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Barrington. Volume 1. Lever Charles James
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Автор произведения Lever Charles James
Жанр Зарубежная классика
Издательство Public Domain
“Right or wrong, I don’t care; but this I know, Terry Dogherty is n’t going to finish off Henderson’s port. It is rather too much to stand, that we are to be treating beggars to luxuries, when we can’t say to-morrow where we shall find salt for our potatoes.” This was a somewhat favorite illustration of Miss Barrington, – either implying that the commodity was an essential to human life, or the use of it an emblem of extreme destitution.
“I conclude we may dispense with Tom Divett’s services,” resumed she. “We can assuredly get on without a professional rat-catcher.”
“If we should, Dinah, we’ll feel the loss; the rats make sad havoc of the spawn, and destroy quantities of the young fish, besides.”
“His two ugly terriers eat just as many chickens, and never leave us an egg in the place. And now for Mr. Darby – ”
“You surely don’t think of parting with Darby, sister Dinah?”
“He shall lead the way,” replied she, in a firm and peremptory voice; “the very first of the batch! And it will, doubtless, be a great comfort to you to know that you need not distress yourself about any provision for his declining years. It is a care that he has attended to on his own part. He ‘ll go back to a very well-feathered nest, I promise you.”
Barrington sighed heavily, for he had a secret sorrow on that score. He knew, though his sister did not, that he had from year to year been borrowing every pound of Darby’s savings to pay the cost of law charges, always hoping and looking for the time when a verdict in his favor would enable him to restore the money twice told. With a very dreary sigh, then, did he here allude “to the well-feathered nest” of one he had left bare and destitute. He cleared his throat, and made an effort to avow the whole matter; but his courage failed him, and he sat mournfully shaking his head, partly in sorrow, partly in shame. His sister noticed none of these signs; she was rapidly enumerating all the reductions that could be made, – all the dependencies cut off; there were the boats, which constantly required repairs; the nets, eternally being renewed, – all to be discarded; the island, a very pretty little object in the middle of the river, need no longer be rented. “Indeed,” said she, “I don’t know why we took it, except it was to give those memorable picnics you used to have there.”
“How pleasant they were, Dinah; how delightful!” said he, totally overlooking the spirit of her remark.
“Oh! they were charming, and your own popularity was boundless; but I ‘d have you to bear in mind, brother Peter, that popularity is no more a poor man’s luxury than champagne. It is a very costly indulgence, and can rarely be had on ‘credit.’”
Miss Barrington had pared down retrenchment to the very quick. She had shown that they could live not only without boatmen, rat-catchers, gardener, and manservant, but that, as they were to give up their daily newspaper, they could dispense with a full ration of candle-light; and yet, with all these reductions, she declared that there was still another encumbrance to be pruned away, and she proudly asked her brother if he could guess what it was?
Now Barrington felt that he could not live without a certain allowance of food, nor would it be convenient, or even decent, to dispense with raiment; so he began, as a last resource, to conjecture that his sister was darkly hinting at something which might be a substitute for a home, and save house-rent; and he half testily exclaimed, “I suppose we ‘re to have a roof over us, Dinah!”
“Yes,” said she, dryly, “I never proposed we should go and live in the woods. What I meant had a reference, to Josephine – ”
Barrington’s cheek flushed deeply in an instant, and, with a voice trembling with emotion, he said, —
“If you mean, Dinah, that I’m to cut off that miserable pittance – that forty pounds a year – I give to poor George’s girl – ” He stopped, for he saw that in his sister’s face which might have appalled a bolder heart than his own; for while her eyes flashed fire, her thin lips trembled with passion; and so, in a very faltering humility, he added: “But you never meant that sister Dinah. You would be the very last in the world to do it.”
“Then why impute it to me; answer me that?” said she, crossing her hands behind her back, and staring haughtily at him.
“Just because I ‘m clean at my wits’ end, – just because I neither understand one word I hear, or what I say in reply. If you ‘ll just tell me what it is you propose, I ‘ll do my best, with God’s blessing, to follow you; but don’t ask me for advice, Dinah, and don’t fly out because I ‘m not as quick-witted and as clever as yourself.”
There was something almost so abject in his misery that she seemed touched by it, and, in a voice of a very calm and kindly meaning, she said, —
“I have been thinking a good deal over that letter of Josephine’s; she says she wants our consent to take the veil as a nun; that, by the rules of the order, when her novitiate is concluded, she must go into the world for at least some months, – a time meant to test her faithfulness to her vows, and the tranquillity with which she can renounce forever all the joys and attractions of life. We, it is true, have no means of surrounding her with such temptations; but we might try and supply their place by some less brilliant but not less attractive ones. We might offer her, what we ought to have offered her years ago, – a home! What do you say to this, Peter?”
“That I love you for it, sister Dinah, with all my heart,” said he, kissing her on each cheek; “that it makes me happier than I knew I ever was to be again.”
“Of course, to bring Josephine here, this must not be an inn, Peter.”
“Certainly not, Dinah, – certainly not. But I can think of nothing but the joy of seeing her, – poor George’s child I How I have yearned to know if she was like him, – if she had any of his ways, any traits of that quaint, dry humor he had, and, above all, of that disposition that made him so loved by every one.”
“And cheated by every one too, brother Peter; don’t forget that!”
“Who wants to think of it now?” said he, sorrowfully.
“I never reject a thought because it has unpleasant associations. It would be but a sorry asylum which only admitted the well-to-do and the happy.”
“How are we to get the dear child here, Dinah? Let us consider the matter. It is a long journey off.”
“I have thought of that too,” said she, sententiously, “but not made up my mind.”
“Let us ask M’Cormick about it, Dinah; he’s coming up this evening to play his Saturday night’s rubber with Dill. He knows the Continent well.”
“There will be another saving that I did n’t remember, Peter. The weekly bottle of whiskey, and the candles, not to speak of the four or five shillings your pleasant companions invariably carry away with them, – all may be very advantageously dispensed with.”
“When Josephine ‘s here, I ‘ll not miss it,” said he, good-humoredly. Then suddenly remembering that his sister might not deem the speech a gracious one to herself, he was about to add something; but she was gone.
CHAPTER III. OUR NEXT NEIGHBORS
Should there be amongst my readers any one whose fortune it has been in life only to associate with the amiable, the interesting, and the agreeable, all whose experiences of mankind are rose-tinted, to him I would say, Skip over two people I am now about to introduce, and take up my story at some later stage, for I desire to be truthful, and, as is the misfortune of people in my situation, I may be very disagreeable.
After all, I may have made more excuses than were needful. The persons I would present are in that large category, the commonplace, and only as uninviting and as tiresome as we may any day meet in a second-class on the railroad. Flourish, therefore, penny trumpets, and announce Major M’Cormick. The Major, so confidently referred to by Barrington in our last chapter