Chapter I: Brian’s Difficulties

Mr. Gyton returned to London with his uncle, greatly to his disgust, for he was really enamoured of Geraldine Drewitt; “But the idea of staying on with a blue-book and a rouge-pot without you!” he remarked to Mr. Pryor.

“Cannot you ride?” asked the barrister.

“Over those winding roads for ever? No. Human nature demands a change.”

“Cannot you fish?”

“No. I cannot live on fried trout, and ham and eggs, and whiskey, in those districts where fish is plentiful: add to which, that I agree with Dr. Johnson—was not it?—who said a fishing-rod had a worm at one end and a fool at the other.”

“Can you not superintend matters at Durrow?”

“Durrow be hanged! We will come over with a party, but till then, Durrow sees nothing of your humble servant.”

“Can you not cultivate a friendship with Harold Drewitt?”

“Much obliged, but Mr. Harold Drewitt is a young gentleman whom I admire much more than I like. No, uncle, I return with you to London by the Kingston and Holyhead packet, if you please.” And Mr. Francis Gyton locked his portmanteau determinedly.

“When shall we see you in Connemara again?” asked Lady Emmeline, with her sweetest smile.

“Not until next summer, I fear,” answered Mr. Pryor, and his hostess looked inconsolable.

“I wish we were going to spend the winter in London,” she said, with a sigh; and Mrs. Gyton heard of that sigh, and asked her Ladyship to visit London after Christmas; a visit which Lady Emmeline enjoyed greatly, and which was most probably the happiest time she ever spent during all the years that had passed since her marriage with Maxwell Drewitt.

As for the owner of the Headlands, he felt rejoiced exceedingly when Mr. Pryor took his leave. The visit had not turned out according to his anticipations.

There were several matters in which he had desired Mr. Pryor’s co-operation and assistance, but he decided that it would be more prudent to let those matters wait.

“Twelve months can make no material difference,” argued Mr. Maxwell Drewitt; “and when he returns, those young people at Kincorth will be singing to a different tune. And that reminds me I may as well call round with Ryan, and give him instructions how to proceed.”

But on the road Maxwell met Mr. Ryan coming post haste to him.

“Look here,” said the attorney—by this time a shabby, shuffling man of close on fifty, who smelt even at the earliest hours in the morning of whiskey, and who would now as soon have thought of calling his employer Max, as he would of addressing Lord Marsden as “Bob.”

There had been a time when the pair were very intimate; when they stood very close together on Fortune’s wheel; but the wheel had gone round since that, and carried Drewitt up and Ryan down. They were very far apart now—far as master and man can stand—and though the attorney said “Look here,” it was not said familiarly, but rather out of the excess of his own astonishment, with a great anxiety to know how Mr. Drewitt would receive the contents of the letter he held out for him to read.

Maxwell glanced over it—then he looked at Ryan.

“What the devil is the meaning of this?” he said.

“That there is a fresh hand at the helm,” was the reply. “It is that young Brian.”

“Damn him!” said Maxwell heartily. “Had not they some clause by which, if the interest were not paid, they could sell without power of redemption?”

“Yes, if the interest were demanded; but the interest has not been demanded lately.”

“And curse you for a fool; why has it not been demanded?”

“By your own order, sir; by your own order, I assure you,” said Ryan. “You were afraid of exciting Mr. Drewitt’s apprehensions, and consequently——”

“Mr. Archibald, you mean. I am Mr. Drewitt. I am the eldest son of the eldest son, remember that, if you please.”

“Mr. Archibald’s apprehensions,” corrected Ryan, “and——”

“You must get to know what this means,” interrupted Maxwell. “You must go to old Neill, and ascertain all about it.”

“I have been, sir, and Neill is quite in the dark himself. This is the last transaction he is ever to be engaged in for them. Master Brian requested him to write to us. Had he seen him first he says he would not have done it. He refused to give him any further information, and begged him to send all his father’s papers back to Kincorth.”

“What will be the next move do you expect?” asked Maxwell.

“To pay off the principal.”

“They have got a backer,” muttered Maxwell Drewitt, with a shocking oath, “and that backer is Geoffry Pryor. Are all the papers likely to go back, Ryan?” he asked, with a certain significance, which made the other turn a little pale.

“Neill will not give them up till his costs are paid, and he has a pretty tidy bill against Mr. Drewitt. He thinks also if he retains the papers he may get back the business.”

“You keep him up to that idea,” said Maxwell; “and as for this interest, let them pay it if they can; and the principal too, for that matter, curse them! That young fool thinks to get the better of me. So much the worse for him, that is all.”

And Maxwell Drewitt turned on his heel, and retraced his steps towards the Headlands, swearing to himself as he walked along. It was a new thing for Mr. Maxwell Drewitt to find himself worsted, and he had been worsted here.

He thought he had but to step up to Kincorth and take possession, and behold Kincorth was as far from him as ever.

Farther perhaps—for there was, as Mr. Ryan had said, a fresh hand at the helm, who was evidently about to follow his cousin’s example and make the old property valuable.

“He is ploughing, he is digging, he is sowing,” Maxwell remarked to Ryan about three months afterwards; “where does he get the money?” and Ryan’s thoughts ran back to a time when he had put the same question to himself with regard to Maxwell, and wondered if this younger and better Drewitt would be equally successful with his cousin.

“It is not likely, I suppose,” remarked Mr. Ryan, “that he will do as well as you have done.”

“No, faith,” was the reply, “he is working in chains. If the young beggar did not richly deserve all he gets, I should pity any one who was trying to work under my uncle. I would rather work for the devil. He would know his own mind; a thing Archibald Drewitt never did.”

And what Maxwell Drewitt said was true.

“But for Kincorth,” wrote Brian to Mr. Pryor, “but for the sake of the dear old place whose roof I want to keep over the heads of my father and mother if I am able, I could sometimes almost wish I had rented a portion of Durrow from you, and tried my luck there. No person can imagine how hard I find it to carry any point, or to maintain it when carried. My father thinks I am taking too much on me, and latterly even Harold has gone over to the enemy. I have no one with me except my mother and Geraldine. Even my mother thought I ought to defer more to my father’s opinions, and so I had to tell her about the mortgage. Since then she has been with me, heart and soul, and indeed but for her I should often have felt inclined to give up in despair. But I am in the river now, and I do not mean to sink if I can help it. We have never got those papers back yet from Mr. Neill. He is keeping them against his costs, and as the papers cannot be of much importance, I think I shall not speak again to my father on the subject till you come over. Connor is doing wonders with Durrow. If the place were his own he could not be working harder to increase its value. My father’s health does not improve; on the contrary, those attacks are more frequent. I have been urging him to go to Dublin, but he seems to think I want him out of the way. Perhaps when you are next here you may be able to persuade him to get some first-rate advice. My speaking seems to do more harm than good.”

And Brian was quite right. The fact of his proposing anything made Mr. Drewitt object to it.

“It is hard upon you Brinbaldy,” said Wilhelmina, who had married years and years before Mr. Goldich, a man far below herself in birth and social position. “It is hard upon you. I can remember the time when my uncle would not cut down a tree because you might not like it; when he was going to build a house for you at Analore; when we were not allowed to have a door open for fear the draught might kill you, precious baby that you were; and now all the county is talking about how badly you and he hit it off, and how sorry he is Harold is not the eldest son.”

“If Harold could keep the property together, I am sure I wish he were the eldest,” sighed Brian.

“Dear, dear! to think about the fuss they made over you once, and to see how that young jack-a-napes has cut you out now. My husband says, Brian, that if he were you, he would not let Maxwell and Harold be so much together. He says Harold will go to the dogs entirely if he is not got out of this neighbourhood, and that you ought to see to him.”

“Can I do everything?” asked Brian. “Am I Harold’s father? am I the owner of Kincorth? How is it possible for me to do more than I am doing? Do you think I am master here?”

“Well, you need not be angry at me for repeating what he says; you need not snap me up like that for giving you good advice. Go on as you choose, only don’t blame us if any harm happens to Harold.”

“There is no harm likely to happen to Harold,” Brian would answer; but spite of this, as often as not he went straight off to his brother, and entreated him to stay more at home, not to drink so much, not to mix so freely with the lower orders, but to remember he was a Drewitt, and being such, to keep himself to himself.

“You want to make me a sneak like yourself,” the boy retorted. “You take too much on you; you set yourself up a great deal too high; you are not a bit like what you used to be; you are too much of the master before your time, as Maxwell says.”

Then calmly, and without a change of colour, Brian damned Maxwell.

“We will be quits some day,” he remarked.

“When you have made your fortune out of mangold-wurzel and your fine new English sheep, I suppose,” taunted Harold, for the English sheep had proved failures, and the success of the mangold was problematical.

“I would rather lose money on mangolds than take it out of my wife’s pocket,” returned Brian; and thus they wrangled on, till oftentimes the elder brother was sick and tired of his thankless labour—of the work which was never done, and which, in the opinion of many people, had better never have been attempted.

It was hard; and this lad of twenty felt the difficulty of his position keenly. He rose early, he went to bed late, he fought hard for what he believed to be right. He did his best to fulfil his promise to Mr. Pryor, and yet the consequence was that, when Mr. Pryor returned to Connemara, he found Mr. Drewitt dreadfully dissatisfied with his son—full of complaints, full of grievances.

“It is very hard for a man to be so treated by his own child, Mr. Pryor,” sobbed the invalid. “There is no use in my making any suggestions. He is only twenty, and I am sixty-four; yet you would think, to see the way he gets on, he was sixty-four instead of me. I am sure I managed my own property for many a year before he was born, but he ignores me completely—completely, sir.”

“I hope Brian is never disrespectful,” observed the Englishman.

“No; I cannot make any complaint on that score; he only takes his own way; he will not be guided by me. Now there’s flax. I wanted him to sow flax; but do you think he would do it? and I ordered the men to plant some young trees round that piece of land he is reclaiming over by the Point. You would hardly credit it, I suppose, but he told them to go on ploughing, and leave the trees till another season. And those trees, sir! when he comes to lay that down in grass he will have no shelter for his cattle; not as much as would shade a sheep.”

Mr. Pryor took the old man’s hand kindly in his own—

“My dear Mr. Drewitt,” he began, and his heart was grieved, as he spoke both for the father and the son. “Will you go back in your own mind twelve months, and think of your position then—of your position now? I know, I have good reason for knowing, that had I not advanced money—had I not, in fact, taken the mortgages on Kincorth myself—the former mortgagee would have foreclosed ere this; and Brian knew this as well, and the lad is now working hard to free your property from its incumbrances. If in all cases he does not follow your advice, I am confident it is only because he feels that whatever returns money in the present is of more importance than any improvements calculated to beautify the property in the future.”

“But trees, Mr. Pryor—trees are always valuable,” persisted Mr. Drewitt.

“Not until they grow,” answered Mr. Pryor, with a smile, and that smile weakened the force of all he had said previously.

“Of course, I know nothing,” said the old man; “of course, my opinion is of no weight. I am your debtor, sir, and Brian sees with your eyes—and I—I might as well be in my coffin.” Having arrived at which sensible conclusion, Mr. Drewitt burst into tears.

All in vain, Mr. Pryor begged him to consider how hard Brian was working, how his endeavours had caused several of Mr. Drewitt’s most troublesome creditors to cease their persecutions, how there was comparative comfort at Kincorth.

“Good Heavens! Mr. Drewitt, what would you have?” went on the Englishman. “How can Brian possibly do more for you than he is doing?”

“For himself, Mr. Pryor, you mean,” answered Brian’s parent. “He thinks the estate will come to him absolutely, when I am dead and gone. It is not right for a son to act as if his father were already dead and buried; and I must look out for Harold’s interests—I must see to them.”

“If you would attend to Harold’s interests in the present,” returned Mr. Pryor, whose patience was by this time exhausted, “and insist that he should spend his days in some profitable manner, instead of drinking, hunting, and consorting with all kinds of bad characters, it would be more to the purpose, I think, than exalting him over the son who is trying his best to do his duty.”

“There you are,” interrupted Mr. Drewitt, “taking Brian’s side, of course: it only shows me more and more that I must see to Harold—poor lad—for who would be on his side if I and his mother were gone?”

“You are right, Mr. Drewitt,” answered Mr. Pryor; “it will be better for you to see to Harold; it will save much heartburning on the boy’s part and much misconception on your own. I am sorry you are so ill-advised as to believe the interests of your two sons can for the present be separated; but I have done: every man must manage his family and his affairs for himself, and strangers only do more harm than good by meddling. I am sure I have,” muttered the lawyer to himself, as he returned slowly and thoughtfully towards Durrow.

He had not, however, gained the top of the hill above Kincorth before he heard some one calling—

“Oh! Mr. Pryor, do stop, pray, pray do!” and stopping and looking back he saw Geraldine flying after him.

“I have run so fast,” she panted. “I want to speak to you. I want to talk with you so much: may I walk part of the way to Durrow?”

Might she?—part of the way?—when he would have given all Durrow to have heard her promise to walk with him all through life.

At what age does a man’s heart cease to beat faster, I wonder, when a pretty girl—that is, the pretty girl of his especial fancy—speaks to him?

There was a dreadful disparity between them—a quarter of a century, or thereabouts—which made Geoffry Pryor feel occasionally that he was mad for thinking of such a thing.

And perhaps he was mad; but he thought about Geraldine, from morning till night, for all that.

“I do so want to talk to you about Brian,” she began. “Home is so wretched for him, you can have no idea, Mr. Pryor—none;” and Geraldine lifted her soft dark eyes to the Englishman’s face to see if he were attending to what she said. “I sometimes think he would be better away, for poor papa seems to fancy he can do nothing right—nothing.”

“Your papa is not in a fit state of health to judge accurately on any subject,” was the reply.

“But it is so miserable for Brian.”

“Brian is doing his duty.”

“It is so hard for him to have to be doing his duty so young,” she answered.

“He will find it all the easier when he is old,” replied Mr. Pryor; but there was nothing unkind in his tone, harsh though the truth might be.

“Could he not do his duty any place else?” she asked. “He tells me he could not; that he must make a struggle to keep Kincorth; that he chose to go into battle, and that he will not turn his back on the fray: but still, I thought I would ask you,” finished Geraldine; and the dark eyes were lifted to his once again, and her soft Irish voice laid an accent at once pathetic and imploring on the “you.”

“Dear child,” answered Mr. Pryor—she seemed so young and so trustful, so childlike and so pretty, that he would have liked to gather her in his arms and carry her to his home, out of the way of sorrow and trouble—“you would not have your brother a coward; he has elected to tread a rough road, but he will reach the end some day; and you must help, and not hinder him on his way.”

“But if you knew, Mr. Pryor; if you knew—papa is so—so jealous of him, and Harold is the same; and everybody seems against him—every—every one.”

“What a foolish little girl you are!” he said; and the longing grew stronger to take such a little bundle of folly to himself for ever. “I am not against Brian, you are not against Brian, your mamma is not against Brian, many people are very much for Brian, and think him an amazingly fine young fellow. Besides, he is doing right, and he will be glad hereafter to think he did strive to keep a roof over his father’s head. Although Mr. Drewitt does not thank him for it now, Brian will be glad to remember at some future day how he stood between his father and the world.”

“I wish I could be of any use,” she said, with such a wistful look in her sweet face that Geoffry Pryor would have given more than Durrow to touch it just once with his lips.

“You can be of use,” he answered; “you can tell Brian, whenever he is dispirited, not to lose heart: you can tell him that the evil is only apparent while the good is real: beyond all”—he hesitated for a moment, and then went on—“you can tell him to be kind to, and patient and forbearing with his father; patient as he would be if he were lying on his death-bed; because, dear Geraldine—may I call you Geraldine?”

“Yes, anything,” she replied; “because why?”

“He will not, I fear, have to exercise his patience so long as he would——”

“Oh! Mr. Pryor—Mr. Pryor!” and the colour faded out of her face and the tears sprang into her eyes.

“My dear, it is true,” he said; “and that thought will make both you and him very tender and very good.”

“Papa, my poor, poor papa:” it was all she could say; but she stretched out her hands towards Mr. Pryor, as though in this dumb fashion she were asking his help.

“God knows when it may be,” he went on, taking her hands, “but you must be prepared any day, my poor child—Geraldine.”

“Mamma, mamma!” and Geraldine drew her hands away from him and covered her face from sight; “mamma, mamma! I think I will go home now,” she added after a pause. “I think I will go back to him: thank you, Mr. Pryor;” and she left him crying bitterly.