Barrington. Volume 2

“There’s a slight canonical objection, if you must know,” said Stapylton, with a smile.

“Oh, I perceive, – a wife already! In India, perhaps?”

“I have no time just now for a long story, M’Cormick,” said he, familiarly, “nor am I quite certain I ‘d tell it if I had. However, you know enough for all practical purposes, and I repeat to you this is a stake I can’t enter for, – you understand me?”

“There’s another thing, now,” said M’Cormick; “and as we are talking so freely together, there’s no harm in mentioning it. It ‘s only the other day, as I may call it, that we met for the first time?”

“Very true: when I was down here at Cobham.”

“And never heard of each other before?”

“Not to my knowledge, certainly.”

“That being the case, I ‘m curious to hear how you took this wonderful interest in me. It wasn’t anything in my appearance, I ‘m sure, nor my manner; and as to what you ‘d hear about me among those blackguards down here, there’s nothing too bad to say of me.”

“I’ll be as frank as yourself,” said Stapylton, boldly; “you ask for candor, and you shall have it. I had n’t talked ten minutes with you till I saw that you were a thorough man of the world; the true old soldier, who had seen enough of life to know that whatever one gets for nothing in this world is just worth nothing, and so I said to myself, ‘If it ever occurs to me to chance upon a good opportunity of which I cannot from circumstances avail myself, there’s my man. I’ll go to him and say, “M’Cormick, that’s open to you, there’s a safe thing!” And when in return he ‘d say, “Stapylton, what can I do for you?” my answer would be, “Wait till you are satisfied that I have done you a good turn; be perfectly assured that I have really served you.” And then, if I wanted a loan of a thousand or fifteen hundred to lodge for the Lieutenant-Colonelcy, I ‘d not be ashamed to say, “M’Cormick, let me have so much.”’”

“That’s it, is it?” said M’Cormick, with a leer of intense cunning. “Not a bad bargain for you, anyhow. It is not every day that a man can sell what is n’t his own.”

“I might say, it’s not every day that a man regards a possible loan as a gift, but I ‘m quite ready to reassure all your fears on that score; I’ll even pledge myself never to borrow a shilling from you.”

“Oh, I don’t mean that; you took me up so quick,” said the old fellow, reddening with a sense of shame he had not felt for many a year. “I may be as stingy as they call me, but for all that I ‘d stand to a man who stands to me.”

“Between gentlemen and men of the world these things are better left to a sense of an honorable understanding than made matters of compact. There is no need of another word on the matter. I shall be curious, however, to know how your project speeds. Write to me, – you have plenty of time, – and write often. I ‘m not unlikely to learn something about the Indian claim, and if I do, you shall hear of it.”

“I’m not over good at pen and ink work; indeed, I haven’t much practice, but I’ll do my best.”

“Do, by all means. Tell me how you get on with Aunt Dinah, who, I suspect, has no strong affection for either of us. Don’t be precipitate; hazard nothing by a rash step; secure your way by intimacy, mere intimacy: avoid particular attentions strictly; be always there, and on some pretext or other – But why do I say all this to an old soldier, who has made such sieges scores of times?”

“Well, I think I see my way clear enough,” said the old fellow, with a grin. “I wish I was as sure I knew why you take such an interest in me.”

“I believe I have told you already; I hope there is nothing so strange in the assurance as to require corroboration. Come, I must say good-bye; I meant to have said five words to you, and I have stayed here five-and-twenty minutes.”

“Would n’t you take something? – could n’t I offer you anything?” said M’Cormick, hesitatingly.

“Nothing, thanks. I lunched before I started; and although old Dinah made several assaults upon me while I ate, I managed to secure two cutlets and part of a grouse-pie, and a rare glass of Madeira to wash them down.”

“That old woman is dreadful, and I’ll take her down a peg yet, as sure as my name is Dan.”

“No, don’t, Major; don’t do anything of the kind. The people who tame tigers are sure to get scratched at last, and nobody thanks them for their pains. Regard her as the sailors do a fire-ship; give her a wide berth, and steer away from her.”

“Ay, but she sometimes gives chase.”

“Strike your flag, then, if it must be; for, trust me, you ‘ll not conquer her.”

“We ‘ll see, we ‘ll see,” muttered the old fellow, as he waved his adieux, and then turned back into the house again.

As Stapylton lay back in his carriage, he could not help muttering a malediction on the “dear friend” he had just parted with. When the bourgeois gentilhomme objected to his adversary pushing him en tierce while he attacked him en quarte, he was expressing a great social want, applicable to those people who in conversation will persist in saying many things which ought not to be uttered, and expressing doubts and distrusts which, however it be reasonable to feel, are an outrage to avow.

“The old fox,” said Stapylton, aloud, “taunted me with selling what did not belong to me; but he never suspects that I have bought something without paying for it, and that something himself! Yes, the mock siege he will lay to the fortress will occupy the garrison till it suits me to open the real attack, and I will make use of him, besides, to learn whatever goes on in my absence. How the old fellow swallowed the bait! What self-esteem there must be in such a rugged nature, to make him imagine he could be successful in a cause like this! He is, after all, a clumsy agent to trust one’s interest to. If the choice had been given me, I’d far rather have had a woman to watch over them. Polly Dill, for instance, the very girl to understand such a mission well. How adroitly would she have played the game, and how clearly would her letters have shown me the exact state of events!”

Such were the texts of his musings as he drove along, and deep as were his thoughts, they never withdrew him, when the emergency called, from attention to every detail of the journey, and he scrutinized the post-horses as they were led out, and apportioned the rewards to the postilions as though no heavier care lay on his heart than the road and its belongings. While he rolled thus smoothly along, Peter Barrington had been summoned to his sister’s presence, to narrate in full all that he had asked, and all that he had learned of Stapylton and his fortunes.

Miss Dinah was seated in a deep armchair, behind a formidable embroidery-frame, – a thing so complex and mysterious in form as to suggest an implement of torture. At a short distance off sat Withering, with pen, ink, and paper before him, as if to set down any details of unusual importance; and into this imposing presence poor Barrington entered with a woful sense of misgiving and humiliation.

“We have got a quiet moment at last, Peter,” said Miss Barrington. “I have sent the girls over to Brown’s Barn for the tulip-roots, and I have told Darby that if any visitors came they were to be informed we were particularly occupied by business, and could see no one.”

“Just so,” added Withering; “it is a case before the Judge in Chamber.”

“But what have we got to hear?” asked Barrington, with an air of innocence.

“We have got to hear your report, brother Peter; the narrative of your late conversation with Major Stapylton; given, as nearly as your memory will serve, in the exact words and in the precise order everything occurred.”

“October the twenty-third,” said Withering, writing as he spoke; “minute of interview between P. B. and Major S. Taken on the same morning it occurred, with remarks and observations explanatory.”

“Begin,” said Dinah, imperiously, while she worked away without lifting her head. “And avoid, so far as possible, anything beyond the precise expression employed.”

“But you don’t suppose I took notes in shorthand of what we said to each other, do you?”

“I certainly suppose you can have retained in your memory a conversation that took place two hours ago,” said Miss Dinah, sternly.

“And can relate it circumstantially and clearly,” added Withering.

“Then I ‘m very sorry to disappoint you, but I can do nothing of the kind.”

“Do you mean to say that you had no interview with Major Stapylton, Peter?”

“Or that you have forgotten all about it?” said Withering.

“Or is it that you have taken a pledge of secrecy, brother Peter?”

“No, no, no! It is simply this, that though I retain a pretty fair general impression of what I said myself, and what he said afterwards, I could no more pretend to recount it accurately than I could say off by heart a scene in ‘Romeo and Juliet.’”

“Why don’t you take the ‘Comedy of Errors’ for your illustration, Peter Barrington? I ask you, Mr. Withering, have you in all your experience met anything like this?”

“It would go hard with a man in the witness-box to make such a declaration, I must say.”

“What would a jury think of, what would a judge say to him?” said she, using the most formidable of all penalties to her brother’s imagination. “Wouldn’t the court tell him that he would be compelled to speak out?”

“They’d have it out on the cross-examination, at all events, if not on the direct.”

“In the name of confusion, what do you want with me?” exclaimed Peter, in despair.

“We want everything, – everything that you heard about this man. Who he is, what he is; what by the father’s side, what by the mother’s; what are his means, and where; who knows him, who are his associates. Bear in mind that to us, here, he has dropped out of the clouds.”

“And gone back there too,” added Withering.

“I wish to Heaven he had taken me with him!” sighed Peter, drearily.