Barrington. Volume 1

“A thousand pardons I ask from each of you,” cried Barrington, coming hurriedly in, with a somewhat flushed face; “but I ‘ve had such a hunt for these cards. When I put a thing away nowadays, it’s as good as gone to me, for I remember nothing. But here we are, now, all right.”

The party, like men eager to retrieve lost time, were soon deep in their game, very little being uttered, save such remarks as the contest called for. The Major was of that order of players who firmly believe fortune will desert them if they don’t whine and complain of their luck, and so everything from him was a lamentation. The doctor, who regarded whist pathologically, no more gave up a game than he would a patient. He had witnessed marvellous recoveries in the most hopeless cases, and he had been rescued by a “revoke” in the last hour. Unlike each, Barrington was one who liked to chat over his game, as he would over his wine. Not that he took little interest in it, but it had no power to absorb and engross him. If a man derive very great pleasure from a pastime in which, after years and years of practice, he can attain no eminence nor any mastery, you may be almost certain he is one of an amiable temperament Nothing short of real goodness of nature could go on deriving enjoyment from a pursuit associated with continual defeats. Such a one must be hopeful, he must be submissive, he must have no touch of ungenerous jealousy in his nature, and, withal, a zealous wish to do better. Now he who can be all these, in anything, is no bad fellow.

If Barrington, therefore, was beaten, he bore it well. Cards were often enough against him, his play was always so; and though the doctor had words of bland consolation for disaster, such as the habits of his craft taught him, the Major was a pitiless adversary, who never omitted the opportunity of disinterring all his opponents’ blunders, and singing a song of triumph over them. But so it is, —tot genera hominum, – so many kinds of whist-players are there!

Hour after hour went over, and it was late in the night. None felt disposed to sup; at least, none proposed it. The stakes were small, it is true, but small things are great to little men, and Barrington’s guests were always the winners.

“I believe if I was to be a good player, – which I know in my heart I never shall,” said Barrington, – “that my luck would swamp me, after all. Look at that hand now, and say is there a trick in it?” As he said this, he spread out the cards of his “dummy” on the table, with the dis-consolation of one thoroughly beaten.

“Well, it might be worse,” said Dill, consolingly. “There’s a queen of diamonds; and I would n’t say, if you could get an opportunity to trump the club – ”

“Let him try it,” broke in the merciless Major; “let him just try it! My name isn’t Dan M’Cormick if he’ll win one card in that hand. There, now, I lead the ace of clubs. Play!”

“Patience, Major, patience; let me look over my hand. I ‘m bad enough at the best, but I ‘ll be worse if you hurry me. Is that a king or a knave I see there?”

“It’s neither; it ‘s the queen!” barked out the Major.

“Doctor, you ‘ll have to look after my eyes as well as my ears. Indeed, I scarcely know which is the worst. Was not that a voice outside?”

“I should think it was; there have been fellows shouting there the whole evening. I suspect they don’t leave you many fish in this part of the river.”

“I beg your pardon,” interposed Dill, blandly, “but you ‘ve taken up my card by mistake.”

While Barrington was excusing himself, and trying to recover his lost clew to the game, there came a violent knocking at the door, and a loud voice called out, “Holloa! Will some of ye open the door, or must I put my foot through it?”

“There is somebody there,” said Barrington, quietly, for he had now caught the words correctly; and taking a candle, he hastened out.

“At last,” cried a stranger, as the door opened, – “at last! Do you know that we’ve been full twenty minutes here, listening to your animated discussion over the odd trick? – I fainting with hunger, and my friend with pain.” And so saying, he assisted another to limp forward, who leaned on his arm and moved with the greatest difficulty.

The mere sight of one in suffering repressed any notion of a rejoinder to his somewhat rude speech, and Barrington led the way into the room.

“Have you met with an accident?” asked he, as he placed the sufferer on a sofa.

“Yes,” interposed the first speaker; “he slipped down one of those rocks into the river, and has sprained, if he has not broken, something.”

“It is our good fortune to have advice here; this gentleman is a doctor.”

“Of the Royal College, and an M.D. of Aberdeen, besides,” said Dill, with a professional smile, while, turning back his cuffs, he proceeded to remove the shoe and stocking of his patient.

“Don’t be afraid of hurting, but just tell me at once what’s the matter,” said the young fellow, down whose cheeks great drops were rolling in his agony.

“There is no pronouncing at once; there is great tumefaction here. It may be a mere sprain, or it may be a fracture of the fibula simple, or a fracture with luxation.”

“Well, if you can’t tell the injury, tell us what’s to be done for it. Get him to bed, I suppose, first?” said the friend.

“By all means, to bed, and cold applications on the affected part.”

“Here’s a room all ready, and at hand,” said Barrington, opening the door into a little chamber replete with comfort and propriety.

“Come,” said the first speaker, “Fred, all this is very snug; one might have fallen upon worse quarters.” And so saying, he assisted his friend forward, and deposited him upon the bed.

While the doctor busied himself with the medical cares for his patient, and arranged with due skill the appliances to relieve his present suffering, the other stranger related how they had lost their way, having first of all taken the wrong bank of the river, and been obliged to retrace their steps upwards of three miles to retrieve their mistake.

“Where were you going to?” asked Barringtou.

“We were in search of a little inn they had told us of, called the ‘Fisherman’s Home.’ I conclude we have reached it at last, and you are the host, I take it?”

Barrington bowed assent.

“And these gentlemen are visitors here?” But without waiting for any reply, – difficult at all times, for he spoke with great rapidity and continual change of topic, – he now stooped down to whisper something to the sick man. “My friend thinks he’ll do capitally now, and, if we leave him, that he’ll soon drop asleep; so I vote we give him the chance.” Thus saying, he made a gesture for the others to leave, following them up as they went, almost like one enforcing an order.

“If I am correct in my reading, you are a soldier, sir,” said Barrington, when they reached the outer room, “and this gentleman here is a brother officer, – Major M’Cor-mick.”

“Full pay, eh?”

“No, I am an old Walcheren man.”

“Walcheren – Walcheren – why, that sounds like Malplaquet or Blenheim! Where the deuce was Walcheren? Did n’t believe that there was an old tumbril of that affair to the fore still. You were all licked there, or you died of the ague, or jaundice? Oh, dummy whist, as I live! Who’s the unlucky dog has got the dummy? – bad as Walcheren, by Jove! Is n’t that a supper I see laid out there? Don’t I smell Stilton from that room?”

“If you ‘ll do us the honor to join us – ”

“That I will, and astonish you with an appetite too! We breakfasted at a beastly hole called Graigue, and tasted nothing since, except a few peaches I stole out of an old fellow’s garden on the riverside, – ‘Old Dan the miser,’ a country fellow called him.”

“I have the honor to have afforded you the entertainment you speak of,” said M’Cormick, smarting with anger.

“All right! The peaches were excellent, – would have been better if riper. I ‘m afraid I smashed a window of yours; it was a stone I shied at a confounded dog, – a sort of terrier. Pickled onions and walnuts, by all that ‘s civilized! And so this is the ‘Fisherman’s Home,’ and you the fisherman, eh? Well, why not show a light or a lantern over the door? Who the deuce is to know that this is a place of entertainment? We only guessed it at last.”

“May I help you to some mutton?” said Barrington, more amused than put out by his guest’s discursiveness.

“By all means. But don’t carve it that way; cut it lengthwise, as if it were the saddle, which it ought to have been. You must tell me where you got this sherry. I have tasted nothing like it for many a day, – real brown sherry. I suppose you know how they brown it? It’s not done by sugar, – that’s a vulgar error. It’s done by boiling; they boil down so many butts and reduce them to about a fourth or a fifth. You haven’t got any currant-jelly, have you? it is just as good with cold mutton as hot. And then it is the wine thus reduced they use for coloring matter. I got up all my sherry experiences on the spot.”

“The wine you approve of has been in my cellar about five-and-forty years.”

“It would not if I ‘d have been your neighbor, rely upon that. I’d have secured every bottle of it for our mess; and mind, whatever remains of it is mine.”

“Might I make bold to remark,” said Dill, interposing, “that we are the guests of my friend here on this occasion?”

“Eh, what, – guests?”

“I am proud enough to believe that you will not refuse me the honor of your company; for though an innkeeper, I write myself gentleman,” said Barrington, blandly, though not without emotion.

“I should think you might,” broke in the stranger, heartily; “and I’d say the man who had a doubt about your claims had very little of his own. And now a word of apology for the mode of our entrance here, and to introduce myself. I am Colonel Hunter, of the 21st Hussars; my friend is a young subaltern of the regiment.”

A moment before, and all the awkwardness of his position was painful to Barrington. He felt that the traveller was there by a right, free to order, condemn, and criticise as he pleased. The few words of explanation, given in all the frankness of a soldier, and with the tact of a gentleman, relieved this embarrassment, and he was himself again. As for M’Cormick and Dill, the mere announcement of the regiment he commanded seemed to move and impress them. It was one of those corps especially known in the service for the rank and fortune of its officers. The Prince himself was their colonel, and they had acquired a wide notoriety for exclusiveness and pride, which, when treated by unfriendly critics, assumed a shape less favorable still.

Colonel Hunter, if he were to be taken as a type of his regiment, might have rebutted a good deal of this floating criticism; he had a fine honest countenance, a rich mellow voice, and a sort of easy jollity in manner, that spoke well both for his spirits and his temper. He did, it is true, occasionally chafe against some susceptible spot or other of those around him, but there was no malice prepense in it, any more than there is intentional offence in the passage of a strong man through a crowd; so he elbowed his way, and pushed on in conversation, never so much as suspecting that he jostled any one in his path.

Both Barrington and Hunter were inveterate sportsmen, and they ranged over hunting-fields and grouse mountains and partridge stubble and trout streams with all the zest of men who feel a sort of mesmeric brotherhood in the interchange of their experiences. Long after the Major and the doctor had taken their leave, they sat there recounting stories of their several adventures, and recalling incidents of flood and field.