Volume I Part 5 (1/2)
”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 appet.i.te 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 s.h.i.+ed 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 b.u.t.ts 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 embarra.s.sment, 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, a.s.sumed a shape less favorable still.
Colonel Hunter, if he were to be taken as a type of his regiment, might have reb.u.t.ted 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 pa.s.sage 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.
In return for a cordial invitation to Hunter to stay and fish the river for some days, Barrington pledged himself to visit the Colonel the first time he should go up to Kilkenny.
”And I 'll mount you. You shall have a horse I never lent in my life. I 'll put you on Trumpeter,--sire Sir Hercules,--no mistake there; would carry sixteen stone with the fastest hounds in England.”
Barrington shook his head, and smiled, as he said, ”It's two-and-twenty years since I sat a fence. I 'm afraid I 'll not revive the fame of my horsemans.h.i.+p by appearing again in the saddle.”
”Why, what age do you call yourself?”
”Eighty-three, if I live to August next.”