Barrington. Volume 2. Lever Charles James

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СКАЧАТЬ door – as eloquent as any speech – close the colloquy.

      “Faix! and the Swiss costume doesn’t become you at all!” said the Major, as he sat back in his chair, and cackled over the scene.

      As Miss Barrington, boiling with passion, passed her brother’s door, she stopped to knock.

      “Peter!” cried she. “Peter Barrington, I say!” The words were, however, not well out, when she heard a step ascending the stair. She could not risk another discovery like the last; so, opening the door, she said, “That hateful M’Cormick is below. Peter, take care that on no account – ”

      There was no time to finish, and she had barely an instant to gain her own room, when Stapylton reached the corridor.

      Peter Barrington had, however, heard enough to inform him of his sister’s high behest. Indeed, he was as quick at interpreting brief messages as people have grown in these latter days of telegraphic communication. Oracular utterings had been more than once in his life his only instructors, and he now knew that he had been peremptorily ordered not to ask the Major to dinner.

      There are, doubtless, people in this world – I almost fancy I have met one or two such myself – who would not have felt peculiar difficulty in obeying this command; who would have gone down to the drawing-room and talked coolly to the visitor, discussing commonplaces, easily and carelessly, noting the while how at every pause of the conversation each was dwelling on the self-same point, and yet, with a quiet abstinence, never touching it, till with a sigh, that was half a malediction, the uninvited would rise to take leave. Barrington was not of this number. The man who sat under his roof was sacred. He could have no faults; and to such a pitch had this punctilio carried him, that had an actual enemy gained the inside of his threshold, he would have spared nothing to treat him with honor and respect.

      “Well, well,” muttered he, as he slowly descended the stairs, “it will be the first time in my life I ever did it, and I don’t know how to go about it now.”

      When a frank and generous man is about to do something he is ashamed of, how readily will a crafty and less scrupulous observer detect it! M’Cormick read Barrington’s secret before he was a minute in the room. It was in vain Peter affected an off-hand easy manner, incidentally dropping a hint that the Attorney-General and another friend had just arrived, – a visit, a mere business visit it was, to be passed with law papers and parchments. “Poor fun when the partridges were in the stubble, but there was no help for it. Who knew, however, if he could not induce them to give him an extra day, and if I can, Major, you must promise to come over and meet them. You ‘ll be charmed with Withering, he has such a fund of agreeability. One of the old school, but not the less delightful to you and me. Come, now, give me your word – for – shall we say Saturday? – Yes, Saturday!”

      “I ‘ve nothing to say against it,” grumbled out M’Cormick, whose assent was given, as attorneys say, without prejudice to any other claim.

      “You shall hear from me in the morning, then,” said Peter. “I ‘ll send you a line to say what success I have had with my friends.”

      “Any time in the day will do,” said the Major, unconcernedly; for, in truth, the future never had in his estimation the same interest as the present. As for the birds in the bush, he simply did not believe in them at all.

      “No, no,” said Barrington, hurriedly. “You shall hear from me early, for I am anxious you should meet Withering and his companion, too, – a brother-soldier.”

      “Who may he be?” asked M’Cormick.

      “That’s my secret, Major, – that’s my secret,” said Peter, with a forced laugh, for it now wanted but ten minutes to six; “but you shall know all on Saturday.”

      Had he said on the day of judgment, the assurance would have been as palatable to M’Cormick. Talking to him of Saturday on a Monday was asking him to speculate on the infinite. Meanwhile he sat on, as only they sit who understand the deep and high mystery of that process. Oh, if you who have your fortunes to make in life, without any assignable mode for so doing, without a craft, a calling, or a trade, knew what success there was to be achieved merely by sitting – by simply being “there,” eternally “there” – a warning, an example, an illustration, a what you will, of boredom or infliction; but still “there.” The butt of this man, the terror of that, – hated, feared, trembled at, – but yet recognized as a thing that must be, an institution that was, and is, and shall be, when we are all dead and buried.

      Long and dreary may be the days of the sitter, but the hour of his reward will come at last. There will come the time when some one – any one – will be wanted to pair off with some other bore, to listen to his stories and make up his whist-table; and then he will be “there.” I knew a man who, merely by sitting on patiently for years, was at last chosen to be sent as a Minister and special Envoy to a foreign Court just to get rid of him. And for the women sitters, – the well-dressed and prettily got-up simperers, who have sat their husbands into Commissionerships, Colonial Secretaryships, and such like, – are they not written of in the Book of Beauty?

      “Here ‘s M’Cormick, Dinah,” said Barrington, with a voice shaking with agitation and anxiety, “whom I want to pledge himself to us for Saturday next. Will you add your persuasions to mine, and see what can be done?”

      “Don’t you think you can depend upon me?” cackled out the Major.

      “I am certain of it, sir; I feel your word like your bond on such a matter,” said Miss Dinah. “My grandniece, Miss Josephine Barrington,” said she, presenting that young lady, who courtesied formally to the unprepossessing stranger.

      “I’m proud of the honor, ma’am,” said M’Cormick, with a deep bow, and resumed his seat; to rise again, however, as Withering entered the room and was introduced to him.

      “This is intolerable, Peter,” whispered Miss Barrington, while the lawyer and the Major were talking together. “You are certain you have not asked him?”

      “On my honor, Dinah! on my honor!”

      “I hope I am not late?” cried Stapylton, entering; then turning hastily to Barrington, said, “Pray present me to your niece.”

      “This is my sister, Major Stapylton; this is my granddaughter;” and the ladies courtesied, each with a degree of satisfaction which the reader shall be left to assign them.

      After a few words of commonplace civility, uttered, however, with a courtesy and tact which won their way for the speaker, Stapylton recognized and shook hands with M’Cormick.

      “You know my neighbor, then?” said Barrington, in some surprise.

      “I am charmed to say I do; he owes me the denouement of a most amusing story, which was suddenly broken off when we last parted, but which I shall certainly claim after dinner.”

      “He has been kind enough to engage himself to us for Saturday,” began Dinah. But M’Cormick, who saw the moment critical, stepped in, —

      “You shall hear every word of it before you sleep. It’s all about Walcheren, though they think Waterloo more the fashion now.”

      “Just as this young lady might fancy Major Stapylton a more interesting event than one of us,” said Withering, laughing. “But what ‘s become of your boasted punctuality, Barrington? A quarter past, – are you waiting for any one?”

      “Are we, Dinah?” asked Barrington, with a look of sheepishness.

      “Not СКАЧАТЬ