Kitabı oku: «Davenport Dunn, a Man of Our Day. Volume 1», sayfa 11

“He’s cool, he is, the noble Lord,” said Davis, laying down the letter, while Beecher laughed till his eyes ran over with tears. “Now, I ‘d trouble his Lordship to tell me,” continued Grog, “which had the worst of that same acquaintance, and which was more profitable to the other. If the famous Grog were to split upon the notorious Annes-ley, who ‘d come last out of the bag?”

“You need n’t take it so seriously as all that, Grog,” said Beecher, in a placable tone.

“Why, when I’m told that one of the hardest things to be laid to your charge is the knowing me, it’s high time to be serious, I think; not but I might just throw a shell into the enemy’s own camp. The noble Lord ain’t so safe as he fancies. I was head-waiter at Smykes’s, – the old Cherry-tree, at Richmond – the night Mat Fortescue was ruined. I could tell the names of the partners even yet, though it’s a matter of I won’t say how many years ago; and when poor Fortescue blew his brains out, I know the man who drove his phaeton into town and said, ‘Fortescue never had a hand light enough for these chestnuts. I always knew what I could do with them if they were my own.’”

“Lackington never said that. I ‘ll take my oath of it he never did!” cried Beecher, passionately.

“Take your oath of it!” said Davis, with an insulting sneer. “Do you mind the day old Justice Blanchard – it was at the York assizes – said, ‘Have a care, Mr. Beecher, what you are about to swear; if you persist in affirming that document, the consequences may be more serious than you apprehend?’ And do you remember you did n’t swear?”

“I ‘ll tell you what, Master Grog,” said Beecher, over whose face a sudden paleness now spread, “you may speak of me just as you like. You and I have been companions and pals for many a day; but Lackington is the head of my family, he has his seat in the Peers, he can hold up his head with the best in England, and I ‘ll not sit here to listen to anything against him.”

“You won’t, won’t you?” said Grog, placing a hand on either knee, and fixing his fiery gray eyes on the other’s face. “Well, then, I ‘ll tell you that you shall! Sit down, sir, – sit down, I say, and don’t budge from that chair till I tell you! Do you see that hand? and that arm, – grasp it, squeeze it, – does n’t feel very like the sinews of a fellow that feared hard labor. I was the best ten stone seven man in England the year I fought Black Joe, and I ‘m as tough this minute, so that Norfolk Island needn’t frighten me; but the Hon. Annesley Beecher would n’t like it, I ‘ll promise him. He ‘d have precious pains in the shoulder-blades, and very sore feelings about the small of the back, after the first day’s stone-breaking. Now, don’t provoke me, that’s all. When the world has gone so bad with a man as it has with me the last year or two, it’s not safe to provoke him, – it is not.”

“I never meant to anger you, old fellow,” began Annesley.

“Don’t do it, then, – don’t, I say,” repeated the other, doggedly; and he resumed the letter, saying: “When you ‘re a-writing the answer to this here letter, just ask Grog Davis to give you a paragraph. Just say, ‘Grog, old fellow, I ‘m writing to my noble brother; mayhap you have a message of some kind or other for him,’ and you ‘ll see whether he has or not.”

“You ‘re a rum one, Master Davis,” said Beecher, with a laugh that revealed very little of a heart at ease.

“I’m one that won’t stand a fellow that doesn’t run straight with me, – that’s what I am. And now for the noble Viscount.” And he ran his eyes over the letter without reading aloud. “All this here is only saying what sums he has paid for you, what terrible embarrassment your debts have caused him. Lord love him! it’s no new thing to hear of in this life that paying money is no pleasure. And then it finishes, as all the stories usually do, by his swearing he won’t do it any more. ‘I think,’ he says, ‘you might come round by a fortunate hit in marriage; but somehow you blundered in every case that I pointed out to you – ‘”

“That’s too bad!” cried Beecher, angrily. “The only thing he ever ‘put me on’ was an iron-master’s widow at Barnstable, and I found that the whole concern was under a contract to furnish rails for a Peruvian line at two pounds ten a ton under the market price of iron.”

“It was I discovered that!” broke in Grog, proudly.

“So it was, old fellow; and you got me off the match without paying forfeit.”

“Well, this here looks better,” continued Grog, reading.

“Young and handsome, one of two daughters of an old Irish provision merchant come abroad for the first time in their life, and consequently new to everything. The name’s O’Reilly, of Mary’s Abbey, so that you can have no difficulty in accurately learning all about him in Dublin. Knowing that these things are snapped up immediately in the cities, I have induced O’R. to take a villa on the lake here for the present, so that if your inquiries turn out satisfactorily, you can come out at once, and we ‘ll find the birds where I have landed them.’”

“That’s business-like, – that’s well and sensibly put,” said Davis, in a voice of no counterfeited admiration.

He read on: “‘O’R. talks of forty thousand to each, but, with the prospect of connecting himself with people of station, might possibly come down more handsomely in one case, particularly when brought to see that the other girl’s prospects will be proportionately bettered by this alliance; at all events, no time is to be lost in the matter, and you can draw on me, at two months, for fifty pounds, which will carry you out here, and where, if you should not find me, you will have letters of presentation to the O’R.‘s. It is not a case requiring either time or money, – though it may call for more energy and determination than you are in the habit of exercising. At the proper moment I shall be ready to contribute all in my power.’

“What does that mean?” said Davis.

“I can’t even guess; but no matter, the thing sounds well. You can surely learn all about this O’Reilly?”

“That’s easy enough.”

“I say, I say, old fellow,” cried Beecher, as he flung his cigar away and walked up and down the room briskly, “this would put us all on our legs again. Wouldn’t I ‘go a heavy pot’ on Rolfs stable! I ‘d take Coulton’s three-year-old for the Canterbury to-morrow, I would! and give them twelve to twenty in hundreds on the double event. We’d serve them out, Master Grog – we’d give them such a shower-bath, old boy! They say I’m a flat, but what will they say when A. B.‘s number hangs out at the Stand-house?”

“There’s not much to do on the turf just now,” said Grog, dryly. “They ‘ve spoiled the turf,” said he, as he lighted his cigar, – “clean spoiled it. Once upon a time the gents was gents, and the legs legs, but nowadays every one ‘legs’ it, as he can; so I ‘d like to see who’s to make a livin’ out of it!”

“There’s truth in that!” chimed in Beecher.

“So that,” resumed Grog, “if you go in for this girl, don’t you be making a book; there’s plenty better things to be had now than the ring. There’s companies, and banks, and speculations on every hand. You buy in at, say thirty, and sell out at eighty, ninety, or a hundred. I ‘ve been a meditating over a new one I ‘ll tell you about another time, – let us first think about this here marriage, – it ain’t impossible.”

“Impossible! I should think not, Master Grog. But you will please to remember that Lackington has no child. I must succeed to the whole thing, – title and all.”

“Good news for the Jews, would n’t it be?” cried Davis. “Why, your outlying paper would n’t leave much of a margin to live on. You owe upwards of a hundred thousand, – that you do.”

“I could buy the whole concern to-morrow for five-and twenty thousand pounds. They can’t touch the entail, old fellow!”

“My word on’t, they ‘d have it out of you, one way or other; but never mind, there’s time enough to think of these things, – just stir yourself about this marriage.”

“I ‘ll start on Monday. I have one or two trifling matters to look after here, and then I ‘m free.”

“What’s this in the turn-down of Lackington’s letter marked ‘Strictly confidential’?

“‘I meant to have despatched this yesterday, but fortunately deferred doing so – fortunately, I say – as Davenport Dunn has just arrived here, with a very important communication, in which your interest is only inferior to my own. The explanation would be too long for a letter, and is not necessary besides, as D. will be in Dublin a day or two after this reaches you. See him at once; his address is Merrion Square North, and he will be fully prepared for your visit. Be on your guard. In truth, D., who is my own solicitor and man of business in Ireland, is somewhat of a crafty nature, and may have other interests in his head paramount to those of, yours,

“‘Lackington.’”

“Can you guess what this means, Grog? Has it any reference to the marriage scheme?”

“No; this is another match altogether,” said Grog, sententiously; “and this here Dunn – I know about him, though I never seen him – is the swellest cove going. You ain’t fit to deal with him– you ain’t!” added he, contemptuously. “If you go and talk to that fellow alone, I know how ‘t will be.”

“Come, come, I’m no flat”

Grog’s look – one of intense derision – stopped him, and after stammering and blushing deeply, he was silent.

“You think, because you have a turn of speed among cripples, that you ‘re fast,” said Grog, with one of his least amiable grins, “but I tell you that except among things of your own breeding, you’d never save a distance. Lord love ye! it never makes a fellow sharp to be ‘done;’ that’s one of the greatest mistakes people ever make. It makes him suspicious, – it keeps him on the look-out, as the sailors say; but what’s the use of being on the look-out if you haven’t got good eyes? It’s the go-ahead makes a man nowadays, and the cautious chaps have none of that. No, no; don’t you go rashly and trust yourself alone with Dunn. You ‘ll have to consider well over this, – you ‘ll have to turn it over carefully in your mind. I ‘d not wonder,” said he, after a pause, “but you ‘ll have to take me with you!”

CHAPTER XIII. A MESSAGE FROM JACK

“He’s come at last, Bella,” said Kellett, as, tired and weary, he entered the little cottage one night after dark. “I waited till I saw him come out of the station at West-land Row, and drive off to his house.”

“Did he see you, papa? – did he speak to you?” asked she, eagerly.

“See me– speak to me! It’s little he was thinking of me, darling! with Lord Glengariff shaking one of his hands, and Sir Samuel Downie squeezing the other, and a dozen more crying out, ‘Welcome home, Mr. Bunn! it is happy we are to see you looking so well; we were afraid you were forgetting poor Ireland and not coming back to us!’ And by that time the carmen took up the chorus, and began cheering and hurrahing, ‘Long life and more power to Davenport Dunn!’ I give you my word, you ‘d have thought it was Daniel O’Connell, or at least a new Lord-Lieutenant, if you saw the uproar and excitement there was about him.”

“And he – how did he take it?” asked she.

“Just as cool as if he had a born right to it all. ‘Thank you very much, – most kind of you,’ he muttered, with a little smile and a wave of his hand, as much as to say, ‘There now, that’ll do. Don’t you see that I’m travelling incog., and don’t want any more homage?’”

“Oh, no, papa, – not that, – it was rather like humility – ”

“Humility!” said he, bursting into a bitter laugh, – “you know the man well! Humility! there are not ten noblemen in Ireland this minute has the pride and impudence of that man. If you saw the way he walked down the steps to his carriage, giving a little nod here, and a little smile there, – maybe offering two fingers to some one of rank in the crowd – you’d say, ‘There’s a Prince coming home to his own country, – see how, in all their joy, he won’t let them be too familiar with him!’”

“Are you quite just – quite fair in all this, dearest papa?”

“Well, I suppose I’m not,” said he, testily. “It’s more likely the fault lies in myself, – a poor, broken-down country gentleman, looking at everything on the dark side, thinking of the time when his own family were something in the land, and Mr. Davenport Dunn very lucky if he got leave to sit down in the servants’-hall. Nothing more likely than that!” added he, bitterly, as he walked up and down the little room in moody displeasure.

“No, no, papa, you mistake me,” said she, looking affectionately at him. “What I meant was this, that to a man so burdened with weighty cares – one whose brain carries so many great schemes and enterprises – a sense of humility, proud enough in its way, might naturally mingle with all the pleasures of the moment, whispering as it were to his heart, ‘Be not carried away by this flattery, be not carried away by your own esteem; it is less you than the work you are destined for that men are honoring. While they seem to cheer the pilot, it is rather the glorious ocean to which he is guiding them that they address their salutations.’ Might not some such consciousness as this have moved him at such a time?”

“Indeed, I don’t know, and I don’t much care,” said Kellett, sulkily. “I suppose people don’t feel, nowadays, the way they used when I was young. There’s new inventions in everything.”

“Human nature is the same in all ages!” said she, faintly.

“Faith, and so much the worse for it, Bella. There’s more bad than good in life, – more cruelty and avarice and falsehood than there’s kindness, benevolence, and honesty. For one good-natured act I ‘ve met with, have n’t I met twenty, thirty, no, but fifty, specimens of roguery and double-dealing. If you want to praise the world, don’t call Paul Kellett into court, that’s all!”

“So far from agreeing with you,” cried she, springing up and drawing her arm within his, “you are exactly the very testimony I’d adduce. From your own lips have I heard more stories of generosity – more instances of self-devotion, trustfulness, and true kindness – than I have ever listened to in life.”

“Ay, amongst the poor, Bella, – amongst the poor!” said Kellett, half ashamed of his recantation.

“Be assured, then, that these traits are not peculiar to any class. The virtues of the poor, like their sufferings, are more in evidence than in any other condition, – their lives are laid bare by poverty; but I feel assured people are better than we think them, – better than they know themselves.”

“I ‘m waiting to hear you tell me that I ‘m richer too,” said Kellett, with a half-melancholy laugh, – “that I have an elegant credit in a bank somewhere, if I only knew where to draw upon it!”

“There is this wealth in the heart of man, if he but knew how to profit by it: it is to teach us this lesson that great men have arisen from time to time. The poets, the warriors, the explorers, the great in science, set us all the same task, to see the world fair as it really is, to recognize the good around us, to subdue the erroneous thoughts that, like poisonous weeds, stifle the wholesome vegetation of our hearts, and to feel that the cause of humanity is our cause, its triumphs our triumphs, its losses our losses!”

“It may be all as you say, Bella darling, but it’s not the kind of world ever I saw. I never knew men do anything but cheat each other and tell lies; and the hardest of it all,” added he, with a bitter sigh, “that, maybe, it is your own flesh and blood treats you worst!”

This reflection announced the approach of gloomy thoughts. This was about the extent of any allusion he would ever make to his son, and Bella was careful not to confirm him in the feeling by discussing or opposing it. She understood his nature well. She saw that some fortunate incident or other, even time, might dissipate what had never been more than a mere prejudice, while, if reasoned with, he was certain to argue himself into the conviction that of all the rubs he had met in life his son Jack’s conduct was the hardest and the worst.

The long and painful silence that now ensued was at length broken by a loud knocking at the door of the cottage, a sound so unusual as to startle them both.

“That’s at our door, Bella,” said he. “I wonder who it can be? Beecher couldn’t come out this time of the night.”

“There it is again,” said Bella, taking a light. “I ‘ll go and see who’s there.”

“No, let me go,” cried Kellett, taking the candle from her hand, and leaving the room with the firm step of a man about to confront a danger.

“Captain Kellett lives here, does n’t he?” said a tall young fellow, in the dress of a soldier in the Rifles.

Kellett’s heart sank heavily within him as he muttered a faint “Yes.”

“I’m the bearer of a letter for him,” said the soldier, “from his son.”

“From Jack!” burst out Kellett, unable to restrain himself. “How is he? Is he well?”

“He’s all right now; he was invalided after that explosion in the trenches, but he’s all right again. We all suffered more or less on that night;” and his eyes turned half inadvertently towards one side, where Kellett now saw that an empty coat-sleeve was hanging.

“It was there you left your arm, then, poor fellow,” said Kellett, taking him kindly by the hand. “Come in and sit down; I’m Captain Kellett. A fellow-soldier of Jack’s, Bella,” said Kellett, as he introduced him to his daughter; and the young man bowed with all the ease of perfect good-breeding.

“You left my brother well, I hope?” said Bella, whose womanly tact saw at once that she was addressing her equal.

“So well that he must be back to his duty ere this. This letter is from him; but as he had not many minutes to write, he made me promise to come and tell you myself all about him. Not that I needed his telling me, for I owe my life to your son, Captain Kellett; he carried me in on his back under the sweeping fire of a Russian battery; two rifle bullets pierced his chako as he was doing it; he must have been riddled with shot if the Russians had not stopped their fire.”

“Stopped their fire!”

“That they did, and cheered him heartily. How could they help it! he was the only man on that rude glacis, torn and gullied with shot and shell.”

“Oh, the noble fellow!” burst out the girl, as her eyes ran over.

“Is n’t he a noble fellow?” said the soldier. “We don’t want for brave fellows in that army; but show me one will do what he did. It was a shot carried off this,” said he, touching the empty sleeve of his jacket; “and I said something – I must have been wandering in my mind – about a ring my mother had given me, and it was on the finger of that poor hand. Well, what does Jack Kellett do, while the surgeon was dressing my wound, but set off to the place where I was shot down, and, under all that hailstorm of Minié-balls, brought in the limb. That’s the ring, – he rescued it at the risk of his life. There’s more than courage in that; there’s a goodness and kindness of heart worth more than all the bravery that ever stormed a battery.”

“And yet he left me, – deserted his poor father!” cried old Kellett, sobbing.

“If he did so, it was to make a name for you that the first man in England might be proud of.”

“To go off and list as a common soldier!” said Kellett; and then, suddenly shocked at his own rudeness, and shamed by the deep blush on Sybella’s face, he stammered out, “Not but I’ve known many a man with good blood in his veins, – many a born gentleman, – serving in the ranks.”

“Well, I hope so,” said the other, laughing with a hearty good-nature. “It’s not exactly so common a thing with us as with our worthy allies the French; but every now and then you’ll find a firelock in the hands that once held a double-barrelled Manton, and maybe knocked over the pheasants in his own father’s preserves.”

“Indeed, I have heard of such things,” said Kellett, with a sigh; but he was evidently lending his assent on small security, because he cared little for the venture.

“How poor Jack loves you!” cried Bella, who, deep in her brother’s letter, had paid no attention to what was passing; “he calls you Charley, – nothing but Charley.”

“My name is Charles Conway,” said the young man, smiling pleasantly.

“‘Charley,’” read she, aloud, “‘my banker when I have n’t a shilling, my nurse in hospital, my friend always, – he ‘ll hand you this, and tell you all about me. How the dear old dad will love to hear his stories of campaigning life, so like his own Peninsular tales! He’ll see that the long peace has not tamed the native pluck of the race, but that the fellows are just as daring, just as steady, just as invincible as ever they were; and he’ll say, too, that to have won the friendship of such a comrade I must have good stuff in me also.’”

“Oh, if he hadn’t gone away and left his old father!” broke in Kellett, lamentingly; “sure it was n’t the time to leave me.”

“Wasn’t it, though?” broke in the soldier; “I differ with you there. It was the very moment that every fellow with a dash of spirit about him should have offered his services. We can’t all have commissions, – we can’t all of us draw handsome allowances from our friends; but we can surely take our turn in the trenches, and man a battery; and it’s not a bad lesson to teach the common fellow, that for pluck, energy, and even holding out, the gentleman is at least his equal.”

“I think it’s the first of the name ever served in the ranks,” said the old man, who, with a perverse obstinacy, would never wander from this one idea.

“How joyously he writes!” continued Bella, as she bent over the letter: “‘I see by the papers, dearest Bella, that we are all disgusted and dispirited out here, – that we have nothing but grievances about green coffee and raw pork, and the rest of it; don’t believe a word of it. We do curse the Commissariat now and then. It smacks like epicurism to abuse the rations; but ask Charley if these things are ever thought of after we rise from dinner and take a peep at those grim old earthworks, that somehow seem growing every day, or if we grumble about fresh vegetables as we are told off for a covering party. There’s plenty of fighting; and if any man has n’t enough in the regular way, he can steal out of a clear night and have a pop at the Russians from a rifle-pit. I ‘m twice as quick a shot as I was when I left home, and I confess the sport has double the excitement of my rambles after grouse over Mahers Mountain. It puts us on our mettle, too, to see our old enemies the French taking the work with us; not but they have given us the lion’s share of it, and left our small army to do the same duties as their large one. One of the regiments in our brigade, rather than flinch from their share, returned themselves twelve hundred strong, while they had close upon three hundred sick, – ay, and did the work too. Ask dad if his Peninsulars beat that? Plenty of hardships, plenty of roughing, and plenty of hard knocks there are, but it’s the jolliest life ever a fellow led, for all that. Every day has its own story of some dashing bit of bravery, that sets us all wild with excitement, while we wonder to ourselves what do you all think of us in England. Here comes an order to summon all to close their letters, and so I shut up, with my fondest affection to the dear old dad and yourself.

“‘Ever yours,

“‘Jack Kellett.

“‘As I don’t suppose you’ll see it in the “Gazette,” I may as well say that I ‘m to be made a corporal on my return to duty. It’s a long way yet to major-general, but at least I ‘m on the road, Bella.’”

“A corporal! a corporal!” exclaimed Kellett; “may I never, if I know whether it’s not a dream. Paul Kellett’s eldest son – Kellett of Kellett’s Court – a corporal!”

“My father’s prejudices all attach to the habits of his own day,” said Bella, in a low voice, to the soldier, – “to a time totally unlike the present in everything.”

“Not in everything, Miss Kellett,” said the youth, with a quiet smile. “Jack has just told you that all the old ardor, all the old spirit, is amongst the troops. They are the sons and grandsons of the gallant fellows that beat the French out of Spain.”

“And are you going back?” asked Kellett, half moodily, and scarcely knowing what he said.

“They won’t have me,” said the soldier, blushing as he looked at his empty sleeve; “they want fellows who can handle a Minié rifle.”

“Oh, to be sure – I ought to have known – I was forgetting,” stammered he out, confusedly; “but you have your pension, anyhow.”

“I’ve a kind old mother, which is better,” said the youth, blushing deeper again. “She only gave me a short leave to run over and see Jack Kellett’s family; for she knows Jack, by name at least, as if he were her own.”

To Bella’s questions he replied that his mother had a small cottage near Bettws, at the foot of Snowdon; it was one of the most picturesque spots of all Wales, and in one of those sunny nooks where the climate almost counterfeits the South of Europe.

“And now you’ll go back, and live tranquilly there,” said the girl, half dreamily, for her thoughts were wandering away Heaven knows where.

The youth saw the preoccupation, and arose to take his leave. “I shall be writing to Jack to-morrow, Captain Kellett,” said he. “I may say I have seen you well and hearty, and I may tell the poor fellow – I ‘m sure you ‘ll let me tell him – that you have heartily forgiven him?” Old Kellett shook his head mournfully; and the other went on: “It’s a hard thing of a dark night in the trenches, or while you lie on the wet ground in front of them, thinking of home and far away, to have any one thought but love and affection in your heart It does n’t do to be mourning over faults and follies, and grieving over things one is sorry for. One likes to think, too, that they who are at home, happy at their firesides, are thinking kindly of us. A man’s heart is never so stout before the enemy as when he knows how dear he is to some one far away.”

As the youth spoke these words half falteringly, for he was naturally bashful and timid, Bella turned her eyes fully upon his, with an interest she had not felt before, and he reddened as he returned her gaze.

“I ‘m sure you forgive me, sir,” said he, addressing Kellett. “It was a great liberty I took to speak to you in this fashion; but I was Jack’s comrade, – he told me every secret he had in the world, and I know how the poor fellow would march up to a Russian battery to-morrow with an easier heart than he’d hear one hard word from you.”

“Ask Bella there if I ever said a word, ever as much as mentioned his name,” said Kellett, with all the self-satisfaction of egotism.

Bella’s eyes quickly turned towards the soldier, with an expression so full of significance that he only gave a very faint sigh, and muttered, —

“Well, I can do no more; when I next hear from Jack, sir, you shall know it.” And with this he moved towards the door.

Bella hastily whispered a few words in her father’s ear, to which, as he seemed to demur, she repeated still more eagerly.

“How could we, since it’s Sunday, and there will be Beecher coming out?” muttered he.

“But this is a gentleman, papa; his soldier jacket is surely no disgrace – ”

“I couldn’t, I couldn’t,” muttered he, doggedly.

Again she whispered, and at last he said, —

“Maybe you ‘d take your bit of dinner with us tomorrow, Conway, – quite alone, you know.”

The young fellow drew himself up, and there was, for an instant, a look of haughty, almost insolent, meaning in his face. There was that, however, in Bella’s which as speedily overcame whatever irritation had crossed his mind, and he politely said, —

“If you will admit me in this dress, – I have no other with me.”

“To be sure, – of course,” broke in Kellett. “When my son is wearing the same, what could I say against it?”

The youth smiled good-naturedly at this not very gracious speech; mayhap the hand he was then holding in his own compensated for its rudeness, and his “Good-bye!” was uttered in all frankness and cordiality.