Volume Ii Part 11 (1/2)

”Yes; I started the moment I took off my uniform. I wanted to be with you, my boy; and the royal politeness that detained me was anything but a favor. How you have grown, Fred,--almost my own height, I believe.”

”The more like you the better,” said the youth, as his eyes ran over, and the old man turned away to hide his emotion.

After a moment he said: ”How strange you should not have got my letters, Fred; but, after all, it is just as well as it is. I wrote in a very angry spirit, and was less just than a little cool reflection might have made me. They made no charges against me, though I thought they had.

There were grumblings and discontents, and such-like. They called me a Rajah, and raked up all the old stories they used to circulate once on a time about a far better fellow--”

”You mean Colonel Barrington, don't you?” said Fred.

”Where or how did you hear of that name?” said the old man, almost sternly.

”An accident made me the guest of his family, at a little cottage they live in on an hish river. I pa.s.sed weeks there, and, through the favor of the name I bore, I received more kindness than I ever before met in life.”

”And they knew you to be a Conyers, and to be my son?”

”It was Colonel Barrington's aunt was my hostess, and she it was who, on hearing my name, admitted me at once to all the privileges of old friends.h.i.+p. She told me of the close companions.h.i.+p which once subsisted between you and her nephew, and gave me rolls of his letters to read wherein every line spoke of you.”

”And Mr. Barrington, the father of George, how did he receive you?”

”At first with such coolness that I could n't bring myself to recross his threshold. He had been away from home when I arrived, and the day of his return I was unexpectedly presented to him by his sister, who evidently was as unprepared as myself for the reception I met with.”

”And what was that reception,--how was it? Tell me all as it happened.”

”It was the affair of a moment. Miss Barrington introduced me, saying, 'This is the son of poor George's dearest friend,--this is a Conyers;'

and the old man faltered, and seemed like to faint, and after a moment stammered out something about an honor he had never counted upon,--a visit he scarcely could have hoped for; and, indeed, so overcome was he that he staggered into the house only to take to his bed, where he lay seriously ill for several days after.”

”Poor fellow! It was hard to forgive,--very hard.”

”Ay, but he has forgiven it--whatever it was--heartily, and wholly forgiven it. We met afterwards by a chance in Germany, and while I was hesitating how to avoid a repet.i.tion of the painful scene which marked our first meeting, he came manfully towards me with his hand out, and said, 'I have a forgiveness to beg of you; and if you only know how I long to obtain it, you would scarce say me no.'”

”The worthy father of poor George! I think I hear him speak the very words himself. Go on, Fred,--go on, and tell me further.”

”There is no more to tell, sir, unless I speak of all the affectionate kindness he has shown,--the trustfulness and honor with which he has treated me. I have been in his house like his own son.”

”Ah! if you had known that son! If you had seen what a type of a soldier he was! The most intrepid, the boldest fellow that ever breathed; but with a heart of childlike simplicity and gentleness. I could tell you traits of him, of his forbearance, his forgiveness, his generous devotion to friends.h.i.+p, that would seem to bespeak a nature that had no room for other than soft and tender emotion; and yet, if ever there was a lion's heart within a man's bosom it was his.” For a moment or two the old man seemed overcome by his recollections, and then, as if by an effort, rallying himself, he went on: ”You have often heard the adage, Fred, that enjoins watching one's pennies and leaving the pounds to take care of themselves; and yet, trust me, the maxim is truer as applied to our morals than our money. It is by the smaller, finer, and least important traits of a man that his fate in life is fas.h.i.+oned. The caprices we take no pains to curb, the tempers we leave unchecked, the petty indulgences we extend to our vanity and self-love,--these are the great sands that wreck us far oftener than the more stern and formidable features of our character. I ought to know this truth; I myself lost the best and truest and the n.o.blest friend that ever man had, just from the exercise of a spirit of bantering and ridicule which amused those about me, and gave me that pre-eminence which a sarcastic and witty spirit is sure to a.s.sert. You know already how George Barrington and I lived together like brothers. I do not believe two men ever existed more thoroughly and sincerely attached to each other. All the contrarieties of our dispositions served but to heighten the interest that linked us together. As for myself, I was never wearied in exploring the strange recesses of that great nature that seemed to unite all that could be daring and das.h.i.+ng in man with the tenderness of a woman. I believe I knew him far better than he knew himself. But to come to what I wanted to tell you, and which is an agony to me to dwell on. Though for a long while our close friends.h.i.+p was known in the regiment, and spoken of as a thing incapable of change, a sort of rumor--no, not even a rumor, but an impression--seemed to gain, that the ties between us were looser on my side than his; that George looked up to _me_, and that I, with the pride of a certain superiority, rather lorded it over _him_. This feeling became painfully strengthened when it got about that Barrington had lent me the greater part of the purchase-money for my troop,--a promotion, by the way, which barred his own advancement,--and it was whispered, so at least I heard, that Barrington was a mere child in my hands, whom I rebuked or rewarded at pleasure. If I could have traced these rumors to any direct source, I could have known how to deal with them. As it was, they were vague, shadowy, and unreal; and their very unsubstantiality maddened me the more. To have told George of them would have been rasher still. The thought of a wrong done to _me_ would have driven him beyond all reason, and he would infallibly have compromised himself beyond recall. It was the very first time in my life I had a secret from him, and it eat into my heart like a virulent disease. The consciousness that I was watched, the feeling that eyes were upon me marking all I did, and tongues were commenting on all I said, exasperated me, and at one moment I would parade my friends.h.i.+p for Barrington in a sort of spirit of defiance, and at another, as though to give the lie to my slanderers, treat him with indifference and carelessness, as it were, to show that I was not bound to him by the weight of a direct obligation, and that our relations involved nothing of dependence. It was when, by some cruel mischance, I had been pursuing this spirit to its extreme, that the conversation one night at mess turned upon sport and tiger-hunting.

Many stories were told, of course, and we had the usual narratives of hairbreadth escapes and perils of the most appalling kind; till, at length, some one--I forget exactly who it was--narrated a single-handed encounter with a jaguar, which in horror exceeded anything we had heard before. The details were alone not so terrible, but the circ.u.mstances so marvellous, that one and all who listened cried out, 'Who did it?'

”'The man who told me the tale,' replied the narrator, 'and who will probably be back to relate it here to you in a few days,--Colonel Barrington.'

”I have told you the devilish spirit which had me in possession. I have already said that I was in one of those moods of insolent mockery in which nothing was sacred to me. No sooner, then, did I hear Barrington's name than I burst into a hearty laugh, and said, 'Oh! if it was one of George Barrington's tigers, you ought to have mentioned that fact at the outset. You have been exciting our feelings unfairly.'

”'I a.s.sume that his statement was true,' said the other, gravely.

”'Doubtless; just as battle-pieces are true, that is, pic-torially true. The tiger did nothing that a tiger ought not to do, nor did George transgress any of those ”unities” which such combats require. At the same time, Barring-ton's stories have always a something about them that stamps the authors.h.i.+p, and you recognize this trait just as you do a white horse in a picture by Wouvermans.'

”In this strain I went on, heated by my own warmed imagination, and the approving laughter of those around me. I recounted more than one feat of Barrington's,--things which I knew he had done, some of them almost incredible in boldness. These I told with many a humorous addition and many an absurd commentary, convulsing the listeners with laughter, and rendering my friend ridiculous.

”He came back from the hills within the week, and before he was two hours in his quarters he had heard the whole story. We were at luncheon in the mess-room when he entered, flushed and excited, but far more moved by emotion than resentment.

”'Ormsby,' said he, 'you may laugh at me to your heart's content and I'll never grumble at it; but there are some young officers here who, not knowing the ties that attach us, may fancy that these quizzings pa.s.s the limits of mere drollery, and even jeopardize something of my truthfulness. _You_, I know, never meant this any more than I have felt it, but others might, and might, besides, on leaving this and sitting at other tables, repeat what they had heard here. Tell them that you spoke of me as you have a free right to do, in jest, and that your ridicule was the good-humored banter of a friend,--of a friend who never did, never could, impugn my honor.'