"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 ill.u.s.tration that recalled his favorite pa.s.sion, "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 a.s.sured 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 ca.n.a.ls; 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 pa.s.sion 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 a.s.sociated 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 gla.s.sy 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 antic.i.p.ated has come to pa.s.s--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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.surance 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?"
"I don"t think I have, Dinah. I "m doing everything for the best."
"If there"s a phrase in the language condemns the person that uses it, it"s "Doing everything for the best." What does it mean but a blind, uninquiring, inconsiderate act, the work of a poor brain and sickly conscience? Don"t talk to me, sir, of doing for the best, but do the best, the very best, according to the lights that guide you. You know well, perfectly well, that Fifine has no fortune, and that this young man belongs to a very rich and a very ambitious family, and that to encourage what might lead to attachment between them would be to store up a cruel wrong and a great disappointment."
"My dear Dinah, you speak like a book, but I don"t agree with you."
"You don"t. Will you please to state why?"
"In the first place, Dinah, forgive me for saying it, but we men do not take _your_ view of these cases. We neither think that love is as catching or as dangerous as the smallpox. We imagine that two young people can a.s.sociate together every day and yet never contract a lien that might break their hearts to dissolve."
"Talking politics together, perhaps; or the state of the Three per Cents?"
"Not exactly that, but talking of fifty other things that interest their time of life and tempers. Have they not songs, drawings, flowers, landscapes, and books, with all their thousand incidents, to discuss? Just remember what that writer who calls himself "Author of Waverley"--what he alone has given us of people to talk over just as if we knew them."
"Brother Peter, I have no patience with you. You enumerate one by one all the ingredients, and you disparage the total. You tell of the flour, and the plums, and the suet, and the candied lemon, but you cry out against the pudding! Don"t you see that the very themes you leave for them all conduce to what you ignore, and that your music and painting and romance-reading only lead to love-making? Don"t you see this, or are you in reality--I didn"t want to say it, but you have made me--are you an old fool?"
"I hope not, Dinah; but I"m not so sure you don"t think me one."
"It"s nothing to the purpose whether I do or not," said she; "the question is, have you asked this young man to come back with us to Ireland?"
"I have, and he is coming."
"I could have sworn to it," said she, with a sudden energy; "and if there was anything more stupid, you "d have done it also." And with this speech, more remarkable for its vigor than its politeness, she turned away and left him.
Ere I close the chapter and the subject, let me glance, and only glance, at the room where Conyers is now standing beside Josephine. She is drawing, not very attentively or carefully, perhaps, and he is bending over her and relating, as it seems, something that has occurred to him, and has come to the end with the words, "And though I was to have gone this evening, it turns out that now I am to stay and accompany you to Ireland."
"Don"t sigh so painfully over it, however," said she, gravely; "for when you come to mention how distressing it is, I "m sure they "ll let you off."
"Fifine," said he, reproachfully, "is this fair, is this generous?"
"I don"t know whether it be unfair, I don"t want it to be generous,"
said she, boldly.
"In point of fact, then, you only wish for me here to quarrel with, is that the truth?"
"I think it better fun disagreeing with you than always saying how accurate you are, and how wise, and how well-judging. That atmosphere of eternal agreement chokes me; I feel as if I were suffocating."
"It"s not a very happy temperament; it"s not a disposition to boast of."
"You never did hear me boast of it; but I have heard _you_ very vainglorious about your easy temper and your facile nature, which were simply indolence. Now, I have had more than enough of that in the convent, and I long for a little activity."
"Even if it were hazardous?"
"Even if it were hazardous," echoed she. "But here comes Aunt Dinah, with a face as stern as one of the sisters, and an eye that reminds me of penance and bread and water; so help me to put up my drawings, and say nothing of what we were talking."
"My brother has just told me, Mr. Conyers," said she, in a whisper, "a piece of news which it only depends upon you to make a most agreeable arrangement."
"I trust you may count upon me, madam," said he, in the same tone, and bowed low as he spoke.
"Then come with me and let us talk it over," said she, as she took his arm and led him away.