Produced by David Widger
BARRINGTON
Volume I.
By Charles James Lever
With Illustrations By Phiz.
Boston: Little, Brown, And Company.
1907.
[Illustration: frontispiece]
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.