Barrington. Volume 1. Lever Charles James

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СКАЧАТЬ had known for many a day, rowed manfully on his way.

      The evening – a soft, mellow, summer evening – was just falling as Tom reached the little boat quay at the “Fisherman’s Home,” – a spot it was seldom his fortune to visit, but one for whose woodland beauty and trim comfort he had a deep admiration. He would have liked to have lingered a little to inspect the boat-house, and the little aviary over it, and the small cottage on the island, and the little terrace made to fish from; but Darby had caught sight of him as he landed, and came hurriedly down to say that the young gentleman was growing very impatient for his coming, and was even hinting at sending for another doctor if he should not soon appear.

      If Conyers was as impatient as Darby represented, he had, at least, surrounded himself with every appliance to allay the fervor of that spirit He had dined under a spreading sycamore-tree, and now sat with a table richly covered before him. Fruit, flowers, and wine abounded, with a profusion that might have satisfied several guests; for, as he understood that he was to consider himself at an inn, he resolved, by ordering the most costly things, to give the house all the advantage of his presence. The most delicious hothouse fruit had been procured from the gardener of an absent proprietor in the neighborhood, and several kinds of wine figured on the table, over which, and half shadowed by the leaves, a lamp had been suspended, throwing a fitful light over all, that imparted a most picturesque effect to the scene.

      And yet, amidst all these luxuries and delights, Bal-shazzar was discontented; his ankle pained him; he had been hobbling about on it all day, and increased the inflammation considerably; and, besides this, he was lonely; he had no one but Darby to talk to, and had grown to feel for that sapient functionary a perfect abhorrence, – his everlasting compliance, his eternal coincidence with everything, being a torment infinitely worse than the most dogged and mulish opposition. When, therefore, he heard at last the doctor’s son had come with the leeches, he hailed him as a welcome guest.

      “What a time you have kept me waiting!” said he, as the loutish young man came forward, so astounded by the scene before him that he lost all presence of mind. “I have been looking out for you since three o’clock, and pottering down the river and back so often, that I have made the leg twice as thick again.”

      “Why didn’t you sit quiet?” said Tom, in a hoarse, husky tone.

      “Sit quiet!” replied Conyers, staring half angrily at him; and then as quickly perceiving that no impertinence had been intended, which the other’s changing color and evident confusion attested, he begged him to take a chair and fill his glass. “That next you is some sort of Rhine wine: this is sherry; and here is the very best claret I ever tasted.”

      “Well, I ‘ll take that,” said Tom, who, accepting the recommendation amidst luxuries all new and strange to him, proceeded to fill his glass, but so tremblingly that he spilled the wine all about the table, and then hurriedly wiped it up with his handkerchief.

      Conyers did his utmost to set his guest at his ease. He passed his cigar-case across the table, and led him on, as well as he might, to talk. But Tom was awestruck, not alone by the splendors around him, but by the condescension of his host; and he could not divest himself of the notion that he must have been mistaken for somebody else, to whom all these blandishments might be rightfully due.

      “Are you fond of shooting?” asked Conyers, trying to engage a conversation.

      “Yes,” was the curt reply.

      “There must be good sport hereabouts, I should say. Is the game well preserved?”

      “Too well for such as me. I never get a shot without the risk of a jail, and it would be cheaper for me to kill a cow than a woodcock!” There was a stern gravity in the way he said this that made it irresistibly comic, and Conyers laughed out in spite of himself.

      “Have n’t you a game license?” asked he.

      “Haven’t I a coach-and-six? Where would I get four pounds seven and ten to pay for it?”

      The appeal was awkward, and for a moment Conyers was silent At last he said, “You fish, I suppose?”

      “Yes; I kill a salmon whenever I get a quiet spot that nobody sees me, and I draw the river now and then with a net at night.”

      “That’s poaching, I take it.”

      “It ‘s not the worse for that!” said Tom, whose pluck was by this time considerably assisted by the claret.

      “Well, it’s an unfair way, at all events, and destroys real sport”

      “Real sport is filling your basket.”

      “No, no; there’s no real sport in doing anything that’s unfair, – anything that’s un – ” He stopped short, and swallowed off a glass of wine to cover his confusion.

      “That’s all mighty fine for you, who can not only pay for a license, but you ‘re just as sure to be invited here, there, and everywhere there’s game to be killed. But think of me, that never snaps a cap, never throws a line, but he knows it’s worse than robbing a hen-roost, and often, maybe, just as fond of it as yourself!”

      Whether it was that, coming after Darby’s mawkish and servile agreement with everything, this rugged nature seemed more palatable, I cannot say; but so it was, Con-yers felt pleasure in talking to this rough unpolished creature, and hearing his opinions in turn. Had there been in Tom Dill’s manner the slightest shade of any pretence, was there any element of that which, for want of a better word, we call “snobbery,” Conyers would not have endured him for a moment, but Tom was perfectly devoid of this vulgarity. He was often coarse in his remarks, his expressions were rarely measured by any rule of good manners; but it was easy to see that he never intended offence, nor did he so much as suspect that he could give that weight to any opinion which he uttered to make it of moment.

      Besides these points in Tom’s favor, there was another, which also led Conyers to converse with him. There is some very subtle self-flattery in the condescension of one well to do in all the gifts of fortune associating, in an assumed equality, with some poor fellow to whom fate has assigned the shady side of the highway. Scarcely a subject can be touched without suggesting something for self-gratulation; every comparison, every contrast is in his favor, and Conyers, without being more of a puppy than the majority of his order, constantly felt how immeasurably above all his guest’s views of his life and the world were his own, – not alone that he was more moderate in language and less prone to attribute evil, but with a finer sense of honor and a wider feeling of liberality.

      When Tom at last, with some shame, remembered that he had forgotten all about the real object of his mission, and had never so much as alluded to the leeches, Conyers only laughed and said, “Never mind them to-night. Come back to-morrow and put them on; and mind, – come to breakfast at ten or eleven o’clock.”

      “What am I to say to my father?”

      “Say it was a whim of mine, which it is. You are quite ready to do this matter now. I see it; but I say no. Is n’t that enough?”

      “I suppose so!” muttered Tom, with a sort of dogged misgiving.

      “It strikes me that you have a very respectable fear of your governor. Am I right?”

      “Ain’t you afraid of yours?” bluntly asked the other.

      “Afraid of mine!” cried Conyers, with a loud laugh; “I should think not. Why, my father and myself are as thick as two thieves. I never was in a scrape that I did n’t tell him. I ‘d sit down this minute and write to him just as I would to СКАЧАТЬ