MR. BRADY’S EX-PROJECTS.
When Mr. Brady found the Rileys had by accident or design checkmated
him, he was, as a young clerk who chanced to be favoured with many of
his inquiries about that period, remarked, “Neither to hold nor to
bind.”
To ruin the Rileys, to oust the proud beggars—so he styled them—out of
Woodbrook, to bring the old man to his level, and to humble the pride of
“that fellow out in India,” had been the dearest desires of his heart
for years previously.
In order to compass them he had not spared his time or his trouble; he
had not objected to wade through very dirty water, he had not grumbled
when asked to eat humble pie in quantity; he had not bemoaned himself
when compelled to cringe to people he longed to kick, or be civil to
those he hated; and now in a moment all he had saved, toiled, lived for
was snatched from his grasp.
When a man first conceives the plot of either a good or a bad project it
is, comparatively speaking, a small matter to find another has
forestalled him in its execution. Let him, however, have nursed, tended,
perfected the scheme, lain with it in his bosom at night, and taken it
for his companion by day, he finds it a cruel hardship to have the one
thing he fancied his own, the one good he asked in life, claimed by
another.
If the punishment of deliberate wrong-doing ever could enlist our
sympathies on behalf of the wrong-doer, I think it might be in a case
like this, when a man having spent his all to compass his object finds
at the last that it eludes his grasp; when having staked everything he
possesses on the success of some villanous trick in the game of life,
his intended victim, at a moment least expected, says “Checkmate” and
leaves him to curse the board whereon his best designs, his
longest-matured schemes, have been defeated.
On Mr. Brady the news of his enemy being at the last moment delivered
out of his hands, fell with such a shock that at first he could not
realize the depth of his own disappointment. Although the interest being
paid might have prepared him for the settlement of the principal, he
refused to believe his lawyers when they told him the whole amount had
by some means been raised.
To incredulity succeeded all the fury of a balked revenge, and in his
rage he accused both solicitors and capitalist with having conspired in
General Riley’s favour against himself. He declared it was through them
the owner of Woodbrook had heard of his own interest in the matter, to
which the former replied by ordering him out of their office, and the
latter remarked that if Mr. Brady did not put some restraint upon his
tongue all transactions must end between them.
“I am willing to make some allowance for you,” he went on, “as I dare
say the matter is as great a blow to you as it has proved a surprise to
me; but I will not have such language as you used just now addressed to
me by any man living; so you can take your choice, either try to be
civil, or else I will have done with you and your affairs at once and
for ever.”
Whereupon Mr. Brady muttered something intended for an apology, adding
in a louder tone,—
“If I only knew who has been meddling in my affairs I would make it
pleasant. He would think twice before thrusting himself into other
people’s business, I can tell him!”
“Well, when you find out who it is that has upset your plans, you can
tell him what you like so far as I am concerned; but, meantime, I will
not have you vent your temper on me. Remember that for the future, sir,
if you please.”
Whether it pleased him or not, Mr. Brady knew he must remember the hint,
and act upon it; and, therefore, set his face homeward full of anger and
mortification.
This was the first severe check his plans had ever received, and in
proportion to the magnitude of the venture appeared the shock of his
failure.
Independent altogether of his desire to beggar and humble a family he
hated, Mr. Brady had looked upon Woodbrook as the El Dorado whence he
should in the future dig fortune and position. He and his friend (who,
so far as disposition and character were concerned, might be considered
a not unworthy match-horse even to Mr. Brady), had long previously laid
their plans, not merely for the acquisition of Woodbrook, but also how
they intended to make that acquisition valuable to them.
It had been proposed by Mr. Brady’s coadjutor to give that gentleman a
share of the profits in consideration of his fertile brain having
devised the scheme, and of his unwearying industry being necessary to
carry it to success.
Mr. Brady’s idea, on the other hand, was by degrees to work the
capitalist out. He had not decided how the feat was to be performed, but
he was well aware that it would be an extremely good thing for him if he
could manage to get the whole power into his own hands.
In the first instance he would require assistance, and that to a large
extent, but he did not despair of finding himself ultimately the owner
of, at all events, a large portion of the property.
Money and revenge—these two desirable things he hoped to compass at a
single blow—and now the castle of his dreams, the fairy palace which he
had mentally erected from foundation to lofty pinnacle, was level with
the dust.
He had been beaten and by the Rileys. Whoever else might realize the
project he had been perfecting for years, Mr. Daniel Brady should reap
no advantage from it.
About the time when he first began to think of annexing Woodbrook,
“going to the salt water for the benefit of sea bathing” was becoming a
recognized necessity even amongst those who had never previously thought
of permitting their families such an indulgence.
From inland rural districts, as well as from the towns great and small,
people came trooping for that “month at the shore,” which it was
believed made weakly children strong, and kept healthy children strong
and robust.
Each summer Kingslough was crowded by visitors. Poor cottages—no matter
how small or poor, provided they were situated close on the bay—were
eagerly taken by those to whom economy was an object; and it must have
been plain even to a much less intelligent gentleman than Mr. Brady
that, if the accommodation in Kingslough and its neighbourhood had been
twice as great, willing guests might still be found to avail themselves
of it.
So far, however, no one had thought of building houses solely and simply
for the benefit of season residents, and it was by a plan of this kind
Mr. Brady hoped to make Woodbrook pay.
Part of the property stretched down to the sea. The water at that
distance from Kingslough was represented better for bathing than that
which washed the grey shore below Ballylough Abbey. The beach was of
finer sand, a headland stretched out into the sea sufficiently far to
suggest the idea of erecting a quay, at which steamers could anchor at
almost all conditions of the tide. The scenery was wilder and more
beautiful than that surrounding Kingslough. Already there was a talk of
a short sea route being inaugurated not merely between Scotland and
Ireland, but between England and Ireland; and Mr. Brady, though he did
not erect his castle on the strength of either English or Scotch money,
considered it quite on the cards that from the great manufacturing towns
in Lancashire, and even from Glasgow, people might come to spend the
summer at Glendare.
That was the name he proposed to confer on the new watering-place, not
because he was especially fond of the Glendares, but because he
considered the title one likely to recommend itself to natives and
foreigners alike. He had seen enough of English people to understand the
horror which seizes them at sight or sound of a long Irish name, such as
Ballinascraw, for instance; on the other hand, he knew the inhabitants
of the Green Isle still retained a preference for words indigenous to
the soil.
The fashion of wiping out old landmarks, by rechristening romantic spots
with prosaic British names, had not then begun, and he would indeed have
been considered an adventurous man—adventurous to madness—who founding a
settlement on the other side of the Channel, blew the trumpets and
assembled the people to hear the town christened Piccadilly, Kensington,
or Wandsworth, as is the case at present.
Mr. Brady therefore decided on Glendare, as a name likely to wear well
and find favour in the minds of the multitude. Lying idly on his oars,
looking with his bodily eyes at the land dotted with trees, sloping so
lovingly to the beach,—his mental sight beheld villas filling up the
landscape, snug cottages scattered along the shore, a town perhaps
climbing up the sides of the headland. The vision grew more real every
day. He had drawn his plans, he had decided from which quarry stone
should be carted; he had thought how much money he could himself afford
as a beginning, how much and at what rate he could raise to complete the
scheme; pleasure-boats in imagination he saw drawn up on the shore,
small gardens filled with flowers, lawns on which walked ladies gaily
dressed,—gentlemen rich enough to pay long rents for convenient,
comfortably furnished houses. There was not another property so suitable
for the purpose as Woodbrook in all that part of the country; and the
beauty of it was that, whilst those few acres by the sea could be so
admirably utilized, the domain itself might remain almost intact, the
farms still be left as they were, the former tenants still permitted to
pay rents to new owners.
And all the while unconscious of the evil-eye coveting his home, his
lands, his son’s inheritance, General Riley pursued his way, never
imagining beggary was coming to him as fast as the feet of misfortune
could bring it.
Lulled into a state of fancied security—suspecting no trick, thinking of
no worse trouble in the future than a day when the arrears would have to
be paid—the old man was, by reason of utter ignorance, and, it may be,
natural carelessness, drifting on rocks from which his ship could never
have been hindered breaking to pieces,—when he was saved as by a
miracle.
What would be the ultimate end it might have puzzled a wiser than the
General to say, but for a time, at least, Woodbrook was though not out
of debt, out of danger. Every one connected with the matter felt nothing
more could be done in the affair till John came home.
Meantime it oozed out, as indeed no one strove to prevent the story
doing, that Mr. Brady and his friend had laid a deliberate trap for the
General, and people began to say some very hard things about the master
of Maryville in consequence; all the sins of his youth and his manhood
were rehearsed, as sins will be on such occasions; all the wrong he had
done in his lifetime, all the right he had left undone, all his errors
of omission and commission, all his subterfuges and tricks, his faults
social and domestic, the grief he had caused to many an honest father
and mother; these things and others like them were disinterred from the
always open grave of the past, and discussed alike in mansion and
cottage in the town of Kingslough, and in other towns, besides in the
country districts throughout all that part.
After a fashion, he had, up to this time, been making way with his
fellows. His wife was not visited by any lady higher in rank than the
wife of the minister who preached at the barn-like little meeting-house
a couple of miles or so from Maryville, but men of a better class,
though of a bad way of living, did not object to be seen in Mr. Brady’s
company, and were willing to drink, smoke, make small bets and play
cards with him, not merely at various hotels and inns in Kingslough and
the other towns, but at his own house.
Now there came a change, nameless, perhaps, but certain. There was no
direct cut, no absolute incivility, no alteration in manner of which it
was possible to take notice, but his former acquaintances were always in
a hurry when he met them, always had an engagement, always had to meet
some one or go somewhere, and rarely now could find time to spend an
hour or two in the evening at Maryville.
After all it was not right, these men opined, to have tried to drive the
old General out of Woodbrook. The line must be drawn somewhere, and
Kingslough drew it at that point which Mr. Brady had tried to cross.
Kingslough considered he ought to have refrained from meddling with a
gentleman. Nothing could have revealed so certainly the taint in Mr.
Brady’s blood as an attempt of such a nature. The marquis went up at
once in public estimation. Many persons who had long been wishing to
change their political creed, since Radical notions had begun to make
Liberalism rather the creed of the vulgar, took that opportunity of
turning their coats.
“It was a very fine thing of Ardmorne to do,” said Kingslough,
Kilcurragh, Glenwellan, and the neighbouring districts. He had gone with
General Riley to the Bank of Ireland himself, it was stated; he had
found the extra money required beyond what the bank would advance. He
had written to request Mr. John Riley’s presence, and arranged that his
prospects should not suffer in consequence. In a time of trouble he had
proved more than a friend, and then it was so clever of him to have
found out that danger menaced the Rileys, and of what nature.
Of course, some one must have given him a clue, but he followed it up to
the last inch of thread. Then came the question, who could have hinted
the matter to him?
Conjecture, which it is never possible to balk, guessed every likely and
unlikely person in the county. Rumour, which is the readiest inventor of
fiction on earth, prepared a score of circumstantial tales on the
subject, and ran them through society with as much regularity as any
other serial writer might.
On the whole, public opinion inclined to the belief that Mr. Dillwyn was
the person who had opened Lord Ardmorne’s eyes. It was well known that
when the new earl succeeded to the title, Mr. Brady had taken a journey
in order to malign Mr. Dillwyn, and secure the agency for himself, and
so much unpleasantness had in consequence arisen that Mr. Somerford’s
stepfather actually did resign, offered on certain conditions to vacate
Rosemont, and expressed his opinion of Mr. Brady and the Glendares in
language as remarkable for its force as its plainness.
It was only at the earl’s earnest entreaty he continued to act until
another agent could be found.
“And that other agent will not be Mr. Daniel Brady in this earl’s time,”
said Mr. Dillwyn triumphantly, on his return from foreign travel—which
remark clearly proved that the feelings he entertained towards the owner
of Maryville were not strictly Christian in their nature.
Society at Kingslough had for so long a time been accustomed to
disagreements between the Glendares and their agents, that it had paid
comparatively little attention to this last dispute, except to marvel
whether Mr. Dillwyn would really go, and if so who would step into his
shoes. But now when every one was anxious to know who it was that
enlightened Lord Ardmorne, the passage between the agent and Mr. Brady
was remembered, and a certain significance attached to it.
In a word, though rumour invented and circulated fifty stories, this was
the one to which people, as a rule, inclined. Mr. Brady himself was
perhaps the only person who attached no importance to it. As at first,
he believed that either his own or his friend’s lawyer, or his friend
himself, had proved unfaithful; so at last he believed that one or other
of the persons with whom he was most closely connected by ties of
interest had—by imprudence or of _malice prepense_—betrayed his plans.
No one else, he was positive, had the faintest knowledge of them. By
intuition Mr. Dillwyn could not have guessed his tactics, and it
mattered little who it was that had finally carried the news to Lord
Ardmorne, when once the secret escaped from the custody of those who
ought to have held it secure.
To discover the person who originally betrayed it, suddenly became the
most paramount business of Mr. Brady’s life, and Nettie often wondered
to herself whether the best thing she could do might not be to run away
to the uttermost ends of the earth, taking the children with her.
“For if he ever finds it out he certainly will kill me,” thought the
wretched woman, and she thenceforth lived in a constant agony of fright.
After all, no matter how tired a person may be of the business of
existence, one would like to have a choice as to the mode of getting rid
of the toil and the sorrow; and perhaps the most repulsive way of having
the trouble ended seems that of being murdered.
There had been times when Nettie felt tempted to bring matters to a
conclusion for herself—and that method of shortening the weary day now
seemed luxurious by comparison with any termination which involved the
ceremony of _un mauvais quart d’heure_, with Mr. Brady as an essential
preliminary.
So far as affairs at the Castle Farm were concerned, General Riley’s
business took precedence of Amos Scott’s. Having quarrelled with his own
solicitors, Mr. Brady had to carry the Scott difficulty elsewhere. Out,
Mr. Brady was determined the farmer, his wife, and his children should
go; but short of pulling the house down about their ears, there seemed
no possibility of getting rid of them; and for all his braggart airs, he
was not prepared to take a step of that kind if he could avoid doing so.
That rough-and-ready method of ejectment, which found such favour in the
south and west, never recommended itself to the northern understanding.
The thing has been done, of course: the roofs have been stripped off;
the windows taken out; the doors torn from their hinges; in extreme
cases the very walls undermined, and the house razed with the ground;
but patient as the northern temperament is, I doubt if a landlord could
enjoy much ease of mind supposing he saw a man like Amos Scott sitting
by his naked hearth—with the heavens for his rooftree, and the wind and
the rain blowing and beating on his head.
Upon the whole, supposing imagination presented the picture of such a
reality, the landlord’s dreams—let right be on his side or wrong—would
be of coffins and of a violent exit into that other world where all the
vexed questions of this will—as we fondly hope—be settled to the
satisfaction of the poor, the oppressed, the brokenhearted.
Curious to say, although Mr. Brady was a bully he was not also a coward;
which seems as inconsistent a statement as to say a negro is not black.
Nevertheless, it is the truth. The man was not destitute of physical
courage. He had writhed mentally under the taunts hurled at him by the
Rileys; but he would not have feared a stand-up fight with the son—a
hand to hand struggle, with liberty given to each to kill if he were
able.
Nevertheless, Mr. Brady had gone almost as far with the Scotts as he
cared to do. He had dug their potatoes and sold them, cut the grass and
saved it, reaped the corn and carried it, sown the land with seed, that
was again hastening to fruition; but beyond this he hesitated to go. The
law must do the rest, he said; but spite of the fact of justice being on
his side, he found the law liked the task of turning Amos Scott out on
the world rather less than he did.
When a bailiff came to take possession of the household goods, gathered
together carefully, anxiously, in the first part of the Scott’s married
life, he was received by husband and wife, one armed with a blunderbuss
and the other with a pike, a relic of ninety-eight.
“Honest man,” said Amos, miscalling him in an access of civility,
“honest man, if ye want to sit down to rest ye’re kindly welcome; if ye
want bite or sup, we can give ye share of what we have ourselves, water
and a meal bannock; but if ye lay a finger on anything in this house and
claim for that devil Brady I’ll shoot ye dead. I’ve made up my mind to
slay the first who meddles with the inside of that half-door, so if
anything happens your blood will be upon your own head, not upon mine.”
The result of which speech was that the man neither stopped nor took
breath till he found himself in Kingslough again. There was a steady
light in Scott’s eye, and a suggestiveness about the way in which he
kept his finger on the trigger, ill-calculated to make visiting at the
Castle Farm pleasant to a person of the bailiff’s profession.
Afterwards Amos declared, “He only meant to fear the man;” but if this
were so his sport was sufficiently like earnest to carry conviction with
it.
Matters had arrived at this pass, in a word: people whispered Scott was
dangerous and that Mr. Brady went armed. Further, popular sympathy was
with Scott, and the very ballad singers had long slips of badly printed
doggrel reciting the doings of Mr. Daniel Brady from his youth upwards,
and enlarging upon the fact not only of his having “decoyed a lovely
maiden to a land beyond the seas,” but of his trying subsequently
“To cajole a gallant gentleman,
And leave his son so poor.”
Some kind friend managed that Nettie should be favoured with a sight of
one of these precious productions.
“If he kills me one day they will sing all about that through the
streets,” she thought with a shiver.
Blue eyes and golden hair, what a day’s work you wrought when in the
bright sunshine you went away with Daniel Brady, trusting the whole
future of your young life in his hands.