Chapter XI: Warned

In the days of which I am writing there were two kinds of lawyer extant in Ireland—the wholly disreputable and the eminently respectable.

Among the disreputable every kind and description of man might be found, providing he was decidedly clever and not over-scrupulous; the respectable, on the contrary, were mostly of one pattern, men of standing, having characters to lose, who were socially quite on an equality with their clients, and who were as far above the stock attorney of Irish novelists as an honest merchant is above a swindling adventurer.

The worst of the respectable lawyers was that they were a little slow; the best of the disreputable lot was that they were decidedly sharp and shrewd.

Drawn as a rule from the lower middle class, the latter had all the quickness of the lower orders of Irish society, all their acuteness of perception, all their rapidity of jumping to conclusions. In guerilla warfare the regular army had no chance with them; they were down on a point of law like a terrier on a rat; they had every Act of Parliament at their fingers’ ends; they were perfect scourges in court; they were the terror of witnesses, the detestation of magistrates. If there were a flaw in your title, woe betide you if one of them got scent of it. They were clever, well up in law, impertinent, impudent, vulgar; they were always talking about the people’s rights; always for the man who had shot his landlord or his landlord’s bailiff from behind a hedge; always against the Crown; always in favour of the Roman Catholics and against the Protestants.

Unless a landlord had very dirty work indeed on hand he seldom left his family solicitor to seek advice from one of these gentlemen; and it was rarely indeed that any of them so far deserted his original flag as to serve under the enemy. In politics they were Liberals; in religion much the same. As a rule, they had been articled without the regular fee, and came into the profession by the back stairs. They were the hope of the vagabond population; they were the deliverers of many a man from the grievous terrors of the law; they fought so long as there was a rag of a chance left to them. If ever they got very rich they settled into men who upheld the constitution and the government; but so long as they remained poor—and that was generally for ever, because they spent as recklessly as they earned easily—they were for the people: for the women who went about barefooted; for the men who lounged through life with their coat-tails trailing the ground, with their battered hats worn on one side, with their hands in their pockets, and short pipes in their mouths.

Of this class Timothy Ryan was a favourable specimen. He might not have much principle, but he had a heart. He was known to forgive men their costs, though he was also known to have done many a thing which his best friends could scarcely consider honest. He was not a hard agent, though he was certainly not an honest man. His conscience had never stood in his way, but his feelings had. He was immensely popular with the lower orders, but he had not the entrée into any of the gentlemen’s houses in the neighbourhood, except into that of Waller of Eversbeg, whose agent he was, and to whose table he was often invited.

For the rest, he had little society save Mr. Murphy, Dr. Sheen’s assistant; the parish priest, and a retired sea captain who lived on the Duranmore side of Eversbeg Head. With Maxwell Drewitt, whom he had known for years, his intimacy was entirely of a business character, and yet Ryan was proud of the acquaintanceship, such as it was. He felt it gave him a certain standing knowing a Drewitt of Kincorth, even although that Drewitt had not the remotest chance of ever owning Kincorth. He knew he owed Waller’s agency—a tremendous lift for him—to Maxwell having brought the owner of Eversbeg into Inchnagawn Cottage to shelter during a storm; he was well aware young Drewitt could benefit him still more if he chose; for all of which reasons, Ryan cultivated Maxwell; whilst, for various sufficient reasons of his own, Maxwell cultivated Ryan.

Jenny Bourke was Ryan’s half-sister. They were children of the same mother; Mrs. Ryan having changed her name for that of Bourke within two years of her first husband’s death.

Of the Ryans’ union there had been many sons: one, Timothy, the eldest, settled at Duranmore as a lawyer; another ran away to sea; a third enlisted; a fourth emigrated; and so at last poor Mrs. Bourke departed this life in despair of ever seeing them reunited, and left her only daughter to the care of her sister and to the guardianship of Timothy.

As for Mr. Bourke, he had long before deserted his wife and married a younger and more attractive-looking woman in England; indeed, rumour said that Mrs. Ryan was by no means his first essay in matrimony. He had a way of winning widows and securing their little fortunes, and then disappearing like a flash of lightning.

Some people declared Bourke was not his name at all; but be this as it may, Jenny had never been called by any other, and she never hoped to be called by any other, unless indeed it might some day happen that Maxwell were able to make her his wife.

Mr. Murphy had something more than a liking for the girl, but Jenny turned her coldest shoulder on the assistant when he called.

“It’s that blackguard Maxwell at his tricks again,” thought Mr. Murphy; “I am sure he sees her somehow:” but Mr. Murphy was a wise man and kept his own counsel. He did not frighten Jenny by spreading a net in her sight, but he drew back and watched who threw the crumbs, he felt confident, the girl came down to pick up.

“I’ve my eye on you, my boy,” he would remark to himself when he met young Mr. Drewitt and exchanged bows with him; “I have my eye on you. Give you rope enough and you will run it into a noose for yourself, or I am greatly mistaken. Good-morning, sir; fine weather this for the country.” And he would ride off on his rough pony, while Maxwell trudged over the Connemara roads on foot.

His uncle had offered him leave to take a couple of horses out of the stable at Kincorth, but Maxwell declined the gift.

“Not one of them shall give me a lift up,” he said to Ryan, and Ryan applauded his spirit even while he wondered at it.

“Where the deuce does he get the money from?” considered the lawyer: “where can he get it? for a man is not able to live for nothing, even in a cabin; and he pays wages, and buys implements, and hires horses, and draws sea-weed. I should like to know who is backing him. Can it be Turner? It is not impossible.”

And Maxwell took every pains to foster this idea, and to make Mr. Ryan think not only that Turner was backing him, but also that Mr. Waller and Mr. Pryor were willing to help him in his endeavours.

In reality, however, he did not for many a long day receive the slightest assistance from any of his male acquaintances, whether Irish or English.

It was Lady Emmeline Vervensoe who helped him into the saddle; it was Lady Emmeline who, when she heard he had left Kincorth with the intention of trying to push his way on in the world, gave him a considerable sum of money, saying significantly as she pressed it into his hand: “Secret service money for the election; you need not give me any account of it, Mr. Drewitt.” And Mr. Drewitt did not give her any account, and when he found that his farming operations required more capital he asked her ladyship to make him a further advance.

He and Colonel Vervensoe had never healed up their old wound. So they passed each other when they met without speaking, and Maxwell was never by any chance now asked up to Cragantlet, even in the hunting season.

But yet the servants at Cragantlet knew that Mr. Drewitt of “The Headlands,” as he was beginning to call his new property, occasionally rode up to the house when Colonel Vervensoe was from home; and a man who was in the habit of attending Lady Emmeline when she drove in her phaeton, or rode out on horse-back, could have told tales of many a meeting, not accidental, between the pair.

There was nothing wrong in the affair; there was no breaking of the seventh commandment, nor idea of breaking it; but still Lady Emmeline liked Maxwell so much, and Maxwell found her ladyship so extremely useful, that neither thought of discontinuing the acquaintance altogether.

To be strictly truthful, however, the young man had thought at one time of persuading her ladyship to go off with him—not because being his neighbour’s wife made her seem any nicer in his eyes, but simply because her husband had insulted him, and she had a large fortune.

I am afraid, seeing Lady Emmeline was not over-prudent, had Maxwell been sure the game was worth the candle, that he would not have proved over-scrupulous in the matter; but as it was, Maxwell had a long head, and a clear head, and he reflected that, if he ran away with Colonel Vervensoe’s wife, that gallant officer would either shoot him or ruin him.

Her ladyship, at a certain price, might not be dear; but her ladyship, with a bullet in some part of his body, or with heavy damages from the Ecclesiastical Courts, was quite another matter.

Mr. Maxwell Drewitt thought that game not worth the candle, and so abandoned it, and accordingly Lady Emmeline Vervensoe’s character was as safe in his keeping as though she had been as ugly as one of the witches in Macbeth or as repulsive as Sycorax.

Nevertheless, it was her money that ploughed his fields, paid his labourers, bought his seed; and, to do Maxwell Drewitt justice, no money was ever more judiciously laid out.

He was prudent, he was economical, he did not encroach on her kindness; he knew when to hold back his hand and say “enough.”

He required money and she lent it to him—gave it to him, she said but Maxwell preferred the other way of putting it. Once he had got the start, however, he worked manfully to keep it: he wanted to show Lady Emmeline, and to convince himself, out of what small beginnings even an Irishman may make a fortune; and so he laboured on, bringing first one piece of land and then another under cultivation, till people finally began to talk of Maxwell Drewitt as a wonder, and to marvel how he did it; while pretty Jenny Bourke thought within herself, “He will soon be rich enough to ask Timothy for me now;” but she never ventured to say this to him again, although she still stole out to meet him, either by the stream, or on the shore, or up in the mountain gorge that lay at the back of Inchnagawn Cottage.

“That is a mighty nice walk on a summer’s evening,” remarked Mr. Murphy, pointing up this gorge, as he and Mr. Ryan stood looking inland one fine morning in June.

“Is it?” said the attorney, carelessly.

“I like to listen to your innocent talk,” replied Mr. Murphy. “‘Is it?’ he says, just as simple as a lamb.”

“Well, is it?” repeated Mr. Ryan. “How should I know anything about the place; I never was up the stream in my life!”

“Never were out with any young woman either, I suppose?”

“I have not been this many a year, at any rate,” returned the other. “The only girl I ever was to say sweet on was not sweet on me; and somehow I never fancied another since.”

“Well, it is mighty queer,” remarked Mr. Murphy.

“What is queer?” asked his friend.

“Why, the lies men will tell when women and money are concerned. It was no later ago than last night that I followed a pair of lovers from the top of the gorge down to that big rock; you see it there, don’t you?”

“Yes. You followed them; what then?”

“Why then, Mr. Timothy Ryan, as I did not want to be seen, I stopped behind that lump of granite and watched; and I saw them in the darkness come down, down, down. The young woman wore a light dress; and I am positive that dress, at any rate, went round your haystacks and in by the back gate.”

“You did not think it was me, Murphy?” said Ryan; but his voice sounded hoarse as he asked the question.

“You in the light dress? in course not; but if the man wasn’t you, who was he?”

“You are sure you had not been drinking?”

“I’ll swear it for you, if you like.”

“And you are certain you were not mistaken?”

“Sure and certain.”

“The man was not as tall as I am?”

“He might not have been.”

“Was he anything like Maxwell Drewitt?” inquired Ryan.

“They could have passed for twins,” replied Mr. Murphy.

“That’s enough, Murphy, thank you,” said Ryan, and he drew a long, deep breath. “It’s warm to-day,” he observed, lifting his hat off his head, and letting the light wind fan his temples. “I must be getting towards Duranmore now,” he added abruptly; “are you going to walk that way?”

“I can walk any way,” was the reply. “Trade is mighty dull just now. There has not been a child born this week, I think; and only one accident, and he was carried home dead as a doornail. It’s a cursed place at the best of times,” proceeded Mr. Murphy; “but the like of it this June nobody would credit. I have made up all our calomel into pills and powders, just for want of something to do; and I have been trying how much nux vomica I could take without bringing on tetanus, for the sake of whiling away the time. I don’t think there is another such hole in the entire of Great Britain or Ireland. Whenever my mother dies, and she can’t last long, poor old girl, I shall cut Ireland altogether, and make for London. That’s the place, my boy—that’s the chance for men like me.”

And Mr. Murphy rattled on after this fashion all the way to Duranmore, leaving it quite optional with his companion whether he answered him or not.

Ryan elected not to answer him, and not to speak till they were shaking hands at the door of his office in the High Street; then he said—

“They did not see you, did they?”

“Does a corpse see the sexton when he is shovelling the mould in on the top of him, do you think?” asked Mr. Murphy.

And with that they parted.

For many a night afterwards Mr. Ryan kept watch; many a time he pretended to go away from home, and kept guard in the gorge, in the twilight, in the starlight, in the moonlight—all in vain.

He would not speak to his sister nor to Maxwell. He bided his time, and he waited without result until one evening when he was returning, a day sooner than he had expected to be back, from an outlying portion of Mr. Waller’s property, among the wildest part of the Joyce country.

There he had bought a new horse, a young, handsome creature, bay with black legs, leaving in exchange his old white mare and a not unreasonable number of pound-notes.

He was proud of his new purchase: it had a long easy trot, and had brought him by bridlepaths up hilly roads, through lonely valleys, thirty Irish miles without turning a hair; and he was so careful of this good steed that he stopped at the top of the hill above Eversbeg in order to lead him down the steep descent.

With his arm passed through the bridle and his hand on the horse’s glossy neck, Mr. Ryan paused at a turn of the road, and looked at the view spread out before him.

Nestling at the foot of the hill, huddled up among its woods, stood Eversbeg, and nearer to him still were the ruins of Eversbeg Abbey. He could see the pointed windows half concealed by ivy; he could see the grave-stones and the crosses and the monuments; he could see away over Eversbeg Bay, out to the great Atlantic; and he could discern, like a speck in the distance, Maxwell Drewitt’s cottage lying away near Eversbeg Head.

There was a great hush and calm over everything—over the sea and the land, the mountains and the valleys—and Ryan could not help feeling subdued by that virtue of stillness, by that calm which seems oftentimes to follow the sun’s setting, as though nature were lying quiet ere falling to sleep for the night.

After this pause he went on, descending the hill by a winding road, which soon shut out from his view Eversbeg and the Abbey and the Atlantic, but brought him at a sharp turn within sight of Kincorth and Duranmore and Duranmore Bay, which was more like a lake than like an arm of the sea, and his own white cottage close to the shore, where Jenny would not be expecting his return.

As he thought of this, Ryan pulled up short. He had twisted his hand in his horse’s mane, he had lifted his left foot half way up to the stirrup, but on the instant he unwound his fingers from among the coarse black hair, and stood beside his steed, while the animal lifted up its head and looked out over the bay, too, as though he had been a Christian.

While he stood irresolute, Ryan saw a man leave the shore road, and, after looking round, follow the course of the stream I have spoken of as flowing at the back of Inchnagawn Cottage.

It was Maxwell Drewitt. Though it was getting dusk, though there was a considerable distance between them, still Mr. Ryan recognized the man he had been waiting for.

When there are not a dozen gentlemen within a circuit of twenty miles it is not easy to mistake the identity of any of them, and Ryan felt that he was not deceived—Maxwell Drewitt was going up the stream to meet Jenny, and he might catch them yet; and he would catch them, “he would, by——.”

He flung the reins to a lad who stood at a cabin-door by the wayside, and bidding him take care of the horse, Ryan left the main road and dashed down what remained of the hill, across bog and river, among brambles and heather, home. He had his riding-whip in his hand, and involuntarily he shortened his hold of it as he drew nearer—nearer still.

Every now and then he stopped, for there was a noise in his ears like the raging of distant waters. It was his passion—it was the tumult in his breast which sounded to him as the roar of the sea.

He came on—on; he gained the high road; he stole round by the back of his own house; and there, by the stream, were the pair still talking.

“Timothy!” shrieked Jenny—and she had reason: in a moment he held Maxwell by the collar, and showered down blows upon him.

“Villain! scoundrel! coward!” he said, and he literally ground his teeth with rage.

“Hands off, fool!” shouted Maxwell, and he clasped his own round Ryan’s throat.

There was an awful struggle for a moment, but then Maxwell tripped his opponent up, and putting his knee on his chest, tore the whip out of his grasp, and sent it flying among the weeds and rashes that grew on the other side the stream.

“Who is villain, scoundrel, coward now?” he asked, with a sneer; with his face black with rage, with the veins in his forehead swelled, with the devil that was in him looking out of his eyes. “Who is a spy and a listener? I won’t thrash you, because you are her brother; I won’t shoot you, because you are not worth the trouble; but I’ll leave you to think what you have made by this move;” and Maxwell released his adversary, picked up his hat, which had fallen to the ground, and saying to Miss Bourke, “I will see you another time, Jenny,” was about to walk off, when Ryan called out, “Stop!”

“You shall never see her to speak to again. Only let me catch you near the house—only let me hear of Jenny ever looking to the side of the street where you walk, and I will shoot you like a dog.”

“Have you finished?” asked Maxwell; “because in that case I may wish you good-morning.” And he lifted his hat to Jenny, whose face was as white as the cottage walls, and was gone.

Within a week Ryan took a house in Duranmore next door to his office, and moved his furniture and himself and his sister away from the pretty cottage by the shore.

But the waves came rolling up the bay for all that: though there was no human ear to listen to their music, they still rippled over the stones and sand—the shutters of the cottage-windows were closed and fastened, but the fuchsias bloomed the same as ever—no Jenny now stood by the stream, singing her love songs, dreaming her love fantasies, but the stream went dancing over the stones to the sea none the less joyously—there were none to look up at the everlasting hills, but the summer’s sun shone on them, and the winter’s snows lay on them, as the sun had shone and the snow had lain since the beginning of time.