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.