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;thatwas 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 hatedthemTories.”
“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.
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?”
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?”
“Thereissomebody there,” said Barrington, quietly, for he had now caught the words correctly; and taking a candle, he hastened out.
“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 ifhedoesn't likeme.”
“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.”
Very soon after daybreak the Colonel was up and at the bedside of his young friend.
“Sorry to wake you, Fred,” said he, gently; “but I have just got an urgent despatch, requiring me to set out at once for Dublin, and I did n't like to go without asking how you get on.”
“Oh, much better, sir. I can move the foot a little, and I feel assured it 's only a severe sprain.”
“That's all right. Take your own time, and don't attempt to move about too early. You are in capital quarters here, and will be well looked after. There is only one difficulty, and I don't exactly see how to deal with it. Our host is a reduced gentleman, brought down to keep an inn for support, but what benefit he can derive from it is not so very clear; for when I asked the man who fetched me hot water this morning for my bill, he replied that his master told him I was to be his guest here for a week, and not on any account to accept money from me. Ireland is a very strange place, and we are learning something new in it every day; but this is the strangest thing I have met yet.”
“Inmycase this would be impossible. I must of necessity give a deal of trouble,—not to say that it would add unspeakably to my annoyance to feel that I could not ask freely for what I wanted.”
“I have no reason to suppose, mind you, that you are to be dealt with as I have been, but it would be well to bear in mind who and what these people are.”
“And get away from them as soon as possible,” added the young fellow, half peevishly.
“Nay, nay, Fred; don't be impatient. You'll be delighted with the old fellow, who is a heart-and-soul sportsman. What station he once occupied I can't guess; but in the remarks he makes about horses and hounds, all his knowing hints on stable management and the treatment of young cattle, one would say that he must have had a large fortune and kept a large establishment.”
In the half self-sufficient toss of the head which received this speech, it was plain that the young man thought his Colonel was easily imposed on, and that such pretensions as these would have very little success withhim.
“I have no doubt some of your brother officers will take a run down to see how you get on, and, if so, I 'll send over a hamper of wine, or something of the kind, that you can manage to make him accept.”
“It will not be very difficult, I opine,” said the young man, laughingly.
“No, no,” rejoined the other, misconstruing the drift of his words. “You have plenty of tact, Fred. You 'll do the thing with all due delicacy. And now, good-bye. Let me hear how you fare here.” And with a hearty farewell they parted.
There was none astir in the cottage but Darby as the Colonel set out to gain the high-road, where the post-horses awaited him. From Darby, however, as he went along, he gathered much of his host's former history. It was with astonishment he learned that the splendid house of Barring-ton Hall, where he had been dining with an earl a few days ago, was the old family seat of that poor innkeeper; that the noble deer-park had once acknowledged him for master. “And will again, plase God!” burst in Darby, who thirsted for an opportunity to launch out into law, and all its bright hopes and prospects.
“We have a record on trial in Trinity Term, and an argument before the twelve Judges, and the case is as plain as the nose on your honor's face; for it was ruled by Chief Baron Medge, in the great cause of 'Peter against Todd, a widow,' that a settlement couldn't be broke by an estreat.”
“You are quite a lawyer, I see,” said the Colonel.
“I wish I was. I 'd rather be a judge on the bench than a king on his throne.”
“And yet I am beginning to suspect law may have cost your master dearly.”
“It is not ten, or twenty—no, nor thirty—thousand pounds would see him through it!” said Darby, with a triumph in his tone that seemed to proclaim a very proud declaration. “There 's families would be comfortable for life with just what we spent upon special juries.”
“Well, as you tell me he has no family, the injury has been all his own.”
“That's true. We're the last of the ould stock,” said he, sorrowfully; and little more passed between them, till the Colonel, on parting, put a couple of guineas in his hand, and enjoined him to look after the young friend he had left behind him.
It is now my task to introduce this young gentleman to my readers. Frederick Conyers, a cornet in his Majesty's Hussars, was the only son of a very distinguished officer, Lieutenant-General Conyers, a man who had not alone served with great reputation in the field, but held offices of high political trust in India, the country where all his life had been passed. Holding a high station as a political resident at a native court, wielding great power, and surrounded by an undeviating homage, General Conyers saw his son growing up to manhood with everything that could foster pride and minister to self-exaltation around him. It was not alone the languor and indolence of an Eastern life that he had to dread for him, but the haughty temper and overbearing spirit so sure to come out of habits of domination in very early life.
Though he had done all that he could to educate his son, by masters brought at immense cost from Europe, the really important element of education,—the self-control and respect for other's rights,—only to be acquired by daily life and intercourse with equals, this he could not supply; and he saw, at last, that the project he had so long indulged, of keeping his son with him, must be abandoned. Perhaps the rough speech of an old comrade helped to dispel the illusion, as he asked, “Are you bringing up that boy to be a Rajah?” His first thought was to send him to one of the Universities, his great desire being that the young man should feel some ambition for public life and its distinctions. He bethought him, however, that while the youth of Oxford and Cambridge enter upon a college career, trained by all the discipline of our public schools, Fred would approach the ordeal without any such preparation whatever. Without one to exert authority over him, little accustomed to the exercise of self-restraint, the experiment was too perilous.
To place him, therefore, where, from the very nature of his position, some guidance and control would be exercised, and where by the working of that model democracy—a mess—he would be taught to repress self-sufficiency and presumption, he determined on the army, and obtained a cornetcy in a regiment commanded by one who had long served on his own staff. To most young fellows such an opening in life would have seemed all that was delightful and enjoyable. To be just twenty, gazetted to a splendid cavalry corps, with a father rich enough and generous enough to say, “Live like the men about you, and don't be afraid that your checks will come back to you,” these are great aids to a very pleasant existence. Whether the enervation of that life of Oriental indulgence had now become a nature to him, or whether he had no liking for the service itself, or whether the change from a condition of almost princely state to a position of mere equality with others, chafed and irritated him, but so is it, he did not “take to” the regiment, nor the regiment to him.
Now it is a fact, and not a very agreeable fact either, that a man with a mass of noble qualities may fail to attract the kindliness and good feeling towards him which a far less worthy individual, merely by certain traits, or by the semblance of them, of a yielding, passive nature is almost sure to acquire.
Conyers was generous, courageous, and loyal, in the most chivalrous sense of that word, to every obligation of friendship. He was eminently truthful and honorable; but he had two qualities whose baneful influence would disparage the very best of gifts. He was “imperious,” and, in the phrase of his brother officers, “he never gave in.” Some absurd impression had been made on him, as a child, that obstinacy and persistency were the noblest of attributes, and that, having said a thing, no event or circumstance could ever occur to induce a change of opinion.
Such a quality is singularly unfitted to youth, and marvellously out of place in a regiment; hence was it that the “Rajah,” as he was generally called by his comrades, had few intimates, and not one friend amongst them.
If I have dwelt somewhat lengthily on these traits, it is because their possessor is one destined to be much before us in this history. I will but chronicle one other feature. I am sorry it should be a disqualifying one. Owing in great measure, perhaps altogether, to his having been brought up in the East, where Hindoo craft and subtlety were familiarized to his mind from infancy, he was given to suspect that few things were ever done from the motives ascribed to them, and that under the open game of life was another concealed game, which was the real one. As yet, this dark and pernicious distrust had only gone the length of impressing him with a sense of his own consummate acuteness, an amount of self-satisfaction, which my reader may have seen tingeing the few words he exchanged with his Colonel before separating.
Let us see him now as he sits in a great easy-chair, his sprained ankle resting on another, in a little honeysuckle-covered arbor of the garden, a table covered with books and fresh flowers beside him, while Darby stands ready to serve him from the breakfast-table, where a very tempting meal is already spread out.
“So, then, I can't see your master, it seems,” said Con-yers, half peevishly.
“Faix you can't; he's ten miles off by this. He got a letter by the post, and set out half an hour after for Kilkenny. He went to your honor's door, but seeing you was asleep he would n't wake you; 'but, Darby,' says he, 'take care of that young gentleman, and mind,' says he, 'that he wants for nothing.'”
“Very thoughtful ofhim,—very considerate indeed,” said the youth; but in what precise spirit it is not easy to say.
“Who lives about here? What gentlemen's places are there, I mean?”
“There's Lord Carrackmore, and Sir Arthur Godfrey, and Moore of Ballyduff, and Mrs. Powerscroft of the Grove—”
“Do any of these great folks come down here?”