Volume I Part 46 (1/2)
”Come, now, sit down here beside me! It can scarcely be anything I may not be a party to. Just let me hear the case like a judge in chamber”--and he smiled at an ill.u.s.tration that recalled his favorite pa.s.sion, ”I won't pretend to say my sister has not a wiser head--as I well know she has a far better heart--than myself, but now and then she lets a prejudice or a caprice or even a mere apprehension run away with her, and it's just possible it is some whim of this kind is now uppermost.”
Conyers only shook his head dissentingly, and said nothing.
”Maybe I guess it,--I suspect that I guess it,” said Peter, with a sly drollery about his mouth. ”My sister has a notion that a young man and a young woman ought no more to be in propinquity than saltpetre and charcoal. She has been giving me a lecture on my blindness, and asking if I can't see this, that, and the other; but, besides being the least observant of mankind, I'm one of the most hopeful as regards whatever I wish to be. Now we have all of us gone on so pleasantly together, with such a thorough good understanding--such loyalty, as the French would call it--that I can't, for the life of me, detect any ground for mistrust or dread. Have n't I hit the blot, Conyers--eh?” cried he, as the young fellow grew redder and redder, till his face became crimson.
”I a.s.sured Miss Barrington,” began he, in a faltering, broken voice, ”that I set too much store on the generous confidence you extended to me to abuse it; that, received as I was, like one of your own blood and kindred, I never could forget the frank trustfulness with which you discussed everything before me, and made me, so to say, 'One of you.'
The moment, however, that my intimacy suggested a sense of constraint, I felt the whole charm of my privilege would have departed, and it is for this reason I am going!” The last word was closed with a deep sigh, and he turned away his head as he concluded.
”And for this reason you shall not go one step,” said Peter, slapping him cordially on the shoulder. ”I verily believe that women think the world was made for nothing but love-making, just as the crack engineer believed rivers were intended by Providence to feed navigable ca.n.a.ls; but you and I know a little better, not to say that a young fellow with the stamp gentleman indelibly marked on his forehead would not think of making a young girl fresh from a convent--a mere child in the ways of life--the mark of his attentions. Am I not right?”
”I hope and believe you are!”
”Stay where you are, then; be happy, and help us to feel so; and the only pledge I ask is, that whenever you suspect Dinah to be a shrewder observer and a truer prophet than her brother--you understand me--you'll just come and say, 'Peter Barrington, I'm off; good-bye!'”
”There's my hand on it,” said he, grasping the old man's with warmth.
”There's only one point--I have told Miss Barrington that I would start this evening.”
”She'll scarcely hold you very closely to your pledge.”
”But, as I understand her, you are going back to Ireland?”
”And you are coming along with us. Isn't that a very simple arrangement?”
”I know it would be a very pleasant one.”
”It shall be, if it depend on me. I want to make you a fisherman too.
When I was a young man, it was my pa.s.sion to make every one a good horseman. If I liked a fellow, and found out that he couldn't ride to hounds, it gave me a shock little short of hearing that there was a blot on his character, so a.s.sociated in my mind had become personal dash and prowess in the field with every bold and manly characteristic. As I grew older, and the rod usurped the place of the hunting-whip, I grew to fancy that your angler would be the truest type of a companion; and if you but knew,” added he, as a gla.s.sy fulness dulled his eyes, ”what a flattery it is to an old fellow when a young one will make a comrade of him,--what a smack of bygone days it brings up, and what suns.h.i.+ne it lets in on the heart,--take my word for it, you young fellows are never so vain of an old companion as we are of a young one! What are you so thoughtful about?”
”I was thinking how I was to make this explanation to Miss Barrington.”
”You need not make it at all; leave the whole case in my hands. My sister knows that I owe you an _amende_ and a heavy one. Let this go towards a part payment of it. But here she comes in search of me. Step away quietly, and when we meet at the tea-table all will have been settled.”
Conyers had but time to make his escape, when Miss Barrington came up.
”I thought I should find you mooning down here, Peter,” said she, sharply. ”Whenever there is anything to be done or decided on, a Barrington is always watching a fly on a fish-pond.”
”Not the women of the family, Dinah,--not the women. But what great emergency is before us now?”
”No great emergency, as you phrase it, at all, but what to men like yourself is frequently just as trying,--an occasion that requires a little tact. I have discovered--what I long antic.i.p.ated has come to pa.s.s--Conyers and Fifine are on very close terms of intimacy, which might soon become attachment. I have charged him with it, and he has not altogether denied it. On the whole he has behaved well, and he goes away to-night.”
”I have just seen him, Dinah. I got at his secret, not without a little dexterity on my part, and learned what had pa.s.sed between you. We talked the thing over very calmly together, and the upshot is--he's not going.”
”Not going! not going! after the solemn a.s.surance he gave me!”
”But of which I absolved him, sister Dinah; or rather, which I made him retract.”
”Peter Barrington, stop!” cried she, holding her hands to her temples.
”I want a little time to recover myself. I must have time, or I'll not answer for my senses. Just reply to one question. I 'll ask you, have you taken an oath--are you under a vow to be the ruin of your family?”