Volume I Part 25 (1/2)

”Just none at all, not to mislead you,” said M'Cabe, in a voice quite devoid of its late whining intonation.

”Is there not a chaise or a car to be had?”

”Sorrow one. Dr. Dill has a car, to be sure, but not for hire.”

”Oh, Dr. Dill lives here. I forgot that. Go and tell him I wish to see him.”

The landlord withdrew in dogged silence, but returned in about ten minutes, to say that the doctor had been sent for to the ”Fisherman's Home,” and Mr. Barrington was so ill it was not likely he would be back that night.

”So ill, did you say?” cried Conyers. ”What was the attack,--what did they call it?”

”'T is some kind of a 'plexy, they said. He's a full man, and advanced in years, besides.”

”Go and tell young Mr. Dill to come over here.”

”He's just gone off with the cuppin' instruments. I saw him steppin'

into the boat.”

”Let me have a messenger; I want a man to take a note up to Miss Barrington, and fetch my writing-desk here.”

In his eager anxiety to learn how Mr. Barrington was, Conyers hastily scratched off a few lines; but on reading them over, he tore them up: they implied a degree of interest on his part which, considering the late treatment extended to him, was scarcely dignified. He tried again; the error was as marked on the other side. It was a cold and formal inquiry. ”And yet,” said he, as he tore this in fragments, ”one thing is quite clear,--this illness is owing to _me!_ But for _my_ presence there, that old man had now been hale and hearty; the impressions, rightfully or wrongfully, which the sight of _me_ and the announcement of _my_ name produced are the cause of this malady. I cannot deny it.”

With this revulsion of feeling he wrote a short but kindly worded note to Miss Barrington, in which, with the very faintest allusion to himself, he begged for a few lines to say how her brother was. He would have added something about the sorrow he experienced in requiting all her kindness by this calamitous return, but he felt that if the case should be a serious one, all reference to himself would be misplaced and impertinent.

The messenger despatched, he sat down beside his fire, the only light now in the room, which the shade of coming night had darkened. He was sad and dispirited, and ill at ease with his own heart. Mr. M'Cabe, indeed, appeared with a suggestion about candles, and a shadowy hint that if his guest speculated of dining at all, it was full time to intimate it; but Conyers dismissed him with a peremptory command not to dare to enter the room again until he was summoned to it. So odious to him was the place, the landlord, and all about him, that he would have set out on foot had his ankle been only strong enough to bear him. ”What if he were to write to Stapylton to come and fetch him away? He never liked the man; he liked him less since the remark Miss Barrrington had made upon him from mere reading of his letter, but what was he to do?”

While he was yet doubting what course to take, he heard the voices of some new arrivals outside, and, strange enough, one seemed to be Stapylton's. A minute or two after, the travellers had entered the room adjoining his own, and from which a very frail part.i.tion of lath and plaster alone separated him.

”Well, Barney,” said a harsh, grating voice, addressing the landlord, ”what have you got in the larder? We mean to dine with you.”

”To dine here, Major!” exclaimed M'Cabe. ”Well, well, wondhers will never cease.” And then hurriedly seeking to cover a speech not very flattering to the Major's habits of hospitality, ”Sure, I 've a loin of pork, and there 's two chickens and a trout fresh out of the water, and there's a cheese; it isn't mine, to be sure, but Father Cody's, but he 'll not miss a slice out of it; and barrin' you dined at the 'Fisherman's Home,' you 'd not get betther.”

”That 's where we were to have dined by right,” said the Major, crankily,--”myself and my friend here,--but we're disappointed, and so we stepped in here, to do the best we can.”

”Well, by all accounts, there won't be many dinners up there for some time.”

”Why so?”

”Ould Barrington was took with a fit this afternoon, and they say he won't get over it.”

”How was it?--what brought it on?”

”Here's the way I had it. Ould Peter was just come home from Kilkenny, and had brought the Attorney-General with him to stay a few days at the cottage, and what was the first thing he seen but a man that come all the way from India with a writ out against him for some of mad George Barrington's debts; and he was so overcome by the shock, that he fainted away, and never came rightly to himself since.”

”This is simply impossible,” said a voice Conyers well knew to be Stapylton's.

”Be that as it may, I had it from the man that came for the doctor, and what's more, he was just outside the window, and could hear ould Barrington cursin' and swearin' about the man that ruined his son, and brought his poor boy to the grave; but I 'll go and look after your honor's dinner, for I know more about that.”

”I have a strange half-curiosity to know the correct version of this story,” said Stapylton, as the host left the room. ”The doctor is a friend of yours, I think. Would he step over here, and let us hear the matter accurately?”

”He's up at the cottage now, but I 'll get him to come in here when he returns.”