Kitabı oku: «Barrington. Volume 1», sayfa 22

CHAPTER XXIX. THE RAMBLE

Day after day, week after week rolled on, and they still rambled about among the picturesque old villages on the Moselle, almost losing themselves in quaint unvisited spots, whose very names were new to them. To Barrington and his sister this picture of a primitive peasant life, with its own types of costume and custom, had an indescribable charm. Though debarred, from his ignorance of their dialect, of anything like intercourse with the people, he followed them in their ways with intense interest, and he would pass hours in the market-place, or stroll through the fields watching the strange culture, and wondering at the very implements of their labor. And the young people all this while? They were never separate. They read, and walked, and sat together from dawn to dark. They called each other Fifine and Freddy. Sometimes she sang, and he was there to listen; sometimes he drew, and she was as sure to be leaning over him in silent wonder at his skill; but with all this there was no love-making between them, – that is, no vows were uttered, no pledges asked for. Confidences, indeed, they interchanged, and without end. She told the story of her friendless infancy, and the long dreary years of convent life passed in a dull routine that had almost barred the heart against a wish for change; and he gave her the story of his more splendid existence, charming her imagination with a picture of that glorious Eastern life, which seemed to possess an instinctive captivation for her. And at last he told her, but as a great secret never to be revealed, how his father and her own had been the dearest, closest friends; that for years and years they had lived together like brothers, till separated by the accidents of life. Her father went away to a long distant station, and his remained to hold a high military charge, from which he was now relieved and on his way back to Europe. “What happiness for you, Freddy,” cried she, as her eyes ran over, “to see him come home in honor! What had I given that such a fate were mine!”

For an instant he accepted her words in all their flattery, but the hypocrisy was brief; her over-full heart was bursting for sympathy, and he was eager to declare that his sorrows were scarcely less than her own. “No, Fifine,” said he, “my father is coming back to demand satisfaction of a Government that has wronged him, and treated him with the worst ingratitude. In that Indian life men of station wield an almost boundless power; but if they are irresponsible as to the means, they are tested by the results, and whenever an adverse issue succeeds they fall irrevocably. What my father may have done, or have left undone, I know not. I have not the vaguest clew to his present difficulty, but, with his high spirit and his proud heart, that he would resent the very shadow of a reproof I can answer for, and so I believe, what many tell me, that it is a mere question of personal feeling, – some small matter in which the Council have not shown him the deference he felt his due, but which his haughty nature would not forego.”

Now these confidences were not love-making, nor anything approaching to it, and yet Josephine felt a strange half-pride in thinking that she had been told a secret which Conyers had never revealed to any other; that to her he had poured forth the darkest sorrow of his heart, and actually confided to her the terrors that beset him, for he owned that his father was rash and headstrong, and if he deemed himself wronged would be reckless in his attempt at justification.

“You do not come of a very patient stock, then,” said she, smiling.

“Not very, Fifine.”

“Nor I,” said she, as her eyes flashed brightly. “My poor Ayah, who died when I was but five years old, used to tell me such tales of my father’s proud spirit and the lofty way he bore himself, so that I often fancy I have seen him and heard him speak. You have heard he was a Rajah?” asked she, with a touch of pride.

The youth colored deeply as he muttered an assent, for he knew that she was ignorant of the details of her father’s fate, and he dreaded any discussion of her story.

“And these Rajahs,” resumed she, “are really great princes, with power of life and death, vast retinues, and splendid armies. To my mind, they present a more gorgeous picture than a small European sovereignty with some vast Protectorate looming over it. And now it is my uncle,” said she, suddenly, “who rules there.”

“I have heard that your own claims, Fifine, are in litigation,” said he, with a faint smile.

“Not as to the sovereignty,” said she, with a grave look, half rebukeful of his levity. “The suit grandpapa prosecutes in my behalf is for my mother’s jewels and her fortune; a woman cannot reign in the Tannanoohr.”

There was a haughty defiance in her voice as she spoke, that seemed to say, “This is a theme I will not suffer to be treated lightly, – beware how you transgress here.”

“And yet it is a dignity would become you well,” said he, seriously.

“It is one I would glory to possess,” said she, as proudly.

“Would you give me a high post, Fifine, if you were on the throne? – would you make me Commander-in-Chief of your army?”

“More likely that I would banish you from the realm,” said she, with a haughty laugh; “at least, until you learned to treat the head of the state more respectfully.”

“Have I ever been wanting in a proper deference?” said he, bowing, with a mock humility.

“If you had been, sir, it is not now that you had first heard of it,” said she, with a proud look, and for a few seconds it seemed as though their jesting was to have a serious ending. She was, however, the earliest to make terms, and in a tone of hearty kindliness said: “Don’t be angry, Freddy, and I ‘ll tell you a secret. If that theme be touched on, I lose my head: whether it be in the blood that circles in my veins, or in some early teachings that imbued my childhood, or long dreaming over what can never be, I cannot tell, but it is enough to speak of these things, and at once my imagination becomes exalted and my reason is routed.”

“I have no doubt your Ayah was to blame for this; she must have filled your head with ambitions, and hopes of a grand hereafter. Even I myself have some experiences of this sort; for as my father held a high post and was surrounded with great state and pomp, I grew at a very early age to believe myself a very mighty personage, and gave my orders with despotic insolence, and suffered none to gainsay me.”

“How silly!” said she, with a supercilious toss of her head that made Conyers flush up; and once again was peace endangered between them.

“You mean that what was only a fair and reasonable assumption in you was an absurd pretension in me, Miss Barrington; is it not so?” asked he, in a voice tremulous with passion.

“I mean that we must both have been very naughty children, and the less we remember of that childhood the better for us. Are we friends, Freddy?” and she held out her hand.

“Yes, if you wish it,” said he, taking her hand half coldly in his own.

“Not that way, sir. It is I who have condescended; not you.”

“As you please, Fifine, – will this do?” and kneeling with well-assumed reverence, he lifted her hand to his lips.

“If my opinion were to be asked, Mr. Conyers, I would say it would not do at all,” said Miss Dinah, coming suddenly up, her cheeks crimson, and her eyes flashing.

“It was a little comedy we were acting, Aunt Dinah,” said the girl, calmly.

“I beg, then, that the piece may not be repeated,” said she, stiffly.

“Considering how ill Freddy played his part, aunt, he will scarcely regret its withdrawal.”

Conyers, however, could not get over his confusion, and looked perfectly miserable for very shame.

“My brother has just had a letter which will call us homeward, Mr. Conyers,” said Miss Dinah, turning to him, and now using a tone devoid of all irritation. “Mr. Withering has obtained some information which may turn out of great consequence in our suit, and he wishes to consult with my brother upon it.”

“I hope – I sincerely hope – you do not think – ” he began, in a low voice.

“I do not think anything to your disadvantage, and I hope I never may,” replied she, in a whisper low as his own; “but bear in mind, Josephine is no finished coquette like Polly Dill, nor must she be the mark of little gallantries, however harmless. Josephine, grandpapa has some news for you; go to him.”

“Poor Freddy,” whispered the girl in the youth’s ear as she passed, “what a lecture you are in for!” “You mustn’t be angry with me if I play Duenna a little harshly, Mr. Conyers,” said Miss Dinah; “and I am far more angry with myself than you can be. I never concurred with my brother that romance reading and a young dragoon for a companion were the most suitable educational means for a young lady fresh from a convent, and I have only myself to blame for permitting it.”

Poor Conyers was so overwhelmed that he could say nothing; for though he might, and with a safe conscience, have answered a direct charge, yet against a general allegation he was powerless. He could not say that he was the best possible companion for a young lady, though he felt, honestly felt, that he was not a bad one. He had never trifled with her feelings, nor sought to influence her in his favor. Of all flirtation, such as he would have adventured with Polly Dill, for instance, he was guiltless. He respected her youth and ignorance of life too deeply to take advantage of either. He thought, perhaps, how ungenerous it would have been for a man of the world like himself to entrap the affections of a young, artless creature, almost a child in her innocence. He was rather fond of imagining himself “a man of the world,” old soldier, and what not, – a delusion which somehow very rarely befalls any but very young men, and of which the experience of life from thirty to forty is the sovereign remedy. And so overwhelmed and confused and addled was he with a variety of sensations, he heard very little of what Miss Dinah said to him, though that worthy lady talked very fluently and very well, concluding at last with words which awoke Conyers from his half-trance with a sort of shock. “It is for these reasons, my dear Mr. Conyers, – reasons whose force and nature you will not dispute, – that I am forced to do what, were the occasion less important, would be a most ungenerous task. I mean, I am forced to relinquish all the pleasure that I had promised ourselves from seeing you our guest at the cottage. If you but knew the pain I feel to speak these words – ”

“There is no occasion to say more, madam,” said he; for, unfortunately, so unprepared was he for the announcement, its chief effect was to wound his pride. “It is the second time within a few months destiny has stopped my step on your threshold. It only remains for me to submit to my fate, and not adventure upon an enterprise above my means.”

“You are offended with me, and yet you ought not,” said she, sorrowfully; “you ought to feel that I am consulting your interests fully as much as ours.”

“I own, madam,” said he, coldly, “I am unable to take the view you have placed before me.”

“Must I speak out, then? – must I declare my meaning in all its matter-of-fact harshness, and say that your family and your friends would have little scruple in estimating the discretion which encouraged your intimacy with my niece, – the son of the distinguished and highly favored General Conyers with the daughter of the ruined George Barring-ton? These are hard words to say, but I have said them.”

“It is to my father you are unjust now, Miss Harrington.”

“No, Mr. Conyers; there is no injustice in believing that a father loves his son with a love so large that it cannot exclude even worldliness. There is no injustice in believing that a proud and successful man would desire to see his son successful too; and we all know what we call success. I see you are very angry with me. You think me very worldly and very small-minded; perhaps, too, you would like to say that all the perils I talk of are of my own inventing; that Fifine and you could be the best of friends, and never think of more than friendship; and that I might spare my anxieties, and not fret for sorrows that have no existence; – and to all this I would answer, I ‘ll not risk the chance. No, Mr. Conyers, I ‘ll be no party to a game where the stakes are so unequal. What might give you a month’s sorrow might cost her the misery of a life long.”

“I have no choice left me. I will go, – I will go to-night, Miss Barrington.”

“Perhaps it would be better,” said she, gravely, and walked slowly away.

I will not tell the reader what harsh and cruel things Conyers said of every one and everything, nor how severely he railed at the world and its ways. Lord Byron had taught the youth of that age a very hearty and wholesome contempt for all manner of conventionalities, into which category a vast number of excellent customs were included, and Conyers could spout “Manfred” by heart, and imagine himself, on very small provocation, almost as great a man-hater; and so he set off on a long walk into the forest, determined not to appear at dinner, and equally determined to be the cause of much inquiry, and, if possible, of some uneasiness. “I wonder what that old-maid,” – alas for his gallantry, it was so he called her, – “what she would say if her harsh, ungenerous words had driven me to – ” what he did not precisely define, though it was doubtless associated with snow peaks and avalanches, eternal solitudes and demoniac possessions. It might, indeed, have been some solace to him had he known how miserable and anxious old Peter became at his absence, and how incessantly he questioned every one about him.

“I hope that no mishap has befallen that boy, Dinah; he was always punctual. I never knew him stray away in this fashion before.”

“It would be rather a severe durance, brother Peter, if a young gentleman could not prolong his evening walk without permission.”

“What says Fifine? I suspect she agrees with me.”

“If that means that he ought to be here, grandpapa, I do.”

“I must read over Withering’s letter again, brother,” said Miss Dinah, by way of changing the subject “He writes, you say, from the Home?”

“Yes; he was obliged to go down there to search for some papers he wanted, and he took Stapylton with him; and he says they had two capital days at the partridges. They bagged, – egad! I think it was eight or ten brace before two o’clock, the Captain or Major, I forget which, being a first-rate shot.”

“What does he say of the place, – how is it looking?”

“In perfect beauty. Your deputy, Polly, would seem to have fulfilled her part admirably. The garden in prime order; and that little spot next your own sitting-room, he says, is positively a better flower-show than one he paid a shilling to see in Dublin. Polly herself, too, comes in for a very warm share of his admiration.”

“How did he see her, and where?”

“At the Home. She was there the evening they arrived, and Withering insisted on her presiding at the tea-table for them.”

“It did not require very extraordinary entreaty, I will make bold to say, Peter.”

“He does not mention that; he only speaks of her good looks, and what he calls her very pretty manners. In a situation not devoid of a certain awkwardness he says she displayed the most perfect tact; and although doing the honors of the house, she, with some very nice ingenuity, insinuated that she was herself but a visitor.”

“She could scarce have forgotten herself so far as to think anything else, Peter,” said Miss Dinah, bridling up. “I suspect her very pretty manners were successfully exercised. That old gentleman is exactly of the age to be fascinated by her.”

“What! Withering, Dinah, – do you mean Withering?” cried he, laughing.

“I do, brother; and I say that he is quite capable of making her the offer of his hand. You may laugh, Peter Barrington, but my observation of young ladies has been closer and finer than yours.” And the glance she gave at Josephine seemed to say that her gun had been double-shotted.

“But your remark, sister Dinah, rather addresses itself to old gentlemen than to young ladies.”

“Who are much the more easily read of the two,” said she, tartly. “But really, Peter, I will own that I am more deeply concerned to know what Mr. Withering has to say of our lawsuit than about Polly Dill’s attractions.”

“He speaks very hopefully, – very hopefully, indeed. In turning over George’s papers some Hindoo documents have come to light, which Stapylton has translated, and it appears that there is a certain Moonshee, called Jokeeram, who was, or is, in the service of Meer Rustum, whose testimony would avail us much. Stapylton inclines to think he could trace this man for us. His own relations are principally in Madras, but he says he could manage to institute inquiries in Bengal.”

“What is our claim to this gentleman’s interest for us, Peter?”

“Mere kindness on his part; he never knew George, except from hearsay. Indeed, they could not have been contemporaries. Stapylton is not, I should say, above five-and-thirty.”

“The search after this creature with the horrid name will be, of course, costly, brother Peter. It means, I take it, sending some one out to India; that is to say, sending one fool after another. Are you prepared for this expense?”

“Withering opines it would be money well spent. What he says is this: The Company will not willingly risk another inquiry before Parliament, and if we show fight and a firm resolve to give the case publicity, they will probably propose terms. This Moonshee had been in his service, but was dismissed, and his appearance as a witness on our side would occasion great uneasiness.”

“You are going to play a game of brag, then, brother Peter, well aware that the stronger purse is with your antagonist?”

“Not exactly, Dinah; not exactly. We are strengthening our position so far that we may say, ‘You see our order of battle; would it not be as well to make peace?’ Listen to what Withering says.” And Peter opened a letter of several sheets, and sought out the place he wanted.

“Here it is, Dinah. ‘From one of these Hindoo papers we learn that Ram Shamsoolah Sing was not at the Meer’s residence during the feast of the Rhamadan, and could not possibly have signed the document to which his name and seal are appended. Jokeeram, who was himself the Moon-shee interpreter in Luckerabad, writes to his friend Cossien Aga, and says – ‘”

“Brother Peter, this is like the Arabian Nights in all but the entertainment to me, and the jumble of these abominable names only drives me mad. If you flatter yourself that you can understand one particle of the matter, it must be that age has sharpened your faculties, that’s all.”

“I’m not quite sure of that, Dinah,” said he, laughing. “I ‘m half disposed to believe that years are not more merciful to our brains than to our ankles; but I’ll go and take a stroll in the shady alleys under the linden-trees, and who knows how bright it will make me!”

“Am I to go with you, grandpapa?” said the young girl, rising.

“No, Fifine; I have something to say to you here,” said Miss Dinah; and there was a significance in the tone that was anything but reassuring.

CHAPTER XXX. UNDER THE LINDEN

That shady alley under the linden-trees was a very favorite walk with Peter Barrington. It was a nice cool lane, with a brawling little rivulet close beside it, with here and there a dark silent pool for the dragon-fly to skim over and see his bronzed wings reflected in the still water; and there was a rustic bench or two, where Peter used to sit and fancy he was meditating, while, in reality, he was only watching a speckled lizard in the grass, or listening to the mellow blackbird over his head. I have had occasion once before to remark on the resources of the man of imagination, but I really suspect that for the true luxury of idleness there is nothing like the temperament devoid of fancy. There is a grand breadth about those quiet, peaceful minds over which no shadows flit, and which can find sufficient occupation through the senses, and never have to go “within” for their resources. These men can sit the livelong day and watch the tide break over a rock, or see the sparrow teach her young to fly, or gaze on the bee as he dives into the deep cup of the foxglove, and actually need no more to fill the hours. For them there is no memory with its dark bygones, there is no looming future with its possible misfortunes; there is simply a half-sleepy present, with soft sounds and sweet odors through it, – a balmy kind of stupor, from which the awaking comes without a shock.

When Barrington reached his favorite seat, and lighted his cigar, – it is painting the lily for such men to smoke, – he intended to have thought over the details of Withering’s letter, which were both curious and interesting; he intended to consider attentively certain points which, as Withering said, “he must master before he could adopt a final resolve;” but they were knotty points, made knottier, too, by hard Hindoo words for things unknown, and names totally unpronounceable. He used to think that he understood “George’s claim” pretty well; he had fancied it was a clear and very intelligible case, that half a dozen honest men might have come to a decision on in an hour’s time; but now he began to have a glimmering perception that George must have been egregiously duped and basely betrayed, and that the Company were not altogether unreasonable in assuming their distrust of him. Now, all these considerations coming down upon him at once were overwhelming, and they almost stunned him. Even his late attempt to enlighten his sister Dinah on a matter he so imperfectly understood now recoiled upon him, and added to his own mystification.

“Well, well,” muttered he, at last, “I hope Tom sees his way through it,” – Tom was Withering, – “and if he does, there’s no need of my bothering my head about it. What use would there be in lawyers if they hadn’t got faculties sharper than other folk? and as to ‘making up my mind,’ my mind is made up already, that I want to win the cause if he’ll only show me how.” From these musings he was drawn off by watching a large pike, – the largest pike, he thought, he had ever seen, – which would from time to time dart out from beneath a bank, and after lying motionless in the middle of the pool for a minute or so, would, with one whisk of its tail, skim back again to its hiding-place. “That fellow has instincts of its own to warn him,” thought he; “he knows he was n’t safe out there. He sees some peril that I cannot see; and that ought to be the way with Tom, for, after all, the lawyers are just pikes, neither more nor less.” At this instant a man leaped across the stream, and hurriedly passed into the copse. “What! Mr. Conyers – Conyers, is that you?” cried Barrington; and the young man turned and came towards him. “I am glad to see you all safe and sound again,” said Peter; “we waited dinner half an hour for you, and have passed all the time since in conjecturing what might have befallen you.”

“Did n’t Miss Barrington say – did not Miss Barrington know – ” He stopped in deep confusion, and could not finish his speech.

“My sister knew nothing, – at least, she did not tell me any reason for your absence.”

“No, not for my absence,” began he once more, in the same embarrassment; “but as I had explained to her that I was obliged to leave this suddenly, – to start this evening – ”

“To start this evening! and whither?”

“I cannot tell; I don’t know, – that is, I have no plans.”

“My dear boy,” said the old man, affectionately, as he laid his hand on the other’s arm, “if you don’t know where you are going, take my word for it there is no such great necessity to go.”

“Yes, but there is,” replied he, quickly; “at least Miss Barrington thinks so, and at the time we spoke together she made me believe she was in the right.”

“And are you of the same opinion now?” asked Peter, with a humorous drollery in his eye.

“I am, – that is, I was a few moments back. I mean, that whenever I recall the words she spoke to me, I feel their full conviction.”

“Come, now, sit down here beside me! It can scarcely be anything I may not be a party to. Just let me hear the case like a judge in chamber” – and he smiled at an illustration that recalled his favorite passion, “I won’t pretend to say my sister has not a wiser head – as I well know she has a far better heart – than myself, but now and then she lets a prejudice or a caprice or even a mere apprehension run away with her, and it’s just possible it is some whim of this kind is now uppermost.”

Conyers only shook his head dissentingly, and said nothing.

“Maybe I guess it, – I suspect that I guess it,” said Peter, with a sly drollery about his mouth. “My sister has a notion that a young man and a young woman ought no more to be in propinquity than saltpetre and charcoal. She has been giving me a lecture on my blindness, and asking if I can’t see this, that, and the other; but, besides being the least observant of mankind, I’m one of the most hopeful as regards whatever I wish to be. Now we have all of us gone on so pleasantly together, with such a thorough good understanding – such loyalty, as the French would call it – that I can’t, for the life of me, detect any ground for mistrust or dread. Have n’t I hit the blot, Conyers – eh?” cried he, as the young fellow grew redder and redder, till his face became crimson.

“I assured Miss Barrington,” began he, in a faltering, broken voice, “that I set too much store on the generous confidence you extended to me to abuse it; that, received as I was, like one of your own blood and kindred, I never could forget the frank trustfulness with which you discussed everything before me, and made me, so to say, ‘One of you.’ The moment, however, that my intimacy suggested a sense of constraint, I felt the whole charm of my privilege would have departed, and it is for this reason I am going!” The last word was closed with a deep sigh, and he turned away his head as he concluded.

“And for this reason you shall not go one step,” said Peter, slapping him cordially on the shoulder. “I verily believe that women think the world was made for nothing but love-making, just as the crack engineer believed rivers were intended by Providence to feed navigable canals; but you and I know a little better, not to say that a young fellow with the stamp gentleman indelibly marked on his forehead would not think of making a young girl fresh from a convent – a mere child in the ways of life – the mark of his attentions. Am I not right?”

“I hope and believe you are!”

“Stay where you are, then; be happy, and help us to feel so; and the only pledge I ask is, that whenever you suspect Dinah to be a shrewder observer and a truer prophet than her brother – you understand me – you’ll just come and say, ‘Peter Barrington, I’m off; good-bye!’”

“There’s my hand on it,” said he, grasping the old man’s with warmth. “There’s only one point – I have told Miss Barrington that I would start this evening.”

“She’ll scarcely hold you very closely to your pledge.”

“But, as I understand her, you are going back to Ireland?”

“And you are coming along with us. Isn’t that a very simple arrangement?”

“I know it would be a very pleasant one.”

“It shall be, if it depend on me. I want to make you a fisherman too. When I was a young man, it was my passion to make every one a good horseman. If I liked a fellow, and found out that he couldn’t ride to hounds, it gave me a shock little short of hearing that there was a blot on his character, so associated in my mind had become personal dash and prowess in the field with every bold and manly characteristic. As I grew older, and the rod usurped the place of the hunting-whip, I grew to fancy that your angler would be the truest type of a companion; and if you but knew,” added he, as a glassy fulness dulled his eyes, “what a flattery it is to an old fellow when a young one will make a comrade of him, – what a smack of bygone days it brings up, and what sunshine it lets in on the heart, – take my word for it, you young fellows are never so vain of an old companion as we are of a young one! What are you so thoughtful about?”

“I was thinking how I was to make this explanation to Miss Barrington.”

“You need not make it at all; leave the whole case in my hands. My sister knows that I owe you an amende and a heavy one. Let this go towards a part payment of it. But here she comes in search of me. Step away quietly, and when we meet at the tea-table all will have been settled.”

Conyers had but time to make his escape, when Miss Barrington came up.

“I thought I should find you mooning down here, Peter,” said she, sharply. “Whenever there is anything to be done or decided on, a Barrington is always watching a fly on a fish-pond.”

“Not the women of the family, Dinah, – not the women. But what great emergency is before us now?”

“No great emergency, as you phrase it, at all, but what to men like yourself is frequently just as trying, – an occasion that requires a little tact. I have discovered – what I long anticipated has come to pass – Conyers and Fifine are on very close terms of intimacy, which might soon become attachment. I have charged him with it, and he has not altogether denied it. On the whole he has behaved well, and he goes away to-night.”

“I have just seen him, Dinah. I got at his secret, not without a little dexterity on my part, and learned what had passed between you. We talked the thing over very calmly together, and the upshot is – he’s not going.”

“Not going! not going! after the solemn assurance he gave me!”

“But of which I absolved him, sister Dinah; or rather, which I made him retract.”

“Peter Barrington, stop!” cried she, holding her hands to her temples. “I want a little time to recover myself. I must have time, or I’ll not answer for my senses. Just reply to one question. I ‘ll ask you, have you taken an oath – are you under a vow to be the ruin of your family?”