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.
[Illustration: 046]
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?”
[Illustration: 052]
“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.
[Illustration: 052]
“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.”