Chapter IX: Mrs. Drewitt understands

It was winter—winter on the grand sea-coast—winter among those everlasting hills; and Agnes Drewitt came to understand how the season might be more endurable in the country than in London; came to see how the breakers dashing on the rocks—how the waves rolling up on the shore—how the mountains covered with snow—how the swelling streams, and the roaring torrents might be less monotonous and depressing than the fine perspective of a London street, or the exhilarating spectacle of a yellow fog.

She was beginning to like Kincorth. Home—be it ever so homely, ever so lonely, ever so uncomfortable—has a great charm for a woman like Mrs. Drewitt; and though her lot was in many respects not an enviable one, still she was becoming reconciled to it. She was growing to know the people and to like them; she was contriving how to get her household into more orderly ways. She had talked with her husband, and got him to consent to see Maxwell. Altogether, on the particular afternoon of which I am speaking, Mrs. Drewitt did not feel unhappy.

She was going out for a walk, a long walk, all by herself; and after long confinement to the house, after constant attendance on an invalid, the idea of fresh air, of a little pilgrimage beside Duranmore Bay, all round Eversbeg Head, and so on nearly to Eversbeg Abbey, did not prove unpleasant.

She had been rather a prisoner since her arrival in Ireland, and freedom seemed sweet. She had never been round Eversbeg Head, which she could see so plainly from her bedroom windows. She had never been very near the Atlantic, for she did not call Duranmore Bay the Atlantic; and she wanted to dip her hand in it for once, and write to her sister, “I have touched the great ocean.” She longed to stand on some point of land whence she could see thousands and thousands of miles away. She had some vague notion, I fancy, of getting a glimpse of America; but be this as it may, she intensely enjoyed the idea of the walk, and meant to make the most of it.

“There is a much nearer way you know, Auntie,” said Kathleen, “thrau the road by Eversbeg Head; but if you wish to get a good view of the Atlantic, you must go by the coast. It is not a nice clear day, though. You ought to have seen it in fine weather.”

“Oh! I think it a lovely day,” answered Mrs. Drewitt, and as she walked along, while the wind drove the clouds before her, she repeated to herself that it was lovely—that she had never enjoyed anything so much in all her life before.

The election had long been over. Mr. Sache and his family were in Dublin, and the “Castle,” as he somewhat pompously called his house—a building all wings and turrets and loopholes and weathercocks—was left in charge of servants.

Duranmore had subsided into its state of normal dullness. Fishermen mended their nets, labourers went about their accustomed work, the shopkeepers did their usual small amount of business. There was no more fighting in the streets, the public-houses were emptied of the crowds of drunken men that had once filled them full to overflowing. The Earl and Countess of Popingham were in France, Lord Marsden in Rome, Mr. and Mrs. Munks in London, and thus Mrs. Drewitt had, after a fashion, the country to herself, to enjoy thoroughly and completely, if she liked.

And she did like. She loved to look at the mountains with the clouds flying fast over them as though hurrying, hurrying away. She loved the wild hills, the distant ravines, the rivers that came bounding down from the far-off heights and went rushing to the sea. She loved the bay when the waters were dark like the sky, when the waves came up towards Duranmore, that was now so quiet and orderly. She loved to pause and look at the whitewashed cottages, at the pretty, picturesque children, who hung their curly heads abashed as the lady passed by. She loved the salutation of the country people, some of whom “made bould to ask her how the masther was.” She was not a stranger among strangers now. She was taking root in the soil, and learning to love the very shamrocks in the grass.

She left Duranmore behind her, and still went on. Spite of recent rains the granite road was hard and dry beneath her feet. Above her head the high wind drove the clouds before it. “You are going to England,” she thought, “but I do not wish to be travelling there with you now.” The western breeze blew a colour into her cheeks, and disarranged her hair, and lifted her veil, and kissed her sweet face caressingly.

“I love the wind,” she thought; “it is fresh and pure, and it comes from travelling over the great sea, instead of bringing the taint of large cities on its breath;” and she turned, even while she was thinking this, round Eversbeg Head, and the wide Atlantic and the full force of the western breeze burst upon her at once.

Thousands of miles! Millions upon millions of tossing billows! Oh! thou great God Almighty! who can look across the restless ocean and not think of Thee! Who can forget, while standing by the sea and watching the great waters come thundering upon the shore, that Thou hast set bounds to the waters and said, “Here shall thy proud waves be stayed”—who, looking over the trackless expanse of ocean, but must feel that all unseen the feet of the Most High have traversed it?

When we see this work of the Lord, His wonders in the deep; when we perceive how at His command the floods arise, and how at His word the storm ceases; when we remember that though the waves of the sea are mighty and rage horribly, still that the Lord God who dwelleth on high is mightier; when we think that he holds the waters in the hollow of his hand, do we not seem for a moment, amid raging tempests and foaming billows, to catch a glimpse of the Infinite? Looking over the waste of waters, does not our weak mortality appear able to grasp for an instant the idea of immortality? Can we not imagine that no material horizon bounds our view—that we are gazing away and away across the ocean into eternity?

Thousands of miles, friends! Which of us has not at one time or other let his heart go free over the waters? Who has not stood by the shore silent, while his inner self—his self that never talks save to his God and his own soul—has gone out from his body and tossed with the billows, and answered the sullen roar of the waters, and risen and sunk with the waters as they rose and fell, rose and fell, and felt the breaking of the foam, the sobbing plash of the great ocean, as it rolls up on the sands and over the rocks and stones and shells of earth, while depth calleth unto depth and the giant floods clap their hands together?

And oh! with what a terrible sadness does that second self come back to us! It has been out listening to strange voices, hearing strange sounds, learning solemn truths. It has been out on the billows, on the foam, among the spray and the clouds and the tempest—out and away to the very confines of the invisible world. It has been restless like the ocean, and it comes back to be set within the bounds of flesh; it has been free, and behold it must return to chains and fetters; it has been telling of its troubles to the ocean, and the ocean has lifted up its mighty arms and mourned out its sorrowful reply.

Mourning—mourning—never silent, never still—now lashing itself up into fury—now tossing hither and thither as it seems to us without plan or purpose; now wave following after wave, as man follows after man in the ranks of a vast army; now flinging its waters on the shore—now striving to climb the steep sides of some rugged rock; fretting itself as we fret ourselves—moaning as we moan—toiling as we toil—restless as we are; now receding—now advancing—but never at peace; in its strong moods wild and tumultuous—in its calmest moments stirred by the ground swell, ruffled by the lightest breeze!

Well may man love this deep, inexplicable, unfathomable ocean, for as it through the ages has gone on sobbing and mourning and struggling, so man through the years of his life goes mourning and struggling too.

Some thoughts like these passed through Mrs. Drewitt’s mind as she stood at the base of Eversbeg Head, and looked out over the Atlantic. She had never seen anything like it before; the ocean had never filled her heart and saddened it till now.

Though not much of a traveller, she had, like most people, known the sea in its quieter aspect. She had visited Brighton; she had been to Hastings; she had seen the flat Norfolk coast, and beheld the mud banks in the Essex Hundreds; but the sea in any of the places I have mentioned was not like the sea that broke over the rocky headlands of the wild West; neither was the desolate shore she stood on like unto the civilized shores she was once familiar with, where bathing boxes were drawn up on the shingle, and men and women walked upon the parade, and the bare windows of lodgings to let looked out above the calm blue waters.

An unromantic lady—middle-aged, shall we say—and with no particular beauty of face or figure, who pursues the even tenour of her unexciting life, is of the same genus, doubtless, as Lady Macbeth, Joan of Arc, or Mary Queen of Scots. Naturalists would declare them to be all women together; but then they were different women, and not much alike, we may suppose, in personal appearance.

It is thus with the sea: we have now the respectable matron, and anon the queen of tragedy; we have the smooth face, the well-established conventionalities; the world’s customs in one place, in another we have anger and passion, and wild beauty and rugged grandeur; and, above all, thousands of miles of ocean, millions of tossing billows.

She had never seen anything like it—never seen such a sea under such a sky before; never seen a vessel out before in rough weather; never thought to look upon such an expanse of angry waters as now met her view.

She turned and looked towards Kincorth. There, secure on the hill-side, it stood in its tranquil beauty; she looked further north still, towards Duranmore Point, and saw it gloomy and impassable, stretching out into the sea. Far and far out she could tell where the sunken rocks lay—she knew by the sheets of white, foam that broke upon them; to her left, on the other side of Eversbeg Bay, she saw a low green hill—green even under that wintry sky, which looked calm and tranquil, though the wild waves were dashing round and about it. Up the bays the water rolled dark and sullen, but still calm by comparison with what they looked out to seaward.

Among the billows a ship was labouring and striving, and when Mrs. Drewitt reluctantly pursued her onward way, she left it making with caution for Duranmore Bay, putting in there out of the way of the coming storm.

“‘And so He bringeth them into the haven where they would be,’” murmured Mrs. Drewitt, as she neared her own destination.

Did she ever forget her first view of the great Atlantic, do you imagine, my reader? Did the stormy ocean, those foaming billows, those restless waves ever fade out of her memory as the years went by?

When she passed, in a far different place, to the haven which God had appointed for her, was not the roar of those mighty waters still in her ears? did she not feel like that reeling vessel, weary of the struggle with the winds and the waves? and was she not glad to turn into any harbour where she might be at rest?

Thinking of the boundless Atlantic, she continued on her way, till she came to a tract of poor, barren land, on the very edge of Eversbeg Bay, which tract of land was Maxwell Drewitt’s sole inheritance.

A child whom she met on the way gladly turned back and showed Mrs. Drewitt which was Headlands Cottage.

Headlands Cottage! Headlands Hovel would have been nearer the mark, she thought, as she knocked with her knuckles at the door, which, for a wonder in that description of house, was shut.

Maxwell Drewitt answered her summons in person, and requested her to enter his poor habitation with all the courtesy of a grand seigneur.

The cabin—for it was nothing better than a cabin—contained but two rooms, in one of which Maxwell slept, whilst he lived, read, ate, wrote, and planned in the other.

He had an old woman who came in and “did for him,” so he explained to his aunt, and who, being at that present moment in a kitchen which he had extemporized out of a cow-shed, would be happy to make Mrs. Drewitt a cup of tea if she wished for it.

“But in any case,” finished Maxwell, “I will tell her to bring it in;” and he left the room to do so, while Mrs. Drewitt looked round at her leisure.

There was a blazing turf fire on the hearth, and near the fire stood a common deal table covered with books, papers, and plans. The apartment boasted two chairs, and Mrs. Drewitt occupied one of them.

The floor was of earth, swept clean; the walls were whitewashed; the roof was unceiled, and between the blackened rafters she could see the thatch. Besides the table and chairs, the room boasted no other furniture of any kind, sort, or description, except a writing-desk and a hair trunk. The walls were decorated with pistols, guns, riding-whips, and fishing-rods. It was in a place like this Maxwell Drewitt had elected to make his first start in life, and Mrs. Drewitt could not help admiring him for it.

I wish I were able to sketch that room for you. I should like to show how the firelight fell on Maxwell’s dark face; how the shadows lay on the floor while the gloom of the winter evening gathered, deepened and deepened, out of doors.

There was no false pride about Maxwell Drewitt. He had that virtue, at any rate. If the king had called, in passing, the young man would have felt no shame about receiving royalty in the only house he owned; and for this reason Mrs. Drewitt found that it was impossible for her to speak about the place in which she found him. She could as soon have remonstrated with an Indian on the inconvenience of living in a wigwam as she could have talked to her nephew concerning his abode.

It was his, and he was a gentleman, and he had chosen it for himself. She had no more right to come there and pity him for his earthen floor and his scant furniture than royalty would have to find fault with the dinner-service at Kincorth.

Headlands Cottage was Maxwell Drewitt’s castle, and being his castle, Mrs. Drewitt respected it.

“She had come to speak to him about many things,” she said. “First of all, your uncle is much better—almost well again, thank God, and he is able and wishful to see you. I thought, perhaps, you would come back with me this evening,” she hesitated; “but in case you were unable to do so, I told one of the men to walk a little way on this side Duranmore to meet me.”

“I have an appointment for this evening,” answered Maxwell, “but I will walk back with you as far as the lodge gates.”

“And when will you come to Kincorth?” she asked.

“To-morrow, if it be convenient to you,” he said.

“As if any time were inconvenient!” she exclaimed; “as if I should not be only too glad to see you back there, for good and all, I mean.”

“I have got so far on my road,” he replied, “I am not likely to try another now.”

“But, Maxwell,” she inquired, “what are you going to do? Forgive me if I seem impertinent; but how are you going to live? Do you mean to stay here? What do you purpose doing for money?”

“I purpose to work for it,” he answered, “and I mean to obtain it. I know you only ask what my plans are, out of kindness, and I, therefore, cannot consider any question impertinent. You must not, however, think me rude if I reply that men are not like women; they do not act from impulse; they do not commence to build without counting the cost; they do not start on a journey without knowing something of the land towards which they are travelling. To speak more plainly still, I did not leave Kincorth without sketching out a plan for my own future, and I mean to perfect that plan if I can. When I have perfected it, you shall see the result. Meantime, be satisfied,” he added, with a smile. “I have food, I have raiment. I have a roof to cover me, and I have a fire at which to warm myself withal. More than this,” he went on, “it is all mine own; that is, mine, so long as I pay my rent punctually. If you came round Eversbeg you must have passed some land which is mine without paying rent at all, and in another year I mean to have it in my own hands. This farm joins my land, so I have my territories close together, and there is a small house on my freehold which, when once Blake gives up possession, I mean to have put into thorough repair, and where I hope you will come and see my improvements.”

“Then you never mean to return to Kincorth?” she said. “Never?”

He looked at her, and then he looked into the fire, and then he flung on a few more peats before he answered—

“I may, perhaps, but you ought not to wish me to do so.”

“Why?” she asked; and as he only laughed in reply, she went on. “You always speak in riddles, Maxwell. What do you mean?”

“You really wish to know?”

“I do; of course I do.”

“Then I will tell you before you go. Now, what else did you want to speak to me about?”

“About your sisters—about twenty things. First about your sisters. They are a great care to me, Maxwell. I do not know what I ought to do. I do not know if I can do anything.”

“What is the particular emergency?” inquired Maxwell.

“Their position is not what it ought to be,” she explained, “and I cannot make it different. If Susan and Wilhelmina would do their parts,” she continued, “things might be better; but they seem to take a delight in thwarting all my plans. Wilhelmina rides from morning till night. She visits with people your uncle does not seem to know and that I have never seen. She will not read or practice, or improve herself in any way: and as for Susan—” but here Mrs. Drewitt paused.

“Well, what about Susan?” he asked.

“There is a Captain Ellenham who is always about the house,” said his aunt; “always with Susan,” and she stopped again.

“He is possibly in love with her,” remarked Maxwell, with a smile, “though it does not say much for his taste.”

“But if he were in love with her,” argued Mrs. Drewitt, “should he not want to see her uncle, to see me, to ascertain how her family were likely to receive him? There is a secrecy about it which puzzles me. I do not wish to speak to your uncle, but I thought that you—”

“I do not wish to have anything to do with Susan’s affairs,” answered Maxwell, shortly; “I think my uncle is the proper person to interfere.”

“And Wilhelmina?”

“Wilhelmina will not hurt, unless she gets her neck broken some of these days.”

“And Kathleen?”

“What about Kathleen?” asked Maxwell, raising his head and looking at Mrs. Drewitt.

“Nothing, only your uncle wants her to be sent to school: now, Maxwell, ought I to let her go? I can teach her all she needs to learn; I can see to her when she is ill; and she is such a comfort to me, I am so fond of her—so fond!”

“But still, would it not be better for her to go to school?” asked Maxwell. “Would the companionship of girls of her own age not be desirable? would the early hours, the regularity, the whole discipline of a school not be good for her? If Susan and Willy had been sent away they might have been different to what they are. You will never have time to attend to Kathie. Altogether, if my uncle be willing to pay for her, it is best she should go.”

“You think so?”

“I do.”

“But she is so delicate.”

“She will be stronger out of Galway.”

“And we are so fond of each other.”

“That is quite another matter,” said Maxwell, and then, to his amazement, Mrs. Drewitt began to cry.

His decision was different to what she had expected it would be, and she and Kathleen had agreed to abide by that decision.

“I feel certain,” he said, “that you would rather do what is best for Kathleen’s future than what you and she would like in the present. I think it is a good thing for her to go to school, but of course that is a matter for you and my uncle to settle.”

“It is for you to settle,” answered Mrs. Drewitt, “and she shall go to school. Now, about another thing, Maxwell. What kind of a woman is Lady Emmeline Vervensoe?”

“You know almost as much of her as I do,” was his reply; “you saw her at the election. You may judge from that very much what she is.”

“She has been often over to Kincorth lately,” said his aunt, “she seems to wish to be very intimate with me; she is very kind and very attentive, but your uncle does not like her much, and—”

“It is not to be expected he would like her after the part she took against Mr. Sache,” laughed Maxwell. “So far as I know, Lady Emmeline has not any harm about her; she is much wiser, in my opinion, than Mrs. Munks, and she is a great deal prettier. I think you would get on very well together, and that you might find her a pleasant acquaintance. Does my uncle not wish you to visit her?”

“He is very great friends with Colonel Vervensoe, you know,” answered Mrs. Drewitt; “but we cannot have him, at least I do not like having him, without his wife, and I thought I would ask you about Lady Emmeline.”

“There is nothing against her, if that is what you mean,” Maxwell replied: “she is perfectly and unexceptionably proper, although she did wear a red scarf at the election and canvass her husband’s tenantry. But then, really they are as much her tenants as his. She has more money than he, and gives it to him freely enough, I believe. I have not seen her these two months.”

“So she told me,” remarked Mrs. Drewitt; “she was asking me where you were and what you were doing.”

“How very kind!” laughed Maxwell. “I should have thought so insignificant a person far beneath her ladyship’s notice,” and Maxwell laughed again.

“I must go now,” said Mrs. Drewitt, rising to depart; “it is getting dusk, and Kathie will be uneasy. Now do not think of coming with me, Patrick is certain to be somewhere on the road; I left a message for him.”

“You must not deny me the pleasure of being your escort for all that,” answered Maxwell, and the two left the heat of the blazing turf-fire and walked back together by the nearer road to Kincorth. As they walked they talked—about Ireland, about her scenery, about her people, about her wrongs, about her want of prosperity. Then Mrs. Drewitt told her nephew how fond she was getting of the country, and spoke enthusiastically of the view from Eversbeg Head; and pleased, almost in spite of himself, by her admiration for his native land, Maxwell began to wish they could be good friends—that no Kincorth stood between them.

“Tell me,” she said, as they parted, “why you think I ought not to wish you back at Kincorth. I can imagine that you might be a great comfort to me and a great help to your uncle.”

“If I tell you, I am afraid you will be angry,” he answered.

“Angry! you are jesting. What is the reason?”

For a moment Maxwell hesitated, then he said—

“Do you remember my saying once that I did not dislike you for yourself, but only for being my uncle’s wife?”

“Perfectly; but I hope you do not dislike me now for that.”

“No, not for that,” was the slow reply; “not for that, exactly, but it is not in flesh and blood—at least it is not in my flesh and blood—to feel any great amount of attachment for a woman whose children will keep me out of Kincorth for ever.”

She never answered him by a word. In the twilight he could see her turn first red and then white: he could see enough in her face to assure him his guess had been correct, and that there was an heir coming to inherit Kincorth, its woods, its lawns, its streamlets.

Never hence by the strength of his own right hand, by the power of his own work, by the force of his own industry, might the lands of his ancestors return to him. The son of a younger son would possess Kincorth; while he, the son of the eldest son, was earning his bread in his barren farm by the desolate sea-shore.

As for Mrs. Drewitt, she re-entered Kincorth a different woman to that she had left its gates. She understood her position now. She knew at last why Maxwell and his two elder sisters detested her.

“Not for myself, but because of the sons I may have,” she thought; and it seemed to her that everything which was strong and evil in her weak and tender nature sprung to life and prompted her to do battle for the sake of her still unborn child.

Had he measured her character accurately, would Maxwell have spoken to her as he did? I doubt it—doubt whether willingly he would have turned her friendship into enmity, and taught her to guard the inheritance of her children with a jealous watchfulness.

It was not for herself—it was for no benefit she ever expected to have out of the property that Mrs. Drewitt vowed Maxwell Drewitt should never own Kincorth—never if she had a living son.

Who can sow good grain as fast as the Evil One can plant tares? who can learn to cleave to the right, even in twenty times the space which it takes him to adopt the wrong? In the garden of Eden the serpent speedily beguiled Eve into eating of the tree; but through all the centuries that have passed, with their sorrow, away since then, the Maker of the universe has never been able to induce his children to cast that evil and cursed fruit from them.

A moment for the one—thousands of years for the other. An instant sows the seed—the labour of a lifetime will not eradicate the noxious plant the seed produces. We are strong for evil; we are weak for good. We are frail; we are erring. God have mercy upon us! for even the best man and the best woman proves, when put to the test, to be but a miserable sinner.