The Barringtons had not been quite a fortnight settled in their home,
when a note came from Conyers, lamenting, in most feeling terms, that he
could not pay them his promised visit. If the epistle was not very long,
it was a grumble from beginning to end. “Nobody would know,” wrote he,
“it was the same regiment poor Colonel Hunter commanded. Our Major is
now in command,--the same Stapylton you have heard me speak of; and if
we never looked on him too favorably, we now especially detest him.
His first step was to tell us we were disorderly, ill-dressed, and
ill-disciplined; but we were even less prepared to hear that we could
not ride. The result of all this is, we have gone to school again,--even
old captains, who have served with distinction in the field, have been
consigned to the riding-house; and we poor subs are treated as if we
were the last refuse of all the regiments of the army, sent here to
be reformed and corrected. We have incessant drills, parades, and
inspections, and, worse again, all leave is stopped. If I was not in the
best of temper with the service before, you may judge how I feel towards
it now. In fact, if it were not that I expect my father back in England
by the middle of May, I 'd send in my papers and leave at once. How I
fall back now in memory to the happy days of my ramble with you, and
wonder if I shall ever see the like again. And how I hate myself for not
having felt at the time how immeasurably delightful they were! Trust me
never to repeat the mistake if I have the opportunity given me. I asked
this morning for three days--only three--to run down and see you once
more before we leave,--for we are ordered to Honnslow,--and I was
refused. But this was not all: not content with rejecting my request,
he added what he called an expression of astonishment that an officer
so deficient in his duties should care to absent himself from regimental
discipline.”
“Poor boy!--this is, indeed, too bad,” said Miss Dinah, as she had read
thus far; “only think, Peter, how this young fellow, spoiled and petted
as he was as a child,--denied nothing, pampered as though he were a
prince,--should find himself the mark of so insulting a tyranny. Are you
listening to me, Peter Barrington?”
“Eh,--what? No, thank you, Dinah; I have made an excellent breakfast,”
said Barrington, hurriedly, and again addressed himself to the letter he
was reading. “That's what I call a Trump, Dinah,--a regular Trump.”
“Who is the especial favorite that has called for the very choice
eulogy?” said she, bridling up.
“Gone into the thing, too, with heart and soul,--a noble fellow!”
continued Barrington.
“Pray enlighten us as to the name that calls forth such enthusiasm.”
“Stapylton, my dear Dinah,--Major Stapylton. In all my life I do not
remember one instance to parallel with this generous and disinterested
conduct. Listen to what Withering says,--not a man given to take up rash
impressions in favor of a stranger. Listen to this: 'Stapylton has been
very active,--written to friends, both at Calcutta and Agra, and shown,
besides, an amount of acuteness in pursuit of what is really important,
that satisfies me a right good common lawyer has been lost by his being
a soldier.' And here, again he recurs to him: it is with reference to
certain documents: 'S. persists in believing that with proper diligence
these may be recovered; he says that it is a common practice with the
Moonshees to retain papers, in the hope of their being one day deemed
of value; and he is fully persuaded that they have not been destroyed.
There is that about the man's manner of examining a question,--his
patience, his instinctive seizure of what is of moment, and his
invariable rejection of whatever is immaterial; and, lastly, his
thorough appreciation of the character of that evidence which would have
most weight with the Indian Board, which dispose me to regard him as an
invaluable ally to our cause.'”
“Do me the favor to regard this picture of your friend now,” said Miss
Barrington, as she handed the letter from Conyers across the table.
Barrington read it over attentively. “And what does this prove, my dear
sister?” said he. “This is the sort of stereotyped complaint of every
young fellow who has been refused a leave. I have no doubt Hunter was
too easy-tempered to have been strict in discipline, and the chances
are these young dogs had everything their own way till Stapylton
came amongst them. I find it hard to believe that any man likes
unpopularity.”
“Perhaps not, Peter Barrington; but he may like tyranny more than he
hates unpopularity; and, for my own part, this man is odious to me.”
“Don't say so, Dinah,--don't say so, I entreat of you, for he will be
our guest here this very day.”
“Our guest!--why, is not the regiment under orders to leave?”
“So it is; but Withering says it would be a great matter if we could
have a sort of consultation together before the Major leaves Ireland.
There are innumerable little details which he sees ought to be discussed
between us; and so he has persuaded him to give us a day,--perhaps two
days,--no small boon, Dinah, from one so fully occupied as he is.”
“I wish he would not make the sacrifice, Peter.”
“My dear sister, are we so befriended by Fortune that we can afford to
reject the kindness of our fellows?”
“I'm no believer in chance friendships, Peter Barrington; neither you
nor I are such interesting orphans as to inspire sympathy at first
sight.”
Josephine could not help a laugh at Miss Dinah's illustration, and old
Barriqgton himself heartily joined in the merriment, not sorry the while
to draw the discussion into a less stern field. “Come, come, Dinah,”
said he, gayly, “let us put out a few bottles of that old Madeira in
the sun; and if Darby can find us a salmon-trout, we 'll do our best to
entertain our visitors.”
“It never occurred to me to doubt the probability of their enjoying
themselves, Peter; my anxieties were quite on another score.”
“Now, Fifine,” continued Barrington, “we shall see if Polly Dill has
really made you the perfect housekeeper she boasted. The next day or two
will put your talents to the test.”
“Oh, if we could only have Polly herself here!”
“What for?--on what pretext, Miss Barrington?” said Dinah, haughtily.
“I have not, so far as I am aware, been accounted very ignorant of
household cares.”
“Withering declares that your equal is not in Europe, Dinah.”
“Mr. Withering's suffrage can always be bought by a mock-turtle soup,
and a glass of Roman punch after it.”
“How he likes it,--how he relishes it! He says that he comes back to the
rest of the dinner with the freshness of a man at an assize case.”
“So like him!” said Dinah, scornfully; “he has never an illustration
that is not taken from the Four Courts. I remember one day, when asking
for the bill of fare, he said, 'Will you kindly let me look at the cause
list.' Prepare yourself, Josephine, for an avalanche of law anecdotes
and Old Bailey stories, for I assure you you will hear nothing for the
next three days but drolleries that have been engrossed on parchment and
paid stamp duty to the Crown.”
Barrington gave a smile, as though in protest against the speech, and
left the room. In truth, he was very anxious to be alone, and to think
over, at his leisure, a short passage in his letter which he had not
summoned courage to read aloud. It was Withering's opinion that to
institute the inquiries in India a considerable sum of money would be
required, and he had left it for Barrington's consideration whether it
were wiser to risk the great peril of this further involvement, or once
more to try what chance there might be of a compromise. Who knows what
success might have attended the suggestion if the old lawyer had but
employed any other word! Compromise, however, sounded to his ears like
an unworthy concession,--a surrender of George's honor. Compromise might
mean money for his granddaughter, and shame to her father's memory. Not,
indeed, that Withering was, as a man, one to counsel such a course, but
Withering was a lawyer, and in the same spirit that he would have
taken a verdict for half his claim if he saw an adverse feeling in the
jury-box, so he would bow to circumstances that were stronger than him,
and accept the best he could, if he might not have all that he ought But
could Barrington take this view? He thought not. His conviction was that
the main question to establish was the fair fame and honor of his son;
his guide was, how George himself would have acted--would have felt--in
the same contingency; and he muttered, “He'd have been a hardy fellow
who would have hinted at compromise to _him_.”
The next point was how the means for the coming campaign were to be
provided. He had already raised a small sum by way of mortgage on the
“Home,” and nothing remained but to see what further advance could be
made on the same security. When Barrington was a great estated gentleman
with a vast fortune at his command, it cost him wonderfully little
thought to contract a loan, or even to sell a farm. A costly election,
a few weeks of unusual splendor, an unfortunate night at play, had made
such sacrifices nothing very unusual, and he would give his orders on
this score as unconcernedly as he would bid his servant replenish his
glass at table. Indeed, he had no more fear of exhausting his fortune
than he felt as to out-drinking his cellar. There was enough there,
as he often said, for those who should come after him. And now, what a
change! He stood actually appalled at the thought of a mortgage for less
than a thousand pounds. But so it is; the cockboat may be more to a man
than was once the three-decker. The cottage was his all now; that lost,
and they were houseless. Was it not a bold thing to risk everything on
one more throw? There was the point over which he now pondered as he
walked slowly along in the little shady alley between the laurel hedges.
He had no friend nearer his heart than Withering, no one to whom he
could unbosom himself so frankly and so freely, and yet this was a
case on which he could not ask his counsel. All his life long he had
strenuously avoided suffering a question of the kind to intervene
between them. Of his means, his resources, his straits, or his demands,
Withering knew positively nothing. It was with Barrington a point of
delicacy to maintain this reserve towards one who was always his lawyer,
and often his guest. The very circumstance of his turning innkeeper was
regarded by Withering as savoring far more of caprice than necessity,
and Barrington took care to strengthen this impression.
If, then, Withering's good sense and worldly knowledge would have been
invaluable aids to him in this conjunction, he saw he could not have
them. The same delicacy which debarred him heretofore, would still
interpose against his appeal to that authority. And then he thought
how he had once troops of friends to whom he could address himself for
counsel. There is nothing more true, indeed, than the oft-uttered scoff
on the hollowness of those friendships which attach to the days of
prosperous fortune, and the world is very prone to point to the utter
loneliness of him who has been shipwrecked by Fate; but let us be just
in our severity, and let us own that a man's belongings, his associates,
his--what common parlance calls--friends, are the mere accidents of his
station, and they no more accompany him in his fall than do the luxuries
he has forfeited. From the level from which he has lapsed they have not
descended. They are there, living to-day as they lived yesterday.
If their sympathy is not with him, it is because neither are they
themselves; they cross each other no more. Such friendships are like the
contracts made with a crew for a particular voyage,--they end with the
cruise. No man ever understood this better than Barrington; no man ever
bore the world less of ill will for its part towards himself. If now
and then a sense of sadness would cloud him at some mark of passing
forgetfulness, he would not own to the gloomy feeling; while to any show
of recognition, to any sign of a grateful remembrance of the past, he
would grow boastful to very vanity. “Look there, Dinah,” he would say,
“what a noble-hearted fellow that is! I scarcely was more than commonly
civil to him formerly, and you saw how courteous he was in making a
place for us, how heartily he hoped I was in good health.”
“I'll send over to Dill and have a talk with him,” was Barrington's last
resolve, as he turned the subject over and over in his mind. “Dill 's a
shrewd fellow, and I 'm not sure that he has not laid by a little
money; he might feel no objection to a good investment for it, with such
security.” And he looked around as he spoke on the trees, some of which
he planted, every one of which he knew, and sighed heavily. “He 'll
scarce love the spot more than I did,” muttered he, and walked along
with his head down. After a while he took out Withering's letter from
his pocket and re-read it. Somehow, it was hard to say why, it did not
read so promisingly as at first. The difficulties to be encountered were
very stubborn ones, so much so that he very palpably hinted how much
better some amicable settlement would be than an open contest wherein
legal subtlety and craft should be evoked. There was so much of that
matter always taken for granted, to be proved, to be demonstrated true
on evidence, that it actually looked appalling. “Of the searches and
inquiries instituted in India,” wrote Withering, “I can speak but
vaguely; but I own the very distance magnifies them immensely to my
eyes.” “Tom is growing old, not a doubt of it,” muttered Barrington;
“these were not the sort of obstacles that could have terrified him once
on a time. He 'd have said, 'If there 's evidence, we 'll have it; if
there's a document, we 'll find it.' It's India, that far-away land,
that has frightened him. These lawyers, like certain sportsmen, lose
their nerve if you take them out of their own country. It 's the new
style of fences they can't face. Well, thanks to him who gave it, I have
my stout heart still, and I 'll go on.”
“Going on” was, however, not the easy task it first seemed, nor was
the pleasantest part of it the necessity of keeping the secret from his
sister. Miss Dinah had from the first discouraged the whole suit. The
adversary was too powerful, the odds against them were too great; the
India Board had only to protract and prolong the case and _they_ must
be beaten from sheer exhaustion. How, then, should he reconcile her to
mortgaging the last remnant of all their fortune for “one more throw on
the table”? “No chance of persuading a woman that this would be wise,”
said he. And he thought, when he had laid the prejudice of sex as the
ground of error, he had completed his argument.
“Going on” had its fine generous side about it, also, that cheered and
elevated him. It was for George he was doing it, and that dear girl,
whose every trait recalled her father; for let those explain it who can,
she, who had never seen nor even heard of her father since her infancy,
inherited all his peculiar ways and habits, and every trick of his
manner. Let me own that these, even more than any qualities of sterling
worth, endeared her to her grandfather; and just as he had often
declared no rank or position that could befall George would have been
above his deserts, so he averred that if Josephine were to be the
greatest heiress in England to-morrow, she would be a grace and an
ornament to the station. If Aunt Dinah would occasionally attempt to
curb this spirit, or even limit its extravagance, his invariable answer
was, “It may be all as you say, sister, but for the life of me I cannot
think my swans to be geese.”
As he thus mused and meditated, he heard the wicket of the garden open
and shut, and shortly afterwards a half-shambling shuffling step on the
gravel. Before he had time to speculate on whose it should be, he saw
Major M'Cormick limping laboriously towards him.
“How is this, Major?” cried he; “has the change of weather disagreed
with your rheumatism?”
“It's the wound; it's always worse in the fall of the year,” croaked the
other. “I'd have been up to see you before but for the pains, and that
old fool Dill--a greater fool myself for trusting him--made me put on
a blister down what he calls the course of the nerve, and I never knew
torture till I tried it.”
“My sister Dinah has, I verily believe, the most sovereign remedy for
these pains.”
“Is it the green draught? Oh, don't I know it,” burst out the Major.
“You might hear my shouts the day I took it down at Inistioge. There was
n't a bit of skin left on my lips, and when I wiped the perspiration off
my head my hair came off too. Aquafortis is like egg-flip compared
to that blessed draught; and I remember well how I crawled to my
writing-desk and wrote, 'Have me opened,' for I knew I was poisoned.”
“Did you tell my sister of your sufferings?”
“To be sure I did, and she only smiled and said that I took it when I
was fasting, or when I was full, I forget which; and that I ought to
have taken a brisk walk, and I only able to creep; and only one spoonful
at a time, and it was the whole bottle I swallowed. In fact, she owned
afterwards that nothing but the strength of a horse could have saved
me.”
Peter found it very hard to maintain a decent gravity at the play of
the Major's features, which during the narrative recalled every dire
experience of his medicine.
“Well, come into the house and we'll give you something better,” said
Barrington, at last.
“I think I saw your granddaughter at the window as I came by,--a
good-looking young woman, and not so dark as I suspected she 'd be.”
“There's not a handsomer girl in Ireland; and as to skin, she 's not as
brown as her father.”
“It wouldn't be easy to be that; he was about three shades deeper than a
Portuguese.”
“George Barrington was confessedly the finest-looking fellow in the
King's army, and as English-looking a gentleman as any man in it.”
The tone of this speech was so palpably that of one who would not stand
the very shadow of a rejoinder, that the Major held his peace, and
shuffled along without a word. The thought, however, of administering a
rebuke to any one within the precincts of his home was so repugnant to
Barrington's nature, that he had scarcely uttered the words than he was
eager to repair them, and with a most embarrassed humility he stammered
out something about their recent tour abroad and all the enjoyment it
had given them.
“Maybe so,” rejoined the other, dryly; “but I never saw any pleasure in
spending money you could keep.”
“My dear Major, that is precisely the very money that does procure
pleasure.”
“Wasn't that a post-chaise I saw through the trees? There it is again;
it's making straight for the 'Home,'” said M'Cormick, pointing with his
stick.
“Yes,” said Peter; “I was expecting a couple of friends to pass a day or
so with me here. Will you excuse me if I hurry forward to welcome them?”
“Don't make a stranger of me; I'll saunter along at my leisure,” said
the Major, as Barrington walked briskly on towards the cottage.