Barrington. Volume 2

“Perhaps not, Peter Barrington; but he may like tyranny more than he hates unpopularity; and, for my own part, this man is odious to me.”

“Don’t say so, Dinah, – don’t say so, I entreat of you, for he will be our guest here this very day.”

“Our guest! – why, is not the regiment under orders to leave?”

“So it is; but Withering says it would be a great matter if we could have a sort of consultation together before the Major leaves Ireland. There are innumerable little details which he sees ought to be discussed between us; and so he has persuaded him to give us a day, – perhaps two days, – no small boon, Dinah, from one so fully occupied as he is.”

“I wish he would not make the sacrifice, Peter.”

“My dear sister, are we so befriended by Fortune that we can afford to reject the kindness of our fellows?”

“I’m no believer in chance friendships, Peter Barrington; neither you nor I are such interesting orphans as to inspire sympathy at first sight.”

Josephine could not help a laugh at Miss Dinah’s illustration, and old Barriqgton himself heartily joined in the merriment, not sorry the while to draw the discussion into a less stern field. “Come, come, Dinah,” said he, gayly, “let us put out a few bottles of that old Madeira in the sun; and if Darby can find us a salmon-trout, we ‘ll do our best to entertain our visitors.”

“It never occurred to me to doubt the probability of their enjoying themselves, Peter; my anxieties were quite on another score.”

“Now, Fifine,” continued Barrington, “we shall see if Polly Dill has really made you the perfect housekeeper she boasted. The next day or two will put your talents to the test.”

“Oh, if we could only have Polly herself here!”

“What for? – on what pretext, Miss Barrington?” said Dinah, haughtily. “I have not, so far as I am aware, been accounted very ignorant of household cares.”

“Withering declares that your equal is not in Europe, Dinah.”

“Mr. Withering’s suffrage can always be bought by a mock-turtle soup, and a glass of Roman punch after it.”

“How he likes it, – how he relishes it! He says that he comes back to the rest of the dinner with the freshness of a man at an assize case.”

“So like him!” said Dinah, scornfully; “he has never an illustration that is not taken from the Four Courts. I remember one day, when asking for the bill of fare, he said, ‘Will you kindly let me look at the cause list.’ Prepare yourself, Josephine, for an avalanche of law anecdotes and Old Bailey stories, for I assure you you will hear nothing for the next three days but drolleries that have been engrossed on parchment and paid stamp duty to the Crown.”

Barrington gave a smile, as though in protest against the speech, and left the room. In truth, he was very anxious to be alone, and to think over, at his leisure, a short passage in his letter which he had not summoned courage to read aloud. It was Withering’s opinion that to institute the inquiries in India a considerable sum of money would be required, and he had left it for Barrington’s consideration whether it were wiser to risk the great peril of this further involvement, or once more to try what chance there might be of a compromise. Who knows what success might have attended the suggestion if the old lawyer had but employed any other word! Compromise, however, sounded to his ears like an unworthy concession, – a surrender of George’s honor. Compromise might mean money for his granddaughter, and shame to her father’s memory. Not, indeed, that Withering was, as a man, one to counsel such a course, but Withering was a lawyer, and in the same spirit that he would have taken a verdict for half his claim if he saw an adverse feeling in the jury-box, so he would bow to circumstances that were stronger than him, and accept the best he could, if he might not have all that he ought But could Barrington take this view? He thought not. His conviction was that the main question to establish was the fair fame and honor of his son; his guide was, how George himself would have acted – would have felt – in the same contingency; and he muttered, “He’d have been a hardy fellow who would have hinted at compromise to him.”

The next point was how the means for the coming campaign were to be provided. He had already raised a small sum by way of mortgage on the “Home,” and nothing remained but to see what further advance could be made on the same security. When Barrington was a great estated gentleman with a vast fortune at his command, it cost him wonderfully little thought to contract a loan, or even to sell a farm. A costly election, a few weeks of unusual splendor, an unfortunate night at play, had made such sacrifices nothing very unusual, and he would give his orders on this score as unconcernedly as he would bid his servant replenish his glass at table. Indeed, he had no more fear of exhausting his fortune than he felt as to out-drinking his cellar. There was enough there, as he often said, for those who should come after him. And now, what a change! He stood actually appalled at the thought of a mortgage for less than a thousand pounds. But so it is; the cockboat may be more to a man than was once the three-decker. The cottage was his all now; that lost, and they were houseless. Was it not a bold thing to risk everything on one more throw? There was the point over which he now pondered as he walked slowly along in the little shady alley between the laurel hedges. He had no friend nearer his heart than Withering, no one to whom he could unbosom himself so frankly and so freely, and yet this was a case on which he could not ask his counsel. All his life long he had strenuously avoided suffering a question of the kind to intervene between them. Of his means, his resources, his straits, or his demands, Withering knew positively nothing. It was with Barrington a point of delicacy to maintain this reserve towards one who was always his lawyer, and often his guest. The very circumstance of his turning innkeeper was regarded by Withering as savoring far more of caprice than necessity, and Barrington took care to strengthen this impression.

If, then, Withering’s good sense and worldly knowledge would have been invaluable aids to him in this conjunction, he saw he could not have them. The same delicacy which debarred him heretofore, would still interpose against his appeal to that authority. And then he thought how he had once troops of friends to whom he could address himself for counsel. There is nothing more true, indeed, than the oft-uttered scoff on the hollowness of those friendships which attach to the days of prosperous fortune, and the world is very prone to point to the utter loneliness of him who has been shipwrecked by Fate; but let us be just in our severity, and let us own that a man’s belongings, his associates, his – what common parlance calls – friends, are the mere accidents of his station, and they no more accompany him in his fall than do the luxuries he has forfeited. From the level from which he has lapsed they have not descended. They are there, living to-day as they lived yesterday. If their sympathy is not with him, it is because neither are they themselves; they cross each other no more. Such friendships are like the contracts made with a crew for a particular voyage, – they end with the cruise. No man ever understood this better than Barrington; no man ever bore the world less of ill will for its part towards himself. If now and then a sense of sadness would cloud him at some mark of passing forgetfulness, he would not own to the gloomy feeling; while to any show of recognition, to any sign of a grateful remembrance of the past, he would grow boastful to very vanity. “Look there, Dinah,” he would say, “what a noble-hearted fellow that is! I scarcely was more than commonly civil to him formerly, and you saw how courteous he was in making a place for us, how heartily he hoped I was in good health.”

“I’ll send over to Dill and have a talk with him,” was Barrington’s last resolve, as he turned the subject over and over in his mind. “Dill ‘s a shrewd fellow, and I ‘m not sure that he has not laid by a little money; he might feel no objection to a good investment for it, with such security.” And he looked around as he spoke on the trees, some of which he planted, every one of which he knew, and sighed heavily. “He ‘ll scarce love the spot more than I did,” muttered he, and walked along with his head down. After a while he took out Withering’s letter from his pocket and re-read it. Somehow, it was hard to say why, it did not read so promisingly as at first. The difficulties to be encountered were very stubborn ones, so much so that he very palpably hinted how much better some amicable settlement would be than an open contest wherein legal subtlety and craft should be evoked. There was so much of that matter always taken for granted, to be proved, to be demonstrated true on evidence, that it actually looked appalling. “Of the searches and inquiries instituted in India,” wrote Withering, “I can speak but vaguely; but I own the very distance magnifies them immensely to my eyes.” “Tom is growing old, not a doubt of it,” muttered Barrington; “these were not the sort of obstacles that could have terrified him once on a time. He ‘d have said, ‘If there ‘s evidence, we ‘ll have it; if there’s a document, we ‘ll find it.’ It’s India, that far-away land, that has frightened him. These lawyers, like certain sportsmen, lose their nerve if you take them out of their own country. It ‘s the new style of fences they can’t face. Well, thanks to him who gave it, I have my stout heart still, and I ‘ll go on.”

“Going on” was, however, not the easy task it first seemed, nor was the pleasantest part of it the necessity of keeping the secret from his sister. Miss Dinah had from the first discouraged the whole suit. The adversary was too powerful, the odds against them were too great; the India Board had only to protract and prolong the case and they must be beaten from sheer exhaustion. How, then, should he reconcile her to mortgaging the last remnant of all their fortune for “one more throw on the table”? “No chance of persuading a woman that this would be wise,” said he. And he thought, when he had laid the prejudice of sex as the ground of error, he had completed his argument.

“Going on” had its fine generous side about it, also, that cheered and elevated him. It was for George he was doing it, and that dear girl, whose every trait recalled her father; for let those explain it who can, she, who had never seen nor even heard of her father since her infancy, inherited all his peculiar ways and habits, and every trick of his manner. Let me own that these, even more than any qualities of sterling worth, endeared her to her grandfather; and just as he had often declared no rank or position that could befall George would have been above his deserts, so he averred that if Josephine were to be the greatest heiress in England to-morrow, she would be a grace and an ornament to the station. If Aunt Dinah would occasionally attempt to curb this spirit, or even limit its extravagance, his invariable answer was, “It may be all as you say, sister, but for the life of me I cannot think my swans to be geese.”

As he thus mused and meditated, he heard the wicket of the garden open and shut, and shortly afterwards a half-shambling shuffling step on the gravel. Before he had time to speculate on whose it should be, he saw Major M’Cormick limping laboriously towards him.

“How is this, Major?” cried he; “has the change of weather disagreed with your rheumatism?”

“It’s the wound; it’s always worse in the fall of the year,” croaked the other. “I’d have been up to see you before but for the pains, and that old fool Dill – a greater fool myself for trusting him – made me put on a blister down what he calls the course of the nerve, and I never knew torture till I tried it.”

“My sister Dinah has, I verily believe, the most sovereign remedy for these pains.”

“Is it the green draught? Oh, don’t I know it,” burst out the Major. “You might hear my shouts the day I took it down at Inistioge. There was n’t a bit of skin left on my lips, and when I wiped the perspiration off my head my hair came off too. Aquafortis is like egg-flip compared to that blessed draught; and I remember well how I crawled to my writing-desk and wrote, ‘Have me opened,’ for I knew I was poisoned.”

“Did you tell my sister of your sufferings?”

“To be sure I did, and she only smiled and said that I took it when I was fasting, or when I was full, I forget which; and that I ought to have taken a brisk walk, and I only able to creep; and only one spoonful at a time, and it was the whole bottle I swallowed. In fact, she owned afterwards that nothing but the strength of a horse could have saved me.”

Peter found it very hard to maintain a decent gravity at the play of the Major’s features, which during the narrative recalled every dire experience of his medicine.

“Well, come into the house and we’ll give you something better,” said Barrington, at last.

“I think I saw your granddaughter at the window as I came by, – a good-looking young woman, and not so dark as I suspected she ‘d be.”

“There’s not a handsomer girl in Ireland; and as to skin, she ‘s not as brown as her father.”

“It wouldn’t be easy to be that; he was about three shades deeper than a Portuguese.”

“George Barrington was confessedly the finest-looking fellow in the King’s army, and as English-looking a gentleman as any man in it.”

The tone of this speech was so palpably that of one who would not stand the very shadow of a rejoinder, that the Major held his peace, and shuffled along without a word. The thought, however, of administering a rebuke to any one within the precincts of his home was so repugnant to Barrington’s nature, that he had scarcely uttered the words than he was eager to repair them, and with a most embarrassed humility he stammered out something about their recent tour abroad and all the enjoyment it had given them.

“Maybe so,” rejoined the other, dryly; “but I never saw any pleasure in spending money you could keep.”

“My dear Major, that is precisely the very money that does procure pleasure.”

“Wasn’t that a post-chaise I saw through the trees? There it is again; it’s making straight for the ‘Home,’” said M’Cormick, pointing with his stick.

“Yes,” said Peter; “I was expecting a couple of friends to pass a day or so with me here. Will you excuse me if I hurry forward to welcome them?”

“Don’t make a stranger of me; I’ll saunter along at my leisure,” said the Major, as Barrington walked briskly on towards the cottage.

CHAPTER III. A SMALL DINNER-PARTY

Withering and Stapylton had arrived fully two hoars earlier than they were expected, and Miss Dinah was too deeply engaged in the household cares that were to do them honor to receive them. Josephine, too, was not less busily occupied, for her conventual education had made her wonderfully skilful in all sorts of confectionery, and she was mistress of devices in spun sugar and preserved fruits, which rose in Aunt Dinah’s eyes to the dignity of high art. Barrington, however, was there to meet them, and with a cordial welcome which no man could express more gracefully. The luncheon hour passed pleasantly over, for all were in good humor and good spirits. Withering’s holiday always found him ready to enjoy it, and when could old Peter feel so happy as when he had a guest beneath his roof who thoroughly appreciated the cottage, and entered into the full charm of its lovely scenery! Such was Stapylton; he blended a fair liking for the picturesque with a natural instinct for comfort and homeliness, and he saw in this spot what precisely embraced both elements. It was very beautiful; but, better still, it was very lovable. “It was so rare” – so, at least, he told Barrington – “to find a cottage wherein internal comfort had not been sacrificed to some requirement of outward show. There was only one way of doing this,” said he, as Barrington led him through the little flower-garden, giving glimpses of the rooms within as they passed, – “only one way, Mr. Barrington; a man must have consummate taste, and strong credit at his banker’s.” Barrington’s cheek grew a thought redder, and he smiled that faint sad smile which now and then will break from one who feels that he could rebut what he has just heard, if it were but right or fitting he should do so. Of course, amongst really distressing sensations this has no place; but yet there is a peculiar pain in being complimented by your friend on the well-to-do condition of your fortune when your conscience is full of the long watching hours of the night, or, worse still, the first awaking thought of difficulties to which you open your eyes of a morning. It is not often, nor are there many to whom you can say, “I cannot tell the day or the hour when all this shall pass away from me; my head is racked with care, and my heart heavy with anxiety.” How jarring to be told of all the things you ought to do! You who could so well afford it! And how trying to have to take shelter from your necessity under the shadow of a seeming stinginess, and to bear every reflection on your supposed thrift rather than own to your poverty!

If Withering had been with them as they strolled, this, perhaps, might have been avoided; he had all a lawyer’s technical skill to change a topic; but Withering had gone to take his accustomed midday nap, the greatest of all the luxuries his time of idleness bestowed upon him.

Now, although Stapylton’s alludings – and they were no more – to Barrington’s gifts of fortune were such as perfectly consisted with good taste and good breeding, Barring-ton felt them all painfully, and probably nothing restrained him from an open disclaimer of their fitness save the thought that from a host such an avowal would sound ungracefully. “It is my duty now,” reasoned he, “to make my guest feel that all the attentions he receives exact no sacrifice, and that the pleasure his presence affords is unalloyed by a single embarrassment. If he must hear of my difficulties, let it be when he is not beneath my roof.” And so he let Stapylton talk away about the blessings of tranquil affluence, and the happiness of him whose only care was to find time for the enjoyments that were secured to him. He let him quote Pope and Wharton and Edmund Burke, and smiled the blandest concurrence with what was irritating him almost to fever.

“This is Withering’s favorite spot,” said Peter, as they gained the shade of a huge ilex-tree, from which two distinct reaches of the river were visible.

“And it shall be mine, too,” said Stapylton, throwing himself down in the deep grass; “and as I know you have scores of things which claim your attention, let me release you, while I add a cigar – the only possible enhancement – to the delight of this glorious nook.”

“Well, it shall be as you wish. We dine at six. I ‘ll go and look after a fish for our entertainment;” and Barrington turned away into the copse, not sorry to release his heart by a heavy sigh, and to feel he was alone with his cares.

Let us turn for a moment to M’Cormick, who continued to saunter slowly about the garden, in the expectation of Barrington’s return. Wearied at length with waiting, and resolved that his patience should not go entirely unrequited, he turned into a little shady walk on which the windows of the kitchen opened. Stationing himself there, in a position to see without being seen, he took what he called an observation of all within. The sight was interesting, even if he did not bring to it the appreciation of a painter. There, upon a spacious kitchen table, lay a lordly sirloin, richly and variously colored, flanked by a pair of plump guinea-hens and a fresh salmon of fully twenty pounds’ weight. Luscious fruit and vegetables were heaped and mingled in a wild profusion, and the speckled plumage of game was half hidden under the massive bunches of great hot-house grapes. It is doubtful if Sneyders himself could have looked upon the display with a higher sense of enjoyment It is, indeed, a question between the relative merits of two senses, and the issue lies between the eye and the palate.

Wisely reasoning that such preparations were not made for common guests, M’Cormick ran over in his mind all the possible and impossible names he could think of, ending at last with the conviction it was some “Nob” he must have met abroad, and whom in a moment of his expansive hospitality he had invited to visit him. “Isn’t it like them!” muttered he. “It would be long before they’d think of such an entertainment to an old neighbor like myself; but here they are spending – who knows how much? – for somebody that to-morrow or next day won’t remember their names, or maybe, perhaps, laugh when they think of the funny old woman they saw, – the ‘Fright’ with the yellow shawl and the orange bonnet. Oh, the world, the world!”

It is not for me to speculate on what sort of thing the world had been, if the Major himself had been intrusted with the control and fashion of it; but I have my doubts that we are just as well off as we are. “Well, though they haven’t the manners to say ‘M’Cormick; will you stop and dine?’ they haven’t done with me yet; not a bit!” And with this resolve he entered the cottage, and found his way to the drawing-room. It was unoccupied; so he sat himself down in a comfortable armchair, to await events and their issue. There were books and journals and newspapers about; but the Major was not a reader, and so he sat musing and meditating, while the time went by. Just as the clock struck five, Miss Dinah, whose various cares of housewifery had given her a very busy day, was about to have a look at the drawing-room before she went to dress, and being fully aware that one of her guests was asleep, and the other full stretched beside the river, she felt she could go her “rounds” without fear of being observed. Now, whatever had been the peculiar functions she was lately engaged in, they had exacted from her certain changes in costume more picturesque than flattering. In the first place, the sleeves of her dress were rolled up above the elbows, displaying arms more remarkable for bone than beauty. A similar curtailment of her petticoats exhibited feet and ankles which – not to be ungallant – might be called massive rather than elegant; and lastly, her two long curls of auburn hair – curls which, in the splendor of her full toilette, were supposed to be no mean aids to her captivating powers – were now tastefully festooned and fastened to the back of her head, pretty much as a pair of hawsers are occasionally disposed on the bow of a merchantman! Thus costumed, she had advanced into the middle of the room before she saw the Major.

“A pleasure quite unexpected, sir, is this,” said she, with a vigorous effort to shake out what sailors would call her “lower courses.” “I was not aware that you were here.”

“Indeed, then, I came in myself, just like old times. I said this morning, if it ‘s fine to-day, I ‘ll just go over to the ‘Fisherman’s Home.’”

“‘The Home,’ sir, if you please. We retain so much of the former name.” But just as she uttered the correction, a chance look at the glass conveyed the condition of her head-gear, – a startling fact which made her cheeks perfectly crimson. “I lay stress upon the change of name, sir,” continued she, “as intimating that we are no longer innkeepers, and expect something, at least, of the deference rendered to those who call their house their own.”

“To be sure, and why not?” croaked out the Major, with a malicious grin. “And I forgot all about it, little thinking, indeed, to surprise you in ‘dishabille,’ as they call it.”

“You surprise me, sir, every time we meet,” said she, with flashing eyes. “And you make me feel surprised with myself for my endurance!” And so saying, she retired towards the door, covering her retreat as she went by every object of furniture that presented itself, and, like a skilful general, defending her rear by every artifice of the ground. Thus did she exit, and with a bang of the door – as eloquent as any speech – close the colloquy.

“Faix! and the Swiss costume doesn’t become you at all!” said the Major, as he sat back in his chair, and cackled over the scene.

As Miss Barrington, boiling with passion, passed her brother’s door, she stopped to knock.

“Peter!” cried she. “Peter Barrington, I say!” The words were, however, not well out, when she heard a step ascending the stair. She could not risk another discovery like the last; so, opening the door, she said, “That hateful M’Cormick is below. Peter, take care that on no account – ”