Chapter X: Maxwell’s Engagements

After leaving Mrs. Drewitt at the entrance to Kincorth, Maxwell slowly retraced his steps to Duranmore, thinking, thinking as he walked. He had never done thinking about his plans, his projects, his schemes, his hopes.

As a man strives to perfect an invention, as he meets every mechanical difficulty, as he seeks to understand what natural law is standing in the way of his success—so Maxwell Drewitt worked out the design of his own future painfully and laboriously.

It is one thing to sketch out a picture, and another to fill it in; one thing to draw a house, and another to build it; one thing to say I will do this or that, and quite another to accomplish the project.

It is easy to plan; it is hard to finish. We can dream dreams, sitting in the firelight or lying on the green hill’s side, but if we would make those dreams realities, we must work hard and think hard; we must think till our brains are weary, we must work through the years for success.

The lives of all famous men repeat the same story, but the hearts of most young people reject it with impatient scorn.

They want the harvest and the seed-time to come together. It seems to them awful not to be able to gather till the autumn, to have to toil before they eat. Seeing the height to which others have climbed, they refuse to believe that the ascent can be so difficult. The successes which genius and labour have found it the most difficult to compass look to the eyes of inexperience easy and commonplace.

Can anything go more smoothly along the lines than engine and tender and carriages and trucks? Can anything be simpler, more natural, more prosaic than a railway train? and yet, oh! friends, how many a man’s thoughts are concentrated there! how many a man’s work has combined together to make up the sum total which you see!

It is thus with everything in life, be it small or be it great—the result seems to bear no proportion to the labour expended to produce it.

Time, thought, industry—we must give all these before, weary and worn, we can hope to reach the goal of such success as our souls desire. We must do what Maxwell Drewitt did—spare no pains, repine at no hardships, grumble at no obstacles on the road.

And yet there was one thing he lacked if he desired to compass such success as might not only give him competence and station, but happiness and content.

He was labouring for riches and position, but he forgot that, even in this world, riches and position, though much, are not everything. What are the daintiest viands, the choicest wines, to the man who can bring no appetite to table? What are lands and houses, what are fields and trees, if the eyes that look over them are dim with weeping, heavy with care?

“Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it. Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.

“It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of carefulness.”

I wonder how many young men believe these words to be true? I wonder how many, walking in the dim light through which all, rich or poor, must one day pass, would be able to say it was false?

The words which we listen to with careless ears at one time of our lives, thinking they were addressed solely to men who spent their strength for nought and disquieted themselves in vain thousands of years since, we come finally to understand hold a meaning within them which is and will be eternally true this year and next, and through all the years that are to come—true for the man who is toiling for fame, for the merchant who is heaping up wealth, for the woman who is labouring to secure a good position, as it was for Maxwell Drewitt walking though the gathering darkness by the shore of Duranmore Bay.

He was planning, plotting, scheming. He had youth, strength, hope, resolution. There was no reason why he should not have made a good thing of life, a good thing for himself and for others, save this—that in the city of his heart he would not suffer that sentinel of the Lord—conscience—to keep watch; that he was selfish, unprincipled, unfeeling; that he did not care whether the car of his progress crushed men and women under his wheels; that he was overconfident in himself; that he believed, if we exhaust the matter completely, man to be stronger than his Maker—the creature, than the Creator.

I am not attempting to write a religious novel, I am not trying to interleave my book with sermons, but there is no author who can tell the story of a man’s life truly, and not speak of the mistakes he made, of the errors he committed.

If it be but an extract out of the volume of existence that we profess to give—but the account of this one’s love-making, of the disappointment of his friend—if we stop short when we find the record becoming troublesome to ourselves, or likely to prove displeasing to our readers, we may dispense with much minutiæ which is indispensable when we are tracing a human being’s footsteps from the cradle to the grave.

When we take a man’s life, and write his biography, indifferently it may be, but still as well as we are able, we must tell where he went wrong, and how that wrong brought forth bitter fruit in the future. We must tell not only of the crimes of which the law of the land takes cognizance, but also of those other transgressions which are not punished with fine or imprisonment, but by the heavy hand of the Lord God himself. It is useless to try to tell a story and be bound to steer clear of this matter of eternal truth, of eternal justice. I might as well lay down my pen at once were the subject beyond a novelist’s province; for the sum total of Maxwell Drewitt’s mistake in life was, that he thought the will of man paramount—that—as many a reader will scoff over the few last pages—he scoffed at the idea of retribution, of repentance.

He built his house, but the Lord had no hand in it; he made his fortune, but the blessing of God was not upon it; he became a prosperous man, but the day came when he acknowledged with bitterness that prosperity is not always happiness.

In the spring-time of youth he reared his life’s edifice on the sands; when the winter came—the winter with its storms, its rain, its snows, its frosts—he saw the work of years scattered to the four winds of heaven.

It was just; but it was terrible. To me there is something too mournful for words to utter in the idea of that man walking on through the darkness—planning, plotting, scheming—for the end that I shall yet have to tell. Strong to work, willing to labour, independent enough to achieve, he had yet the seeds of ultimate failure in him—he was walking on blindly to meet his doom.

As he walked along, with the wind raising the hair from his forehead, he was thinking—how Kincorth should yet be his—how the day would come when his homeward steps would lead him thither, and not away from its gates; and he was thinking of something else, too—of something he was going to meet that very night—of a girl he had tried to make love him, and not without success.

He passed Ryan’s cottage slowly, passed it and stopped to listen; then he leaped over the ditch that divided the lawyer’s little meadow from the road, and made his way round to the place where his friend’s hay was stacked. A stream went brawling by to the sea, and beside the stream Jenny Bourke was waiting for him—poor little girl! poor foolish child!

From the hour Ryan warned Maxwell Drewitt off this ground, Maxwell vowed to win her heart. He did not know then whether she were pretty or ugly, sweet or sour, able to take care of herself or guileless as an infant; but it was all one to Maxwell. He would pay Ryan out, let his sister be what she pleased. He knew he was handsome; he knew he was a favourite with women; he knew he could soon make the girl fond of him. When he saw her he discovered something more—that the girl made him care for her. He had not quite contemplated this possibility, and it complicated matters a little; but the fact was so, nevertheless.

The only woman Maxwell Drewitt ever loved was Jenny Bourke; and the reason that he loved her was probably because she was so diametrically opposite to himself.

When he lay a-dying he thought of her; and thought then, what I believe to be true, that a prettier creature than Jenny Bourke never walked on the face of God’s earth—pretty and soft and gentle; and faithful to him, at any rate. Oh! sweet Jenny Bourke! why did you ever go out to meet such a man? why did you disobey your brother’s commands? why did you lay your lovely face on his breast, and say that it was long since you had seen him—long that he had kept away?

Fair, sweet Jenny! there was never a rose in the kingdom lovelier, never a lily purer, when Maxwell Drewitt first cast his dark eyes upon you. Let me try to sketch the face he saw—the saucy piquante face that, in the time of his tribulation, in the time of his wealth, in the hour of death, was still framed in his memory.

Would she appear before him in the day of judgment, I wonder? Maxwell Drewitt said not. He said, as solemnly as he said he believed he was dying, that Jenny Bourke would be true to him in the next world as she had been in this, and that she would never turn informer.

Dark-brown hair; clear white and red complexion; large eyes, that now seemed brown, now grey, now black—eyes that varied with the light, with her thoughts, with her feelings, with her words; lips that were as red as cherries; teeth white and even, but not too small; a somewhat short nose;—these were the features; but then it was not her features, it was the expression of her face; so joyous, so innocent, so pure!

I do not know how a man could ever make such a woman cry and forget seeing her tears. I cannot imagine how Maxwell Drewitt, fair and false, and hypocritical and remorseless though he was, could ever take such a girl to his heart and teach her to nestle there, knowing all the time he never intended to marry her; that the hour must come when he would have to cast her out from her abiding-place.

“I thought you never were coming,” she said, with her sweet Irish voice, soft and low and plaintive as music over the waters—as the low wind sighing among the trees. “I thought you had forgotten me—that I never was to see you again—that—”

He stopped her words with kisses; but she laughingly released herself, and went on.

“That you were caring more for the grand ladies you are so intimate with than for me.”

“As if any one of them could compare with you,” he answered; “as if there were any creature on earth equal to you. How many hundred times am I to tell you that I love you, and you only; that you are dearer to me than life or station or anything else in the world? But you say these things to try my temper,” he added; “you say them to make me contradict you—to make me punish you,” and he kissed brow and cheeks and lips till Jenny’s face was as red as a rose; till she was glad that the darkness hid her blushes from his admiring gaze.

“I cannot come out to meet you again,” she said at length, timidly and hesitatingly.

“Nonsense, Jenny; there is no such word as cannot in the whole of love’s dictionary.”

“Well, will not then, if you like that better,” she answered, more firmly. “Indeed, indeed,” went on the girl, “I cannot deceive Timothy any longer; I am getting that I am afraid to look him straight in the face; that I dread every sentence he speaks; that I am frightened of every question he puts. Let us part,” and as she made this terrible suggestion Jenny began to sob. “Let us part if you cannot have me tell Timothy; if you will not speak to him yourself.”

“The first day I ever saw you, Jenny, what did your brother say to you after I left the house?” But Jenny remained mute.

“Did he not tell you, to keep out of my way; to give me no encouragement; to show me no favour? Did not he tell you that, although I might be a fit acquaintance for him, I was none for you? that I was a bad man; a bad nephew; a bad brother; a bad friend? Did he not give me the worst character you ever heard given to an unfortunate fellow out of favour with fortune? Did not he do all this? I know he did, Jenny; I know it as well as if I had been sitting in the parlour listening to him.”

“Maybe you were near it,” suggested Jenny.

“No, I was not; but he spoke those words, or something very like those words, to me before you ever came to Duranmore. He said, ‘I had rather put the child in her grave than give her to you.’ That was his summing up. I hear it tingling in my ears yet.”

“I wonder you ever looked near me after that!” remarked Jenny.

“Ah, Jenny!” said Maxwell Drewitt, “who could ever see you and not look after you?” and the young man stole his arm round her waist, and drew her nearer to him—nearer still.

“But if he knew the way things were now, don’t you think he might change his mind?” she coaxed. “If he thought that you—that I—”

“If he thought you loved me, is that it, Jenny?” he finished. “No, that would make no difference; it would only make him bitterer. I am a poor man you see, dear; and a poor man is always a bad man: you must take patience and wait a while. When I am able to drive here in my carriage and ask him to give me his sister, he will then perhaps beg me to step inside; but till then I must see you as I have seen you, on the quiet.”

“I cannot go on with it,” she said. “It is not right; and I have heard that good can never come out of evil.”

“If it be wrong,” he answered, “let the punishment fall on me.”

“But oh!” said the girl, “we must each bear the burden of our own faults.”

“When we come to faults, it will be time enough to discuss that question,” he impatiently retorted.

“It is wrong, though,” she persisted.

“If you think it wrong then you do not love me,” he said. “You are not willing to suffer anything for my sake; you are ready to desert me because I am poor and in difficulties. Had I been still at Kincorth I should not have been forced to beg so hard for so small a favour; but let us part, Miss Bourke, as you wish all to be at an end between us. I cannot force you against your will. Give me one kiss, Jenny, and bid me good-bye. I am used to being scurvily treated. I will go back to my wretched home, and forswear love for ever. One more—forgive me, it is the last time. Now, good-bye. Let me go.”

But Jenny would not let him go; she hung about him, she sobbed, she asked forgiveness, she told him how she should die if he left her in anger, left her in grief.

He knew her every mood, her every thought almost, and he could manage her as easily as he might a child. She had her little qualms of conscience every now and then about her brother; she had her little fits of strength when she made all kinds of resolutions and declared her intention of keeping to them; she had her instincts too, which perhaps warned her that in concealment there is mostly danger—that though stolen waters may be sweet they are generally unwholesome; she had her hours of sadness, her times of bitter self-reproach;—but Maxwell had long known how to deal with her in every mood: he was her master and she his slave; and the end of all such conversations invariably was that Jenny promised to be guided by her lover’s advice; to do what he told her; to meet him when he asked her; to keep the fact of their engagement secret.

He called it an engagement, but whether he wilfully deceived her or resolutely blinded himself it would be hard to say: Jenny Bourke implicitly believed that he would marry her whenever he had enough money to do so, and her only trouble was lest her brother should withhold his consent.

As for Maxwell’s intentions! He was very fond of Jenny, and that is all he ever told even to himself.

He was very fond of the girl: all the worse for her. That love was the whole of her life: it was then but a part, a small part, of his. He had other aims, other objects, other wishes. He had plans into which she never entered, projects of which she formed no part: there were whole days when he never thought of her, or at least never thought save casually. There was not an hour, there was not a minute, when Jenny did not think of him.

When they parted after a few such stolen minutes as those I have spoken of, he could put her out of his memory, he could thrust her out of his head, he could forget the sweet face, the pleading voice, the twining arms, the clinging manner, and turn him to his plots and his schemes again; nay, he could do more—he could part with the sister and go to meet the brother; he could make an appointment with Ryan likely to keep him out of the way while he talked to Jenny, and then he would tell some lie to account for being late, and be as mild and gentle as a south wind during their interview.

There are not many men in the world, more particularly not many of Maxwell’s age, with consciences so elastic as to permit such stretches as these. It is not usual even for Christians to seethe the kid in its mother’s milk, and I fancy there are few who would like to think that they had offered a man hospitality to the end that they might clandestinely make love to his sister. Human nature, though not at all times over-nice or over-particular, will turn squeamish occasionally about trifles; and if Maxwell Drewitt had been at all like other people it must have cut him a little to think, after he left Jenny, that her brother was waiting for him at Headlands Cottage, wondering where the deuce Maxwell could have got to.

“Had to see madam home,” was that young gentleman’s explanation. “I think I must be a devilishly nice sort of fellow when ladies take to visiting me in an elegant mansion like this,” and Maxwell threw himself into one of the two chairs his ménage boasted, and after expressing a hope that Ryan had seen to the kettle, began to rattle on about Mrs. Drewitt’s visit, about her pressing invitation to Kincorth.

“I suppose you will soon go back to the old place now, then,” suggested Mr. Timothy Ryan; “you must be pretty well tired of this,” and the lawyer glanced contemptuously round the cabin.

“I would thank you not to sneer at my house,” answered Maxwell; “I hope to have a better some day, but it is the best I have at present.”

“Just so,” argued Ryan; “and as I was saying, you must be pretty well tired of it.”

“You should think! well, you are not me, that is the whole thing.”

“But are you not tired?” asked Ryan.

“No; I have not even thought of being tired yet. Time enough for that when I see a better place to go to; time enough for that when I have made my fortune!”

“And how the devil,” asked Mr. Timothy Ryan, “do you propose making your fortune here?”

“I mean to set up a private still,” answered Maxwell; “I mean to turn alchemist; I intend to discover the philosopher’s stone.”

“You have your work cut out then,” was the reply.

“I mean to make the howling wilderness a smiling plain,” went on Maxwell, unheeding the interruption; “I mean to see corn growing where corn has never grown before; I mean to live in advance of my age and to make money in Connemara.”

“You won’t make much,” said Ryan, by way of encouragement.

“That depends,” answered Maxwell: “meanwhile, the certainty before us is punch. Let us drink that and be happy,” and he pushed the whiskey-bottle over to Ryan, with the remark that the contents had never paid the King a halfpenny.

“It is all the better for that,” remarked Ryan; “but, not to seem personal, here’s ‘Long life to him.’”

“Amen,” said Maxwell Drewitt, and the two men took a pull at the punch together.

“And here’s to ‘Ireland: long life to her,’” observed the lawyer.

“Amen,” repeated Maxwell, and the pair emptied their glasses.

“Don’t spare the potheen,” urged Maxwell; “don’t make the creature so weak that it won’t be able to get into your mouth. Remember the good old Irish receipt for making punch: first the sugar, then the whiskey, and then every drop of water after that spoils it.”

“So it may, but I have to get home to-night,” remarked Ryan.

“The more reason you should recruit your strength for the walk,” observed Mr. Drewitt.

“So you won’t go back to Kincorth,” said Ryan, after a pause devoted to whiskey and water.

“No; I am better off here. I have food and shelter in this cabin—as I suppose you would call it. At Kincorth, excepting a horse, I had nothing but the run of my teeth. I had no chance of making money; I had no feeling of independence. In Headlands Cottage, on the contrary, ‘I am monarch of all I survey, and my right there is none to dispute.’ I have land; I have a house; I have bog beyond Eversbeg, I have sea-wreck on the shore. I have a future; I have hope; I see my way. I mean yet to be a rich man. When you, Mr. Timothy Ryan, my worthy creditor, are blacking your fingers over deeds of settlement and iniquitous wills, I, at present your humble debtor, will be a great man; able to make your heart glad by appointing you agent to my estates. Mix again, man. We shall have many a talk in years to come about this old cottage, about these winter nights.”

And Maxwell laughed, and the turf-fire—the bright upheaped turf-fire shone on his dark face; and Mr. Ryan, looking around the room, wondered what made the young man so merry; what he could see in his prospects or his surroundings to inspire him with such hopes.

“I confess,” he said, at length, “that I do not see how you are to do it.”

“My friend,” answered Mr. Maxwell Drewitt, “do you know anything of the science of agriculture?”

“No further than that it reluctantly pays rent,” was the reply.

“Do you know anything of the rotation of crops?”

“I have not the faintest idea what you are talking about,” answered the lawyer.

“Do you know anything of the nature of soils?” persisted his host.

“No more than I know of Arabic,” was the reply.

“Have you ever thought much about manures?”

“Damn it, I am not a farmer.”

“Well, I am; and I have thought about manures; I have studied the nature of soils; I can tell you all about the rotation of crops; and I mean to make money. I mean to turn up these grass lands, that grow nothing but moss and rushes. I mean to manure them; I mean to crop them. Harder than ever you read to be a lawyer, I have been reading to be a farmer. Pryor has been very good; he has sent me over books about soils. Turner is a trump; he has introduced me to an eminent English agriculturist with whom I correspond. I have ploughed and sowed half my farm already; I shall get the remainder ploughed, so that the frost, if any frost come, may eat into the ground. I have collected sea-weed. I intend to keep stock after this year. The great mistake in Ireland is the neglect of stall-feeding. I mean to try it. If you exhaust the secret of England’s prosperity, it is beer, beef, and manure; and I think I ought, as a simple matter of justice, to have put manure first. Let us see what sea-weed and stall-feeding will do in Connemara—what perseverance and resolution can effect anywhere.”

“I hope I shall not see you ruined,” was the reply.

“A beggar cannot be ruined,” said Maxwell, calmly; and the conversation reverted to general subjects, till Mr. Ryan rose to take his leave, when Maxwell lighted him to the door and out into the night with a dip candle.

“Wishing it was wax for your sake,” he said, with a laugh; and then he went back to his sitting-room, and remained there reading and writing and thinking for a couple of hours.

Next day he paid his promised visit to Kincorth.

“You will stay for dinner?” said Mrs. Drewitt, whose manner was, as Maxwell noticed, colder than usual.

“Do, Maxwell,” urged Kathleen.

“Of course he will,” chimed in Mr. Drewitt.

“Thank you,” said Maxwell, “but I am engaged—that is, I have an engagement.”

“You have always engagements now,” pouted his sister.

“Shows what a great man I am,” answered her brother, as he left to keep another appointment with Jenny Bourke—pretty, trustful, foolish Jenny!