Volume Ii Part 11 (2/2)

”His eyes were swimming over, and his lips trembling, as he uttered the last words. I see him now, as he stood there, his very cheek shaking in agitation. That brave, bold fellow, who would have marched up to a battery without quailing, shook like a sickly girl.

”'Am I to say that you never draw the long-bow, George?' asked I, half insolently.

”'You are to say, sir, that I never told a lie,' cried he, dark with pa.s.sion.

”'Oh, this discussion will be better carried on elsewhere,' said I, as I arose and left the room.

”As I was in the wrong, totally in the wrong, I was pa.s.sionate and headstrong. I sat down and wrote a most insolent letter to Barrington. I turned all the self-hate that was consuming _me_ against my friend, and said I know not what of outrage and insult. I did worse; I took a copy of my letter, and declared that I would read it to the officers in the mess-room. He sent a friend to me to beg I would not take this course of open insult. My answer was, 'Colonel Barrington knows his remedy.' When I sent this message, I prepared for what I felt certain would follow. I knew Barrington so well that I thought even the delay of an hour, then two hours, strange. At length evening drew nigh, and, though I sat waiting in my quarters, no one came from him,--not a letter nor a line apprised me what course he meant to take.

”Not caring to meet the mess at such a moment, I ordered my horses and drove up to a small station about twenty miles off, leaving word where I was to be found. I pa.s.sed three days there in a state of fevered expectancy. Barrington made no sign, and, at length, racked and distressed by the conflict with myself,--now summoning up an insolent spirit of defiance to the whole world, now humbling myself in a consciousness of the evil line I had adopted,--I returned one night to my quarters. The first news that greeted me was that Barrington had left us. He had accepted the offer of a Native command which had been made to him some months before, and of which we had often canva.s.sed together all the advantages and disadvantages. I heard that he had written two letters to me before he started, and torn them up after they were sealed. I never heard from him, never saw him more, till I saw his dead body carried into camp the morning he fell.

”I must get to the end of this quickly, Fred, and I will tell you all at once, for it is a theme I will never go back on. I came to England with despatches about two years after Barrington's death. It was a hurried visit, for I was ordered to hold myself in readiness to return almost as soon as I arrived. I was greatly occupied, going about from place to place, and person to person, so many great people desired to have a verbal account of what was doing in India, and to hear confidentially what I thought of matters there. In the midst of the ma.s.s of letters which the post brought me every morning, and through which, without the aid of an officer on the staff, I could never have got through, there came one whose singular address struck me. It was to 'Captain Ormsby Conyers, 22d Light Dragoons,' a rank I had held fourteen years before that time in that same regiment. I opined at once that my correspondent must have been one who had known me at that time and not followed me in the interval. I was right. It was from old Mr. Barrington,--George Barrington's father. What version of my quarrel with his son could have reached him, I cannot even guess, nor by what light he read my conduct in the affair; but such a letter I never read in my life. It was a challenge to meet him anywhere, and with any weapon, but couched in language so insulting as to impugn my courage, and hint that I would probably shelter myself behind the pretext of his advanced age. 'But remember,' said he, 'if G.o.d has permitted me to be an old man, it is _you_ who have made me a childless one!'”

For a few seconds he paused, overcome by emotion, and then went on: ”I sat down and wrote him a letter of contrition, almost abject in its terms. I entreated him to believe that for every wrong I had done his n.o.ble-hearted son, my own conscience had repaid me in misery ten times told; that if he deemed my self-condemnation insufficient, it was open to him to add to it whatever he wished of obloquy or shame; that if he proclaimed me a coward before the world, and degraded me in the eyes of men, I would not offer one word in my defence. I cannot repeat all that I said in my deep humiliation. His answer came at last, one single line, re-enclosing my own letter to me: 'Lest I should be tempted to make use of this letter, I send it back to you; there is no need of more between us.'

”With this our intercourse ceased. When a correspondence was published in the 'Barrington Inquiry,' as it was called, I half hoped he would have noticed some letters of mine about George; but he never did, and in his silence I thought I read his continued unforgiveness.”

”I hope, father, that you never believed the charges that were made against Captain Barrington?”

”Not one of them; disloyalty was no more his than cowardice. I never knew the Englishman with such a pride of country as he had, nor could you have held out a greater bribe to him, for any achievement of peril, than to say, 'What a gain it would be for England!'”

”How was it that such a man should have had a host of enemies?”

”Nothing so natural. Barrington was the most diffident of men; his bashfulness amounted to actual pain. With strangers, this made him cold to very sternness, or, as is often seen in the effort to conquer a natural defect, gave him a manner of over-easy confidence that looked like impertinence. And thus the man who would not have wounded the self-love of the meanest beggar, got the reputation of being haughty, insolent, and oppressive. Besides this, when he was in the right, and felt himself so, he took no pains to convince others of the fact. His maxim was,--have I not heard it from his lips scores of times,--'The end will show.'”

”And yet the end will not show, father; his fame has not been vindicated, nor his character cleared.”

”In some measure the fault of those who took up his cause. They seemed less to insist on reparation than punishment. They did not say, 'Do justice to this man's memory;' but, 'Come forward and own you wronged him, and broke his heart.' Now, the accusation brought against George Barrington of a.s.suming sovereign power was not settled by his death; his relatives forgot this, or merged it in their own charge against the Company. They mismanaged everything.”

”Is it too late to put them on the right track, father; or could you do it?” asked the youth, eagerly.

”It is not too late, boy! There is time for it yet. There is, however, one condition necessary, and I do not see how that is to be secured.”

”And what is that?”

”I should see Mr. Barrington and confer with him alone; he must admit me to his confidence, and I own to you, I scarcely deem that possible.”

”May I try--may I attempt this?”

”I do not like to refuse you, Fred: but if I say Yes, it will be to include you in my own defeated hopes. For many a year Mr. Barrington has refused to give one sign of his forgiveness; for in his treatment of you I only recognize the honorable feeling of exempting the son from the penalty due to the father. But perhaps defeat is better than self-reproach, and as I have a strong conviction I could serve him, I am ready to risk a failure.”

”I may make the attempt, then?” said Fred, eagerly. ”I will write to Miss Barrington to-day.”

”And now of yourself. What of your career? How do you like soldiering, boy?”

”Less than ever, sir; it is only within the last week or two that we have seen anything beyond barrack or parade duty. Now, however, we have been called to repress what are called risings in the northern s.h.i.+res; and our task has been to ride at large unarmed mobs and charge down ma.s.ses, whose grape-shot are brickbats. Not a very glorious campaign!”

The old man smiled, but said nothing for a moment.

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