EACH VOLUME SOLD SEPARATELY.
COLLECTION
OF
BRITISH AUTHORS
TAUCHNITZ EDITION.
VOL. 809.
MAXWELL DREWITT BY F. G. TRAFFORD
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. 1.
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. 809.
MAXWELL DREWITT BY F. G. TRAFFORD.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
MAXWELL DREWITT.
A NOVEL.
BY
F. G. TRAFFORD,
AUTHOR OF “GEORGE GEITH,” ETC.
_COPYRIGHT EDITION._
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
LEIPZIG
BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ
1866.
_The Right of Translation is reserved._
CONTENTS
OF VOLUME I.
Page
CHAPTER I. Diamond cut Diamond 1
— II. Maxwell’s Little Game 14
— III. The Master of Kincorth 33
— IV. Coming Home 50
— V. Peacemaking 62
— VI. At the Hustings 76
— VII. The Result of the Poll 93
— VIII. Not Dead 113
— IX. Mrs. Drewitt understands 125
— X. Maxwell’s Engagements 142
— XI. Warned 158
— XII. Son and Heir 172
— XIII. Maxwell’s Improvements 187
— XIV. Next 203
— XV. Man and Beast 218
— XVI. Poor Jenny 230
— XVII. Master Harold 243
— XVIII. A Little Political Economy 260
— XIX. Durrow 278
— XX. A Little Leap 294
— XXI. Help 307
MAXWELL DREWITT.
CHAPTER I.
Diamond cut Diamond.
“Confoundedly unlucky for you, Max.”
“Truth, though you spoke it, my boy.”
Having uttered which civil reply, Mr. Maxwell Drewitt flung the fag-end
of a cigar he had been gnawing out of the window, lit another, and
commenced smoking like a chimney.
I wonder, reader, what opinion you, looking into that little
sitting-room, would be inclined to form concerning the two men who
tenanted it—what sort of character you would naturally attribute to
each—what precise road through life you might think it most probable
they would respectively follow.
That tall one lolling on the sofa will, if you ask his name, answer,
“Tim Ryan, at your service;” whilst the younger man, supposing you put
the same question to him, would first inquire, “What the deuce business
it was of yours?” and finally give in to the fact, that people did call
him Maxwell Drewitt, nephew to Archibald Drewitt, Esquire, of Kincorth,
near Duranmore, Connemara, Galway, Ireland.
It is the story of Maxwell Drewitt’s life which I am about to try to
tell, and I must ask you before we go further, to look attentively at
him, and at the man whom for lack of a better word must be called his
friend.
There they sit in the sunlight, in the parlour of Mr. Ryan’s house,
which is a long, low, two-storey, whitewashed cottage, standing a little
back from the highroad leading to Duranmore. There they are for you to
study at your leisure. Ryan fair; Drewitt dark; the former grey-eyed,
reddish haired, wide-mouthed, and eight-and-twenty; the latter nearly
six years younger, slightly made, and rather under than over the middle
height, with dark eyes, dark complexion, and regular features.
Nothing very remarkable, you think, about either of them in face, dress,
circumstances, or expression.
Perhaps you may judge that Ryan is inclined to mirth, whilst Drewitt
affects gravity; that Max has more brains than Tim, and Tim a better
temper than Max; but still, notwithstanding Ryan turns his eyes at times
in a way which is not pleasant, and although when Drewitt speaks he has
a peculiar and most ungraceful knack of not moving his lips like other
people, you see nothing evil in either face.
Look again, look steadily, and be sure. Nothing evil? No, decidedly not;
and this time you are certain of the accuracy of your observation.
All of which only proves that, spite of Lavater, faces are oftentimes
great lies. They are the paper-money of society, for which, on demand,
there frequently proves to be no gold in the human coffer.
Maxwell Drewitt’s face, at any rate, was a lie, for it told no
unpleasant tales about his character. There was nothing disagreeable in
its expression; there was no shadow of evil in his eyes, and yet the
person that knew him best perhaps on earth—his uncle—once declared, “the
man who trusted Maxwell Drewitt twice was a fool.”
He had been that fool, so it is fair to suppose him a competent judge in
the matter.
Wherever Maxwell Drewitt had been born; under whatsoever circumstances
he had been brought up; had he been the son of a bishop, or the heir of
a duke, there can be no reasonable doubt but that he would have turned
out just as bad a man, though, perhaps, a man differently bad.
With Timothy Ryan the case was different. It seemed as though Nature had
hardly been able to decide what to make of him; that she had hesitated
between an honest man and a rogue; and that while she remained
irresolute, training and nurture took the matter into their own hands,
and did the worst for him they could.
He himself was wont to declare he was as honest as he could afford to
be; and if such were the case we can only suppose that the smallness of
his capital restricted his expenditure of probity and fair dealing to
almost a minimum sum per annum.
There ensued a long pause after the two remarks I have recorded, during
which the younger man puffed the smoke of his cigar out into the summer
air, and the elder toyed with the tassels of the window-curtains and
looked forth upon Duranmore Bay.
“Confoundedly unlucky,” he at length repeated, bringing his eyes back
from the sea and the mountains, and stretching one long leg across a
neighbouring chair—“confoundedly unlucky, indeed.”
“You have made that remark three times,” answered Mr. Drewitt, “and I do
not see that it grows any less true by repetition, for which reason let
us quit talking about the matter. If I am not at Kincorth I shall be
elsewhere. We must always be someplace, Tim; on the earth, or in it.
What’s done is done, and there is no use fretting over it. When one door
is shut, another is open. The thing that has been predestined from the
beginning of time must come to pass before the end of it. Are not those
your sentiments?”
“Yes, but then we never know what has been predestined till it actually
happens; and this cursed marriage has not come off yet. Though I am a
firm fatalist, still I never leave anything for fate to do that I can do
for myself, and should advise you ditto. Can’t you scotch the wheel,
Max?”
“I? No,” replied the other.
“Nor loosen a screw, nor upset the coach matrimonial, nor—nor do
anything, my son?”
“Not a thing,” said Mr. Drewitt out of one side of his mouth.
“Could you not go to London and marry her yourself?”
“And saddle myself with a poor wife, and in due time a tribe of hungry
brats, leaving my worthy uncle at liberty to marry any one else whom he
might take it into his wise head to fancy. No thank you, Tim, I am
rather too wide awake for that. Let him bring home his young wife; I
won’t try to prevent him.”
“They say she is pretty, Max, as well as young,” remarked Mr. Ryan. “She
will wind him round her finger. There will be some stir at the old place
when she comes over.”
“Yes, the same stir there always has been,” said Maxwell Drewitt with a
malicious smile, “a rustling of bills, and clamour of duns, a rumour of
writs and dread of bailiffs. I wish the lady joy of her bargain. She
will see hundreds going out, but not a sixpence will she ever be able to
keep in her purse. She will have to pay the servants’ wages with
promises, and manage her housekeeping on credit, and turn her silk gowns
three times. She will be the scapegoat in trouble, the stay at home in
pleasure. She will have to teach Willy and Katty, and fight it out with
Sue. She will have no excitement from year’s end to year’s end, for it
is not likely she can either drink or hunt. Altogether, Mrs. Archibald
Drewitt of Kincorth will have an agreeable life of it, and if she were
the devil I pity her.”
At that Ryan looked up. “You pity her?” he repeated slowly and
doubtingly, for he knew his companion seldom pitied any but those he was
resolved should ere long require an abundance of the article from some
one. “You pity her?”
“Yes, faith,” answered the other; “I know what Kincorth has been to us;
I know what it will be to her. But hang it, Ryan, let us quit talking
about this new martyr; put a cigar in your mouth and shut up.”
“They say,” continued Mr. Ryan, unheeding his friend’s polite request,
“that your uncle intends settling Kincorth upon her.”
For a moment Maxwell Drewitt remained silent, while his face changed and
darkened; then he answered—
“Likely enough. The man’s in love, you know.”
“So he may be,” replied Ryan, “but justice is justice for all that; and
it is not justice to cut you out of the house and demesne for ever.”
“And a day,” finished the smoker; “but bless your soul, it may just as
well be decided, now that I am never to be a farthing the better for any
Drewitt living or dead, except myself. It must have come to this sooner
or later, and I say it is better sooner, than later.”
“Then how am I to be paid?” inquired the other. At which question Mr.
Maxwell Drewitt raised his eyebrows and shrugged his shoulders and
looked full in his friend’s face while he laughed aloud.
“What the devil is amusing you?” asked Ryan angrily.
“So you were waiting to be paid out of Kincorth, were you?” answered Mr.
Drewitt. “You would have been content to run barefoot till Archibald
Drewitt dropped off his shoes some fine winter morning following the
hounds, or slipped his feet out of them after a night’s hard drinking
preparatory to taking a sound sleep in Eversbeg Abbey. Laugh!—it is
enough to make a cat laugh to think of such patience.”
“I was not waiting for his death,” retorted Ryan. “I thought he would do
something for you before long—make some suitable provision for the next
heir.”
“You chanced to be damnably out in your thought, then,” replied the
younger man; “that is all the remark I have to offer on the subject.”
“Well, then, how am I to be paid?” repeated Mr. Ryan. “You owe me more
than I can afford to lose, Max, and——”
“Don’t trouble yourself to make a speech,” interrupted Drewitt, “there
is no audience; you want to know how you are to be paid. I’ll pay you.
You perhaps want to know when. Within twelve months. You may further
desire to know how, but that is my business, not yours. Now let us talk
about something else.”
“If you have not much gold, you have lots of brass,” remarked the other:
“you borrow and borrow and borrow, and then say I am not to ask a
question about repayment.”
“Are you going to dun me, Ryan?”
“I do not want to dun you; I only wish to know how I am to be paid.”
“I have told you I will pay you within twelve months from this present
hour.”
“But how? How is it possible?”
“Mr. Timothy Ryan,” broke in his friend, “there is only one way in which
a man without a pound note in his pocket can possibly pay his debts
honourably—with an ounce of lead. If you would choose that settlement
between us I can have no possible objection to such an arrangement; but
if, on the other hand, you prefer taking your principal and interest in
the coin of the realm you must wait my time, and my time is a year from
this date.”
“Have your year, then,” said the other, sulkily. “I don’t want to press
you. I only——”
“That’s right,” answered Mr. Drewitt, as his friend paused. “Now let us
talk about something else.”
“What else? The election?”
“Thank you. I hear enough about that up at the house. The very name of
it drives me away. I am sick and tired to death of the whole confounded
humbug;” and as he concluded, the young man rose from his chair, placed
a somewhat shabby hat jauntily on his head, and prepared to take his
departure.
“Stop a minute,” entreated Ryan. “You know the seat is to be contested
this time, and pretty hotly too. Sache is not going to walk over the
course as Abbott did. You are old enough to take some decided part on
your own account. Which party do you side with?”
“Really, I have never thought about the matter; but I will now. Let me
see—who is my uncle for?”
“Sache, of course.”
“Then I am for Ryan, of course,” returned Mr. Drewitt.
“May we count upon your assistance?” asked Ryan eagerly.
“I do not know,” answered the younger man. “Any good likely to come of
it?” he inquired, after a moment’s pause.
“What is your figure?” said Ryan. (Among friends, you see, reader, much
ceremony can be dispensed with.) “What is your figure?”
“That place of Lynch’s has just fallen in—that place near Eversbeg—round
the headland, I mean—between the abbey and the shore.”
“Oh, that! It is promised to Hunter, a Scotch fellow. He talked about
building a good house on it.”
“Did he? Well, talk’s cheaper than building, any day. It is a nice farm
though, and you can just mention to Waller that I like it, and that
Hunter is a Sacheite. I would take it without a fine, on lease of
Waller’s life. You might think it over. Good-bye.” And without waiting
for an answer, Mr. Drewitt strolled leisurely out of the house, and
wended his way towards home.
“It is my belief,” remarked Mr. Ryan, as he watched his visitor’s
departure, “it is my belief, Max, that you are the making of as great a
scoundrel as ever broke bread.”
And considering Mr. Timothy Ryan was a long way from being a honest man
himself, this remark may be regarded as a solemn truth, for Mr. Maxwell
Drewitt’s friend was by no means biased in his judgment, either by the
prejudices of superior virtue or by any contracted ideas as to the
number of vices requisite to form a scoundrel.
It was simply the confession of faith of a man who stuck at few things,
concerning the character of a man who stuck at none; and when he had
given utterance to his opinion in the sentence recorded, Timothy Ryan,
Esq., solicitor, felt himself wonderfully relieved, and at liberty to
retire from the window to a table covered with books and papers and
letters and deeds and leases, where he was soon up to his ears in
business.
He had not been writing for more than fifteen minutes, however, when
Maxwell Drewitt re-appeared.
He came lounging into the room with the same immoveable expression on
his countenance, and the eternal cigar between his lips—for Maxwell
Drewitt lived smoking; he did nothing without either a pipe or a weed in
his mouth, and the principal reason perhaps why he liked tobacco was,
because his uncle detested it.
“I say, Ryan,” began the young man, taking one hand out of his pocket in
order to knock the ash off his cigar, “I say, Ryan, lend me a pen and
sheet of paper, will you, for five minutes? I want to send a letter off
to-day, and it will be too late for post, I find, if I go back to
Kincorth. There, don’t disturb yourself—that will do.”
And as he concluded, the speaker pulled a chair up to the opposite end
of the table, dragged the writing materials his friend looked out,
towards him, and then, after sitting biting his nails for a few seconds,
shaded the top of the sheet with his hand, dipped his pen in the ink,
muttered an oath about the latter being so infernally thick, and began.
Busily the quill at the lawyer’s desk went scratching over the foolscap;
rapidly was line after line completed; hurriedly were erasures made and
other sentences substituted; but spite of all his hurry, Mr. Ryan
managed to keep an eye on his visitor, and tried to make out what he was
writing.
He might as well have spared himself the trouble, for even when Maxwell
did lift his hand for a moment from the top of the page to the end, that
he might finish biting his nails down to the quick, Mr. Ryan found it
impossible to read his friend’s letter upside down.
“Never mind,” he thought, “I shall know all about it one of these days.
Judging from his face, he means no good to some poor devil.”
Mr. Ryan was right, and if you, dear reader, would like to watch the
progress of Mr. Maxwell Drewitt’s little game, we can walk round to the
other end of the table, and read the epistle over his shoulder.
[PRIVATE.]
“Inchnagawn Cottage, near Duranmore,
June 11th, 18—.
“DEAR SIR,—I suppose you have heard ere this that my uncle is going to
be married to a young lady named Dyak, a daughter of Colonel Dyak, of
London, but conclude that his intention of settling Kincorth upon her
will be as new to you as it was until last night to me.
“I am sure it will seem but natural to you that I should wish to
prevent this, as you are aware that by the terms of my grandfather’s
will, my father, the elder son, was disinherited, and that my sisters
and self were consequently left dependent on the generosity, or
justice, of my uncle.
“You will at once see the effect of such a settlement. It would cut me
off for ever from all hope of possessing this portion of my
grandfather’s property; as in case of my uncle dying without issue,
Kincorth would pass absolutely to Mrs. Drewitt, who would thus be left
at liberty to contract a second marriage, and to will the house and
demesne to whom she pleased.
“Further, it would render your chances of repayment almost indefinite,
Kincorth being the gem of the property; indeed, the result of the
whole arrangement would be to place Kincorth beyond the reach of Mr.
Drewitt’s creditors; and though there is no doubt but that he would
bitterly repent his imprudence in after years, at the present moment
any remonstrance on my part would only tend to produce an estrangement
between us.
“I want nothing except what is fair, and certainly think as the lady
has no fortune of her own, that some settlement is desirable. But an
equitable settlement is one thing, and making over an entire estate to
a stranger, another.
“However, I now leave the matter entirely in your hands, to act as you
think best, _for you are the only person who can interfere with
advantage to all parties_, and shall only beg that you will in any
case consider this letter as strictly confidential.
“Trusting your health is re-established,
“I remain, dear sir,
“Yours faithfully,
“MAXWELL DREWITT.
“P.S.—I am at present staying with my friend Mr. Thomas Ryan, and
shall feel obliged by your directing me here _under cover_ to him.”
“So you have finished at last, Max?” remarked the attorney, as his
visitor commenced folding up his letter. “I think the sky must be going
to fall when you take to the quill. Surely you have not gone and done
it?”
“Gone and done what?” demanded the younger man, hurriedly.
“Put your foot in your fortune—made a fool of yourself—fallen in love.”
“Fallen in nonsense!” retorted Mr. Drewitt. “No, Tim, I’m not in love
with anybody, unless it be with myself.”
“Ah! that’s best. You will have no rivals there,” replied the lawyer,
which remark Maxwell affected not to hear.
“You are not writing love-letters, then?” persisted Mr. Ryan.
“Not I, faith; the sort of love-letters I want to fall in with are money
letters. Thank God, I am not such a fool as you are, Tim.”
“You are thankful for small mercies,” was the retort, uttered as Mr.
Drewitt reached the door. “Are you off in a huff? Well, good-bye—but
stay—when shall I see you again about the election?”
“Damn the election!” replied the young hypocrite. “Do you think I have
nothing to interest me but drunken voters and lying candidates? I’ll
come when it suits me; and besides, I have not yet made up my mind
whether I will be your man or not.”
“You had better, then, lose no time about making it up,” snapped back
Ryan; “for Sache and his people are in the field already, and we ought
to be there too.”
“That is your affair,” said Drewitt, as he passed out into the hall.
“Adieu, my dear fellow, _au revoir!_” And this time he banged the door
after him and was fairly off.
“Some day,” soliloquized the lawyer, “some day, Maxwell Drewitt, I shall
pay you out in your own coin. Some day when you stand in no need of me,
nor I of you, then we shall be equals—then we shall have many an old
score to settle. Meanwhile——”
He went back to his work, leaving the remainder of the sentence
unspoken; and as it would be but waste of time for us to follow his
thoughts, we will step out into the bright sunshine, and track Mr.
Drewitt’s indolent footsteps home.