Barrington

"Just none at all, not to mislead you," said M"Cabe, in a voice quite devoid of its late whining intonation.

"Is there not a chaise or a car to be had?"

"Sorrow one. Dr. Dill has a car, to be sure, but not for hire."

"Oh, Dr. Dill lives here. I forgot that. Go and tell him I wish to see him."

The landlord withdrew in dogged silence, but returned in about ten minutes, to say that the doctor had been sent for to the "Fisherman"s Home," and Mr. Barrington was so ill it was not likely he would be back that night.

"So ill, did you say?" cried Conyers. "What was the attack,--what did they call it?"

""T is some kind of a "plexy, they said. He"s a full man, and advanced in years, besides."

"Go and tell young Mr. Dill to come over here."

"He"s just gone off with the cuppin" instruments. I saw him steppin"

into the boat."

"Let me have a messenger; I want a man to take a note up to Miss Barrington, and fetch my writing-desk here."

In his eager anxiety to learn how Mr. Barrington was, Conyers hastily scratched off a few lines; but on reading them over, he tore them up: they implied a degree of interest on his part which, considering the late treatment extended to him, was scarcely dignified. He tried again; the error was as marked on the other side. It was a cold and formal inquiry. "And yet," said he, as he tore this in fragments, "one thing is quite clear,--this illness is owing to _me!_ But for _my_ presence there, that old man had now been hale and hearty; the impressions, rightfully or wrongfully, which the sight of _me_ and the announcement of _my_ name produced are the cause of this malady. I cannot deny it."

With this revulsion of feeling he wrote a short but kindly worded note to Miss Barrington, in which, with the very faintest allusion to himself, he begged for a few lines to say how her brother was. He would have added something about the sorrow he experienced in requiting all her kindness by this calamitous return, but he felt that if the case should be a serious one, all reference to himself would be misplaced and impertinent.

The messenger despatched, he sat down beside his fire, the only light now in the room, which the shade of coming night had darkened. He was sad and dispirited, and ill at ease with his own heart. Mr. M"Cabe, indeed, appeared with a suggestion about candles, and a shadowy hint that if his guest speculated of dining at all, it was full time to intimate it; but Conyers dismissed him with a peremptory command not to dare to enter the room again until he was summoned to it. So odious to him was the place, the landlord, and all about him, that he would have set out on foot had his ankle been only strong enough to bear him. "What if he were to write to Stapylton to come and fetch him away? He never liked the man; he liked him less since the remark Miss Barrrington had made upon him from mere reading of his letter, but what was he to do?"

While he was yet doubting what course to take, he heard the voices of some new arrivals outside, and, strange enough, one seemed to be Stapylton"s. A minute or two after, the travellers had entered the room adjoining his own, and from which a very frail part.i.tion of lath and plaster alone separated him.

"Well, Barney," said a harsh, grating voice, addressing the landlord, "what have you got in the larder? We mean to dine with you."

"To dine here, Major!" exclaimed M"Cabe. "Well, well, wondhers will never cease." And then hurriedly seeking to cover a speech not very flattering to the Major"s habits of hospitality, "Sure, I "ve a loin of pork, and there "s two chickens and a trout fresh out of the water, and there"s a cheese; it isn"t mine, to be sure, but Father Cody"s, but he "ll not miss a slice out of it; and barrin" you dined at the "Fisherman"s Home," you "d not get betther."

"That "s where we were to have dined by right," said the Major, crankily,--"myself and my friend here,--but we"re disappointed, and so we stepped in here, to do the best we can."

"Well, by all accounts, there won"t be many dinners up there for some time."

"Why so?"

"Ould Barrington was took with a fit this afternoon, and they say he won"t get over it."

"How was it?--what brought it on?"

"Here"s the way I had it. Ould Peter was just come home from Kilkenny, and had brought the Attorney-General with him to stay a few days at the cottage, and what was the first thing he seen but a man that come all the way from India with a writ out against him for some of mad George Barrington"s debts; and he was so overcome by the shock, that he fainted away, and never came rightly to himself since."

"This is simply impossible," said a voice Conyers well knew to be Stapylton"s.

"Be that as it may, I had it from the man that came for the doctor, and what"s more, he was just outside the window, and could hear ould Barrington cursin" and swearin" about the man that ruined his son, and brought his poor boy to the grave; but I "ll go and look after your honor"s dinner, for I know more about that."

"I have a strange half-curiosity to know the correct version of this story," said Stapylton, as the host left the room. "The doctor is a friend of yours, I think. Would he step over here, and let us hear the matter accurately?"

"He"s up at the cottage now, but I "ll get him to come in here when he returns."

If Conyers was shocked to hear how even this loose version of what had occurred served to heighten the anxiety his own fears created, he was also angry with himself at having learned the matter as he did. It was not in his nature to play the eavesdropper, and he had, in reality, heard what fell between his neighbors, almost ere he was aware of it. To apprise them, therefore, of the vicinity of a stranger, he coughed and sneezed, poked the fire noisily, and moved the chairs about; but though the disturbance served to prevent him from hearing, it did not tend to impress any greater caution upon them, for they talked away as before, and more than once above the din of his own tumult, he heard the name of Barrington, and even his own, uttered.

Unable any longer to suffer the irritation of a position so painful, he took his hat, and left the house. It was now night, and so dark that he had to stand some minutes on the door-sill ere he could accustom his sight to the obscurity. By degrees, however, he was enabled to guide his steps, and, pa.s.sing through the little square, he gained the bridge; and here he resolved to walk backwards and forwards till such time as he hoped his neighbors might have concluded their convivialities, and turned homeward.

A thin cold rain was falling, and the night was cheerless, and without a star; but his heart was heavy, and the dreariness without best suited that within him. For more than an hour he continued his lonely walk, tormented by all the miseries his active ingenuity could muster. To have brought sorrow and mourning beneath the roof where you have been sheltered with kindness is sad enough, but far sadder is it to connect the calamity you have caused with one dearer to you than yourself, and whose innocence, while a.s.sured of, you cannot vindicate. "My father never wronged this man, for the simple reason that he has never been unjust to any one. It is a gross injustice to accuse him! If Colonel Barrington forfeited my father"s friendship, who could doubt where the fault lay? But I will not leave the matter questionable. I will write to my father and ask him to send me such a reply as may set the issue at rest forever; and then I will come down here, and, with my father"s letter in my hand, say, "The mention of my name was enough, once on a time, to make you turn away from me on the very threshold of your own door--"" When he had got thus far in his intended appeal, his ear was suddenly struck by the word "Conyers," uttered by one of two men who had pa.s.sed him the moment before, and now stood still in one of the projections of the bridge to talk. He as hastily recognized Dr. Dill as the speaker. He went on thus: "Of course it was mere raving, but one must bear in mind that memory very often is the prompter of these wanderings; and it was strange how persistently he held to the one theme, and continued to call out, "It was not fair, sir! It was not manly! You know it yourself, Conyers; you cannot deny it!""

"But you attach no importance to such wanderings, doctor?" asked one whose deep-toned voice betrayed him to be Stapylton.

"I do; that is, to the extent I have mentioned. They are incoherencies, but they are not without some foundation. This Conyers may have had his share in that famous accusation against Colonel Barrington,--that well-known charge I told you of; and if so, it is easy to connect the name with these ravings."

"And the old man will die of this attack," said Stapylton, half musingly.

"I hope not. He has great vigor of const.i.tution; and old as he is, I think he will rub through it."

"Young Conyers left for Kilkenny, then, immediately?" asked he.

"No; he came down here, to the village. He is now at the inn."

"At the inn, here? I never knew that. I am sorry I was not aware of it, doctor; but since it is so, I will ask of you not to speak of having seen me here. He would naturally take it ill, as his brother officer, that I did not make him out, while, as you see, I was totally ignorant of his vicinity."

"I will say nothing on the subject, Captain," said the doctor. "And now one word of advice from you on a personal matter. This young gentleman has offered to be of service to my son--"

Conyers, hitherto spellbound while the interest attached to his father, now turned hastily from the spot and walked away, his mind not alone charged with a heavy care, but full of an eager anxiety as to wherefore Stapylton should have felt so deeply interested in Barrington"s illness, and the causes that led to it,--Stapylton, the most selfish of men, and the very last in the world to busy himself in the sorrows or misfortunes of a stranger. Again, too, why had he desired the doctor to preserve his presence there as a secret? Conyers was exactly in the frame of mind to exaggerate a suspicion, or make a mere doubt a grave question. While be thus mused, Stapylton and the doctor pa.s.sed him on their way towards the village, deep in converse, and, to all seeming, in closest confidence.

"Shall I follow him to the inn, and declare that I overheard a few words on the bridge which give me a claim to explanation? Shall I say, "Captain Stapylton, you spoke of my father, just now, sufficiently aloud to be overheard by me as I pa.s.sed, and in your tone there was that which ent.i.tles me to question you? Then if he should say, "Go on; what is it you ask for?" shall I not be sorely puzzled to continue? Perhaps, too, he might remind me that the mode in which I obtained my information precludes even a reference to it. He is one of those fellows not to throw away such an advantage, and I must prepare myself for a quarrel.

Oh, if I only had Hunter by me! What would I not give for the brave Colonel"s counsel at such a moment as this?"

Of this sort were his thoughts as he strolled up and down for hours, wearing away the long "night watches," till a faint grayish tinge above the horizon showed that morning was not very distant. The whole landscape was wrapped in that cold mysterious tint in which tower and hill-top and spire are scarcely distinguishable from each other, while out of the low-lying meadows already arose the bluish vapor that proclaims the coming day. The village itself, overshadowed by the mountain behind it, lay a black, unbroken ma.s.s.

Not a light twinkled from a window, save close to the river"s bank, where a faint gleam stole forth and flickered on the water.

Who has not felt the strange interest that attaches to a solitary light seen thus in the tranquil depth of a silent night? How readily do we a.s.sociate it with some incident of sorrow! The watcher beside the sick-bed rises to the mind, or the patient sufferer himself trying to cheat the dull hours by a book, or perhaps some poor son of toil arising to his daily round of labor, and seated at that solitary meal which no kind word enlivens, no companionship beguiles. And as I write, in what corner of earth are not such scenes pa.s.sing,--such dark shadows moving over the battlefield of life?

In such a feeling did Conyers watch this light as, leaving the high-road, he took a path that led along the river towards it. As he drew nigher, he saw that the light came from the open window of a room which gave upon a little garden,--a mere strip of ground fenced off from the path by a low paling. With a curiosity he could not master, he stopped and looked in. At a large table, covered with books and papers, and on which a skull also stood, a young man was seated, his head leaning on his hand, apparently in deep thought, while a girl was slowly pacing the little chamber as she talked to him.

"It does not require," said she, in a firm voice, "any great effort of memory to bear in mind that a nerve, an artery, and a vein always go in company."

"Not for you, perhaps,--not for you, Polly."

"Not for any one, I "m sure. Your fine dragoon friend with the sprained ankle might be brought to that amount of instruction by one telling of it."

"Oh, he "s no fool, I promise you, Polly. Don"t despise him because he has plenty of money and can lead a life of idleness."

"I neither despise nor esteem him, nor do I mean that he should divert our minds from what we are at. Now for the popliteal s.p.a.ce. Can you describe it? Do you know where it is, or anything about it?"

"I do," said he, doggedly, as he pushed his long hair back from his eyes, and tried to think,--"I do, but I must have time. You must n"t hurry me."

She made no reply, but continued her walk in silence.