture, Harold stopped again in the
very middle of the pavement, and seemed disposed to have a good cry on
the spot.
There was a car passing at the moment, which Mr. Pryor hailed. “You are
tired, Harold,” he said; “you have tried your strength too much. Jump
up, and let us drive home.”
When they reached home, Harold went off to bed; but whether because he
was sick, or whether he was sulky, Mr. Pryor could not decide.
Next day, however, he saw clearly that the young gentleman’s temper was
greatly damaged; for he insisted, against the advice of every one of his
family, on going to his late employers, and asking why they had filled
up his berth.
“I wish you would not do anything so foolish,” Brian remarked.
“I am not a child,” was the reply; “and I mean to see to my own business
for myself. I won’t be kept in the dark by anybody.”
And accordingly he went.
It was the best thing that could have happened to a youth of Harold’s
peculiar disposition, to be able to hear for himself what the world said
of him.
He had been so pampered and spoiled at home, that he was never likely to
learn the truth there. Strangers, however, did not stand on so much
ceremony, and when Harold grew impudent, gave him quite as good as he
brought.
“I know you have got off,” said one of his late employers; “and I know
how you have got off, also—by an alibi; for which I would not give
that!” and he threw a scrap of waste paper on the floor. “Of course, I
am sure Mr. Gyton would not have said what he did unless he fully
believed it to be the truth; but he was mistaken, that is all; and a
very lucky mistake it turned out for you. I really wonder at your
assurance in coming here at all. As for taking you back, I am only too
glad to be rid of you; there is not another house in Dublin who would
have kept so idle, useless, and disreputable a young vagabond for a
week.”
Harold walked out of the inner office, and as he passed through the
outer looked defiantly at the clerks he had once been intimate with: one
or two nodded; but none came forward to shake hands—to say they were
pleased at his escape.
He felt tired, but he had no heart to go home; he had taken his own way,
and his own way not having proved a pleasant one, he did not like to go
back and confess to such a disappointment: accordingly he went on—on
along the North Wall, where his respectable friend of the preceding
evening dropped upon him, and proposed that they should go out for a
drive together: “Round by the strawberry-beds, and on as far as Lucan.”
Harold jumped at the idea. “And we can have some dinner together, and
then spend the evening at Birdley’s; there are to be a lot of fellows
there. What do you say? will ‘the old folks at home,’ be singing all the
evening, ‘Willie, we have missed you?’”
“No,” answered Harold; “I’m your man.” And while Mrs. Drewitt was
marvelling what in the world could have become of her boy, he was
rattling through the Dublin streets, talking and laughing and joking, as
though he had never been in any trouble, as though he had never been a
prisoner in his life.
Before evening came he was pretty well exhausted, but still his
companion insisted on taking him to Birdley’s, where he was greeted by
the assembled guests with great enthusiasm; his health being drunk with
all the honours.
“Now tell us how you did it?” exclaimed one. “How many of the flimsies
did you manage to get off?” asked another.
“I suppose you have made a bonfire of the rest: it would be no go trying
to pass them now,” said a third.
“You must have made a tidy haul of it though, altogether,” observed one
unwholesome-looking young man.
“And how did you contrive to hoodwink those respectable friends of
yours, for I suppose they would have been above sharing the swag.”
“Tell us all about it?” repeated the first speaker. “Silence now,
gentlemen, if you please. Mr. Harold Drewitt rises to address the
meeting.”
“I want to know something,” cried Harold, who was indeed on his legs.
“Do you really think I stole those notes?”
“Draw it mild,” suggested the young man above referred to; who looked
very much as though he had been buried and dug up again. “Stole is such
a confoundedly ugly way of putting it.”
“Do you believe then I ever was at Drogheda? Do you think I ever saw
that money? Do you imagine that all I said was lies?”
“Well, very few people looked upon it as the truth,” was the reply.
“You consider me a thief, then, in plain words?”
“Oh! no, nothing of the kind; you merely annexed the contents of that
carpet-bag——”
“I did not—I did not,” Harold vehemently interrupted. “I know no more
who took that money than you do.” (Here the auditors winked at one
another.) “If I never should speak another word, I am as innocent in
this matter as any man among you.”
“Well, then, who the devil is guilty?” asked the chairman; “for no
person in his senses can suppose all those witnesses were in collusion
against you. It must have been you or your twin brother, if you have
one.”
“If you look closely at his face, it must strike you as too old, too
second-hand, if I may use the expression, to have served only one body,”
said Mr. Grinnell. “Rely upon it there’s another trunk somewhere that
borrows that face and goes out with it at nights while this good child
is sleeping it its bed.”
“Gentlemen,” began Harold.
“We are all attention.”
“I wish you would believe me.”
“Lord help the boy, we are so simple we could be made believe anything,”
said his neighbour.
“I never saw that money. I never changed one of those notes. Everybody
is against me, though I am innocent—innocent;” and Harold’s voice began
to shake a little and his lips to tremble.
“Really this is becoming affecting,” remarked the corpse-like young
gentleman, addressing Mr. Grinnell.
“Allow me to perform a parent’s part,” said the chairman, offering
Harold a handkerchief.
But Harold’s temper was now up: he pitched the handkerchief back at the
speaker; he threw off his coat, and declaring he would fight the matter
out, dared any one to say he was a liar, and requested the company
generally to “come on!”
“Now, now,” said Mr. Grinnell; “now, now,” and he walked round the
table, and picked up Harold’s coat, and begged him to put it on, and to
sit down and take things peaceably.
“How can I take things peaceably when you are all against me—all?” asked
Harold, looking first at one of his tormentors and then at another. “Are
you cowards, that none of you will come on, when I ask you? Will you not
even let me fight for my good name? will you not——”
“Catch him, some of you,” cried the chairman, and involuntarily every
man sprang to his feet, and stretched out his arms towards the boy, who,
stopping suddenly in his sentence, reeled back a few paces, and then
fell into the chair he had pushed away from him.
“Send for a doctor,” said one.
“Give him some punch.”
“He’s had too much already.”
“No, he hasn’t,” said Grinnell, “he has scarcely tasted a drop.”
“Get him some water.”
“Stand back, stand back,” entreated Grinnell, “and open the windows,
some of you; it is not a common faint though, he’s quite gone,” and he
wiped the perspiration from Harold’s face, and put the hair back off his
forehead, and took the clammy hands in his and chafed them gently.
“I will take him home,” he said, when Harold recovered a little. “Tell
the waiter to call a car. Birdley will lend me something warm to wrap
round him. Are you able to walk now, do you think?” he continued,
addressing Harold, “or shall I carry you? That is right; take hold of my
arm; don’t be afraid of leaning. Now come with me.”
“Good-night, gentlemen,” Harold said, turning round and addressing the
group that were looking after him. “Likely I shall never see any of you
again; but, whether you believe it or not, I am innocent of what you
think.”
“He looks to me,” remarked the chairman after he had left the room, “as
though he were going precious fast to that place where it’s best known
what he is. It is a pity, too, for he is a plucky lad;” and there ensued
a great silence, during which every man present was employed wondering
whether it were indeed within the bounds of possibility that Harold had
been mistaken for some one else, who might be thinking at that very
moment how deucedly lucky it was for him that he had escaped scot free.
CHAPTER XI.
Called Home.
The September wind blew cold and keen as Mr. Grinnell and Harold drove
along the quays to Carlisle Bridge, and the man that had so strongly
excited Mr. Pryor’s disapproval drew the borrowed rug closer round the
boy, who shivered and trembled as the blast swept by.
It was better when they entered the south side; there they were
sheltered from the cutting wind, and Harold grew quieter and calmer as
the car bore him nearer and nearer home. He asked Mr. Grinnell not to
drive up to the door, but to set him down at the end of the street where
his mother resided; and then they had a quarrel as to which should pay
the man, that resulted in Harold, as usual, having it all his own way.
On one point, however, Mr. Grinnell was firm—he would not let the sick
lad walk up the street alone, neither would he allow him to throw aside
Birdley’s rug. “I will take it back with me,” he said. “I am resolved to
see you safe and sound to your own door.”
Which he did, and then bidding Harold a cheery “good-night,” left Harold
as Brian admitted him.
“Who was that came with you?” the elder brother asked.
“A friend of mine, a man who brought me home. I have been ill, Brian—I
have indeed,” and Harold dropped into a chair and put out his white thin
hand deprecatingly towards his brother.
“I am going to be good,” he said. “I am. If you all will only do what I
ask you, I will never get drunk again. I will try to be a credit to
everybody belonging to me yet. It is not too late, I think, is it?” and
with a gesture which was unspeakably touching, he put Brian’s hand on
the table, and laid his cheek upon it.
Brian had persuaded his mother and Geraldine to go to bed. The servant,
however, was still up, and now stood in the doorway. She came to ask if
anything more were needed; but seeing Harold’s head bent down and his
brother leaning over him, she remained silent.
Brian saw her and whispered the one word “Doctor.”
In a moment, Mary was running down the street, and late though the hour
was, returned in five minutes with a surgeon.
“My brother is not very well,” said Brian, after the first greetings
were over. “Can you suggest any little thing that will set him to
rights?”
“I would rather not see a doctor. I do not want any medicine,” remarked
Harold, lifting his head, and looking with his great dark eyes straight
in the face of the surgeon who was feeling his pulse, and counting its
beats with the greatest apparent indifference. “I am quite well,” he
went on, pettishly, trying to wrench away his wrist; and then he dropped
his face again on Brian’s hand, and his brother knew it was to hide the
hot tears, that were falling thick and fast as rain.
“Hysterical,” said the doctor, calmly; and Harold gave Brian a push, as
a hint that he should contradict the medical statement.
“His strength has been greatly tried lately, as most probably you know,”
answered the elder brother; and his low, full voice had a great virtue
of quietness in it. “He has suffered much, both mentally and bodily; but
we hope rest and change may do wonders for him. Don’t we, Harold?”
The boy made no reply, but he pressed his lips on Brian’s hand.
“Is this the young gentleman, then, who was charged with a crime that
some one else committed?” asked the surgeon; and for those words Harold
turned round and thanked him.
“Nobody would believe me, sir,” he said. “Nobody, that is, out of my own
home. But I did not do it. I did not, indeed.”
“That I am sure you did not!” answered the surgeon, heartily; and
immediately he and Harold became good friends; and the boy, pushing back
the mass of black hair that had fallen forward over his face, answered
all the doctor’s questions, and told all his symptoms, so far as he knew
them himself.
“It is the nights I dread,” he finished. “If you could only give me
something to prevent my being so frightened. It is horrible to be all
alone in the dark, like that;” and he clutched Brian’s hand, and held it
fast while he spoke.
“Why did you never tell any one of these attacks before?” asked Brian.
“I told Mr. Pryor. The first of them I ever had at night was the time I
was staying at Durrow; and he tipped me a five-pound note, and made me
promise him to go to some of the great guns here, and ask them about it;
and I meant to go, only, you know, they took me up the very day I came
back—they did.”
“Poor lad!” said the surgeon, compassionately.
“I was a poor lad, I think,” answered Harold. “There’s nobody ever can
know what it was—to be like what I have been to-night, in that horrid
place. Another week of it would have killed me; I am sure it would.”
“Well, we must try to set you up again now,” observed the surgeon,
cheerfully. “If your servant can come with me,” he added, addressing
Brian, “I will send back some medicine with her, and see your brother
early to-morrow morning;” and he stretched out his hand, which the two
youths shook gratefully and departed.
“You won’t leave me to-night, Brian, will you?” pleaded Harold; and
Brian was just saying that he would not, when Mrs. Drewitt, who had got
up and dressed herself at the sound of a strange voice, came
down-stairs, asking what was the matter.
“I did not feel up to the mark,” Harold answered; “and that obstinate
Brian must needs go disturb the whole neighbourhood by fetching a doctor
to see me. What a shame it is to have roused you up! but now that you
are here, I want to ask you a favour. I want you and Brian to do
something for me.”
“What is it, dear?” She was sitting on a chair, drawn close up to his;
her arms were about him, and his head was resting on her breast.
“I want to go away. I want you to leave Dublin, and take me where I
shall not be known—where I shall not be called a thief and a liar at
every turn.”
“Who dares call you either the one or the other?” and Brian’s hand
clenched, and his mouth was drawn tight as he asked the question.
Harold laughed out.
“Who killed Kildare? who dared Kildare to kill?—
I killed Kildare, and dare kill whom I will,”
he repeated. “He would go out and fight for me, I do believe,” he said,
turning to his mother; “but he would have to fight all Dublin if he took
up that quarrel. I have found out to-day,” Harold went on, as he kept
curling and uncurling the broad strings of the widow’s cap that fitted
so closely to Mrs. Drewitt’s face, “that there is no place like home,
after all, and that there are no people like our own people, when they
are true to us.”
“Come up to bed, Harold,” interposed Brian, who dreaded another fit of
weeping. “Come along;” and he lifted his brother off his chair.
“Wait a moment,” entreated Harold, standing with his arm round Brian’s
neck, and Brian’s arm supporting him. “Wait a moment; will you do what I
say? Will you leave Dublin?”
Mrs. Drewitt’s glance wandered for a moment round the room. It was not
large; it was not well furnished; but it had been a shelter, and it had
seemed like home. For the instant it appeared hard to have to turn out
once more into the world; to be in middle age a wanderer on the face of
the earth; but the feeling only lasted for a moment; then she said—
“I will do whatever may be best for my children, and the child that has
most need of me I must consider first.”
The last few words were addressed to Brian, who answered—
“Harold has most need of you, mother. Do what he asks. Leaving Ireland
may be the making of him yet.”
“Do you wish to leave Ireland, Harold?” Mrs. Drewitt inquired, and the
boy nodded.
“I should like to go to London,” he said; “I want to be lost; I want to
be able to be a good boy. I am tired and sick of being bad and foolish.”
“Then God forbid we should keep you in the way of temptation!” exclaimed
Brian: “but now come to bed; if you are to travel to London you must
make haste and get strong.”
“Oh! I shall be all right enough,” answered the lad as he crawled up the
staircase, with Brian’s arm still encircling him, with his right hand
still twined round Brian’s neck.
And thus it came to pass that, instead of going to the Dargle, or to the
Seven Churches, or to the meeting of the waters, or any of the lovely
places to which Mr. Gyton had planned little excursions, the Drewitts
set about packing up their effects forthwith and removing to London.
“You can do as you please about it, of course,” said the surgeon to
Brian; “but——”
“It is his fancy,” the elder brother answered; “and I would not baulk it
for any consideration. And do not tell my mother, Mr. Ross; she will
find it out for herself in time. I know what you mean. I have been
afraid of it from the first.”
And there was another person who knew also; upon whom the feeling that
he was dying came slowly but surely; who day by day clung to his mother
with a more despairing attachment, with a more passionate love.
After they removed to London he and she were never separate. In the dull
winter days he sat at the windows of their lodgings, looking out on the
constantly-changing panorama that was passing below. For the sake of her
boy, Mrs. Drewitt had rented apartments in a house that commanded the
view of a crowded thoroughfare; and it was Harold’s delight to sit from
noon to dusk, and from dusk to nightfall, watching the people passing
and repassing, the endless conveyances, the lights, the bustle, the
noise, the excitement.
Hand clasped in hand, mother and son spent the days thus together. It
was a fearful winter, that of 1854–5, but Harold lived through it. The
spring of 1855 was late, and the season ungenial; but Harold lived to
smell the violets which Geraldine bought for him, and to see the
primrose-roots hawked in baskets about the streets.
It was a lovely summer, and Harold lived to take many a drive and many a
walk through the great Babylon. He loved the parks—he liked to go where
there were hundreds and hundreds of people, and not a face he knew among
them save one, his mother’s; while she—it was impossible for her not to
know that to Harold’s life there could be but one sequel—an early death:
and when at last, in the September following their arrival in London,
the heart that had once throbbed so high with youth and hope and courage
was cold and quiet, Mrs. Drewitt, alone with her dead, fell on her knees
and thanked God that her boy—her frail, erring, unfortunate boy—belonged
at last solely to Him and her.
She made no mourning for her child, she raised no cry of grievous
lamentation, of unutterable woe, but she lay through the night thinking
of how he had come home at last—home to the one sure shelter to die in
peace. The touch of his hand seemed never to depart from her; she could
not forget how day after day he had pillowed his head on her bosom; she
could not shut her ears to the “mother—mother” that he kept repeating
towards the last if she left his side for a moment.
“God has been very good to me, Brian,” she said. “He gave my boy back to
me before he died, and I am content.”
With some difficulty Brian at last found a resting-place for Harold: not
in one of the great cemeteries, but in a quiet churchyard in one of the
northern suburbs, where the evening sun falls aslant over the graves,
where great trees throw a pleasant shade across the grass, where the
grey church-tower flings its shadow over the tombs, where the bells ring
out Sunday after Sunday, where there is quiet without loneliness, rest
without desertion.
There Brian laid his brother down to sleep, himself the solitary
mourner.
Mr. Pryor and Mr. Gyton were both out of town; and in the vast city
Brian Drewitt had no other friend.
As he left the grave, his thoughts went back to another funeral, at
which he had been chief mourner likewise: where, under the shadow of the
mountains, within sound of the sea, he had seen the mortal remains of
his father placed in the vault of the Drewitts.
He would have felt better satisfied had Harold slept there likewise. He
would have liked a train of mourners, and a procession such as had wound
down the avenue at Kincorth, and under the trees, and round the bay, and
over Duranmore Hill, and down into the hollow.
Each man has his special weakness, and this was Brian’s. He had never
felt so fully that they were Drewitts of Kincorth no longer, as when he
followed his brother to the grave alone.
What did the words graven on his headstone, “Harold Drewitt,” imply to
the men and the women who passed through that churchyard Sunday after
Sunday? Nothing. They only served to show that there a stranger had laid
him down to rest.
What guess could they make about how the nineteen years of his young
life had been spent? What could they know of his story—his errors—his
repentance—his wrongs?
But as though it had been all contained in a single page, Brian read the
tale which was now finished over again—over and over again.
He could see the boy riding round and round the meadows; he could see
the proud glances which both father and mother directed towards their
youngest born; he could see the daring imp taking his leaps, bearing his
tosses, laughing advice to scorn, and mocking at all grave counsels. He
could see him walking about with Maxwell; looking defiantly across the
dinner-table, at the Headlands, at his more prudent brother, and then
draining off his bumper out of mere bravado. He thought of him that
night at Regan’s: he saw him disappear through the darkness on Madcap;
he remembered his life in Dublin, and the great trial which had, so far
as any human being could see, saved his soul, while it destroyed his
life; and then—then there came the days when Harold was tractable as a
child—when he clung to his mother—when he turned back home to die.
The short story was finished—the tale told—the book closed in this world
for ever.
It was with the life of Harold Drewitt “as it is with a ship that
passeth over the waves of the sea, which, when it is gone by, the trace
thereof cannot be found, neither the pathway of the keel in the waves;
or, as when a bird hath flown through the air, there is no token of the
way to be found; or, as when an arrow is shot at a mark, it parteth the
air, which immediately cometh together again.” He had “passed away like
a shadow, or as a post that hasteth by.”
Maxwell Drewitt had been right. It was a young body that Brian left,
with an exceeding bitter and sorrowful heart, to sleep in the grave
until the Judgment-day.
CHAPTER XII.
Geraldine is Satisfied.
In the lives of all men there come long pauses, when the river of
existence seems to flow on without a ripple, when day succeeds to day
without any event of sufficient importance to be set down and chronicled
occurring in the even course of their experience.
Such a time was the year following Harold’s death to Brian Drewitt.
Though some changes had taken place, they had come about so naturally
that they scarcely seemed changes to him. All perhaps he noticed
specially or cared for particularly was, that he found it would take him
a long time to grow rich, and that during that time he was separated
from revenge and Maxwell and Kincorth.
Had he forgotten Kincorth, do you imagine? Had trouble driven all
thoughts of vengeance out of his head? Had struggling with the world not
tamed him, experience not subdued him, time not softened him? No, my
reader. The object he had planned to work for in Connemara he was
working for still, and though the end seemed no nearer of attainment,
but further off than ever, yet Brian Drewitt never withdrew his eyes
from it, but kept that distant goal in view by day and night, in
solitude and when he was mixing among his fellows.
Long ago, I said a person had but to look in Brian Drewitt’s face to
know that he could wait through years. He was waiting through years now
for the end.
He had been very fortunate in business; fortunate, that is, considering
his training and the age at which he made his start in the world; but
still Brian felt dissatisfied.
It is not easy to be content with pounds when you have been calculating
thousands; it is difficult to work for small pay when you desire to make
money _ad libitum_ for the purpose of wiping out old scores; and thus,
though Brian was in the receipt of a hundred and fifty pounds a year, he
worked like a galley-slave to make himself of more value to his
employers, who were now not the Dublin firm in whose establishment he
had made his first start in life, but the great London house of Gyton,
Lark, Munday, Hatfield and Company, Austinfriars.
After his brother’s death he felt that he would like to be nearer his
mother than could possibly be the case if he retained his situation in
Dublin.
As for asking Mrs. Drewitt and Geraldine to return there, to return to a
country which was now so full of painful associations, he felt that such
a request would be both foolish and unreasonable, and when Mr. Frank
Gyton proposed to him that he should take his chance of the “governor’s
temper,” at a salary of one hundred and fifty, which was an advance of
fifty on the pay of the Dublin firm, Brian close with the offer on the
spot, and three months afterwards walked into the city office as
corresponding and foreign clerk.
That Mr. Gyton had a temper; that Mr. Munday had a worse; that the
managing clerk had a worse temper than all his principals’ tempers put
together, Brian was not long of finding out; but he had sense enough to
find out at the same time that if he did his work no one could find
fault with him; that if he kept his time, held his tongue, did what he
was told and refrained from idling, nobody would meddle with him.
Had he been gay and light-hearted, like other lads; had he been given to
merriment, or to merry-making; had he been sociable and lively, like
Harold, with a jeer or a joke for every one, probably he would never
have made way in the good graces of Mr. Gyton; but as matters stood that
gentleman took to him in due time amazingly.
Mr. Gyton, in the City, was a different man from Mr. Gyton at the
West-end. At the west he did not seem to have much voice in any matter
on which his son and wife chanced to entertain a decided opinion; but in
the City he was an individual of many prejudices, with old-fashioned
ideas; who gave himself all the airs of a millionaire; who was a
martinet in Austinfriars, and who liked to see old heads set on young
shoulders.
In this respect Brian suited him to a nicety. Brian might have been a
thousand years of age.
“A most discreet young man,” he remarked to Mr. Munday; and Mr. Munday
agreed that he was, but ventured to observe that it was a pity he
chanced to be born on the wrong side of the channel.
“As for that, sir,” answered Mr. Gyton, drawing himself up, and taking a
pinch of snuff out of his box, without offering any to Mr. Munday, “as
for that, sir, the Gytons have some Irish blood in their veins. My
grandfather married the niece of an Irish Earl, and my father-in-law was
Irish to the back-bone. Well trained, sir, and well bred, the Irish can
run as well as the best of us.”
“Then I suppose it is quite true what I hear about your son?” said Mr.
Munday, a little maliciously.
“What about my son, sir?—what—what about Frank?”
“It is generally said that Mr. Drewitt has a very charming sister——”
“And if he have a dozen sisters, Mr. Munday——”
“Why, in that case, your son could have choice enough.”
“Of course he could, and he can choose whom he pleases, and he can marry
whom he likes, without consulting every idiot in London on the subject,
I suppose.”
“Certainly, Mr. Gyton, his own father not excepted, we may conclude.”
And then the partners had quite a quarrel; they tried who could hit
hardest, who could say the sharpest things, and went on wrangling and
snarling, until Mr. Gyton, looking as red as a turkey-cock and as
pompous as a beadle, remarked, that he supposed his private affairs
might be regarded as separate from those of the firm; and that he wished
Mr. Munday would recollect for the future that he had expressed such a
wish; after which observation, which was delivered in the tone of a
royal command, Mr. Gyton summoned Brian into his private office, and
began catechizing him.
“How long have you been with us, Drewitt?”
“Six months, sir.”
“And you like the business?”
“I like anything out of which money can be made,” was the reply.
“Anything honest, I suppose, you mean.”
“Anything honest and honourable,” agreed Brian. “Anything that a
gentleman may do, and still remain one.”
“Humph! You call yourself a gentleman, then, do you?”
Brian flushed scarlet, but had sense enough to make no reply.
“There—there—don’t be annoyed. I only asked for information. I wanted to
know more of you. An employer ought to understand clearly the position
in life of a person holding your responsible office. Let me see—how did
you happen to come here?—who recommended you?—with whom were you last?”
Brian told him.
“And wasn’t there something about your father cutting you out?—what was
all that?”
Once again, Brian gave him the information he wanted.
“And which of your family have you with you in London?” was the next
question.
“My mother and only sister,” answered the young man.
“Dependent upon you, of course?”
“No, sir; my mother has her settlement, which is quite enough for all
her wants,” Brian said, stiffly.
“Hah! so much the better. Now just begin and tell me your story right
through—don’t keep anything back—be frank with me, and I will be fair
with you. I am not asking out of idle curiosity—I am not, upon my
honour.”
Thus exhorted, Brian told all—told everything, even to Harold’s mishap;
and during the course of the recital, Mr. Gyton senior indulged himself
in many pinches of snuff—in many hems, and haws, and God bless me’s, and
upon my soul’s.
It was early summer, and Mr. Gyton was arrayed in those wonderfully
light trousers for which most City magnates seem to have some kind of
mania; he had on a white waistcoat, displayed an imposing amount of
shirt-collar, wore a lightblue silk cravat, and was shaved as clean as
it was in the art of man to shave a human chin.
He always carried an immense white silk pocket-handkerchief and an
equally enormous bandana.
The bandana was now spread out over his knee, like a flag laid over a
railing, and he contemplated the way in which his boots were blacked;
while with his plump legs well apart, and his stomach swelling out under
his white waistcoat, and his heavy guard-chain strolling about over his
chest, he sat and listened to Brian, interrupting him only with the
remarks I have mentioned.
“Hah! poor lady—very sad—very sad indeed: has Mrs. Gyton been to see her
yet—eh?”
Mr. Gyton was always fancying his wife was in league with his son, and
he put the question fully expecting to hear that Mrs. Gyton and Mrs.
Drewitt were bosom friends.
No such thing however.
“My brother took that affair I mentioned so much to heart,” answered
Brian, “and his health was so bad from the time we left Ireland, that he
could not bear the sight of a stranger at all, and since his death my
mother has never recovered her spirits sufficiently to care for
visiting.”
“Wonderful—bless me—extraordinary!”
“We are so differently situated now,” began Brian, who really did not
know what else to say; but Mr. Gyton interrupted him with the remark
that he should have thought—but of course everybody knew their own
business best (the millionaire was apt at times to be ungrammatical)—a
little friendly visiting would have done Mrs. Drewitt good. “It’s not
well to sit moping,” went on the great man; “brooding over sorrow only
makes it worse; and we none of us can live alone—at least, that is my
experience. I am sure when I was so ill, this time two years—let me see,
is it two years? yes, it must be pretty nearly two years—the doctors
told me I must speak to no one, see no one, and think of nothing, for at
least three months.”
“They considered your case so serious?” suggested Brian, imagining some
observation was expected from him.
“Serious? yes, indeed, it was serious; but their prescription would have
killed me. I might as well have been put in my coffin at once, and so I
told them. I went abroad, certainly, but what did I do there? I amused
myself as much as possible. I saw everything there was to be seen. I
drove about, I ate foreign kickshaws, I talked French (Brian thought he
would have given something to hear the French to which Dives had treated
the Parisians), and what was the consequence?”
His clerk faintly hoped that he had come back better.
“Better! why you see me now. I have been better since than I ever was in
my life; and that’s what your mother ought to have, change and variety,
instead of mouching in the house all day. Mrs. Gyton shall call upon
her; yes, that she shall;” and Mr. Gyton having uttered the last words
as if in answer to an internal protest against any such erratic
proceedings, took a pinch of snuff, blew his nose violently and looked
straight at Brian, who said—
“I hope, sir, you will not think me rude and ungrateful, but——”
“But what—what is it you have got to say?”
“I think my mother would rather—that is, we are so completely removed
from the circle we——”
“Bless my soul! what ails the boy? he cannot finish a single sentence!”
exclaimed Mr. Gyton, pettishly. “That is a shocking habit for any one to
get into. Out with it!” he finished, working himself up to a pitch of
desperation; “out with whatever you have got to say.”
“I am quite certain,” said Brian, steadily—so steadily that Mr. Gyton
never guessed what the effort cost him—“that you would rather our house
and your house were kept completely separate, when I tell you Mr.
Francis Gyton once thought my sister very pretty; as she is,” added
Brian. “All things considered, my mother decided it was best he should
not see so much of her, nor she of him. I hope I am not doing wrong in
telling you this, sir. We know exactly where we stand, and we do not
wish to push ourselves into any house under false pretences;” and Mr.
Brian drew himself up to his full height, and looked the very
incarnation of pride and determination.
“Do you mean to say my son was ever fond of your sister?” asked Mr.
Gyton, facing slowly round.
“I believe he was. I do not think my mother would ever have said it was
best for him not to see Geraldine, had there not been something of the
kind—and something definite, too.”
“The young dog!” remarked the parent.
“I should be sorry to say anything calculated to annoy you, or to
prejudice you against Mr. Francis. But the matter is all settled now;
and you will understand, from what I have said, why I think my mother
would rather Mrs. Gyton did not call.”
“Thank you. It is always best to speak out fairly and frankly, is not
it? Now there is something else I want to talk to you about. You have
done your best, I think, since you came to us?”
“I have tried to do my best,” answered Brian, who was in horror lest he
was going to be dismissed.
“Yes; and those who try generally succeed, don’t they?” said Mrs. Gyton,
whose face seemed to Brian to get redder every moment, while his
shirt-collar became more imposing. “I have been thinking of sending you
abroad, very shortly.”
“Do you mean to any of the colonies?” asked Brian, hurriedly.
“No, no—only to France; it is rather a delicate piece of business, and I
want it managed cleverly. If you conducted it to our satisfaction, I
have no doubt we should be able to raise your salary next year.”
“You are very kind to me, sir,” Brian said.
“Not at all, not at all. I know what I am about. Take care of what you
do, and you may make your way in the world yet. Now you can go; that is
all I wanted.”
But still Brian hesitated.
“I can have no objection to your repeating to Mr. Francis what has
passed between us to-day; but at the same time, sir, I almost wish you
would not mention the matter to him. It is all settled now; and——”
“Yes—yes—yes—yes,” exclaimed Mr. Gyton, impatiently waving his hand; “I
understand perfectly; be satisfied, I shall not make any mischief;” and
Mr. Gyton rose from his chair as a hint that the interview must be
considered ended, while Brian went back to his desk wondering greatly
whither all his principal’s questions had tended.
As for Mr. Gyton, he took an early opportunity of seeing Mr. Pryor and
asking him what kind of girl that sister of Drewitt’s might be; which
question Mr. Pryor answered by inquiring why his brother-in-law wanted
to know.
“Curiosity,” was the reply.
“Nonsense,” exclaimed Mr. Pryor; “you have heard some of that chatter of
Munday’s about Frank being fond of her, as Frank was, for that matter;
but do not let it influence you against Brian; for though Munday does
not like him, you will never get a more faithful nor trustworthy clerk.”
“But I want to hear about this girl. Have you seen her?”
“Have I seen her?” repeated Mr. Pryor, with a nervous laugh. “Have I
seen you? Did not I see them every day in Connemara before they ever
left Kincorth? Did not I tell you I was in the house when her father
died, and that I heard the will read over too? Seen her! I should think
I had.”
“Do you think Frank really was fond of her?”
“How is it possible for me to answer such a question? He was at one time
never out of the house, and he proposed for her. There, now the cat is
out of the bag. But he had not courage to ask your consent, and Mrs.
Drewitt would not allow the affair to go on without your knowledge.
Frank asked me about it, and said he feared there was no chance of your
approval; in which opinion, knowing there was no money nor prospect of
any money, I agreed with him.” Mr. Pryor was never weary of having a
fling at his brother-in-law’s money-bags.
“And so Frank gave her up?”
“I don’t think he did; I think he is waiting for an opportunity to speak
to you.”
Thereupon Mr. Gyton grew rampant: was he a bear, was he a brute, was he
a beast, that his own son should be afraid to speak to him on such a
subject? “Hang it! sir,” he said, “was I rolling in money when I married
your sister?”
“No,” was the reply; “but then neither were you dependent on your father
for your support; and Frank knows, as I know, that there are probably
many young ladies you would prefer to a girl without fortune, and she an
Irishwoman.”
“Now I’ll tell you what it is, Geoffry,” and at this point Mr. Gyton
became almost purple in the face with indignation, “I won’t have you or
anybody settling my affairs for me, and saying what I should like, or
what I should not. If you must know what I should not like, it would be
one of those Munday girls. I wonder,” he went on, “that you, having just
come into such a handsome property, should not have offered to make
things square for Frank, and he your only near male relative. Not that I
want the money; only I wonder, when these Drewitts seem to be such
_protégés_ of yours.”
“You need not wonder,” was the reply. “I may marry yet, myself.”
“The deuce you may!” and Mr. Gyton surveyed him with perplexed
amazement. “Ho, ho! I am beginning to see daylight, I think. Perhaps you
are in love with the girl yourself?”
“Perhaps I am;” and Geoffry Pryor, seeing that his last chance of
winning Geraldine was slipping through his fingers, stood at bay.
“Indeed,” he proceeded, “there is no use in my making any pretence about
the matter. I did hope—I have hoped year after year since I first knew
her, that some day I might be able to persuade her to become my wife. It
may seem to you a ridiculous rivalry,” added Mr. Pryor, hastily; “but I
think I should have been far the honester lover of the two. Had I
approved of Frank’s conduct in the affair—had I thought it likely he
would make her happy—I love her so well, that—”
“You would have taken his part against me. I am obliged to you,
Geoffry.”
“—That I would have done what I could to help him and her, though I do
not pretend to much Quixotism either,” finished Mr. Pryor.
“I must see this young lady, who seems to have turned all your heads,”
remarked Mr. Gyton.
“Well, then, listen to one word first. Frank has treated her very
badly.”
“How dare you say such a thing of my son, sir?”
“I shall say what I please about my nephew,” retorted Mr. Pryor, coolly.
“And I repeat, Frank has treated her very badly. Now, do not you go and
treat her badly also. Make up your mind what your intentions are in the
matter, and see that Frank has not changed his, and then do what you
like; only don’t let him keep beating about the bush as he has been
doing, ever since he first saw her.”
“What relative is she to that Lady Emmeline woman who stayed with us one
spring?”
“Lady Emmeline’s husband and Miss Drewitt are first cousins,” Mr. Pryor
replied.
“Was that the fellow who got the estate?”
“The same.”
“Any chance at all of our clerk having it back again?”
“Not the slightest.”
“Are you going over to Ireland this year?”
“I do not know. No, I think not. I have some intention of selling
Durrow, and buying a place in England.”
“How long have you taken that idea into your head?”
“Not very long;” and Mr. Pryor returned his brother-in-law’s stare
unflinchingly.
“Don’t take it to heart,” said Mr. Gyton, with a certain kindness and
sympathy in his manner; “don’t, there’s a good fellow.”
“If you don’t take it to heart, I am sure I need not,” answered the
barrister, bitterly; “I thought the very mention of such a _mésalliance_
would have driven you out of your mind. The longer I live the less I see
one need expect any person to act as it might have been supposed he
would.”
“Then you are sorry I do not altogether disapprove of the business.”
“Do you think I am made of iron, that I should be glad?” was the reply;
but Mr. Pryor never afterwards repeated this remark; on the contrary,
when his sister told him how Frank’s wandering habits and unsettled mode
of life had been a source of grief and anxiety to both her and his
father, how anxious they were for their only son to be “settled,” and
how thankful for her part she felt that he had chosen that “dear, sweet,
pretty Geraldine, who was so fond of him,” the barrister resigned
himself to the inevitable, and began marvelling whether he could ever
look on Geraldine as his niece.
He did not much think his nephew would make any woman very happy; but
still, they were both young, and both in love; and, who knew but that it
was best as it was?
Geoffry Pryor could not say it was not best, though it ended his dream,
though it crushed out of his heart the hope he had been cherishing for
years.
“I thought you would have liked Frank to marry either rank or fortune,”
he remarked to his sister.
“So we should, but Frank has never shown the slightest predilection for
either one or the other, and really young men now-a-days do make such
matches that I am thankful he has chosen a lady by birth, and one whom
we need not be ashamed to present to any person or in any place. There
is young Munday—married his sister’s maid! Mr. Lark has just had to send
his son abroad to keep him out of the way of some most disreputable
connexion. There is Lady Ackington’s step-son run off with the
governess—and in short, my dear Geoffry—”
“In short, my dear Maria, you think, with me, that Miss Drewitt will
make almost too good a wife for Frank.”
“I think no such thing,” retorted Mrs. Gyton, indignantly; “for a young
lady in Miss Drewitt’s destitute position to make such a capital match
is remarkable; and had Mr. Gyton not taken such a fancy to her brother
it never could have been brought about. Of course we shall be glad to
see Frank settled. He has promised his father that he will really settle
down to business now, and take that position to which, as the son of the
head of the firm, he is entitled; and if he does that I shall say
meeting with Miss Drewitt was the greatest blessing which could have
befallen him. But, at the same time, I must add, that had he fancied
Miss Ackington, or even one of the Miss Larks, I should infinitely have
preferred a connexion which might have advanced his worldly interests as
well as insured his domestic happiness.”
“You really are getting eloquent, Maria.”
“It is enough to make any one indignant to hear the way you talk. A
stranger would really go away with the impression that Miss Drewitt had
ten thousand a year, and that she was conferring some honour on Frank by
accepting him, instead of being only too glad to secure such a catch.
Not but what,” continued Mrs. Gyton, noticing an angry look in her
brother’s face; “not but what I will say, they behaved admirably in the
business, which proves that, though they are poor, they have been
educated in all the ideas of the highest ranks.”
“What are the ideas of the highest ranks, Maria?” inquired Mr. Pryor.
“Not to take advantage—to act honourably—to do as you would be done by,
and so forth.”
“Oh! indeed!” remarked her brother; “after that, I think I may go home
and propose to my housekeeper.” But he did not go home, neither did he
propose to his housekeeper: he drove to the house in Islington which
Brian had taken for his mother after Harold’s death, and found Geraldine
alone in the drawing-room.
“I have come to wish you joy, dear,” he said; but there was an
unsteadiness in his voice as he spoke, and the hand which held hers
trembled a little. “I hope you will be happy, and wealthy, and wise;”
and he tried to smile; which proved so futile an attempt, that the tears
came into Geraldine’s eyes as she looked at him.
“I was foolish once,” he went on, “and thought—Ah! well, you know what I
thought. But that is all gone and past now, my child, and we will be
good friends for ever, won’t we?”
She put her other hand on his shoulder and said, “yes,” with a sob in
her voice.
“And if ever you are in any trouble or perplexity, you will come to me
as you would to—I am going to be your uncle,” he added abruptly; “so
what need I say more?”
“I will come,” she replied.
“And we will forget all the past. You will forget I was ever silly
enough to overlook the fact that I was old enough to be your father;
that the time when I might have found favour in a young girl’s eyes was
in the summers before you were born.”
“Don’t,” she pleaded; “don’t; I can’t bear it.”
He put the hair back from her forehead, he held her away from him at
arms’ length, he looked at her sweet sorrowful face—looked at it as he
knew he might never look in her face, or in the face of any other woman
again, and then he took her to him and kissed her, as he had longed to
do that day when they stood together on the hill above Kincorth.
“Is not there a nursery rhyme, Geraldine, which declares that some go
up, and some go down? I feel that I have been among the latter class;
and yet, if you are happy, my dear, I will make myself happy too. It was
a mistake; that is all; and in this world it has often seemed to me we
pay as dearly for our mistakes as we do for our sins. You may think it a
strange fancy, child. I am not going away from London; at least, I am
only going to Durrow for a month, and I hope often to see you when I
come back; constantly, indeed, after a time: yet still, I want to say
good-bye; that was the chief word I came to speak to you to-day.”
She knew what he meant; knew that it was not to her he was bidding
farewell, but to the dream that had been so sweet and so exceeding
beautiful. She knew that from thenceforth he wanted her to forget, as he
intended to forget—that from that day forward, she was to seem to him
his nephew’s affianced wife, nothing more.
Nothing more. When he was standing on the cliffs above Durrow it seemed
to him that the sea kept repeating that refrain eternally:
Nothing more—nothing—so long as the rain fell, and the wind blew,
nothing for ever!
But Geraldine was happy, and talked with her mother of brighter days to
come, when she should have no anxiety about ways and means; no need to
pinch and save; no trouble, no sorrow.
“And they will push Brian on, mamma, and he will get, oh! so rich, and
Frank wants him also to live with us till he marries; so that you need
have no hesitation now about coming to us; and we will make you so
comfortable, mamma, and take every care from you, and you shall be so
happy—so happy!”
Should she? After a talk like this Mrs. Drewitt would go to her own
room, and fall on her knees, and pray that her son and daughter might
somehow learn the truth which she had not courage enough to tell
them—that the days were not very far off when she should indeed have no
more care, when she should be very happy, but not in this world—ah! no,
not here.
CHAPTER XIII.
Country Gossip.
Mr. Pryor did not make a very long stay in Ireland. He merely remained a
sufficient length of time to receive Mr. Connor’s numerous reports; to
ride round his property; to point out a few improvements he wished made;
to distribute much charity; to be blessed with blessings that were
beyond reason as they were without stint; to drive out a few times; to
renew his acquaintance with the Durrow fishermen, and to hear all the
local news.
Considering that Mr. Connor had a whole year’s budget to unfold, the
amount of information was not great, although it might be interesting.
The gaugers had been over several times, and the constabulary, too,
about the stills and the smugglers; “And one gauger was not afraid to
say,” went on Mr. Connor, “that if you, sir, did your duty, there would
soon not be a still in Durrow; and about the smugglers, the coastguard
people declared I got share of the cargoes.”
“We can both bear such remarks, I suppose, Mr. Connor,” said Mr. Pryor,
smiling.
“They are wild about it, that is the thing, you know, sir. Why, they do
say that even Mr. Drewitt has turned against the stills, and is hunting
them off his property there in the Joyce county. You would not know Mr.
Maxwell, sir, if you were to see him now; he is all for law and order,
and is making himself perfectly detested by everybody, high and low. He
is abroad now, sir; travelling on the Continent with a Mr. Campnell from
Oxford, who they do say is going to be his heir, and who, many people
think, is something nearer even than that; and Lady Emmeline has left
him—did you never hear of it, sir? She has left him and is gone to live
with Mr. Vervensoe and his wife up at Cragantlet. The famine made a poor
man of him, rich though he was once; and they are glad enough to have
Lady Emmeline with them for the sake of what she pays. They do say the
life he led that misguided woman, sir, lately was shocking—shocking. I
could not tell you half the stories that are in everybody’s mouth about
his wickedness, and his cruelty; and it all began, that is, the cruelty,
because she refused to have this young man come to the house as her
nephew, or come to the house while she was in it, in fact, at all.”
“One cannot wonder at her doing so,” remarked Mr. Pryor.
“No; but I am told he did—that he said, as she had no children, the
least she could do was to let him have one of his own in the house; and
then she threatened him—I could never rightly make out with what; and
then he struck her; and then she got worse, and said she would leave
him, and expose him; and after that he begged her pardon, and talked to
her for more than an hour, and got somehow to the soft side of her; so
that she said, at last, if he would let her go, and take what she
brought with her, there might be peace between them.”
“That could only have come through the servants,” remarked Mr. Pryor,
thoughtfully.
“It came to me, most of it, from my brother-in-law; but where he got it
I cannot say.”
“And so Lady Emmeline is really gone?”
“Yes, sir. I met her the other day out driving with Mr. and Mrs.
Vervensoe; and she looked ninety. And, indeed, I was sorry to see her,”
finished Mr. Connor.
“I wonder if Maxwell Drewitt was married before he met with Lady
Emmeline—secretly, I mean,” said Mr. Pryor.
“Not a bit of it, sir; there never was a man less in the marrying notion
than that same Mr. Drewitt, if all I have heard from Ryan about his
young days is true. And if you are thinking that he was married first,
and then married Lady Emmeline afterwards, you may put that notion away
altogether. He was always far too wide-awake to get himself into any
mess of that kind. Have you been round by Kincorth, sir? He is putting
up the handsomest entrance there is in this part of the country at all;
and they do tell me the house is like a palace, and that the gardens are
just a show. He has made a second avenue, leading out on Calgillan Road;
so that the drive now goes right through the property. I heard say—but I
don’t know whether it was true or not—that some young lady in England
took a fancy to him, not knowing he was married; and that when he came
home, he cursed and swore at Lady Emmeline for living too long, and
standing in his way.”
“I think that story must be an invention,” answered Mr. Pryor; “at
least, I give my countrywomen credit for more taste than that would
imply they were possessed of.”
“I don’t know,” said Mr. Connor; “I fancy there is no way Mr. Drewitt
cannot put on him when he likes. I am sure he came over here one day
wanting gravel out of Durrow River, for his new avenue, and you would
have thought I was Prince Albert, at the very least.”
“Who is living at the Headlands, now?” asked Mr. Pryor.
“A Captain Crabbe, his name is; and awful work he and Mr. Drewitt have
about the place not being kept in good order; and about the cows getting
among the plantations. I don’t wonder, myself, at Mr. Drewitt’s being
vexed to see the grounds—you remember how he used to have them; and now
they are as bad as Cragantlet. He says he will never let it to anybody
again, unless an Englishman; and not to him, unless he signs an
agreement to keep the place as it ought to be kept. He goes on
dreadfully, though, when anything puts him out. When you are going along
the Calgillan Road you can hear him cursing his men half a mile off.”
“What do you suppose is the cause of his ill-temper?”
“Goodness knows, sir! He never had much of a temper, and now it is worse
than ever. Ryan says, he thinks it must be that the devil he has inside
him wears away his patience, and that he is glad to break out on
anybody. There is one thing sure, he has been worse since Mr. Harold
died. My brother-in-law told me he shut himself up for a whole day when
the news came over, and that no one durst go near him; and I believe he
sent to Galway, and telegraphed over to Mr. Brian, would he like to bury
him in Eversbeg. But Mr. Brian wrote back, he would not be indebted to
him for enough ground even to lay a dog in, let alone a brother.”
“What an unforgiving set they are!”
“Yes, sir; and little though you might think it, Mr. Archibald Drewitt
was just the same in some things. There was a man talking to me about
him only the other day, a poor fellow of the name of Byrne, who was
turned off one of Mr. Drewitt’s lots the time you stood for Duranmore.
He would vote for you, and so Mr. Drewitt said he should go, and he got
a farm under Mr. Waller; but someway, nothing went well with him, and
then he took a place as labourer, with Mr. Maxwell. He had always liked
Mr. Drewitt, for he had a kind, affable way with him, and a friendly
look and a pleasant word for tenant and labourer just the same; and of
course whenever he met Mr. Drewitt, for a while he touched his hat to
him, expecting that Mr. Drewitt would give him time of day,[1] or say it
was fine weather for the crops; or perhaps, how are the pigs? or is the
wife getting better, Barney? But Mr. Drewitt never took the least notice
of him, no more than if he hadn’t been speaking to him every week for
the previous ten years. As you may suppose, Barney quit touching his
hat; but he said that about two months before Mr. Drewitt’s death, he
saw him creeping along the road, and that his mind misgave him the
master was not long for this world. So he thought he would like to speak
to him once before he went, (the old fellow cried when he told me about
it), and he stood up close to the roadside of the footpath, so that Mr.
Drewitt could not help seeing him; and he touched his hat, after twenty
years, to his old landlord again, and says: “I was sorry to hear you had
been bad, sir; I hope your honour’s better.” Mr. Drewitt looked him all
over from head to foot, and the man was ragged enough; so perhaps, he
thought his politics had not done much for him; but he never answered
him, no more than if he had been dirt under his feet. Byrne never saw
him after that, but he followed his coffin and saw it put in Eversbeg
Abbey. I call a thing like that carrying hatred too far; but of course I
am no judge.”
Footnote 1:
Meaning good-morning, or good-evening.
Mr. Pryor walked on for a few steps in silence, slowly, thinking of all
his agent had told him while he walked.
Then he began showing Mr. Connor the alterations he desired to have
made, remarking at the same time—
“It is very likely my nephew and Miss Geraldine may pay you a visit next
summer, and I should like the place to look its best in honour of them.”
“Are they going,” began Connor, considering in what suitable form of
words to clothe his question, “are they going to make a match of it?”
“They are talking of doing so,” answered Mr. Pryor, with a smile which
he could not suppress.
“I am right glad to hear it, sir, if I may make so free as to say so. If
Miss Geraldine is half as well as every one here wishes her, she will
make him a good wife, and he will be a good husband to her!”
“Thank you, Connor.” Mr. Pryor said this simply, and as though he was
thanking Connor for some compliment paid to himself.
“And you think they will come next summer, sir?”
“I hope so,” answered Mr. Pryor: but many things happened before that
next summer which the barrister then had no idea the future could bring
to pass.
He went to call on Lady Emmeline ere he returned to London, and found
her what Connor had described—an old withered woman, bent and aged, but
still rouged to the eyes, and dressed in the extreme of the fashion.
“I am so glad to see you, Mr. Pryor,” she said, entering the room with
skirts so voluminous and crinoline so extensive that it was some time
before the barrister could see which was woman and which steel and silk
and lace. “It was so kind of you to come, considering all things, so
very kind.”
Mr. Pryor ventured to think it was very kind of her ladyship to say so.
“It is the truth, it is nothing but the truth; there are not many who
would come running after an old woman like me, though there was a time—”
and Lady Emmeline stopped, and would have coloured had not the rouge on
her face rendered such a performance as impossible as it was
unnecessary. “Do you remember the election at Duranmore, Mr. Pryor? Ah!
who that saw me then would ever have thought I could come to this?”
When a woman’s case is beyond flattery it is beyond consolation. Mr.
Pryor felt this and held his tongue.
“You have heard, I suppose,” resumed Lady Emmeline, after leaving a
decent space for compliment had he chosen to fill it up, “that
unfortunate circumstances have compelled me to accept an asylum here.
Ah! dear; to think my husband should ever have treated me as he has
done: and I made him, Mr. Pryor; it was my money made him; and I did
once think he was fond of me, I did indeed.” Poor Lady Emmeline! there
was no falsehood nor affectation about those words; and although her
tears might wear strange channels down her cheeks, giving her a
generally wrung-out and draggled appearance about the face, Mr. Pryor
did not feel inclined even to smile, but listened sympathetically while
the neglected poetess proceeded.
“I often think of those sweet lines by Moore,” and she repeated—
“‘When first I met thee warm and true,
There shone such truth about thee,
And on thy lips such promise hung
I thought ’twere sin to doubt thee.’
“That was just my case, Mr. Pryor. I believed in him implicitly. I
thought he could say nothing but what was good and true; that he was
brave and honest. I have found how much mistaken I was since those days.
But it is too late now for repentance, almost for regret;” and she went
on whispering, as was her wont, the remainder of the lines—
“‘Go, deceiver, go—
The heart whose hopes could make it
Trust one so false, so low,
Deserved that thou shouldst break it.’
“So false, so low,” she said, shaking her head sadly; “aye, and so base
and cruel, too.”
Thinking to divert her attention, Mr. Pryor asked her when she had been
last in London, and when she intended paying it another visit, and in
return got more than he bargained for.
In the spring she hoped to go to London again, but not till then,
unless, indeed, dear Geraldine’s marriage took place first, in which
case she should make a point of being present.
“I was so truly delighted to hear of the probability of her settling so
well,” went on Lady Emmeline. “At one time, do you know, Mr. Pryor, we
all thought you were to be the fortunate man. Shows how wrongly people
may judge sometimes—even the cleverest people.” Which was a back-handed
blow at her husband.
Mr. Pryor winced—the wound was still green—but the lady proceeded. “I
was always very fond of Geraldine—fonder than of either of her
brothers—though Brian was a gentlemanlike lad, and promised to grow up
handsome. I thought Geraldine took most after her mother. I suppose she
is greatly improved in her appearance since she went to London?”
The barrister paused for a moment before he answered. He was thinking of
the Geraldine who had stood talking with him on the way to Durrow, and
wondering in what way Lady Emmeline could imagine it possible for such a
vision of loveliness to be improved.
“She is thinner,” he said; that seemed the truest and most unconcerned
statement he could make, under the circumstances; “but otherwise I do
not think her much altered.”
“Ah! Well, that would be an improvement,” said Lady Emmeline. “She was
always a little too plump for perfect elegance.”
“Opinions may differ on that point,” Mr. Pryor would have answered, but
he fortunately remembered that Lady Emmeline, who had always prided
herself on her graceful figure and perfect elegance, was as thin as a
thread-paper.
He therefore contented himself with saying, that when she came to London
she would be able to judge for herself; and shortly afterwards took his
leave, though earnestly entreated by Mrs. Vervensoe, _née_ Munks, to
stop for dinner.
“I had five hundred and sixty-one things I wanted to ask you about,”
said that energetic lady; “and I had twice as many, I know, to tell you;
but, however, if you must go, why you must. It is treating us very
shabbily, though; and I do not know what Mr. Vervensoe will say to me
when he comes in, about letting you go.”
“You should tell him, ‘a wilful man must have his way,’ and then he can
say nothing,” answered Mr. Pryor.
“But, really now, is not it mean and shabby?”
“It would be, perhaps, if I could remain; but as I cannot, you must
exercise your charity, and think as well of me as you can.”
“There is no fear of our not thinking well of you. Good-bye, then, if it
must be good-bye. Give my love to Geraldine, and tell her I shall expect
a piece of the wedding-cake; she had a bit of mine to dream on, I know,
when she was not three years old.”
With which pleasing reminiscence Mrs. Vervensoe allowed their visitor to
depart; and accordingly Mr. Pryor rode away from Cragantlet, which,
though twenty miles from Durrow, supposing Duranmore were taken by the
way, was not more than fifteen, if the traveller turned up the lane
leading past Regan’s, crossed the Calgillan coach-road, and then kept
straight on for the ruins of Castle Cronach.
Under any circumstances it was a long ride, and a lonely; and Mr. Pryor
had got very weary of his own thoughts before he reached the highway,
with its many turnings and windings, along which they had trotted all
four abreast the first day he ever beheld Durrow.
He had not gone a mile, however, past Castle Cronach, when a new subject
for thought presented itself, in the shape of a jaunting-car, on which
were seated two gentlemen, one on each side, with the driver occupying
the position that of right belongs to him, but which in Ireland he seems
never to assume, unless dire necessity compels his doing so.
One of the gentlemen was Maxwell Drewitt; the other, a dark moustached
youth, apparently not more than two and twenty, though he had a beard
that might have been growing for a dozen years.
“Mr. Campnell, I presume,” thought Mr. Pryor, as the car pursued its way
to Duranmore and he to Durrow. “I wonder if he wears that mass of hair
to prevent any one tracing a likeness to his father; if it be his
father,” corrected the barrister.
“Where could they be coming from, Connor?” he asked during the course of
the evening.
“Most likely from Castlebar. It is nearer from here to Castlebar than it
is from Galway to here, and a nicer country to pass through too. And so
you saw Mr. Campnell; and what kind of a looking young gentleman is he,
sir, if I may inquire?”
“He is so covered with hair, it is almost impossible to say what he is
like. He has dark eyes, as well as I could observe, and that is all I
can tell you about him.”
“And he is only twenty-one, I hear.”
There was the rustling of a woman’s dress through the hall, and Mr.
Pryor, turning round sharply, guessed that Mrs. Connor had been
listening at the open door.
There was nothing in their conversation that he cared if all Ireland
were cognizant of, yet the circumstance gave him an uncomfortable
impression, and made him feel a little doubtful about Mrs. Connor’s
entire trustworthiness.
While she, poor Jenny! she stole out to a field at the back of the
house, where her children were playing in the summer’s evening, and
sitting down on the grass, took the youngest to her heart, while she
thought about the boy she had borne in the times gone by; whom she had
never nursed on her knees; whom she had never folded in her arms; whom
she had been forced to send away; whom she had never through the years
set eyes on; who would never be told the name of his mother, but whom,
she knew, was coming to Kincorth that day, to be, if he lived,
Kincorth’s owner, when perhaps she and his father were both dead.
CHAPTER XIV.
What met Brian.
A winter’s day in London, more especially when that winter’s day happens
to be raw, damp, drizzling and foggy, is one, I think, of the most
depressing ordeals through which a human being can be called to pass—a
day when the streets are sloppy; when the pavements are greasy; when the
passing omnibuses are full of wet men, and wetter women; when people
poke you in the eyes with their umbrellas; when more people poke you in
the ribs, and jostle you into the middle of another set of people, who
shove you back again and probably anathematize you into the bargain;
when there is no business doing in shops, where the gas is lighted, nor
in offices, where the gas is lighted likewise; when if you are out
collecting money, nobody will pay you; when if you owe any person any
money, everybody makes a point of boring you (in the gaslight), and
saying they felt sure of finding you within; when the apples in the
costermongers’ carts look damp and dirty; when there is a dull yellow,
leaden sky above, and an atmosphere you can taste around you; when
London Bridge looks as much like water as the Thames; when you do not
feel as if there ever had been any fine weather on earth; when you are
quite certain there will never be any fine weather again;—this, I say,
is the kind of day to try a man’s equanimity, and to put his
cheerfulness to the test.
There was one man however who, having been set down by an omnibus coming
from the Borough at the corner of Mansion House and Princes Streets,
walked along, careless of the weather, careless of the passers-by,
careless of the dull leaden sky, of the greasy pavements and the sloppy
horse-roads. He looked neither to right nor left as he strode away after
his business; he was evidently thinking of something pleasant, carrying
his sunshine along with him, as some country-people carry lanterns: that
man was Brian Drewitt; he had just come from Paris, and he was bound for
Austinfriars.
He wanted to see Mr. Gyton before he left the City, and as it was
getting on for three o’clock he hurried his pace and dashed on towards
Austinfriars as though he were walking for a wager.
If you do not know Austinfriars, reader, you are not acquainted with one
of the queerest nooks that the march of modern improvement and the
heartlessness of railway companies has left us. Before some new
extension gets its bill passed, I should recommend you to go and see
that curious spot, where, in 1253, says Pennant, “was erected by
Humphrey Bohun, Earl of Hereford, the house of the Augustins, for friars
eremites of that order.” Until very recently, one of the oldest churches
in London (built before 1361) stood about the centre of Austinfriars;
the external walls still, I believe, remain, but the interior was,
unhappily, destroyed by fire some few years since.
In it were laid great people: Edmund Guy de Meric, who, it is stated,
incited Richard II. to the murder of the Duke of Gloucester; Lucie,
daughter of Barnaby, Lord of Milan; the great Earl of Arundel, beheaded
on Tower Hill, in 1397; the Earl of Oxford, who suffered a similar fate
in 1463; Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, in 1521; while,
twenty-five years afterwards, this church was filled with herrings, by
order of Henry VIII., who used Grey Friars, at the same period, as a
warehouse for wine.
There are fewer historical records of Austinfriars than of almost any
other spot about the City. In a map of London, A. D. 1563, the old house
of the Augustines is not even marked; yet some gleams of the olden glory
still lie here and there—in its out-of-the-way courts—in its
old-fashioned houses—under the stones of its ancient church—for the
curious in such matters to note, as they pass by.
Some time, it may be, that I shall ask you, reader who have so often
before this, strayed with me into world-forgotten corners—into silent
and deserted nooks—to turn aside from the bustle and din of the City
streets, and spend a few minutes with me in Austinfriars; but that day
must not be now, when Brian Drewitt is hurrying along to catch the head
of the great house of Gyton, Lark, Munday, Hatfield, and Company, before
he takes his portly person westward.
Very cheerfully, Brian Drewitt pursued his way. He knew that he had
accomplished the business on which he was sent abroad satisfactorily.
He felt certain he should receive the praise of his employers for the
manner in which he had performed his mission. It had been intimated to
him more than once, that in being sent abroad he was also being put on
his trial, and that if he stood the test of the negotiation entrusted to
him, his salary would be at once increased, and every facility afforded
him for pushing his way up to the very top of the tree.
When he reached the top, he had then his vague designs of vengeance to
gratify; but upon the lower branches were hanging sweet home fruits,
that Brian longed to gather. He wanted to prevail on his mother not to
live with Geraldine; to live near, but not with her; to have her all to
himself, to provide with the little luxuries that her delicate health
required—that it would he a pleasure and a pride to him to place around
her.
If she went with Geraldine, it would be Frank Gyton, and not Brian
Drewitt, whose money might anticipate her wants, and outspeed her very
wishes. No one knew better than Brian how both he and she had saved, and
pinched, to pay the expenses attendant on Harold’s trial—on their
removal to London—on his long sickness—on his early death. Even
Geraldine never fully understood all her mother had denied herself, so
that Harold might not suffer for lack of anything he desired. And now,
hungrily and greedily, the son who did comprehend everything, longed to
have his mother, who had suffered so much, all to himself, that he might
make her life a happy one at last, and render the evening of her days
the calmest, the brightest, the peacefulest portion of her existence.
There are some men who, from their youth upwards, need to have something
to love—something upon which to pour out all their affection, all their
devotion. It may be father, brother, sister, mother, child, that they
gather into their heart, and keep there: whatever the object may be, it
is love they give, rather than love they receive. It is necessary to
their very existence to be planning, thinking, working, for some one;
and during the entire of his short life, Brian Drewitt had been
planning, thinking, working, for others rather than himself.
He could scarcely remember the time when the love he felt for his mother
was not a species of idolatry. Instinctively, perhaps, even from
childhood, the stronger nature knew that the weaker had need of it; and
as years went by, and the child became a boy, and the boy a man, this
feeling grew stronger and stronger, till at last Brian came to
understand that whatsoever his mother stood in need of, if it were in
the power of a human being to procure it, she should have her wish
gratified.
And at last he felt that it would soon be in his power to make his
mother’s life comfortable and happy, and to free it from care.
Comfortable and happy—did I not say once before, that was not to be in
this world for ever?
Onwards he sped; eager, sanguine, triumphant. Mr. Gyton, senior, was not
gone; and with his snuffbox on the table, with his bandana ready for
use, with his coat thrown well back, and his thumbs stuck in the
arm-holes of his superfine black cloth waistcoat, he listened to Brian’s
narration with every sign of approval visible in his face.
When Brian had quite finished he said—
“We did not expect you home until to-morrow; but now that you are here I
believe my son has something to say to you. Meantime, I may add that you
can draw your salary at the rate of two hundred and fifty pounds per
annum from to-morrow.”
Mr. Gyton had a way of uttering those two words “per annum” which always
seemed to give money its true value in the listener’s ears; and
accordingly, Brian Drewitt thanked him very heartily for the advance,
and had just reached the middle of a neatly-turned sentence when Mr.
Gyton, junior, entered.
“Don’t stand wasting your time here, Brian,” he said; “but go home at
once. There’s something up there. Geraldine sent here this morning to
know your address, and telegraphed for you.”
“What is it?” Brian asked: he stretched out his one hand and seized the
table tightly as he spoke.
“Your mother is very ill, I believe; don’t turn so white, Brian; it may
be nothing to signify. I have told them to get you a cab. Should you
like me to go with you?”
“No, thank you,” Brian answered; “no—no.” Even then he wanted to have
her all to himself, and he blindly made his way out of Mr. Gyton’s
presence-chamber, and across the clerks’ office, and down the stairs,
and so out into the court, at the entrance to which a hansom was waiting
for him.
“Drive fast!” that was all he could say; but the man obeyed his
instructions literally. Up the City Road, round by Duncan Terrace, out
across the Lower Road, and then up Upper Street, till they were close to
Canonbury Tower.
“Set me down here,” Brian said, pushing up the little trap-door, and the
driver pulled up instantly.
“Your fare?” was the next question; and Brian counted him out a sum,
which even the man’s conscience pricked him for demanding, without a
remonstrance, but stupidly, and as though he were drunk.
He never could tell what feeling possessed him to stop the cab and walk
quietly up the street where was his home. He never knew how he got from
the cab to the door opposite his own door, where he paused and looked
across the way.
Every blind in the house was down.
He saw a gentleman coming out; a gentleman whose carriage stood waiting
for him to enter. Brian crossed the street and asked him what was the
matter.
“A poor lady has done with all suffering,” was the reply.
“Mrs. Drewitt?”
“Yes; are you her son?”
It was too much, the reaction was too great; and Brian would have fallen
on the pavement, but that he staggered by chance against the doctor’s
brougham.
“Come in,” said the doctor, “and I will go in with you.”
“I won’t,” answered Brian; and he turned and walked back down the
street, like one in a dream.
For hours and hours he walked about before he could face the house
again. With his clothes soaked through, with his hair damp and wet,
shivering with the cold, heartbroken and miserable, Brian Drewitt at
last made up his mind to face the inevitable, and retraced his steps
towards home.
It was late in the evening when he approached the door; the street-lamps
had long been lighted; the shops in Upper Street were all brilliantly
illuminated as he passed by; the pavements were crowded with people,
well-dressed, lively, happy, thoughtless; with women going to make their
purchases; with women only curious to look through the windows at the
goods displayed within; with men on their way from the City to Holloway
and Highbury; with the husbands, and the brothers, and the lovers of the
females, who were going shopping, or window-gazing, with idlers and
loungers of all descriptions—amongst whom Brian made his way, with a
dull, stupid sorrow tearing at his heart, with a conviction that he was
going home to meet something very dreadful—something that he still
doubted whether he should have strength of mind to meet.
He lifted his hand to the knocker, and rapped hesitatingly for
admittance. When the servant opened the door she put her apron to her
eyes, and said, “Oh! sir——”
“I have heard,” Brian interrupted, sharp and stern, and walked straight
into the parlour.
There sat Geraldine—her eyes red with weeping, her cheeks pale with
watching. Mrs. Gyton was holding one hand, and Frank the other, while a
man whom Brian had never seen before was standing with his back to the
fire, talking vehemently and positively.
At sight of Brian, he stopped short, and while Geraldine, with a cry,
ran towards her brother, he stooped down and inquired of Mr. Gyton who
the new comer might be.
“Her brother,” was the answer; and when Brian came forward into the
room, he found his hand clasped in that of the stranger, who said—
“It is a poor welcome home for you, this—but we did all for her we
could.”
“May I ask your name?” Brian’s tone was as quiet as though nothing
unusual were lying in the house.
“Murphy—at your service. It is many a year since I saw you; and it is
just the same time since I saw your poor mother. God help her! she must
have gone through an awful lot of trouble. I can remember her as
young-looking as your sister is now, with her hair as soft and dark
every bit as yours, Miss; but there is one comfort, she can feel no more
sorrow where she is gone: women’s heads are not turned grey with grief
there. Just let him be,” he whispered to Francis Gyton. “You know he
must feel it, so do not try to get him to put on a face before you.”
Brian had sat down at the table and rested his head on his hand. All at
once he looked up, with no dimness in his eye, with no hesitation in his
voice—
“I should like to see her,” he said; “may I go up stairs?”
Geraldine rose to go with him, but Mr. Murphy gently pushed her aside.
“With your permission,” he observed, taking one of the candles off the
table, and he and Brian left the room.
“Did you attend her?” Brian asked.
“No, I was only called in last night. She had a very good doctor,
though—very good. The whole College of Surgeons could not have saved
her, nor all the physicians in London to the back of that.”
“It was sudden, I suppose?” Brian scarcely spoke above a whisper, and he
drew Mr. Murphy nervously into the drawing-room, still evidently
unwilling to look upon the dead.
“Towards the last, very; but these cases always are sudden. She must
have known how it would end for a considerable time past.”
“Can you tell me if she had been long under treatment?”
“Twelve months, her doctor says; but your sister never knew a syllable
of what was the matter with her. She does not appear to have told a
living soul belonging to her a word about her disease.”
“And was it incurable from the first?”
“Yes.”
“Could money have kept her with us a little longer? had anxiety any
share in hastening her death?”
“I do not know; I cannot tell. Anxiety always aggravates sickness, as a
rule; and money also, as a rule, alleviates it; but in this particular
case I cannot say. I do not know how she has lived; I can only guess how
she must have suffered.”
There was a moment’s silence; then Mr. Murphy said, “Are you ready?” and
Brian bent his head in answer.
The bed-chamber opened off the drawing-room with folding-doors: as Mr.
Murphy turned the handle of one of these, Brian put his hand on the
surgeon’s and held it so tight that he could not shoot back the lock.
“Shall we wait a while?” he asked.
“No—no;” and Brian relaxed his grasp and put up his right hand to his
head, as though, fancying he had on his hat, he was going to remove it.
The bed was made, and unoccupied; there was a fearful formality in the
arrangement of the furniture; something terrible in the prim, frigid
neatness which pervaded the apartment.
There had been a space cleared in the centre, and there on trestles
stood the shell.
Mr. Murphy laid his hand on the lid, and looked inquiringly at his
companion.
Brian nodded, and the surgeon pushed the lid aside.
There she lay; there she slept the sleep that on this side eternity
knows no waking. She had been tossed by the billows; she had been amid
the waves; she had been buffeted by the winds; she had been beaten
hither and thither by the world’s storms; she had crossed the ocean of
suffering; she had been out in seas of trouble; she had felt the deeps
go over her head, and passed through torrents of tribulation—but it was
all over now—the voyage, the fear, the struggle, the misery—for the Lord
had taken her, after much weariness, unto Himself to rest, and she was
at last brought by Him “unto the haven where she would be.”
There she lay, with the wrinkles smoothed out of her face; with the
lines care had written erased from her forehead; with the beauty of her
youth almost restored to her—so unlike what she had been in her later
life, so different to what he could remember her, that Brian Drewitt
looked in Mr. Murphy’s face incredulously.
“That is not my mother?” he said; and he drew back a step.
“It is all you will ever again see for your mother here,” was the reply,
uttered slowly and thoughtfully.
Brian stooped over the coffin. Mr. Murphy always believed he was
listening to hear if she breathed; but he was only touching her lips
with his lips—only silently whispering words of tenderness—of passionate
sorrow—that he had a vague feeling she might understand, though she
could never answer.
“Would you mind leaving me for a minute?” he said, at last. “Would you
go into the next room and wait for me?—if you go down stairs some of
them will be coming up.”
Without uttering a syllable, Mr. Murphy placed the candle on the
chimneypiece, and left Brian, closing the folding-doors after him.
The surgeon thought that very likely Brian wanted to have a good cry
unnoticed—unpitied. He had seen as strong natures weeping in their agony
and despair. He knew the blow must have been heavy—the wound sharp; and
he knew, likewise, that at such times sorrow must have its way in some
form or other: for all of which reasons, he left Brian willingly, and,
walking to one of the windows in the drawing-room, lifted a corner of
the blind and looked out.
Had he been able to see what was passing in the inner chamber, he would
scarcely have remained contemplating the wet street and the flickering
gas-lamps for so long.
At the head of his mother’s coffin Brian stood erect; one arm was
stretched out over the dead, and he was swearing an oath, to himself,
full of vengeance and of hate. Beside her coffin he was pouring out
imprecations on all who had ever caused her misery—just as Maxwell had
said the peasants sat beside their desolate hearths, cursing the men who
had taken the roofs off their heads, and left them without a shelter
from the storm.
There were no tears in Brian Drewitt’s eyes—there was no softness in
Brian Drewitt’s heart. We had best come out and close the door, and
leaving him alone; for the days were nigh at hand when he repented him
of his blasphemy—when he covered his face, and acknowledged his sin, and
bowed his head, while that angel of the Lord,—which teaches unto men all
manner of good things—suffering—showed him how God’s ways are not as
man’s ways—how they are eternally wise and eternally just, although, to
our short-sightedness, they may oftentimes seem indeed inscrutable and
past finding out.
CHAPTER XV.
Madcap’s last Leap.
There was a great meet of the Duranmore foxhounds at Kincorth, and on
the lawn and about the drive were hunters in abundance: gentlemen in
scarlet coats and buckskins by the dozen, grooms _ad libitum_, and
hangers-on past counting.
It was a clear, bright morning. Every man’s spirits were of the highest;
every man’s girths of the tightest; everybody was expecting prime sport;
and the breakfast of which they had just partaken was one certainly not
calculated to damp their courage or to retard their pace.
Wine had been drunk freely—conversation had circulated more freely
still. Mr. Maxwell Drewitt was a good host, and knew how to make his
guests comfortable; and the absence of a lady of the house tended, in
the opinion of most present, to make the repast pleasanter still. Mr.
Drewitt was perhaps the gayest of all present. He laughed, he joked, he
talked, he drank—not to excess—but certainly beyond his wont; and he
backed his mare, Madcap, to leap Durrow River—if, as was most likely,
the fox took that course—better than the youngest hunter on the lawn.
“She is nine years old,” he said; “but I would not change her for any
other animal in my stable.”
“It is a shame for you to be hunting her still,” remarked Mr. Frost, who
was Lady Marsden’s nephew.
“It would be a shame for you to hunt her,” retorted Maxwell; “for you
ride, I suppose, thirteen stone every pound of it; but I, who am a light
weight, cannot possibly distress her; and then she loves the tally-ho!
and the long swinging gallop after the hounds as much as either of us.”
They had all risen from table by this time, and were standing, some on
the lawn, some in the hall, some on the drive, making altogether a
bright and animated picture.
Nothing prettier indeed in its way can be imagined than the scene at
Kincorth that morning. Far below lay Duranmore Bay, with its green
islands shining like emeralds in the beams of the midday sun. Although
it was winter, the morning had broken up clear and bright and pleasant;
the mountains were not enveloped in mists; you could see over the
country for miles and miles; in the distance the Twelve Pins showed blue
and distinct against the sky, while for foreground the looker-on had the
lawn and trees and gardens of Kincorth; steeds plunging and pawing;
grooms running hither and thither; the dogs kept in order by the
whipper-in, and red coats and buckskins and top-boots appearing at every
turn.
The fulness of life seemed to be in that place at that moment; it was
impossible to imagine sickness prostrating one of those men, sorrow
touching one of their hearts, anguish wringing one of their souls.
The winter’s sun looked down upon the scene, brightening and beautifying
all it touched.
“One moment, Mr. Drewitt, if you please.” It was Ryan, who spoke to his
employer when Maxwell came out to mount.
“Make haste, then.”
“I should like to see you alone.”
“What a fool you must be, Ryan, coming at this time! I cannot leave my
guests. Say what you have got to say here, or else leave it to a more
convenient opportunity.”
“I must speak to you in private. Lead your horse up to that privet
hedge, if you do not wish to come into the house, for speak to you I
must and will.”
Maxwell looked at the man who uttered these words, looked at him from
head to foot, but Ryan never flinched.
“I am in earnest,” he said; “and I am sober. Let me speak to you; I will
not keep you five minutes.”
Mr. Drewitt flung the reins to a groom.
“Hold her a second,” he said, and turned aside with his lawyer.
“Now, what excuse have you to make for intruding upon me?” he fiercely
demanded: “what do you mean by coming up here at such a time?”
“I have a letter from London this morning,” said Ryan. “Mrs. Drewitt is
dead.”
“How the devil does her death concern me?” asked Maxwell.
“It concerns me,” answered Ryan. “There is her son dead—here is she
dead. Mr. Drewitt, I can’t stand it. I won’t stand it any longer.”
“What do you mean? Do you think I killed them?”
“Yes, I do,” returned Ryan; “you and I between us. I wish to God I had
let old Neill do his worst! I wish to the Lord I had been hung, drawn,
and quartered, before I ever was indebted to you for sixpence! But I
won’t hold my tongue any longer. You promised me to do well for Mrs.
Drewitt and her children, and this is the end of it—this!”
“Ryan, you are drunk,” said his employer, putting a curb upon his temper
as he spoke.
“If I am, it is on grief then,” was the reply. “Oh! why did I ever put
it in your power to beggar them—to send them away from home, and
friends, and all, to die!”
“That is a question you ought to be able to answer for yourself without
any difficulty,” sneered Maxwell Drewitt; “and as for holding your
tongue, or not holding it, you can exercise your own discretion. I am
not in your power. You may try to ruin me if you like, but you will only
ruin yourself. You may say you gave the later will to me, and added the
codicil to the former will yourself, at my dictation; but you have only
your own word; you have no proof, no corroborative evidence. And look
here, Ryan,” he added; “so sure as you begin a game of that kind, I will
have you shut up in a mad-house for life. Poor fool! you thought to
frighten me, I suppose. Go home, man, go home; I am not such a born
idiot as to let any created being have the whip-hand of me.”
“But I have the whip-hand of you,” answered Ryan; “and if you don’t do
the thing that is right by that woman’s children, by—I’ll use it. I am
no fool either, Maxwell Drewitt. Yes, for all your properties, you are
no more than Maxwell Drewitt to me now. And I knew that that Campnell
you are so taken on with is your own son, and that it was he, not Harold
Drewitt, who should have stood in the dock. Ha! have I touched you at
last? Who is the fool now? Can nobody put two and two together, do you
think, but yourself? I won’t keep silence,” he went on passionately; “it
was only last night I was dreaming about Mrs. Drewitt, and I thought she
came to the foot of my bed and said: ‘Ryan, you know all about that
robbery; clear my poor boy’s memory.’ And I believe she was there, that
is, her spirit. I am sure she came and parted the curtains, and spoke
just those very words to me; and I will clear his memory, unless you
give back Kincorth, or Kincorth’s value, to him who has the best right
to it.”
“They are waiting for me, and I must go,” said Maxwell Drewitt, and his
voice sounded so strange and unnatural, that Ryan’s rage was quieted for
the moment. “What do you mean to do?” he asked.
“What do you mean to do?” and Maxwell faced round on him like a maniac.
“I mean to go to London and tell Brian Drewitt all,” was the reply.
“You can tell nothing without criminating yourself,” said Maxwell.
“I know that.”
“And you will tell him—about—tell him of what you suspect, in short?”
“Yes, everything. I swore long ago I would be even with you one day; and
I will be even with you now.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I am;” and the pair drew back a step or two from one another, and
looked each in his enemy’s face as they had done years before—years and
years previously, in that little cottage down by the sea.
“I don’t think you will,” began Maxwell, after he had stared for a
moment full into Ryan’s eyes; “I don’t think you will. You say Arthur
Campnell is my son, and you say right; but you have not said who Arthur
Campnell’s mother is. Can you guess?”
“No, and do not want to guess. What can it signify to me who she was?”
“Will you guess?”
“I have told you I will not.”
“Shall I tell you her name?”
“If you like.”
“Do you ask me to tell you?”
“I do not.”
“Then I will tell you without your asking. Arthur Campnell’s mother
lives over at Durrow, and her husband’s name is Connor. Now do your
worst. The man must get up very early in the morning who means to play
card against card with me.”
“You are the damndest villain, and the most cursed liar!”
“Am I? Go and ask your sister if I lie.”
“I will; and if I find you are lying, as I feel sure you are—if I make
sure you have thrown dirt on her name to shield your son from disgrace,
then, Maxwell Drewitt, then the dogs pity your cries, for I won’t. I
swear I won’t!”
But he spoke the last words to the air, for Mr. Drewitt had already left
him, and was walking rapidly across the lawn to the spot where his horse
stood.
In his heart he was cursing the hunt and the guests, the sunshine and
the breeze; and as he rode to the piece of plantation on the side of
Calgillan Hill, where the underwood was thick and the fox hidden away,
he wished he had sent Ryan out of the country long before, and that, let
come or go what would, he had not told him anything about Jenny, whom he
had betrayed and ruined and deserted in the years that were now so very
far behind him—in the years that could return no more.
“You were right—he has made for Durrow,” said Mr. Frost; and the words
were scarcely out of his lips before the hounds were off in full cry,
and the horses off after them.
On and away; galloping across the fields; leaping the eternal stone
fences; plunging through bogs; dashing over the moorland—in the
excitement of that mad ride Maxwell forgot everything save the wild
pleasure which is caused by passing at the full top of a horse’s speed
through the air—forgot everything save the pace at which Madcap was
going, and the ease with which she took her leaps.
“Now for the river!” he said, and as though Madcap had heard his words,
she laid back her ears, and bounded on like a thing possessed, towards
the bank.
Age had not stiffened her limbs, nor crippled her pace. There was not a
horse in the field could keep up with her save one, and that was a
hunter belonging to Captain Crabbe, and ridden by that gentleman’s son,
who, having been trying all the way to pass Madcap, now shot by, almost
touching the chesnut as he did so, and eliciting a volley of oaths from
Maxwell for his awkwardness.
Boring on the bit, Madcap tore along. All her spirit was up, and she
flew after Captain Crabbe’s fleabitten old screw, as Maxwell had often
contemptuously called the horse, like the wind.
Maxwell had his work cut out to hold her. It was a beautiful piece of
turf, smooth and level as a bowling-green. There was no break, no pause,
till they came to the river, which ran broad and deep between two steep
and awkward banks away to the sea. Mr. Crabbe was already close on the
brink; but at that very moment, when he thought he was going to beat the
chesnut for ever—when with a blow of his heel and cut of his whip he was
urging his horse to the leap, the brute swerved suddenly round, and
sticking its plain ugly neck out straight before it, galloped back as
hard as it could go along the way it had come.
Mr. Crabbe, taken completely unawares by this sudden manœuvre, had
scarcely recovered himself from the shock of the sudden baulk before
there came a tremendous crash.
Maxwell, tearing on for the leap himself, could not get out of the way.
He saw the collision coming, but was powerless to avert it. He felt a
shock just as though a battering ram had come up against him; a shock
which lifted him right out of the saddle—lifted him so high, that he
could remember the reins being jerked out of his hand; and then he came
down flat, with his back on the ground and his face to the sky; in which
position he lay while the whole field jumped over him.
“Drewitt’s down—Drewitt’s dead!” was the shout; but not a man could stop
his horse to look after him until Mr. Frost, who had not been going at
quite so furious a pace as the others, managed to pull up, and dismount.
“I’m not dead,” Maxwell managed to say, “but I’m badly hurt; don’t touch
me. I didn’t try to move because I knew the horses would leap me, and
that if I stirred I should likely have my brains knocked out. Let me lie
quiet for a while; don’t stop for me, go on.”
But there were about half a dozen gathered about him by this time who
would not go on; who sent to the nearest cabin and had a door taken off
its hinges, on which Maxwell, groaning with pain, was laid gently and
tenderly.
“The mare?” he said; but nobody answered him.
“The mare?” he repeated, and Mr. Frost asked—
“Where is the chesnut? he wants to know.”
“She is all right,” answered some one.
“You are not telling me the truth?” Maxwell said, turning his eyes on
the speaker, for he was too much shaken to move his head. “I want to
know about the mare.”
“Well, then, if you must know, poor old Madcap has taken her last leap,
and she died in taking it.”
The injured man made no answer; he closed his eyes; whilst all the
people around looked at one another.
There was not a person present who did not feel grieved at Madcap’s end.
She had been to each of them almost as a friend—so gallant, so fleet, so
daring, so proud of herself, and her small head, and her arched neck,
and her flowing mane, and her shining coat—so proud, so petted, so
dainty, so conceited, and so beautiful, that Lord Marsden once said, “He
thought there must be a woman’s soul inside her, for that he had never
seen an animal give herself such airs and graces before.”
Poor Chessy—poor Madcap! She had made on like the rest for her leap, and
taken it—taken it at the worst point she could have chosen. Missing her
footing on the other side, she fought desperately for a moment to keep
herself from slipping while she tried to scramble up the bank. One man
made a clutch at her bridle, but missed it, fortunately, perhaps, for
him; for, with a scream almost such as a human being might have uttered,
she fell backwards into the river.
Flynn had always said she was as sensible as a Christian, and those who
saw that mad struggle for life, who heard that sound which is never
uttered by a horse, save under the influence of some terrible pain, or
some frightful fear, thought that Madcap must have had a kind of human
comprehension of what the river’s bed held for her—great blocks of
granite, which cut her all to bits; huge stones, against which she was
knocked all to pieces; and just enough water to float her, lying on her
side and kicking convulsively, down the stream, which was dyed red with
her blood.
Poor Madcap—poor beauty! She kept her head up as long as she could, but
soon her strength failed, her neck sank below the surface, the water
filled her nostrils, and before many minutes it was all over.
“She had,” as Maxwell’s informant truly said, “taken her last leap, and
died in taking it.”
“And there’s not her like left in Ireland,” remarked Flynn, who in the
course of the afternoon dragged her, stiff and stark, out of the river,
at a curve half a mile below where the accident happened, and then he
fell to sobbing over her like a child.
“I’ll hamstring that brute of Crabbe’s the first time I get the chance,”
he said to the grooms who came with him; “a score of such ill-looking
divils wouldn’t make one of her. Not but what we must all die some day,”
he concluded; “and I don’t know that I wouldn’t as soon she had died
that way as any other.”
As for Maxwell, in the midst of his own pain, in the midst of his own
agony, he could not get the thought of that dead animal out of his mind.
It was not because he had ever cared for her, as some men do care for
their horses; it was not that her wise, winning ways, her playful
tricks, her never-failing spirit had made him feel for her any real
affection; but he had been proud of her, vain of her. She had been his,
and she was the best mare in the county; and above and beyond all this,
there seemed to Maxwell something more than mere accident about the
whole affair.
Like many men who are utterly irreligious, he was superstitious; and,
lying there with his eyes shut, his mind was busy, piecing, in a kind of
delirium, past, present, and future into a connected whole.
He saw Brian bidding his farewell to that mare the night he left
Kincorth and went out into the world. He saw Harold taking that
desperate leap at the Headlands; and he remembered, at the same time,
that Harold was dead. He had heard that morning of Mrs. Drewitt’s death;
he had been asked by Ryan to act justly at last by his uncle’s living
children—and he refused. Ryan had threatened him; and he in return
stabbed the lawyer in his tenderest point.
He had ridden out on Harold’s mare; and now Madcap was dead, too; while
he was being carried, though he did not know it, straight as the mare
who bore him could go to Durrow.
The same thing, or worse, might have happened, no matter on what horse
he had been mounted; but, as the “wicked flee when no man pursueth,” so
the wicked likewise are apt to be superstitious about circumstances to
which better men would attach no importance; and the fever, which was
already upon him, made Maxwell look at all things with a fearful and
troubled mind.
He thought of what Ryan had said about Mrs. Drewitt; and he wondered if,
when he was alone, she would come and stand at the foot of his bed, too.
How many more times was Harold going to take that hedge?—how often was
his uncle’s head to drop forward on Brian’s breast? He knew they were
carrying him to Kincorth; for he could see Kathleen standing at the
hall-door; and Jenny, too—Jenny, with a child in her arms; he and she
were wandering through the glen. They could not get the cover of the
will opened—the seals would not break. They need not mind—he could tell
them what was in the codicil—he had got Ryan to add it. Yes, and he
could let them into a secret about what would make ink look faded! What
was that? Was the house falling? He was going up in the air—up—up—up;
and then his mind ceased to wander—for he fainted.
CHAPTER XVI.
After long Years.
Ryan stood in the spot where Maxwell had left him until the riders were
all gone—until the last red coat, the last groom, the last whipper-in,
had disappeared from view; then, like a man rousing him from a dream, he
moved slowly away, and took the hill-path towards Durrow.
Most men have some sense of honour—some point where, if you cut down
deep enough, blood will spout out; and a woman’s virtue was that
sensitive place in Timothy Ryan.
To him it seemed that a woman should be pure as snow—that for her fame
to be breathed on was for it to be sullied. He had his own ideal of what
the sex should be: and that ideal was very lofty and very beautiful.
Pretty well he knew what men were; he knew more of their bad than of
their good, perhaps; but women!
The angels were not purer or more holy than the generality of women, in
Ryan’s estimation; and one of the women whom he had loved, honoured, and
adored, for many a year past, was his own sister, of whom Maxwell had
asserted such things as made his very heart stand still.
But he did not believe it—he would not believe it unless her own lips
condemned her. While he walked across the hills he kept saying this to
himself, and then he would hurry on for a few steps, only again to stop
and linger—linger by the way.
He sat down on blocks of granite, and pulled the grass and heather up by
the roots, while he thought the matter over, till he went almost mad.
His own life had not been peculiarly honest or honourable. He had done
many a dirty trick; he had helped Maxwell Drewitt to serve many a man a
mean turn; he had not been scrupulous in the way of business; he had
lent a hand at forging the codicil; he had given, or, rather, allowed
Maxwell to take the second will.
He had not been at all nice as to what filth he put his hand into, and
he had not felt many qualms of conscience in his life; but now, behold,
there was a spot on his sister’s robe, and he could not bear it; could
not endure to think she had deceived him and her husband, and—and
everybody, thought the poor fellow.
“I will not believe it,” he ended. “I will go on; I will ask her about
the matter, and then I will return to Kincorth and cram his words down
his lying throat if there were a hundred people with him; for I will not
believe Jenny could be bad—I will not—I will not.”
It was easy enough to say this—easy enough to repeat the words over and
over, over and over again—but, alas! the more he repeated them the less
he believed them; the more surely conviction stole over his heart that
Jenny had once fallen from her high estate; that Jenny was not pure, not
innocent, not what he had fondly imagined his sister, and Connor’s wife,
and the mother of her children, to be—a woman as much above fear as
beyond reproach.
Onwards towards Durrow, with the mountains to his right hand and the
Atlantic to his left. But Ryan never looked either to right or left;
never looked, that is, noticing the hills or the sea. His heart was full
to bursting. He had been a bad man, and an unscrupulous, and now the
hour of reckoning was at hand. His health was ruined by drinking, his
nerves were shattered, he had been unhinged by hearing of Mrs. Drewitt’s
death, and now it seemed to him as though sorrows were multiplying upon
him, while he paused at intervals, and asked himself—
“What if it be true—what if he did not speak falsely after all?”
Mrs. Connor was alone, and sitting at work in one of the upper rooms,
when her brother entered. He was a frequent visitor, so Jenny did not
attach any importance to his coming till he had been seated for a few
minutes, when, noticing the anxious, troubled expression of his face,
she asked him what was the matter, whether anything was amiss.
“There is a good deal amiss, Jenny, that I want to talk with you about.
Is Dennis out?”
“Yes, he has gone to Duranmore, I think. What is wrong, Timothy? Can I
be of any use to you? Is it money? Sure Dennis is always willing to lend
to you when he has it. What is wrong? Tell me.”
She had laid down her work, and was close beside him. She was a woman
who never could grow old—who had such gentle, clinging ways, such
loving, winning manners, that she was always to Ryan the young sister,
the sweet Jenny whom he had once trembled might go off with Maxwell.
Once! what was that dread to this?
“It is not money, Jenny,” he answered. “I wish to God it were! I have
got many a thing to say to you. Go back to your chair, dear, and sit
down. Let me see, where was I?”
“Going to tell me about this trouble that has come to you,” she said. It
never struck her it could be any trouble relating to her; she had been
safe for so long. There were none alive that knew her secret who would
reveal it; through the years it had never oozed out, and she did not
imagine that after long years her sin could be brought to her
remembrance by any human being.
“I have bad news, Jenny,” he began, after a moment’s hesitation. She sat
with her hands folded together in her lap, her eyes fixed on his face,
her lips a little parted, and he felt he could not plunge into _that_
question without leading up to it in some indirect manner. “I have bad
news. Mrs. Drewitt is dead!”
“Dead!” Mrs. Connor repeated, and the slight colour faded out of her
cheeks, and her eyes brimmed full of tears. “I am very sorry to hear it.
She was a nice lady.”
“And hardly done by.”
“I am afraid she was. My heart was sore for her that night she came here
after Mr. Drewitt’s funeral. How did you hear about it, Timothy? did Mr.
Brian write to Mr. Maxwell?”
“Mr. Brian will never write to Mr. Maxwell, and small blame to him for
it. No, it was Mr. Murphy wrote to me, whatever possessed him—Murphy
that used to be with Sheen, I mean, who was so sweet on you. He’s a
great man now, I believe. Somebody told me he was making two or three
thousand a-year; but maybe it is not true.”
“She did not stay long after Mr. Harold. I wonder if it was the fretting
killed her.”
“I don’t know, I am sure—likely as not, for she worshipped the ground he
walked on. He was a fine lad.”
“He was,” answered Jenny, simply; “but I was fondest of Mr. Brian.”
“Did you ever see anybody Harold favoured?” asked Ryan, suddenly.
“Never. Mr. Pryor always said he was the image of his cousin. I never
could see it, though.”
“Mr. Pryor was right; but there is another person who is more like
Harold than his cousin ever was; that is, another person who must have
been like Harold when he was Harold’s age.”
“Who is that?”
“Mr. Campnell, the young gentleman who was at Kincorth last autumn.”
“I never saw him.” But the colour came back into her cheek, and her eyes
drooped under the look of eager, anxious inquiry her brother fixed upon
her.
“Say that again, Jenny; say you never saw him.”
“I never saw him,” she repeated.
“Is it the truth you are telling me, or is it a lie?” He rose in his
suspense and misery, and stood directly facing her.
“Why should I tell you a lie about the matter?” she asked. “What can Mr.
Campnell be to me that I should fear to speak the truth? I never set
eyes on him.”
“And yet Maxwell Drewitt told me, not two hours ago, you were his
mother?”
The work she had taken up again dropped from her fingers; she lifted her
face to her brother’s with a cry of helpless despair. Against any other
testimony she might have maintained her innocence; but it was useless to
attempt any further denial. Against him—false first and last—false as
cruel—deceitful as relentless—there was no appeal.
“You need not speak, Jenny,” he said; “you need not rack your brain to
think what other falsehood you can coin to try and deceive me. I see it
is all true. Oh! Jenny, Jenny.”
She did not say a word—she could not say a word—she was so stunned, so
confused, so wretched, that she could do nothing but sit and wonder if
the misery of the past would all have to be endured over again; if she
had not suffered enough then, that this fresh disgrace was come to
her—that this blow had been dealt to her by _him_.
“I suppose this was the reason you would not marry for so long. I
suppose this was what made you refuse offer after offer, and live on
single till I’m sure I thought you never were going to be a wife at all.
But though you deceived me, Jenny, I hope you did not deceive him. I
hope you never let any honest man take you as you were, ignorantly.”
She put out her hands, and there came such a look of horror into her
white face as made Ryan turn round to see what could have caused it.
Behind him stood Connor, who, having heard the last part of his
brother-in-law’s sentence, asked hoarsely what they were talking
about—what it all meant.
“It means, I ought never to have married you, Dennis,” she broke out
passionately. “It means, I am all he says, and worse. It means, that
years, and years, and years ago I sinned, and that now my sin has found
me out.”
“What is it?” he repeated. “I do not understand it at all. Are you both
mad? What is it, Tim? Tell me what she says.”
“She says she is not what we both took her to be,” answered Ryan,
bitterly. “She confesses—that—that boy Maxwell Drewitt has ‘adopted’ is
her son, and his son, and their son.”
“And God knows, Dennis, that many a time I would have given anything to
have been able to tell you this—that when you have been telling me how
happy—” the poor creature’s voice was choked with sobs—“how happy you
were, I felt my heart turn cold, thinking about my fault. I did not want
to marry you, Dennis; you know I didn’t. And I have been true and
faithful to you since; and I was so young, and I am the mother of your
children, and you have had every thought of my heart, and every bit of
my love, since ever you took me home. Won’t you forgive, Dennis?—sure
you couldn’t cast me off?”
She stretched out her arms towards him, but he made no step forward to
take her to him. He averted his face that he might not look at the woman
who had deceived him; who had lain in his bosom, and lived with him
through the years and borne him children, knowing what she knew about
herself all the time.
“Dennis!” and she was going to fling herself at his feet, but her
brother prevented her.
“Connor,” he said, holding her back, and standing resolutely between
them, “I don’t ask you—I can’t ask you to keep her. She has brought
shame and disgrace to both of us. She is no more to you now than if she
had never been your wife; but she is my own sister just the same as
ever; so I will e’en take her with me;” and suiting the action to the
word, Ryan drew her arm within his and led her, spite of her struggles
and remonstrances towards the door.
It was stern justice, stern and sharp, and Jenny rebelled against it.
“Let me go back to him,” she said; “don’t try to take me from him, Tim.
He is not that hard—he will listen to me, and forgive me.”
They had reached the door by this time, and one of her children, her
youngest, came running along the passage, calling out “Mammy—Mammy.”
At the words she fought to free herself, and succeeding, caught the
little fellow to her heart and covered his face with kisses.
Very resolutely, Ryan took the boy from her and setting him down, said—
“Run away, Johnny, and play yourself; run away, you have no mother now;”
and he drew his sister’s arm in his once more and walked on towards the
head of the staircase.
This time Jenny made no effort to free herself; no struggle to return.
With the full sense of her dishonour brought home by that one solitary
sentence, she staggered forward, weeping bitter tears for her shame and
their disgrace.
Weeping for a stain that the floods of Niagara could not have washed
away; for hearts broken; for sin discovered; for confidence abused; for
love betrayed!
So they descended the stairs together; she crying audibly; he weeping
tears not to be noticed of men, but seen of God—tears not of brine from
his eyes, but of blood from his heart.
So, clasping her hand closer and tighter, he guided her down step by
step: he who had never forsaken her in joy or in sorrow—who was true to
her in bad report as in good—who, reckless and unscrupulous and
unprincipled though he might be in most things—who, fallen though he
knew her to be, was her faithful brother still.
Step by step they descended that broad staircase; but when they reached
the bottom, a hoarse voice called after them to stop; and Connor,
running down the flight, laid his hand on Jenny’s shoulder.
“Give me my wife!” he said; “she has been a good wife to me, and you
shall not take her from me. Jenny, haven’t you loved me? haven’t you
been true to me since we came together? Only say that, and I won’t mind
the rest. I’ll try to forget it, Jenny—I’ll think it was a bad dream.
There—there—darling; don’t fret. I was stunned like for the minute; but
I could not have let you go; no, I couldn’t, dear, I couldn’t.”
Her arms were about his neck; her head was resting on his shoulder; her
tears were falling like rain; and she was striving to articulate some
words of thankfulness and blessing, when there was a trampling over the
ground outside of many horses’ hoofs, and of many men’s feet; then a
loud knocking; and then followed a scene of indescribable confusion.
“It was nearer to bring him here than take him to Kincorth. Shall we
carry him upstairs? He is not dead, though he is badly hurt. Who is it,
d’ye say? It is Mr. Drewitt; who else? He was thrown just on the other
side Durrow River; and the chesnut mare is killed.”
“God help us!” exclaimed Connor.
“And we have sent for the doctor; and there’s a heap of gentlemen
outside there; and shall we take him upstairs, or will you make him up a
bed down here? That would be best, if you could do it.”
“Where is he hurt?”
“Sorra a one of me knows,” answered the man addressed; “he groaned that
bad at first, I am sure you might have heard him up here; but he’s
fainted now, I think. Likely as not he won’t get over it.”
By this time several of the gentlemen had alighted and entered the
house. From them Connor learned the particulars of the accident.
“The rest are gone after the fox,” said Mr. Frost; “but I have have had
enough hunting for to-day; and so I think have my friends here. I never
was more upset in my life.”
Whereupon Mr. Connor suggested that a little whiskey might not be
unacceptable; or “some wine,” he added. “Mr. Pryor’s Madeira is very
good, I’m told.”
“Let us have two or three bottles up, then. I should like to hear the
doctor’s opinion of Mr. Drewitt. I have been thinking since, that we
ought perhaps to have taken him to Kincorth; for I suspect he won’t be
able to move from here for many and many a day—unless, indeed, he is
moved away in his coffin.”
“Well, sir, we must only do our best for him, if he does stay,” answered
Connor, who could not, at such a time, remember his own injuries, or
nurse his own anger.
Sickness, like death, is a great soother of human passions; and Maxwell
Drewitt’s state was for a long time sufficiently critical to render it
doubtful whether he should ever leave Durrow again, except for his
grave.
Day followed day—week succeeded to week—and month to month—but still
Maxwell was unable to leave his bed. What he thought of, as he lay
there, weak and faint and helpless, who can tell?—not even Jenny could
imagine—though, judging by the words he let fall in his delirium, his
reveries could scarcely, during convalescence, have been pleasant.
All through that illness he was nursed and tended by the people he had
injured—by Ryan and Connor and Jenny; and that he ever recovered
sufficiently to leave Durrow and return to Kincorth, was owing more to
their care and attention than to any other cause.
But Maxwell was not grateful for their kindness. I think he hated them
all bitterly for thus heaping coals of fire upon his head. I believe he
could have struck Ryan when he told him how he had kept forwarding money
to Mr. Campnell, at that gentleman’s request, without waiting for Mr.
Drewitt’s recovery, or troubling him on the subject till he should
regain his strength.
“And in a letter I had from him the other day,” proceeded the lawyer,
“he says he wishes you would reconsider your decision and purchase him a
commission, as he should prefer a soldier’s life to any other.”
“If he choose a soldier’s life he must go as a private, and never look
for a shilling from me,” retorted Mr. Drewitt. “The boy is a fool, and
he must be brought to his senses.”
CHAPTER XVII.
The Beginning of the End.
Once again the summer sun was shining over Kincorth—brightly as on the
day this story opened—and under the shadow of the overarching trees
Maxwell Drewitt stood gazing up at the house just as he had done
twenty-five years previously.
He was then three-and-twenty; he was now eight-and-forty: he was then
full of youth and health and strength; he was now older than his age, a
man stricken and feeble, who might never have a vigorous body or a sound
constitution again. That fall, though it had failed to kill, had yet
injured him permanently. He could know no more what it was to be free
from ache and pain, to care nothing about the weather, to be insensible
to fatigue, to have an iron frame, an indomitable spirit.
A minute—less than a minute—had sufficed to make him a perfect wreck; a
worn, sickly man, who, having formed no sweet home-ties for himself in
the days of his strength, was now, in the time of his weakness, lonely
and desolate.
Upon him the sunlight that streamed through the branches of the trees
fell brightly, as they had fallen brightly, if you remember,
five-and-twenty years before. He was starting on life’s journey then;
that journey was nearly over now.
He had planned then, he had hoped. The plans were now realities, the
hopes certainties. He had longed to possess, and Kincorth was his. He
had determined to be wealthy, and behold he had gold at his command. He
had resolved to make the name of Drewitt notable, and the name of
Drewitt had become remarkable. He had declared he would make the estate
valuable, the property something to talk about, and in the length and
breadth of Connemara there were not two lovelier places than Kincorth
and Headlands. He had made up his mind to have his revenge, and uncle
and aunt and youngest-born were all gone to their graves, poor, and
stricken, and sorrowful, while Brian was a clerk in London—Brian, who
ought to have had Kincorth.
If success be happiness, Maxwell Drewitt should have been a man without
a care; but the best-mounted horseman has as often that imp sitting
behind him on the crupper as the poorest man riding on the shaggiest
pony. Care, as a rule, indeed, loves high places, and care never left
Maxwell Drewitt’s side now by day or night.
Care for his own life; care for the man who was to come after him; care
lest the winds of heaven might blow upon his own cheek too roughly; lest
Arthur, the only thing he had on earth belonging to him, should go
hopelessly astray.
He was doing no good at college; he was spending money as though he had
an income of a thousand pounds a week; he was wild, he was reckless, he
was intractable; and yet Maxwell, in his own fashion, loved him, perhaps
on the same principle that a prisoner loves a rat; namely, because he
had nothing else to care for.
And the youth knew this, and traded on it; winding the man who had never
been weak before round his finger as easily as Maxwell had wound others
in the days gone by.
Of his son and of his health, Maxwell Drewitt was thinking while he
stood under the trees, looking up at Kincorth. He felt that for him,
life was over—life with its purposes, its hopes, its successes; and
occasionally he could not help asking himself how it would be when not
only the life of work was over, but the bare life—the living and
breathing that would, he knew, continue after every capacity for
exertion, every power of action had been taken from him.
House to house, acre to acre, property to property! for this end—to be
standing with the best part of his existence—health—taken away from him;
thinking in solitude of that unknown world concerning which the clergy
preached continually; the secrets of which not one of the departed had
ever returned to reveal.
The next world! There is a something very terrible to a man like Maxwell
Drewitt in the idea of leaving all he has most enjoyed, most coveted,
most valued, and going away to the cold and silent grave. He could not
bear it; he shrank from the reality of death; he turned away from the
grim spectre; he fled from the unwelcome thoughts that would intrude
themselves upon him. He could not bear to be alone; he would have
anybody to sit with him rather than remain in solitude. He wished he had
not quarrelled with his wife, and made overtures of reconciliation to
her; but Lady Emmeline, now resident in London, refused his offers, and
treated his advances with indifference and coldness.
He could not get Ryan to come and chat with him, and the evenings were
frightful. He had no strength to endure the racket of company, and it
was not likely that the men he knew would take pity on an invalid, and
bear with his temper in sickness as they had borne with it in health.
The rector would have come; but Maxwell, after one or two trials,
abandoned that experiment.
He thought of going away, but he did not know where to go, and, besides,
it was in his nature to cling to his home and his country—to remain in
the midst of the scenery he knew so well rather than take up his abode
in the midst of a great city. He wished he had some one to stay always
with him, always to speak to, always to have at his elbow, whom he could
tell to drive away that demon who always would persist in reminding him
that the days were passing—passing; that there must come an hour when
soul and body would have to be parted—when time would be the shadow, and
eternity the substance.
If he had even Wilhelmina; but Wilhelmina and her husband and her
children had sailed a year before for America. Susan was in the
country—that is, in England; but then he had always hated Susan, and he
had quarrelled fearfully with Captain, now Colonel, Ellenham about her
fortune. When that individual, who had long been a widower, discovered
that under Mr. Drewitt’s will Susan was entitled to a small fortune, he
married her forthwith; and over the matter of that fortune he and
Maxwell had exchanged such letters as few people have inclination to
send, or leisure to pen.
No, he had not a soul excepting his son; and his son would not consent
to take up his abode permanently in Connemara—not, at any rate, until he
had seen the world. He wanted to be an officer—he would be an officer;
his father must purchase him a commission.
In his very last letter he repeated this statement, and expressed a wish
that a remittance might be forwarded to him immediately.
“I must stop the supplies,” Mr. Drewitt decided, as he walked away from
under the trees, and retraced his steps towards the house slowly and
painfully. “Yes, I must stop the supplies; that will bring him to his
senses.”
The next letter from his son announced that he had gone to London, and
begged again for money. In reply, Maxwell referred him to his former
letter, and desired him to return home.
During the week, Arthur wrote once more, and intimated that if “the
needful,” as he called it, were not forthcoming from Connemara, he must
get it elsewhere, and in some mode which might be disagreeable to his
father.
The tone of the correspondence was, by this time, waxing warm, and
accordingly Mr. Drewitt answered—
“That for Arthur’s own sake, he hoped he would get it honestly.”
After that there came a lull; for a month there was not a line from this
unrepentant prodigal, and Maxwell was getting most seriously anxious
about his black sheep, when one morning the post brought two pleasant
pieces of intelligence to him at the same time: news that his son had
enlisted and that the mutiny in India had broken out.
Arthur was very penitent, very submissive; he had seen quite enough of
soldiering to satisfy him. He wanted to be bought off. If his father
would but buy him off, he would do everything he required. He would
settle in Connemara, and never ask to stir outside the gates of
Kincorth, unless his father permitted him to do so. He would make it the
study of his life to obey and please his parent; he would thankfully
accept any conditions his father chose to impose. He confessed he had
been a bad son; that considering his birth, he had not estimated Mr.
Drewitt’s kindness at its proper value, and he wound up by imploring his
father to get him out of the service somehow.
“I have got into, perhaps, the very worst regiment I could have done,”
he finished, “and our colonel is one of the most detestable men, they
tell me, in the whole of the British army. His name is Ellenham.
“Your affectionate son.”
Maxwell dropped the letter on the carpet. Were his troubles to have no
end? Had he been prosperous for so long only that the tide might turn at
last, and bring nothing but sorrow to him on its waves?
What had he done, that in middle life he should be stricken down in the
pride of his health and strength?
Wherein did he now differ from the Maxwell of former years—that
everything he touched in those days should have gone well with him—while
nothing that he now desired would come to pass—nothing?
In a moment he had grasped all the facts of the case—in a moment he
realized the complicated difficulties of his position. He knew, if
Colonel Ellenham guessed Arthur to be his son, that he would throw such
obstacles in the way of purchasing his discharge as might make that
discharge impossible to obtain. He was well aware how much the war in
India would increase his embarrassment; and he sat on, pondering and
pondering what he should do—how it would be best for him to proceed,
while his son’s letter lay on the carpet and the newspaper was spread
out before him.
Look at him now, reader. Would you know him? Remembering what he was
when this story opened, would you have imagined it within the bounds of
probability that—long before old age had laid its hand upon him—long
before winter’s withering frosts had come to pick the green leaves off
the goodly tree—to dry up its sap, to strip it of its beauty, and to
leave it bare and destitute of foliage, almost in the summer of his
life—he could have changed to this?
Sitting alone there, the terrible ravages sickness and pain had made
were plainly to be traced; and, with Maxwell Drewitt, when once his
physical beauty was destroyed, everything was destroyed; and he who had
once been so haughty—so insolent—so handsome—was now but as any other
bowed and beaten man.
And in that hour he was humbling himself mentally—he was bending his
proud spirit to ask a favour from a man whom he detested. He only knew
one person in London who would, he felt sure, work for his son’s release
heart and soul—and that person was Geoffry Pryor.
Yet Geoffry Pryor had read him through in the days gone by; and, reading
him, had refused his proffered hand, and never grasped it since.
Nevertheless, it was to him Maxwell Drewitt made up his mind to apply.
“I will send Ryan to Dublin by this night’s mail,” he decided; “and he
can cross to Holyhead to-morrow morning.”
Sickness had not dulled the keen brain, though it had wasted and worn
his body. He could think rapidly, though it was pain and misery to him
to move swiftly. He could still chalk out a plan, and make others act
upon it, though the days were gone for ever when he could execute his
designs himself and be dependent on no other man living to see that they
were carried out to his satisfaction.
“Do you think I had better follow you?” he inquired; but Ryan answered,
“No. I am certain, if any person can get him off, Mr. Pryor will find
that man; and you will only knock yourself up by going travelling in
such hot weather as this. No; you keep yourself quiet, and rely on us. I
will do my best—if only for _her_ sake—be sure of that.”
Yes, they were all rowing in the same boat now. Ryan could never
disassociate his interests from Maxwell, nor Maxwell his from Ryan in
the future for ever.
The comparison may not seem complimentary to the married state; but in
one respect guilt is very like matrimony. Whether people like or hate,
they must endure each his fellow’s company when once they have bound
themselves together in the bonds of sin.
It is as difficult for rogues to get a divorce as for husband and wife;
and accordingly what Maxwell and Ryan had been in the beginning, so they
continued to the end.
“I had better ride to Galway, I suppose,” Ryan observed; “there is no
dependence to be placed on those post-horses.”
“Nonsense,” answered his employer. “The mail-car can take you as safely
as the letters, I should imagine.”
“I won’t risk it,” returned Ryan; “there might not he a vacant seat.”
“And how about your luggage?”
“The car can bring a carpet-bag after me; there is sure to be room for
that.”
“One word more, Ryan. Don’t let him out of your sight; bring him
straight back with you here, till we try if we cannot make something of
him. I wish to heaven he was as wise as he is handsome!”
“He’ll never be wise, I’m right sure of that,” was the reply; “but I
will do what you tell me. I will bring him back to you.” And with that
Ryan left the room, while Maxwell remained fuming over his last words.
“What right had any man to say his son would never be wise? Was not he
clever enough? was not he young? If he had gone wrong once, what of
that? He should be a credit and a comfort to him yet. Once let him
(Maxwell) have him back again in Connemara, and he would look him out a
wife who should keep him in order, and give him an interest in the
county.
“Many a girl would snap at such a chance, and he, Maxwell, could take
the opportunity of making a proviso that his heir should assume the name
of Drewitt.
“It would be pleasant for him to have his son and his son’s wife living
in the house, and the chatter of children’s tongues and the patter of
children’s feet might yet break the funeral silence of the empty rooms,
by the doors of which he dreaded to pass.”
Always this man had longed for children, and now, with a more terrible
longing than ever, he desired to hear young voices ringing in his
ears—to have something lively and bright to chase away the gloom that
was enveloping him.
With all his heart and with all his soul he wished he had brought Arthur
home sooner; that he had insisted years and years before on having him
at the Headlands, instead of leaving him among strangers.
He recollected why he had not done so. How he had calculated on Lady
Emmeline’s death, and on his second marriage, and on the chances of
legitimate issue.
The scroll of his life could not have been pleasant reading in the days
of which I am now writing, and it was little marvel that Maxwell Drewitt
opened that manuscript as seldom as possible.
Rather he preferred to dream dreams, and see visions; to picture to
himself the young wife who would make the old house seem home-like and
cheerful, the children who might gambol on the lawn.
Dreams—dreams—sad and pitiful to think that they could never be
realized! visions so bright that when the disillusion came the man whose
life was almost over could not bear the blow!
It was on himself he had built before; it was on another he was building
now: that made all the difference. He had been always able to tell what
course he should pursue; but the course his son might adopt was darkness
to him.
One of the children of this world, he had been wise in his generation;
one of the fools of this world, there was no counting upon what Arthur
might do from day to day.
And what he finally did was this:—
While Mr. Pryor, after vainly trying to come to some arrangement with
Colonel Ellenham, was running after one great man after another, to try
to procure Arthur’s discharge, that young gentleman, wearied of the
ill-success attendant on his friend’s efforts, coolly did the most
foolish thing possible under the circumstances, namely, took the matter
into his own hands and deserted.
“That I ever should have been father to such an idiot!” exclaimed
Maxwell Drewitt when the news reached him. “There is no hope for him
now, unless we can discover where he is and get him out of the country.”
And even, in fancy, he never again heard the chatter of children’s
tongues or the patter of children’s feet; the lonely rooms he could fill
no more, even in dreams, with light and life and merriment.
Deeper and darker grew the night, lonelier and more desolate grew the
man—sad and pitiful! sinner that he had been—for the days were come at
last when he said he had no pleasure in them. He had thought to live
long, and to have much enjoyment, and behold he found out in a moment
that what Solomon said was true: “Man knoweth not his time: as the
fishes are taken in an evil net, and as the birds that are caught in the
snare, so are the sons of men snared in an evil time when it falleth
suddenly upon them.”
CHAPTER XVIII.
Man’s Vengeance.
The world had prospered with Brian Drewitt since his mother’s death; his
salary was still indeed not excessive, but he was promised an increase
very shortly, and Mr. Francis Gyton had further thrown out many vague
hints to the effect that in his, Frank Gyton’s opinion, it would be far
jollier if they (he and Brian) were to cut the old connection, and start
in business on their own account.
“I know I could not stand Munday, so there is no use in my father
talking of taking me into partnership,” he said one evening when he and
Brian were walking up westward together from the City. “I think such a
lot of partners are a damned nuisance, and I should like to get clear of
them. So, to cut the matter short, Brian, whenever I am married I should
like to commence with you. I can find the tin, and you the brains—is it
a bargain?”
“Your father?” hesitated Brian.
“My father will be a little restive at first, but when he is tired of
opposition he will give in, and it is of no use mincing the matter,
Brian; Mr. Munday and I cannot remain in the same business together.
What do you say—will you be my man, or will you not?”
“I will not, without speaking first to your father in the matter. He has
been very kind to me, and—”
“And you will do the respectful and all the rest of it, and I will do
the dutiful; so that, between us, the old gentleman will be as easily
managed as possible. I should not wonder if he came over to us himself,
for he likes Munday no better than I do.”
Mrs. Drewitt’s death had of course postponed Geraldine’s marriage, and
as it had also crippled their means, brother and sister were now living
in a cottage at Highgate, which Mr. Gyton entertained some idea of
purchasing for his son.
“Throw out a drawing-room there, and build a conservatory here, and put
the kitchens at the back, and it would really make a very charming
little residence. Love in a cottage, eh, Geraldine?”
Whereupon Geraldine blushed and laughed, while the evening sunshine fell
upon her.
“And you will require coach-house and stabling; in fact, the whole place
will need alteration; but it is a lovely situation—lovely!” and the
great man stood back to admire the view. “I tell you what it is, Miss,”
he went on; “I shall get so fond of this cottage one of these days, that
you will have me taking up my abode here,” and he pinched the girl’s
cheek, who, passing her hand through his arm, said coaxingly—
“Something has taken up its abode here that would astonish you. I wonder
if I might tell you, or whether you would be shocked. It is a deserter,
a countryman of my own.”
“A deserter?—you are jesting, Geraldine.”
“I am not jesting at all,” she answered. “Our servant found him in the
wood-shed, this morning, and he is half-starved, and badly clad, and ill
and miserable.”
“Good bless me!” exclaimed Mr. Gyton.
“And I want your help to send him over to America, or Newfoundland, or
some place,” added Geraldine, with that charming ambiguity of expression
which is so pleasing a characteristic of her sex.
“But—but—but all this is very illegal; extremely improper,” began Mr.
Gyton.
“We don’t care for law at all in Ireland,” answered Geraldine, demurely;
“and in such a case as this, not much for propriety.”
“You incorrigible little girl, I don’t know what I must say to you.”
“Say you will pay his passage out to America,” she suggested. “If I had
the money, I would do it in a minute.”
“But it is against law: the proper course for you to pursue, would be to
go down to Scotland Yard, and give information that such and such a
person was concealed on your premises.”
Geraldine broke out into a peal of laughter. “Should you really like me
to go to Scotland Yard, Mr. Gyton?” she suggested. “Would a note not do
as well, or could Frank not call round in the morning? Is there any
reward? I think I should like to get a reward.”
“What are you talking about?” demanded Lady Emmeline, who was likewise
of the party. “I declare, any person might think it was you and Mr.
Gyton who were engaged, instead of you and Frank.”
“So we are engaged for life, as father and daughter,” replied the
millionaire; “we were talking about a deserter. Geraldine, it appears,
keeps one among her coals and wood.”
“You are not serious?”
“Perfectly serious. I dare say the young man is on view at the present
moment.”
“Dear me! how romantic!”
“It is romantic,” added Geraldine; “for he is evidently a gentleman; he
has been to Oxford, at the University, I mean—a student there, or
whatever you call it.”
“I think, Mr. Gyton, that this affair ought to be investigated,” said
Lady Emmeline.
“I think so, too,” was the reply. “Suppose we send for a policeman?”
“If a policeman come here I will smash his skull for him!” remarked
Brian, at this juncture.
“Dear! dear! what a set of people you Irish are!” observed Mr. Gyton. “A
man has only to shoot his landlord—or be a rebel—or a deserter—or
something of that kind, to engage all your sympathies!”
“You would not have us give him up?” exclaimed Brian, his voice sounding
loud and angry, as he spoke.
“Certainly not, sir. To an Englishman I might suggest such a course; but
to an Irishman—never. The proper thing for you to do, is to feed him,
clothe him, love him, and then send him over to America, to hate the
English, and say we are the cause of all Ireland’s misfortunes.”
For the life of him, Brian could not help laughing. The sketch was so
true—so real and so ready.
“Could not we get a peep at him?” asked Lady Emmeline.
“Certainly,” answered Brian; “at five pounds a head.”
“Is he worth the money, Lady Emmeline, do you consider?” inquired Mr.
Gyton.
“Now, how can one possibly tell that unless one sees him?” demanded Lady
Emmeline. “You really must allow us some discretion, Brian.”
“As much as you please,” Brian answered, “if you give me five pounds.”
“Is it as a charity?” inquired her ladyship.
“As a charity,” Brian replied, bowing low.
“Then there is my five pounds,” said Lady Emmeline, putting five
sovereigns into Brian’s hand.
“And five pounds for me and five for my wife,” added Mr. Gyton.
“You won’t charge me anything, Brian? I am one of the family,” said Mr.
Francis Gyton.
“And well able to afford to pay for the sight,” added Brian.
“What a leech you are! Won’t my I O U do as well? Won’t you trust me?
’Pon my honour, I have not five pounds about me.”
“I will pay for him,” said Geraldine, drawing out her purse; “but
remember, Frank, it is out of my housekeeping money; so you must give it
back to me honestly.”
And thus, amidst much laughing, they collected twenty pounds, on the
strength of which the deserter was brought by Brian into the little
parlour of Spring Lodge.
“Well, but really now, you know—joking apart, excuse me, but, my good
fellow, this is really very irregular,” remarked Mr. Gyton, senior.
“I suppose no one can know that better than he,” said Brian, looking at
the thin pale face, the hollow cheeks, the unshaved chin, the grisly
moustache, with an interest he could neither have explained nor defined.
“And where do you come from?” asked Frank Gyton.
“From Yorkshire,” was the reply; “that young lady (indicating Geraldine)
will have it that I am from Ireland, but she is mistaken.”
“No, I am not,” answered Geraldine. “No Englishman ever pronounced ‘have
it’—‘haf’t’—as you do.”
“What is your name?” inquired Mr. Gyton.
“Ward,” he said; “Charles Ward.”
“It is not,” exclaimed Lady Emmeline; “it is Campnell, and you are Mr.
Maxwell Drewitt’s illegitimate son.”
“Do you know him?” asked Brian, hurriedly.
“Know him? To be sure I do. Didn’t I see him in Connemara last year?
Have not you noticed the likeness between him and Harold?”
In a moment Brian comprehended what had attracted him about the
deserter. In an instant he formed his plans. The hour of vengeance was
striking at last, and it would be his own fault if he faltered in his
design.
Through Maxwell’s son he must hurt Maxwell; and soon after he rose, and
left the room.
While they were all talking together, speaking to Arthur Campnell,
asking him how he chanced to enlist, how he came to desert, Geraldine
left the room likewise. She searched all over the house, she made
inquiries of the servants, their own, and Mr. Gyton, and Lady
Emmeline’s. None knew where Brian had gone; but one man had seen him go
out of the gate, and walk down the hill.
“Tell Mr. Gyton I want him,” Geraldine said; “not Mr. Frank, but Mr.
Gyton.” And Mr. Gyton came out. “Brian is gone to give information,” she
said; “we must get him away, and at once.”
“Geraldine, you are dreaming,” exclaimed Mr. Gyton.
“Am I? You don’t know Brian as well as I do. So long as he thought that
man was simply a deserter, he would have died before letting a hair of
his head be touched; but now he knows him to be Maxwell’s son, he would
put a rope round his neck, and hang him.”
“God bless my soul! you don’t say no!”
“I do say so,” she answered; “and I say you know nothing of the Irish,
whose hate is as strong as their love. I noticed his face change, the
moment Lady Emmeline said who Arthur was, and I know he must be got away
from here without a moment’s delay.”
“But really, that is, you know——”
“Take him to Mr. Pryor; he will see to him—he will get him off,” said
Geraldine. And accordingly, greatly to his disgust, Mr. Gyton was
persuaded to drive off, with a deserter in his carriage personating
Frank.
“And now, Geoffry,” added Mr. Gyton, when he had finished his narrative,
“let me entreat of you to get him away as soon as possible. He is no
credit to the family; and one really cannot get through life
respectably, if deserters, and so forth, are to be hidden in our
coal-cellars and larders. Really, Mr. Maxwell Drewitt ought to have more
consideration,” he continued; but Mr. Pryor smiled.
“Maxwell Drewitt does not know what to do with this boy, whom he means
to make his heir. It is a lamentable business altogether; but, as you
say, there is nothing for it except to get him to Ireland, and out of
the country as soon as possible.”
“I did not think Brian would really have informed,” remarked Mr. Gyton.
“It would be hard to say what he might, or what he might not do, where
his cousin is concerned,” was the reply.
“And with regard to this youth?”
“Leave him to me.”
Meanwhile, there were high words waging at Highgate between Geraldine
and her brother.
She was accusing him of meanness, cowardice, vindictiveness.
He retorted by saying she was cold, insensible, heartless.
“Indifferent to our mother’s sufferings—to Harold’s disgrace.”
“Our mother, on her death-bed, said, that you were to forgive, as you
hoped to be forgiven,” answered Geraldine.
“You should not talk about what you do not understand, Geraldine,” he
said.
“I understood that well enough,” she replied; “and I know that long
letter she wrote to you was full of nothing else but regrets for ever
having encouraged your dislike of Maxwell, and not having checked your
desire for revenge.”
“She was an angel.”
“She was.”
“Who never could carry a feeling of resentment; and therefore it behoves
me—I tell you, Geraldine, it behoves me to remember her wrongs, and have
no mercy.”
“That is not what she would tell you, Brian, if she were alive. But
there is no use in our arguing this point out now, for Maxwell’s son is
now beyond the reach of your vindictiveness.”
“Are you quite satisfied of that?”
“Yes, I am. Oh, Brian! do not push this matter further. Think if it had
been Harold!—and he is so like Harold.”
“So was the lad who stole those notes.”
“Do you think it was he that took them?”
“Think!” he repeated, contemptuously; “I am sure of it. What is your
opinion of your protégé, now?”
There was a long pause, during the continuance of which Geraldine sat
weeping silently. At last, she said—
“Brian, do you imagine it would comfort Harold to know you were pursuing
that young man for his sake?”
“It comforts me,” he replied.
“Now, when he is gone where his innocence is known, what can it matter
to him who goes free on earth?”
“It matters to his memory, Geraldine.”
“And who cares for his memory? who but a few that, believing him
innocent in life, cannot doubt him in death?”
“We need not talk any further about the matter,” said Brian, angrily. “I
am doing what I consider right; and no one shall convince me to the
contrary.”
“I think I could,” said Mr. Pryor, who, late though the hour was,
entered at the moment. “Brian, you have done very wrong!”
“I have not!” was the answer.
“I told you yourself, years ago, you were preparing a bitter cup; but
you would not listen to my warning. That youth was safe here. No one
would have suspected his being concealed in such a house as this; and we
could easily have shipped him off from here to some place of safety.
Now, I candidly say, I do not know what we are to do. Every plan seems
beset with danger and difficulty!”
“I am glad to hear it,” remarked Brian, sullenly.
“No, Brian, you are not. Vindictive though you may be, you could not in
cool blood—you could not, I am sure—give that boy over to be flogged and
branded!”
“I could! believing, as I do, that his father will feel every lash and
every touch of the iron through him.”
“And his mother, Brian?”
“The mother of such a son must be as bad as his father.”
“She is not! I know her well; and I know she is not! Shall I tell you
her name, Brian?”
“It can have no interest for me,” he answered; “but you may tell me, if
you like.”
“Mrs. Connor!”
“No!” Brian started to his feet. “No! I tell you it is not—it shall not
be!”
“How can you prevent it? the fact is so. Mrs. Connor, when she was Jenny
Bourke—young, pretty, guileless—brought that boy into the world, whom
you have tried your best this night, Brian, to give up to trial and
punishment.”
“Mr. Pryor, God is my witness! I thought I was only doing my duty!”
“Duty toward whom?”
“To my mother’s memory—to Harold’s! For myself and Geraldine, I do not
care—I never have cared; but no soul can give _them_ any comfort or
happiness here. And I vowed—I swore—if ever I could pay Maxwell back any
portion of the suffering he had caused them, I would do so.”
“Did not your mother leave some parting message for you—some words that
must have sounded as though uttered from her coffin?” asked Mr. Pryor.
“She did,” was the reply; “but though she might forgive for herself, I
did not think myself bound to comply with her request and forgive for
her. So long as we are in the flesh we must act like men; and it is not
like a man to forgive and forget such injuries as Maxwell heaped on us.”
“Brian, do you think it is our affair to manage the world—to avenge
wrongs, to requite the virtuous and punish the wicked?”
“How can I tell?” he answered. “I suppose we are instruments; and when
one sees a man like Maxwell prosperous, happy, respected, what is one to
do—how is one to act?”
“Not as you have done, at any rate; we are all so mixed up here, that if
we strike a blow we never can tell whose heart may feel the wound most
severely. As in this case, for instance, you never guessed Mrs. Connor
could be mixed up in such a matter.”
“Well, the young fellow is gone,” answered Brian, impatiently; “he is
not caught, I suppose; and wherever Geraldine sent him, I conclude he is
safe enough.”
“Is he? there were inquiries at my house not half an hour ago, and if I
had not been quicker than they suspected, the boy would have been now on
his way back to barracks.”
Brian made no answer; he sat for a long time silent, for many minutes he
never spoke one word; then he rose and left the room in silence.
“He is sorry,” Geraldine remarked; and Geraldine was right. Brian was
gone away, to mourn in solitude; not that he had tried to punish
Maxwell’s son, but that Maxwell’s son was also Jenny’s boy—poor Jenny,
to whom he had once vowed to be grateful for life.
Next morning Ryan and his nephew started for Ireland; proceeding
thither, not by the Dublin and Holyhead route, but running down by the
Great Western to Milford Haven, whence they crossed to Waterford; from
which place Mr. Ryan meant to work their way by all manner of curious
routes to Connemara.
“Once there we shall be safe,” thought Mr. Ryan; but he reckoned without
his host.
“I wonder if they have reached Kincorth?” Mr. Pryor remarked, the day
but one after their departure, to Brian, who had never opened his lips
on the subject from the night he discovered who the deserter really was
until that present moment.
“If who have reached Kincorth?” asked the younger man.
“Ryan and his nephew.”
“They have not gone to Ireland, surely—they have not been so mad as
that?” exclaimed Brian, all in a hurry and tremble.
“Why not? it seemed to me a much safer place than London.”
“But I told them whose son he was—they are certain to be on the
look-out. Why did you say nothing to me—oh! why did not you?”
They were walking down the Holloway Road at the moment, and Mr. Pryor,
without answering Brian by a word, called a passing Hansom, and jumped
in.
“Where are you going?” asked Brian.
“I am going to Lothbury, to the Telegraph Office, to stop your work, if
I can.”
“Let me go with you.”
“No;” and Mr. Pryor banged the door of the Hansom and was off.
Brian had never seen him angry before, never out of temper; and as he
stood there alone on the edge of the broad pavement, between the Seven
Sisters Road and the railway bridge, he began to feel that he had indeed
done more evil than he could readily undo, that he had let his revenge
get the better not merely of his charity but of his prudence, and that
unless he could give some assistance in the matter he should feel
wretched for life.
Wretched for life! Did he know the meaning of the words he was
whispering to his own soul? had he other than the vaguest comprehension
of the misery he had wrought both for others and himself?
Flogged—branded! Somehow he derived no sort of satisfaction from the
idea of his enemy being punished now.
He had kept his pebble and turned it, taken it out and slung it, and
struck his foe in the very place where it had delighted him to think the
blow would take effect. But now that it had taken effect—now that his
enemy was worsted, that his pebble was gone out of his own keeping, that
he had taken his own way, and revenged himself at once on the man who
had cast them out of Kincorth, and the boy who had damaged Harold’s
character past repair—he could not help asking himself what good there
was likely to come of it all to her, or him, or them.
To him or her? Should he go up to the churchyard sloping towards the
west and tell the earth how he had taken one step forward to the end he
had laid out for himself? Should he whisper to the dead that he had made
the living wretched for their sakes? Should he tell the wind that
stirred the grass growing green on Harold’s grave how the delinquent was
at last discovered, how he had set the officers of justice on his track?
Would not the dead be gratified; could not he make them hear that; would
not the words bring them back to life? Had not he well obeyed his
mother’s dying injunction, that he should forgive as he hoped to be
forgiven; and from the heavens would she not look approvingly at the
base act of vindictive hatred of which he had been guilty?
Dimly as he walked along all this passed through his mind; vaguely he
began to see he had chosen the wrong path, that others had been right,
that he had been wrong. Somewhere he had heard of a better way of
avenging oneself upon an enemy than by branding and scourging, of a way
which did not raise every feeling of a man’s heart into ten times worse
hatred and antagonism, but which instead “heaped coals of fire upon his
head.” Nothing he could do—nothing—nothing for ever might comfort or
soothe the departed: the “dull cold ear of death” could hearken to no
words that it was in his power to frame: if he killed Maxwell and laid
his body on their graves, what could it profit them? Could he bring them
back again? and if he could, oh God! if he could, would it not be awful
to see them rise up and rejoice because their enemy was brought low?
Very speedily Brian made up his mind he would follow Mr. Pryor, hear
what he had done, and then, if need were, start that night for Ireland.
He might be of some use, he might be able to render some assistance; and
“I declare to you, Mr. Pryor,” he said, “that if I could retrace my
steps I would; if I could take that night back and act my part in it
over again, I would not do one thing I have done, not one.”
“Even a savage would not have been so treacherous, so inhospitable,”
answered Mr. Pryor.
“I know it,” was the reply; “but are we always able to argue out such
questions coolly? Does the man live who has never believed he has seen
clearly walking through the darkness?”
CHAPTER XIX.
Through Connemara.
Maxwell Drewitt sat alone in the dining-room at Kincorth, waiting for
his son; he had waited many days and yet the fugitive came not, neither
had any tidings of Arthur reached him.
He had watched for the post, he had strained his ears to catch the sound
of horses’ feet, the noise of coming wheels. He had risen early, and
gone to bed late; he had lain through the night wakeful and restless,
and still there arrived no tidings; he had no data to go upon except Mr.
Pryor’s telegram which he held in his hand.
Sorrow had told upon him; the suspense, the agony, the alternations of
hope and fear had broken him down more and more. He was old—old and
stricken; and as he crouched over the fire, which a damp autumnal
evening had rendered acceptable, I think a more hopeless picture of the
vanity of human wishes, of the end of human desires, could not have been
presented for consideration.
Where was the erect carriage, the bold, defiant glance, the indolent
grace of movement, the insolent overbearing manner? Gone, friends,
gone—like the raven hue of his own glossy hair; like the cold brightness
of his eyes; like the beauty he had been proud of, and that women had
been won by; gone—gone for ever.
The passionless sneer had left his lips and given place to a sort of
irrepressible convulsion. He could not walk now as he had walked in
former years along the shore of Duranmore Bay, kicking the pebbles
before him; but when at last he arose from his chair, in order to make
his way to one of the windows, he had to support himself with a stick
and to catch at chairs and tables as he passed by.
It was a wild night; the equinoctial gales were blowing their fiercest,
and Maxwell, standing leaning against the window-frame, thought of how
the waves must be lashing up against Eversbeg Head; how the billows must
be raging and tossing outside the bay.
There was a something so dreary in the idea of that limitless ocean;
those thousands of miles of tempestuous waters; that great expanse of
sea without an island, without a shore, without a rock; those great
deeps, shouting under the night to one another, while the floods clapped
their hands—that Maxwell could not bear it; he had to turn from the
window, and make his way feebly to the hearth, and stir up the fire, and
try to think of a more cheerful subject.
But what cheerful subject had he to think of—this man, who had lived for
the midday, and not for the night?
He could think of his boy, but of nothing else—of his boy, who, all
unknown to him, was fleeing through Connemara towards Kincorth; who was
trying to outstrip his pursuers, whom Ryan had promised to mislead, if
possible, at Oughterard.
Through the night he was riding as if for his life; while the wind
howled down among the mountains and through the valleys, and washed the
waters of the lakes over the low stone walls that are in some places all
that separates them from the highway—he rode on.
He had lost his hat about six miles on the Duranmore side of Oughterard,
and now, as he galloped through the darkness, the wind tossed his hair
hither and thither, now leaving his forehead bare, and again blinding
him with locks that were dead-black as Harold’s had been. On—on—without
a pause, except when the steepness of the ground necessitated pulling up
his horse and walking—on past the giant mountains; past the eternal
lakes; past the long low line of hills that lay between him and the sea;
past bogs and morasses; over mountain-streams, over brawling
torrents—still on through the darkness towards Kincorth.
Having gained the Calgillan road, he dismounted, unfastened his girths,
took the saddle off his good steed’s back, and the bridle off his head,
and then turned the animal adrift. Saddle and bridle he carried till he
reached the plantations of Kincorth, when he left the main road, and
hiding his belongings deep in the underwood, made his way across the
fields towards the house.
“They are after me, father,” were his first words; “but I have got the
start. Mr. Ryan said you were not to keep me here, but forward me on to
Durrow. I don’t know my way there.”
He stood in the centre of the room while he spoke, with the firelight
flickering over his pale face, with his straight hair tangled and
matted, with a weary, anxious look on his countenance, with a hunted
expression in his dark eyes.
“Who let you in?” Maxwell asked. It was no time for the interchange of
much ceremony—for many words to be wasted.
“Dickson; and I have warned him.”
“Go into the next room for a minute while I ring the bell. Bring wine,”
Maxwell ordered, “and, Dickson, come here for a moment.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Is Flynn gone?”
“He leaves at six, you know, sir, usually, and it is now eleven.”
“Could you put the roan horse in the car?”
“Yes, sir.”
“The other servants are gone to-bed, I suppose?”
“All, except the cook, sir.”
“Take the horse and car round to the back avenue, and then sit up for
me. If anybody comes here asking where I am, say I have gone to Lord
Marsden’s to dinner, and will not be back till late—perhaps not till
morning, and—and—you know the rest, Dickson.”
“Yes, sir. I am to say Mr. Arthur has not been here.”
“Now go. Of course you will sit up for me. Should there be danger, light
a candle in the blue room, and I will be on my guard; you understand?”
“Perfectly, sir. But surely you are not going out to-night; excuse me,
sir, but——”
“Necessity knows no law,” finished Maxwell Drewitt, with something of
his old decision of manner. “Now, Arthur, drink some wine, to put life
into you; for it may be many a night before you are able to put your
head under a roof again.” And while his son followed his advice in
silence, the wretched father sat and looked at the only child he ever
had.
“Surely you are not coming with me?” said Arthur, as his father arose
and intimated it was time for them to depart. “It is an awful night,
cold, and bleak, and threatening for rain. Let me try to find my way
alone, if you would rather not trust Dickson.”
“I am not afraid of trusting Dickson,” was the reply; “but I must leave
some one to answer their inquiries should they come.” Arthur shuddered;
too well he knew who _they_ meant. “And as for the night, I shall be
better out; the cold air will not hurt me.”
Would not it? He knew better; but he knew, also, that anything would be
preferable to remaining at home in suspense; and, besides, after all,
whom could he trust so well as himself—who could keep the secret like he
and Arthur?
Through the night they pressed on together—father and son.
As they drove along that interminable road towards Durrow, Maxwell could
not help thinking, that at some previous time he had traversed it under
circumstances similar to the present; and all at once, as they drew near
Castle Cronach, he remembered what Mr. Gyton had said about riding for
one’s life through Connemara; and about how a man who was doing so would
curse those bends and twists and curves.
There are some things which impress us with such a sense of reality—with
such a feeling that at a future day we shall pass through what we fancy
then—as gives us the idea, when the future day arrives, that we have not
prefigured the event, but that it has actually happened at some former
period.
This was Maxwell’s state of mind, at all events; and as the keen wind
swept by—as the rain began pattering in his face—as he felt the nipping
night air blowing through and through him, he could not help
occasionally marvelling which was the dream, and which the reality—which
was the shadow, and which the substance. Had he ever ridden along that
road with three companions? Was he driving it in very truth then? Had he
ever been strong enough to ride? Was he only imagining he was driving
now? Were there people following them? Did he hear the sound of horses’
hoofs behind?
“It is only the wind,” Arthur kept saying; but Maxwell lashed the roan
on for all that.
How long the road was! How he did curse those curves! how he did
anathematize the engineer who planned, and the men who made it! How
every winding seemed to double itself in length! how every mile appeared
to quadruple itself in distance! But there, at last, thank God! at last,
was Durrow!
They soon knocked Mr. Connor up, and explained to him the state of the
case.
“You are on good terms with the fishermen, Connor,” said Mr. Drewitt;
“get Skerritt to stow Arthur away till he can be taken off in some
smuggling craft. Make it all right with the men; and say, I don’t mind
five hundred pounds when I hear he is safe in France. It is more than
you are worth, boy,” he added. “Don’t you think, now, you have been more
trouble than profit to me, all your life long?”
His voice shook and trembled as he spoke; and Mr. Connor drew back,
knowing they were about to say farewell to one another.
“It will be safest for us to leave you in their hands entirely,”
explained Mr. Drewitt; “I am not afraid of any informers among them.
Write to me, when you get clear off. You will have money and clothes
provided for you on board the vessel. If I can, I will join you in
France; but do not attempt to come back to these countries. And now
good-bye, for the present. Good-bye!”
He held out his hand—he had never been much given to caressing, and it
was the only mode of leave-taking he knew; but Arthur fell on his neck
and wept; and Maxwell felt those tears dropping down into his heart, one
by one.
It had been a cold heart and a dead—it had lain numb through life, only
to waken up with pain and grief towards the last; and now he felt not
only his son’s tears softening him, but the memory of other tears he had
seen flow—of other sobs he had heard in the night—of other anguish he
had let go away unsoothed—came up before him then—the ghosts of dead
realities, the shadows of things that had all once been.
A few seconds and it was over; that was no time at which to waste
precious moments in grief or in adieux; and while Connor took Arthur
with him down to the shore, Maxwell drove back to Kincorth through the
night alone.
That seemed to be his doom—alone—alone for ever—in adversity as in
prosperity—at the end as in the beginning. But in the beginning solitude
had not seemed terrible as it did towards the end; and that fact made
all the difference.
Through that desolate wilderness he drove back, as I have said, alone;
past great stretches of country, across which the wind went howling and
howling as though, with shrieks and laughter, the storm were running
races over the flat tracts of moorland. For a little distance the road
wound along by the side of Durrow River, where the chesnut had died
taking her leap so gallantly, and then great mountains hemmed him in for
a mile or so, when they swept grandly off to right and left, leaving the
traveller breathing space once more.
It is a grand country, this Connemara, but desolate beyond all power of
description; the ends of the world seem to be reached when you are
journeying through it; and even when a person has no pressing care, no
special cause for unhappiness, when he is strong and free from anxiety
of mind, there is a weirdness and a solemnity about a night-ride through
his part of that land of the Wild West which must be felt to be
comprehended.
What, then, must that solitary drive have proved to Maxwell Drewitt,
whose strength was turned into weakness, whose powers of endurance were
not equal to such an undertaking—who, racked with mental and bodily
pain, prostrated by physical suffering, fancied, now that the mountains
were advancing towards him—now that the road was slipping away—now that
the air was full of strange sounds—and again that through the valleys
and up the defiles were coming hundreds and hundreds of armed men
seeking after his son?
It was fortunate that the roan knew his way to his stable, knew every
turn in the road, every point of danger, every awkward curve, the
position almost of every block of granite, or else Maxwell could
scarcely have guided him home.
As it was, between two and three o’clock in the morning, when the wind
was a little lulled, and the rain coming down in torrents, the unhappy
man reached Kincorth, and lifting his eyes instinctively to the windows,
saw no light in them.
“You must be just drowned, sir,” said Dickson, as he helped him off the
car and took the reins out of his trembling hand and assisted him into
the house; “I have a good fire in your own room, sir, and you had better
get off your wet things and go straight away to bed.”
“Who is that, Dickson, who is that?” Maxwell whispered, seeing that a
man had taken the horse’s head and was leading him round towards the
stables. “There was no light burning—who is it?”
“No one, sir, but Mr. Brian Drewitt, who came in not ten minutes after
you left. He said he would put up the roan, and set everything right for
the morning, so that I could stay with you. He seems dreadfully
downhearted, and he hasn’t put bite nor sup in his lips since he entered
the doors.”
“Go to him, Dickson, and tell him not to lay a finger on any horse of
mine; tell him that he shall not stay in my house, nor meddle in my
concerns. It is owing to him that my son is a fugitive this night,
without a place to lay his head in. He has come to gloat over me, to
exult in my defeat; but he shall not stay here; he shall not, by——!”
Very unceremoniously, Dickson marched his master off to bed.
“I don’t think, sir,” he answered, “that you rightly know what you are
talking about. I never saw a young gentleman seem in less notion of
exulting, as you call it, than that same Mr. Brian was to-night; and I
am certain sure if Mr. Arthur had been his own brother he could not have
appeared more cut up than he was. When you’re warm in your bed, just see
him, and hear what he has got to say; and if you don’t think then he
means fair, why tell me to put him out, and if I don’t do it my name is
not Michael Dickson. And sure, is not he making himself of use at this
very minute, washing the car and rubbing down the horse, and doing a
stable-boy’s work, only better than any stable-boy ever did it? I know
what Mr. Brian can do. Many a time when I used to be coming up here, I
saw him at work just like a labourer. Let him stay, sir, let him stay;
we’ll want him yet.”
“It was he gave the information,” muttered Maxwell.
“So he told me; and he told me why he did it, and how sorry he had been
since. He talked to me for an hour in the dining-room there—for an hour
at the least. And he spoke about his mother, and Mr. Harold, so that it
would have melted the heart of a stone.”
With a shudder, Maxwell Drewitt turned his head away, and laid it on the
furthermost pillow.
“Let him come,” he said, faintly; “it may be that we have cross accounts
to settle; let him come;” and Brian came accordingly.
“Maxwell,” he began, “I am here to help you, if I can. I am here to make
what poor reparation is in my power. There was a time,” he went on,
“when I swore I never would re-enter your doors at peace with you: over
my dead mother’s body, I renewed that oath; and I swore then that if
ever I had a chance of vengeance offered me, I would avail myself of
that chance to the uttermost. Maxwell, I have recalled those oaths. I
would undo that which I have done if I could. I want to help you, if in
my power. Had I known who Arthur’s mother really was, I would have cut
out my tongue before bringing sorrow upon her. Do you believe me,
Maxwell? I never spoke falsely to you in my life; and you may believe it
is the truth I am telling you now.”
There ensued a long silence, broken only by the sick man’s sobs. “I am
so ill,” he said, “I am so weak—Brian, I thank you—I will take your
offer, I will trust you. If you will, there shall be peace between us at
last. Do you forgive me?”
“You are pressing me hard, Maxwell,” answered the other. “Hearing what I
hear, guessing what I guess; with my dear ones where no reparation can
be made to them, I cannot say I forgive. But I may try to forgive; will
that content you?”
“And you will stay with me, Brian, you will stay. I am so sick, and I am
so lonely. It was a fall off the chesnut did it; but I suppose you heard
all about that?”
“Yes, poor Madcap!”
“It was not her fault, it was that fool of a Crabbe—it has made wild
work with me, Brian, has not it? I shall never be a man again while I
live—never!”
While he lived. Brian, keeping watch by the sick man’s bedside, knew
that his existence could not be prolonged much longer, and looking at
that poor wreck of mortality—at that old worn man—he found it hard to
identify him with the Maxwell he had last seen standing just within the
hall door of that house in which he was at length master.
Then he had been handsome, strong, resolute; now he was a stricken and
hesitating creature, dying by inches, while there was not a human being
related to him, by any close ties of blood, to take his hand and bid him
be of good cheer, as he glided onward to that valley where is the
blackness of the shadow of death.
CHAPTER XX.
Brian’s Repentance.
Before many days Mr. Pryor appeared at Durrow, anxious to know what had
become of Arthur, and how Brian and his cousin were settling their old
scores.
As for Arthur, Mr. Connor informed him the lad was still lying concealed
in one of the caves in Durrow cliff—“the secretest of all their
hiding-places, Skerritt informs me,” he proceeded—“a cave that no gauger
or coast-guardsman could find out unless he were the devil.”
“Then as I never heard of the devil taking the form of an exciseman, and
going about the country looking after private stills and cargoes of
smuggled goods, I suppose we may conclude there is every chance of the
young gentleman getting off safe.”
“He’ll get off right enough, the first time the schooner comes round
this way again. The reward Mr. Drewitt has offered ought to put the men
on their mettle—not, to do them justice, that they need such an
inducement—it’s enough for them to know that a man is flying from the
constituted authorities, and they will strain every nerve to assist him
to escape.”
“That characteristic of your country-people it is which makes Ireland so
much pleasanter a residence for rogues than for honest men,” remarked
Mr. Pryor.
“Ah, well, sir; sure you see by this that even very respectable fathers
may have sons in trouble.”
“I hope you do not call Mr. Drewitt a respectable father, because, in my
opinion, he is nothing of the kind,” answered Mr. Pryor.
“He is fond of the boy, at any rate,” said Connor, simply; and his
thoughts flew back to that night when through the storm Maxwell drove
his son over to Durrow, and had stood silent while Arthur wept tears of
penitence upon his neck.
“He’ll never get the better of it, Mr. Brian tells me,” went on the
agent, pursuing his own train of reflection. “He was wet to the skin,
and has not been able to be out of bed since. Well, let him have been
what he will, Mr. Pryor, you would be sorry for him if you were to see
him now—just a shadow of himself, and with the grey hairs more plentiful
than the black, and crow’s feet about his eyes, and a drop of the mouth,
and a twitching of the face that you would wonder what ailed him.”
“I think I’ll go over and see him,” observed Mr. Pryor.
“Indeed, sir, and I just would,” agreed Connor; “maybe the day’s not so
very far off when you’ll be glad to remember you did it.”
“Do you mean, Connor, you really think he is going to die so soon as all
that comes to?”
“Think, sir! I am sure I believe in my heart he’ll never rise from his
bed again; that he did his last piece of work in this world, the night
he came over here with Mr. Arthur. I did all I could to get him to stop,
and so did my wife, too; but he was so mortally afraid of any of the
Duranmore people guessing where his son was hid away, that nothing would
serve him but round with the horse’s head and back to Kincorth, though
the wind was coming down from among those hills, and blowing off the
Atlantic, fit to tear the house down. And then it began pelting with
rain. I don’t know how he ever got home, and him in the state of health
he was—I do not.”
Next morning Mr. Pryor walked over the hills to Kincorth, to pay his
visit to Maxwell Drewitt.
“He will see you if you come upstairs,” Brian said, in answer to the
Englishman’s inquiries; “but I must warn you that he is very
ill—dangerously ill, in my opinion. I have thought it right to tell Lady
Emmeline what I believe about him; and it is very probable she may be
here to-morrow afternoon.”
“Are you glad you came, Brian?” asked Mr. Pryor.
“I would not have come for all the property Maxwell owns;” and Brian,
who was head nurse in the sick-room, led his friend gently to the
darkened chamber, which Maxwell was never again to leave till he was
carried out in his coffin.
“You were right about me, Mr. Pryor,” said Maxwell. “I was not an honest
man; and I did not come into Kincorth fairly; but Brian shall get it
back again when I am gone; and I hope he will have more enjoyment of it
than ever I had.”
“I trust,” answered Mr. Pryor, “you will live for many a long year to
keep him out of it. Brian will be better and happier working for his
living in London than he ever could be dawdling about Kincorth.”
He spoke these words cheerfully and heartily, but Maxwell shook his
head.
“My race is run,” he said, “my day almost finished; and if I could but
once know the boy was safe, I am so tired that I think I would lay my
head down and never raise it again.”
“You will think differently when once he is clear off,” answered Mr.
Pryor.
“Shall I?” and Maxwell’s hand strayed idly and listlessly over the
coverlet, picking bits of cotton out of it while he spoke.
“Why of course you will; anxiety is the chief thing that is the matter
with you now.”
“Is it?” and the poor wasted fingers still kept picking, picking.
“I don’t know what I should have done without him,” he said, after a
short pause, turning his eyes towards Brian. “I could not have lived so
long had I been alone. He has been gentler to me than any woman I ever
had about me; and when I look at him I think of his mother, and believe
she has forgiven me——”
“You can clear that matter up, about Harold,” suggested Mr. Pryor.
“Yes, when I am gone, and when Arthur is off, you will find a parcel and
letter in that safe over there. You can make what use you like of both;
of course they would not take any proceedings at this distance of time,
but you will settle that with them, won’t you?”
“And I mean to settle that you shall not talk any more at present, and
that if Mr. Pryor comes here to discuss unpleasant topics he must be
forbidden the house,” broke in Brian.
“Will you come to my house, then, to-morrow, to dinner?” asked Mr.
Pryor; and Brian promised that if his patient were no worse, he would;
having received which assurance, Mr. Pryor walked back over the hills as
he had come, and noticed as he walked a wicked-looking little schooner
tacking and tacking between Duranmore Point and Durrow. “That is our
friend,” he thought, “and twenty-four hours more will see Arthur out of
the country.”
“Yes, sir, that’s her,” remarked Skerritt with a knowing wink. “She is
only making believe tacking about there; she is really bound for Mayo,
and then she will be back here about this time to-morrow. We have sent
word to the captain, and it will be all correct.”
Mr. Pryor was truly rejoiced to hear it, and said so. It was wretched to
think of that lad lying in the cave night after night while he slept
comfortably in a good house close at hand; and his sympathy was strongly
excited for the unhappy father, whose first question when he awoke in
the mornings was always, “Has Arthur got off yet?” and whose last sigh
at night sounded like a moan for the son who had made such grievous
shipwreck of his life.
“You will bring me back a report of how things are going on, Brian,” he
said as his cousin was leaving for Durrow; “a true report,
remember,—promise me that;” and Brian promised ere he departed.
It was a lovely afternoon in the early part of October; the trees about
Kincorth were getting very bare of foliage, but there were still enough
leaves left to make the woods look very beautiful in their autumnal
deckings of brown and orange and gold. The sky was clear and bright, and
though there was a stiff breeze blowing, Brian after long watching in
his cousin’s sick room found the wind only make his walk the pleasanter.
He did not feel in bad spirits as he climbed the hill and pursued the
short cut towards Durrow; rather, on the contrary, his heart was lighter
than it had been for many a day past, for he began to be certain Arthur
would effect his escape safely, and he knew if the youth were once
landed in France that a load of anxiety would be lifted from his
shoulders, a burden of self-reproach taken off his soul.
It was a delicious afternoon; there was just that feeling of chilliness
in the air which is pleasant when a man who can walk fast has likewise
to walk far; and Brian hurried over the ground feeling that there are
some days in the year when living is a pleasure, and that this was one
of them.
But yet, as he drew near Durrow, he fancied he saw on the side of the
hill, looking seaward, something which alarmed him—a man with a
telescope. Brian immediately charged down the incline, and came upon a
commonplace-looking individual apparently engaged in digging up bait.
It seemed a strange place to select for such a purpose; but of course
the man had a right to choose an inconvenient position if he chose, and
Brian remained talking with him for a few minutes while he looked about
to see if he could discover any trace of the telescope or discover what
part of Durrow was best commanded from the spot.
The whole of Durrow village was concealed by Durrow cliff, and there was
nothing to be discerned except the south side of the principal rock,
which rose sheer out of the sea which now washed its base.
Any trace of the telescope he failed to detect, though he could have
sworn he saw the brass tube glitter for a moment in the afternoon sun.
“He was there, was he, the divil!” remarked Skerritt, whom Brian at once
informed of the circumstance. “I wish I had caught him at his spying.
You’re not sure he was spying, arn’t ye? Well, I am, and that’s enough.
Digging earth-worms, too, for a make-believe! Pity he wasn’t feedin’
them, that’s all I have got to say.”
“Will it hinder Arthur getting away?” asked Brian, anxiously.
“Will it hinder the say comin’ in to-morrow morning?” inquired Mr.
Skerritt, which, being decidedly an unlikely result, Brian took heart
again.
“Are you going out fishing to-night, Skerritt?” inquired Brian, noticing
that the man was preparing his nets and getting his boat ready for sea.
“I go out fishing most nights,” was the answer; “and now, sir, if you
are as tired of asking questions as I am of answerin’ them, I wish ye
just would go up till the house, and stay in your proper place, which is
up there with the quality,[2] instead of down here with me.”
Footnote 2:
Gentlefolks.
“Your best friends can’t say much for your civility, Skerritt,” remarked
Brian as he moved away.
“If I am not very civil I am very wise,” was the significant answer; and
Brian departed on the instant.
“I wish to-night was over—and well over,” said Mr. Pryor, as they stood
together on the lawn, while the afternoon light faded away, and the
twilight deepened, and the darkness drew on.
“And so do I. Have you any notion at what hour they mean to make their
venture?” returned Brian.
“Not the least. Skerritt would give me no information on the subject,
and I have not seen a sign of the schooner to-day. The first
intelligence I expect to hear is that he is off safe and sound, and
half-way to France.”
“Heaven grant it!” Brian replied.
The words were scarcely out of his lips before there arose such a shout
from the shore, as made Mr. Pryor and Brian exclaim, at the same moment—
“There is something wrong: let us go down;” and they ran round to the
shelving side of the cliff, and hurried down the path leading to the
sea.
“They have found the cave,” explained Skerritt; “and they are all here,
police, and gaugers, and soldiers, and all.”
“And where is Arthur?”
“You’ll see in a minit,” was the reply. “Now Patsey, my man. Run down
for your life, Mr. Arthur, and out into the sea!” he cried in a voice
like thunder, and, at the same instant, there flared out from the shore
a flame of light that just flashed across the waters and then was
extinguished.
Quick as thought, another light glanced out from the little schooner,
which had been quietly stealing round a line of rocks that stretched far
away into the ocean; and, next moment, while his eyes were still dazzled
by the sudden glare, Brian heard the plash of oars, and knew that Arthur
was safe in the boat and making for the vessel that alone could ever
bear him to freedom.
Hoarsely the command for the boat to stop rung out through the night,
and, as a mocking laugh came back across the waters, the corporal gave
the order to fire.
Three balls went instantly whizzing over the sea; and then there was a
shriek such as Brian never had heard in all his life before—the shriek
of a strong man in his death agony.
But the boat went on.
“Fire!” was again the command, and again the balls sought their mark: no
shriek followed this discharge, and, for a minute or two, the corporal
seemed to think his men must have made some mistake, but it was only for
a moment.
The next, cries for help were borne by the wind to the shore, and there
were frantic entreaties among the women that a boat might be launched on
the instant.
“Lord help you, mother,” said Skerritt’s son; “don’t you remember every
boat was sent to Duranmore, that they might not be able to get the
advantage over us that way? but then if he is not hit he can swim. There
it is again! That’s not my father’s shout, it is the young fellow’s, and
the boat is settling.”
The boat was settling. Every one of the balls, except that which struck
Skerritt, had gone through her side. There can be no doubt but that the
men must have happened to fire as she rose on the waves; and now, with
their hands loosely holding their muskets, they stood listening to the
screams of the drowning men.
“I can’t bear this,” cried Brian; “I must do something;” and he made a
rush towards the sea, but half a dozen people were before him in an
instant, and kept him back from his design. “Have you not got a boat?”
he gasped.
“Not one. Do you think if we had, it’s myself would be talking to you
now, and my own father and brother out there in the middle of it all?”
“How many were there altogether?”
“Just three; and, out of the three, there were two of us.”
“God pity you,” said Brian, as he sat down on the shore. “And God pity
me, too,” he added to himself, “for this is my doing.”
There was silence on the sea—silence only broken by the whistling of the
wind—by the plashing of the waves against the rocks.
Each moment it was growing darker and darker, and though the people
under the cliffs were running hither and thither with lighted torches in
their hands, still nothing could be seen of the tragedy that had just
been enacted.
Sullenly the sea came rolling up on the shore—sullenly it swept along,
wave succeeding to wave, and billow to billow: though they strained
their eyes out into the night they could see nothing but a waste of
water, but an eternity of ocean.
Till morning dawned they would not be able to distinguish any object,
and when morning dawned where would be the objects they desired to see?
“I’ll go and get a boat some place or other,” whispered young Skerritt
to his mother, “and I’ll row round the rocks; may be one of them may
have drifted that way with one of the oars.”
It was a forlorn hope; but perhaps in the future it comforted that widow
and her son to know everything which could be done, had been done.
There was no one near the rocks, no one had reached the schooner; but a
week afterwards Skerritt’s body was washed ashore near Clew Head, while
Arthur’s drifted into a little bay about five miles north of Durrow.
“It was better than being caught,” Mr. Pryor ventured to say at length
to Brian; “but I am grieved about Skerritt.”
“And it is all my doing,” Brian moaned out; “I shall feel now like a
murderer to the end of my days.”
For hours Brian sat repeating this one sentence, and it was not until
Mr. Pryor reminded him Maxwell would be expecting tidings, that he could
rouse him from his fit of despairing remorse.
“I think I had better go round with you and break the news to him,” said
the barrister.
“No, I will do it—I—and I only,” answered Brian.
“But it will be so dreadful a task for you.”
“Only part of my punishment,” he said, with a sort of gloomy
satisfaction; “and I was so happy to-day, and I made so certain he would
get off.” And as he thought of that, he sat down and covered his face
with his hands once more.
“Brian,” said Mr. Pryor, “some one must go to Kincorth and break this
news to Maxwell; if you do not go, I will; for otherwise he will hear it
suddenly, and in his state of health a shock of the kind might prove
fatal.”
“Come with me then!” exclaimed Brian, “I have not courage to go alone.”
And accordingly they drove round to Kincorth by the same road as that
Maxwell Drewitt had followed when he took his son to Durrow.
It was late when they reached Kincorth, but the sick man was still
awake, and anxiously expecting Brian’s return.
He knew, the moment he saw his cousin and Mr. Pryor enter the room
together, that some misfortune had happened.
“You bring me bad tidings,” he said.
“I have no good news,” Brian answered.
“He is taken?”
“No, he is not taken; he has escaped that fate.”
“What do you mean?—if he is not taken, he must have escaped; or has he
not got off yet? Will neither of you speak?—there, you need not tell me,
I know the worst—he’s dead.”
Brian knelt down by the bedside and buried his face in the coverlet. Mr.
Pryor took one of the wasted hands in his, and drawing a chair close up
to Maxwell’s pillow, told him how his boy had been drowned, how the very
efforts they had made to secure his escape had caused his destruction.
Very quietly Maxwell listened to him; through the night he talked of
nothing else, but still Brian knelt by the bedside with his face hidden
in the coverlet praying in a very agony of supplication to the Lord Most
High.
This was vengeance! this was what he had longed for, waited for; this
was the end of all his oaths, of all his hate, ay, and of all his love—a
terrible memory which should abide with him to the end—a gnawing remorse
which, though its teeth might get less sharp in time, was yet certain
never quite to loosen its hold upon him.
This was vengeance: he would have given his life to be able to live the
past year over again with his present experience, retaining his present
feelings. Oh, for power to wipe the sin he had committed off his
conscience, to bring that boy to life again, to restore even comparative
health to his cousin!
This was vengeance—to pass through such agony as he had never felt
before, to wrestle with his anguish, to have to rise up and face his
misery, to hear Maxwell’s voice saying faintly, “Do not vex yourself
about it, Brian; I am content that it should be so.”
This was vengeance. Like him who, in the olden days, drew a bow at a
venture and slew the king of Israel, so Brian had drawn his bow at a
venture, and this was the ruin his arrow had wrought.
Still the waves rolled on and the sea mourned upon the shore; still the
wind blew keen over the ocean, and the billows tossed and lamented, and
the deeps called out to one another through the night; still in the
darkness the great mountains stood proudly aloof; still Mr. Pryor talked
while the thin fingers picked the cotton more restlessly out of the
coverlet, for the end was very nigh at hand, and Maxwell Drewitt was
soon about to pass into that unknown land which is so “very far off.”
CHAPTER XXI.
Sickness onto Death.
Lady Emmeline arrived from London on the day following that on which the
tragedy recorded in the last chapter was acted out, and with her came
Mrs. Ellenham, who repaired, on hearing of her brother’s illness, by
command of her husband, to the Euston Square railway station, where she
proceeded _viâ_ Holyhead and Kingstown to Galway.
She had never been in Ireland from the day of her elopement, until she
travelled back thither to see her brother on his death-bed, and she
would not have gone then, only the law of Colonel Ellenham was as that
of the Medes and Persians, and if he said, “go”—which he did in hopes of
a bequest—there was no alternative but to pack up and depart.
Poor Lady Emmeline was inexpressibly shocked at sight of her husband.
All the love she had once felt for him woke to live again in a moment,
and she wept as genuine tears as she had ever shed in her life when he
put up his white lips to kiss her.
They had lived latterly like cat and dog, but yet she once loved him,
and she loved him now again when he lay dying, thinking, thinking not of
her, but of many a more attractive woman and most of all of Jenny
Bourke, whom he could see standing by the stream at the back of her
brother’s cottage in all the beauty of her young loveliness, so
innocent, so pure, so tender, and so true.
As for Susan, her brother saw her, but that was about all he would do.
From others she heard the story of his unhappy son; from others she
learned how her husband was mixed up in the matter.
“I would go back to London at once,” she said to Mr. Pryor, “if I were
not afraid.” And accordingly, as she was afraid, she remained at
Kincorth, keeping as much out of the way as possible, and generally
conducting herself after a fashion as unlike all the fashions of Susan
Drewitt as can well be imagined.
Matrimony, or perhaps the absence of matrimony for so many years, had
tamed her effectually, and so she roamed about the place and looked at
the improvements, and wondered if Brian would get Kincorth back again,
and wrote long explanatory letters to her husband, and was considered a
very quiet kind of lady by the servants.
As for Brian, he never left the sick man by day nor by night; and when
the end drew very near, when every one saw that the sickness could never
be cured, the disease never mastered; when it became a question not of
weeks but of hours, Maxwell could not bear his cousin to leave him for
an instant.
They had been at deadly feud once, but they were united now; they had
been bitter enemies, but they were now fast friends; and it was Brian,
who, when the last moments came, wiped the damp dews off Maxwell’s face,
and held his hand while he passed through the portals of death.
Thus he departed. Many a time since, Brian Drewitt has recalled that
scene.
It was noon—noon on a dull, damp November day.
The sick man had been lying all the morning thinking, thinking, and at
last he began to talk.
“What’s that you are saying?” he broke out—and Brian knew from his tone
that he was wandering—“That I made nothing? Give me those maps—reach me
those plans;” and then he went on muttering some words which Brian could
not catch. “There is The Headlands,” he said, in a louder key, “and
Cherryfield, and the Calgillan estates. Isn’t it getting very dark, eh?
What’s that? Are you there, Brian? Have I been asleep?”
“I don’t know. Do you feel tired?”
“No; but it is time I was getting to sleep—these winter nights are very
dark. Ring for lights, Brian, I cannot bear this gloom.”
Brian knew then what was coming, and rose and put his strong arms about
his cousin, and lifted him up a little.
“Can you see any better now?” he said.
“No; it is all darkness, all; Brian, is it night or day? Is it light to
you?”
“It is day, Maxwell, though a very dull day, and I can see well enough.”
“Then this is death,” he said; and he stood at last face to face with
the foe he had dreaded all his life.
There was an utter silence for a moment, during which Maxwell appeared
to be solving some problem in his mind.
Over and over he appeared to be turning the question, while his dim eyes
moved restlessly about, as though striving to catch some gleam, however
feeble, of light.
“It grows darker,” he said, at last, and the cold dew of death was on
his forehead.
“It grows darker—don’t leave me, Brian.” But Brian had no thought of
leaving him.
He had lived without God, but he should not die without man—that was the
idea which passed swiftly through his cousin’s mind.
“Do not let me go,” he murmured; and the hand which Brian held tight in
his, grew cold as marble.
“I think I have made a great mistake,”—he spoke these words out so
loudly, that Brian almost started, and they were the last he ever
uttered. The problem was solved, the life-story finished, the purpose
accomplished, the end of all earthly things reached; and with a sigh,
Maxwell Drewitt, who had raised his head a little, fell back dead on his
pillow.
That was the end.
He laboured and planted, he sowed and reaped, he got him great
possessions, he amassed wealth in abundance, he accomplished what he
said he would; he made the howling wilderness a smiling plain; he found
Headlands a wretched piece of barren land, and he left it an Eden.
Whatsoever his hand found to do, that he performed; whatsoever his mind
planned, that he executed; and yet when he spoke the last words of his
life—when he summed up the whole story of his endeavours and his
successes—it proved to have been all “a great mistake.”
Pitiful! most pitiful! In his prime this man was taken away from among
his treasures—from the place he had longed to possess—from the country
of his birth—from the scenes he had loved to gaze over. What did it
matter, then, whether he had been rich or poor, wealthy or indigent,
lofty or lowly, peer or peasant?—what did it matter? what even in life
had the lands and the houses, had the silver and the gold, profited him?
“I think I have made a great mistake.” Was that sentence spoken in time
or in eternity? Was it uttered as his last farewell to earth, or when he
had passed into the land of shadows? His soul was on the threshold of
both worlds at the moment—to which world was the truth addressed? Was it
spoken with the gloom he had complained of settling down upon him, or
with light ineffable flooding the secrets of our humanity, and making
all those things plain which here we see but as through a glass darkly?
Draw down the blinds, and tread lightly across the room, wherein there
is no life left, but only the body which once held a soul.
Maxwell Drewitt has passed into that dim land which he so dreaded to
face. He has gone away, and left his work to be taken up by another
after him.
Never more may he walk by the sea shore, or stand under the arching
trees that shade the avenue, or ride by lake and river, past mountains
and through the valleys—never more for ever.
His works remain after him, but he himself is departed into that silent
land where no echoes of the waves of time can reach the ears of the
sleepers.
With great pomp and ceremony, with grandeur befitting his wealth and his
influence, and the height to which he had climbed, they bore him to
Eversbeg Abbey, and laid him down to rest.
There, so near to where he made his first start in life, he sleeps
well—free from ambitious hopes, from regretful longings. From all
dreads, from all alarms, he is delivered at last. The unquiet heart is
still, the busy mind hushed into repose. The summer’s sun comes each
year and falls warm and bright on the graves in Eversbeg; but the
summer’s sun cannot quicken the cold body into life.
The great mountains rear their blue summits to heaven, the lakes ripple
and ripple, the rivers flow onward to the sea, and the boulders and the
blocks of granite lie scattered about on the hill sides—the great
Atlantic beats against the iron-bound coast, and up the thousand bays
the waves steal gently as ever—on that strange country through which
Maxwell rode when he was still young, when he had life all before him,
the moon looks down with as cold a light, playing as many fantastic
tricks, creeping up the hills, and lying in the waters just as she did
then.
And in the dancing sunlight Kincorth is beautiful as of old; but the man
who coveted Kincorth,—who vowed to have it, who declared before God that
neither woman nor devil should keep it from him,—where is he?
Lying with the rest of his kindred amid the ruins of Eversbeg,
slumbering with the ivy trailing over his tomb, with the birds
chattering all the day long above his head, dreamlessly, until the hour
comes when he shall have to give an account of that life concerning
which he said—he had made a great mistake.
CHAPTER XXII.
Brighter Days.
When Maxwell Drewitt’s will came to be read, it was discovered that he
had left everything which he possessed to his son; but, as Arthur died
before Maxwell, this will became of none effect, and Brian, the
heir-at-law, succeeded to the properties.
And what properties they were! There had never been a Drewitt so rich
for many a long day—never been a Drewitt without mortgages—without
debt—without incumbrances, until Maxwell made his fortune, as I have
told you, and left it for Brian to enjoy.
Amongst the dead man’s papers were found the notes which had been stolen
from Mr. Kearns; and these were delivered to the Dundalk and Drogheda
Banking Company, in precisely the same state as that in which they were
discovered.
Whatever could be done to clear Harold’s memory from the stain that had
lain on it, was done: there were paragraphs inserted in the newspapers;
there were statements read in court; there were communications made to
friends. Mr. Blosse was induced to open his mouth; and every one agreed
that Harold had been shamefully treated; but that the whole proceeding
was “just on a piece” with the rest of Mr. Maxwell Drewitt’s
performances.
“There is no chance now, old fellow, I suppose, of your coming into
partnership with me,” said Mr. Francis Gyton, when he and Brian met once
more at Highgate. “Like all the rest of your countrymen, you will begin
to turn up your nose at business—cut the money-making establishment
altogether, and take to doing the idle and patriarchal.”
“I’ll tell you what I have a great mind to do,” answered Brian.
“Listen attentively, Geraldine,” said Mr. Gyton. “Crœsus has a great
mind to do something; perhaps it may be something for our benefit.”
“No, it is not,” Brian replied. “I have a very great mind to sell all
those Irish properties, and go abroad.”
“Bless my soul!” exclaimed his brother-in-law elect.
“I hate the places!” went on Brian; “I hate the associations! I hate the
country—”
“And you hate the people! That is right, go it, my boy!”
“I wish, Frank, that you would not interrupt me so continually,” said
Brian Drewitt, a little irritably. “There is no human being but myself,”
he proceeded, “can understand the misery I have endured in Ireland—nor
the wretched memories it recalls! If I retain the properties I shall
never reside in Connemara.”
“You need not offer any of them to me, if that is your benevolent
intention,” said Mr. Gyton, hastily; “for I would not be hired to live
in Ireland at a salary of ten thousand a year! It is all very well when
the weather is fine—and it is all very well when you don’t want much
society; but it is the devil when it rains! and when one is shut up in
the house all day—with a fine sea-view and the toothache! London for
me!” finished Mr. Gyton. “I am of London, Londony; I am of the streets,
streety. I detest high tragedy; and your prodigious funerals; and your
outrageous grief; and your excessive sensibilities; and your despairing
remorse; and your eternal hatreds; and your desperate revenges, seem to
me quite out of place in the civilized nineteenth century!”
“The end, and aim, and object of which civilized nineteenth century is
to destroy all hatred, as it has destroyed all love!”
“Well, now, that is really too bad; what do you know about love,
sir?—you who have, ever since I had the honour of making your
acquaintance, been so occupied with a kind of Hibernian Vendetta, that
you have had no leisure even to look at a pretty girl, let alone fall in
love with her.”
“I was not talking about love of that sort, Frank,” answered Brian; “but
about all descriptions of love—love of friends, parents, children,
sisters, brothers.”
“If you have any compassion, Brian, do stop,” entreated Mr. Gyton; “do
not treat me to a long dissertation on vehement attachments, or
never-to-be-forgotten griefs. Allow me to remark that, had you been born
in any other country than in Ireland, you would have been a much more
agreeable individual than is the case.”
“Now, Francis,” interposed Geraldine.
“My sweet child, I am only speaking the truth. Had your brother stood in
my shoes, he would either have been sent to Oxford or put to business
about the time he began nourishing those romantic ideas on the subject
of Kincorth, which ideas have, fortunately for him, been realised.
Hem!—where was I?—oh! yes, at Oxford or the desk. There are two things
in this world which leave a man very little time for developing his
eccentricities, viz., business and pleasure. In a country where you have
neither, as in Ireland, it follows naturally—”
“Excuse me interrupting you,” observed Brian, “but Ireland is usually
considered to be a very pleasure-seeking country.”
“Is it really? where do the poor devils go to seek for it? Precious far
afield I should say. It struck me as being one of the most melancholy
corners of the earth that ever I set my foot in.”
“Yet I suppose you will allow that there is a small portion of wit in
Ireland?”
“There may be; I never heard any Irish wit excepting in England.”
“Probably that was not the fault of the Irish,” answered Brian, with a
slight sneer.
“Thank you for the implied compliment. What I meant to say when you
tripped me up so short was, that one hears a certain number of stock
anecdotes on this side the channel which spoil one for ordinary Irish
conversation. Every Dublin car-driver is not a wit; on the contrary, I
have never heard a really clever speech from one of them, nor am I
acquainted with any person who has. The manner is amusing, I admit; but
the matter will not bear inspection: all of which brings me round to
what I said at first. I would not have to reside in Ireland—indeed I
would not reside in any place at a great distance from London for ten
thousand a year.”
“I certainly was not going to ask you to reside in Ireland,” observed
Brian.
“Then we need not fear any misunderstanding on the subject,” remarked
Mr. Gyton; “and you can proceed with what you were about to say.”
“I have said all I was about to say.”
“No, you have not; you were going to tell us why you thought of going
abroad, where you intended travelling to, and what you purposed doing
when you had reached your destination.”
“There is no use, Frank, in trying to talk seriously to you. Everything
seems to you to bear a comical aspect. To hear you speak I am sure
anybody might think the world was a place only intended by the Almighty
for jibes and jeers, for the fool’s motley, for the cap and bells.”
“After all, the fool’s bells make more lively music than the passing
bells; which appear to be what you delight to listen to. In sober
earnest though, Brian, I do hate to see a man, a wise man, taking life
after your fashion. Is not there happiness in this world, is not there
sunshine, are not there women’s voices, are not there flowers, and birds
and bees and butterflies? Do you think God ever intended we should let
any sorrow or any suffering so dim our eyes that we should never again
be able to look out on life with a sense of enjoyment, with a thrill of
pleasure? Talk to him, Geraldine; tell him what a madman he is to dwell
so sorrowfully on the past, instead of taking pleasure in the present.
Brian,” he added, and for the first time during their acquaintance there
came a touch of passionate entreaty into his voice, “Brian, my brother,
for God’s sake, put that unhappy boy out of your mind; bury your dead,
and leave their graves, and come and stand out in the sunshine, so that
you may make both yourself and those belonging to you happy once more.”
With a gesture almost of despair, Brian lifted his head, and looking
over the great city which lay below them, answered—
“It is too soon yet. You do not know, no man can know, what my life has
been, what I have suffered, how I have sinned. You have never stood, as
I have, at one death-bed after another, where the life had been either
unhappy or wicked. Think of it, Frank: out of your own brighter
experience, judge what mine must have been. Father, mother, brother,
cousin, and cousin’s son—all in five years. Those whom I wanted to make
happy, whom I would have laid down my life to save from grief and
trouble, are all gone where the wealth that is now mine is unavailing. I
never was young; I never had a boy’s heart; I never was like other men I
met, gay and thoughtless and light-hearted. I think you are right,
Frank, after all, and that I was wrong. I believe, had I been brought up
in England, I should have been a better man and a happier than I am ever
likely to be now. Like Maxwell, I have made a great mistake.”
“Well, rectify it then,” answered Mr. Gyton. “It is not too late; it is
never too late while you have breath in your body. I know what you were
going to say: you were going to make some remark about that Arthur,
whose death you have taken a fancy to charge at your own door. There
never was a better day’s work done for that young gentleman than when he
was put so easily out of harm’s way.”
“What shocking things you do say, Frank!” remarked Geraldine.
“If being true makes things shocking, I have no doubt they are so,” he
replied; “but the fact is this. Supposing he had escaped drowning, he
would have lived to be hung to a certainty. I am as positive of that as
I am that I am living. Those are just the kind of youths who come as
surely to the gallows, let them start from what point they may, as that
the sparks fly upward. My uncle is of the same opinion; he thinks that
for the sake of all parties interested it was a great blessing Mr.
Arthur Campnell, or Bourke, or Drewitt, or whatever his name might be,
made his exit when he did. Just fancy that boy in possession of those
properties. I ask you just to fancy it. He would have more misery than
we should ever be able to estimate. Those notes! why you know the lad
who could carry a thing of that kind through coolly must have been the
making of a thorough scoundrel; and if it were only for the suffering he
caused Harold, he richly deserved all he got.”
“That was the way I argued,” Brian groaned. “Heaven, forgive me!”
“There can be no worse article for every-day wear than a delicate
conscience like yours; which first thinks it a duty to avenge the dead,
and then turns round and repents having inflicted punishment on the
object of its deadliest hatred. I think you were born a few centuries
too late, Brian. You would have been a capital fellow for the sack-cloth
and scourging days; and in one respect I think those days were a vast
deal better than our own. Men then wore their sorrow out of sight, and
their penitence too; now they go about with faces as long as my arm,
making everybody they meet miserable, because of some trifling sin that
they chance to have committed in years gone by.”
“That cap fits well, if it were made at random.”
“I did not make it for you,” answered Mr. Gyton, colouring with vexation
at his own stupidity; “and I don’t want to say anything to vex you, only
take my advice. Come out of your shell—mix in the world—share its
pleasures—enjoy its sunshine—don’t go moping about the Continent alone,
and beyond all things, don’t go shut yourself up in those old Irish
estates till you become a monomaniac. Look out for a nice wife—marry—and
forget. If you have done wrong, you must try and do right for the
future. If you have made a mistake, thank God it is not on your
death-bed you have found it out; but with life, years of it before you,
I trust, to make a better thing of than any Drewitt I ever heard of
dreamt of attempting.”
“What are you sermonizing about, Frank?” asked Mr. Pryor, who came at
this moment into the room.
“I am preaching the doctrine of work and common sense in the ears of a
morbid sinner,” was the reply.
“And is he converted?” inquired his uncle, with a smile.
“Give me time,” Brian answered, “give me time; only, of one thing be
sure—I will not sit down with my hands folded and sorrow vainly. I will
do my best. I will not fly my duties. I will not attempt to get rid of
my responsibilities; and should it ever please God to remove the weight
that is lying on my heart, I will become a laughing philosopher like
you, Frank, and find sunshine in the darkest places.”
“That is right!” cried Mr. Gyton, clapping him on the back; while Mr.
Pryor went up to Brian and silently took his hand.
Perhaps the barrister could better estimate the length and breadth, and
height and depth, of the agony that Brian had passed through than any
other man on earth. He had traced the boy’s progress to manhood, and
seen how each year had brought its trial, each day its necessity for
self-command and self-forgetfulness.
He knew, who better? how long even a slight wound takes to heal with
some mental constitutions, and he could not marvel at the effect all his
trials had produced on Brian Drewitt.
For himself, it was many a long day before he could forget either that
night-scene on the coast of the wild West, or that darkened room to
which the man who had thought once no domain large enough for him, was
confined at last.
His life had been prosperous, but the end was so unutterably sorrowful
that it left an impression on Mr. Pryor’s mind like the wail of a
mournful melody, or the sobbing of the wind among the pines at night.
Unmourned, unlamented, the man had passed to his long home, without one
to weep over him and say, “Alas! my brother.”
* * * * *
It was autumn in Connemara once again; the hills were clad in their
robes of purple heather, and the country looked its loveliest, and there
was a great peace on land, on lake, on sea; while under the arching
trees a bridal party came forth from Kincorth; for the daughter of the
house was going to be married to the man she had loved for so long.
As a matter of choice, and as a matter of convenience, the bridegroom
would certainly have preferred that the wedding should be solemnized in
London; but it was a fancy of Brian’s that Frank Gyton should take his
sister from amongst her own people; that in the place where she had been
born she should be married; that with much stately ceremony, with every
festive rejoicing, the son of the English merchant should mate with the
daughter of the Irish gentleman.
Brian would not have been a Drewitt had he not been likewise proud, and
it was more out of pride than out of ostentation that he prepared so
great a feast, and bade so many guests to partake of it. Duranmore had
never seen such a wedding before; such strings of carriages, such
strewing of flowers, such passing under wreaths and garlands, was
unprecedented even in a place where many a well-born bride had been
wooed, and won, and married.
It was a gay sight, and the hearts of the tenantry rejoiced to see such
a cavalcade leaving the gates of Kincorth. Many a day it was since such
a festival had been held at the old home of the Drewitts; and it seemed,
as the people said, like the good old times come back again when the
bride, blushing and happy, walked out of the church porch, leaning on
her husband’s arm, and passed through the people who had known her from
a child, receiving blessings and praises as she went by.
Half the county was at the wedding, and there were great folks from
London staying at Durrow, and the whole country side was alive with
carriages and servants, and spectators and guests.
Lady Emmeline graced the scene with her presence, and presented the
bride with some sweet verses of her own composition, which she secretly
hoped might be read aloud at the breakfast.
She was looking very old and very haggard, poor lady, but she enjoyed
that wedding immensely, and told everybody how fond she had always been
of Geraldine, and how “many people had taken them for mother and
daughter when they were in London together.”
Mr. Gyton was in great force; he was perfectly stupendous in the way of
waistcoat, and gold chain and pocket-handkerchiefs. He drank champagne,
and he grew pathetic; he partook of all manner of good things, and did
such justice to the viands set before him that Frank Gyton sent round a
card to Brian Drewitt, on which he had written, in pencil—
“I hope there is a clever doctor among the company—dread apoplexy.”
Altogether it was, as Mr. Gyton, junior, declared, enormously jolly.
“I think that everybody should come to Ireland to be married,” said one
tremendous young swell, who turned R into W in the most cruel and
unintelligible manner imaginable. “I think every body should come to
Ireland to be married, it is such fun.”
“Yes, and the ten miles’ drive gives one such an appetite,” remarked Mr.
Gyton, senior.
“And, Frank, what did you mean about the climate?” asked his mother. “We
have had three days without a single drop of rain.”
“That is because it never rains single drops in Ireland,” was the reply;
“they always fall plenty at a time.”
“Well, now, you know this is charming,” said one City man. “If one could
make certain of not being shot, I think I should like to end my days
here.”
“Did you ever see such a view?”
“What a delicious house!”
“And how exquisitely furnished!”
“Don’t you wonder Mr. Drewitt has never married?”
“Hasn’t had the property long; was a clerk in Mr. Gyton’s office in the
City.”
“Dear me, how singular!”
“And he proposed for her in her poverty?”
“Yes, and takes her from here with a handsome fortune, I am told.”
“How romantic!”
“Virtue rewarded.”
And so the talk ran on, while the groom’s-man implored one of the
bridesmaids to tell him who that wonderful piece of antiquity was,
seated on the other side of the table.
“That, sir,” said the young lady, demurely, “is my cousin, Lady Emmeline
Drewitt.”
“I am sure, I beg your pardon; really that is—”
“She is the widow of the late proprietor of Kincorth,” proceeded Miss
Vervensoe, who rather enjoyed her companion’s confusion. “She is very
wealthy, and has been considered very handsome.”
“Really, now you speak of it—yes, to be sure, bears traces of having
been very beautiful.”
“I have never detected those traces myself,” said the young Irish belle,
“for it is little more than a tradition with us. Mr. Pryor, however,
declares he can remember her a most graceful and fascinating woman when
he stood for Duranmore in 1832.”
“I had not the least idea Pryor was so old—1832 carries us back into the
remote ages of antiquity.”
“I suppose it does, to about the time the Pyramids were built,” answered
Miss Vervensoe, a little pertly. She had some pretensions to talent, and
indulged in satirical poetry, and on her return home wrote some very
smart lines descriptive of the wedding-breakfast generally, and of her
conversational friend particularly.
“Are you coming to the ball to-night?” she asked.
Of course he was. Did not every one intend coming to it, or rather
staying for it, who had got an invitation? “For his part,” and here the
speaker became slightly tender in his manner; “for his part, he quite
agreed with Mr. Sherwood and Mr. Gyton, that everybody ought to come to
Ireland to get married.”
Which observation Miss Vervensoe shrined in her poem with an addendum of
her own, to the effect that she thought a good many people would have to
bring the wives with them.
On the whole, Miss Vervensoe was not a nice young lady; not a young lady
it would have been well for Brian Drewitt to marry; though it was her
mother’s intention that he should marry her, if the thing were
compassable.
Lady Emmeline, also, was very desirous that her sweetest “Anne” should
become mistress of Kincorth; and Mr. Dolf Vervensoe told his daughter
that he should think her a “damned deal cleverer even than she thought
herself, if she could bring Brian Drewitt to book!”
But through that danger the young man passed scatheless. He was not a
person very easy to satisfy, either in the matter of beauty or of
anything else; and accordingly, he waited, and waited, till, quite by
chance, as it seemed to them both, he met one day with a bright,
loveable, English country-girl, who had been brought up very quietly in
her father’s old-fashioned parsonage-house—whence Brian Drewitt took her
to himself, without any fuss or ceremonial or excitement whatsoever.
Geraldine always declared he took a fancy to the girl because she
resembled their mother; and Brian did not contradict her assertion.
When the spring was shyly putting out its soft green leaves—when the
winter’s frosts were over, and the winter’s snows gone—when the balmy
south wind began to blow, bringing flowers and buds on its genial
breath, Brian Drewitt took his young wife home to Kincorth, which he has
never talked of selling from that hour.
She was his home-angel! his sweet, pretty, cheerful treasure! and he
told her so one day, when she began, in her winning way, to coax him to
tell her why he ever married her—he, so rich! so grand! who might have
wooed and won some wonderful heiress—some great beauty; and he added,
also, a statement which was true as Holy Writ—viz., that, when he first
looked in her face, he felt its expression comfort him as nothing else
had comforted him since that sad day when he stood beside his mother’s
coffin, and felt almost as though his heart were broken!
CONCLUSION.
Thus they were all at rest at last—they who had loved, and they who had
hated; the years had passed by, and brought peace with them—peace to the
dead—peace to the living.
As for Brian Drewitt, who is a good landlord and a faithful steward, he
can think over the past now without anguish—without despair.
There was once a time in his life when, had any one foretold that into
so quiet a haven his soul could ever drift, he would have derided the
idea, and scoffed it to scorn; there was once a time when he lived but
for vengeance—once—but that was gone.
Like a tale that was told—like a watch in the night—like a storm which
was spent, so the great thirst for revenge had died out, and left, it
might be, a still greater grief, but a more holy feeling behind.
The draught he had once panted and sickened for—the power to ruin
Maxwell—to hurl him from his pinnacle of worldly greatness into the very
depths of poverty—never slackened his feverish thirst, it is true; but
he had drained another goblet to the dregs, and found at the bottom,
bitterness—in its sweetness, death.
Well, it was all over now; the desire, the sin, the remorse—the fever
which had once dried up his very blood—which had burnt and consumed
him—which had eaten into his heart and torn at his vitals, had subsided;
and he now looked back at the days and the years of his awful sickness
as one might who, having recovered from the frenzy of madness, tries to
recall the sensations, and the events and the phases, and the once great
leading passion of his lunacy.
So he looked back from a safe and sure haven at last, over the waves of
that troublous ocean where he had waged so unequal a fight; where he had
seen his purest and best hopes shipwrecked; where he had beheld _her_ go
down amongst the billows, never to rise till eternity again; where he
had struck out madly to reach his enemy; where after years he stood by
the shore watching Maxwell sink lower and lower in the flood,
proclaiming with his last breath that life had not been to him all
happiness—that somewhere, or all through, he had made a great mistake.
The storm had swept by, but it had left traces behind it—such traces as,
that wife, nor child, nor friend, ever after saw Brian Drewitt laugh.
He said he was well and happy; and so he was; but such passions as had
dwelt in his breast are enemies who never quit a man without leaving
tracks of sorrow and traces of sin, long deep scars and ugly furrows
behind them, that not even the soft caresses of his loving wife, the
sunshine of domestic happiness could entirely heal.
There was a shade, even to that bright sunshine; for long after his lips
had ceased to pronounce her name; when to mere casual observers the sore
seemed healed, the wound cicatrized; when children climbed his knee, and
young tongues called him father, and tiny hands clutched his hair, and
little essayists in the sublime mystery of walking came toddling towards
him, forcing the grave, stern face to relax and smile—Brian Drewitt was
still weeping at heart for her who had been his mother.
Whenever he visited London, he often took long morning walks alone, and
by his resolute persistency in refusing her companionship his sister
knew whither he was gone.
In one direction he invariably turned his steps—to that churchyard
where, as I have said, the setting sun casts its departing rays on the
graves of the loved and lost.
In that churchyard there is still one little piece of ground kept bright
and beautiful by the living, in remembrance of the dead; and beside that
grave Brian Drewitt will stand motionless, with his arms folded and his
eyes fixed on the only inscription except her name which the white
marble bears: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”
THE END.
PRINTING OFFICE OF THE PUBLISHER.
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
Page Changed from Changed to
132 He never seemed to have courage He never seemed to have courage
expect when he except when he
202 increased, and very facility increased, and every facility
afforded him for pushing afforded him for pushing
270 bare of foliage, but there were bare of foliage, but there were
still enough leaver still enough leaves
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