In a snug little room of the Old Ship Hotel, at Dover, a large, heavy
man, with snow-white hair, and moustaches,--the latter less common in
those days than the present,--sat at table with a younger one, so like
him that no doubt could have existed as to their being father and son.
They had dined, and were sitting over their wine, talking occasionally,
but oftener looking fondly and affectionately at each other; and once,
by an instinct of sudden love, grasping each other's hand, and sitting
thus several minutes without a word on either side.
“You did not expect me before to-morrow, Fred,” said the old man, at
last.
“No, father,” replied young Conyers. “I saw by the newspapers that you
were to dine at the Tuileries on Tuesday, and I thought you would not
quit Paris the same evening.”
“Yes; I started the moment I took off my uniform. I wanted to be with
you, my boy; and the royal politeness that detained me was anything but
a favor. How you have grown, Fred,--almost my own height, I believe.”
“The more like you the better,” said the youth, as his eyes ran over,
and the old man turned away to hide his emotion.
After a moment he said: “How strange you should not have got my letters,
Fred; but, after all, it is just as well as it is. I wrote in a very
angry spirit, and was less just than a little cool reflection might have
made me. They made no charges against me, though I thought they had.
There were grumblings and discontents, and such-like. They called me a
Rajah, and raked up all the old stories they used to circulate once on a
time about a far better fellow--”
“You mean Colonel Barrington, don't you?” said Fred.
“Where or how did you hear of that name?” said the old man, almost
sternly.
“An accident made me the guest of his family, at a little cottage they
live in on an hish river. I passed weeks there, and, through the favor
of the name I bore, I received more kindness than I ever before met in
life.”
“And they knew you to be a Conyers, and to be my son?”
“It was Colonel Barrington's aunt was my hostess, and she it was who,
on hearing my name, admitted me at once to all the privileges of old
friendship. She told me of the close companionship which once subsisted
between you and her nephew, and gave me rolls of his letters to read
wherein every line spoke of you.”
“And Mr. Barrington, the father of George, how did he receive you?”
“At first with such coolness that I could n't bring myself to recross
his threshold. He had been away from home when I arrived, and the day
of his return I was unexpectedly presented to him by his sister, who
evidently was as unprepared as myself for the reception I met with.”
“And what was that reception,--how was it? Tell me all as it happened.”
“It was the affair of a moment. Miss Barrington introduced me, saying,
'This is the son of poor George's dearest friend,--this is a Conyers;'
and the old man faltered, and seemed like to faint, and after a moment
stammered out something about an honor he had never counted upon,--a
visit he scarcely could have hoped for; and, indeed, so overcome was he
that he staggered into the house only to take to his bed, where he lay
seriously ill for several days after.”
“Poor fellow! It was hard to forgive,--very hard.”
“Ay, but he has forgiven it--whatever it was--heartily, and wholly
forgiven it. We met afterwards by a chance in Germany, and while I was
hesitating how to avoid a repetition of the painful scene which marked
our first meeting, he came manfully towards me with his hand out, and
said, 'I have a forgiveness to beg of you; and if you only know how I
long to obtain it, you would scarce say me no.'”
“The worthy father of poor George! I think I hear him speak the very
words himself. Go on, Fred,--go on, and tell me further.”
“There is no more to tell, sir, unless I speak of all the affectionate
kindness he has shown,--the trustfulness and honor with which he has
treated me. I have been in his house like his own son.”
“Ah! if you had known that son! If you had seen what a type of a soldier
he was! The most intrepid, the boldest fellow that ever breathed; but
with a heart of childlike simplicity and gentleness. I could tell
you traits of him, of his forbearance, his forgiveness, his generous
devotion to friendship, that would seem to bespeak a nature that had no
room for other than soft and tender emotion; and yet, if ever there was
a lion's heart within a man's bosom it was his.” For a moment or two
the old man seemed overcome by his recollections, and then, as if by an
effort, rallying himself, he went on: “You have often heard the adage,
Fred, that enjoins watching one's pennies and leaving the pounds to take
care of themselves; and yet, trust me, the maxim is truer as applied
to our morals than our money. It is by the smaller, finer, and least
important traits of a man that his fate in life is fashioned. The
caprices we take no pains to curb, the tempers we leave unchecked, the
petty indulgences we extend to our vanity and self-love,--these are the
great sands that wreck us far oftener than the more stern and formidable
features of our character. I ought to know this truth; I myself lost the
best and truest and the noblest friend that ever man had, just from the
exercise of a spirit of bantering and ridicule which amused those about
me, and gave me that pre-eminence which a sarcastic and witty spirit
is sure to assert. You know already how George Barrington and I lived
together like brothers. I do not believe two men ever existed more
thoroughly and sincerely attached to each other. All the contrarieties
of our dispositions served but to heighten the interest that linked us
together. As for myself, I was never wearied in exploring the strange
recesses of that great nature that seemed to unite all that could be
daring and dashing in man with the tenderness of a woman. I believe I
knew him far better than he knew himself. But to come to what I wanted
to tell you, and which is an agony to me to dwell on. Though for a long
while our close friendship was known in the regiment, and spoken of as a
thing incapable of change, a sort of rumor--no, not even a rumor, but an
impression--seemed to gain, that the ties between us were looser on my
side than his; that George looked up to _me_, and that I, with the pride
of a certain superiority, rather lorded it over _him_. This feeling
became painfully strengthened when it got about that Barrington had lent
me the greater part of the purchase-money for my troop,--a promotion, by
the way, which barred his own advancement,--and it was whispered, so
at least I heard, that Barrington was a mere child in my hands, whom I
rebuked or rewarded at pleasure. If I could have traced these rumors to
any direct source, I could have known how to deal with them. As it was,
they were vague, shadowy, and unreal; and their very unsubstantiality
maddened me the more. To have told George of them would have been rasher
still. The thought of a wrong done to _me_ would have driven him beyond
all reason, and he would infallibly have compromised himself beyond
recall. It was the very first time in my life I had a secret from him,
and it eat into my heart like a virulent disease. The consciousness that
I was watched, the feeling that eyes were upon me marking all I did, and
tongues were commenting on all I said, exasperated me, and at one moment
I would parade my friendship for Barrington in a sort of spirit of
defiance, and at another, as though to give the lie to my slanderers,
treat him with indifference and carelessness, as it were, to show that I
was not bound to him by the weight of a direct obligation, and that our
relations involved nothing of dependence. It was when, by some cruel
mischance, I had been pursuing this spirit to its extreme, that the
conversation one night at mess turned upon sport and tiger-hunting.
Many stories were told, of course, and we had the usual narratives of
hairbreadth escapes and perils of the most appalling kind; till, at
length, some one--I forget exactly who it was--narrated a single-handed
encounter with a jaguar, which in horror exceeded anything we had heard
before. The details were alone not so terrible, but the circumstances so
marvellous, that one and all who listened cried out, 'Who did it?'
“'The man who told me the tale,' replied the narrator, 'and who will
probably be back to relate it here to you in a few days,--Colonel
Barrington.'
“I have told you the devilish spirit which had me in possession. I have
already said that I was in one of those moods of insolent mockery in
which nothing was sacred to me. No sooner, then, did I hear Barrington's
name than I burst into a hearty laugh, and said, 'Oh! if it was one of
George Barrington's tigers, you ought to have mentioned that fact at the
outset. You have been exciting our feelings unfairly.'
“'I assume that his statement was true,' said the other, gravely.
“'Doubtless; just as battle-pieces are true, that is, pic-torially
true. The tiger did nothing that a tiger ought not to do, nor did George
transgress any of those “unities” which such combats require. At the
same time, Barring-ton's stories have always a something about them that
stamps the authorship, and you recognize this trait just as you do a
white horse in a picture by Wouvermans.'
“In this strain I went on, heated by my own warmed imagination, and the
approving laughter of those around me. I recounted more than one feat
of Barrington's,--things which I knew he had done, some of them almost
incredible in boldness. These I told with many a humorous addition and
many an absurd commentary, convulsing the listeners with laughter, and
rendering my friend ridiculous.
“He came back from the hills within the week, and before he was two
hours in his quarters he had heard the whole story. We were at luncheon
in the mess-room when he entered, flushed and excited, but far more
moved by emotion than resentment.
“'Ormsby,' said he, 'you may laugh at me to your heart's content and
I'll never grumble at it; but there are some young officers here who,
not knowing the ties that attach us, may fancy that these quizzings
pass the limits of mere drollery, and even jeopardize something of my
truthfulness. _You_, I know, never meant this any more than I have felt
it, but others might, and might, besides, on leaving this and sitting at
other tables, repeat what they had heard here. Tell them that you spoke
of me as you have a free right to do, in jest, and that your ridicule
was the good-humored banter of a friend,--of a friend who never did,
never could, impugn my honor.'
“His eyes were swimming over, and his lips trembling, as he uttered the
last words. I see him now, as he stood there, his very cheek shaking
in agitation. That brave, bold fellow, who would have marched up to a
battery without quailing, shook like a sickly girl.
“'Am I to say that you never draw the long-bow, George?' asked I, half
insolently.
“'You are to say, sir, that I never told a lie,' cried he, dark with
passion.
“'Oh, this discussion will be better carried on elsewhere,' said I, as I
arose and left the room.
“As I was in the wrong, totally in the wrong, I was passionate and
headstrong. I sat down and wrote a most insolent letter to Barrington. I
turned all the self-hate that was consuming _me_ against my friend, and
said I know not what of outrage and insult. I did worse; I took a copy
of my letter, and declared that I would read it to the officers in the
mess-room. He sent a friend to me to beg I would not take this course of
open insult. My answer was, 'Colonel Barrington knows his remedy.' When
I sent this message, I prepared for what I felt certain would follow. I
knew Barrington so well that I thought even the delay of an hour, then
two hours, strange. At length evening drew nigh, and, though I sat
waiting in my quarters, no one came from him,--not a letter nor a line
apprised me what course he meant to take.
“Not caring to meet the mess at such a moment, I ordered my horses and
drove up to a small station about twenty miles off, leaving word where
I was to be found. I passed three days there in a state of fevered
expectancy. Barrington made no sign, and, at length, racked and
distressed by the conflict with myself,--now summoning up an insolent
spirit of defiance to the whole world, now humbling myself in a
consciousness of the evil line I had adopted,--I returned one night to
my quarters. The first news that greeted me was that Barrington had left
us. He had accepted the offer of a Native command which had been made to
him some months before, and of which we had often canvassed together
all the advantages and disadvantages. I heard that he had written
two letters to me before he started, and torn them up after they were
sealed. I never heard from him, never saw him more, till I saw his dead
body carried into camp the morning he fell.
“I must get to the end of this quickly, Fred, and I will tell you all at
once, for it is a theme I will never go back on. I came to England with
despatches about two years after Barrington's death. It was a hurried
visit, for I was ordered to hold myself in readiness to return almost
as soon as I arrived. I was greatly occupied, going about from place
to place, and person to person, so many great people desired to have a
verbal account of what was doing in India, and to hear confidentially
what I thought of matters there. In the midst of the mass of letters
which the post brought me every morning, and through which, without the
aid of an officer on the staff, I could never have got through, there
came one whose singular address struck me. It was to 'Captain Ormsby
Conyers, 22d Light Dragoons,' a rank I had held fourteen years before
that time in that same regiment. I opined at once that my correspondent
must have been one who had known me at that time and not followed me
in the interval. I was right. It was from old Mr. Barrington,--George
Barrington's father. What version of my quarrel with his son could have
reached him, I cannot even guess, nor by what light he read my conduct
in the affair; but such a letter I never read in my life. It was a
challenge to meet him anywhere, and with any weapon, but couched in
language so insulting as to impugn my courage, and hint that I would
probably shelter myself behind the pretext of his advanced age. 'But
remember,' said he, 'if God has permitted me to be an old man, it is
_you_ who have made me a childless one!'”
For a few seconds he paused, overcome by emotion, and then went on:
“I sat down and wrote him a letter of contrition, almost abject in its
terms. I entreated him to believe that for every wrong I had done his
noble-hearted son, my own conscience had repaid me in misery ten times
told; that if he deemed my self-condemnation insufficient, it was open
to him to add to it whatever he wished of obloquy or shame; that if he
proclaimed me a coward before the world, and degraded me in the eyes of
men, I would not offer one word in my defence. I cannot repeat all that
I said in my deep humiliation. His answer came at last, one single line,
re-enclosing my own letter to me: 'Lest I should be tempted to make use
of this letter, I send it back to you; there is no need of more between
us.'
“With this our intercourse ceased. When a correspondence was published
in the 'Barrington Inquiry,' as it was called, I half hoped he would
have noticed some letters of mine about George; but he never did, and in
his silence I thought I read his continued unforgiveness.”
“I hope, father, that you never believed the charges that were made
against Captain Barrington?”
“Not one of them; disloyalty was no more his than cowardice. I never
knew the Englishman with such a pride of country as he had, nor could
you have held out a greater bribe to him, for any achievement of peril,
than to say, 'What a gain it would be for England!'”
“How was it that such a man should have had a host of enemies?”
“Nothing so natural. Barrington was the most diffident of men; his
bashfulness amounted to actual pain. With strangers, this made him
cold to very sternness, or, as is often seen in the effort to conquer
a natural defect, gave him a manner of over-easy confidence that looked
like impertinence. And thus the man who would not have wounded the
self-love of the meanest beggar, got the reputation of being haughty,
insolent, and oppressive. Besides this, when he was in the right, and
felt himself so, he took no pains to convince others of the fact. His
maxim was,--have I not heard it from his lips scores of times,--'The end
will show.'”
“And yet the end will not show, father; his fame has not been
vindicated, nor his character cleared.”
“In some measure the fault of those who took up his cause. They seemed
less to insist on reparation than punishment. They did not say, 'Do
justice to this man's memory;' but, 'Come forward and own you wronged
him, and broke his heart.' Now, the accusation brought against George
Barrington of assuming sovereign power was not settled by his death;
his relatives forgot this, or merged it in their own charge against the
Company. They mismanaged everything.”
“Is it too late to put them on the right track, father; or could you do
it?” asked the youth, eagerly.
“It is not too late, boy! There is time for it yet. There is, however,
one condition necessary, and I do not see how that is to be secured.”
“And what is that?”
“I should see Mr. Barrington and confer with him alone; he must admit me
to his confidence, and I own to you, I scarcely deem that possible.”
“May I try--may I attempt this?”
“I do not like to refuse you, Fred: but if I say Yes, it will be to
include you in my own defeated hopes. For many a year Mr. Barrington
has refused to give one sign of his forgiveness; for in his treatment of
you I only recognize the honorable feeling of exempting the son from
the penalty due to the father. But perhaps defeat is better than
self-reproach, and as I have a strong conviction I could serve him, I am
ready to risk a failure.”
“I may make the attempt, then?” said Fred, eagerly. “I will write to
Miss Barrington to-day.”
“And now of yourself. What of your career? How do you like soldiering,
boy?”
“Less than ever, sir; it is only within the last week or two that we
have seen anything beyond barrack or parade duty. Now, however, we have
been called to repress what are called risings in the northern shires;
and our task has been to ride at large unarmed mobs and charge down
masses, whose grape-shot are brickbats. Not a very glorious campaign!”
The old man smiled, but said nothing for a moment.
“Your colonel is on leave, is he not?” asked he.
“Yes. We are commanded by that Major Stapylton I told you of.”
“A smart officer, but no friend of yours, Fred,” said the General,
smiling.
“No, sir; certainly no friend of mine,” said the young man, resolutely.
“To refuse me a week's leave to go and meet my father, whom I have not
seen for years, and, when pressed, to accord me four days, is to disgust
me with himself and the service together.”
“Well, as you cannot be my guest, Fred, I will be yours. I 'll go back
with you to headquarters. Stapylton is a name I used to be familiar with
long ago. It may turn out that I know his family; but let us talk of
Barrington. I have been thinking it would be better not to link any
question of his own interests with my desire to meet him, but simply to
say I 'm in England, and wish to know if he would receive me.”
“It shall be as you wish, sir. I will write to his sister by this post.”
“And after one day in town, Fred, I am ready to accompany you anywhere.”