Barrington Volume Ii Part 2

continued Barrington.

"Pray enlighten us as to the name that calls forth such enthusiasm."

"Stapylton, my dear Dinah,--Major Stapylton. In all my life I do not remember one instance to parallel with this generous and disinterested conduct. Listen to what Withering says,--not a man given to take up rash impressions in favor of a stranger. Listen to this: 'Stapylton has been very active,--written to friends, both at Calcutta and Agra, and shown, besides, an amount of acuteness in pursuit of what is really important, that satisfies me a right good common lawyer has been lost by his being a soldier.' And here, again he recurs to him: it is with reference to certain doc.u.ments: 'S. persists in believing that with proper diligence these may be recovered; he says that it is a common practice with the Moonshees to retain papers, in the hope of their being one day deemed of value; and he is fully persuaded that they have not been destroyed.

There is that about the man's manner of examining a question,--his patience, his instinctive seizure of what is of moment, and his invariable rejection of whatever is immaterial; and, lastly, his thorough appreciation of the character of that evidence which would have most weight with the Indian Board, which dispose me to regard him as an invaluable ally to our cause.'"

"Do me the favor to regard this picture of your friend now," said Miss Barrington, as she handed the letter from Conyers across the table.

Barrington read it over attentively. "And what does this prove, my dear sister?" said he. "This is the sort of stereotyped complaint of every young fellow who has been refused a leave. I have no doubt Hunter was too easy-tempered to have been strict in discipline, and the chances are these young dogs had everything their own way till Stapylton came amongst them. I find it hard to believe that any man likes unpopularity."

"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 ill.u.s.tration, 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 gla.s.s 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 a.s.size case."

"So like him!" said Dinah, scornfully; "he has never an ill.u.s.tration 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 a.s.sure 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 pa.s.sage in his letter which he had not summoned courage to read aloud. It was Withering's opinion that to inst.i.tute 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 circ.u.mstances 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 gla.s.s 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 c.o.c.kboat 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 circ.u.mstance 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 p.r.o.ne 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 a.s.sociates, 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 pa.s.sing 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 n.o.ble-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 inst.i.tuted 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 doc.u.ment, 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 s.e.x 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 embarra.s.sed 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 pa.s.s 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.