“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 passion.
“'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 passionate 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 passed 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 canvassed 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 mass 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 God 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 noble-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?”