While Barrington and his lawyer sat in conclave over the details of the
great suit, Stapylton hurried along his road with all the speed he could
summon. The way, which for some miles led along the river-side, brought
into view M'Cormick's cottage, and the Major himself, as he stood
listlessly at his door.'
Halting his carriage for a moment, Stapylton jumped out and drew nigh
the little quickset hedge which flanked the road.
“What can I do for you in the neighborhood of Manchester, Major? We are
just ordered off there to ride down the Radicals.”
“I wish it was nearer home you were going to do it,” said he, crankily.
“Look here,”--and he pointed to some fresh-turned earth,--“they were
stealing my turnips last night.”
“It would appear that these fellows in the North are growing dangerous,”
said Stapylton.
“'T is little matter to us,” said M'Cormick, sulkily. “I'd care more
about a blight in the potatoes than for all the politics in Europe.”
“A genuine philosopher! How snug you are here, to be sure! A man in a
pleasant nook like this can well afford to smile at the busy ambitions
of the outer world. I take it you are about the very happiest fellow I
know?”
“Maybe I am, maybe I'm not,” said he, peevishly.
“This spot only wants what I hinted to you t'other evening, to be
perfection.”
“Ay!” said the other, dryly.
“And you agree with me heartily, if you had the candor to say it. Come,
out with it, man, at once. I saw your gardener this morning with a great
basketful of greenery, and a large bouquet on the top of it,--are not
these significant signs of a projected campaign? You are wrong, Major,
upon my life you are wrong, not to be frank with me. I could, by a
strange hazard, as the newspapers say, 'tell you something to your
advantage.'”
“About what?”
“About the very matter you were thinking of as I drove up. Come, I will
be more generous than you deserve.” And, laying his arm on M'Cormick's
shoulder, he halt whispered in his ear; “It is a good thing,--a deuced
good thing! and I promise you, if I were a marrying man, you 'd have a
competitor. I won't say she 'll have one of the great fortunes people
rave about, but it will be considerable,--very considerable.”
“How do you know, or what do you know?”
“I 'll tell you in three words. How I know is, because I have been the
channel for certain inquiries they made in India. What I know is, the
Directors are sick of the case, they are sorely ashamed of it, and not a
little uneasy lest it should come before the public, perhaps before the
Parliament. Old Barrington has made all negotiation difficult by the
extravagant pretensions he puts forward about his son's honor, and so
forth. If, however, the girl were married, her husband would be
the person to treat with, and I am assured with him they would deal
handsomely, even generously.”
“And why would n't all this make a marrying man of you, though you were
n't before?”
“There's a slight canonical objection, if you must know,” said
Stapylton, with a smile.
“Oh, I perceive,--a wife already! In India, perhaps?”
“I have no time just now for a long story, M'Cormick,” said he,
familiarly, “nor am I quite certain I 'd tell it if I had. However, you
know enough for all practical purposes, and I repeat to you this is a
stake I can't enter for,--you understand me?”
“There's another thing, now,” said M'Cormick; “and as we are talking so
freely together, there's no harm in mentioning it. It 's only the other
day, as I may call it, that we met for the first time?”
“Very true: when I was down here at Cobham.”
“And never heard of each other before?”
“Not to my knowledge, certainly.”
“That being the case, I 'm curious to hear how you took this wonderful
interest in me. It wasn't anything in my appearance, I 'm sure, nor my
manner; and as to what you 'd hear about me among those blackguards down
here, there's nothing too bad to say of me.”
“I'll be as frank as yourself,” said Stapylton, boldly; “you ask for
candor, and you shall have it. I had n't talked ten minutes with you
till I saw that you were a thorough man of the world; the true old
soldier, who had seen enough of life to know that whatever one gets for
nothing in this world is just worth nothing, and so I said to myself,
'If it ever occurs to me to chance upon a good opportunity of which I
cannot from circumstances avail myself, there's my man. I'll go to him
and say, “M'Cormick, that's open to you, there's a safe thing!” And when
in return he 'd say, “Stapylton, what can I do for you?” my answer would
be, “Wait till you are satisfied that I have done you a good turn; be
perfectly assured that I have really served you.” And then, if I
wanted a loan of a thousand or fifteen hundred to lodge for the
Lieutenant-Colonelcy, I 'd not be ashamed to say, “M'Cormick, let me
have so much.”'”
“That's _it_, is it?” said M'Cormick, with a leer of intense cunning.
“Not a bad bargain for _you_, anyhow. It is not every day that a man can
sell what is n't his own.”
“I might say, it's not every day that a man regards a possible loan as
a gift, but I 'm quite ready to reassure all your fears on that score;
I'll even pledge myself never to borrow a shilling from you.”
“Oh, I don't mean that; you took me up so quick,” said the old fellow,
reddening with a sense of shame he had not felt for many a year. “I may
be as stingy as they call me, but for all that I 'd stand to a man who
stands to _me_.”
“Between gentlemen and men of the world these things are better left
to a sense of an honorable understanding than made matters of compact.
There is no need of another word on the matter. I shall be curious,
however, to know how your project speeds. Write to me,--you have plenty
of time,--and write often. I 'm not unlikely to learn something about
the Indian claim, and if I do, you shall hear of it.”
“I'm not over good at pen and ink work; indeed, I haven't much practice,
but I'll do my best.”
“Do, by all means. Tell me how you get on with Aunt Dinah, who, I
suspect, has no strong affection for either of us. Don't be precipitate;
hazard nothing by a rash step; secure your way by intimacy, mere
intimacy: avoid particular attentions strictly; be always there, and on
some pretext or other--But why do I say all this to an old soldier, who
has made such sieges scores of times?”
“Well, I think I see my way clear enough,” said the old fellow, with a
grin. “I wish I was as sure I knew why you take such an interest in me.”
“I believe I have told you already; I hope there is nothing so strange
in the assurance as to require corroboration. Come, I must say
good-bye; I meant to have said five words to you, and I have stayed here
five-and-twenty minutes.”
“Would n't you take something?--could n't I offer you anything?” said
M'Cormick, hesitatingly.
“Nothing, thanks. I lunched before I started; and although old Dinah
made several assaults upon me while I ate, I managed to secure two
cutlets and part of a grouse-pie, and a rare glass of Madeira to wash
them down.”
“That old woman is dreadful, and I'll take her down a peg yet, as sure
as my name is Dan.”
“No, don't, Major; don't do anything of the kind. The people who tame
tigers are sure to get scratched at last, and nobody thanks them for
their pains. Regard her as the sailors do a fire-ship; give her a wide
berth, and steer away from her.”
“Ay, but she sometimes gives chase.”
“Strike your flag, then, if it must be; for, trust me, you 'll not
conquer _her_.”
“We 'll see, we 'll see,” muttered the old fellow, as he waved his
adieux, and then turned back into the house again.
As Stapylton lay back in his carriage, he could not help muttering
a malediction on the “dear friend” he had just parted with. When the
_bourgeois gentilhomme_ objected to his adversary pushing him _en
tierce_ while he attacked him _en quarte_, he was expressing a great
social want, applicable to those people who in conversation will persist
in saying many things which ought not to be uttered, and expressing
doubts and distrusts which, however it be reasonable to feel, are an
outrage to avow.
“The old fox,” said Stapylton, aloud, “taunted me with selling what did
not belong to me; but he never suspects that I have bought something
without paying for it, and that something himself! Yes, the mock siege
he will lay to the fortress will occupy the garrison till it suits me
to open the real attack, and I will make use of him, besides, to learn
whatever goes on in my absence. How the old fellow swallowed the bait!
What self-esteem there must be in such a rugged nature, to make him
imagine he could be successful in a cause like this! He is, after all,
a clumsy agent to trust one's interest to. If the choice had been given
me, I'd far rather have had a woman to watch over them. Polly Dill, for
instance, the very girl to understand such a mission well. How adroitly
would she have played the game, and how clearly would her letters have
shown me the exact state of events!”
Such were the texts of his musings as he drove along, and deep as were
his thoughts, they never withdrew him, when the emergency called,
from attention to every detail of the journey, and he scrutinized the
post-horses as they were led out, and apportioned the rewards to the
postilions as though no heavier care lay on his heart than the road and
its belongings. While he rolled thus smoothly along, Peter Barrington
had been summoned to his sister's presence, to narrate in full all that
he had asked, and all that he had learned of Stapylton and his fortunes.
Miss Dinah was seated in a deep armchair, behind a formidable
embroidery-frame,--a thing so complex and mysterious in form as to
suggest an implement of torture. At a short distance off sat Withering,
with pen, ink, and paper before him, as if to set down any details of
unusual importance; and into this imposing presence poor Barrington
entered with a woful sense of misgiving and humiliation.
“We have got a quiet moment at last, Peter,” said Miss Barrington. “I
have sent the girls over to Brown's Barn for the tulip-roots, and I have
told Darby that if any visitors came they were to be informed we were
particularly occupied by business, and could see no one.”
“Just so,” added Withering; “it is a case before the Judge in Chamber.”
“But what have we got to hear?” asked Barrington, with an air of
innocence.
“We have got to hear your report, brother Peter; the narrative of your
late conversation with Major Stapylton; given, as nearly as your memory
will serve, in the exact words and in the precise order everything
occurred.”
“October the twenty-third,” said Withering, writing as he spoke; “minute
of interview between P. B. and Major S. Taken on the same morning it
occurred, with remarks and observations explanatory.”
“Begin,” said Dinah, imperiously, while she worked away without lifting
her head. “And avoid, so far as possible, anything beyond the precise
expression employed.”
“But you don't suppose I took notes in shorthand of what we said to each
other, do you?”
“I certainly suppose you can have retained in your memory a conversation
that took place two hours ago,” said Miss Dinah, sternly.
“And can relate it circumstantially and clearly,” added Withering.
“Then I 'm very sorry to disappoint you, but I can do nothing of the
kind.”
“Do you mean to say that you had no interview with Major Stapylton,
Peter?”
“Or that you have forgotten all about it?” said Withering.
“Or is it that you have taken a pledge of secrecy, brother Peter?”
“No, no, no! It is simply this, that though I retain a pretty fair
general impression of what I said myself, and what he said afterwards,
I could no more pretend to recount it accurately than I could say off by
heart a scene in 'Romeo and Juliet.'”
“Why don't you take the 'Comedy of Errors' for your illustration, Peter
Barrington? I ask you, Mr. Withering, have you in all your experience
met anything like this?”
“It would go hard with a man in the witness-box to make such a
declaration, I must say.”
“What would a jury think of, what would a judge say to him?” said she,
using the most formidable of all penalties to her brother's imagination.
“Wouldn't the court tell him that he would be compelled to speak out?”
“They'd have it out on the cross-examination, at all events, if not on
the direct.”
“In the name of confusion, what do you want with me?” exclaimed Peter,
in despair.
“We want everything,--everything that you heard about this man. Who he
is, what he is; what by the father's side, what by the mother's; what
are his means, and where; who knows him, who are his associates. Bear in
mind that to us, here, he has dropped out of the clouds.”
“And gone back there too,” added Withering.
“I wish to Heaven he had taken me with him!” sighed Peter, drearily.
“I think in this case, Miss Barrington,” said Withering, with a
well-affected gravity, “we had better withdraw a juror, and accept a
nonsuit.”
“I have done with it altogether,” said she, gathering up her worsted and
her needles, and preparing to leave the room.
“My dear Dinah,” said Barrington, entreatingly, “imagine a man as
wanting in tact as I am,--and as timid, too, about giving casual
offence,--conducting such an inquiry as you committed to my hands. Fancy
how, at every attempt to obtain information, his own boldness, I might
call it rudeness, stared him in the face, till at last, rather than
push his investigations, he grew puzzled how to apologize for his prying
curiosity.”
“Brother, brother, this is too bad! It had been better to have thought
more of your granddaughter's fate and less of your own feelings.” And
with this she flounced out of the room, upsetting a spider-table, and a
case of stuffed birds that stood on it, as she passed.
[Illustration: 410]
“I don't doubt but she 's right, Tom,” said Peter, when the door closed.
“Did he not tell you who he was, and what his fortune? Did you really
learn nothing from him?”
“He told me everything; and if I had not been so cruelly badgered, I
could have repeated every word of it; but you never made a hound true to
the scent by flogging him, Tom,--is n't that a fact, eh?” And consoled
by an illustration that seemed so pat to his case, he took his hat and
strolled out into the garden.
[Illustration: 410]