BARRINGTON
Volume I.
By Charles James Lever
With Illustrations By Phiz.
Boston: Little, Brown, And Company.
1907.
CONTENTS
[ CHAPTER I. ] THE FISHERMAN'S HOME
[ CHAPTER II. ] A WET MORNING AT HOME
[ CHAPTER III. ] OUR NEXT NEIGHBORS
[ CHAPTER IV. ] FRED CONYERS
[ CHAPTER V. ] DILL AS A DIPLOMATIST
[ CHAPTER VI. ] THE DOCTOR'S DAUGHTER
[ CHAPTER VII. ] TOM DILL'S FIRST PATIENT
[ CHAPTER VIII. ] FINE ACQUAINTANCES
[ CHAPTER IX. ] A COUNTRY DOCTOR
[ CHAPTER X. ] BEING “BORED”
[ CHAPTER XI. ] A NOTE TO BE ANSWERED
[ CHAPTER XII. ] THE ANSWER
[ CHAPTER XIII. ] A FEW LEAVES FROM A BLUE-BOOK
[ CHAPTER XIV. ] BARRINGTON'S FORD
[ CHAPTER XV. ] AN EXPLORING EXPEDITION
[ CHAPTER XVI. ] COMING HOME
[ CHAPTER XVII. ] A SHOCK
[ CHAPTER XVIII. ] COBHAM
[ CHAPTER XIX. ] THE HOUR OF LUNCHEON
[ CHAPTER XX. ] AN INTERIOR AT THE DOCTOR'S
[ CHAPTER XXI. ] DARK TIDINGS
[ CHAPTER XXII. ] LEAVING HOME
[ CHAPTER XXIII. ] THE COLONEL'S COUNSELS
[ CHAPTER XXIV. ] CONYERS MAKES A MORNING CALL
[ CHAPTER XXV. ] DUBLIN REVISITED
[ CHAPTER XXVI. ] A VERY SAD GOOD-BYE
[ CHAPTER XXVII. ] THE CONVENT ON THE MEUSE
[ CHAPTER XXVIII. ] GEORGE'S DAUGHTER
[ CHAPTER XXIX. ] THE RAMBLE
[ CHAPTER XXX. ] UNDER THE LINDEN
BARRINGTON.
CHAPTER I. THE FISHERMAN'S HOME
If there should be, at this day we live in, any one bold enough to confess that he fished the river Nore, in Ireland, some forty years ago, he might assist me by calling to mind a small inn, about two miles from the confluence of that river with the Barrow, a spot in great favor with those who followed the “gentle craft.”
It was a very unpretending hostel, something wherein cottage and farmhouse were blended, and only recognizable as a place of entertainment by a tin trout suspended over the doorway, with the modest inscription underneath,—“Fisherman's Home.” Very seldom is it, indeed, that hotel pledges are as honestly fulfilled as they were in this simple announcement. The house was, in all that quiet comfort and unostentatious excellence can make, a veritable Home! Standing in a fine old orchard of pear and damson trees, it was only approachable by a path which led from the highroad, about two miles off, or by the river, which wound round the little grassy promontory beneath the cottage. On the opposite side of the stream arose cliffs of considerable height, their terraced sides covered with larch and ash, around whose stems the holly, the laurel, and arbutus grew in a wild and rich profusion. A high mountain, rugged with rock and precipice, shut in the picture, and gave to the river all the semblance of a narrow lake.
The Home, as may be imagined, was only resorted to by fishermen, and of these not many; for the chosen few who knew the spot, with the churlishness of true anglers, were strenuously careful to keep the secret to themselves. But another and stronger cause contributed to this seclusion. The landlord was a reduced gentleman, who, only anxious to add a little to his narrow fortune, would not have accepted a greater prosperity at the cost of more publicity, and who probably only consented to his occupation on finding how scrupulously his guests respected his position.
Indeed, it was only on leave-taking, and then far from painfully, you were reminded of being in an inn. There was no noise, no bustle; books, magazines, flowers, lay about; cupboards lay open, with all their cordials free to take. You might dine under the spreading sycamore beside the well, and have your dessert for the plucking. No obsequious waiter shook his napkin as you passed, no ringleted barmaid crossed your musing steps, no jingling of bells, or discordant cries, or high-voiced remonstrances disturbed you. The hum of the summer bee, or the flapping plash of a trout, were about the only sounds in the stillness, and all was as peaceful and as calm and as dreamy as the most world-weary could have wished it.
Of those who frequented the spot, some merely knew that the host had seen better days. Others, however, were aware that Peter Barrington had once been a man of large fortune, and represented his county in the Irish Parliament. Though not eminent as a politician, he was one of the great convivial celebrities of a time that boasted of Curran, and Avanmore, and Parsons, and a score of others, any one of whom, in our day, would have made a society famous. Barrington, too, was the almoner of the monks of the screw, and “Peter's pence” was immortalized in a song by Ned Lysaght, of which I once possessed, but have lost a copy.
One might imagine there could be no difficulty in showing how in that wild period of riotous living and costly rivalry an Irish gentleman ran through all his property and left himself penniless. It was, indeed, a time of utter recklessness, many seeming possessed of that devil-may-care spirit that drives a drowning crew to break open the spirit-room and go down in an orgie. But Barrington's fortune was so large, and his successes on the turf so considerable, that it appeared incredible, when his estates came to the hammer, and all his personal property was sold off; so complete his ruin, that, as he said himself, the “only shelter he had was an umbrella, and even that he borrowed from Dan Driscoll, the sheriff's officer.”
Of course there were theories in plenty to account for the disaster, and, as usual, so many knew, many a long day ago, how hard pressed he had been for money, and what ruinous interest he was obliged to pay, till at last rumors filtered all down to one channel, and the world agreed that it was all his son's doing, and that the scamp George had ruined his father. This son, his only child, had gone out to India in a cavalry regiment, and was celebrated all over the East for a costly splendor that rivalled the great Government officials. From every retired or invalided officer who came back from Bengal were heard stories of mad Barring-ton's extravagance: his palace on the Hooghly, his racing stud, his elephants, his army of retainers,—all narratives which, no matter in what spirit retailed, seemed to delight old Peter, who, at every fresh story of his son's spendthrift magnificence, would be sure to toast his health with a racy enthusiasm whose sincerity was not to be doubted.
Little wonder need there be if in feeding such extravagance a vast estate melted away, and acre followed acre, till all that remained of a property that ranked next to the Ormonds' was the little cottage over whose door the tin-trout dangled, and the few roods of land around it: sorry remnant of a princely fortune!
But Barrington himself had a passion, which, inordinately indulged, has brought many to their ruin. He was intensely fond of law. It was to him all that gambling is to other men. All that gamesters feel of hope and fear, all the intense excitement they derive from the vacillating fortunes of play, Barrington enjoyed in a lawsuit. Every step of the proceeding had for him an intense interest. The driest legal documents, musty declarations, demurrers, pleadings, replies, affidavits, and counter-affidavits were his choicest reading; and never did a young lady hurry to her room with the last new novel with a stronger anticipation of delight than did Barrington when carrying away to his little snuggery a roll of parchments or rough drafts, whose very iterations and jargon would have driven most men half crazy. This same snuggery of his was a curiosity, too, the walls being all decorated with portraits of legal celebrities, not selected with reference to their merit or distinction, but solely from their connection with some suit in which he had been engaged; and thus under the likeness of Chief Baron O'Grady might be read, “Barring-ton versus Brazier, 1802; a juror withdrawn:” Justice Moore's portrait was inscribed, “Argument in Chambers, 1808,” and so on; even to the portraits of leading counsel, all were marked and dated only as they figured in the great campaign,—the more than thirty years' war he carried on against Fortune.
Let not my reader suppose for one moment that this litigious taste grew out of a spirit of jarring discontent or distrust. Nothing of the kind. Barrington was merely a gambler; and with whatever dissatisfaction the declaration may be met, I am prepared to show that gambling, however faulty in itself, is not the vice of cold, selfish, and sordid men, but of warm, rash, sometimes over-generous temperaments. Be it well remembered that the professional play-man is, of all others, the one who has least of a gamester in his heart; his superiority lying in the simple fact that his passions are never engaged, his interest never stirred. Oh! beware of yourself in company with the polished antagonist, who only smiles when he loses, whom nothing adverse ever disturbs, but is calmly serene under the most pitiless pelting of luck. To come back: Barrington's passion for law was an intense thirst for a certain species of excitement; a verdict was to him the odd trick. Let him, however, but win the game, there never was a man so indifferent about the stakes.
For many a year back he had ceased to follow the great events of the world. For the stupendous changes in Europe he cared next to nothing. He scarcely knew who reigned over this empire or that kingdom. Indifferent to art, science, letters, and even society, his interest was intense about all that went on in the law courts, and it was an interest so catholic that it took in everything and everybody, from the great judge upon the bench to the small taxing-officer who nibbled at the bill of costs.
Fortunately for him, his sister, a maiden lady of some eighteen or twenty years his junior, had imbibed nothing of this passion, and, by her prudent opposition to it, stemmed at least the force of that current which was bearing him to ruin. Miss Dinah Barrington had been the great belle of the Irish court,—I am ashamed to say how long ago,—and though at the period my tale opens there was not much to revive the impression, her high nose, and full blue eyes, and a mass of wonderfully unchanged brown hair, proclaimed her to be—what she was very proud to call herself—a thorough Barrington, a strong type of a frank nature, with a bold, resolute will, and a very womanly heart beneath it.
When their reverses of fortune first befell them, Miss Barrington wished to emigrate. She thought that in Canada, or some other far-away land, their altered condition might be borne less painfully, and that they could more easily bend themselves to humble offices where none but strangers were to look on them; but Barrington clung to his country with the tenacity of an old captain to a wreck. He declared he could not bring himself to the thought of leaving his bones in a strange land, but he never confessed what he felt to be the strongest tie of all, two unfinished lawsuits, the old record of Barrington v. Brazier, and a Privy Council case of Barrington and Lot Rammadahn Mohr against the India Company. To have left his country with these still undecided seemed to him—like the act of a commander taking flight on the morning of a general action—an amount of cowardice he could not contemplate. Not that he confided this opinion to his sister, though he did so in the very fullest manner to his old follower and servant, Darby Cassan. Darby was the last remnant of a once princely retinue, and in his master's choice of him to accompany his fallen fortunes, there was something strangely indicative of the man. Had Darby been an old butler or a body-servant, had he been a favorite groom, or, in some other capacity, one whose daily duties had made his a familiar face, and whose functions could still be available in an humble state, there would have seemed good reason for the selection; but Darby was none of these: he had never served in hall or pantry; he had never brushed the cobweb from a bottle, or led a nag to the door. Of all human professions his were about the last that could address themselves to the cares of a little household; for Darby was reared, bred, and passed fifty-odd years of his life as an earth-stopper!
A very ingenious German writer has attempted to show that the sympathies of the humble classes with pursuits far above their own has always its origin in something of their daily life and habits, just as the sacristan of a cathedral comes to be occasionally a tolerable art critic from his continual reference to Rubens and Vandyck. It is possible that Darby may have illustrated the theory, and that his avocations as earth-stopper may have suggested what he assuredly possessed, a perfect passion for law. If a suit was a great game to Barrington, to Darby it was a hunt! and though his personal experiences never soared beyond Quarter Sessions, he gloried in all he saw there of violence and altercation, of vituperative language and impassioned abuse. Had he been a rich man, free to enjoy his leisure, he would have passed all his days listening to these hot discussions. They were to him a sort of intellectual bull-fight, which never could be too bloody or too cruel. Have I said enough, therefore, to show the secret link which bound the master to the man? I hope so; and that my reader is proud of a confidence with which Miss Barrington herself was never intrusted. She believed that Darby had been taken into favor from some marvellous ability he was supposed to possess, applicable to their new venture as innkeepers. Phrenology would perhaps have pronounced Darby a heaven-born host, for his organ of acquisitiveness was grandly developed. Amidst that great household, where the thriftless habits of the master had descended to the servants, and rendered all reckless and wasteful alike, Darby had thriven and grown almost rich. Was it that the Irish climate used its influence over him; for in his practice to “put by something for a rainy day,” his savings had many promptings? As the reputation of having money soon attached to him, he was often applied to in the hunting-field, or at the kennel, for small loans, by the young bloods who frequented the Hall, and, being always repaid three or four fold, he grew to have a very high conception of what banking must be when done on a large scale. Besides all this, he quickly learned that no character attracts more sympathy, especially amongst the class of young squires and sporting-men, than a certain quaint simplicity, so flattering in its contrast to their own consummate acuteness. Now, he was simple to their hearts' content. He usually spoke of himself as “Poor Darby, God help him!” and, in casting up those wonderful accounts, which he kept by notches on a tally-stick, nothing was more amusing than to witness his bewilderment and confusion, the inconceivable blunders he would make, even to his own disadvantage, all sure to end at last in the heart-spoken confession that it was “clean beyand him,” and “he 'd leave it all to your honor; pay just what ye plaze, and long life to ye!”
Is it that women have some shrewd perception of character denied to men? Certainly Darby never imposed on Miss Barrington. She read him like a book, and he felt it. The consequence was a very cordial dislike, which strengthened with every year of their acquaintance.
Though Miss Barrington ever believed that the notion of keeping an inn originated with her brother, it was Darby first conceived the project, and, indeed, by his own skill and crafty intelligence was it carried on; and while the words “Peter Barrington” figured in very small letters, it is true, over the door to comply with a legal necessity, to most of the visitors he was a mere myth. Now, if Peter Barrington was very happy to be represented by deputy,—or, better still, not represented at all,—Miss Dinah regarded the matter in a very different light. Her theory was that, in accepting the humble station to which reverse of fortune brought them, the world ought to see all the heroism and courage of the sacrifice. She insisted on being a foreground figure, just to show them, as she said, “that I take nothing upon me. I am the hostess of a little wayside inn,—no more!” How little did she know of her own heart, and how far was she from even suspecting that it was the ci-devant belle making one last throw for the admiration and homage which once were offered her freely.
Such were the three chief personages who dwelt under that secluded roof, half overgrown with honeysuckle and dog-roses,—specimens of that wider world without, where jealousies, and distrusts, and petty rivalries are warring: for as in one tiny globule of water are represented the elements which make oceans and seas, so is it in the moral world; and “the family” is only humanity, as the artists say, “reduced.”
For years back Miss Barrington had been plotting to depose Darby. With an ingenuity quite feminine, she managed to connect him with every chagrin that crossed and every annoyance that befell them. If the pig ploughed up the new peas in the garden, it was Darby had left the gate open; it was his hand overwound the clock; and a very significant hint showed that when the thunder soured the beer, Mr. Darby knew more of the matter than he was likely to tell. Against such charges as these, iterated and reiterated to satiety, Barrington would reply by a smile, or a good-natured excuse, or a mere gesture to suggest patience, till his sister, fairly worn out, resolved on another line of action. “As she could not banish the rats,” to use her own words, “she would scuttle the ship.”
To explain her project, I must go back in my story, and state that her nephew, George Barrington, had sent over to England, some fifteen years before, a little girl, whom he, called his daughter. She was consigned to the care of his banker in London, with directions that he should communicate with Mr. Peter Barrington, announce the child's safe arrival, and consult with him as to her future destination. Now, when the event took place, Barrington was in the very crisis of his disasters. Overwhelmed with debts, pursued by creditors, regularly hunted down, he was driven day by day to sign away most valuable securities for mere passing considerations, and obliged to accept any conditions for daily support He answered the banker's letter, briefly stating his great embarrassment, and begging him to give the child his protection for a few weeks or so, till some arrangement of his affairs might enable him to offer her a home.
This time, however, glided over, and the hoped-for amendment never came,—far from it. Writs were out against him, and he was driven to seek a refuge in the Isle of Man, at that time the special sanctuary of insolvent sinners. Mr. Leonard Gower wrote again, and proposed that, if no objection would be made to the plan, the child should be sent to a certain convent near Namur, in the Netherlands, where his own daughter was then placed for her education. Aunt Dinah would have rejected,—ay, or would have resented such a proposal as an insult, had the world but gone on better with them. That her grand-niece should be brought up a Catholic was an outrage on the whole Barring-ton blood. But calamity had brought her low,—very low, indeed. The child, too, was a heathen,—a Hindoo or a Buddhist, perhaps,—for the mother was a native woman, reputed, indeed, to be a princess. But who could know this? Who could vouch that George was ever married at all, or if such a ceremony were possible? All these were “attenuating circumstances,” and as such she accepted them; and the measure of her submission was filled up when she received a portrait of the little girl, painted by a native artist. It represented a dark-skinned, heavy-browed child, with wide, full eyes, thick lips, and an expression at once florid and sullen,—not any of the traits one likes to associate with infancy,—and it was with a half shudder Aunt Dinah closed the miniature, and declared that “the sight of the little savage actually frightened her.”
Not so poor Barrington. He professed to see a great resemblance to his son. It was George all over. To be sure, his eyes were deep blue, and his hair a rich brown; but there was something in the nose, or perhaps it was in the mouth,—no, it was the chin,—ay, it was the chin was George's. It was the Barrington chin, and no mistake about it.
At all events, no opposition was made to the banker's project, and the little girl was sent off to the convent of the Holy Cross, on the banks of the Meuse. She was inscribed on the roll as the Princess Doondiah, and bore the name till her father's death, when Mr. Gower suggested that she should be called by her family name. The letter with the proposal, by some accident, was not acknowledged, and the writer, taking silence to mean consent, desired the superior to address her, henceforth, as Miss Barrington; the first startling intimation of the change being a strangely, quaintly written note, addressed to her grand-aunt, and signed “Josephine Barrington.” It was a cold, formal letter,—so very formal, indeed, as to read like the copy of a document,—asking for leave to enter upon a novitiate of two years' duration, at the expiration of which she would be nineteen years of age, and in a position to decide upon taking the veil for life. The permission, very urgently pressed for by Mr. Gower in another letter, was accorded, and now we have arrived at that period in which but three months only remained of the two years whose closure was to decide her fate forever.
Barrington had long yearned to see her. It was with deep and bitter self-reproach he thought over the cold neglect they had shown her. She was all that remained of poor George, his boy,—for so he called him, and so he thought of him,—long after the bronzed cheek and the prematurely whitened hair had tempered his manhood. To be sure, all the world said, and he knew himself, how it was chiefly through the “boy's” extravagance he came to ruin. But it was over now. The event that sobers down reproach to sorrow had come. He was dead! All that arose to memory of him were the traits that suggested hopes of his childhood, or gave triumph in his riper years; and oh, is it not better thus? for what hearts would be left us if we were to carry in them the petty rancors and jealousies which once filled them, but which, one day, we buried in the cold clay of the churchyard.
Aunt Dinah, moved by reasons long canvassed over in her own mind, at last began to think of recalling her grand-niece. It was so very bold a project that, at first, she could scarcely entertain it. The Popery was very dreadful! Her imagination conjured up the cottage converted into a little Baal, with false gods and graven images, and holy-water fonts at every turn; but the doubtful legitimacy was worse again. She had a theory that it was by lapses of this kind the “blue blood” of old families grew deteriorated, and that the downfall of many an ancient house was traceable to these corruptions. Far better, she deemed it, that the Barringtons should die out forever than their line be continued by this base and ignoble grafting.
There is a contre for every pour in this world. It may be a weak and an insufficient one, it is true; but it is a certainty that all our projects must come to a debtor or creditor reckoning, and the very best we can do is to strike an honest balance!
How Miss Dinah essayed to do this we shall learn in the next chapter and what follows it.
CHAPTER II. A WET MORNING AT HOME
If there was anything that possessed more than common terror for Barrington, it was a wet day at the cottage! It was on these dreary visitations that his sister took the opportunity of going into “committee of supply,”—an occasion not merely for the discussion of fiscal matters, but for asking the most vexatious questions and demanding the most unpleasant explanations.
We can all, more or less, appreciate the happiness of that right honorable gentleman on the Treasury bench who has to reply to the crude and unmeaning inquiries of some aspiring Oppositionist, and who wishes to know if her Majesty's Government have demanded an indemnity from the King of Dahomey for the consul's family eaten by him at the last court ceremonial? What compensation is to be given to Captain Balrothery for his week's imprisonment at Leghorn, in consequence of his having thrown the customs officer and a landing waiter into the sea? Or what mark of her Majesty's favor will the noble lord recommend should be conferred upon Ensign Digges for the admirable imitation he gave of the dancing dervishes at Benares, and the just ridicule he thus threw upon these degrading and heathenish rites?
It was to a torture of this order, far more reasonable and pertinent, however, that Barrington usually saw himself reduced whenever the weather was so decidedly unfavorable that egress was impossible. Poor fellow, what shallow pretexts would he stammer out for absenting himself from home, what despicable subterfuges to put off an audience! He had forgotten to put down the frame on that melon-bed.
There was that awning over the boat not taken in. He 'd step out to the stable and give Billy, the pony, a touch of the white oils on that swelled hock. He 'd see if they had got the young lambs under cover. In fact, from his perturbed and agitated manner, you would have imagined that rain was one of the rarest incidents of an Irish climate, and only the very promptest measures could mitigate the calamity.
“May I ask where you are off to in such haste, Peter?” asked Miss Dinah one morning, just as Barrington had completed all his arrangements for a retreat; far readier to brave the elements than the more pitiless pelting that awaited him within doors.
“I just remembered,” said he, mildly, “that I had left two night-lines out at the point, and with this fresh in the river it would be as well if I 'd step down and see—”
“And see if the river was where it was yesterday,” broke she in, sneeringly.
“No, Dinah. But you see that there 's this to be remarked about night-lines—”
“That they never catch any fish!” said she, sternly. “It's no weather for you to go tramping about in the wet grass. You made fuss enough about your lumbago last week, and I suppose you don't want it back again. Besides,”—and here her tongue grew authoritative,—“I have got up the books.” And with these words she threw on the table a number of little greasy-looking volumes, over which poor Barrington's sad glances wandered, pretty much as might a victim's over the thumb-screws and the flesh-nippers of the Holy Inquisition.
“I've a slight touch of a headache this morning, Dinah.”
“It won't be cured by going out in the rain. Sit down there,” said she, peremptorily, “and see with your own eyes how much longer your means will enable you to continue these habits of waste and extravagance.”
“These what?” said he, perfectly astounded.
“These habits of waste and extravagance, Peter Barring-ton. I repeat my words.”
Had a venerable divine, being asked on the conclusion of an edifying discourse, for how much longer it might be his intention to persist in such ribaldries, his astonishment could scarce have been greater than Barrington's.
“Why, sister Dinah, are we not keeping an inn? Is not this the 'Fisherman's Home'?”
“I should think it is, Peter,” said she, with scorn. “I suspect he finds it so. A very excellent name for it it is!”
“Must I own that I don't understand you, Dinah?”
“Of course you don't. You never did all your life. You never knew you were wet till you were half drowned, and that's what the world calls having such an amiable disposition! Ain't your friends nice friends? They are always telling you how generous you are,—how free-handed,—how benevolent. What a heart he has! Ay, but thank Providence there's very little of that charming docility about me, is there?”
“None, Dinah,—none,” said he, not in the least suspecting to what he was bearing testimony.
She became crimson in a minute, and in a tone of some emotion said, “And if there had been, where should you and where should I be to-day? On the parish, Peter Barrington,—on the parish; for it 's neither your head nor your hands would have saved us from it.”
“You're right, Dinah; you're right there. You never spoke a truer word.” And his voice trembled as he said it.
“I did n't mean that, Peter,” said she, eagerly; “but you are too confiding, too trustful. Perhaps it takes a woman to detect all the little wiles and snares that entangle us in our daily life?”
“Perhaps it does,” said he, with a deep sigh.
“At all events, you needn't sigh over it, Peter Barring-ton. It's not one of those blemishes in human nature that have to be deplored so feelingly. I hope women are as good as men.”
“Fifty thousand times better, in every quality of kindliness and generosity.”
“Humph!” said she, tossing her head impatiently. “We 're not here for a question in ethics; it is to the very lowly task of examining the house accounts I would invite your attention. Matters cannot go on as they do now, if we mean to keep a roof over us.”
“But I have always supposed we were doing pretty well, Dinah. You know we never promised ourselves to gain a fortune by this venture; the very utmost we ever hoped for was to help us along,—to aid us to make both ends meet at the end of the year And as Darby tells me—”
“Oh, Darby tells you! What a reliable authority to quote from! Oh, don't groan so heavily! I forgot myself. I would n't for the world impeach such fidelity or honesty as his.”
“Be reasonable, sister Dinah,—do be reasonable; and if there is anything to lay to his charge—”
“You 'll hear the case, I suppose,” cried she, in a voice high-pitched in passion. “You 'll sit up there, like one of your favorite judges, and call on Dinah Barrington against Cassan; and perhaps when the cause is concluded we shall reverse our places, and I become the defendant! But if this is your intention, brother Barrington, give me a little time. I beg I may have a little time.”
Now, this was a very favorite request of Miss Barring-ton's, and she usually made it in the tone of a martyr; but truth obliges us to own that never was a demand less justifiable. Not a three-decker of the Channel fleet was readier for a broadside than herself. She was always at quarters and with a port-fire burning.
Barrington did not answer this appeal; he never moved,—he scarcely appeared to breathe, so guarded was he lest his most unintentional gesture should be the subject of comment.
“When you have recovered from your stupefaction,” said she, calmly, “will you look over that line of figures, and then give a glance at this total? After that I will ask you what fortune could stand it.”
“This looks formidable, indeed,” said he, poring over the page through his spectacles.
“It is worse, Peter. It is formidable.”
“After all, Dinah, this is expenditure. Now for the incomings!”
“I suspect you 'll have to ask your prime minister for them. Perhaps he may vouchsafe to tell you how many twenty-pound notes have gone to America, who it was that consigned a cargo of new potatoes to Liverpool, and what amount he invested in yarn at the last fair of Graigue? and when you have learned these facts, you will know all you are ever likely to know of your profits!” I have no means of conveying the intense scorn with which she uttered the last word of this speech.
“And he told me—not a week back—that we were going on famously!”
“Why wouldn't he? I 'd like to hear what else he could say. Famously, indeed, for him with a strong balance in the savings-bank, and a gold watch—yes, Peter, a gold watch—in his pocket. This is no delusion, nor illusion, or whatever you call it, of mine, but a fact,—a downright fact.”
“He has been toiling hard many a year for it, Dinah, don't forget that.”
“I believe you want to drive me mad, Peter. You know these are things that I can't bear, and that's the reason you say them. Toil, indeed! I never saw him do anything except sit on a gate at the Lock Meadows, with a pipe in his mouth; and if you asked him what he was there for, it was a 'track' he was watching, a 'dog-fox that went by every afternoon to the turnip field.' Very great toil that was!”
“There was n't an earth-stopper like him in the three next counties; and if I was to have a pack of foxhounds tomorrow—”
“You 'd just be as great a foot as ever you were, and the more sorry I am to hear it; but you 're not going to be tempted, Peter Barrington. It's not foxes we have to think of, but where we 're to find shelter for ourselves.”
“Do you know of anything we could turn to, more profitable, Dinah?” asked he, mildly.
“There 's nothing could be much less so, I know that! You are not very observant, Peter, but even to you it must have become apparent that great changes have come over the world in a few years. The persons who formerly indulged their leisure were all men of rank and fortune. Who are the people who come over here now to amuse themselves? Staleybridge and Manchester creatures, with factory morals and bagman manners; treating our house like a commercial inn, and actually disputing the bill and asking for items. Yes, Peter, I overheard a fellow telling Darby last week that the ''ouse was dearer than the Halbion!'”
“Travellers will do these things, Dinah.”
“And if they do, they shall be shown the door for it, as sure as my name is Dinah Barrington.”
“Let us give up the inn altogether, then,” said he, with a sudden impatience.
“The very thing I was going to propose, Peter,” said she, solemnly.
“What!—how?” cried he, for the acceptance of what only escaped him in a moment of anger overwhelmed and stunned him. “How are we to live, Dinah?”
“Better without than with it,—there's my answer to that. Let us look the matter fairly in the face, Peter,” said she, with a calm and measured utterance. “This dealing with the world 'on honor' must ever be a losing game. To screen ourselves from the vulgar necessities of our condition, we must submit to any terms. So long as our intercourse with life gave us none but gentlemen to deal with, we escaped well and safely. That race would seem to have thinned off of late, however; or, what comes to the same, there is such a deluge of spurious coin one never knows what is real gold.”
“You may be right, Dinah; you may be right.”
“I know I am right; the experience has been the growth of years too. All our efforts to escape the odious contact of these people have multiplied our expenses. Where one man used to suffice, we keep three. You yourself, who felt it no indignity to go out a-fishing formerly with a chance traveller, have to own with what reserve and caution you would accept such companionship now.”
“Nay, nay, Dinah, not exactly so far as that—”
“And why not? Was it not less than a fortnight ago three Birmingham men crossed the threshold, calling out for old Peter,—was old Peter to the good yet?”
“They were a little elevated with wine, sister, remember that; and, besides, they never knew, never had heard of me in my once condition.”
“And are we so changed that they cannot recognize the class we pertain to?”
“Not you, Dinah, certainly not you; but I frankly own I can put up with rudeness and incivility better than a certain showy courtesy some vulgar people practise towards me. In the one case I feel I am not known, and my secret is safe. In the other, I have to stand out as the ruined gentleman, and I am not always sure that I play the part as gracefully as I ought.”
“Let us leave emotions, Peter, and descend to the lowland of arithmetic, by giving up two boatmen, John and Terry—”
“Poor Terry!” sighed he, with a faint, low accent
“Oh! if it be 'poor Terry!' I 've done,” said she, closing the book, and throwing it down with a slap that made him start.
“Nay, dear Dinah; but if we could manage to let him have something,—say five shillings a week,—he 'd not need it long; and the port wine that was doing his rheumatism such good is nearly finished; he'll miss it sorely.”
“Were you giving him Henderson's wine,—the '11 vintage?” cried she, pale with indignation.
“Just a bottle or two, Dinah; only as medicine.”
“As a fiddlestick, sir! I declare I have no patience with you; there 's no excuse for such folly, not to say the ignorance of giving these creatures what they never were used to. Did not Dr. Dill tell you that tonics, to be effective, must always have some relation to the daily habits of the patient?”
“Very true, Dinah; but the discourse was pronounced when I saw him putting a bottle of old Madeira in his gig that I had left for Anne M'Cafferty, adding, he 'd send her something far more strengthening.”
“Right or wrong, I don't care; but this I know, Terry Dogherty is n't going to finish off Henderson's port. It is rather too much to stand, that we are to be treating beggars to luxuries, when we can't say to-morrow where we shall find salt for our potatoes.” This was a somewhat favorite illustration of Miss Barrington,—either implying that the commodity was an essential to human life, or the use of it an emblem of extreme destitution.
“I conclude we may dispense with Tom Divett's services,” resumed she. “We can assuredly get on without a professional rat-catcher.”
“If we should, Dinah, we'll feel the loss; the rats make sad havoc of the spawn, and destroy quantities of the young fish, besides.”
“His two ugly terriers eat just as many chickens, and never leave us an egg in the place. And now for Mr. Darby—”
“You surely don't think of parting with Darby, sister Dinah?”
“He shall lead the way,” replied she, in a firm and peremptory voice; “the very first of the batch! And it will, doubtless, be a great comfort to you to know that you need not distress yourself about any provision for his declining years. It is a care that he has attended to on his own part. He 'll go back to a very well-feathered nest, I promise you.”
Barrington sighed heavily, for he had a secret sorrow on that score. He knew, though his sister did not, that he had from year to year been borrowing every pound of Darby's savings to pay the cost of law charges, always hoping and looking for the time when a verdict in his favor would enable him to restore the money twice told. With a very dreary sigh, then, did he here allude “to the well-feathered nest” of one he had left bare and destitute. He cleared his throat, and made an effort to avow the whole matter; but his courage failed him, and he sat mournfully shaking his head, partly in sorrow, partly in shame. His sister noticed none of these signs; she was rapidly enumerating all the reductions that could be made,—all the dependencies cut off; there were the boats, which constantly required repairs; the nets, eternally being renewed,—all to be discarded; the island, a very pretty little object in the middle of the river, need no longer be rented. “Indeed,” said she, “I don't know why we took it, except it was to give those memorable picnics you used to have there.”
“How pleasant they were, Dinah; how delightful!” said he, totally overlooking the spirit of her remark.
“Oh! they were charming, and your own popularity was boundless; but I 'd have you to bear in mind, brother Peter, that popularity is no more a poor man's luxury than champagne. It is a very costly indulgence, and can rarely be had on 'credit.'”
Miss Barrington had pared down retrenchment to the very quick. She had shown that they could live not only without boatmen, rat-catchers, gardener, and manservant, but that, as they were to give up their daily newspaper, they could dispense with a full ration of candle-light; and yet, with all these reductions, she declared that there was still another encumbrance to be pruned away, and she proudly asked her brother if he could guess what it was?
Now Barrington felt that he could not live without a certain allowance of food, nor would it be convenient, or even decent, to dispense with raiment; so he began, as a last resource, to conjecture that his sister was darkly hinting at something which might be a substitute for a home, and save house-rent; and he half testily exclaimed, “I suppose we 're to have a roof over us, Dinah!”
“Yes,” said she, dryly, “I never proposed we should go and live in the woods. What I meant had a reference, to Josephine—”
Barrington's cheek flushed deeply in an instant, and, with a voice trembling with emotion, he said,—
“If you mean, Dinah, that I'm to cut off that miserable pittance—that forty pounds a year—I give to poor George's girl—” He stopped, for he saw that in his sister's face which might have appalled a bolder heart than his own; for while her eyes flashed fire, her thin lips trembled with passion; and so, in a very faltering humility, he added: “But you never meant that sister Dinah. You would be the very last in the world to do it.”
“Then why impute it to me; answer me that?” said she, crossing her hands behind her back, and staring haughtily at him.
“Just because I 'm clean at my wits' end,—just because I neither understand one word I hear, or what I say in reply. If you 'll just tell me what it is you propose, I 'll do my best, with God's blessing, to follow you; but don't ask me for advice, Dinah, and don't fly out because I 'm not as quick-witted and as clever as yourself.”
There was something almost so abject in his misery that she seemed touched by it, and, in a voice of a very calm and kindly meaning, she said,—
“I have been thinking a good deal over that letter of Josephine's; she says she wants our consent to take the veil as a nun; that, by the rules of the order, when her novitiate is concluded, she must go into the world for at least some months,—a time meant to test her faithfulness to her vows, and the tranquillity with which she can renounce forever all the joys and attractions of life. We, it is true, have no means of surrounding her with such temptations; but we might try and supply their place by some less brilliant but not less attractive ones. We might offer her, what we ought to have offered her years ago,—a home! What do you say to this, Peter?”
“That I love you for it, sister Dinah, with all my heart,” said he, kissing her on each cheek; “that it makes me happier than I knew I ever was to be again.”
“Of course, to bring Josephine here, this must not be an inn, Peter.”
“Certainly not, Dinah,—certainly not. But I can think of nothing but the joy of seeing her,—poor George's child I How I have yearned to know if she was like him,—if she had any of his ways, any traits of that quaint, dry humor he had, and, above all, of that disposition that made him so loved by every one.”
“And cheated by every one too, brother Peter; don't forget that!”
“Who wants to think of it now?” said he, sorrowfully.
“I never reject a thought because it has unpleasant associations. It would be but a sorry asylum which only admitted the well-to-do and the happy.”
“How are we to get the dear child here, Dinah? Let us consider the matter. It is a long journey off.”
“I have thought of that too,” said she, sententiously, “but not made up my mind.”
“Let us ask M'Cormick about it, Dinah; he's coming up this evening to play his Saturday night's rubber with Dill. He knows the Continent well.”
“There will be another saving that I did n't remember, Peter. The weekly bottle of whiskey, and the candles, not to speak of the four or five shillings your pleasant companions invariably carry away with them,—all may be very advantageously dispensed with.”
“When Josephine 's here, I 'll not miss it,” said he, good-humoredly. Then suddenly remembering that his sister might not deem the speech a gracious one to herself, he was about to add something; but she was gone.
CHAPTER III. OUR NEXT NEIGHBORS
Should there be amongst my readers any one whose fortune it has been in life only to associate with the amiable, the interesting, and the agreeable, all whose experiences of mankind are rose-tinted, to him I would say, Skip over two people I am now about to introduce, and take up my story at some later stage, for I desire to be truthful, and, as is the misfortune of people in my situation, I may be very disagreeable.
After all, I may have made more excuses than were needful. The persons I would present are in that large category, the commonplace, and only as uninviting and as tiresome as we may any day meet in a second-class on the railroad. Flourish, therefore, penny trumpets, and announce Major M'Cormick. The Major, so confidently referred to by Barrington in our last chapter as a high authority on matters continental, was a very shattered remnant of the unhappy Walcheren expedition. He was a small, mean-looking, narrow-faced man, with a thin, bald head, and red whiskers. He walked very lame from an injury to his hip; “his wound,” he called it, though his candor did not explain that it was incurred by being thrown down a hatchway by a brother officer in a drunken brawl. In character he was a saving, penurious creature, without one single sympathy outside his own immediate interests. When some sixteen or eighteen years before the Barringtons had settled in the neighborhood, the Major began to entertain thoughts of matrimony. Old soldiers are rather given to consider marriage as an institution especially intended to solace age and console rheumatism, and so M'Cormick debated with himself whether he had not arrived at the suitable time for this indulgence, and also whether Miss Dinah Barrington was not the individual destined to share his lot and season his gruel.
But a few years back and his ambition would as soon have aspired to an archduchess as to the sister of Barrington, of Barrington Hall, whose realms of social distinction separated them; but now, fallen from their high estate, forgotten by the world, and poor, they had come down—at least, he thought so—to a level in which there would be no presumption in his pretensions. Indeed, I half suspect that he thought there was something very high-minded and generous in his intentions with regard to them. At all events, there was a struggle of some sort in his mind which went on from year to year undecided. Now, there are men—for the most part old bachelors—to whom an unfinished project is a positive luxury, who like to add, day by day, a few threads to the web of fate, but no more. To the Major it was quite enough that “some fine day or other”—so he phrased it—he 'd make his offer, just as he thought how, in the same propitious weather, he 'd put a new roof on his cottage, and fill up that quarry-hole near his gate, into which he had narrowly escaped tumbling some half-dozen times. But thanks to his caution and procrastination, the roof, and the project, and the quarry-hole were exactly, or very nearly, in the same state they had been eighteen years before.
Rumor said—as rumor will always say whatever has a tinge of ill-nature in it—that Miss Barrington would have accepted him; vulgar report declared that she would “jump at the offer.” Whether this be, or not, the appropriate way of receiving a matrimonial proposal, the lady was not called upon to display her activity. He never told his love.
It is very hard to forgive that secretary, home or foreign, who in the day of his power and patronage could, but did not, make us easy for life with this mission or that com-missionership. It is not easy to believe that our uncle the bishop could not, without any undue strain upon his conscience, have made us something, albeit a clerical error, in his diocese, but infinitely more difficult is it to pardon him who, having suggested dreams of wedded happiness, still stands hesitating, doubting, and canvassing,—a timid bather, who shivers on the beach, and then puts on his clothes again.
It took a long time—it always does in such cases—ere Miss Barrington came to read this man aright. Indeed, the light of her own hopes had dazzled her, and she never saw him clearly till they were extinguished; but when the knowledge did come, it came trebled with compound interest, and she saw him in all that displayed his miserable selfishness; and although her brother, who found it hard to believe any one bad who had not been tried for a capital felony, would explain away many a meanness by saying, “It is just his way,—a way, and no more!” she spoke out fearlessly, if not very discreetly, and declared she detested him. Of course she averred it was his manners, his want of breeding, and his familiarity that displeased her. He might be an excellent creature,—perhaps he was; that was nothing to her. All his moral qualities might have an interest for his friends; she was a mere acquaintance, and was only concerned for what related to his bearing in society. Then Walcheren was positively odious to her. Some little solace she felt at the thought that the expedition was a failure and inglorious; but when she listened to the fiftieth time-told tale of fever and ague, she would sigh, not for those who suffered, but over the one that escaped. It is a great blessing to men of uneventful lives and scant imagination when there is any one incident to which memory can refer unceasingly. Like some bold headland last seen at sea, it lives in the mind throughout the voyage. Such was this ill-starred expedition to the Major. It dignified his existence to himself, though his memory never soared above the most ordinary details and vulgar incidents. Thus he would maunder on for hours, telling how the ships sailed and parted company, and joined again; how the old “Brennus” mistook a signal and put back to Hull, and how the “Sarah Reeves,” his own transport, was sent after her. Then he grew picturesque about Flushing, as first seen through the dull fogs of the Scheldt, with village spires peeping through the heavy vapor, and the strange Dutch language, with its queer names for the vegetables and fruit brought by the boats alongside.
“You won't believe me, Miss Dinah, but, as I sit here, the peaches was like little melons, and the cherries as big as walnuts.”
“They made cherry-bounce out of them, I hope, sir,” said she, with a scornful smile.
“No, indeed, ma'am,” replied he, dull to the sarcasm; “they ate them in a kind of sauce with roast-pig, and mighty good too!”
But enough of the Major; and now a word, and only a word, for his companion, already alluded to by Barrington.
Dr. Dill had been a poor “Dispensary Doctor” for some thirty years, with a small practice, and two or three grand patrons at some miles off, who employed him for the servants, or for the children in “mild cases,” and who even extended to him a sort of contemptuous courtesy that serves to make a proud man a bear, and an humble man a sycophant.
Dill was the reverse of proud, and took to the other line with much kindliness. To have watched him in his daily round you would have said that he liked being trampled on, and actually enjoyed being crushed. He smiled so blandly, and looked so sweetly under it all, as though it was a kind of moral shampooing, from which he would come out all the fresher and more vigorous.
The world is certainly generous in its dealings with these temperaments; it indulges them to the top of their hearts, and gives them humiliations to their heart's content. Rumor—the same wicked goddess who libelled Miss Barrington—hinted that the doctor was not, within his own walls and under his own roof, the suffering angel the world saw him, and that he occasionally did a little trampling there on his own account. However, Mrs. Dill never complained; and though the children wore a tremulous terror and submissiveness in their looks, they were only suitable family traits, which all redounded to their credit, and made them “so like the doctor.”
Such were the two worthies who slowly floated along on the current of the river of a calm summer's evening, to visit the Barringtons. As usual, the talk was of their host. They discussed his character and his habits and his debts, and the difficulty he had in raising that little loan; and in close juxtaposition with this fact, as though pinned on the back of it, his sister's overweening pride and pretension. It had been the Major's threat for years that he 'd “take her down a peg one of these days.” But either he was mercifully unwilling to perform the act, or that the suitable hour for it had not come; but there she remained, and there he left her, not taken down one inch, but loftier and haughtier than ever. As the boat rounded the point from which the cottage was visible through the trees and some of the outhouses could be descried, they reverted to the ruinous state everything was falling into. “Straw is cheap enough, anyhow,” said the Major. “He might put a new thatch on that cow-house, and I 'm sure a brush of paint would n't ruin any one.” Oh, my dear reader! have you not often heard—I know that I have—such comments as these, such reflections on the indolence or indifference which only needed so very little to reform, done, too, without trouble or difficulty, habits that could be corrected, evil ways reformed, and ruinous tendencies arrested, all as it were by a “rush of paint,” or something just as uncostly?
“There does n't seem to be much doing here, Dill,” said M'Cormick, as they landed. “All the boats are drawn up ashore. And faith! I don't wonder, that old woman is enough to frighten the fish out of the river.”
“Strangers do not always like that sort of thing,” modestly remarked the doctor,—the “always” being peculiarly marked for emphasis. “Some will say, an inn should be an inn.”
“That's my view of it. What I say is this: I want my bit of fish, and my beefsteak, and my pint of wine, and I don't want to know that the landlord's grandfather entertained the king, or that his aunt was a lady-in-waiting. 'Be' as high as you like,' says I, 'but don't make the bill so,'—eh, Dill?” And he cackled the harsh ungenial laugh which seems the birthright of all sorry jesters; and the doctor gave a little laugh too, more from habit, however, than enjoyment.
“Do you know, Dill,” said the Major, disengaging himself from the arm which his lameness compelled him to lean on, and standing still in the pathway,—“do you know that I never reach thus far without having a sort of struggle with myself whether I won't turn back and go home again. Can you explain that, now?”
“It is the wound, perhaps, pains you, coming up the hill.”
“It is not the wound. It's that woman!”
“Miss Barrington?”
“Just so. I have her before me now, sitting up behind the urn there, and saying, 'Have you had tea, Major M'Cormick?' when she knows well she did n't give it to me. Don't you feel that going up to the table for your cup is for all the world like doing homage?”
“Her manners are cold,—certainly cold.”
“I wish they were. It's the fire that's in her I 'm afraid of! She has as wicked an eye in her head as ever I saw.”
“She was greatly admired once, I 'm told; and she has many remains of beauty.”
“Oh! for the matter of looks, there's worse. It's her nature, her temper,—herself, in fact, I can't endure.”
“What is it you can't endure, M'Cormick?” cried Barrington, emerging from a side walk where he had just caught the last words. “If it be anything in this poor place of mine, let me hear, that I may have it amended.”
“How are ye,—how are ye?” said the Major, with a very confused manner. “I was talking politics with Dill. I was telling him how I hated them Tories.”
“I believe they are all pretty much alike,” said Barring-ton; “at least, I knew they were in my day. And though we used to abuse him, and drink all kind of misfortunes to him every day of our lives, there was n't a truer gentleman nor a finer fellow in Ireland than Lord Castlereagh.”
“I'm sure of it. I've often heard the same remark,” chimed in Dill.
“It's a pity you didn't think so at the time of the Union,” said M'Cormick, with a sneer.
“Many of us did; but it would not make us sell our country. But what need is there of going back to those times, and things that can't be helped now? Come in and have a cup of tea. I see my sister is waiting for us.”
Why was it that Miss Barrington, on that evening, was grander and statelier than ever? Was it some anticipation of the meditated change in their station had impressed her manner with more of pride? I know not; but true it is she received her visitors with a reserve that was actually chilling. To no end did Barrington exert himself to conceal or counteract this frigidity. In all our moral chemistry we have never yet hit upon an antidote to a chilling reception.
The doctor was used to this freezing process, and did not suffer like his companion. To him, life was a huge ice-pail; but he defied frost-bite, and bore it. The Major, however chafed and fidgeted under the treatment, and muttered to himself very vengeful sentiments about that peg he had determined to take her down from.
“I was hoping to be able to offer you a nosegay, dear lady,” said Dill,—this was his customary mode of address to her, an ingenious blending of affection with deference, but in which the stronger accent on the last word showed the deference to predominate,—“but the rain has come so late, there's not a stock in the garden fit to present to you.”
“It is just as well, sir. I detest gillyflowers.”
The Major's eyes sparkled with a spiteful delight, for he was sorely jealous of the doctor's ease under difficulties.
“We have, indeed, a few moss-roses.”
“None to be compared to our own, sir. Do not think of it.”
The Major felt that his was not a giving disposition, and consequently it exempted him from rubs and rebuffs of this sort. Meanwhile, unabashed by failure, the doctor essayed once more: “Mrs. Dill is only waiting to have the car mended, to come over and pay her dutiful respects to you, Miss Dinah.”
“Pray tell her not to mind it, Dr. Dill,” replied she, sharply, “or to wait till the fourth of next month, which will make it exactly a year since her last visit; and her call can be then an annual one, like the tax-gatherer's.”
“Bother them for taxes altogether,” chimed in Barrington, whose ear only caught the last word. “You haven't done with the county cess when there's a fellow at you for tithes; and they're talking of a poor-rate.”
“You may perceive, Dr. Dill, that your medicines have not achieved a great success against my brother's deafness.”
“We were all so at Walcheren,” broke in M'Cormick; “when we 'd come out of the trenches, we could n't hear for hours.”
“My voice may be a shrill one, Major M'Cormick, but I'll have you to believe that it has not destroyed my brother's tympanum.”
“It's not the tympanum is engaged, dear lady; it's the Eustachian tube is the cause here. There's a passage leads down from the internal ear—”
“I declare, sir, I have just as little taste for anatomy as for fortification; and though I sincerely wish you could cure my brother, as I also wish these gentlemen could have taken Walcheren, I have not the slightest desire to know how.”
“I 'll beg a little more tea in this, ma'am,” said the Major, holding out his cup.
“Do you mean water, sir? Did you say it was too strong?”
“With your leave, I 'll take it a trifle stronger,” said he, with a malicious twinkle in his eye, for he knew all the offence his speech implied.
“I'm glad to hear you say so, Major M'Cormick. I'm happy to know that your nerves are stronger than at the time of that expedition you quote with such pleasure. Is yours to your liking, sir?”
“I 'll ask for some water, dear lady,” broke in Dill, who began to think that the fire was hotter than usual. “As I said to Mrs. Dill, 'Molly,' says I, 'how is it that I never drink such tea anywhere as at the—'” He stopped, for he was going to say, the Harringtons', and he trembled at the liberty; and he dared not say the Fisherman's Home, lest it should be thought he was recalling their occupation; and so, after a pause and a cough, he stammered out—“'at the sweet cottage.'” Nor was his confusion the less at perceiving how she had appreciated his difficulty, and was smiling at it.
“Very few strangers in these parts lately, I believe,” said M'Cormick, who knew that his remark was a dangerous one.
“I fancy none, sir,” said she, calmly. “We, at least, have no customers, if that be the name for them.”
“It's natural, indeed, dear lady, you shouldn't know how they are called,” began the doctor, in a fawning tone, “reared and brought up as you were.”
The cold, steady stare of Miss Barrington arrested his speech; and though he made immense efforts to recover himself, there was that in her look which totally overcame him. “Sit down to your rubber, sir,” said she, in a whisper that seemed to thrill through his veins. “You will find yourself far more at home at the odd trick there, than attempting to console me about my lost honors.” And with this fierce admonition, she gave a little nod, half in adieu, half in admonition, and swept haughtily out of the room.
M'Cormick heaved a sigh as the door closed after her, which very plainly bespoke how much he felt the relief.
“My poor sister is a bit out of spirits this evening,” said Barrington, who merely saw a certain show of constraint over his company, and never guessed the cause. “We've had some unpleasant letters, and one thing or another to annoy us, and if she does n't join us at supper, you 'll excuse her, I know, M'Cormick.”
“That we will, with—” He was going to add, “with a heart and a half,” for he felt, what to him was a rare sentiment, “gratitude;” but Dill chimed in,—
“Of course, we couldn't expect she'd appear. I remarked she was nervous when we came in. I saw an expression in her eye—”
“So did I, faith,” muttered M'Cormick, “and I'm not a doctor.”
“And here's our whist-table,” said Barrington, bustling about; “and there 's a bit of supper ready there for us in that room, and we 'll help ourselves, for I 've sent Darby to bed. And now give me a hand with these cards, for they 've all got mixed together.”
Barrington's task was the very wearisome one of trying to sort out an available pack from some half-dozen of various sizes and colors.
“Is n't this for all the world like raising a regiment out of twenty volunteer corps?” said M'Cormick.
“Dill would call it an hospital of incurables,” said Barrington. “Have you got a knave of spades and a seven? Oh dear, dear! the knave, with the head off him! I begin to suspect we must look up a new pack.” There was a tone of misgiving in the way he said this; for it implied a reference to his sister, and all its consequences. Affecting to search for new cards in his own room, therefore, he arose and went out.
“I wouldn't live in a slavery like that,” muttered the Major, “to be King of France.”
“Something has occurred here. There is some latent source of irritation,” said Dill, cautiously. “Barrington's own manner is fidgety and uneasy. I have my suspicion matters are going on but poorly with them.”
While this sage diagnosis was being uttered, M'Cormick had taken a short excursion into the adjoining room, from which he returned, eating a pickled onion. “It's the old story; the cold roast loin and the dish of salad. Listen! Did you hear that shout?”
“I thought I heard one awhile back; but I fancied afterwards it was only the noise of the river over the stones.”
“It is some fellows drawing the river; they poach under his very windows, and he never sees them.”
“I 'm afraid we 're not to have our rubber this evening,” said Dill, mournfully.
“There's a thing, now, I don't understand!” said M'Cormick, in a low but bitter voice. “No man is obliged to see company, but when he does do it, he oughtn't to be running about for a tumbler here and a mustard-pot there. There's the noise again; it's fellows robbing the salmon-weir!”
“No rubber to-night, I perceive that,” reiterated the doctor, still intent upon the one theme.
“A thousand pardons I ask from each of you,” cried Barrington, coming hurriedly in, with a somewhat flushed face; “but I 've had such a hunt for these cards. When I put a thing away nowadays, it's as good as gone to me, for I remember nothing. But here we are, now, all right.”
The party, like men eager to retrieve lost time, were soon deep in their game, very little being uttered, save such remarks as the contest called for. The Major was of that order of players who firmly believe fortune will desert them if they don't whine and complain of their luck, and so everything from him was a lamentation. The doctor, who regarded whist pathologically, no more gave up a game than he would a patient. He had witnessed marvellous recoveries in the most hopeless cases, and he had been rescued by a “revoke” in the last hour. Unlike each, Barrington was one who liked to chat over his game, as he would over his wine. Not that he took little interest in it, but it had no power to absorb and engross him. If a man derive very great pleasure from a pastime in which, after years and years of practice, he can attain no eminence nor any mastery, you may be almost certain he is one of an amiable temperament Nothing short of real goodness of nature could go on deriving enjoyment from a pursuit associated with continual defeats. Such a one must be hopeful, he must be submissive, he must have no touch of ungenerous jealousy in his nature, and, withal, a zealous wish to do better. Now he who can be all these, in anything, is no bad fellow.
If Barrington, therefore, was beaten, he bore it well. Cards were often enough against him, his play was always so; and though the doctor had words of bland consolation for disaster, such as the habits of his craft taught him, the Major was a pitiless adversary, who never omitted the opportunity of disinterring all his opponents' blunders, and singing a song of triumph over them. But so it is,—tot genera hominum,—so many kinds of whist-players are there!
Hour after hour went over, and it was late in the night. None felt disposed to sup; at least, none proposed it. The stakes were small, it is true, but small things are great to little men, and Barrington's guests were always the winners.
“I believe if I was to be a good player,—which I know in my heart I never shall,” said Barrington,—“that my luck would swamp me, after all. Look at that hand now, and say is there a trick in it?” As he said this, he spread out the cards of his “dummy” on the table, with the dis-consolation of one thoroughly beaten.
“Well, it might be worse,” said Dill, consolingly. “There's a queen of diamonds; and I would n't say, if you could get an opportunity to trump the club—”
“Let him try it,” broke in the merciless Major; “let him just try it! My name isn't Dan M'Cormick if he'll win one card in that hand. There, now, I lead the ace of clubs. Play!”
“Patience, Major, patience; let me look over my hand. I 'm bad enough at the best, but I 'll be worse if you hurry me. Is that a king or a knave I see there?”
“It's neither; it 's the queen!” barked out the Major.
“Doctor, you 'll have to look after my eyes as well as my ears. Indeed, I scarcely know which is the worst. Was not that a voice outside?”
“I should think it was; there have been fellows shouting there the whole evening. I suspect they don't leave you many fish in this part of the river.”
“I beg your pardon,” interposed Dill, blandly, “but you 've taken up my card by mistake.”
While Barrington was excusing himself, and trying to recover his lost clew to the game, there came a violent knocking at the door, and a loud voice called out, “Holloa! Will some of ye open the door, or must I put my foot through it?”
“There is somebody there,” said Barrington, quietly, for he had now caught the words correctly; and taking a candle, he hastened out.
“At last,” cried a stranger, as the door opened,—“at last! Do you know that we've been full twenty minutes here, listening to your animated discussion over the odd trick?—I fainting with hunger, and my friend with pain.” And so saying, he assisted another to limp forward, who leaned on his arm and moved with the greatest difficulty.
The mere sight of one in suffering repressed any notion of a rejoinder to his somewhat rude speech, and Barrington led the way into the room.
“Have you met with an accident?” asked he, as he placed the sufferer on a sofa.
“Yes,” interposed the first speaker; “he slipped down one of those rocks into the river, and has sprained, if he has not broken, something.”
“It is our good fortune to have advice here; this gentleman is a doctor.”
“Of the Royal College, and an M.D. of Aberdeen, besides,” said Dill, with a professional smile, while, turning back his cuffs, he proceeded to remove the shoe and stocking of his patient.
“Don't be afraid of hurting, but just tell me at once what's the matter,” said the young fellow, down whose cheeks great drops were rolling in his agony.
“There is no pronouncing at once; there is great tumefaction here. It may be a mere sprain, or it may be a fracture of the fibula simple, or a fracture with luxation.”
“Well, if you can't tell the injury, tell us what's to be done for it. Get him to bed, I suppose, first?” said the friend.
“By all means, to bed, and cold applications on the affected part.”
“Here's a room all ready, and at hand,” said Barrington, opening the door into a little chamber replete with comfort and propriety.
“Come,” said the first speaker, “Fred, all this is very snug; one might have fallen upon worse quarters.” And so saying, he assisted his friend forward, and deposited him upon the bed.
While the doctor busied himself with the medical cares for his patient, and arranged with due skill the appliances to relieve his present suffering, the other stranger related how they had lost their way, having first of all taken the wrong bank of the river, and been obliged to retrace their steps upwards of three miles to retrieve their mistake.
“Where were you going to?” asked Barringtou.
“We were in search of a little inn they had told us of, called the 'Fisherman's Home.' I conclude we have reached it at last, and you are the host, I take it?”
Barrington bowed assent.
“And these gentlemen are visitors here?” But without waiting for any reply,—difficult at all times, for he spoke with great rapidity and continual change of topic,—he now stooped down to whisper something to the sick man. “My friend thinks he'll do capitally now, and, if we leave him, that he'll soon drop asleep; so I vote we give him the chance.” Thus saying, he made a gesture for the others to leave, following them up as they went, almost like one enforcing an order.
“If I am correct in my reading, you are a soldier, sir,” said Barrington, when they reached the outer room, “and this gentleman here is a brother officer,—Major M'Cor-mick.”
“Full pay, eh?”
“No, I am an old Walcheren man.”
“Walcheren—Walcheren—why, that sounds like Malplaquet or Blenheim! Where the deuce was Walcheren? Did n't believe that there was an old tumbril of that affair to the fore still. You were all licked there, or you died of the ague, or jaundice? Oh, dummy whist, as I live! Who's the unlucky dog has got the dummy?—bad as Walcheren, by Jove! Is n't that a supper I see laid out there? Don't I smell Stilton from that room?”
“If you 'll do us the honor to join us—”
“That I will, and astonish you with an appetite too! We breakfasted at a beastly hole called Graigue, and tasted nothing since, except a few peaches I stole out of an old fellow's garden on the riverside,—'Old Dan the miser,' a country fellow called him.”
“I have the honor to have afforded you the entertainment you speak of,” said M'Cormick, smarting with anger.
“All right! The peaches were excellent,—would have been better if riper. I 'm afraid I smashed a window of yours; it was a stone I shied at a confounded dog,—a sort of terrier. Pickled onions and walnuts, by all that 's civilized! And so this is the 'Fisherman's Home,' and you the fisherman, eh? Well, why not show a light or a lantern over the door? Who the deuce is to know that this is a place of entertainment? We only guessed it at last.”
“May I help you to some mutton?” said Barrington, more amused than put out by his guest's discursiveness.
“By all means. But don't carve it that way; cut it lengthwise, as if it were the saddle, which it ought to have been. You must tell me where you got this sherry. I have tasted nothing like it for many a day,—real brown sherry. I suppose you know how they brown it? It's not done by sugar,—that's a vulgar error. It's done by boiling; they boil down so many butts and reduce them to about a fourth or a fifth. You haven't got any currant-jelly, have you? it is just as good with cold mutton as hot. And then it is the wine thus reduced they use for coloring matter. I got up all my sherry experiences on the spot.”
“The wine you approve of has been in my cellar about five-and-forty years.”
“It would not if I 'd have been your neighbor, rely upon that. I'd have secured every bottle of it for our mess; and mind, whatever remains of it is mine.”
“Might I make bold to remark,” said Dill, interposing, “that we are the guests of my friend here on this occasion?”
“Eh, what,—guests?”
“I am proud enough to believe that you will not refuse me the honor of your company; for though an innkeeper, I write myself gentleman,” said Barrington, blandly, though not without emotion.
“I should think you might,” broke in the stranger, heartily; “and I'd say the man who had a doubt about your claims had very little of his own. And now a word of apology for the mode of our entrance here, and to introduce myself. I am Colonel Hunter, of the 21st Hussars; my friend is a young subaltern of the regiment.”
A moment before, and all the awkwardness of his position was painful to Barrington. He felt that the traveller was there by a right, free to order, condemn, and criticise as he pleased. The few words of explanation, given in all the frankness of a soldier, and with the tact of a gentleman, relieved this embarrassment, and he was himself again. As for M'Cormick and Dill, the mere announcement of the regiment he commanded seemed to move and impress them. It was one of those corps especially known in the service for the rank and fortune of its officers. The Prince himself was their colonel, and they had acquired a wide notoriety for exclusiveness and pride, which, when treated by unfriendly critics, assumed a shape less favorable still.
Colonel Hunter, if he were to be taken as a type of his regiment, might have rebutted a good deal of this floating criticism; he had a fine honest countenance, a rich mellow voice, and a sort of easy jollity in manner, that spoke well both for his spirits and his temper. He did, it is true, occasionally chafe against some susceptible spot or other of those around him, but there was no malice prepense in it, any more than there is intentional offence in the passage of a strong man through a crowd; so he elbowed his way, and pushed on in conversation, never so much as suspecting that he jostled any one in his path.
Both Barrington and Hunter were inveterate sportsmen, and they ranged over hunting-fields and grouse mountains and partridge stubble and trout streams with all the zest of men who feel a sort of mesmeric brotherhood in the interchange of their experiences. Long after the Major and the doctor had taken their leave, they sat there recounting stories of their several adventures, and recalling incidents of flood and field.
In return for a cordial invitation to Hunter to stay and fish the river for some days, Barrington pledged himself to visit the Colonel the first time he should go up to Kilkenny.
“And I 'll mount you. You shall have a horse I never lent in my life. I 'll put you on Trumpeter,—sire Sir Hercules,—no mistake there; would carry sixteen stone with the fastest hounds in England.”
Barrington shook his head, and smiled, as he said, “It's two-and-twenty years since I sat a fence. I 'm afraid I 'll not revive the fame of my horsemanship by appearing again in the saddle.”
“Why, what age do you call yourself?”
“Eighty-three, if I live to August next.”
“I 'd not have guessed you within ten years of it. I 've just passed fifty, and already I begin to look for a horse with more bone beneath the knee, and more substance across the loins.”
“These are only premonitory symptoms, after all,” said Barrington, laughing. “You've many a day before you come to a fourteen-hand cob and a kitchen chair to mount him.”
Hunter laughed at the picture, and dashed away, in his own half-reckless way, to other topics. He talked of his regiment proudly, and told Barrington what a splendid set of young fellows were his officers. “I 'll show you such a mess,” said he, “as no corps in the service can match.” While he talked of their high-hearted and generous natures, and with enthusiasm of the life of a soldier, Barrington could scarcely refrain from speaking of his own “boy,” the son from whom he had hoped so much, and whose loss had been the death-blow to all his ambitions. There were, however, circumstances in that story which sealed his lips; and though the father never believed one syllable of the allegations against his son, though he had paid the penalty of a King's Bench mandamus and imprisonment for horsewhipping the editor who had aspersed his “boy,” the world and the world's verdict were against him, and he did not dare to revive the memory of a name against which all the severities of the press had been directed, and public opinion had condemned with all its weight and power.
“I see that I am wearying you,” said Hunter, as he remarked the grave and saddened expression that now stole over Barrington's face. “I ought to have remembered what an hour it was,—more than half-past two.” And without waiting to hear a reply, he shook his host's hand cordially and hurried off to his room.
While Barrington busied himself in locking up the wine, and putting away half-finished decanters,—cares that his sister's watchfulness very imperatively exacted,—he heard, or fancied he heard, a voice from the room where the sick man lay. He opened the door very gently and looked in.
“All right,” said the youth. “I 'm not asleep, nor did I want to sleep, for I have been listening to you and the Colonel these two hours, and with rare pleasure, I can tell you. The Colonel would have gone a hundred miles to meet a man like yourself, so fond of the field and such a thorough sportsman.”
“Yes, I was so once,” sighed Barrington, for already had come a sort of reaction to the late excitement.
“Isn't the Colonel a fine fellow?” said the young man, as eager to relieve the awkwardness of a sad theme as to praise one he loved. “Don't you like him?”
“That I do!” said Barrington, heartily. “His fine genial spirit has put me in better temper with myself than I fancied was in my nature to be. We are to have some trout-fishing together, and I promise you it sha'n't be my fault if he doesn't like me.”
“And may I be of the party?—may I go with you?”
“Only get well of your accident, and you shall do whatever you like. By the way, did not Colonel Hunter serve in India?”
“For fifteen years. He has only left Bengal within a few months.”
“Then he can probably help me to some information. He may be able to tell me—Good-night, good-night,” said he, hurriedly; “to-morrow will be time enough to think of this.”
CHAPTER IV. FRED CONYERS
Very soon after daybreak the Colonel was up and at the bedside of his young friend.
“Sorry to wake you, Fred,” said he, gently; “but I have just got an urgent despatch, requiring me to set out at once for Dublin, and I did n't like to go without asking how you get on.”
“Oh, much better, sir. I can move the foot a little, and I feel assured it 's only a severe sprain.”
“That's all right. Take your own time, and don't attempt to move about too early. You are in capital quarters here, and will be well looked after. There is only one difficulty, and I don't exactly see how to deal with it. Our host is a reduced gentleman, brought down to keep an inn for support, but what benefit he can derive from it is not so very clear; for when I asked the man who fetched me hot water this morning for my bill, he replied that his master told him I was to be his guest here for a week, and not on any account to accept money from me. Ireland is a very strange place, and we are learning something new in it every day; but this is the strangest thing I have met yet.”
“In my case this would be impossible. I must of necessity give a deal of trouble,—not to say that it would add unspeakably to my annoyance to feel that I could not ask freely for what I wanted.”
“I have no reason to suppose, mind you, that you are to be dealt with as I have been, but it would be well to bear in mind who and what these people are.”
“And get away from them as soon as possible,” added the young fellow, half peevishly.
“Nay, nay, Fred; don't be impatient. You'll be delighted with the old fellow, who is a heart-and-soul sportsman. What station he once occupied I can't guess; but in the remarks he makes about horses and hounds, all his knowing hints on stable management and the treatment of young cattle, one would say that he must have had a large fortune and kept a large establishment.”