Barrington. Volume 1

“‘I have no doubt, Mr. Dill, you ‘ll occupy one of these places at some future day,’ says Dr. Willes, ‘but for the present your seat is yonder.’ I don’t remember much more after that, till Mr. Porter said, ‘Don’t be so nervous, Mr. Dill; collect yourself; I am persuaded you know what I am asking you, if you will not be flurried.’ And all I could say was, ‘God bless you for that speech, no matter how it goes with me’ and they all laughed out.

“It was Asken’s turn now, and he began. ‘You are destined for the navy, I understand, sir?’

“‘No, sir; for the army,’ said I.

“‘From what we have seen to-day, you ‘ll prove an ornament to either service. Meanwhile, sir, it will be satisfactory to the court to have your opinion on gun-shot wounds. Describe to us the case of a man laboring under the worst form of concussion of the brain, and by what indications you would distinguish it from fracture of the base of the skull, and what circumstances might occur to render the distinction more difficult, and what impossible?’ That was his question, and if I was to live a hundred years I ‘ll never forget a word in it, – it’s written on my heart, I believe, for life.

“‘Go on, sir,’ said he, ‘the court is waiting for you.’

“‘Take the case of concussion first,’ said Dr. Willes.

“‘I hope I may be permitted to conduct my own examination in my own manner,’ said Asken.

“That finished me, and I gave a groan that set them all laughing again.

“‘Well, sir, I ‘m waiting,’ said Asken. ‘You can have no difficulty to describe concussion, if you only give us your present sensations.’

“‘That’s as true as if you swore it,’ said I. ‘I ‘m just as if I had a fall on the crown of my head. There’s a haze over my eyes, and a ringing of bells in my ears, and a feeling as if my brain was too big.’

“‘Take my word for it, Mr. Dill,’ said he, sneeringly, ‘the latter is a purely deceptive sensation; the fault lies in the opposite direction. Let us, however, take something more simple;’ and with that he described a splinter wound of the scalp, with the whole integuments torn in fragments, and gunpowder and sticks and sand all mixed up with the flap that hung down over the patient’s face. ‘Now,’ said he, after ten minutes’ detail of this, – ‘now,’ said he, ‘when you found the man in this case, you ‘d take out your scalpel, perhaps, and neatly cut away all these bruised and torn integuments?’

“‘I would, sir,’ cried I, eagerly.

“‘I knew it,’ said he, with a cry of triumph, – ‘I knew it. I ‘ve no more to ask you. You may retire.’

“I got up to leave the room, but a sudden flash went through me, and I said out boldly, —

“‘Am I passed? Tell me at once. Put me out of pain, for I can’t bear any more!’

“‘If you’ll retire for a few minutes,’ said the President —

“‘My heart will break, sir,’ said I, ‘if I ‘m to be in suspense any more. Tell me the worst at once.’

“And I suppose they did tell me, for I knew no more till I found myself in the housekeeper’s room, with wet cloths on my head, and the money you see there in the palm of my hand. That told everything. Many were very kind to me, telling how it happened to this and to that man, the first time; and that Asken was thought very unfair, and so on; but I just washed my face with cold water, and put on my hat and went away home, that is, to where I lodged, and I wrote to Polly just this one line: ‘Rejected; I ‘m not coming back.’ And then I shut the shutters and went to bed in my clothes as I was, and I slept sixteen hours without ever waking. When I awoke, I was all right. I could n’t remember everything that happened for some time, but I knew it all at last, and so I went off straight to the Royal Barracks and ‘listed.”

“Enlisted? – enlisted?”

“Yes, sir, in the Forty-ninth Regiment of Foot, now in India, and sending off drafts from Cork to join them on Tuesday. It was out of the dépôt at the bridge I made my escape to-night to come and see you once more, and to give you this with my hearty blessing, for you were the only one ever stood to me in the world, – the only one that let me think for a moment I could be a gentleman!”

“Come, come, this is all wrong and hasty and passionate, Tom. You have no right to repay your family in this sort; this is not the way to treat that fine-hearted girl who has done so much for you; this is but an outbreak of angry selfishness.”

“These are hard words, sir, very hard words, and I wish you had not said them.”

“Hard or not, you deserve them; and it is their justice that wounds you.”

“I won’t say that it is not, sir. But it isn’t justice I ‘m asking for, but forgiveness. Just one word out of your mouth to say, ‘I ‘m sorry for you, Tom;’ or, ‘I wish you well.’”

“So I do, my poor fellow, with all my heart,” cried Con-yers, grasping his hand and pressing it cordially, “and I ‘ll get you out of this scrape, cost what it may.”

“If you mean, sir, that I am to get my discharge, it’s better to tell the truth at once. I would n’t take it. No, sir, I ‘ll stand by what I ‘ve done. I see I never could be a doctor, and I have my doubts, too, if I ever could be a gentleman; but there’s something tells me I could be a soldier, and I’ll try.”

Conyers turned from him with an impatient gesture, and walked the room in moody silence.

“I know well enough, sir,” continued Tom, “what every one will say; perhaps you yourself are thinking it this very minute: ‘It ‘s all out of his love of low company he ‘s gone and done this; he’s more at home with those poor ignorant boys there than he would be with men of education and good manners.’ Perhaps it’s true, perhaps it is ‘n’t! But there ‘s one thing certain, which is, that I ‘ll never try again to be anything that I feel is clean above me, and I ‘ll not ask the world to give me credit for what I have not the least pretension to.”

“Have you reflected,” said Conyers, slowly, “that if you reject my assistance now, it will be too late to ask for it a few weeks, or even a few days hence?”

“I have thought of all that, sir. I ‘ll never trouble you about myself again.”

“My dear Tom,” said Conyers, as he laid his arm on the other’s shoulder, “just think for one moment of all the misery this step will cause your sister, – that kind, true-hearted sister, who has behaved so nobly by you.”

“I have thought of that, too, sir; and in my heart I believe, though she ‘ll fret herself at first greatly, it will all turn out best in the end. What could I ever be but a disgrace to her? Who ‘d ever think the same of Polly after seeing me? Don’t I bring her down in spite of herself; and is n’t it a hard trial for her to be a lady when I am in the same room with her? No, sir, I’ll not go back; and though I haven’t much hope in me, I feel I’m doing right.”

“I know well,” said Conyers, pettishly, “that your sister will throw the whole blame on me. She ‘ll say, naturally enough, You could have obtained his discharge, —you should have insisted on his leaving.”

“That’s what you could not, sir,” said Tom, sturdily. “It’s a poor heart hasn’t some pride in it; and I would not go back and meet my father, after my disgrace, if it was to cost me my right hand, – so don’t say another word about it. Good-bye, sir, and my blessing go with you wherever you are. I ‘ll never forget how you stood to me.”

“That money there is yours, Dill,” said Conyers, half haughtily. “You may refuse my advice and reject my counsel, but I scarcely suppose you ‘ll ask me to take back what I once have given.”

Tom tried to speak, but he faltered and moved from one foot to the other, in an embarrassed and hesitating way. He wanted to say how the sum originally intended for one object could not honestly be claimed for another; he wanted to say, also, that he had no longer the need of so much money, and that the only obligation he liked to submit to was gratitude for the past; but a consciousness that in attempting to say these things some unhappy word, some ill-advised or ungracious expression might escape him, stopped him, and he was silent.

“You do not wish that we should part coldly, Tom?”

“No, sir, – oh, no!” cried he, eagerly.

“Then let not that paltry gift stand in the way of our esteem. Now, another thing. Will you write to me? Will you tell me how the world fares with you, and honestly declare whether the step you have taken to-day brings with it regret or satisfaction?”

“I’m not over-much of a letter-writer,” said he, falter-ingly, “but I’ll try. I must be going, Mr. Conyers,” said he, after a moment’s silence; “I must get back before I’m missed.”

“Not as you came, Tom, however. I’ll pass you out of the barrack-gate.”

As they walked along side by side, neither spoke till they came close to the gate; then Conyers halted and said, “Can you think of nothing I can do for you, or is there nothing you would leave to my charge after you have gone?”

“No, sir, nothing.” He paused, and then, as if with a struggle, said, “Except you ‘d write one line to my sister Polly, to tell her that I went away in good heart, that I did n’t give in one bit, and that if it was n’t for thinking that maybe I ‘d never see her again – ” He faltered, his voice grew thick, he tried to cough down the rising emotion, but the feeling overcame him, and he burst out into tears. Ashamed at the weakness he was endeavoring to deny, he sprang through the gate and disappeared.

Conyers slowly returned to his quarters, very thoughtful and very sad.

CHAPTER XXVII. THE CONVENT ON THE MEUSE

While poor Tom Dill, just entering upon life, went forth in gloom and disappointment to his first venture, old Peter Barrington, broken by years and many a sorrow, set out on his journey with a high heart and a spirit well disposed to see everything in its best light and be pleased with all around him. Much of this is, doubtless, matter of temperament; but I suspect, too, that all of us have more in our power in this way than we practise. Barrington had possibly less merit than his neighbors, for nature had given him one of those happy dispositions upon which the passing vexations of life produce scarcely any other effect than a stimulus to humor, or a tendency to make them the matter of amusing memory.

He had lived, besides, so long estranged from the world, that life had for him all the interests of a drama, and he could no more have felt angry with the obtrusive waiter or the roguish landlord than he would with their fictitious representatives on the stage. They were, in his eyes, parts admirably played, and no more; he watched them with a sense of humorous curiosity, and laughed heartily at successes of which he was himself the victim. Miss Barrington was no disciple of this school; rogues to her were simply rogues, and no histrionic sympathies dulled the vexation they gave her. The world, out of which she had lived so long, had, to her thinking, far from improved in the mean while. People were less deferential, less courteous than of old. There was an indecent haste and bustle about everything, and a selfish disregard of one’s neighbor was the marked feature of all travel. While her brother repaid himself for many an inconvenience by thinking over some strange caprice, or some curious inconsistency in human nature, – texts for amusing afterthought, – she only winced under the infliction, and chafed at every instance of cheating or impertinence that befell them.

The wonderful things she saw, the splendid galleries rich in art, the gorgeous palaces, the grand old cathedrals, were all marred to her by the presence of the loquacious lackey whose glib tongue had to be retained at the salary of the “vicar of our parish,” and who never descanted on a saint’s tibia without costing the price of a dinner; so that old Peter at last said to himself, “I believe my sister Dinah would n’t enjoy the garden of Eden if Adam had to go about and show her its beauties.”

The first moment of real enjoyment of her tour was on that morning when they left Namur to drive to the Convent of Bramaigne, about three miles off, on the banks of the Meuse. A lovelier day never shone upon a lovelier scene. The river, one side guarded by lofty cliffs, was on the other bounded by a succession of rich meadows, dotted with picturesque homesteads half hidden in trees. Little patches of cultivation, labored to the perfection of a garden, varied the scene, and beautiful cattle lay lazily under the giant trees, solemn voluptuaries of the peaceful happiness of their lot.

Hitherto Miss Dinah had stoutly denied that anything they had seen could compare with their own “vale and winding river,” but now she frankly owned that the stream was wider, the cliffs higher, the trees taller and better grown, while the variety of tint in the foliage far exceeded all she had any notion of; but above all these were the evidences of abundance, the irresistible charm that gives the poetry to peasant life; and the picturesque cottage, the costume, the well-stored granary, bespeak the condition with which we associate our ideas of rural happiness. The giant oxen as they marched proudly to their toil, the gay-caparisoned pony who jingled his bells as he trotted by, the peasant girls as they sat at their lace cushions before the door, the rosy urchins who gambolled in the deep grass, all told of plenty, – that blessing which to man is as the sunlight to a landscape, making the fertile spots more beautiful, and giving even to ruggedness an aspect of stern grandeur.