That shady alley under the linden-trees was a very favorite walk with
Peter Barrington. It was a nice cool lane, with a brawling little
rivulet close beside it, with here and there a dark silent pool for the
dragon-fly to skim over and see his bronzed wings reflected in the still
water; and there was a rustic bench or two, where Peter used to sit
and fancy he was meditating, while, in reality, he was only watching a
speckled lizard in the grass, or listening to the mellow blackbird over
his head. I have had occasion once before to remark on the resources of
the man of imagination, but I really suspect that for the true luxury of
idleness there is nothing like the temperament devoid of fancy. There is
a grand breadth about those quiet, peaceful minds over which no shadows
flit, and which can find sufficient occupation through the senses, and
never have to go “within” for their resources. These men can sit the
livelong day and watch the tide break over a rock, or see the sparrow
teach her young to fly, or gaze on the bee as he dives into the deep cup
of the foxglove, and actually need no more to fill the hours. For them
there is no memory with its dark bygones, there is no looming future
with its possible misfortunes; there is simply a half-sleepy present,
with soft sounds and sweet odors through it,--a balmy kind of stupor,
from which the awaking comes without a shock.
When Barrington reached his favorite seat, and lighted his cigar,--it
is painting the lily for such men to smoke,--he intended to have thought
over the details of Withering's letter, which were both curious and
interesting; he intended to consider attentively certain points which,
as Withering said, “he must master before he could adopt a final
resolve;” but they were knotty points, made knottier, too, by hard
Hindoo words for things unknown, and names totally unpronounceable. He
used to think that he understood “George's claim” pretty well; he had
fancied it was a clear and very intelligible case, that half a dozen
honest men might have come to a decision on in an hour's time; but now
he began to have a glimmering perception that George must have been
egregiously duped and basely betrayed, and that the Company were not
altogether unreasonable in assuming their distrust of him. Now, all
these considerations coming down upon him at once were overwhelming, and
they almost stunned him. Even his late attempt to enlighten his sister
Dinah on a matter he so imperfectly understood now recoiled upon him,
and added to his own mystification.
“Well, well,” muttered he, at last, “I hope Tom sees his way through
it,”--Tom was Withering,--“and if _he_ does, there's no need of my
bothering _my_ head about it. What use would there be in lawyers if they
hadn't got faculties sharper than other folk? and as to 'making up my
mind,' my mind is made up already, that I want to win the cause if he'll
only show me how.” From these musings he was drawn off by watching a
large pike,--the largest pike, he thought, he had ever seen,--which
would from time to time dart out from beneath a bank, and after lying
motionless in the middle of the pool for a minute or so, would, with one
whisk of its tail, skim back again to its hiding-place. “That fellow has
instincts of its own to warn him,” thought he; “he knows he was n't safe
out there. _He_ sees some peril that _I_ cannot see; and that ought to
be the way with Tom, for, after all, the lawyers are just pikes, neither
more nor less.” At this instant a man leaped across the stream, and
hurriedly passed into the copse. “What! Mr. Conyers--Conyers, is that
you?” cried Barrington; and the young man turned and came towards him.
“I am glad to see you all safe and sound again,” said Peter; “we waited
dinner half an hour for you, and have passed all the time since in
conjecturing what might have befallen you.”
“Did n't Miss Barrington say--did not Miss Barrington know--” He stopped
in deep confusion, and could not finish his speech.
“My sister knew nothing,--at least, she did not tell me any reason for
your absence.”
“No, not for my absence,” began he once more, in the same embarrassment;
“but as I had explained to her that I was obliged to leave this
suddenly,--to start this evening--”
“To start this evening! and whither?”
“I cannot tell; I don't know,--that is, I have no plans.”
“My dear boy,” said the old man, affectionately, as he laid his hand on
the other's arm, “if you don't know where you are going, take my word
for it there is no such great necessity to go.”
“Yes, but there is,” replied he, quickly; “at least Miss Barrington
thinks so, and at the time we spoke together she made me believe she was
in the right.”
“And are you of the same opinion _now?_” asked Peter, with a humorous
drollery in his eye.
“I am,--that is, I was a few moments back. I mean, that whenever I
recall the words she spoke to me, I feel their full conviction.”
“Come, now, sit down here beside me! It can scarcely be anything I
may not be a party to. Just let me hear the case like a judge in
chamber”--and he smiled at an illustration that recalled his favorite
passion, “I won't pretend to say my sister has not a wiser head--as I
well know she has a far better heart--than myself, but now and then she
lets a prejudice or a caprice or even a mere apprehension run away
with her, and it's just possible it is some whim of this kind is now
uppermost.”
Conyers only shook his head dissentingly, and said nothing.
“Maybe I guess it,--I suspect that I guess it,” said Peter, with a sly
drollery about his mouth. “My sister has a notion that a young man and
a young woman ought no more to be in propinquity than saltpetre and
charcoal. She has been giving me a lecture on my blindness, and asking
if I can't see this, that, and the other; but, besides being the least
observant of mankind, I'm one of the most hopeful as regards whatever I
wish to be. Now we have all of us gone on so pleasantly together, with
such a thorough good understanding--such loyalty, as the French would
call it--that I can't, for the life of me, detect any ground for
mistrust or dread. Have n't I hit the blot, Conyers--eh?” cried he, as
the young fellow grew redder and redder, till his face became crimson.
“I assured Miss Barrington,” began he, in a faltering, broken voice,
“that I set too much store on the generous confidence you extended to
me to abuse it; that, received as I was, like one of your own blood
and kindred, I never could forget the frank trustfulness with which you
discussed everything before me, and made me, so to say, 'One of you.'
The moment, however, that my intimacy suggested a sense of constraint, I
felt the whole charm of my privilege would have departed, and it is for
this reason I am going!” The last word was closed with a deep sigh, and
he turned away his head as he concluded.
“And for this reason you shall not go one step,” said Peter, slapping
him cordially on the shoulder. “I verily believe that women think the
world was made for nothing but love-making, just as the crack engineer
believed rivers were intended by Providence to feed navigable canals;
but you and I know a little better, not to say that a young fellow with
the stamp gentleman indelibly marked on his forehead would not think of
making a young girl fresh from a convent--a mere child in the ways of
life--the mark of his attentions. Am I not right?”
“I hope and believe you are!”
“Stay where you are, then; be happy, and help us to feel so; and the
only pledge I ask is, that whenever you suspect Dinah to be a shrewder
observer and a truer prophet than her brother--you understand me--you'll
just come and say, 'Peter Barrington, I'm off; good-bye!'”
“There's my hand on it,” said he, grasping the old man's with warmth.
“There's only one point--I have told Miss Barrington that I would start
this evening.”
“She'll scarcely hold you very closely to your pledge.”
“But, as I understand her, you are going back to Ireland?”
“And you are coming along with us. Isn't that a very simple
arrangement?”
“I know it would be a very pleasant one.”
“It shall be, if it depend on me. I want to make you a fisherman too.
When I was a young man, it was my passion to make every one a good
horseman. If I liked a fellow, and found out that he couldn't ride to
hounds, it gave me a shock little short of hearing that there was a blot
on his character, so associated in my mind had become personal dash and
prowess in the field with every bold and manly characteristic. As I
grew older, and the rod usurped the place of the hunting-whip, I grew to
fancy that your angler would be the truest type of a companion; and if
you but knew,” added he, as a glassy fulness dulled his eyes, “what a
flattery it is to an old fellow when a young one will make a comrade
of him,--what a smack of bygone days it brings up, and what sunshine it
lets in on the heart,--take my word for it, you young fellows are never
so vain of an old companion as we are of a young one! What are you so
thoughtful about?”
“I was thinking how I was to make this explanation to Miss Barrington.”
“You need not make it at all; leave the whole case in my hands. My
sister knows that I owe you an _amende_ and a heavy one. Let this go
towards a part payment of it. But here she comes in search of me. Step
away quietly, and when we meet at the tea-table all will have been
settled.”
Conyers had but time to make his escape, when Miss Barrington came up.
“I thought I should find you mooning down here, Peter,” said she,
sharply. “Whenever there is anything to be done or decided on, a
Barrington is always watching a fly on a fish-pond.”
“Not the women of the family, Dinah,--not the women. But what great
emergency is before us now?”
“No great emergency, as you phrase it, at all, but what to men like
yourself is frequently just as trying,--an occasion that requires a
little tact. I have discovered--what I long anticipated has come to
pass--Conyers and Fifine are on very close terms of intimacy, which
might soon become attachment. I have charged him with it, and he has not
altogether denied it. On the whole he has behaved well, and he goes away
to-night.”
“I have just seen him, Dinah. I got at his secret, not without a little
dexterity on my part, and learned what had passed between you. We talked
the thing over very calmly together, and the upshot is--he's not going.”
“Not going! not going! after the solemn assurance he gave me!”
“But of which I absolved him, sister Dinah; or rather, which I made him
retract.”
“Peter Barrington, stop!” cried she, holding her hands to her temples.
“I want a little time to recover myself. I must have time, or I'll not
answer for my senses. Just reply to one question. I 'll ask you, have
you taken an oath--are you under a vow to be the ruin of your family?”
“I don't think I have, Dinah. I 'm doing everything for the best.”
“If there's a phrase in the language condemns the person that uses it,
it's 'Doing everything for the best.' What does it mean but a blind,
uninquiring, inconsiderate act, the work of a poor brain and sickly
conscience? Don't talk to me, sir, of doing for the best, but do the
best, the very best, according to the lights that guide you. You know
well, perfectly well, that Fifine has no fortune, and that this young
man belongs to a very rich and a very ambitious family, and that to
encourage what might lead to attachment between them would be to store
up a cruel wrong and a great disappointment.”
“My dear Dinah, you speak like a book, but I don't agree with you.”
“You don't. Will you please to state why?”
“In the first place, Dinah, forgive me for saying it, but we men do
not take _your_ view of these cases. We neither think that love is as
catching or as dangerous as the smallpox. We imagine that two young
people can associate together every day and yet never contract a lien
that might break their hearts to dissolve.”
“Talking politics together, perhaps; or the state of the Three per
Cents?”
“Not exactly that, but talking of fifty other things that interest
their time of life and tempers. Have they not songs, drawings, flowers,
landscapes, and books, with all their thousand incidents, to
discuss? Just remember what that writer who calls himself 'Author of
Waverley'--what he alone has given us of people to talk over just as if
we knew them.”
“Brother Peter, I have no patience with you. You enumerate one by one
all the ingredients, and you disparage the total. You tell of the flour,
and the plums, and the suet, and the candied lemon, but you cry out
against the pudding! Don't you see that the very themes you leave for
them all conduce to what you ignore, and that your music and painting
and romance-reading only lead to love-making? Don't you see this, or are
you in reality--I didn't want to say it, but you have made me--are you
an old fool?”
“I hope not, Dinah; but I'm not so sure you don't think me one.”
“It's nothing to the purpose whether I do or not,” said she; “the
question is, have you asked this young man to come back with us to
Ireland?”
“I have, and he is coming.”
“I could have sworn to it,” said she, with a sudden energy; “and if
there was anything more stupid, you 'd have done it also.” And with this
speech, more remarkable for its vigor than its politeness, she turned
away and left him.
Ere I close the chapter and the subject, let me glance, and only glance,
at the room where Conyers is now standing beside Josephine. She is
drawing, not very attentively or carefully, perhaps, and he is bending
over her and relating, as it seems, something that has occurred to him,
and has come to the end with the words, “And though I was to have gone
this evening, it turns out that now I am to stay and accompany you to
Ireland.”
“Don't sigh so painfully over it, however,” said she, gravely; “for when
you come to mention how distressing it is, I 'm sure they 'll let you
off.”
“Fifine,” said he, reproachfully, “is this fair, is this generous?”
“I don't know whether it be unfair, I don't want it to be generous,”
said she, boldly.
“In point of fact, then, you only wish for me here to quarrel with, is
that the truth?”
“I think it better fun disagreeing with you than always saying how
accurate you are, and how wise, and how well-judging. That atmosphere of
eternal agreement chokes me; I feel as if I were suffocating.”
“It's not a very happy temperament; it's not a disposition to boast of.”
“You never did hear me boast of it; but I have heard _you_ very
vainglorious about your easy temper and your facile nature, which
were simply indolence. Now, I have had more than enough of that in the
convent, and I long for a little activity.”
“Even if it were hazardous?”
“Even if it were hazardous,” echoed she. “But here comes Aunt Dinah,
with a face as stern as one of the sisters, and an eye that reminds me
of penance and bread and water; so help me to put up my drawings, and
say nothing of what we were talking.”
“My brother has just told me, Mr. Conyers,” said she, in a whisper, “a
piece of news which it only depends upon you to make a most agreeable
arrangement.”
“I trust you may count upon me, madam,” said he, in the same tone, and
bowed low as he spoke.
“Then come with me and let us talk it over,” said she, as she took his
arm and led him away.
END OF VOL. I.