Barrington. Volume 1

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.

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?”

“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.

“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.