Barrington. Volume 1

It was so evident that she was speaking with a forced calm, and that all her self-restraint might at any moment prove unequal to the effort she was making, that Conyers, affecting to have a few words to say to Stapylton’s messenger, stole away, and hastened to his room to look over the letters and the volume she had given him.

He had scarcely addressed himself to his task when a knock came to the door, and at the same instant it was opened in a slow, half-hesitating way, and Tom Dill stood before him. Though evidently dressed for the occasion, and intending to present himself in a most favorable guise, Tom looked far more vulgar and unprepossessing than in the worn costume of his every-day life, his bright-buttoned blue coat and yellow waistcoat being only aggravations of the low-bred air that unhappily beset him. Worse even than this, however, was the fact that, being somewhat nervous about the interview before him, Tom had taken what his father would have called a diffusible stimulant, in the shape of “a dandy of punch,” and bore the evidences of it in a heightened color and a very lustrous but wandering eye.

“Here I am,” said he, entering with a sort of easy swagger, but far more affected than real, notwithstanding the “dandy.”

“Well, and what then?” asked Conyers, haughtily, for the vulgar presumption of his manner was but a sorry advocate in his favor. “I don’t remember, that I sent for you.”

“No; but my father told me what you said to him, and I was to come up and thank you, and say, ‘Done!’ to it all.”

Conyers turned a look – not a very pleased or very flattering look – at the loutish figure before him, and in his changing color might be seen the conflict it cost him to keep down his rising temper. He was, indeed, sorely tried, and his hand shook as he tossed over the books on his table, and endeavored to seem occupied in other matters.

“Maybe you forget all about it,” began Tom. “Perhaps you don’t remember that you offered to fit me out for India, and send me over with a letter to your father – ”

“No, no, I forget nothing of it; I remember it all.” He had almost said “only too well,” but he coughed down the cruel speech, and went on hurriedly: “You have come, however, when I am engaged, – when I have other things to attend to. These letters here – In fact, this is not a moment when I can attend to you. Do you understand me?”

“I believe I do,” said Tom, growing very pale.

“To-morrow, then, or the day after, or next week, will be time enough for all this. I must think over the matter again.”

“I see,” said Tom, moodily, as he changed from one foot to the other, and cracked the joints of his fingers, till they seemed dislocated. “I see it all.”

“What do you mean by that? – what do you see?” asked Conyers, angrily.

“I see that Polly, my sister, was right; that she knew you better than any of us,” said Tom, boldly, for a sudden rush of courage had now filled his heart. “She said, ‘Don’t let him turn your head, Tom, with his fine promises. He was in good humor and good spirits when he made them, and perhaps meant to keep them too; but he little knows what misery disappointment brings, and he’ll never fret himself over the heavy heart he’s giving you, when he wakes in the morning with a change of mind.’ And then, she said another thing,” added he, after a pause.

“And what was the other thing?”

“She said, ‘If you go up there, Tom,’ says she, ‘dressed out like a shopboy in his Sunday suit, he’ll be actually shocked at his having taken an interest in you. He ‘ll forget all about your hard lot and your struggling fortune, and only see your vulgarity.’ ‘Your vulgarity,’ – that was the word.” As he said this, his lip trembled, and the chair he leaned on shook under his grasp.

“Go back, and tell her, then, that she was mistaken,” said Conyers, whose own voice now quavered. “Tell her that when I give my word I keep it; that I will maintain everything I said to you or to your father; and that when she imputed to me an indifference as to the feelings of others, she might have remembered whether she was not unjust to mine. Tell her that also.”

“I will,” said Tom, gravely. “Is there anything more?” “No, nothing more,” said Conyers, who with difficulty suppressed a smile at the words and the manner of his questioner. “Good-bye, then. You ‘ll send for me when you want me,” said Tom; and he was out of the room, and half-way across the lawn, ere Conyers could recover himself to reply.

Conyers, however, flung open the window, and cried to him to come back.

“I was nigh forgetting a most important part of the matter, Tom,” said he, as the other entered, somewhat pale and anxious-looking. “You told me, t’ other day, that there was some payment to be made, – some sum to be lodged before you could present yourself for examination. What about this? When must it be done?”

“A month before I go in,” said Tom, to whom the very thought of the ordeal seemed full of terror and heart-sinking.

“And how soon do you reckon that may be?”

“Polly says not before eight weeks at the earliest. She says we ‘ll have to go over Bell on the Bones all again, and brush up the Ligaments, besides. If it was the Navy, they ‘d not mind the nerves; but they tell me the Army fellows often take a man on the fifth pair, and I know if they do me, it’s mighty little of India I ‘ll see.”

“Plucked, eh?”

“I don’t know what you mean by ‘plucked,’ but I ‘d be turned back, which is, perhaps, the same. And no great disgrace, either,” added he, with more of courage in his voice; “Polly herself says there’s days she could n’t remember all the branches of the fifth, and the third is almost as bad.”

“I suppose if your sister could go up in your place, Tom, you ‘d be quite sure of your diploma?”

“It’s many and many a day I wished that same,” sighed he, heavily. “If you heard her going over the ‘Subclavian,’ you ‘d swear she had the book in her hand.”

Conyers could not repress a smile at this strange piece of feminine accomplishment, but he was careful not to let Tom perceive it. Not, indeed, that the poor fellow was in a very observant mood; Polly’s perfections, her memory, and her quickness were the themes that filled up his mind.

“What a rare piece of luck for you to have had such a sister, Tom!”

“Don’t I say it to myself? – don’t I repeat the very same words every morning when I awake? Maybe I ‘ll never come to any good; maybe my father is right, and that I ‘ll only be a disgrace as long as I live; but I hope one thing, at least, I ‘ll never be so bad that I ‘ll forget Polly, and all she done for me. And I’ll tell you more,” said he, with a choking fulness in his throat; “if they turn me back at my examination, my heart will be heavier for her than for myself.”

“Come, cheer up, Tom; don’t look on the gloomy side. You ‘ll pass, I ‘m certain, and with credit too. Here ‘s the thirty pounds you ‘ll have to lodge – ”

“It is only twenty they require. And, besides, I could n’t take it; it’s my father must pay.” He stammered, and hesitated, and grew pale and then crimson, while his lips trembled and his chest heaved and fell almost convulsively.

“Nothing of the kind, Tom,” said Conyers, who had to subdue his own emotion by an assumed sternness. “The plan is all my own, and I will stand no interference with it. I mean that you should pass your examination without your father knowing one word about it. You shall come back to him with your diploma, or whatever it is, in your hand, and say, ‘There, sir, the men who have signed their names to that do not think so meanly of me as you do.’”

“And he’d say, the more fools they!” said Tom, with a grim smile.

“At all events,” resumed Conyers, “I ‘ll have my own way. Put that note in your pocket, and whenever you are gazetted Surgeon-Major to the Guards, or Inspector-General of all the Hospitals in Great Britain, you can repay me, and with interest, besides, if you like it.”

“You ‘ve given me a good long day to be in your debt,” said Tom; and he hurried out of the room before his overfull heart should betray his emotion.

It is marvellous how quickly a kind action done to another reconciles a man to himself. Doubtless conscience at such times condescends to play the courtier, and whispers, “What a good fellow you are! and how unjust the world is when it calls you cold and haughty and ungenial!” Not that I would assert higher and better thoughts than these do not reward him who, Samaritan-like, binds up the wounds of misery; but I fear me much that few of us resist self-flattery, or those little delicate adulations one can offer to his own heart when nobody overhears him.

At all events, Conyers was not averse to this pleasure, and grew actually to feel a strong interest for Tom Dill, all because that poor fellow had been the recipient of his bounty; for so is it the waters of our nature must be stirred by some act of charity or kindness, else their healing virtues have small efficacy, and cure not.

And then he wondered and questioned himself whether Polly might not possibly be right, and that his “governor” would maryel where and how he had picked up so strange a specimen as Tom. That poor fellow, too, like many an humble flower, seen not disadvantageously in its native wilds, would look strangely out of place when transplanted and treated as an exotic. Still he could trust to the wide and generous nature of his father to overlook small defects of manner and breeding, and take the humble fellow kindly.

Must I own that a considerable share of his hopefulness was derived from thinking that the odious blue coat and brass buttons could scarcely make part of Tom’s kit for India, and that in no other costume known to civilized man could his protégé look so unprepossessingly?

CHAPTER XIII. A FEW LEAVES FROM A BLUE-BOOK

The journal which Miss Barrington had placed in Conyers’s hands was little else than the record of the sporting adventures of two young and very dashing fellows. There were lion and tiger hunts, so little varied in detail that one might serve for all, though doubtless to the narrator each was marked with its own especial interest. There were travelling incidents and accidents, and straits for money, and mishaps and arrests, and stories of steeple-chases and balls all mixed up together, and recounted so very much in the same spirit as to show how very little shadow mere misadventure could throw across the sunshine of their every-day life. But every now and then Conyers came upon some entry which closely touched his heart. It was how nobly Ormsby behaved. What a splendid fellow he was! so frank, so generous, such a horseman! “I wish you saw the astonishment of the Mahratta fellows as Ormsby lifted the tent-pegs in full career; he never missed one. Ormsby won the rifle-match; we all knew he would. Sir Peregrine invited Ormsby to go with him to the Hills, but he refused, mainly because I was not asked.” Ormsby has been offered this, that, or t’other; in fact, that one name recurred in every second sentence, and always with the same marks of affection. How proud, too, did Barrington seem of his friend. “They have found out that no country-house is perfect without Ormsby, and he is positively persecuted with invitations. I hear the ‘G. – G.’ is provoked at Ormsby’s refusal of a staff appointment. I’m in rare luck; the old Rajah of Tannanoohr has asked Ormsby to a grand elephant-hunt next week, and I ‘m to go with him. I ‘m to have a leave in October. Ormsby managed it somehow; he never fails, whatever he takes in hand. Such a fright as I got yesterday! There was a report in the camp Ormsby was going to England with despatches; it’s all a mistake, however, he says. He believes he might have had the opportunity, had he cared for it.”

If there was not much in these passing notices of his father, there was quite enough to impart to them an intense degree of interest. There is a wondrous charm, besides, in reading of the young days of those we have only known in maturer life, in hearing of them when they were fresh, ardent, and impetuous; in knowing, besides, how they were regarded by contemporaries, how loved and valued. It was not merely that Ormsby recurred in almost every page of this journal, but the record bore testimony to his superiority and the undisputed sway he exercised over his companions. This same power of dominating and directing had been the distinguishing feature of his after-life, and many an unruly and turbulent spirit had been reclaimed under Ormsby Conyers’s hands.

As he read on, he grew also to feel a strong interest for the writer himself; the very heartiness of the affection he bestowed on his father, and the noble generosity with which he welcomed every success of that “dear fellow Ormsby,” were more than enough to secure his interest for him. There was a bold, almost reckless dash, too, about Barrington which has a great charm occasionally for very young men. He adventured upon life pretty much as he would try to cross a river; he never looked for a shallow nor inquired for a ford, but plunged boldly in, and trusted to his brave heart and his strong arms for the rest. No one, indeed, reading even these rough notes, could hesitate to pronounce which of the two would “make the spoon,” and which “spoil the horn.” Young Conyers was eager to find some mention of the incident to which Miss Barrington had vaguely alluded. He wanted to read George Barrington’s own account before he opened the little pamphlet she gave him, but the journal closed years before this event; and although some of the letters came down to a later date, none approached the period he wanted.

It was not till after some time that he remarked how much more unfrequently his father’s name occurred in the latter portion of the correspondence. Entire pages would contain no reference to him, and in the last letter of all there was this towards the end: “After all, I am almost sorry that I am first for purchase, for I believe Ormsby is most anxious for his troop. I say ‘I believe,’ for he has not told me so, and when I offered to give way to him, he seemed half offended with me. You know what a bungler I am where a matter of any delicacy is to be treated, and you may easily fancy either that I mismanage the affair grossly, or that I am as grossly mistaken. One thing is certain, I ‘d see promotion far enough, rather than let it make a coldness beween us, which could never occur if he were as frank as he used to be. My dear aunt, I wish I had your wise head to counsel me, for I have a scheme in my mind which I have scarcely courage for without some advice, and for many reasons I cannot ask O.‘s opinion. Between this and the next mail I ‘ll think it over carefully, and tell you what I intend.

“I told you that Ormsby was going to marry one of the Gpvernor-General’s daughters. It is all off, – at least, I hear so, – and O. has asked for leave to go home. I suspect he is sorely cut up about this, but he is too proud a fellow to let the world see it. Report says that Sir Peregrine heard that he played. So he does, because he does everything, and everything well. If he does go to England, he will certainly pay you a visit. Make much of him for my sake; you could not make too much for his own.”

This was the last mention of his father, and he pondered long and thoughtfully over it. He saw, or fancied he saw, the first faint glimmerings of a coldness between them, and he hastily turned to the printed report of the House of Commons inquiry, to see what part his father had taken. His name occurred but once; it was appended to an extract of a letter, addressed to him by the Governor-General. It was a confidential report, and much of it omitted in publication. It was throughout, however, a warm and generous testimony to Barrington’s character. “I never knew a man,” said he, “less capable of anything mean or unworthy; nor am I able to imagine any temptation strong enough to warp him from what he believed to be right. That on a question of policy his judgment might be wrong, I am quite ready to admit, but I will maintain that, on a point of honor, he would, and must, be infallible.” Underneath this passage there was written, in Miss Barrington’s hand, “Poor George never saw this; it was not published till after his death.” So interested did young Conyers feel as to the friendship between these two men, and what it could have been that made a breach between them, – if breach there were, – that he sat a long time without opening the little volume that related to the charge against Colonel Barrington. He had but to open it, however, to guess the spirit in which it was written. Its title was, “The Story of Samuel Ed-wardes, with an Account of the Persecutions and Tortures inflicted on him by Colonel George Barrington, when serving in command of the Forces of the Meer Nagheer Assahr, Rajah of Luckerabad, based on the documents produced before the Committee of the House, and private authentic information.” Opposite to this lengthy title was an ill-executed wood-cut of a young fellow tied up to a tree, and being flogged by two native Indians, with the inscription at foot: “Mode of celebrating His Majesty’s Birthday, 4th of June, 18 – , at the Residence of Luckerabad.”

In the writhing figure of the youth, and the ferocious glee of his executioners, the artist had displayed all his skill in expression, and very unmistakably shown, besides, the spirit of the publication. I have no intention to inflict this upon my reader. I will simply give him – and as briefly as I am able – its substance.

The Rajah of Luckerabad, an independent sovereign, living on the best of terms with the Government of the Company, had obtained permission to employ an English officer in the chief command of his army, a force of some twenty-odd thousand, of all arms. It was essential that he should be one not only well acquainted with the details of command, but fully equal to the charge of organization of a force; a man of energy and decision, well versed in Hindostanee, and not altogether ignorant of Persian, in which, occasionally, correspondence was carried on. Amongst the many candidates for an employment so certain to insure the fortune of its possessor, Major Barrington, then a brevet Lieutenant-Colonel, was chosen.

It is not improbable that, in mere technical details of his art, he might have had many equal and some superior to him; it was well known that his personal requisites were above all rivalry. He was a man of great size and strength, of a most commanding presence, an accomplished linguist in the various dialects of Central India and a great master of all manly exercises. To these qualities he added an Oriental taste for splendor and pomp. It had always been his habit to live in a style of costly extravagance, with the retinue of a petty prince, and when he travelled it was with the following of a native chief.

Though, naturally enough, such a station as a separate command gave might be regarded as a great object of ambition by many, there was a good deal of surprise felt at the time that Barrington, reputedly a man of large fortune, should have accepted it; the more so since, by his contract, he bound himself for ten years to the Rajah, and thus forever extinguished all prospect of advancement in his own service. There were all manner of guesses afloat as to his reasons. Some said that he was already so embarrassed by his extravagance that it was his only exit out of difficulty; others pretended that he was captivated by the gorgeous splendor of that Eastern life he loved so well; that pomp, display, and magnificence were bribes he could not resist; and a few, who affected to see more nearly, whispered that he was unhappy of late, had grown peevish and uncompanionable, and sought any change, so that it took him out of his regiment. Whatever the cause, he bade his brother-officers farewell without revealing it, and set out for his new destination. He had never anticipated a life of ease or inaction, but he was equally far from imagining anything like what now awaited him. Corruption, falsehood, robbery, on every hand! The army was little else than a brigand establishment, living on the peasants, and exacting, at the sword point, whatever they wanted. There was no obedience to discipline. The Rajah troubled himself about nothing but his pleasures, and, indeed, passed his days so drugged with opium as to be almost insensible to all around him. In the tribunals there was nothing but bribery, and the object of every one seemed to be to amass fortunes as rapidly as possible, and then hasten away from a country so insecure and dangerous.

For some days after his arrival, Barrington hesitated whether he would accept a charge so apparently hopeless; his bold heart, however, decided the doubt, and he resolved to remain. His first care was to look about him for one or two more trustworthy than the masses, if such there should be, to assist him, and the Rajah referred him to his secretary for that purpose. It was with sincere pleasure Barring-ton discovered that this man was English, – that is, his father had been an Englishman, and his mother was a Malabar slave in the Rajah’s household: his name was Edwardes, but called by the natives Ali Edwardes. He looked about sixty, but his real age was about forty-six when Barrington came to the Residence. He was a man of considerable ability, uniting all the craft and subtlety of the Oriental with the dogged perseverance of the Briton. He had enjoyed the full favor of the Rajah for nigh twenty years, and was strongly averse to the appointment of an English officer to the command of the army, knowing full well the influence it would have over his own fortunes. He represented to the Rajah that the Company was only intriguing to absorb his dominions with their own; that the new Commander-in-chief would be their servant and not his; that it was by such machinery as this they secretly possessed themselves of all knowledge of the native sovereigns, learned their weakness and their strength, and through such agencies hatched those plots and schemes by which many a chief had been despoiled of his state.

The Rajah, however, saw that if he had a grasping Government on one side, he had an insolent and rebellious army on the other. There was not much to choose between them, but he took the side that he thought the least bad, and left the rest to Fate.

Having failed with the Rajah, Edwardes tried what he could do with Barrington; and certainly, if but a tithe of what he told him were true, the most natural thing in the world would have been that he should give up his appointment, and quit forever a land so hopelessly sunk in vice and corruption. Cunning and crafty as he was, however, he made one mistake, and that an irreparable one. When dilating on the insubordination of the army, its lawless ways and libertine habits, he declared that nothing short of a superior force in the field could have any chance of enforcing discipline. “As to a command,” said he, “it is simply ludicrous. Let any man try it and they will cut him down in the very midst of his staff.”

That unlucky speech decided the question; and Barring-ton simply said, —

“I have heard plenty of this sort of thing in India; I never saw it, – I ‘ll stay.”

Stay he did; and he did more: he reformed that rabble, and made of them a splendid force, able, disciplined, and obedient. With the influence of his success, added to that derived from the confidence reposed in him by the Rajah, he introduced many and beneficial changes into the administration; he punished peculators by military law, and brought knavish sutlers to the drum-head. In fact, by the exercise of a salutary despotism, he rescued the state from an impending bankruptcy and ruin, placed its finances in a healthy condition, and rendered the country a model of prosperity and contentment. The Rajah had, like most of his rank and class, been in litigation, occasionally in armed contention, with some of his neighbors, – one especially, an uncle, whom he accused of having robbed him, when his guardian, of a large share of his heritage. This suit had gone on for years, varied at times by little raids into each other’s territories, to burn villages and carry away cattle. Though with a force more than sufficient to have carried the question with a strong hand, Barrington preferred the more civilized mode of leaving the matter in dispute to others, and suggested the Company as arbitrator. The negotiations led to a lengthy correspondence, in which Edwardes and his son, a youth of seventeen or eighteen, were actively occupied; and although Barrington was not without certain misgivings as to their trustworthiness and honesty, he knew their capacity, and had not, besides, any one at all capable of replacing them. While these affairs were yet pending, Barrington married the daughter of the Meer, a young girl whose mother had been a convert to Christianity, and who had herself been educated by a Catholic missionary. She died in the second year of her marriage, giving birth to a daughter; but Barrington had now become so completely the centre of all action in the state, that the Rajah interfered in nothing, leaving in his hands the undisputed control of the Government; nay, more, he made him his son by adoption, leaving to him not alone all his immense personal property, but the inheritance to his throne. Though Barrington was advised by all the great legal authorities he consulted in England that such a bequest could not be good in law, nor a British subject be permitted to succeed to the rights of an Eastern sovereignty, he obstinately declared that the point was yet untried; that, however theoretically the opinion might be correct, practically the question had not been determined, nor had any case yet occurred to rule as a precedent on it. If he was not much of a lawyer, he was of a temperament that could not brook opposition. In fact, to make him take any particular road in life, you had only to erect a barricade on it. When, therefore, he was told the matter could not be, his answer was, “It shall!” Calcutta lawyers, men deep in knowledge of Oriental law and custom, learned Moonshees and Pundits, were despatched by him at enormous cost, to England, to confer with the great authorities at home. Agents were sent over to procure the influence of great Parliamentary speakers and the leaders in the press to the cause. For a matter which, in the beginning, he cared scarcely anything, if at all, he had now grown to feel the most intense and absorbing interest. Half persuading himself that the personal question was less to him than the great privilege and right of an Englishman, he declared that he would rather die a beggar in the defence of the cause than abandon it. So possessed was he, indeed, of his rights, and so resolved to maintain them, supported by a firm belief that they would and must be ultimately conceded to him, that in the correspondence with the other chiefs every reference which spoke of the future sovereignty of Luckerabad included his own name and title, and this with an ostentation quite Oriental.