Barren Honour: A Novel

by George A. Lawrence

Crichton shivered all over, worse than he had done out in the cold March evening.

"Put the case down," he said hoarsely. "It will be time enough to talk about that and your good intentions half-an-hour hence. I'll tell you what I have been doing, if you care to hear."

Now, though the story interested Wyverne sincerely, it would be simple cruelty to inflict it on you; with very slight variations, it might have applied to half the viveurs that have been ruined during the last hundred years. Still, not many men could have listened unmoved to such a tale, issuing from the mouth of an ancient friend. When he had come to a certain point in his story, the speaker paused abruptly.

"Poor Hugh!" Alan said. "How you must have suffered. Take breath now; I'm certain your throat wants moistening, and the claret has been waiting on you this quarter of an hour. It's my turn to speak; I'm impatient to tell you my plan. The agent at Castle Dacre is so wonderfully old and rheumatic, that it makes one believe in miracles when he climbs on the back of his pony. I would give anything to have a decent excuse for pensioning him off. I shall never live there much, and the property is so large, that it ought to be properly looked after. If you don't mind taking care of a very dreary old house, there's £800 a year, and unlimited lights and coals, (they used to burn about ten tons a week, I believe,) and all the snipe and fowl you like to shoot, waiting for you. I shall be the obliged party if you'll take it; for it will ease my conscience, which at present is greatly troubled. The work is not so hard, and you've head enough for anything."

Not pleasure or gratitude, but rather vexation and confusion showed themselves in Crichton's face.

"Can't you have patience!" he muttered, irritably. "Didn't I ask you to wait till you had heard all? There's more, and worse, to tell; though I don't know, yet, how much harm was done."

He went on to say, that about the time when things were at the worst with him, he had stumbled upon Harding Knowles; they had been contemporaries at Oxford, and rather intimate. Harding did not appear to rejoice much at the encounter; though he must have guessed at the first glance the strait to which his old acquaintance was reduced, he made no offer of prompt assistance, but asked for Crichton's address, expressing vague hopes of being able to do something for him; Hugh gave it with great reluctance, and only under a solemn promise of secrecy. He did not the least expect that Knowles would remember him, and was greatly surprised when the latter called some five or six weeks afterwards. Harding's tone was much more cordial than it had been at their first meeting; he seemed really sorry at having failed, so far, in finding anything that would suit Crichton, and actually pressed him to borrow £10—or more if it was required—to meet present emergencies. An instinctive suspicion almost made Hugh refuse the loan; he felt as if he would rather be indebted to any man alive than to the person who offered it; but he was so fearfully "hard up" that he had not the courage to decline. Knowles came again and again, with no ostensible object except cheering his friend's solitude, and each time was ready to open his purse. "We must get you something before long, and then you can repay me," he would say. Crichton availed himself of these offers more than once, moderately; he began to think that he had done his benefactor great injustice, and looked for his visits eagerly; indeed, few causeurs, when he chose to exert himself, could talk more pleasantly than Knowles.

One evening the conversation turned, apparently by chance, to old memories of college days.

"That was the best managed thing we ever brought off," Harding said at last, "when we made Alick Drummond carry on a regular correspondence with a foreign lady of the highest rank, who was madly in love with him. How did we christen the Countess? I forget. But I remember the letters you wrote for her; the delicate feminine character was the most perfect thing I ever saw. Have you lost that talent of imitating handwriting? It must have been a natural gift; I never saw it equalled."

"Write down a sentence or two," Hugh replied; "I'll show you if I have lost the knack."