Chapter XII: Geraldine is Satisfied

In the lives of all men there come long pauses, when the river of existence seems to flow on without a ripple, when day succeeds to day without any event of sufficient importance to be set down and chronicled occurring in the even course of their experience.

Such a time was the year following Harold’s death to Brian Drewitt. Though some changes had taken place, they had come about so naturally that they scarcely seemed changes to him. All perhaps he noticed specially or cared for particularly was, that he found it would take him a long time to grow rich, and that during that time he was separated from revenge and Maxwell and Kincorth.

Had he forgotten Kincorth, do you imagine? Had trouble driven all thoughts of vengeance out of his head? Had struggling with the world not tamed him, experience not subdued him, time not softened him? No, my reader. The object he had planned to work for in Connemara he was working for still, and though the end seemed no nearer of attainment, but further off than ever, yet Brian Drewitt never withdrew his eyes from it, but kept that distant goal in view by day and night, in solitude and when he was mixing among his fellows.

Long ago, I said a person had but to look in Brian Drewitt’s face to know that he could wait through years. He was waiting through years now for the end.

He had been very fortunate in business; fortunate, that is, considering his training and the age at which he made his start in the world; but still Brian felt dissatisfied.

It is not easy to be content with pounds when you have been calculating thousands; it is difficult to work for small pay when you desire to make money _ad libitum_ for the purpose of wiping out old scores; and thus, though Brian was in the receipt of a hundred and fifty pounds a year, he worked like a galley-slave to make himself of more value to his employers, who were now not the Dublin firm in whose establishment he had made his first start in life, but the great London house of Gyton, Lark, Munday, Hatfield and Company, Austinfriars.

After his brother’s death he felt that he would like to be nearer his mother than could possibly be the case if he retained his situation in Dublin.

As for asking Mrs. Drewitt and Geraldine to return there, to return to a country which was now so full of painful associations, he felt that such a request would be both foolish and unreasonable, and when Mr. Frank Gyton proposed to him that he should take his chance of the “governor’s temper,” at a salary of one hundred and fifty, which was an advance of fifty on the pay of the Dublin firm, Brian close with the offer on the spot, and three months afterwards walked into the city office as corresponding and foreign clerk.

That Mr. Gyton had a temper; that Mr. Munday had a worse; that the managing clerk had a worse temper than all his principals’ tempers put together, Brian was not long of finding out; but he had sense enough to find out at the same time that if he did his work no one could find fault with him; that if he kept his time, held his tongue, did what he was told and refrained from idling, nobody would meddle with him.

Had he been gay and light-hearted, like other lads; had he been given to merriment, or to merry-making; had he been sociable and lively, like Harold, with a jeer or a joke for every one, probably he would never have made way in the good graces of Mr. Gyton; but as matters stood that gentleman took to him in due time amazingly.

Mr. Gyton, in the City, was a different man from Mr. Gyton at the West-end. At the west he did not seem to have much voice in any matter on which his son and wife chanced to entertain a decided opinion; but in the City he was an individual of many prejudices, with old-fashioned ideas; who gave himself all the airs of a millionaire; who was a martinet in Austinfriars, and who liked to see old heads set on young shoulders.

In this respect Brian suited him to a nicety. Brian might have been a thousand years of age.

“A most discreet young man,” he remarked to Mr. Munday; and Mr. Munday agreed that he was, but ventured to observe that it was a pity he chanced to be born on the wrong side of the channel.

“As for that, sir,” answered Mr. Gyton, drawing himself up, and taking a pinch of snuff out of his box, without offering any to Mr. Munday, “as for that, sir, the Gytons have some Irish blood in their veins. My grandfather married the niece of an Irish Earl, and my father-in-law was Irish to the back-bone. Well trained, sir, and well bred, the Irish can run as well as the best of us.”

“Then I suppose it is quite true what I hear about your son?” said Mr. Munday, a little maliciously.

“What about my son, sir?—what—what about Frank?”

“It is generally said that Mr. Drewitt has a very charming sister——”

“And if he have a dozen sisters, Mr. Munday——”

“Why, in that case, your son could have choice enough.”

“Of course he could, and he can choose whom he pleases, and he can marry whom he likes, without consulting every idiot in London on the subject, I suppose.”

“Certainly, Mr. Gyton, his own father not excepted, we may conclude.”

And then the partners had quite a quarrel; they tried who could hit hardest, who could say the sharpest things, and went on wrangling and snarling, until Mr. Gyton, looking as red as a turkey-cock and as pompous as a beadle, remarked, that he supposed his private affairs might be regarded as separate from those of the firm; and that he wished Mr. Munday would recollect for the future that he had expressed such a wish; after which observation, which was delivered in the tone of a royal command, Mr. Gyton summoned Brian into his private office, and began catechizing him.

“How long have you been with us, Drewitt?”

“Six months, sir.”

“And you like the business?”

“I like anything out of which money can be made,” was the reply.

“Anything honest, I suppose, you mean.”

“Anything honest and honourable,” agreed Brian. “Anything that a gentleman may do, and still remain one.”

“Humph! You call yourself a gentleman, then, do you?”

Brian flushed scarlet, but had sense enough to make no reply.

“There—there—don’t be annoyed. I only asked for information. I wanted to know more of you. An employer ought to understand clearly the position in life of a person holding your responsible office. Let me see—how did you happen to come here?—who recommended you?—with whom were you last?”

Brian told him.

“And wasn’t there something about your father cutting you out?—what was all that?”

Once again, Brian gave him the information he wanted.

“And which of your family have you with you in London?” was the next question.

“My mother and only sister,” answered the young man.

“Dependent upon you, of course?”

“No, sir; my mother has her settlement, which is quite enough for all her wants,” Brian said, stiffly.

“Hah! so much the better. Now just begin and tell me your story right through—don’t keep anything back—be frank with me, and I will be fair with you. I am not asking out of idle curiosity—I am not, upon my honour.”

Thus exhorted, Brian told all—told everything, even to Harold’s mishap; and during the course of the recital, Mr. Gyton senior indulged himself in many pinches of snuff—in many hems, and haws, and God bless me’s, and upon my soul’s.

It was early summer, and Mr. Gyton was arrayed in those wonderfully light trousers for which most City magnates seem to have some kind of mania; he had on a white waistcoat, displayed an imposing amount of shirt-collar, wore a lightblue silk cravat, and was shaved as clean as it was in the art of man to shave a human chin.

He always carried an immense white silk pocket-handkerchief and an equally enormous bandana.

The bandana was now spread out over his knee, like a flag laid over a railing, and he contemplated the way in which his boots were blacked; while with his plump legs well apart, and his stomach swelling out under his white waistcoat, and his heavy guard-chain strolling about over his chest, he sat and listened to Brian, interrupting him only with the remarks I have mentioned.

“Hah! poor lady—very sad—very sad indeed: has Mrs. Gyton been to see her yet—eh?”

Mr. Gyton was always fancying his wife was in league with his son, and he put the question fully expecting to hear that Mrs. Gyton and Mrs. Drewitt were bosom friends.

No such thing however.

“My brother took that affair I mentioned so much to heart,” answered Brian, “and his health was so bad from the time we left Ireland, that he could not bear the sight of a stranger at all, and since his death my mother has never recovered her spirits sufficiently to care for visiting.”

“Wonderful—bless me—extraordinary!”

“We are so differently situated now,” began Brian, who really did not know what else to say; but Mr. Gyton interrupted him with the remark that he should have thought—but of course everybody knew their own business best (the millionaire was apt at times to be ungrammatical)—a little friendly visiting would have done Mrs. Drewitt good. “It’s not well to sit moping,” went on the great man; “brooding over sorrow only makes it worse; and we none of us can live alone—at least, that is my experience. I am sure when I was so ill, this time two years—let me see, is it two years? yes, it must be pretty nearly two years—the doctors told me I must speak to no one, see no one, and think of nothing, for at least three months.”

“They considered your case so serious?” suggested Brian, imagining some observation was expected from him.

“Serious? yes, indeed, it was serious; but their prescription would have killed me. I might as well have been put in my coffin at once, and so I told them. I went abroad, certainly, but what did I do there? I amused myself as much as possible. I saw everything there was to be seen. I drove about, I ate foreign kickshaws, I talked French (Brian thought he would have given something to hear the French to which Dives had treated the Parisians), and what was the consequence?”

His clerk faintly hoped that he had come back better.

“Better! why you see me now. I have been better since than I ever was in my life; and that’s what your mother ought to have, change and variety, instead of mouching in the house all day. Mrs. Gyton shall call upon her; yes, that she shall;” and Mr. Gyton having uttered the last words as if in answer to an internal protest against any such erratic proceedings, took a pinch of snuff, blew his nose violently and looked straight at Brian, who said—

“I hope, sir, you will not think me rude and ungrateful, but——”

“But what—what is it you have got to say?”

“I think my mother would rather—that is, we are so completely removed from the circle we——”

“Bless my soul! what ails the boy? he cannot finish a single sentence!” exclaimed Mr. Gyton, pettishly. “That is a shocking habit for any one to get into. Out with it!” he finished, working himself up to a pitch of desperation; “out with whatever you have got to say.”

“I am quite certain,” said Brian, steadily—so steadily that Mr. Gyton never guessed what the effort cost him—“that you would rather our house and your house were kept completely separate, when I tell you Mr. Francis Gyton once thought my sister very pretty; as she is,” added Brian. “All things considered, my mother decided it was best he should not see so much of her, nor she of him. I hope I am not doing wrong in telling you this, sir. We know exactly where we stand, and we do not wish to push ourselves into any house under false pretences;” and Mr. Brian drew himself up to his full height, and looked the very incarnation of pride and determination.

“Do you mean to say my son was ever fond of your sister?” asked Mr. Gyton, facing slowly round.

“I believe he was. I do not think my mother would ever have said it was best for him not to see Geraldine, had there not been something of the kind—and something definite, too.”

“The young dog!” remarked the parent.

“I should be sorry to say anything calculated to annoy you, or to prejudice you against Mr. Francis. But the matter is all settled now; and you will understand, from what I have said, why I think my mother would rather Mrs. Gyton did not call.”

“Thank you. It is always best to speak out fairly and frankly, is not it? Now there is something else I want to talk to you about. You have done your best, I think, since you came to us?”

“I have tried to do my best,” answered Brian, who was in horror lest he was going to be dismissed.

“Yes; and those who try generally succeed, don’t they?” said Mrs. Gyton, whose face seemed to Brian to get redder every moment, while his shirt-collar became more imposing. “I have been thinking of sending you abroad, very shortly.”

“Do you mean to any of the colonies?” asked Brian, hurriedly.

“No, no—only to France; it is rather a delicate piece of business, and I want it managed cleverly. If you conducted it to our satisfaction, I have no doubt we should be able to raise your salary next year.”

“You are very kind to me, sir,” Brian said.

“Not at all, not at all. I know what I am about. Take care of what you do, and you may make your way in the world yet. Now you can go; that is all I wanted.”

But still Brian hesitated.

“I can have no objection to your repeating to Mr. Francis what has passed between us to-day; but at the same time, sir, I almost wish you would not mention the matter to him. It is all settled now; and——”

“Yes—yes—yes—yes,” exclaimed Mr. Gyton, impatiently waving his hand; “I understand perfectly; be satisfied, I shall not make any mischief;” and Mr. Gyton rose from his chair as a hint that the interview must be considered ended, while Brian went back to his desk wondering greatly whither all his principal’s questions had tended.

As for Mr. Gyton, he took an early opportunity of seeing Mr. Pryor and asking him what kind of girl that sister of Drewitt’s might be; which question Mr. Pryor answered by inquiring why his brother-in-law wanted to know.

“Curiosity,” was the reply.

“Nonsense,” exclaimed Mr. Pryor; “you have heard some of that chatter of Munday’s about Frank being fond of her, as Frank was, for that matter; but do not let it influence you against Brian; for though Munday does not like him, you will never get a more faithful nor trustworthy clerk.”

“But I want to hear about this girl. Have you seen her?”

“Have I seen her?” repeated Mr. Pryor, with a nervous laugh. “Have I seen you? Did not I see them every day in Connemara before they ever left Kincorth? Did not I tell you I was in the house when her father died, and that I heard the will read over too? Seen her! I should think I had.”

“Do you think Frank really was fond of her?”

“How is it possible for me to answer such a question? He was at one time never out of the house, and he proposed for her. There, now the cat is out of the bag. But he had not courage to ask your consent, and Mrs. Drewitt would not allow the affair to go on without your knowledge. Frank asked me about it, and said he feared there was no chance of your approval; in which opinion, knowing there was no money nor prospect of any money, I agreed with him.” Mr. Pryor was never weary of having a fling at his brother-in-law’s money-bags.

“And so Frank gave her up?”

“I don’t think he did; I think he is waiting for an opportunity to speak to you.”

Thereupon Mr. Gyton grew rampant: was he a bear, was he a brute, was he a beast, that his own son should be afraid to speak to him on such a subject? “Hang it! sir,” he said, “was I rolling in money when I married your sister?”

“No,” was the reply; “but then neither were you dependent on your father for your support; and Frank knows, as I know, that there are probably many young ladies you would prefer to a girl without fortune, and she an Irishwoman.”

“Now I’ll tell you what it is, Geoffry,” and at this point Mr. Gyton became almost purple in the face with indignation, “I won’t have you or anybody settling my affairs for me, and saying what I should like, or what I should not. If you must know what I should not like, it would be one of those Munday girls. I wonder,” he went on, “that you, having just come into such a handsome property, should not have offered to make things square for Frank, and he your only near male relative. Not that I want the money; only I wonder, when these Drewitts seem to be such _protégés_ of yours.”

“You need not wonder,” was the reply. “I may marry yet, myself.”

“The deuce you may!” and Mr. Gyton surveyed him with perplexed amazement. “Ho, ho! I am beginning to see daylight, I think. Perhaps you are in love with the girl yourself?”

“Perhaps I am;” and Geoffry Pryor, seeing that his last chance of winning Geraldine was slipping through his fingers, stood at bay. “Indeed,” he proceeded, “there is no use in my making any pretence about the matter. I did hope—I have hoped year after year since I first knew her, that some day I might be able to persuade her to become my wife. It may seem to you a ridiculous rivalry,” added Mr. Pryor, hastily; “but I think I should have been far the honester lover of the two. Had I approved of Frank’s conduct in the affair—had I thought it likely he would make her happy—I love her so well, that—”

“You would have taken his part against me. I am obliged to you, Geoffry.”

“—That I would have done what I could to help him and her, though I do not pretend to much Quixotism either,” finished Mr. Pryor.

“I must see this young lady, who seems to have turned all your heads,” remarked Mr. Gyton.

“Well, then, listen to one word first. Frank has treated her very badly.”

“How dare you say such a thing of my son, sir?”

“I shall say what I please about my nephew,” retorted Mr. Pryor, coolly. “And I repeat, Frank has treated her very badly. Now, do not you go and treat her badly also. Make up your mind what your intentions are in the matter, and see that Frank has not changed his, and then do what you like; only don’t let him keep beating about the bush as he has been doing, ever since he first saw her.”

“What relative is she to that Lady Emmeline woman who stayed with us one spring?”

“Lady Emmeline’s husband and Miss Drewitt are first cousins,” Mr. Pryor replied.

“Was that the fellow who got the estate?”

“The same.”

“Any chance at all of our clerk having it back again?”

“Not the slightest.”

“Are you going over to Ireland this year?”

“I do not know. No, I think not. I have some intention of selling Durrow, and buying a place in England.”

“How long have you taken that idea into your head?”

“Not very long;” and Mr. Pryor returned his brother-in-law’s stare unflinchingly.

“Don’t take it to heart,” said Mr. Gyton, with a certain kindness and sympathy in his manner; “don’t, there’s a good fellow.”

“If you don’t take it to heart, I am sure I need not,” answered the barrister, bitterly; “I thought the very mention of such a _mésalliance_ would have driven you out of your mind. The longer I live the less I see one need expect any person to act as it might have been supposed he would.”

“Then you are sorry I do not altogether disapprove of the business.”

“Do you think I am made of iron, that I should be glad?” was the reply; but Mr. Pryor never afterwards repeated this remark; on the contrary, when his sister told him how Frank’s wandering habits and unsettled mode of life had been a source of grief and anxiety to both her and his father, how anxious they were for their only son to be “settled,” and how thankful for her part she felt that he had chosen that “dear, sweet, pretty Geraldine, who was so fond of him,” the barrister resigned himself to the inevitable, and began marvelling whether he could ever look on Geraldine as his niece.

He did not much think his nephew would make any woman very happy; but still, they were both young, and both in love; and, who knew but that it was best as it was?

Geoffry Pryor could not say it was not best, though it ended his dream, though it crushed out of his heart the hope he had been cherishing for years.

“I thought you would have liked Frank to marry either rank or fortune,” he remarked to his sister.

“So we should, but Frank has never shown the slightest predilection for either one or the other, and really young men now-a-days do make such matches that I am thankful he has chosen a lady by birth, and one whom we need not be ashamed to present to any person or in any place. There is young Munday—married his sister’s maid! Mr. Lark has just had to send his son abroad to keep him out of the way of some most disreputable connexion. There is Lady Ackington’s step-son run off with the governess—and in short, my dear Geoffry—”

“In short, my dear Maria, you think, with me, that Miss Drewitt will make almost too good a wife for Frank.”

“I think no such thing,” retorted Mrs. Gyton, indignantly; “for a young lady in Miss Drewitt’s destitute position to make such a capital match is remarkable; and had Mr. Gyton not taken such a fancy to her brother it never could have been brought about. Of course we shall be glad to see Frank settled. He has promised his father that he will really settle down to business now, and take that position to which, as the son of the head of the firm, he is entitled; and if he does that I shall say meeting with Miss Drewitt was the greatest blessing which could have befallen him. But, at the same time, I must add, that had he fancied Miss Ackington, or even one of the Miss Larks, I should infinitely have preferred a connexion which might have advanced his worldly interests as well as insured his domestic happiness.”

“You really are getting eloquent, Maria.”

“It is enough to make any one indignant to hear the way you talk. A stranger would really go away with the impression that Miss Drewitt had ten thousand a year, and that she was conferring some honour on Frank by accepting him, instead of being only too glad to secure such a catch. Not but what,” continued Mrs. Gyton, noticing an angry look in her brother’s face; “not but what I will say, they behaved admirably in the business, which proves that, though they are poor, they have been educated in all the ideas of the highest ranks.”

“What are the ideas of the highest ranks, Maria?” inquired Mr. Pryor.

“Not to take advantage—to act honourably—to do as you would be done by, and so forth.”

“Oh! indeed!” remarked her brother; “after that, I think I may go home and propose to my housekeeper.” But he did not go home, neither did he propose to his housekeeper: he drove to the house in Islington which Brian had taken for his mother after Harold’s death, and found Geraldine alone in the drawing-room.

“I have come to wish you joy, dear,” he said; but there was an unsteadiness in his voice as he spoke, and the hand which held hers trembled a little. “I hope you will be happy, and wealthy, and wise;” and he tried to smile; which proved so futile an attempt, that the tears came into Geraldine’s eyes as she looked at him.

“I was foolish once,” he went on, “and thought—Ah! well, you know what I thought. But that is all gone and past now, my child, and we will be good friends for ever, won’t we?”

She put her other hand on his shoulder and said, “yes,” with a sob in her voice.

“And if ever you are in any trouble or perplexity, you will come to me as you would to—I am going to be your uncle,” he added abruptly; “so what need I say more?”

“I will come,” she replied.

“And we will forget all the past. You will forget I was ever silly enough to overlook the fact that I was old enough to be your father; that the time when I might have found favour in a young girl’s eyes was in the summers before you were born.”

“Don’t,” she pleaded; “don’t; I can’t bear it.”

He put the hair back from her forehead, he held her away from him at arms’ length, he looked at her sweet sorrowful face—looked at it as he knew he might never look in her face, or in the face of any other woman again, and then he took her to him and kissed her, as he had longed to do that day when they stood together on the hill above Kincorth.

“Is not there a nursery rhyme, Geraldine, which declares that some go up, and some go down? I feel that I have been among the latter class; and yet, if you are happy, my dear, I will make myself happy too. It was a mistake; that is all; and in this world it has often seemed to me we pay as dearly for our mistakes as we do for our sins. You may think it a strange fancy, child. I am not going away from London; at least, I am only going to Durrow for a month, and I hope often to see you when I come back; constantly, indeed, after a time: yet still, I want to say good-bye; that was the chief word I came to speak to you to-day.”

She knew what he meant; knew that it was not to her he was bidding farewell, but to the dream that had been so sweet and so exceeding beautiful. She knew that from thenceforth he wanted her to forget, as he intended to forget—that from that day forward, she was to seem to him his nephew’s affianced wife, nothing more.

Nothing more. When he was standing on the cliffs above Durrow it seemed to him that the sea kept repeating that refrain eternally:

Nothing more—nothing—so long as the rain fell, and the wind blew, nothing for ever!

But Geraldine was happy, and talked with her mother of brighter days to come, when she should have no anxiety about ways and means; no need to pinch and save; no trouble, no sorrow.

“And they will push Brian on, mamma, and he will get, oh! so rich, and Frank wants him also to live with us till he marries; so that you need have no hesitation now about coming to us; and we will make you so comfortable, mamma, and take every care from you, and you shall be so happy—so happy!”

Should she? After a talk like this Mrs. Drewitt would go to her own room, and fall on her knees, and pray that her son and daughter might somehow learn the truth which she had not courage enough to tell them—that the days were not very far off when she should indeed have no more care, when she should be very happy, but not in this world—ah! no, not here.