Son and Heir.
Meanwhile there had been changes at Kincorth, such changes as the birth
of a son and the management of a careful and educated woman were likely
to produce; but the greatest change of all had perhaps been that wrought
in Mrs. Drewitt herself, who, looking back twelve months, could not help
marvelling if the Agnes Drewitt who sat nursing her child in her bedroom
at Kincorth were the same with the new-made wife who had wept bitter
tears in that self-same chamber, who had grieved over Maxwell, who had
wanted to keep him in the house at any sacrifice, at any cost.
Since those early days, Mrs. Drewitt had grown very jealous for her
son’s inheritance, very watchful over the interests of her baby. Maxwell
had opened her eyes and taught her to discern between good and evil; and
with all a woman’s quickness of perception she had seen that there would
be war between her children and the children of the elder brother; that
Maxwell wanted the estate, and was resolved some day to have it.
“But he shan’t, darling, shall he?” and Mrs. Drewitt kissed every one of
her son’s toes in succession as though he had been a pope.
There is no accounting for tastes, or otherwise one might wonder at the
fancy mothers have for this form of refreshment. Pink and plump and
pretty the creature’s toes looked peeping from under the long white
robe, but there was no earthly reason why she should have kissed them
for all that.
She did perform the ceremony, nevertheless, rapturously, and then she
lifted her eyes and looked out over the waving woods and the sunny
fields that went sloping towards the sea.
It was a fair property. I have said what Maxwell thought of it as he
stood gazing up at Kincorth on the summer’s afternoon when you, dear
reader, were introduced to him, and it was perhaps natural that Mrs.
Drewitt longed a little greedily to secure it for her boy.
Women nursing babies are all alike. They think nothing good enough for
the new king, and they expect every created being to fall down and adore
the autocrat as they do.
Women whose children are growing up get, as a rule, more sensible and
fairer dealing year by year. They see their white crows throwing out
black feathers, they begin to understand that other people have children
too, and that the meadow-lands of existence cannot be kept clear so that
their young lambs may browse over them undisturbed.
But a baby!—there is so much left to the imagination about a baby. It
may grow up to be as handsome as Apollo, as wise as Solomon, as eloquent
as Demosthenes, as just as Aristides, as holy as George Herbert.
It is so delightful to be able to sit in the sunlight, as Mrs. Drewitt
was doing, nursing a two months’ old monarch, and picture for him a
reign long, glorious, and triumphant. If mothers did not mercifully
forget these dreams, how could they ever live and face the downfall of
all these airy castles? How could they bear to see their sons and
daughters grow up, not as the polished corners of the temple, but
sometimes no better than other folks’ sons and daughters—oftentimes much
worse?
A baby!—a monarch, a pope, a little god, a lord mayor for a year and a
day, and then another lord mayor rides in gilded coach to fortune, and
inhabits his brother’s grand chateaux en Espagne.
The king is dead, long live the king! and autocrat No. 2, No. 3, No. 4,
as the case may be, appears on the daïs for the household generally to
bow down before and worship.
A baby!—well, well, Maxwell Drewitt had been a baby once, and perhaps
his mother dreamed such dreams for him as Mrs. Drewitt of Kincorth was
doing for her baby now.
There are some things in nature which we shall never understand on this
side eternity, and one of them, I think, is, why having a child born to
her should make a woman unjust for the time being.
I know there will be an outcry of indignation at this assertion; but it
is true for all that. Beyond her baby, a woman has at first no sympathy.
Nay, I go further, and say she has no liking save for those who serve,
honour, and obey her Moloch.
There are men who are worse than women in this matter, but not many,
thank God! If there were, the shop of the world might be shut up, and
human nature would have to retire from business altogether.
Her baby!—there came a day when Mrs. Drewitt turned from her first
allegiance and worshipped another baby. All her life long she was
somewhat of an idolater, and her gods did nothing for her, as is the way
with the gods we rear for ourselves—only brought trouble and sorrow to
that gentle breast.
But sitting in the sunshine, kissing the fat toes of her first-born,
Mrs. Drewitt was happy, and she was all the happier perhaps because she
felt no sorrow for the man whom the birth of her son cut out from
Kincorth for ever.
If we exhaust the matter, the young mother thought in her heart it ought
to be a pleasure for Maxwell to stand out of the way of the new king’s
progress; and as she felt sure it was no pleasure to him to do anything
of the kind, she began to entertain a very sincere dislike for her
husband’s nephew.
Holding her baby from her at arms’ length—laughing when it laughed,
clasping it to her heart, touching its little fingers, its little hands,
its meaningless face, with a delight ever strange and ever new—something
even in that happy moment came over Mrs. Drewitt that made the tears
start into her eyes, and caused her face to change and sadden under the
sunlight.
She was sorry that she did not feel sorry for Maxwell, that she did not
like him, that she was not so glad to see him as formerly, that she
could not care for Susan and Wilhelmina. She had resolved to do her
duty, and this was the end of it. Human nature is stronger than duty,
and it was impossible for Mrs. Drewitt to help her feelings. The child
she had brought into this world was nearer to her than any other
person’s children could be.
It was natural she should long to secure Kincorth for the baby—that she
should dislike any one who seemed to stand in antagonism to her son.
The child had changed her, and it was the consciousness of this change
having taken place that made Mrs. Drewitt’s eyes fill full of tears.
As for Mr. Drewitt, he had received the new arrival just as such a man
usually does receive such donations—ecstatically!
To have heard him talk, any stranger might have thought that Mr. Drewitt
only held the property in trust until his son should come of age. If his
bailiff spoke to him about cutting down a tree, he hesitated. He would
grant no lease for more than seven years.
The expenses must be curtailed, the household expenditure retrenched.
His agent must see that the rents were paid more punctually. When Brian
came of age it would not do for him to find the tenants all in arrear.
He trusted those girls would marry, or that if they did not, Maxwell
would have them to live with him. “I must try to make him an allowance
for their maintenance till they all come of age, when I can perhaps
manage to settle a certain sum on each,” said Mr. Drewitt to his wife.
“I should not like Brian to marry one of them, and if they grow up
together who knows what might happen?”
Who indeed? but meantime the state of mind in which Mr. Drewitt went
about the house, and walked round the shrubberies, and exchanged
greetings with his friends, and answered the congratulations of his
acquaintances, was involved and ridiculous beyond description.
“It is a far cry to Loch Awe,” Maxwell observed drily, when Wilhelmina
told him, with shrieks of laughter, how her uncle was doing everything
with an eye to the pleasure and advancement of the young heir. “What
kind of a creature is it?”
“What kind of creatures are all babies?” inquired Miss Susan Drewitt,
scornfully. “Though to be sure, to hear the way they go on about it,
anybody might imagine it was not a baby at all, but an angel. Nannie
says it is like its papa, and the doctor says it is like its mamma; but
for my part, I think it is a cross between a star-fish and a lobster.”
“You really ought to be in the house with uncle,” remarked Wilhelmina.
“He won’t let a window be open for fear of the brat catching cold. He
won’t let any stranger touch it for fear the said stranger should have
any dreadful and communicable disease. He was going to put Mr. Murphy
out of the hall-door, the other day, because the poor man said, after
uncle had quite worn him out, ‘Tut, tut, tut, Mr. Drewitt, the egg is
all very well, but it is not worth the cackling you make over it.’ I
really thought I would have died, Maxwell. I had to put the whole of my
pocket-handkerchief into my mouth, or I should have laughed outright.
“‘Sir!’ says my uncle, and he drew himself up like a grenadier.
“‘You need not be offended, Mr. Drewitt,’ says Murphy. I do love that
man, it is so hard to put him out of countenance. ‘A hen with only one
chicken always makes ten times the fuss she would if she had a good
clutch to go about with; and by the time you have a dozen, I’m thinking
you won’t be caring so much whether a few of them should catch some
infection or not. Excuse a jest, sir, it is only my way. The baby is a
fine baby. I don’t know that ever I saw a handsomer.’
“And as he said that he looked over at me, and you know, Maxwell, what
his looks are.”
“He is an impudent scoundrel,” remarked her brother. “If I hear of him
looking at you at all, I will wring his neck for him—and glad of the
excuse too,” added Maxwell, _sotto voce_.
“You never saw a man make such an idiot of himself in your life,” said
Susan, laying a true Hibernian emphasis on the last word in her
sentence. “He ought to build a little chapel and have a shrine made, and
let people only look at the brat from a distance. And that reminds me,
Maxwell—do you know Kathie has never gone back to school yet? She is not
well enough to go, Sheen says, and my uncle wanted her to keep away from
the heir, seeming to think it might be something of consumption, and
that the young gentleman would take it from her.”
“And Kathie cried, till I told her she was a greater idiot than uncle
and a bigger baby than the heir,” put in Wilhelmina. “Mrs. Drewitt would
not listen to such nonsense, though; she said Kathie should be with her
and Brian if she liked. That is one thing I will say for Mrs.
Drewitt—that she is good to Kathie. Give the devil his due, her own
mother could not be better to her.”
“But do you think Kathie ill, seriously ill, I mean?” asked Maxwell: if
the young man had ever loved any of his own flesh and blood, it was
Kathie, and he put the question anxiously.
“Well, you know she never was strong—she was always, as Nannie says, the
‘crowl’ among us,” answered Wilhelmina, who looked both strong and
handsome, and had a rich colour in her cheeks with walking to Headlands
Cottage; “she ought not to have gone to school, and it was not with Mrs.
Drewitt’s good will she went, but you and uncle would have it. You know
it was your doing, Maxwell, and she got a cold, and the cold got worse,
and you should see for yourself how she looks.”
“What are they doing for her?” he inquired.
“Dr. Sheen has sent her some medicine, and Mrs. Drewitt tries to coax
her to eat,” Wilhelmina replied; while Susan added—
“I think they have an idea of sending her abroad. I am sure I heard some
one talk of letting her spend the winter with the Dyaks, if money for
her travelling expenses could be raised.”
Then Maxwell Drewitt rose up, walked across the room, took a cigar out
of a paper lying on the table, lit it, and began to smoke. When he had
puffed away for a little time he said—
“Kathie shall not go to the Dyaks. I won’t have my sister eating the
bread of a dependent in the house of any of Mr. Drewitt’s relations. If
she needs a milder climate I will find somebody to take charge of her,
and I will find the money too, which the great people up at Kincorth
seem to think a thing so devilishly hard to raise.”
“That’s right, Maxwell. Go it,” exclaimed Wilhelmina, clapping her
hands. “Send us all abroad, and come yourself—we’d make our fortunes at
_rouge-et-noir_. Wouldn’t it be capital sport?”
“You seem to think so, at any rate,” remarked Susan, shortly.
“And you—ten thousand pardons. I forgot. You would not like to leave——”
“Whom?” asked Maxwell, as his sister stopped abruptly.
“The baby, I suppose,” laughed Wilhelmina; whereupon Maxwell made some
remark about the baby which did not sound like a blessing.
“What the deuce is their fancy for calling the young beggar Brian?” he
inquired. “Is it Brian Boroïhme they have gone back to, or is it some of
her people, or what?”
“There was a good Drewitt once,” answered Wilhelmina; “at least, so
tradition says, though I believe there is not a syllable of truth in the
story. There was a good Drewitt once—good and wise, and his name was
Brian. There is a long rigmarole about him on some old stone in the
abbey, and Nannie told Mrs. Drewitt a great history about what grand
people the Drewitts were in his day, and about what a pious man he was,
and how he repaired the abbey, and how he planted that huge yew-tree in
the churchyard, and that hollow ash, and that rotten beech on the lawn
at Kincorth. And Nannie told her, too, how a child always strains after
the person it is called after, and how luck follows names, and worked
her up to such a pitch finally, that nothing would do her but the young
gentleman must be called Brian—and accordingly Brian he is—Brian
Archibald. It is not an easy name to make fun out of; so all I can do is
to call him Brin Baldy. It’s a pretty conceit, is not it? as Lady
Emmeline would say, and it has the great advantage of being
unintelligible. I have ventured to talk about Brin Baldy to Susan before
uncle, and he had not the remotest idea of whom I was talking.”
“I shall come up to see Kathie,” said Maxwell, when his sister stopped—a
little irrelevantly it is true, but still in consequence of some train
of thought he had been pursuing during her sentence.
“I am sure _we_ ought to be grateful,” remarked Susan. “Get up and make
a courtesy, Willy.”
Which Willy accordingly did, observing, at the same time, she thought
somebody ought to come and see Kathie, and rouse her up.
“Talk about peaches! You should have seen the peaches the Countess gave
me the other day to take home to Kathie,” she went on; “they were as
big—oh! as big as Susan’s head—four times as big as any I ever saw grow
at Kincorth, and do you think she would touch them?—not a bit of it.
“‘You little ungrateful wretch!’ I said, ‘and I have brought them all
the way from Laddenwell home for you, and it was as much as I could do
to keep from eating them on the road. You _shall_ take them!’
“So she took one, and tried to swallow it, but she did not like peaches,
she told me.
“‘Will you have grapes, then?’ I asked her, but she would not have
grapes. At last I worried out of her what she could eat, and what do you
think it was, Maxwell? I will give you six guesses.”
“Don’t be childish, Willy; go on.”
“Crabs!” exclaimed that young lady. “Now you know crabs are things uncle
can’t bear the sight of, and that he thinks nobody else ought to be able
to bear the sight of either; so I had to get one smuggled up for her.
But when it came, would she touch it? I don’t know what to do with
Kathie,” finished Wilhelmina, in despair.
“She ought to take a good canter every day of her life,” said Susan,
“and keep out of the nursery. There is nothing the matter with Kathie
except the mopes.”
“Do you know what your mother died of, Susan?” asked Maxwell, a little
sternly.
“She died when Kathie was born. I suppose it was of that,” answered Miss
Drewitt.
“She would not have died of that if she had not been in a decline
beforehand,” said Maxwell; “and from what you say, I’m afraid it is
consumption Kathie has got. I will come up and see her,” he repeated. “I
will walk back with you.”
When Maxwell passed through Duranmore, on his way from Kincorth to
Eversbeg, he stopped at Dr. Sheen’s, and not finding that gentleman at
home, spoke to Mr. Murphy about his sister’s health.
“Had not you better step round when the doctor is within?” asked the
assistant.
“I have got something else to do than dance up and down from Eversbeg
here, after him or anybody else,” answered Maxwell, with that
graciousness of manner which distinguished his treatment of any one he
considered beneath him in station.
“It is not my place to talk about Doctor Sheen’s patients,” persisted
Mr. Murphy.
“What the devil is the use of your getting on in this way to me? She is
my sister, and I must know, and I will know, what is the matter with
her.”
“And how should I know what is the matter with her?” demanded the other.
“Sure we never know for certain what is wrong with man, woman, or child,
unless we open them, and I suppose you don’t want me to do that?”
“Will you tell me, as far as you do know, what ails my sister, or not?
If you do not choose to do so, I must take her to somebody who will.”
“I would rather you would ask Dr. Sheen. I am only his assistant, and I
have not had his experience; and to be plain, the doctor and I don’t
agree about the case. Ask him; or if you like, I will tell him to write
to you.”
“I want your opinion,” persisted Maxwell. “All you say I shall consider
as spoken to me confidentially, if you wish, only tell me exactly what
you think is wrong with Kathleen.”
“I do believe you are fond of her,” said Mr. Murphy, with a vague wonder
in his voice.
“What the deuce is it to you whether I am or not? Tell me your opinion,
without beating about the bush any longer.”
“Do you want me to tell you the truth or a lie?”
“I want the truth, whatever the truth may be,” was the answer.
“Because,” went on Mr. Murphy, “there’s many a one says he wants to hear
the truth, and then is angry at the man who tells it to him.”
“Whatever you think, out with it,” exclaimed Maxwell, impatiently.
“Your sister is very far from strong.”
“I can see that without the help of any doctor’s eyes,” answered the
young man; “but is she likely to get worse? Will the medicine she is
taking cure her?”
“Doctor Sheen thinks it will,” was the reply.
“But what do you think, Mr. Murphy?”
“I consider Miss Kathie to be in a very bad way,” said the assistant.
“Will it be life or death?” asked Maxwell.
“Don’t ask me. What is the use of it? Sure you know yourself.”
For a minute there was silence—for a minute the thought of the only
enemy that in youth a man like Maxwell Drewitt is afraid to face cowed
him. Then he said:
“Would a warmer climate, Mr. Murphy——”
“Save her, I suppose you mean. You can try it.”
Slowly and reluctantly, Maxwell turned to go.
“One thing more, Mr. Murphy,” he said. “Was the cold she caught at
school the cause of this?”
“If she had not caught a cold there she would have caught it some place
else,” was the answer. “You can’t keep a person shut up in a band-box
for ever; and the fire was always ready laid in her, to be kindled some
chilly winter’s morning. But people invariably like to attribute disease
to accident: they think if they could guard themselves against that they
would be immortal,” added Mr. Murphy.
Maxwell went out into the air. He walked home round by Eversbeg Head,
from whence he had a view over the wide Atlantic, looking under the
summer’s sky like a glassy lake. He saw the ships going past with their
white sails shining and glistening in the sun; he beheld the ocean at
peace with man—the land kissed softly and gently by the waves; he saw
his own fields looking rich and cultivated, in the warm glow of the
afternoon light;—but there was a sorrow in his heart, the memory of
which the peaceful scene could not chase away.
Many a feeling which passes through our breasts to-day we forget
to-morrow; we fear, and with a new sunrise the dread is gone. We settle
down to think: something comes to prevent our doing so, and the
impression made, fades away and is forgotten.
Could Maxwell Drewitt have stereotyped in his memory all the feelings
which saddened him when he stood, that day, looking out over the great
Atlantic, I think—I believe—he would have gone through the rest of his
life a better man.
But as it was, they were merely as words spoken to the air—as letters
traced on the sand.
The next wind of passion bore them far beyond his reach and his
recollection; the next wave of life, rushing up on the shore of his
existence, obliterated their meaning.
Life and death, friends—life and death!—are these two not ever walking
through this world hand in hand together?
The tide that brings a fresh soul into existence on its flow, bears a
pale corpse out to the great sea as it ebbs.
There was a child born—there was a girl dying: there was a son and heir,
over whose birth exulting parents rejoiced—there was an orphan waiting
to rejoin her father and mother also.
There was life in the boy, who crowed and shrieked in the nursery: there
was death in Kathleen, who walked about the grounds and through the
rooms at Kincorth—who had learned her last lessons, who was never to go
back to school any more—who was never to have lovers, never to be
married—never to be anything except a slight, dark-eyed, loveable,
delicate girl—who cooed and fondled the baby as long as she had strength
to do it, and who delighted in the newcomer, even although he did cut
Maxwell out from the property.
“And Maxwell was always kinder to me than he was to anybody,” sighed
Kathie to Mrs. Drewitt; “I wish he was out of that cottage—I wish he was
back at Kincorth!”
But when her wish was fulfilled, when Maxwell did return to Kincorth, I
think it was best for Kathleen that she could not see him there—that she
had then been sleeping for twenty years in Eversbeg Abbey, away from all
the sinful jealousies and wicked passions which make the world so often
seem only like a battle-field, where man stands up to war against man.