Chapter XVII: Master Harold

There was little change in Connemara—in the general aspect of the country I mean—and yet the suns of sixteen summers had risen and set upon the mountains since Maxwell Drewitt rode home from Cragantlet under the moonlight—since, under the moonlight also, Jenny Bourke accepted the sorrow that was inevitable, and went away through the night, crying silently.

There were the mountains, grand and stern and rugged as ever; there were the desolate lakes, the dreary bogs, the huge boulders, the endless bays, the rocky headlands, the grassy promontories washed by the wide ocean.

To look at the country, any one might have thought only a new day had dawned upon the earth; and it was a new day indeed, but one twenty years after that summer afternoon when you, reader, first looked into the parlour of Inchnagawn Cottage, and heard Maxwell Drewitt and Timothy Ryan talking about the new mistress who was coming home to Kincorth.

What are twenty years, when all is said and done, but as an hour in the life of the great hills? Twenty years! Man frets and troubles himself through the third portion of almost his longest day, and the hills look on silently. Twenty years! Others come and go, are born and die, marry and have children, strive and plan, harass themselves, laugh and weep, rejoice and mourn, while the hills remain unchanged.

Twenty years! The mountains and the lakes and the ocean were the same—but the people! Ah! dear reader, no one but God in Heaven may ever know what the Irish suffered between the summer’s day on which this story opened and the summer’s day on which I take up my pen once more.

It was a lovely afternoon, towards the latter end of June. There had been rain in the early morning, but towards twelve o’clock the clouds dispersed, the sun broke out, and now, as the mail-coach, bound to arrive at Duranmore at five o’clock, stopped to change horses at Calgillan, ten miles distant, the traveller could not have desired a more beautiful day for his journey, or a finer country for his eyes to wander over. Fine, not with cultivation, but by nature. Grand with hills—well-wooded here and there too—with waterfalls dashing down the mountain-sides, with rapid rivers pursuing their course onward to the sea. The road leading from Calgillan to Duranmore was far the most picturesque approach to the little town which could have been selected, and it was because of its beauty that two English gentlemen chose it for their route.

The younger of these two men had never visited Ireland before; the elder had been in Connemara twenty years previously, when he stood for Duranmore and lost the day. Henry Pryor was coming back, after all those years, to look at a property which was for sale near Duranmore, and if he liked, to buy it.

Whilst he remained in Connemara he was going to be the guest of Maxwell Drewitt, Esq., of the Headlands; and Maxwell Drewitt, Esq., had kindly offered to extend his hospitality to Mr. Francis Gyton, whose father was principal in the great firm of Gyton, Lark, Munday, Hatfield and Company, Austinfriars, London.

Mr. Gyton, senior, was a millionaire—Mr. Gyton, junior, was rather a fast young man, who went down to the City and “looked in” at the office as seldom as he could help, whose health required continual absences from town, and who, consequently, the moment he heard his uncle intended visiting Ireland, offered to accompany him.

Calgillan was not a town, merely a straggling village lying among the hills, and Mr. Gyton employed himself during the time that was occupied in taking the tired horses out and putting the fresh horses to in making depreciating remarks concerning the country and its inhabitants generally. He saw nothing picturesque except the short petticoats of the women.

“Like ballet girls, by Jove!” finished Mr. Gyton, who pronounced Jove Jauve, and surveyed Irish society through an eyeglass.

“You never saw a ballet girl half so pretty,” answered a young lad who had travelled with them for the last thirty miles, and who now stood with his hands in his pockets leaning against the wall of Joyce’s Hotel.

“And how do you know anything about the matter?” asked Mr. Gyton, laughing, for he had been tormenting and chaffing the boy all the way, “you never saw a ballet girl in your life.”

“I don’t want to see one,” retorted the other, sulkily; “but I know our women are prettier than the English women for all that, and our country is finer than England. You have no mountains like those where you came from;” and he pointed away towards the “Twelve Pins,” which are the Alps of Connemara.

“No; our mountains are twenty times higher,” said Mr. Gyton, laughing again.

“I could take you to a place where you might count a hundred lakes below you,” went on the boy.

“Mill-ponds,” observed the other.

“And you have no such fish in England as we have at our very doors.”

“Ah! you never tasted whitebait, my boy.”

“We’re ready now, gentlemen, if you please,” said the guard at this juncture, and all the passengers clambered up into their seats.

“There’s a team!” Mr. Gyton leaned back from the box to whisper to the young Irish lad; “why, there’s not a coachman in England would sit behind four such sorry nags.”

“You never saw such a turn-out, at any rate,” answered the boy.

“He’s right, sir,” interposed the driver. “Master Harold’s right. You might travel England and Ireland through, and never meet with such a turn-out again.”

“The horses are as thin as whipping-posts, and the harness is falling to pieces; but I should have thought that no such uncommon sight on this side the channel,” replied Mr. Gyton.

“But we know—we know better, don’t we, Master Harold?” chuckled the coachman, bringing his whip down cleverly on the off leader’s flank as he spoke.

“Yes, Doyle, we know,” answered the boy, and the pair laughed in chorus.

“What is remarkable about the turn-out?” asked Mr. Pryor, who had for some time been watching Master Harold with considerable interest.

“There is nothing remarkable; they’re trying to humbug us, that is all,” said his nephew.

“Bet you five to one,” retorted the boy, sharply.

“Done. Who is to hold the stakes?”

“He may,” agreed Master Harold, pointing to Mr. Pryor, “and he shall be umpire.” And with that the lad pulled out five shillings, and placed them in Mr. Pryor’s hand.

Mr. Gyton laughed till he almost fell off the coach, while he laid down his stake.

“Now go ahead,” he said; “what is there so remarkable about Pharaoh’s lean kine?”

“Why, there are four horses—you see them; and here is Billy Doyle who drives them—you see him; and the five have only one eye among them, and that is Billy’s. Did you ever see anything like that in England?—did you now?”

“Fairly beaten, Frank,” said his uncle.

“Done, by Jupiter!” exclaimed the young man about town. “Here, sir, take your money.”

“Give it to Bill—I don’t want it,” said the lad, contemptuously; and he folded his hands tightly together, and looked away towards the “Twelve Pins” with as lordly an expression as though he owned them and the hundred lakes he had spoken of into the bargain.

“But they can’t go,” began Mr. Gyton, who considered Master Harold far too good fun to be left in peace. “Poor things! they seem as if they hadn’t one leg among them—as if they were lame as well as blind. They are tired already. Do you call such animals horses in this part of the country?”

“If I was sitting where you are,” retorted the lad, “I would show you whether they could go or not.”

“Perhaps you will take the box seat,” suggested Mr. Gyton, with a delighted chuckle.

“I will if you’ll let me.”

“Don’t, Frank, do not,” entreated Mr. Pryor. “You are carrying the joke too far,” he added, in a lower tone; “you do not understand the Irish. Remain where you are.”

But Mr. Gyton would not take his uncle’s advice. They were at the very foot of a hill which rose up before them steep and straight like the wall of a house. “I mean to walk up here,” he said, “and if you like at the top to take my place and the ribbons, you are welcome to both.”

“I did not see you offer to drive,” remarked the boy. “Are you not used to it?”

“Not to driving such cattle as the creatures you call horses. A good English thoroughbred now, or something of that kind.”

“Oh, indeed!” said Harold, and they walked on in silence.

“Coachman, I say, coachman,” exclaimed Mr. Gyton, when they reached the top of the hill, “this young gentleman is going to take my place and the reins, and means to break all our necks. Keep your one eye on him.”

“I won’t need, sir. Master Harold is as good a whip as ye’d find betwixt this and the Shannon; ay, and faith an’ there’s not a leap a horse could take that it’s himself couldn’t go over with him.”

“I’d like to see him on the back of an English hunter,” laughed Mr. Gyton.

“And damn me if I would not like to put _you_ on the back of my father’s chestnut Madcap; you’d be precious soon off, I’m thinking,” Harold turned round to answer.

“Take care, Frank, take care,” urged Mr. Pryor, but his nephew was incorrigible.

“Is the chestnut anything like our blind team, which you are driving so beautifully?” he asked.

“No, she is not; but our team could go faster than perhaps you would like to travel,” retorted the boy.

“Try me,” was the reply.

“Don’t, for Heaven’s sake!” entreated Mr. Pryor; but, before the words were well out of his lips, Harold had knotted up the reins, flung them on the horses’ necks, and, with an hoorah and a whoop, lashed them forward down the hill.

“Now for Hell or Duranmore,” gasped the coachman, while the insides screamed, and every outside passenger held on for his life.

“Can Irish horses go now?” hissed out the boy, turning round to his tormentor, as the coach went swaying and rocking down the hill.

Every moment the pace increased. Doyle seized the whip, but he could not stop Harold shouting and hallooing, and as the horses felt the vehicle gaining on them they galloped, blind though they were, faster and faster still.

The collars tightened, and the haime chains were strained to their utmost, as the creatures drew further away from one another in their frantic endeavours to get loose.

From side to side—bumping, tossing, rolling—the coach went flying down the incline. If one of the horses had fallen it would have been all over with the passengers; but hot iron had never touched the hoofs of those four blind steeds, and they were sure-footed as goats.

Down the hill they went; the mountains seemed to be spinning along with them. Duranmore and the Bay were now up, now down—now in the depths of the earth, now on the top of Eversbeg Head—but at last the level was safely reached, and the bays, after galloping along for a while, stopped of their own accord.

“It’s not your fault, Master Harold, that there’s one of us left alive. If the craythurs had not been blind it is hard to say when we would have pulled up,” remarked Doyle, as he descended from his perch and unfastened the reins, and soothed and patted the frightened and panting animals, that stood with their nostrils quivering, with their flanks white with foam.

“Is it your misfortune, Bill?” asked the lad, swinging himself to the ground. “I’ll send for the kit;” and then he looked coolly up to Mr. Gyton, and hoped he had enjoyed his drive. “It was not the distance, I suppose, so much as the pace?” he suggested, and lifting his cap to the two gentlemen, he turned along the road leading towards Kincorth.

“Who is that—that lunatic?” asked Mr. Gyton, when the coachman resumed his seat on the box.

“That, sir,” answered the man, whose cheeks and nose were blanched as white as though whiskey had never reddened them, “is Masther Harold Drewitt; and I am free to say that a bigger divil niver run.”

“Any relation to Mr. Drewitt, of Kincorth?” inquired Mr. Pryor.

“His youngest son,” was the reply; and uncle and nephew exchanged glances.

“They sent him to school to quiet him down a bit; but faith I think he’s come back worse than he went.”

“Send a goose to Dover, and a goose will come over,” remarked Mr. Gyton.

“A goose!” repeated the coachman. “It’s not much of a goose there is about Masther Harold. It’s more of the cloven foot than the web that’s inside his boots; an’ it’s a pity, for a kinder-hearted, more spirity, freer-spoken young gentleman there’s not in Connemara. But they tell me it’s the mother has spoiled him entirely; an’ a nice lady she is, too, and homely-like in her ways, for a foreigner.”

“Foreigner!” echoed Mr. Pryor, in surprise.

“Well, English then, like yourself, sir; shure it’s all one. The masther married her in London, I think it was—and well spoken of she is by rich and poor. Only they do say it’s she spoils Masther Harold: though some think he would not have been so wild a divil if he had not been so much at the Headlands: that’s his cousin’s place, sir, Mr. Maxwell Drewitt, and a clever gintleman he is. He’s made a sight of money, and gives plenty of employment.”

“We are going to the Headlands,” remarked Mr. Gyton, demurely.

“See that now!—well, as I was saying, you are going to see a clever gintleman. What he has in his head nobody would credit; and as for land, I could not tell all he bought up in the Estates Court. All that fine farm, that lies down in the hollow after we passed Calgillan, is his; and he has a great property, they tell me, beyond Cragantlet; that is behind the hill there facing you: and then he has the place that used to be Mr. Munks’, on the other side of Laddenwell Lake; and never chick nor child to leave all to. Many a time I think about that when I see the childer swarming in and out of the cottages of his labourers. They say he’d give Cherryfield, the place he bought from Mr. Munks, to have a son. It seems queer, sir, the way them things go. I suppose it’s by favour, like kisses.”

“It will be a deucedly lucky thing for that boy if he never have any children,” observed Mr. Gyton, thoughtfully.

“So Mr. Drewitt thinks, people do say,” answered the driver. “Maybe, gentlemen,” he went on after a pause, “ye wouldn’t mind saying nothing to Mr. Maxwell about Masther Harold’s tricks. It might get him into thrubble. An’ the lad intended no harm; it’s just divilment and contrariness.”

“Oh, we will do the young fellow no harm,” said Mr. Gyton, “though, as you remarked, it was not his fault that our necks were not broken; and if you take my advice you will not trust him with the ribbons again. What _are_ you considering, uncle?” he added. “You look as grave as if you had been retained for a bad case and got an adverse verdict.”

“I was thinking about that Master Harold,” replied Mr. Pryor, who had neither wife nor child himself. “I was thinking about that Master Harold. He is the very image of what Maxwell Drewitt was twenty years ago, though there is not much resemblance now.”

“They tell me Mr. Maxwell never favoured him, sir,” dissented the driver; “that there’s a kindly look in Master Harold’s eyes, and a soft winning way with him, that nobody ever remembered in Mr. Maxwell; but I ask your pardon, sir, for making so free, and Mr. Maxwell a friend of your own too.”

“I have only seen him twice in the last twenty years,” replied Mr. Pryor, “but I can remember very well what he was the first day we ever met, and that boy is like him. I could not think who he reminded me of all the way. Of course,” he added, speaking to his nephew, “Maxwell Drewitt was a man when I first saw him, somewhere about my own age at that time, and this Harold is but a boy; still, the turn of the head, the tone of the voice, the features, and something in the expression, are the same. How it carries one back!” he finished, with a sigh; “how it carries one back! But here we are at Duranmore, and there is Mr. Maxwell Drewitt himself.”

“Welcome once more to Connemara,” said that gentleman, shaking Mr. Pryor’s hand as though he wanted to shake it off. “See to the luggage, Dickson,” he added, turning to his servant, and then he asked his guests which they would choose—to walk or drive.

“Walk, if you please,” answered Mr. Gyton. “I shall be glad to stretch my legs after so much coaching.”

“And you?” inquired Maxwell, turning to Mr. Pryor, with a smile at the younger man’s lead.

“Should like the walk also,” laughed Mr. Pryor. “Do you remember all the walks we had along the bay, twenty years ago?”

“Twenty years this month,” answered Maxwell Drewitt. “They have not been long in passing.” And the trio sauntered down the street together, while Doyle said to Dickson—

“Whose’s them gentlemen, Barney, do ye know?”

“One of them is some Mr. Pryor,” said Dickson, “that stood for Duranmore the time of the great election.”

“You don’t mane that?”

“Do you think I’m a liar then?” asked Dickson, who was of a taciturn disposition and easily annoyed.

“I don’t think much of the young chap, but if that’s Mr. Pryor, I wish I was dhriving him ivery day, and was getting his blissing in silver too.”

“Ay, faith, I believe ye. That’s the only blissing or crossing aither you ever thrubble yerself about.”

Which remark being disagreeably true, caused Mr. Doyle to retire into the “Marsden Arms,” where he wet Mr. Pryor’s gift with whiskey immediately.

Meanwhile Harold, after parting with his travelling companions, proceeded along the road which led round the north side of Duranmore Bay, and wended his way towards home—now running, now loitering, now pegging stones at the birds in the trees by the wayside, now cutting a stick, now decapitating the dandelions and benweeds, which were plentiful and in splendid bloom. He was full of life and youth and strength and spirit. He did not seem to know what to do with himself for very happiness, and so he would jump backwards and forward over the ditches and swing himself up to the first branch of a tree, and then drop lightly to the ground, in order to let off the superfluous steam.

A fine lad truly—straight and tall and well-made—with black hair, dark eyes, white teeth, good features, and a fine open expression of face. He was like Maxwell Drewitt, and yet he was unlike. He had Maxwell’s figure and Maxwell’s face, but he had not Maxwell’s impassiveness of muscle, his command of countenance, his steely self-possession.

A fine lad—one whom his mother idolised and his father adored. No other autocrat had come to reign after him; and the love and thought and devotion bestowed on Harold as a baby were bestowed on Harold likewise when he was a boy.

Brother and sister and servants were all alike—all yielded their wills to Harold. It was an understood thing in the household that Master Harold could think no wrong, that Master Harold was not to be crossed, that whatever Master Harold desired was to be done for him immediately.

Brian had for so long a time given place to Harold that no person remembered the time when Brian was anybody. The eldest born was to have Kincorth, and the younger was to reign over all hearts in consequence. No one ever seemed to think such an arrangement harsh or unjust until the boys grew up, but then people began to remark that Mrs. Drewitt’s entreaty—

“Do, Brian. Now cannot you let him have it? remember he is the youngest,” was heard too often for much good to come of such training.

The best horse in the stable, the best fishing-rod, the best gun, had to be relinquished in Harold’s favour without a murmur; and, perhaps, I cannot say more in praise of Brian Drewitt than that he never murmured at this favouritism; that he accepted his lower seat without a word.

At the gate of Kincorth the brothers ran up against each other.

“I was coming to meet you, Haro,” said Brian, passing his arm through his brother’s. “I meant to have been at the cross-roads in good time. Is the coach early, or am I late?”

“Both, I should say,” answered Harold. “The coach was early, for I drove; and you are late, for some reason best known to yourself.”

“I had to fetch Doctor Sheen to see papa,” was the reply. “He’s often ill now. I sometimes think Sheen does not know what is the matter with him.”

“Sheen is a fool!” remarked Master Harold. “Why don’t you have old Barnes? But doctors are no use, are they now?”

“I don’t know,” sighed Brian; “but I wish somebody would do him some good.”

“What ails him?” asked Harold; “is it the same old pain?”

“I believe so,” answered Brian, and the pair walked on a little way in silence.

“I tell you what,” at last broke out the younger brother; “if I were mamma I’d take him to Dublin; I would not stand Sheen’s duffing about any longer. The fellows there could soon find out all about him, and he’d be ready for the hunting if they set him up at once.”

“Harold——”

“Yes, Brian.”

“Sometimes I am afraid that nothing will set him up.”

“Do you mean, you think he is going to die?” Harold asked, with a gradual crescendo.

“I hope not—but——”

“You are as bad as old Sheen,” retorted Harold. “Die—why should he die? he is ten years younger than Sheen himself, and he’s twenty years younger than old Mrs. Waller—Waller’s grandmother I mean. Why you might as well talk about you or me dying as of him.”

“Don’t say anything to mamma.”

“_I_ would be ashamed to repeat such folly,” answered Harold, with a swagger; “but I shall tell her to take him to Dublin, and to have done with Sheen.”

“I wish she could. She was wishing herself she had money to pay some eminent physician for coming down.”

“Money—there you go again—money! It is all nonsense our being short of money. Haven’t we this, and haven’t we that, and haven’t we hundreds and thousands and millions of acres beside?” asked Harold.

“What is the use of acres if they are all mortgaged?” demanded Brian. “What is the use of land if we can make nothing out of it?”

“I declare, Brian, if you go on like that I will turn straight back to school; you are the most confounded old croak I ever heard; and I have got such a lark I want to tell you about. I galloped the horses down Calgillan Pass, and nearly frightened the wits out of two English fellows, who thought Doyle’s team had no blood in them. They shouted for me to stop: the younger fellow prayed and cursed alternately: the insides were screeching like pigs a-killing. Old Doyle could not get the reins, for I had pitched them on the horses’ necks, and I gave it to them with the whip as long as he left it with me. Didn’t I, just? and didn’t they go? We came down the hill with never a drag on, at the rate of about forty miles an hour; and then I hoped they had enjoyed their drive. Serve them right!—teach them to abuse Ireland again.”

“You’ll get your neck broken some day to a certainty, Harold,” said Brian, gravely.

“Well, it can only be broken once, that is a comfort,” answered Harold.

“And did the harness hold?—did no accident happen?”

“Devil an accident.”

“What did Doyle say?”

“He was frightened to death—thought we were all going to hell, I believe—old humbug! He was trembling for his half-crowns I suspect. I hope they won’t give him a halfpenny! Shall I tell mamma? Yes, I will, for it would put her all of a shake. No, I won’t, because she would send word to Doyle never to let me drive again. There she is at the hall-door waiting for us;” and both sons started off to reach her.

“Beaten, Brian,” said Harold, disengaging himself from his mother’s arms, and wiping her kisses away with his coat-sleeve. He could not bear her to kiss him. He did not think it looked manly; he was afraid of anybody calling him a “Molly Coddle,” and he considered the correct thing would have been for Mrs. Drewitt to shake hands with him and say, “How are you, Harold?” instead of “hugging and kissing,” as the young gentleman put it.

A natural enough sentiment for his age and disposition; and yet, do not be quite so energetic about the matter, Harold. Let the twining arms hold you, and the loving kisses remain, for those arms cannot clasp you always—those kisses cannot be given twice.

There is no need to be ashamed of a mother’s love, boy; no need to wonder if any one be looking at that clinging paroxysm of affection.

Do not turn your eyes from her to see if the servants have beheld your meeting; for you will never find another on the wide earth to love you like her. No one hereafter will lie awake at nights wondering how it is faring with you: no one will ever think of you in the days to come as she does now: no one in that vague future stretching away before you will ever feel her entire world bound up and centered in you.

Do not thrust her love aside, boy; you will stand in grievous want of it yet: do not wipe her kisses off your lips; the day is coming when you will lay your head on her breast and pray for another—and another yet.

Her love may be foolish, but it is foolish only because she thinks too much of you.

As man is born of woman, so man in his bitterest extremity turns back to woman; and ere many years passed over, Harold asked to listen to no voice beside his mother’s, to look in no other face save hers, to hold no hand except that which had so often caressed him in vain.

He found comfort in the love which was unselfish in its selfishness; he sought shelter in a heart he had well-nigh broken; while she, poor soul! while she——?

If Mrs. Drewitt loved him too much, she was punished; if she were unjust, justice was done; if she sowed the wind, she reaped the whirlwind; if she made an idol of him, he showed her his feet of clay; if she spoiled him, she repented her of it; if she mourned, the Lord God, in his own good time, brought consolation to her!