Barrington. Volume 1. Lever Charles James

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ