Chapter VI: On the Way to Durrow

Through the twilight Brian Drewitt pursued his way over the hills to Durrow, keeping as near the sea as the nature of the country would permit.

Instinctively he felt that the waters rolling on the shore, that the plash of the waves which rose to his ears, that the noise of the ocean washing up to the base of the cliffs calmed and comforted him.

When no human being could have quieted his heart, the voices of the night and the murmurs of the sea came round and about him, bringing tranquillity and repose with them.

All his plans had that day been wrecked, all his hopes had foundered. It is no easy matter to realize the full extent of such a misfortune in a minute, and Brian sometimes caught himself wondering about the leases, about the grass land, about how soon the oats would be fit to reap, even while he knew, in a dull, stupid kind of way, that the leases, the grass lands and the oats could never more signify anything to him.

When we go out of the light we find it difficult to see clearly in the darkness; and after the flare of excitement in which he had been living all the day, Brian discovered that the intense stillness, the utter lull of human passions and human wishes around him, prevented any distinct thoughts or plans taking shape in his mind.

For a time everything seemed mixed and confused. He walked on like a person in a dream, now thinking of one thing, now of another, until at last, as he drew near Durrow, every incident of the past week came back to his memory clearly and separately. When it did so, Brian Drewitt threw himself down on the grass by the edge of the cliff—lay with his face touching the cool earth—thinking of his past, tracing out his future.

He thought of his father; of the coldness that had come between them; of the way in which he had worked and struggled to free Kincorth; of how his endeavours had fretted his parent; of how his motives had been misunderstood, his intentions doubted; of how Harold had been preferred to him; of how Harold had been everything, he nothing—and Brian’s heart, as he lay and considered these things, became a perfect well of bitterness.

But then, again, he remembered how his father’s grey head had lain on his breast, how his father’s last action on earth had been to stretch out his arms towards him, and Brian’s heart was softened, and grew exceeding tender and sorrowful within him.

And the waves came rolling on the shore, slowly and gently, and the sea washed the base of Durrow Cliffs, and it seemed as though he could hear the voices of the great waters coming nearer and nearer, talking to him, mourning with him, as if they too had suffered.

He recollected what his father had said about having left everything to him. He repeated to himself the warning he had received years and years before. He called up every word and look of Maxwell’s, and then suspicion became certainty. Kincorth _had_ been procured by fraud; though by what fraud Brian was unable to imagine. Which idea brought him almost to the end of his reflections on the past, by causing him to wonder what he should do in the future.

There, however, all seemed vague and shadowy. He could not yet tell what he ought to do. He had no idea on what course his mother would decide. He must talk the matter over with Mr. Pryor; and having settled so much, Brian rose from the ground, and walked onwards for a little distance towards the house.

Then he turned and went back to the cliff once more, where he sat down and listened dreamily to the song which the ocean was murmuring so far below. Heaven knows what the waves whispered to him, what message the soft wind brought to his soul—I only can tell, that with hands clasped over his head, with his face bowed forward on his knees, Brian hearkened to the sermon which nature preached to him that night, taking, as we all do, his own construction out of it.

We have, most of us, some memory of this kind—some scene that, so often as we think of any great trouble, immediately recurs to our memory.

With one it is a forest glade, where the sunbeams pour through the branches and make bright patterns and golden traceries on the turf beneath; with another, it is a bare expanse of country, upon which the winter afternoon is darkening down; with a third, it is some river reach, where trees overhang the waters, and the grass looks green and beautiful on the banks, and a boat or two is gliding past; while a fourth sees in imagination the city streets all lighted up, and full of people hurrying—hurrying away.

But sadder to my mind than all, is the memory of a sunset watched from a lonely seashore; a sunset seen over a waste of angry waters, of roaring billows; or a night-watch on the deck of a vessel, while the stormy waves are lashing themselves to fury all around; or such a vigil as that kept by Brian Drewitt, during which his soul seemed to go out of him, and stand on the shore below, greeting the white foam as it was thrown upon the shingle, and asking the waters questions that might only be fitly put if the ocean washed, on one side, the sands of time, but on the other the headlands of Eternity.

His life—it was all before him then, to make what he would out of. His life—he had reached that point in the highway of existence where his father had once stood, where Maxwell had once stood, where all those who have grown to man’s estate must surely have paused for a moment to survey their road. His life—what a much grander thing life would have seemed to this youth had he looked out at it from the windows of Kincorth instead of from the cliffs of Durrow! And yet, to my thinking, it was in his power to make as good a thing of his existence one place as another; unencumbered by a mortgaged estate, as burdened by it; free to go where he liked, instead of being chained to one spot, and forced to make his fortune there. For he determined to make his fortune. He resembled Maxwell in that respect, and he resembled him, unfortunately, in another—viz., in his resolution to win back Kincorth.

“Earth fighting for earth, earth struggling after earth, earth losing its youthfulness, its innocence, its light-heartedness to gain earth!” Did the wind and the waves utter no such plaint as this in his ears, as he sat listening to their voices? Had the night, which had spoken so plainly to Maxwell, nothing to tell Brian?

Life, oh! life—who is there that has lived, who would not go back and try to make a better of it if he could? Who, when the last day comes, does not think that, if he might be permitted to retrace his steps, to stand once more on the threshold of existence, his prayer would be to wash his hands in innocency, and to keep himself unspotted from the world?

Stained and soiled, torn and defiled, who does not wish that he could commence wearing the fleshy garments of our poor mortality once again, fondly believing he could keep them out of the mire, and bring them almost white to the end of the journey? And yet, as the instrument can give forth no music till its strings have been played upon—as we can never tell the quality of the gold till it comes forth from the furnace—as we know little of our own capabilities till our strength has been tested and tried in the battlefield of the world—so there is no man, or woman either, who dare say that, if return were possible, a better working out of the great problem would be probable also.

And for these reasons I do not say that Brian would have passed through the fire scatheless had he laid out a different course to travel; though I believe it would have made all the difference had he decided to pursue his onward path without permitting hatred to gain dominion over him—without letting envy and malice and all uncharitableness find lodging in his young heart.

But yet it was scarcely Brian’s fault that he disliked his cousin so intensely. He had drunk in that enmity with his mother’s milk; he had fed on it from his youth upward. Mrs. Drewitt was the one to blame here. She had been pleased to see Brian at war with Maxwell. She had done her best to make her son hate the man who desired her son’s inheritance: for, like all weak people, in striving only to put Brian on his guard against his cousin’s machinations, she had overdone her part, and caused her boy to look with suspicion on every act of his relative—to search for some hidden meaning under every word—to listen greedily to stories concerning Maxwell’s wickedness, Maxwell’s avariciousness, Maxwell’s heartlessness—to consider the owner of the Headlands, in fact, as the _bête noire_ of the county, and to believe that honey could as soon be bitter as any act of Maxwell Drewitt’s good.

Add to this the well-meant warning which he had received, and his own experience of his cousin, and you will see that, unless Brian Drewitt made up his mind to leave Ireland entirely, to forget Kincorth and Connemara, and Maxwell, and to start on a new life which should have no sort of connexion with the past, there could be nothing between the pair but war to the death for ever.

In his hour of triumph it might be that Brian would hold out his hand to Maxwell, and contemptuously offer him friendship as his cousin had offered friendship to him; but even that was scarcely likely; for in his hates Brian was more sincere than his cousin. He was a staunch friend, an open enemy; and if his constitution, his education, his temperament, his country, and his misfortunes, all tended to render him implacable, who may blame him?

It is not so easy to turn the other cheek as those who have never received a blow on one, would have us believe. We are all rather more apt to fight for our coat than to bestow our cloak on the thief also. What man is there that, having Brian Drewitt’s strength of character, would venture to say he could always keep clear of that dangerous frontier ground where strength becomes sin?

Nevertheless, I would it were possible for me to record that the voices of the night, the murmurs of the sea, the light wind that came down from among the tops of the hills, taught Brian a different lesson; but alas! when the youth arose he was the same as when he sat down; death had not softened him, suffering had not subdued him, nature and silence had no power to change him.

When in the after years he returned to Ireland and sat on the cliffs of Durrow, listening to the plash of the waves, to the sighing of the wind, he would have given all his wealth, all his influence, aye, and his life also, if he could but have kept that sorrowful vigil once again, and learned a different lesson out of it—if he could but have started on his journey through the world resolved never to look back, but always forward.

Through the years, the sea ebbed out, and the sea flowed in; through the years, in storm and tempest, in calm and sunshine, the waves stole up on the sands, and kissed the feet of the great rocks lovingly; through the years, the shore-birds built their nests, and fed their young, and winged their flight far out over the ocean, and then came back, with pinions weary and drooping, to the land; through the years, the fishermen dried their nets, and put out their lines, and pushed off their boats; through the years, the ships went by, staggering among the billows, or with their white sails glistening and shining, sped onwards to their destined haven; through the years, the sun set, and the darkness drew on, and the great hills hid themselves behind the curtains of the night; through the years, the deeps never ceased calling unto one another, now softly, now in louder tones; through the years, the youth who had once sat and listened to them was a stranger in a strange country, working for his daily bread.

He did not know as, at last, he walked away from the edge of the cliff, that it would be necessary for him to leave Connemara; on the contrary, he had some vague idea of renting a cottage for his mother, near Analore, and of trying to make his fortune there. He knew that with worse land Maxwell had done well, and although there was no Lady Emmeline for him to marry, yet he thought that, with Mr. Pryor’s help, he could, perhaps, still weather the storm.

“I must talk to him,” thought Brian, and he went up to Durrow House, where Mrs. Connor met Brian in the hall, and informed him that his mother and brother and sister were all gone to bed, “tired out” as Jenny expressed it.

“And Mr. Pryor?” Brian asked.

“He is staying at Eversbeg with Mr. Waller.”

“What’s that for?” inquired the youth.

“He said he thought Mrs. Drewitt would be more comfortable if she felt she had the house to herself,” was the reply. And then Mrs. Connor went on to ask what he would have to eat, and brought in supper herself, and made the boy a cup of strong coffee. Look at her as she sits in the candlelight—would you think that from her eyes had ever fallen such passionate tears, that she had ever pleaded so vehemently, that she had ever loved so unavailingly, as you can remember to have been the case?

Those calm, kind eyes look now as though sorrow had never dimmed them. Away in her girlhood, far, far back, lies the dream, and the grief, and the sorrow, and the sin.

To such natures, to such gentle, loving women, time is very kind; he refuses to wear channels in their cheeks, to draw lines across their foreheads, to take away their beauty, or to destroy their power of conferring happiness upon others; and thus Jenny was still pleasant to look upon—pleasant, though she was young no more; though the flush of her girlish loveliness had faded off her cheeks, though the warm brightness of her hair was dulled, though the years that had come and gone could not come and go without leaving traces behind them, still Jenny was pretty still, and Brian, who liked her greatly, found her face pleasant, as I have said, to look on.

Had she done wrong to marry? Jenny’s nature, facile as it was, had yet set itself resolutely against marrying or giving in marriage; but time, as it passed by, worked wonders, and Connor’s patient devotion and enduring constancy prevailed at last. All were dead who knew her secret—all save Maxwell and one other; and so, after ten years, she married, and came, as we have seen, with her husband to take charge of the great house at Durrow.

Mr. Pryor’s agency was of course immense promotion to Connor. There was a wonderful difference between living at Durrow Park and in Duranmore Cottage. Altogether, the Connors were rising people, greatly loved by the poor, and much appreciated by their employer; and Brian could not help thinking; while Jenny coaxed him to eat, and set dainty viands before him, that the Englishman had been fortunate; that no man and no woman could have been found in the length and breadth of Connemara likely to suit him better.

For many a day Jenny and Brian had been friends. She it was who, seeing the boy idling away his time, sought opportunity and occasion to give him the caution he spoke of to Mr. Pryor; and now, when all his struggles, all his efforts had proved of no avail, Mrs. Connor spoke tearfully of the sorrow that had come upon them, and told the son how deeply she grieved for his mother.

“You must be a good boy to her,” she said; “you must make up to her for what she has lost.”

“Yes,” answered Brian, “and I mean to try and give her back what she has lost.”

“You cannot give her back the dead,” Mrs. Connor remarked, sorrowfully.

“No; but I may give her back Kincorth,” the youth replied.

“Mr. Brian,” began Jenny, “since ever I came to Duranmore I have heard of Kincorth—heard of it as a bone of contention, as a place about which there had been quarrels, and broils, and heart-burnings, generation after generation. But for Kincorth, maybe your cousin might have been a better man: not that I have any reason to speak ill of him,” she went on hurriedly; “for though I am afraid he did put Timothy out of Mr. Waller’s agency, still he has stood his friend since, and he has been very kind to Dennis; but still everybody knows, unless by chance his wife, that Mr. Maxwell has not been a good man, which I think he might only for Kincorth——”

“How do you make that out, Mrs. Connor?” asked Brian, pushing away his plate as he spoke.

“You are not eating a bit,” said Jenny, piteously.

“Never mind me,” answered the young man. “You were speaking about Maxwell: how do you think Kincorth made him what he is?”

“Why, this way,” she replied. “He always thought himself wronged, you know, and it is not for anybody to say, Mr. Brian, that your grandfather did the thing that was right when he passed by his own eldest son and left all to your father. Do you think, Mr. Brian, it would have been fair for Mr. Drewitt to cut you out for Master Harold? Would it, now?” and Jenny’s voice grew quite earnest and pathetic as she pleaded the cause of the man she had once loved too well.

“Putting it in that way, Mrs. Connor, I must agree with you,” he answered; “but then it was not with Maxwell a question between brother and brother, but between uncle and nephew. If George Drewitt had been bitter about the matter, I must say his feelings would have seemed to me perfectly natural, and if Harold had superseded me, perhaps I should have felt angry too. That, however, would have been no reason why my son should feel himself injured. There is no just cause why Maxwell should have imagined Kincorth belonged of right to him.”

“Yes, there was, Mr. Brian,” she persisted. “Your father said he would never marry, and then he did marry. He promised to be a father to his brother’s children, and then——”

“Mrs. Connor, he was buried to-day; let what he did and what he left undone be buried with him,” Brian interrupted.

“I beg your pardon,” she said, humbly, and the tears came up into her eyes as she saw how hurt the lad was. “He was a good man and a true, even if he did leave many a thing undone he ought to have seen to; and all I meant to say was, that as Kincorth has been a curse and a snare to your cousin, I hope and pray, Mr. Brian, you will never let it be either to you. Sure there’s many a place as nice in Ireland. To my fancy, this house, with its look-out over the sea, is heartsomer than those woods and mountains”—poor Jenny! she shivered as she spoke—“and I think Dennis is right in saying you are better without so large a property so heavily mortgaged. And, indeed,” finished Jenny, “if I was a young gentleman I would not stay in these parts at all. I would go to England, and see the world, and make money, and come back here maybe for a month or two in the year, as Mr. Pryor does, but no longer. For many and many a day before I was married I used to wish I could go away. I did—I did.”

“I have not a notion what I shall do yet,” Brian answered, while he took another cup of coffee from her. “There is one thing, however, I do know—that wherever I go I shall always feel grateful to you for making me what I am. But for you I do not think I should have been fit for anything; and now I do not feel afraid of turning out into the world to earn my bread.”

“I told you before, Mr. Brian, that your mother had been my friend once in a time of bitter trouble, and that if at any hour of the day or night I could serve her or hers I would get up to do it. You have no call to feel grateful to me. There is nothing I could do for her, God knows, that would be half enough—not half.”

“I cannot fancy your ever having had a trouble, Mrs. Connor,” said the lad. She was the same in middle age as she had been in youth, a woman who took men’s fancies, to whom it came easy and natural for them to talk. “You look as if you never could have known a care.”

“Do I?” and she dropped her head forward for a moment on her hands. “There are few who come to my time of life,” she went on, “that have not met trouble; but there are few who, when in trouble, find such a friend as I did in your mother. If I could have died to keep this grief from her, Mr. Brian, I would have done it. You may think that strange now, having both Dennis and the children to value my life for; but I would, and it is because I love her, and because I love you for her sake, that I bid you quit caring for Kincorth—that I want you to make her quit caring for it too.”

Brian turned away. He could not bear to think of his mother dependent even for a shelter on the kindness of friends, on the courtesy of strangers.

For himself it would not have mattered, but for her—

That was the keystone of the lad’s character; that was what had made a man of him, whilst in years he was yet a boy—love for her—love for the mother who had not been true to her first allegiance, but who had loved two other babies since, and her last child, Harold, most of all.

“What am I to do?” he asked after a pause; “how can I make her cease caring for her home, for the place to which she came a wife, which she has left a widow? Tell me, Mrs. Connor,” he added, “what made you think so many years ago that Maxwell was determined to have Kincorth; what induced you to warn me; I should like to know that now.”

“Well, then, you cannot know,” she replied, taking one of the candles off the table; “for I shall not tell you. If I had to do it again, I am not sure that I should act as I did then, though I meant my warning for your good;” and with that Jenny stretched out her hand a little hesitatingly towards Brian, who stooped and kissed it as though she had been a queen. As he did so Jenny tore her hand away and broke out crying hysterically.

“Have I offended you, Mrs. Connor?” he said, standing abashed at his boyish gallantry; which was no impertinence, but an act of pure, and honest homage, and liking. “I am very sorry; I never meant to vex you. Forgive me—pray, forgive!”

“Forgive!” she cried; “what have I to forgive? only, Mr. Brian, don’t do that again—don’t. And may God bless—and may God keep you!”

Having completed which intelligible sentence Mrs. Connor left the room, only turning back at the door to suggest that Brian should accompany her and see the apartment which had been prepared for him.

“Try to get some sleep,” were her parting words; and worn out in body and in mind, Brian followed her advice, and was soon forgetful alike of past, present, and future.