Chapter XVIII: Man’s Vengeance

The world had prospered with Brian Drewitt since his mother’s death; his salary was still indeed not excessive, but he was promised an increase very shortly, and Mr. Francis Gyton had further thrown out many vague hints to the effect that in his, Frank Gyton’s opinion, it would be far jollier if they (he and Brian) were to cut the old connection, and start in business on their own account.

“I know I could not stand Munday, so there is no use in my father talking of taking me into partnership,” he said one evening when he and Brian were walking up westward together from the City. “I think such a lot of partners are a damned nuisance, and I should like to get clear of them. So, to cut the matter short, Brian, whenever I am married I should like to commence with you. I can find the tin, and you the brains—is it a bargain?”

“Your father?” hesitated Brian.

“My father will be a little restive at first, but when he is tired of opposition he will give in, and it is of no use mincing the matter, Brian; Mr. Munday and I cannot remain in the same business together. What do you say—will you be my man, or will you not?”

“I will not, without speaking first to your father in the matter. He has been very kind to me, and—”

“And you will do the respectful and all the rest of it, and I will do the dutiful; so that, between us, the old gentleman will be as easily managed as possible. I should not wonder if he came over to us himself, for he likes Munday no better than I do.”

Mrs. Drewitt’s death had of course postponed Geraldine’s marriage, and as it had also crippled their means, brother and sister were now living in a cottage at Highgate, which Mr. Gyton entertained some idea of purchasing for his son.

“Throw out a drawing-room there, and build a conservatory here, and put the kitchens at the back, and it would really make a very charming little residence. Love in a cottage, eh, Geraldine?”

Whereupon Geraldine blushed and laughed, while the evening sunshine fell upon her.

“And you will require coach-house and stabling; in fact, the whole place will need alteration; but it is a lovely situation—lovely!” and the great man stood back to admire the view. “I tell you what it is, Miss,” he went on; “I shall get so fond of this cottage one of these days, that you will have me taking up my abode here,” and he pinched the girl’s cheek, who, passing her hand through his arm, said coaxingly—

“Something has taken up its abode here that would astonish you. I wonder if I might tell you, or whether you would be shocked. It is a deserter, a countryman of my own.”

“A deserter?—you are jesting, Geraldine.”

“I am not jesting at all,” she answered. “Our servant found him in the wood-shed, this morning, and he is half-starved, and badly clad, and ill and miserable.”

“Good bless me!” exclaimed Mr. Gyton.

“And I want your help to send him over to America, or Newfoundland, or some place,” added Geraldine, with that charming ambiguity of expression which is so pleasing a characteristic of her sex.

“But—but—but all this is very illegal; extremely improper,” began Mr. Gyton.

“We don’t care for law at all in Ireland,” answered Geraldine, demurely; “and in such a case as this, not much for propriety.”

“You incorrigible little girl, I don’t know what I must say to you.”

“Say you will pay his passage out to America,” she suggested. “If I had the money, I would do it in a minute.”

“But it is against law: the proper course for you to pursue, would be to go down to Scotland Yard, and give information that such and such a person was concealed on your premises.”

Geraldine broke out into a peal of laughter. “Should you really like me to go to Scotland Yard, Mr. Gyton?” she suggested. “Would a note not do as well, or could Frank not call round in the morning? Is there any reward? I think I should like to get a reward.”

“What are you talking about?” demanded Lady Emmeline, who was likewise of the party. “I declare, any person might think it was you and Mr. Gyton who were engaged, instead of you and Frank.”

“So we are engaged for life, as father and daughter,” replied the millionaire; “we were talking about a deserter. Geraldine, it appears, keeps one among her coals and wood.”

“You are not serious?”

“Perfectly serious. I dare say the young man is on view at the present moment.”

“Dear me! how romantic!”

“It is romantic,” added Geraldine; “for he is evidently a gentleman; he has been to Oxford, at the University, I mean—a student there, or whatever you call it.”

“I think, Mr. Gyton, that this affair ought to be investigated,” said Lady Emmeline.

“I think so, too,” was the reply. “Suppose we send for a policeman?”

“If a policeman come here I will smash his skull for him!” remarked Brian, at this juncture.

“Dear! dear! what a set of people you Irish are!” observed Mr. Gyton. “A man has only to shoot his landlord—or be a rebel—or a deserter—or something of that kind, to engage all your sympathies!”

“You would not have us give him up?” exclaimed Brian, his voice sounding loud and angry, as he spoke.

“Certainly not, sir. To an Englishman I might suggest such a course; but to an Irishman—never. The proper thing for you to do, is to feed him, clothe him, love him, and then send him over to America, to hate the English, and say we are the cause of all Ireland’s misfortunes.”

For the life of him, Brian could not help laughing. The sketch was so true—so real and so ready.

“Could not we get a peep at him?” asked Lady Emmeline.

“Certainly,” answered Brian; “at five pounds a head.”

“Is he worth the money, Lady Emmeline, do you consider?” inquired Mr. Gyton.

“Now, how can one possibly tell that unless one sees him?” demanded Lady Emmeline. “You really must allow us some discretion, Brian.”

“As much as you please,” Brian answered, “if you give me five pounds.”

“Is it as a charity?” inquired her ladyship.

“As a charity,” Brian replied, bowing low.

“Then there is my five pounds,” said Lady Emmeline, putting five sovereigns into Brian’s hand.

“And five pounds for me and five for my wife,” added Mr. Gyton.

“You won’t charge me anything, Brian? I am one of the family,” said Mr. Francis Gyton.

“And well able to afford to pay for the sight,” added Brian.

“What a leech you are! Won’t my I O U do as well? Won’t you trust me? ’Pon my honour, I have not five pounds about me.”

“I will pay for him,” said Geraldine, drawing out her purse; “but remember, Frank, it is out of my housekeeping money; so you must give it back to me honestly.”

And thus, amidst much laughing, they collected twenty pounds, on the strength of which the deserter was brought by Brian into the little parlour of Spring Lodge.

“Well, but really now, you know—joking apart, excuse me, but, my good fellow, this is really very irregular,” remarked Mr. Gyton, senior.

“I suppose no one can know that better than he,” said Brian, looking at the thin pale face, the hollow cheeks, the unshaved chin, the grisly moustache, with an interest he could neither have explained nor defined.

“And where do you come from?” asked Frank Gyton.

“From Yorkshire,” was the reply; “that young lady (indicating Geraldine) will have it that I am from Ireland, but she is mistaken.”

“No, I am not,” answered Geraldine. “No Englishman ever pronounced ‘have it’—‘haf’t’—as you do.”

“What is your name?” inquired Mr. Gyton.

“Ward,” he said; “Charles Ward.”

“It is not,” exclaimed Lady Emmeline; “it is Campnell, and you are Mr. Maxwell Drewitt’s illegitimate son.”

“Do you know him?” asked Brian, hurriedly.

“Know him? To be sure I do. Didn’t I see him in Connemara last year? Have not you noticed the likeness between him and Harold?”

In a moment Brian comprehended what had attracted him about the deserter. In an instant he formed his plans. The hour of vengeance was striking at last, and it would be his own fault if he faltered in his design.

Through Maxwell’s son he must hurt Maxwell; and soon after he rose, and left the room.

While they were all talking together, speaking to Arthur Campnell, asking him how he chanced to enlist, how he came to desert, Geraldine left the room likewise. She searched all over the house, she made inquiries of the servants, their own, and Mr. Gyton, and Lady Emmeline’s. None knew where Brian had gone; but one man had seen him go out of the gate, and walk down the hill.

“Tell Mr. Gyton I want him,” Geraldine said; “not Mr. Frank, but Mr. Gyton.” And Mr. Gyton came out. “Brian is gone to give information,” she said; “we must get him away, and at once.”

“Geraldine, you are dreaming,” exclaimed Mr. Gyton.

“Am I? You don’t know Brian as well as I do. So long as he thought that man was simply a deserter, he would have died before letting a hair of his head be touched; but now he knows him to be Maxwell’s son, he would put a rope round his neck, and hang him.”

“God bless my soul! you don’t say no!”

“I do say so,” she answered; “and I say you know nothing of the Irish, whose hate is as strong as their love. I noticed his face change, the moment Lady Emmeline said who Arthur was, and I know he must be got away from here without a moment’s delay.”

“But really, that is, you know——”

“Take him to Mr. Pryor; he will see to him—he will get him off,” said Geraldine. And accordingly, greatly to his disgust, Mr. Gyton was persuaded to drive off, with a deserter in his carriage personating Frank.

“And now, Geoffry,” added Mr. Gyton, when he had finished his narrative, “let me entreat of you to get him away as soon as possible. He is no credit to the family; and one really cannot get through life respectably, if deserters, and so forth, are to be hidden in our coal-cellars and larders. Really, Mr. Maxwell Drewitt ought to have more consideration,” he continued; but Mr. Pryor smiled.

“Maxwell Drewitt does not know what to do with this boy, whom he means to make his heir. It is a lamentable business altogether; but, as you say, there is nothing for it except to get him to Ireland, and out of the country as soon as possible.”

“I did not think Brian would really have informed,” remarked Mr. Gyton.

“It would be hard to say what he might, or what he might not do, where his cousin is concerned,” was the reply.

“And with regard to this youth?”

“Leave him to me.”

Meanwhile, there were high words waging at Highgate between Geraldine and her brother.

She was accusing him of meanness, cowardice, vindictiveness.

He retorted by saying she was cold, insensible, heartless.

“Indifferent to our mother’s sufferings—to Harold’s disgrace.”

“Our mother, on her death-bed, said, that you were to forgive, as you hoped to be forgiven,” answered Geraldine.

“You should not talk about what you do not understand, Geraldine,” he said.

“I understood that well enough,” she replied; “and I know that long letter she wrote to you was full of nothing else but regrets for ever having encouraged your dislike of Maxwell, and not having checked your desire for revenge.”

“She was an angel.”

“She was.”

“Who never could carry a feeling of resentment; and therefore it behoves me—I tell you, Geraldine, it behoves me to remember her wrongs, and have no mercy.”

“That is not what she would tell you, Brian, if she were alive. But there is no use in our arguing this point out now, for Maxwell’s son is now beyond the reach of your vindictiveness.”

“Are you quite satisfied of that?”

“Yes, I am. Oh, Brian! do not push this matter further. Think if it had been Harold!—and he is so like Harold.”

“So was the lad who stole those notes.”

“Do you think it was he that took them?”

“Think!” he repeated, contemptuously; “I am sure of it. What is your opinion of your protégé, now?”

There was a long pause, during the continuance of which Geraldine sat weeping silently. At last, she said—

“Brian, do you imagine it would comfort Harold to know you were pursuing that young man for his sake?”

“It comforts me,” he replied.

“Now, when he is gone where his innocence is known, what can it matter to him who goes free on earth?”

“It matters to his memory, Geraldine.”

“And who cares for his memory? who but a few that, believing him innocent in life, cannot doubt him in death?”

“We need not talk any further about the matter,” said Brian, angrily. “I am doing what I consider right; and no one shall convince me to the contrary.”

“I think I could,” said Mr. Pryor, who, late though the hour was, entered at the moment. “Brian, you have done very wrong!”

“I have not!” was the answer.

“I told you yourself, years ago, you were preparing a bitter cup; but you would not listen to my warning. That youth was safe here. No one would have suspected his being concealed in such a house as this; and we could easily have shipped him off from here to some place of safety. Now, I candidly say, I do not know what we are to do. Every plan seems beset with danger and difficulty!”

“I am glad to hear it,” remarked Brian, sullenly.

“No, Brian, you are not. Vindictive though you may be, you could not in cool blood—you could not, I am sure—give that boy over to be flogged and branded!”

“I could! believing, as I do, that his father will feel every lash and every touch of the iron through him.”

“And his mother, Brian?”

“The mother of such a son must be as bad as his father.”

“She is not! I know her well; and I know she is not! Shall I tell you her name, Brian?”

“It can have no interest for me,” he answered; “but you may tell me, if you like.”

“Mrs. Connor!”

“No!” Brian started to his feet. “No! I tell you it is not—it shall not be!”

“How can you prevent it? the fact is so. Mrs. Connor, when she was Jenny Bourke—young, pretty, guileless—brought that boy into the world, whom you have tried your best this night, Brian, to give up to trial and punishment.”

“Mr. Pryor, God is my witness! I thought I was only doing my duty!”

“Duty toward whom?”

“To my mother’s memory—to Harold’s! For myself and Geraldine, I do not care—I never have cared; but no soul can give _them_ any comfort or happiness here. And I vowed—I swore—if ever I could pay Maxwell back any portion of the suffering he had caused them, I would do so.”

“Did not your mother leave some parting message for you—some words that must have sounded as though uttered from her coffin?” asked Mr. Pryor.

“She did,” was the reply; “but though she might forgive for herself, I did not think myself bound to comply with her request and forgive for her. So long as we are in the flesh we must act like men; and it is not like a man to forgive and forget such injuries as Maxwell heaped on us.”

“Brian, do you think it is our affair to manage the world—to avenge wrongs, to requite the virtuous and punish the wicked?”

“How can I tell?” he answered. “I suppose we are instruments; and when one sees a man like Maxwell prosperous, happy, respected, what is one to do—how is one to act?”

“Not as you have done, at any rate; we are all so mixed up here, that if we strike a blow we never can tell whose heart may feel the wound most severely. As in this case, for instance, you never guessed Mrs. Connor could be mixed up in such a matter.”

“Well, the young fellow is gone,” answered Brian, impatiently; “he is not caught, I suppose; and wherever Geraldine sent him, I conclude he is safe enough.”

“Is he? there were inquiries at my house not half an hour ago, and if I had not been quicker than they suspected, the boy would have been now on his way back to barracks.”

Brian made no answer; he sat for a long time silent, for many minutes he never spoke one word; then he rose and left the room in silence.

“He is sorry,” Geraldine remarked; and Geraldine was right. Brian was gone away, to mourn in solitude; not that he had tried to punish Maxwell’s son, but that Maxwell’s son was also Jenny’s boy—poor Jenny, to whom he had once vowed to be grateful for life.

Next morning Ryan and his nephew started for Ireland; proceeding thither, not by the Dublin and Holyhead route, but running down by the Great Western to Milford Haven, whence they crossed to Waterford; from which place Mr. Ryan meant to work their way by all manner of curious routes to Connemara.

“Once there we shall be safe,” thought Mr. Ryan; but he reckoned without his host.

“I wonder if they have reached Kincorth?” Mr. Pryor remarked, the day but one after their departure, to Brian, who had never opened his lips on the subject from the night he discovered who the deserter really was until that present moment.

“If who have reached Kincorth?” asked the younger man.

“Ryan and his nephew.”

“They have not gone to Ireland, surely—they have not been so mad as that?” exclaimed Brian, all in a hurry and tremble.

“Why not? it seemed to me a much safer place than London.”

“But I told them whose son he was—they are certain to be on the look-out. Why did you say nothing to me—oh! why did not you?”

They were walking down the Holloway Road at the moment, and Mr. Pryor, without answering Brian by a word, called a passing Hansom, and jumped in.

“Where are you going?” asked Brian.

“I am going to Lothbury, to the Telegraph Office, to stop your work, if I can.”

“Let me go with you.”

“No;” and Mr. Pryor banged the door of the Hansom and was off.

Brian had never seen him angry before, never out of temper; and as he stood there alone on the edge of the broad pavement, between the Seven Sisters Road and the railway bridge, he began to feel that he had indeed done more evil than he could readily undo, that he had let his revenge get the better not merely of his charity but of his prudence, and that unless he could give some assistance in the matter he should feel wretched for life.

Wretched for life! Did he know the meaning of the words he was whispering to his own soul? had he other than the vaguest comprehension of the misery he had wrought both for others and himself?

Flogged—branded! Somehow he derived no sort of satisfaction from the idea of his enemy being punished now.

He had kept his pebble and turned it, taken it out and slung it, and struck his foe in the very place where it had delighted him to think the blow would take effect. But now that it had taken effect—now that his enemy was worsted, that his pebble was gone out of his own keeping, that he had taken his own way, and revenged himself at once on the man who had cast them out of Kincorth, and the boy who had damaged Harold’s character past repair—he could not help asking himself what good there was likely to come of it all to her, or him, or them.

To him or her? Should he go up to the churchyard sloping towards the west and tell the earth how he had taken one step forward to the end he had laid out for himself? Should he whisper to the dead that he had made the living wretched for their sakes? Should he tell the wind that stirred the grass growing green on Harold’s grave how the delinquent was at last discovered, how he had set the officers of justice on his track? Would not the dead be gratified; could not he make them hear that; would not the words bring them back to life? Had not he well obeyed his mother’s dying injunction, that he should forgive as he hoped to be forgiven; and from the heavens would she not look approvingly at the base act of vindictive hatred of which he had been guilty?

Dimly as he walked along all this passed through his mind; vaguely he began to see he had chosen the wrong path, that others had been right, that he had been wrong. Somewhere he had heard of a better way of avenging oneself upon an enemy than by branding and scourging, of a way which did not raise every feeling of a man’s heart into ten times worse hatred and antagonism, but which instead “heaped coals of fire upon his head.” Nothing he could do—nothing—nothing for ever might comfort or soothe the departed: the “dull cold ear of death” could hearken to no words that it was in his power to frame: if he killed Maxwell and laid his body on their graves, what could it profit them? Could he bring them back again? and if he could, oh God! if he could, would it not be awful to see them rise up and rejoice because their enemy was brought low?

Very speedily Brian made up his mind he would follow Mr. Pryor, hear what he had done, and then, if need were, start that night for Ireland.

He might be of some use, he might be able to render some assistance; and “I declare to you, Mr. Pryor,” he said, “that if I could retrace my steps I would; if I could take that night back and act my part in it over again, I would not do one thing I have done, not one.”

“Even a savage would not have been so treacherous, so inhospitable,” answered Mr. Pryor.

“I know it,” was the reply; “but are we always able to argue out such questions coolly? Does the man live who has never believed he has seen clearly walking through the darkness?”