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.