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
● Fixed typos; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.
● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
● The caret (^) is used to indicate superscript, whether applied to a
single character (as in 2^d) or to an entire expression (as in
1^{st}).