Kitabı oku: «Davenport Dunn, a Man of Our Day. Volume 1», sayfa 16
“You are a trump, Grog!” cried Beecher, delightedly.
“If we had a clear two hundred, we could start to-morrow,” said Grog, laying down his cigar, and staring steadfastly at him.
“Why, would you come, too?” muttered Beecher, who had never so much as imagined the possibility of this companionship on the Continent.
“I expect I would,” said Davis, with a very peculiar grin. “It ain’t likely you’d manage an affair like this without advice.”
“Very true, – very true,” said Beecher, hurriedly. “But remember, Lackington is my brother, – we ‘re both in the same boat.”
“But not with the same skulls,” said Grog. And he grinned a savage grin at the success of his pun.
Beecher, however, so far from appreciating the wit, only understood the remark as a sneer at his intelligence, and half sulkily said, —
“Oh! I’m quite accustomed to that, now, – I don’t mind it.”
“That’s right, – keep your temper,” said Grog, calmly; “that’s the best thing in your book. You ‘re what they call good-tempered. And,” added he, in the moralizing tone, “though the world does take liberties with the good-tempered fellows, it shies them many a stray favor, – many a sly five-pun’-note into the bargain. I’ve known fellows go through life – and make a rare good thing of it, too – with no other stock-in-trade than this same good temper.”
Beecher did not pay his habitual attention to Grog’s words, but sat pondering over all the possible and impossible objections to a tour in such company. There were times and places where men might be seen talking to such a man as Davis. The betting-ring and the weighing-stand have their privileges, just like the green-room or the “flats,” but in neither case are the intimacies of such localities exactly of a kind for parade before the world. Of all the perils of such a course none knew better than Beecher. What society would think, – what clubs would say of it, – he could picture to his mind at once.
Now, there were very few of life’s casualties of which the Honorable Annesley Beecher had not tasted. He knew what it was to have his bills protested, his chattels seized, his person arrested; he had been browbeaten by Bankruptcy Commissioners, and bullied by sheriffs’ officers; tradesmen had refused him credit; tailors abjured his custom; he had “burned his fingers” in one or two not very creditable transactions; but still, with all this, there was yet one depth to which he had not descended, – he was never seen in public with a “wrong man.” He had a jerk of the head, a wink, or a glance for the leg who met him in Piccadilly, as every one else had. If he saw him in the garden of the Star and Garter, or the park at Greenwich, he might even condescend to banter him on “looking jolly,” and ask what new “robbery” he was in for; but as to descending to intimacy or companionship openly before the gaze of the world, he ‘d as soon have thought of playing cad to a ‘bus, or sweep at a crossing.
It was true the Continent was not Hyde Park, – the most strait-laced and well-conducted did fifty things there they had never ventured on at home. Foreign travel had its license, and a passport was a sort of plenary indulgence for many a social transgression; but, with all this, there were a few names – about half a dozen in all Europe – that no man could afford to link his own along with.
As for Grog, he was known everywhere. From Ostend to Odessa his fame extended, and there was scarcely a police prefect in the travelled districts of the Continent that had not a description of his person, and some secret instructions respecting him. From many of the smaller states, whose vigilance is in the ratio of their littleness, he was rigidly excluded; so that in his journeying through Europe, he was often reduced to a zigzag and erratic procedure, not unlike the game known to schoolboys as scotch-hop. In the ten minutes – it was not more – that Beecher passed in recalling these and like facts to his memory, his mind grew more and more perplexed; nor was the embarrassment unperceived by him who caused it. As Davis sipped and smoked, he stole frequent glances at his companion’s face, and strove to read what was passing in his mind. “It may be,” thought Grog, “he does n’t see his way to raising the money. It may be that his credit is lower in the market than I fancied; or” – and now his fiery eyes grew fiercer and his lip more tense – “or it may be that he doesn’t fancy my company. If I was only sure it was that,” muttered he between his teeth; and had Annesley Beecher only chanced to look at him as he said it, the expression of that face would have left a legacy of fear behind it for many a day.
“Help yourself,” said Grog, passing the bottle across the table, – “help yourself, and the gin will help you, for I see you are ‘pounded.’”
“Pounded? No, not a bit; nothing of the kind,” said Beecher, blushing. “I was thinking how Lackington would take all this; what my Lady would say to it; whether they ‘d regard it seriously, or whether they ‘d laugh at my coming out so far about nothing.”
“They’ll not laugh, depend on’t; take my word for it, they won’t laugh,” said Davis, dryly.
“Well, but if it all comes to nothing, – if it be only a plant to extort money?”
“Even that ain’t anything to laugh at,” said Davis. “I ‘ve done a little that way myself, and yet I never saw the fellow who was amused by it.”
“So that you really think I ought to go out and see my brother?”
“I’m sure and certain that we must go,” said Davis, just giving the very faintest emphasis to the “we.”
“But it will cost a pot of money, Grog, even though I should travel in the cheapest way, – I mean, the cheapest way possible for a fellow as well known as I am.”
This was a bold stroke; it was meant to imply far more than the mere words announced. It was intended to express a very complicated argument in a mere innuendo.
“That’s all gammon,” said Grog, rudely. “We don’t live in an age of couriers and extra-post; every man travels by rail nowadays, and nobody cares whether you take a coupé or a horse-box; and as to being known, so am I, and almost as well known as most fellows going.”
This was pretty plain speaking; and Beecher well knew that Davis’s frankness was always on the verge of the only one thing that was worse than frankness.
“After all,” said Beecher, after a pause, “let the journey be ever so necessary, I have n’t got the money.”
“I know you haven’t, neither have I; but we shall get it somehow. You ‘ll have to try Kellett; you ‘ll have to try Dunn himself, perhaps. I don’t see why you should n’t start with him. He knows that you ought to confer with my Lord; and he could scarce refuse your note at three months, if you made it – say fifty.”
“But, Grog,” said Beecher, laying down his cigar, and nerving himself for a great effort of cool courage, “what would suffice fairly enough for one, would be a very sorry allowance for two; and as the whole of my business will be with my own brother, – where of necessity I must be alone with him, – don’t you agree with me that a third person would only embarrass matters rather than advance them?”
“No!” said Grog, sternly, while he puffed his cigar in measured time.
“I ‘m speaking,” said Beecher, in a tone of apology, – “I’m speaking, remember, from my knowledge of Lackington. He’s very high and very proud, – one of those fellows who ‘take on,’ even with their equals; and with myself, he never forgets to let me feel I’m a younger brother.”
“He would n’t take any airs with me,” said Grog, insolently. And Beecher grew actually sick at the bare thought of such a meeting.
“I tell you frankly, Davis,” said he, with the daring of despair, “it wouldn’t do. It would spoil all. First and foremost, Lackington would never forgive me for having confided this secret to any one. He’d say, and not unfairly either, ‘What has Davis to do with this? It’s not the kind of case he is accustomed to deal with; his counsel could n’t possibly be essential here.’ He does n’t know,” added he, rapidly, “your consummate knowledge of the world; he hasn’t seen, as I have, how keenly you read every fellow that comes before you.”
“We start on Monday,” said Grog, abruptly, as he threw the end of his cigar into the fire; “so stir yourself, and see about the bills.”
Beecher arose and walked the room with hurried strides, his brow growing darker and his face more menacing at every moment.
“Look here, Davis,” cried he, turning suddenly round and facing the other, “you assume to treat me as if I was a – schoolboy;” and it was evident that he had intended a stronger word, but had not courage to utter it, for Davis’s wicked eyes were upon him, and a bitter grin of irony was already on Grog’s mouth as he said, —
“Did you ever try a round with me without getting the worst of it? Do you remember any time where you came well out of it? You ‘ve been mauled once or twice somewhat roughly, but with the gloves on, – always with the gloves on. Now, take my advice, and don’t drive me to take them off, – don’t! You never felt my knuckles yet, – and, by the Lord Harry, if you had, you’d not call out ‘Encore.’”
“You just want to bully me,” said Beecher, in a whimpering tone.
“Bully you, – bully you!” said Davis, and his features put on a look of the most intense scorn as he spoke. “Egad!” cried he, with an insolent laugh, “you know very little about either of us.”
“I’d rather you’d do your worst at once than keep threatening me in this fashion.”
“No, you would n’t; no – no – nothing of the kind,” said Davis, with a mockery of gentleness in his voice and manner.
“May I be hanged if I would not!” cried Beecher, passionately.
“It ain’t hanging now, – they ‘ve made it transportation,” said Davis, with a grin; “and them as has tried it says the old way was easiest.” And in the slang style of the last words there was a terrible significance, – it was as though a voice from the felons’ dock was uttering a word of warning. Such was the effect on Beecher that he sank slowly down into a seat, silent and powerless.
“If you had n’t been in this uncommon high style tonight,” said Grog, quietly, “I’d have told you some excellent reasons for what I was advising. I got a letter from Spicer this morning. He, and a foreign fellow he calls Count Lienstahl, – it sounds devilish like ‘lie and steal,’ don’t it? – have got a very pretty plant together, and if they could only chance upon a good second-rate horse, they reckon about eight or ten hundred in stakes alone this coming spring. They offer me a share if I could come out to them, and mean to open the campaign at Brussels. Now, there’s a thing to suit us all, – ‘picking for every one,’ as they say in the oakum-sheds.”
“Cochin China might be had for five hundred; or there’s Spotted Snake, they want to sell him for anything he’ll bring,” said Beecher, with animation.
“They could manage five hundred at least, Spicer says. We ‘re good for about twelve thousand francs, which ought to get us what we’re looking for.”
“There’s Anchovy Paste – ”
“Broke down before and behind.”
“Hop the Twig, own sister to Levanter; ran second for the Colchester Cup – ”
“Mares don’t answer abroad.”
“Well, what do you say to Mumps?”
“There’s the horse for the Continent. A great heavy-headed, thick-jawed beast, with lazy action, and capped hocks. He’s the animal to walk into a foreign jockey club. Oh, if we had him!”
“I know where he is!” exclaimed Beecher, in ecstasy. “There ‘s a Brummagem fellow driving him through Wales, – a bagman, – and he takes him a turn now and then for the county stakes that offer. I ‘ll lay my head on’t we get him for fifty pounds.”
“Come, old fellow,” said Grog, encouragingly, “you have your wits about you, after all. Breakfast here to-morrow, about twelve o’clock, and we ‘ll see if we can’t arrange the whole affair. It’s a sure five hundred apiece, as if we had it here;” and he slapped his pockets as he spoke.
Beecher shook his friend’s hand with a warmth that showed all his wonted cordiality, and with a hearty “Good-night!” they separated.
Grog had managed cleverly. He had done something by terror, and the rest he had accomplished by temptation. They were the two only impulses to sway that strange temperament.
CHAPTER XXI. A DARK DAY
It was the day appointed for the sale of Kellett’s Court, and a considerable crowd was assembled to witness the proceeding. Property was rapidly changing hands; new names were springing up in every county, and old ones were growing obsolete. Had the tide of conquest and confiscation flowed over the land, a greater social revolution could not have resulted; and while many were full of hope and confidence that a new prosperity was about to dawn upon Ireland, there were some who continued to deplore the extinction of the old names, and the exile of the old families, whose traditions were part of the history of the country.
Kellett’s Court was one of those great mansions which the Irish gentlemen of a past age were so given to building, totally forgetting how great the disproportion was between their house and their rent-roll. Irregular, incongruous, and inelegant, it yet, by its very size and extent, possessed a certain air of grandeur. Eighty guests had sat down to table in that oak wainscoted dinner-room; above a hundred had been accommodated with beds beneath that roof; the stables had stalls for every hunting-man that came; and the servants’ hall was a great galleried chamber, like the refectory of a convent, in everything save the moderation of the fare.
Many were curious to know who would purchase an estate burdened by so costly a residence, the very maintenance of which in repair constituted a heavy annual outlay. The gardens, long neglected and forgotten, occupied three acres, and were themselves a source of immense expense; a considerable portion of the demesne was so purely ornamental that it yielded little or no profit; and, as an evidence of the tastes and habits of its former owners, the ruins of a stand-house marked out where races once were held in the park, while hurdle fences and deep drains even yet disfigured the swelling lawn.
Who was to buy such a property was the question none could answer. The house, indeed, might be converted into a “Union,” if its locality suited; it was strong enough for a jail, it was roomy enough for a nunnery. Some averred the Government had decided on purchasing it for a barrack; others pretended that the sisterhood of the Sacred Heart had already made their bargain for it; yet to these and many other assertions not less confidently uttered there were as many demurrers.
While rumors and contradictions were still buzzed about, the Commissioner took his place on the bench, and the clerk of the Court began that tedious recital of the circumstances of the estate with whose details all the interested were already familiar, and the mere curious cared not to listen to. An informality on a former day had interfered with the sale, a fact which the Commissioner alluded to with satisfaction, as property had risen largely in value in the interval, and he now hoped that the estate would not alone clear off all the charges against it, but realize something for its former owner. A confused murmur of conversation followed this announcement. Men talked in knots and groups, consulted maps and rent-rolls, made hasty calculations in pencil, whispered secretly together, muttering frequently the words “Griffith,” “plantation measure,” “drainage,” and “copyhold,” and then, in a half-hurried, half-wearied way, the Court asked, “Is there no bidding after twenty-seven thousand five hundred?”
“Twenty-eight!” said a deep voice near the door.
A long, dreary pause followed, and the sale was over.
“Twenty-eight thousand!” cried Lord Glengariff; “the house alone cost fifty.”
“It’s only the demesne, my Lord,” said some one near; “it’s not the estate is sold.”
“I know it, sir; but the demesne contains eight hundred acres, fully wooded, and enclosed by a wall. – Who is it for, Dunn?” asked he, turning to that gentleman.
“In trust, my Lord,” was the reply.
“Of that I am aware, sir; you have said as much to the Court.”
Dunn bent over, and whispered some words in his ear.
“Indeed!” exclaimed the other, with evident astonishment; “and intending to reside?” added he.
“Eventually, I expect so,” said Dunn, cautiously, as others were now attending to the conversation.
Again Lord Glengariff spoke; but, ere he had finished, a strange movement of confusion in the body of the Court interrupted him, while a voice hoarse with passionate meaning cried out, “Is the robbery over? – is it done?” and a large, powerful man, his face flushed, and his eyes glaring wildly, advanced through the crowd to the railing beneath the bench. His waistcoat was open, and he held his cravat in one hand, having torn it off in the violence of his excitement.
“Who is this man?” asked the Commissioner, sternly.
“I’ll tell you who I am, – Paul Kellett, of Kellett’s Court, the owner of that house and estate you and your rascally miscreants have just stolen from me, – ay, stolen is the word; law or justice have nothing to do with it. Your Parliament made it law, to be sure, to pamper your Manchester upstarts who want to turn gentlemen – ”
“Does any one know him? – has he no friends who will look after him?” said the Commissioner, leaning over and addressing those beneath in a subdued voice.
“Devil a friend in the world! It’s few friends stick to the man whose property comes here. But don’t make me out mad. I ‘m in my full senses, though I had enough to turn fifty men to madness.”
“I know him, my Lord; with the permission of the Court, I ‘ll take charge of him,” said Dunn, in a tone so low as to be audible only to a few. Kellett, however, was one of them, and he immediately cried out, —
“Take charge of me! Ay, that he will. He took charge of my estate, too, and he ‘ll do by me what he did with the property, – give a bargain of me!”
A hearty burst of laughter filled the hall at this sally; for Dunn was one of those men whose prosperity always warrants the indulgence of a sarcasm. The Court, however, could no longer brook the indecorous interruption, and sternly ordered that Kellett might be removed.
“My dear Mr. Kellett, pray remember yourself; only recollect where you are; such conduct will only expose you – ”
“Expose me! do you think I’ve any shame left in me? Do you think, when a man is turned out to starve on the roads, that he cares much what people say of him?”
“This interruption is intolerable,” said the Commissioner. “If he be not speedily removed, I ‘ll order him into the custody of the police.”
“Do, in God’s name,” cried Kellett, calmly. “Anything that will keep me from laying hands on myself, or somebody else, will be a charity.”
“Come with me, Kellett, – do come along with me!” said Dunn, entreatingly.
“Not a step, – not an inch. It was going with you brought me here. This man, my Lord,” cried he, addressing the Court with a wild earnestness, – “this man said to me that this was the time to sell a property, – that land was rising every day; that if we came into the Court now, it’s not twenty, nor twenty-five, but thirty years’ purchase – ”
“I am sorry, sir,” said the Commissioner, sternly, “that you will give me no alternative but that of committing you; such continued disrespect of Court cannot longer be borne.”
“I ‘m as well in jail as anywhere else. You ‘ve robbed me of my property, I care little for my person. I’ll never believe it’s law, – never! You may sit up with your wig and your ushers and your criers, but you are just a set of thieves and swindlers, neither more nor less. Talk of shame, indeed! I think some of yourselves might blush at what you ‘re doing. There, there, I ‘m not going to resist you,” said he to the policeman; “there’s no need of roughness. Newgate is the best place for me now. Mind,” added he, turning to where the reporters for the daily press were sitting, – “mind and say that I just offered a calm protest against the injustice done me; that I was civilly remonstrating with the Court upon what every man – ”
Ere he could finish, he was quietly removed from the spot, and before the excitement of the scene had subsided, he was driving away rapidly towards Newgate.
“Drunk or mad, – which was it?” said Lord Glengariff to Davenport Dunn, whose manner was scarcely as composed as usual.
“He has been drinking, but not to drunkenness,” said Dunn, cautiously. “He is certainly to be pitied.” And now he drew nigh the bench and whispered a few words to the Commissioner.
Whatever it was that he urged – and there was an air of entreaty in his manner – did not seem to meet the concurrence of the judge. Dunn pleaded earnestly, however; and at last the Commissioner said, “Let him be brought up tomorrow, then, and having made a suitable apology to the Court, we will discharge him.” Thus ended the incident, and once more the clerk resumed his monotonous readings. Townlands and baronies were described, valuations quoted, rights of turbary defined, and an ancient squirearchy sold out of their possessions with as little commotion or excitement as a mock Claude is knocked down at Christie’s. Indeed, of so little moment was the scene we have mentioned deemed, that scarcely half a dozen lines of the morning papers were given to its recital. The Court and its doings were evidently popular with the country at large, and one of the paragraphs which readers read with most pleasure was that wherein it was recorded that estates of immense value had just changed owners, and that the Commissioner had disposed of so many thousands’ worth of landed property within the week.
Sweeping measures, of whatever nature they be, have always been in favor with the masses; never was any legislation so popular as the guillotine!
Evening was closing in, the gloomy ending of a gloomy day in winter, and Sybella Kellett sat at the window anxiously watching for her father’s return. The last two days had been passed by her in a state of feverish uneasiness. Since her father’s attendance at the custom-house ceased, – . for he had been formally dismissed at the beginning of the week, – his manner had exhibited strange alternations of wild excitement and deep depression. At times he would move hurriedly about, talking rapidly, sometimes singing to himself; at others he would sit in a state of torpor for hours. He drank, too, affecting some passing pain or some uneasiness as an excuse for the whiskey-bottle; and when gently remonstrated with on the evil consequences, became fearfully passionate and excited. “I suppose I ‘ll be called a drunkard next; there ‘s nothing more likely than I ‘ll be told it was my own sottish habits brought all this ruin upon me. ‘He ‘s a sot.’ – ‘He ‘s never sober.’ – ‘Ask his own daughter about him.’” And then stimulating himself, he would become furious with rage. As constantly, too, did he inveigh against Dunn, saying that it was he that ruined him, and that had he not listened to his treacherous counsels he might have arranged matters with his creditors. From these bursts of passion he would fall into moods of deepest melancholy, accusing his own folly and recklessness as the cause of all his misfortunes, and even pushing self-condemnation so far as to assert that it was his misconduct and waste had driven poor Jack from home and made him enlist as a soldier.
Bella could not but see that his intellect was affected and his judgment impaired, and she made innumerable pretexts to be ever near him. Now she pretended that she required air and exercise, that her spirits were low, and needed companionship. Then she affected to have little purchases to make in town, and asked him to bear her company. At length he showed a restlessness under this restraint that obliged her to relax it; he even dropped chance words as if he suspected that he was the object of some unusual care and supervision. “There’s no need of watching me,” said he, rudely, to her on the morning that preceded the sale; “I ‘m in no want of a keeper. They ‘ll see Paul Kellett ‘s not the man to quail under any calamity; the same to-day, to-morrow, and the next day. Sell him out or buy him in, and you ‘ll never know by his face that he felt it.”
He spoke very little on that morning, and scarcely tasted his breakfast. His dress was more careful than usual; and Bella, half by way of saying something, asked if he were going into Dublin.
“Into Dublin! I suppose I am, indeed,” said he, curtly, as though giving a very obvious reply. “Maybe,” added he, after a few minutes, – “maybe you forget this is the seventeenth, and that this is the day for the sale.”
“I did remember it,” said she, with a faint sigh, but not daring to ask how his presence there was needed.
“And you were going to say,” added he, with a bitter smile, “what did that matter to me, and that wasn’t wanted. Neither I am, – I ‘m neither seller nor buyer; but still I ‘m the last of the name that lived there, – I was Kellett of Kellett’s Court, and there ‘ll never be another to say the same, and I owe it to myself to be there to-day, – just as I ‘d attend a funeral, – just as I ‘d follow the hearse.”
“It will only give you needless pain, dearest father,” said she, soothingly; “pray do not go.”
“Faith, I’ll go if it gave me a fit,” said he, fiercely. “They may say when they go home, ‘Paul Kellett was there the whole time, as cool as I am now; you ‘d never believe it was the old family place – the house his ancestors lived in for centuries – was up for sale; there he was, calm and quiet If that is n’t courage, tell me what is.’”
“And yet I ‘d rather you did not go, father. The world has trials enough to tax our energies, that we should not go in search of them.”
“That’s a woman’s way of looking at it,” said he, contemptuously.
“A man with a man’s heart likes to meet danger, just to see how he ‘ll treat it.”
“But remember, father – ”
“There, now,” said he, rising from the table, “if you talked till you were tired, I ‘d go still. My mind is made up on it.”
Bella turned away her head, and stole her handkerchief to her eyes.
“I know very well,” burst he in, bitterly, “that the blackguard newspapers to-morrow will just be as ready to abuse me for it. It would have been more dignified, or more decent, or something or other, if Mr. Kellett had not appeared at the sale; but I ‘ll go, nevertheless, if it was only to see the man that’s to take our place there! Wait dinner for me till six, – that is, if there ‘s any dinner at all.” And, with a laugh of bitterest meaning, he left the room, and was soon seen issuing from the little garden into the road.
What a sad day, full of gloomy forebodings, was that for her! She knew well how all the easy and careless humor of her father had been changed by calamity into a spirit fierce and resentful; that, suspectful of insult on every hand, he held himself ever prepared to meet the most harmless remark with words of defiance. An imaginary impression that the world had agreed to scorn him, made him adopt a bearing at once aggressive and offensive; and he who was once a proverb for good temper became irritable and savage to a degree.
What might not come of such a temperament, tried in its tenderest spot? What might occur to expose him to the heartless sneers of those who neither knew his qualities nor his trials? These were her thoughts as she walked to and fro in her little room, unable to read, unable to write, though she made several attempts to begin a letter to her brother. The dark future also lowered before, without one flicker of light to pierce its gloom. How were they to live? In a few days more they would be at the end of their frail resources, – something less than two pounds was all that they had in the world. How she envied those in some foreign land who could stoop to the most menial labor, unseen and unremembered by their own. How easily, she thought, poverty might be borne, if divested of the terrible contrast with a former condition. Could they by any effort raise the means to emigrate, – and where to? Might not Mr. Dunn be the person to give counsel in such a case? From all she had heard of him, he was conversant with every career, every walk, and every condition. Doubtless he could name the very colony, and the very spot to suit them, – nor impossible that he might aid them to reach it. If they prospered, they could repay him. They might pledge themselves to such a condition on this head as he would dictate. How, then, to approach him? A letter? And yet a letter was always so wanting in the great requisite of answering doubts as they arose, and meeting difficulties by ready re-Joinder. A personal interview would do this. Then why not ask for an audience of him? “I’ll call upon him at once,” said she; “he may receive me without other solicitation, – my name will surely secure me that much of attention.” Would her father approve of such a step? – would it not appear to his eyes an act of meanness and dependence? – might not the whole scheme be one to which he would offer opposition? From conflicts like these she came back to the dreary present and wondered what could still delay his coming. It was a road but little travelled; and as she sat watching at the window, her eyes grew wearied piercing the hazy atmosphere, darkening deeper and deeper as night drew near. She endeavored to occupy herself in various ways: she made little preparations for his coming; she settled his room neatly, over and over; she swept the hearth, and made a cheerful fire to greet him; and then, passing into the kitchen, she looked after the humble dinner that awaited him. Six o’clock passed, and another weary hour followed. Seven, – and still he came not. She endeavored to divert her thoughts into thinking of the future she had pictured to herself. She tried to fancy the scenery, the climate, the occupation of that dream-land over the seas; but at every bough that beat against the window by the wind, at every sound of the storm without, she would start up, and hasten to the door to listen.
