Chapter XX: Brian’s Repentance

Before many days Mr. Pryor appeared at Durrow, anxious to know what had become of Arthur, and how Brian and his cousin were settling their old scores.

As for Arthur, Mr. Connor informed him the lad was still lying concealed in one of the caves in Durrow cliff—“the secretest of all their hiding-places, Skerritt informs me,” he proceeded—“a cave that no gauger or coast-guardsman could find out unless he were the devil.”

“Then as I never heard of the devil taking the form of an exciseman, and going about the country looking after private stills and cargoes of smuggled goods, I suppose we may conclude there is every chance of the young gentleman getting off safe.”

“He’ll get off right enough, the first time the schooner comes round this way again. The reward Mr. Drewitt has offered ought to put the men on their mettle—not, to do them justice, that they need such an inducement—it’s enough for them to know that a man is flying from the constituted authorities, and they will strain every nerve to assist him to escape.”

“That characteristic of your country-people it is which makes Ireland so much pleasanter a residence for rogues than for honest men,” remarked Mr. Pryor.

“Ah, well, sir; sure you see by this that even very respectable fathers may have sons in trouble.”

“I hope you do not call Mr. Drewitt a respectable father, because, in my opinion, he is nothing of the kind,” answered Mr. Pryor.

“He is fond of the boy, at any rate,” said Connor, simply; and his thoughts flew back to that night when through the storm Maxwell drove his son over to Durrow, and had stood silent while Arthur wept tears of penitence upon his neck.

“He’ll never get the better of it, Mr. Brian tells me,” went on the agent, pursuing his own train of reflection. “He was wet to the skin, and has not been able to be out of bed since. Well, let him have been what he will, Mr. Pryor, you would be sorry for him if you were to see him now—just a shadow of himself, and with the grey hairs more plentiful than the black, and crow’s feet about his eyes, and a drop of the mouth, and a twitching of the face that you would wonder what ailed him.”

“I think I’ll go over and see him,” observed Mr. Pryor.

“Indeed, sir, and I just would,” agreed Connor; “maybe the day’s not so very far off when you’ll be glad to remember you did it.”

“Do you mean, Connor, you really think he is going to die so soon as all that comes to?”

“Think, sir! I am sure I believe in my heart he’ll never rise from his bed again; that he did his last piece of work in this world, the night he came over here with Mr. Arthur. I did all I could to get him to stop, and so did my wife, too; but he was so mortally afraid of any of the Duranmore people guessing where his son was hid away, that nothing would serve him but round with the horse’s head and back to Kincorth, though the wind was coming down from among those hills, and blowing off the Atlantic, fit to tear the house down. And then it began pelting with rain. I don’t know how he ever got home, and him in the state of health he was—I do not.”

Next morning Mr. Pryor walked over the hills to Kincorth, to pay his visit to Maxwell Drewitt.

“He will see you if you come upstairs,” Brian said, in answer to the Englishman’s inquiries; “but I must warn you that he is very ill—dangerously ill, in my opinion. I have thought it right to tell Lady Emmeline what I believe about him; and it is very probable she may be here to-morrow afternoon.”

“Are you glad you came, Brian?” asked Mr. Pryor.

“I would not have come for all the property Maxwell owns;” and Brian, who was head nurse in the sick-room, led his friend gently to the darkened chamber, which Maxwell was never again to leave till he was carried out in his coffin.

“You were right about me, Mr. Pryor,” said Maxwell. “I was not an honest man; and I did not come into Kincorth fairly; but Brian shall get it back again when I am gone; and I hope he will have more enjoyment of it than ever I had.”

“I trust,” answered Mr. Pryor, “you will live for many a long year to keep him out of it. Brian will be better and happier working for his living in London than he ever could be dawdling about Kincorth.”

He spoke these words cheerfully and heartily, but Maxwell shook his head.

“My race is run,” he said, “my day almost finished; and if I could but once know the boy was safe, I am so tired that I think I would lay my head down and never raise it again.”

“You will think differently when once he is clear off,” answered Mr. Pryor.

“Shall I?” and Maxwell’s hand strayed idly and listlessly over the coverlet, picking bits of cotton out of it while he spoke.

“Why of course you will; anxiety is the chief thing that is the matter with you now.”

“Is it?” and the poor wasted fingers still kept picking, picking.

“I don’t know what I should have done without him,” he said, after a short pause, turning his eyes towards Brian. “I could not have lived so long had I been alone. He has been gentler to me than any woman I ever had about me; and when I look at him I think of his mother, and believe she has forgiven me——”

“You can clear that matter up, about Harold,” suggested Mr. Pryor.

“Yes, when I am gone, and when Arthur is off, you will find a parcel and letter in that safe over there. You can make what use you like of both; of course they would not take any proceedings at this distance of time, but you will settle that with them, won’t you?”

“And I mean to settle that you shall not talk any more at present, and that if Mr. Pryor comes here to discuss unpleasant topics he must be forbidden the house,” broke in Brian.

“Will you come to my house, then, to-morrow, to dinner?” asked Mr. Pryor; and Brian promised that if his patient were no worse, he would; having received which assurance, Mr. Pryor walked back over the hills as he had come, and noticed as he walked a wicked-looking little schooner tacking and tacking between Duranmore Point and Durrow. “That is our friend,” he thought, “and twenty-four hours more will see Arthur out of the country.”

“Yes, sir, that’s her,” remarked Skerritt with a knowing wink. “She is only making believe tacking about there; she is really bound for Mayo, and then she will be back here about this time to-morrow. We have sent word to the captain, and it will be all correct.”

Mr. Pryor was truly rejoiced to hear it, and said so. It was wretched to think of that lad lying in the cave night after night while he slept comfortably in a good house close at hand; and his sympathy was strongly excited for the unhappy father, whose first question when he awoke in the mornings was always, “Has Arthur got off yet?” and whose last sigh at night sounded like a moan for the son who had made such grievous shipwreck of his life.

“You will bring me back a report of how things are going on, Brian,” he said as his cousin was leaving for Durrow; “a true report, remember,—promise me that;” and Brian promised ere he departed.

It was a lovely afternoon in the early part of October; the trees about Kincorth were getting very bare of foliage, but there were still enough leaves left to make the woods look very beautiful in their autumnal deckings of brown and orange and gold. The sky was clear and bright, and though there was a stiff breeze blowing, Brian after long watching in his cousin’s sick room found the wind only make his walk the pleasanter.

He did not feel in bad spirits as he climbed the hill and pursued the short cut towards Durrow; rather, on the contrary, his heart was lighter than it had been for many a day past, for he began to be certain Arthur would effect his escape safely, and he knew if the youth were once landed in France that a load of anxiety would be lifted from his shoulders, a burden of self-reproach taken off his soul.

It was a delicious afternoon; there was just that feeling of chilliness in the air which is pleasant when a man who can walk fast has likewise to walk far; and Brian hurried over the ground feeling that there are some days in the year when living is a pleasure, and that this was one of them.

But yet, as he drew near Durrow, he fancied he saw on the side of the hill, looking seaward, something which alarmed him—a man with a telescope. Brian immediately charged down the incline, and came upon a commonplace-looking individual apparently engaged in digging up bait.

It seemed a strange place to select for such a purpose; but of course the man had a right to choose an inconvenient position if he chose, and Brian remained talking with him for a few minutes while he looked about to see if he could discover any trace of the telescope or discover what part of Durrow was best commanded from the spot.

The whole of Durrow village was concealed by Durrow cliff, and there was nothing to be discerned except the south side of the principal rock, which rose sheer out of the sea which now washed its base.

Any trace of the telescope he failed to detect, though he could have sworn he saw the brass tube glitter for a moment in the afternoon sun.

“He was there, was he, the divil!” remarked Skerritt, whom Brian at once informed of the circumstance. “I wish I had caught him at his spying. You’re not sure he was spying, arn’t ye? Well, I am, and that’s enough. Digging earth-worms, too, for a make-believe! Pity he wasn’t feedin’ them, that’s all I have got to say.”

“Will it hinder Arthur getting away?” asked Brian, anxiously.

“Will it hinder the say comin’ in to-morrow morning?” inquired Mr. Skerritt, which, being decidedly an unlikely result, Brian took heart again.

“Are you going out fishing to-night, Skerritt?” inquired Brian, noticing that the man was preparing his nets and getting his boat ready for sea.

“I go out fishing most nights,” was the answer; “and now, sir, if you are as tired of asking questions as I am of answerin’ them, I wish ye just would go up till the house, and stay in your proper place, which is up there with the quality,[2] instead of down here with me.”

Footnote 2:

Gentlefolks.

“Your best friends can’t say much for your civility, Skerritt,” remarked Brian as he moved away.

“If I am not very civil I am very wise,” was the significant answer; and Brian departed on the instant.

“I wish to-night was over—and well over,” said Mr. Pryor, as they stood together on the lawn, while the afternoon light faded away, and the twilight deepened, and the darkness drew on.

“And so do I. Have you any notion at what hour they mean to make their venture?” returned Brian.

“Not the least. Skerritt would give me no information on the subject, and I have not seen a sign of the schooner to-day. The first intelligence I expect to hear is that he is off safe and sound, and half-way to France.”

“Heaven grant it!” Brian replied.

The words were scarcely out of his lips before there arose such a shout from the shore, as made Mr. Pryor and Brian exclaim, at the same moment—

“There is something wrong: let us go down;” and they ran round to the shelving side of the cliff, and hurried down the path leading to the sea.

“They have found the cave,” explained Skerritt; “and they are all here, police, and gaugers, and soldiers, and all.”

“And where is Arthur?”

“You’ll see in a minit,” was the reply. “Now Patsey, my man. Run down for your life, Mr. Arthur, and out into the sea!” he cried in a voice like thunder, and, at the same instant, there flared out from the shore a flame of light that just flashed across the waters and then was extinguished.

Quick as thought, another light glanced out from the little schooner, which had been quietly stealing round a line of rocks that stretched far away into the ocean; and, next moment, while his eyes were still dazzled by the sudden glare, Brian heard the plash of oars, and knew that Arthur was safe in the boat and making for the vessel that alone could ever bear him to freedom.

Hoarsely the command for the boat to stop rung out through the night, and, as a mocking laugh came back across the waters, the corporal gave the order to fire.

Three balls went instantly whizzing over the sea; and then there was a shriek such as Brian never had heard in all his life before—the shriek of a strong man in his death agony.

But the boat went on.

“Fire!” was again the command, and again the balls sought their mark: no shriek followed this discharge, and, for a minute or two, the corporal seemed to think his men must have made some mistake, but it was only for a moment.

The next, cries for help were borne by the wind to the shore, and there were frantic entreaties among the women that a boat might be launched on the instant.

“Lord help you, mother,” said Skerritt’s son; “don’t you remember every boat was sent to Duranmore, that they might not be able to get the advantage over us that way? but then if he is not hit he can swim. There it is again! That’s not my father’s shout, it is the young fellow’s, and the boat is settling.”

The boat was settling. Every one of the balls, except that which struck Skerritt, had gone through her side. There can be no doubt but that the men must have happened to fire as she rose on the waves; and now, with their hands loosely holding their muskets, they stood listening to the screams of the drowning men.

“I can’t bear this,” cried Brian; “I must do something;” and he made a rush towards the sea, but half a dozen people were before him in an instant, and kept him back from his design. “Have you not got a boat?” he gasped.

“Not one. Do you think if we had, it’s myself would be talking to you now, and my own father and brother out there in the middle of it all?”

“How many were there altogether?”

“Just three; and, out of the three, there were two of us.”

“God pity you,” said Brian, as he sat down on the shore. “And God pity me, too,” he added to himself, “for this is my doing.”

There was silence on the sea—silence only broken by the whistling of the wind—by the plashing of the waves against the rocks.

Each moment it was growing darker and darker, and though the people under the cliffs were running hither and thither with lighted torches in their hands, still nothing could be seen of the tragedy that had just been enacted.

Sullenly the sea came rolling up on the shore—sullenly it swept along, wave succeeding to wave, and billow to billow: though they strained their eyes out into the night they could see nothing but a waste of water, but an eternity of ocean.

Till morning dawned they would not be able to distinguish any object, and when morning dawned where would be the objects they desired to see?

“I’ll go and get a boat some place or other,” whispered young Skerritt to his mother, “and I’ll row round the rocks; may be one of them may have drifted that way with one of the oars.”

It was a forlorn hope; but perhaps in the future it comforted that widow and her son to know everything which could be done, had been done.

There was no one near the rocks, no one had reached the schooner; but a week afterwards Skerritt’s body was washed ashore near Clew Head, while Arthur’s drifted into a little bay about five miles north of Durrow.

“It was better than being caught,” Mr. Pryor ventured to say at length to Brian; “but I am grieved about Skerritt.”

“And it is all my doing,” Brian moaned out; “I shall feel now like a murderer to the end of my days.”

For hours Brian sat repeating this one sentence, and it was not until Mr. Pryor reminded him Maxwell would be expecting tidings, that he could rouse him from his fit of despairing remorse.

“I think I had better go round with you and break the news to him,” said the barrister.

“No, I will do it—I—and I only,” answered Brian.

“But it will be so dreadful a task for you.”

“Only part of my punishment,” he said, with a sort of gloomy satisfaction; “and I was so happy to-day, and I made so certain he would get off.” And as he thought of that, he sat down and covered his face with his hands once more.

“Brian,” said Mr. Pryor, “some one must go to Kincorth and break this news to Maxwell; if you do not go, I will; for otherwise he will hear it suddenly, and in his state of health a shock of the kind might prove fatal.”

“Come with me then!” exclaimed Brian, “I have not courage to go alone.” And accordingly they drove round to Kincorth by the same road as that Maxwell Drewitt had followed when he took his son to Durrow.

It was late when they reached Kincorth, but the sick man was still awake, and anxiously expecting Brian’s return.

He knew, the moment he saw his cousin and Mr. Pryor enter the room together, that some misfortune had happened.

“You bring me bad tidings,” he said.

“I have no good news,” Brian answered.

“He is taken?”

“No, he is not taken; he has escaped that fate.”

“What do you mean?—if he is not taken, he must have escaped; or has he not got off yet? Will neither of you speak?—there, you need not tell me, I know the worst—he’s dead.”

Brian knelt down by the bedside and buried his face in the coverlet. Mr. Pryor took one of the wasted hands in his, and drawing a chair close up to Maxwell’s pillow, told him how his boy had been drowned, how the very efforts they had made to secure his escape had caused his destruction.

Very quietly Maxwell listened to him; through the night he talked of nothing else, but still Brian knelt by the bedside with his face hidden in the coverlet praying in a very agony of supplication to the Lord Most High.

This was vengeance! this was what he had longed for, waited for; this was the end of all his oaths, of all his hate, ay, and of all his love—a terrible memory which should abide with him to the end—a gnawing remorse which, though its teeth might get less sharp in time, was yet certain never quite to loosen its hold upon him.

This was vengeance: he would have given his life to be able to live the past year over again with his present experience, retaining his present feelings. Oh, for power to wipe the sin he had committed off his conscience, to bring that boy to life again, to restore even comparative health to his cousin!

This was vengeance—to pass through such agony as he had never felt before, to wrestle with his anguish, to have to rise up and face his misery, to hear Maxwell’s voice saying faintly, “Do not vex yourself about it, Brian; I am content that it should be so.”

This was vengeance. Like him who, in the olden days, drew a bow at a venture and slew the king of Israel, so Brian had drawn his bow at a venture, and this was the ruin his arrow had wrought.

Still the waves rolled on and the sea mourned upon the shore; still the wind blew keen over the ocean, and the billows tossed and lamented, and the deeps called out to one another through the night; still in the darkness the great mountains stood proudly aloof; still Mr. Pryor talked while the thin fingers picked the cotton more restlessly out of the coverlet, for the end was very nigh at hand, and Maxwell Drewitt was soon about to pass into that unknown land which is so “very far off.”