Maxwell’s Little Game.
Very leisurely Mr. Maxwell Drewitt lounged along, for it was part of
that young man’s creed to work rather with his head than with his body.
In that caldron he was eternally brewing something which turned out food
for him, and poison for other people.
From childhood he had been plotting and scheming, and by dint of long
thought and care and study he had finally reached almost the top step of
the ladder of hypocrisy, and was, as Ryan said, “the making of as great
a scoundrel as ever lived.”
So he went on his way very slowly, with his hands plunged in his
pockets. Kicking the small stones ruthlessly before him, he went along
the road leading to Duranmore, where, having posted his letter, he
turned aside from the regular thoroughfare and descended to the beach,
along which there was a path, though a circuitous one, home.
Sometimes he looked over the bay; but more generally he kept his eyes
riveted on the ground.
Written on the sands he saw the story of his future life traced
out—riches, prosperity, success; he beheld them all. There were
obstacles, but he crushed them; impediments, but he removed them; foes,
but he annihilated them.
“Yes, yes,” he cried at last, halting suddenly, and looking away towards
the hills that rose to heaven—“Yes, yes, Kincorth, you shall yet be
mine—you and many a fair property beside; but you in especial, because I
have sworn that neither man nor devil shall keep you from me. And shall
a woman? No, before God!”
And the veins came swelling up in his forehead as he stretched out one
clenched hand towards Kincorth, and registered his oath.
There lay his home—his home where he lived a dependent—which was his,
only so long as his uncle’s charity chose to give him the shelter of its
roof.
Look at it, reader, intently as he did, for it was destined to bring
agony unto many hearts, to curse many lives, to peril some souls.
Kincorth! there was not a lovelier spot in Ireland; and is not that
almost equivalent to saying there was not a lovelier spot in the wide
world?
Halfway up a hill stood the house, backed by dark plantations,
surrounded by woods and long belts of trees, and verdant fields and
trickling streams. It was built of the blue granite for which Galway is
noted, and some Drewitt had in other days erected a porch of black
marble, around the pillars of which wreathed roses and fuchsias and
myrtles.
There was the flower-garden, with its hedges of sweetbriar and
evergreens, with its baskets of wickerwork filled with mignonette.
There were rose-trees covered with buds, and little wild Scotch bushes
that crept close to the ground, and strewed it with a carpet of white
and yellow leaves. There were perfumed syringas, Italian broom, and
barberry-trees, and beds of tulips.
There was a fountain in the centre where the supply of water never
failed, and creepers and passionflowers and honeysuckles grew about the
inclosure at their own sweet will.
Kincorth had also its glen and waterfall, and at the top of the fall
there stood a dilapidated summer-house, from which you could see away
and away over the sea and the land. The trackless ocean and the distant
mountains, the villages and hamlets below, and the dashing water near at
hand—all were visible from this place, which was made of fir, and
ornamented with shells, and shaded with sycamore and chesnut trees.
Then there was the old entrance, built of the same dark stone as the
house, half covered with wild white roses, whilst the lodge looked
brilliant in its scarlet deckings of pyracanthus, the blossoms of which
mixed among the white buds that were straggling about everywhere, and
trying to effect an entrance even at the latticed windows.
There were holes in the roof and breakages in the wall; but trees shaded
the one, and wild flowers concealed the other; and Kincorth, with all
its dilapidations—with its ruined buildings, and trailing brambles, and
unmown grass, and unpruned trees—looked beautiful in the dancing
sunshine.
“And it was this place he wanted to settle on her, and secure from me,”
muttered Maxwell, as he entered the drive, across which the branches of
the dark trees met and formed a sort of cathedral roof; and again he
paused, and with arms folded across his chest, with his lips tightly
pressed together, and his dark brows bent down looked up at the house
once more.
Look at him now, reader. Would you like to be an obstacle in his path?
Would you care to be a thing in his way? Cannot you see he would stamp
you into the earth as he stamps his heel into the gravel? Would it not
be an awful thing to have to plead to that man for mercy?—to hear him
answer you with that mocking devil in his eyes, out of those thin,
relentless lips?
He is young now: what will he be when he is old? He is just starting on
life’s journey: what will he be when the road has been traversed—when
the world has hardened him—when experience has matured him? If you come
on to the end, you shall see what he is like when the raven hair is
gray, and the keen eyes dulled, and the devil within satisfied—you shall
see. Meantime he stands with the evening sunbeams making their way
through the trees and falling aslant on his figure, and lighting up the
green and beautiful sward and the plotting, scheming, wary man whose
heart was full of bitterness, whose soul was full of hate.
Kincorth should have been his! If primogeniture were worth anything—if
being the eldest son of the eldest son entitled a man to name and land
and houses—Maxwell Drewitt ought to have been master of Kincorth, and
Archibald should have been eking out existence somewhere else as best he
could.
What had George Drewitt done that his father should cut him off? In the
natural course George Drewitt would have succeeded Nicholas Drewitt,
Maxwell’s grandfather, save for one deadly sin which he committed. He
married a nobody, and a Roman Catholic; and though he tried to keep his
indiscretion a secret, it came finally to his father’s ears, who cut him
off with a shilling on the spot.
“I would as soon you had married the devil, sir!” thundered the old man;
and before very long poor Nicholas Drewitt found he might almost as soon
have mated with that objectionable personage as with his wife, who,
fortunately perhaps for all parties, died in giving birth to her fourth
child, leaving George Drewitt at liberty to marry again if he pleased.
But George Drewitt did not please; he lived to get his shilling
certainly, and to see his brother Archibald owner of Kincorth; he lived
to move himself and his children back as guests to the old place which
he had expected to possess; and then he quietly slipped out of this
world, leaving Maxwell and his sisters to be provided for by their
uncle, a man full of good intentions, who offered to see to them as if
they were his own boys and girls.
“I promise you, George, so long as I have sixpence they shall share it.
I swear it, and you may die happy,” he said to the dying man; who,
whether he died happy or not, accepted the promise and departed, leaving
Archibald Drewitt to perform his good intentions if he could.
It is something more than probable that the owner of Kincorth fulfilled
his promise strictly to the letter, though his own embarrassments and
wretched mismanagement made it impossible for him to carry out the
scheme he had proposed to himself in the spirit.
“I will put aside a certain amount,” he determined, “and devote it to
Maxwell’s education and to portioning his sisters.” A good resolution,
and perhaps only fair, but one which Mr. Drewitt found he could never
carry into practice.
He would have done just the same by his own children; he would have
planned all manner of good things for their benefit, and then he would
have let them grow up as he let his nephews and nieces grow
up—uneducated, untrained, unprovided for.
The curse of the Drewitts, improvidence, was on him, and the consequence
was that, though Maxwell Drewitt and his sisters had food and shelter
out of their grandfather’s property, they had little more.
Maxwell was not sent to college nor the girls to school. Ready money was
one of those things which Mr. Drewitt only knew by name; of himself he
had no acquaintance with it. That George Drewitt’s family did not grow
up idiots was attributable rather to their own natural cleverness than
to any advantages of society or education provided for them by their
uncle. Kincorth was swamped with debt. Every blade of grass, every ear
of corn, was due to some one ere ever it lifted its head above ground;
the description given to Ryan by Maxwell of the state of things at his
uncle’s was not exaggerated in the slightest, and while duns and
bailiffs besieged the old home of the Drewitts, Maxwell looked on, and
gnashed his teeth, and thought how, if _he_ had the management, Kincorth
should soon be clear of debt and the Drewitts rear their heads in the
county once again.
From his mother he had inherited a clear clever head—a head calculated
to look closely and warily after the interests of No. 1. His hospitality
would not have carried him away; his generosity would never have made
him a poorer man; and it was natural perhaps for such a temper to be
irritated with the senseless prodigality of his uncle’s _ménage_, and to
feel more angry at what Mr. Drewitt had left undone than grateful for
that which he had performed.
Above all, Maxwell Drewitt had been brought up a martyr; since boyhood
he had thought his uncle a usurper, himself the lawful heir. With that
love for the first-born which is so distinguishing a feature of the
Irish, his nurse had always regarded him as “wronged,” and had taught
him to believe himself so. We read in a very ancient book that when
Jacob put his hand on the head of Ephraim, Joseph was displeased, and
just so the mass of the poorer population, much as they liked Archibald
Drewitt, still considered that the boy had been hardly done by, and that
he was the rightful owner of all the broad acres that went sloping to
the sea.
With this idea Maxwell grew up: he had been done out of the estate by
his grandfather; he was being kept out of it by his uncle, but the day
must come when the property would revert to him. He was the heir.
Kincorth must eventually return to the only son of the eldest son—and
then—
Then all at once came the news that Mr. Drewitt was about to marry.
“And if he marry,” thought Maxwell Drewitt, as he lay awake and tossed
about from side to side of his bed; “and if he marry—and if he have
sons—where am I?”
That was the question Archibald Drewitt ought to have considered when he
adopted the children, but which he had never thought about, first or
last.
“What was to become of them?” girls who could never earn enough to buy
shoes to their feet? A young man who could ride across country—bring
down his bird—dance all night—walk all day—but who knew nothing likely
to put a guinea in his pocket—what was to become of him?—“What was to
become of them?”
I echo the question which Maxwell Drewitt put to himself as he lay
thinking out all manner of disagreeable and evil thoughts in the
darkness.
All the stories he had read and scoffed at of self-made men came into
his head. “Why should not a gentleman’s son do well too? Why should not
a Drewitt and an Irishman make money if he could? What the devil could
there be in those English people that made them seem able to turn the
very dirt under their feet to gold? Could _he_ do nothing? Was there no
El Dorado to which he might turn his steps? If he had Kincorth, could he
not make money out of it? And if he tried the same scheme with any other
place, might he not do well with that?”
And Maxwell Drewitt sprang out of bed as he thought of this, and looked
down over the trees, away and away towards Duranmore, which lay by the
sea-shore, looking dark and disconsolate in the first dawn of morning.
He looked beyond Duranmore—at something he saw in his mind’s eye, but
which certainly his outward vision could not have presented to him. “I
will have that,” he said, and he went back to bed again and fell asleep
as calmly and peacefully as a child.
From that night the young man formed his plans. Ready money he, like his
uncle, had none, and like his uncle also he was considerably in debt. He
had no property save some forty acres of freehold land that came to him
through his maternal grandfather, and which, having been let during his
minority to a farmer, were now available if Maxwell chose to give him
the usual notice. The land, however, was poor and unproductive, and
though there was a house on the ground, it had been left to go to rack
and ruin for so long a time that it was almost uninhabitable.
So far the future was unpromising enough. Poor and involved, with no
profession, with no cash in hand, with no property save a neglected
piece of barren land, value certainly not exceeding 25_l._ a-year—how
could the man push his way to fortune?
It was not a cheerful prospect for any one, but still Maxwell Drewitt
looked out over it bravely, and hour by hour, and day by day, perfected
his schemes.
He would be idle no longer—he would work, he would be a rich man, when
Archibald Drewitt was a beggar. Kincorth should NOT pass away from him.
His uncle should yet be glad to give over the whole place and receive an
allowance from his nephew. It would take him, say ten years to compass
this end, and then he would paper and paint Kincorth from garret to
cellar; he would give every old servant notice; he would keep the
gardens and grounds in such order that Kincorth should be the talk of
all the county; and when he had got his own again he would marry—he
would marry birth, money, and rank, and take his leisure under the
shadow of his vine and his fig-tree.
In the middle of this day-dream came Ryan’s announcement of his uncle’s
intention to settle Kincorth upon his wife; and it was the thought of
the possibility of such a settlement being effected that made Maxwell
Drewitt stand still as he entered the drive, and look eagerly, longingly
over Kincorth.
There came a day when he looked over it with different eyes, when the
netted sunbeams fell aslant on the figure of a bowed and broken man;
when, satiated with possession and wearied of all he had struggled and
sinned to obtain, Maxwell Drewitt walked feebly under the shadow of
those self-same trees, thinking not of this world, wherein he had laid
house to house and acre to acre, but with a terrible dread, with a
horrible affright, of that other, to which the treasures of earth may
not be carried.
But on the summer evening of which I am speaking youth was present and
age afar off. He was strong, he knew neither ache nor pain, life was all
before him, it was the spring of his year, the time of budding promise,
of fearless hope. He had no dread of anything save of Kincorth being
placed beyond his reach, and he had but little fear of that, for when he
finished his reverie, and walked on towards the house, he muttered—
“I think I have scotched that wheel. Old Turner has too tight a hold
over my good uncle to let that cock fight. I would give five pounds to
see the old fellow’s face when he reads my letter.” And Maxwell Drewitt
laughed aloud as he pictured to himself the Quaker’s consternation on
receipt of his communication.
Had Samuel Turner been anything except a “friend” he would have relieved
his mind by swearing; as it was he merely said “infamous,” and went
straight off to his solicitor.
After a consultation with that gentleman, who comforted him exceedingly,
he sent back the following reply to his young correspondent:—
“Ashton-under-Lyne, June —, 18—.
“FRIEND MAXWELL,
“Thee hast done quite right, and acted (an unusual thing for youths of
thine age and country) with sound sense and good feeling. Be satisfied
I shall do the best I can for thee and thy sisters. I grieve that thy
uncle, a sensible man, should think at his time of life of marrying a
young wife, and she a fashionable woman from London.
“Thy sincere friend,
“SAMUEL TURNER.
“If thee should turn thy attention at any time to business, I would
try to advance thy views if in my power.”
Which letter, coming to Mr. Ryan amongst a number of others, was opened
by him in mistake, and read right through by intention. He read it once,
he read it twice, and then laying it down, he said to himself, “So this
is your dodge, Maxwell Drewitt, is it?—this is the first step.” And when
Maxwell himself appeared he handed him the epistle, adding, “You are a
deal cleverer than I thought you. You will—”
“What the devil, sir, do you mean by opening my letters?” burst forth
his visitor, the blood rushing up warm and red even through his dark
complexion. “I tell you what it is, Ryan,” he went on, “for many a less
thing than this a fellow has had a bullet in his skull.”
“Hold your tongue, my son, and don’t talk like a fool,” interrupted Mr.
Ryan. “How the deuce am I to know a letter is not for me till I have
read it? On my honour I was half way through the thing before it
occurred to me there was any blunder.”
“I don’t believe you,” said Drewitt.
“For less than that many a man has been sent into kingdom-come at twelve
paces,” retorted Ryan; “but there is one blessed comfort in the affair,
which is, I don’t care whether you believe me or not. There now, boy,
sit down, and don’t make such a confounded row about the matter. Honour
among thieves, you know; and I am not going to turn informer.”
“You are an unprincipled scoundrel,” Maxwell persisted, “to open another
person’s letter.”
“Oh, for Heaven’s sake! drop the saint,” exclaimed his friend. “Maxwell
Drewitt talking about principle, and Satan reproving sin, always seem to
me to sail together in the same boat. I tell you I did NOT open the
letter of malice afore-thought. Now I have made all the apology I intend
to make, and if you do not like to take it you may leave it.”
“When a letter comes to you under cover, you cannot open it by
accident.”
“Hang the lad!” exclaimed Ryan, pettishly, “the thing did not come under
cover at all. There is the whole cursed concern.” And he flung letter
and envelope to their rightful owner, who, turning up the latter, read:
“MAXWELL DREWITT,
“Care of T. Ryan,
“Inchnagawn Cottage,
“near Duranmore, Galway, Ireland.
“What an idiot the old fellow must be. I told him as—”
“I know all you said as well as if I had seen your letter,” interrupted
Ryan. “Besides, what does it matter about my knowing you wrote to
Turner? Whenever I heard Mrs. Drewitt’s jointure was cut down, I should
have been sure you had put your foot in it somehow. Indeed, Max Drewitt,
you are a very promising young man, and your uncle has every right to be
proud of you.”
“He is proud of nothing just at present, I fancy,” answered the other,
recovering his temper at this neatly-turned compliment, and flinging
himself into a chair as he spoke. “I left him wishing all Quakers and
lawyers in the hottest of hot quarters. We send for our letters, you
know, and so get them earlier than you do; and you may depend the
opening of the bag made an uncommon fuss at Kincorth this morning.”
“Let the cat out?” suggested Mr. Ryan.
“No, faith. If it had I might have walked. As it was I had nothing but
black looks and short answers. Turner has lost no time about the affair
though, has he?”
“Trust a Quaker for that,” said Mr. Ryan.
“It seems to me,” remarked Mr. Drewitt, “that a dislike to losing money
is common to both churchmen and Quakers; but really you should see my
uncle, he is worth travelling from here to Kincorth to get a sight of.”
“What will he do now?” inquired his companion.
“How should I know? write, I suppose, to his father-in-law elect, and
tell him unforeseen circumstances, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, prevent
his fulfilling his liberal intentions; or he may try to raise money to
pay off Turner. He could scarcely do it in the time though,” added
Maxwell, reflectively.
“Scarcely,” acquiesced Ryan. “But now, I say, Max, tell me why is this
woman marrying your uncle? You declare she is young, pretty,
well-born—she can therefore scarcely be in her last wonder yet. What is
the attraction?”
“Kincorth,” sneered his visitor, pulling his chair up to the table as he
spoke, with a violence which spilt the contents of the lawyer’s tea-cup
over his hand.
“You don’t think she loves him, then?” persisted the other, as he wiped
the tea off his sleeve and wristband.
“Why, what on earth should she love him for?” asked Mr. Drewitt.
“I cannot tell—perhaps because he is frank, handsome, generous, amiable.
Although he is nearly twenty years older than you, Master Maxwell
Drewitt, I know if I were a woman, which thank heaven I am not, I should
fall in love with him sooner than with you.”
“You cannot tell what you might do if you were a woman,” answered the
youth, thus plainly complimented; “but in this case what I tell you is
true. The Colonel, her father, is poor as a church-mouse; he has this
daughter single, and no sons; his income dies with him. It follows,
therefore, that the girls must either marry or starve, and there is
Kincorth for the one who is left. A pretty little catch it sounds.
Fifteen thousand a year, with no encumbrance that she knows of, is worth
looking pretty and pleasant for, eh, Ryan?”
“In theory,” replied Ryan, “but not in fact. If they are playing such a
game it is a pity they should lose it; my creed is that whatever people
marry for, whether for love or money, or position or birth, they should
get it; and they have mistaken the cards over in England if they are
reckoning on Kincorth as a trump. Suppose, however, Max, that you are
wrong, and that this Miss Dyak is marrying your uncle not for love of
Kincorth, but for love of himself.”
“Love of folly!” was the civil answer. “Why, man, you are turning
spooney all at once.”
“No I am not,” said Ryan. “Mr. Drewitt is still very handsome; he is a
thoroughbred Irish gentleman, just the sort to take a girl’s fancy.
Everywhere but at Kincorth he is as lively and talkative as a boy. I do
not see why she should not love him; and if she do, God help her!”
“And wherefore?” demanded his visitor, who was employing himself in
cramming hot buttered toast down his throat—“and wherefore?”
“Because love is too valuable and scarce a commodity to be wasted,”
answered the lawyer, oracularly; “and further, if Miss Dyak be a woman
who can love, she will probably feel inclined to do her duty, and if she
do her duty, why God help her again, I say.”
“You mean with Sue?” This was interrogative.
“I mean with everything: all is wrong at Kincorth—master, nephew,
nieces, servants, labourers, tenants, everything!”
“I’d soon make all right if I had the management,” remarked Maxwell.
“Old maids’ children and bachelors’ wives,” sneered Ryan.
“I keep every soul about the place in order when my uncle is away,”
returned the other, hotly. “I should like to see the man that would
disobey my orders if I were master. I’d undertake to tame any dog,
horse, or woman in a week. But what is the matter with you, Ryan, you
are as white as a sheet?”
Mr. Ryan did not answer: he got up and walked to the window; after
standing there for a minute he came back and reseated himself at the
table.
“What ails you?” persisted his companion, “are you not well?”
“No, I am not,” was the reply. “I feel as weak as a cat at times, and if
I were standing in the biggest room at Kincorth I should seem
suffocating when the fit takes me. I don’t intend to work at home at all
for the future, and I wish you would come and see me at the office,
after Monday next, when you want to see me.”
“Upon my soul, you are civil. I like that,” said his visitor. “Why do
you want me to call at the office? Why do you not want me to come here?”
“Because I want my house to be my home after this week,” was the reply.
“You are going to be married!” exclaimed Mr. Drewitt. “Saul is among the
prophets.”
“I wish I were married,” answered the lawyer, “if only for my poor
little sister’s sake. She is coming back to me now her aunt is dead, and
I must shift for her as best I can. That is the reason I want you to
call at the office. Do you understand?”
“You are afraid I might fall in love with her, I suppose,” laughed
Maxwell.
“No; but I am afraid, nothing being impossible, of her falling in love
with you, and,” went on Mr. Ryan, speaking rapidly and, I might almost
add, fiercely, “as you and I know one another so well that we need not
stand on ceremony, I may say that although I do not pretend to be either
a very good or a very scrupulous man, I had rather put the child in her
grave than give her to you.”
“I do not know what may be the fashion in your rank,” said Maxwell
Drewitt, “but in ours we do not consider it the thing to refuse our
sisters till they are asked for, and I shall certainly never ask you for
yours. It is all very well for me to know you, but Miss Bourke is a
different affair altogether. When I take to running in double harness it
shall be with something more thoroughbred. Tit for tat is fair play.
Never look so cross about being hit back, man. Let us get to business. I
am your man throughout the election—at least I think I am; and if you
like, whenever my uncle leaves for England, I will go canvassing.”
“How many voters can you insure?” asked Ryan, “because if you can bring
nobody but yourself, I don’t know that you will be of much use.”
“Bless my heart, how independent we are all of a sudden!” exclaimed
young Drewitt. “Shall I go and tell Pryor’s committee you think me a
bird not worth catching? How would it be with Waller’s agency then? What
have you got to say to that?”
“Simply what I said before—a single voter is not worth the having, even
though he be a Drewitt. How many can you bring with you?” And the pair
looked straight into one another’s eyes as Ryan finished.
Two dogs might have looked in the same way before flying, with hungry
teeth, each at the throat of his fellow, but the two men drew off. If
Drewitt had not changed his tone there would have been a quarrel, but
the young man spied danger, and answered quietly enough—
“That depends on the cash. I can bribe where you could not. I can get
refractory fellows out of the way. I can do lots of things if you make
it worth my while. In short, I will do anything you please, on two
conditions.”
“There was only one the other day,” remarked the lawyer.
“There are two now, though,” was the reply. “First, the farm, which I
suppose we may call settled; next, I must second Pryor.”
“Why——”
“I have a crow to pluck with Sache, and I can then have it out with
him,” answered Mr. Drewitt. “Even you have no idea how much I can help
you if I choose. Pitted against me, my uncle has no chance. He is an
intruder—a man who has no earthly right to be at Kincorth. He has
brought me up as his heir until now, and now he takes a young wife to
himself, so as to cut me out for ever. On principle I am opposing him.
Contrary to my own interests I am leaving the old ship of the Drewitts.
If he would only turn me out of the house it would be the best thing
possible for the Liberal party. Would not it be capital for us? Heavens!
what fools people are, and what humbug they will swallow!”
Having concluded which complimentary speech relative to the
understandings of his fellows, the young man stuffed his hand into his
coat pocket, and produced thence a book, which Ryan seized eagerly.
“There are their voters,” remarked his friend, “and a precious job I had
to get it. There you have them all—dead, doubtful, and certain. Now how
many of our own dead can we personate, and how many of their doubtfuls
can we get?”
“That depends greatly on you; but are we not losing time most
needlessly? Sache and Munks and Marsden and Tooley and your uncle have
been hard at work for days past, and here are we, with all the landed
interests against us, doing nothing—literally nothing.”
“True; but when once I do start I won’t let the grass grow under my
feet. There has been many an election at Duranmore, but this will cap
everything. I hear my uncle is going to bring the new mistress of
Kincorth home right away, and there are to be election balls and dinners
and Heaven knows what besides, up at the old place. I should have
thought the excitement of marrying ought to have been enough for him,
without any extra fuss; but Archibald Drewitt is like no other human
being on earth.”
“There is not a man in the county much better liked at any rate,”
remarked Mr. Ryan, drily. “I wish we had him on our side.”
“Stuff!” exclaimed Maxwell; “can’t you take the book and let us get to
business?”
“It is impossible to refuse a request urged with such politeness,”
answered the lawyer, moving over to his writing-table, indistinctly
catching, as he did so, Maxwell Drewitt’s comment, which was, “Damn your
politeness.”