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.