Kitabı oku: «Davenport Dunn, a Man of Our Day. Volume 1», sayfa 26

CHAPTER XXXVI. A COUNTRY VISIT

Let us now return to the Hermitage, and the quiet lives of those who dwelt there. Truly, to the traveller gazing down from some lofty point of the Glengariff road upon that lowly cottage deep buried in its beech wood, and only showing rare glimpses of its trellised walls, nothing could better convey the idea of estrangement from the world and its ambitions. From the little bay, where the long low waves swept in measured cadence on the sands, to the purple-clad mountains behind, the scene was eminently calm and peaceful. The spot was precisely one to suggest the wisdom of that choice which prefers tranquil obscurity to the struggle and conflict of the great world. What a happy existence would you say was theirs, who could drop down the stream of a life surrounded with objects of such beauty, free to indulge each rising fancy, and safe from all the collisions of mankind! – how would one be disposed to envy the unbroken peacefulness that no ambitions ruffled, no rude disappointments disturbed! And yet such speculations as these are ever faulty, and wherever the human heart throbs, there will be found its passions, its hopes and fears. Beneath that quiet roof there dwelt all the elements that make the battle of life; and high aspirings and ignoble wishes, and love and fear, and jealousy, and wealth-seeking lived there, as though the spot were amidst the thundering crash of crowded streets and the din of passing thousands!

Sybella Kellett had been domesticated there about two months, and between Lady Augusta and herself there had grown a sort of intimacy, – short, indeed, of friendship, but in which each recognized good qualities in the other.

Had Miss Kellett been older, less good-looking, less grace-ful in manner, or generally less attractive, it is just possible that – we say it with all doubt and deference – Lady Augusta might have been equally disposed to feel satisfied. She suspected “Mr. Dunn must have somewhat mistaken the object of her note,” or “overlooked the requirements they sought for.” Personal attractions were not amongst the essentials she had mentioned. “My Lord,” too, was amazed at his recommending a “mere girl,” – she couldn’t be more than “twenty,” – and, consequently, “totally deficient in the class of knowledge he desired.”

Two months, – no very long period, – however, sufficed to show both father and daughter that they had been, to some extent, mistaken. Not only had she addressed herself to the task of an immense correspondence, but she had drawn out reports, arranged prospectuses, and entered into most complicated financial details with a degree of clearness that elicited marked compliment from the different bodies with whom this intercourse was maintained. The Glengariff Joint Stock Company, with its half-million capital, figured largely in the public journals. Landscapes of the place appeared in the various illustrated papers, and cleverly written magazine articles drew attention to a scheme that promised to make Ireland a favored portion of the empire. Her interest once excited, Sybella Kellett’s zeal was untiring.

Already she anticipated the time when the population of that poor village – now barely subsisting in direst poverty – should become thriving and happy. The coast-fisheries – once a prolific source of wealth – were to be revived; fishing-craft and tackle and curing-houses were all to be provided; means of transporting the proceeds to the rich markets of England procured; she had also discovered traces of lead in the neighborhood; and Dunn was written to, to send down a competent person to investigate the matter. In fact, great as was her industry, it seemed only second to an intelligence that adapted itself to every fresh demand and every new exigency, without a moment’s interruption. To the old Lord her resources appeared inexhaustible, and gradually he abandoned the lead and guidance he had formerly given to his plans, and submitted everything to her will and dictation. It did not, indeed, escape his shrewdness that her zeal was more warmly engaged by the philanthropy than by the profit of these projects. It was to the advancement of the people, the relief of their misery, the education of their children, the care of their sick, that she looked as the great reward of all that they proposed. “What a lesson we shall teach the rest of Ireland if we ‘succeed’!” was the constant exclamation she uttered. “How we shall be sought after to explain this and reveal that! What a proud day for us will it be when Glengariff shall be visited as the model school of the empire!”

Thus fed and fostered by her hopes, her imagination knew no bounds, and the day seemed even too short for the duties it exacted. Even Lady Augusta could not avoid catching some of the enthusiasm that animated her, only restraining her expectations, however, by the cautious remark, “I wonder what Mr. Dunn will say. I am curious to know how he will pronounce upon it all.”

The day at last came when this fact was to be ascertained, and the post brought the brief but interesting intelligence that Mr. Davenport Dunn would reach the Hermitage for dinner.

Lord Glengariff would have felt excessively offended could any one have supposed him anxious or uneasy on the score of Dunn’s coming. That a great personage like himself should be compelled occasionally in life to descend to the agencies of such people was bad enough, but that he should have any misgivings about his co-operation or assistance, was really intolerable; and yet, we blush to confess, these were precisely the thoughts which troubled his Lordship throughout the whole of that long day.

“Not that Dunn has ever forgotten himself with me, – not that he has ever shown himself unmindful of our respective stations, – so much I must say,” were the little scraps of consolation that he repeated over and over to himself, while grave doubts really oppressed him that we had fallen upon evil days, when men of that stamp usurped almost all the influence that swayed society. No easy matter was it, either, to resolve what precise manner to assume towards him. A cold and dignified bearing might possibly repel all confidence, and an easy familiarity be just as dangerous as surrendering the one great superiority his position conferred. It was true his Lordship had never yet experienced any difficulty on such a score, – of all men, he possessed a consummate sense of his own dignity, and suffered none to infringe it; but “this fellow Dunn had been spoiled.” Great men – greater men than Lord Glengariff himself – had asked him to dinner. He had passed the thresholds of certain fine houses in Piccadilly, and well-powdered lackeys in Park Lane had called “Mr. Dunn’s carriage.” Now, the Irishman that has soared to the realm of whitebait with a minister, or even a Star and Garter luncheon with a Secretary of State, becomes, to the eyes of his home-bred countrymen, a very different person from the celebrity of mere Castle attentions and Phoenix Park civilities. Dunn was this, and more. He lounged into the Irish Office as into his own lodgings, and he walked into the most private chambers of Downing Street as if by right. Consulted or not, he had the reputation of holding the patronage of all Ireland in his hands; and assuredly they who attained promotion were not slow in testifying to what quarter they owed their gratitude. Some of that mysterious grandeur that clung to the old religions of the Greeks seems to hover round the acts of a great Government, till the Ministers, like Priests or Augurs, appear less equals and fellow-men than stewards and dispensers of immense bounties intrusted to their keeping. There was about Dunn’s manner much to foster this illusion. He was a blending of mystery with the deepest humility, but with a very evident desire that you should neither believe one nor the other. It was the same conscious power looming through the affected modesty of his pretensions that offended Lord Glengariff, and made him irritable in all his intercourse with him.

Let us take a passing glance at Lady Augusta. And why, may we ask, has she taken such pains about her toilette to-day? Not that her dress is unusually rich or costly, but she has evidently made a study of the “becoming,” and looks positively handsome. She remembered something of a fuchsia in her hair, long, long ago; and now, by mere caprice of course, she has interwoven one in those dark clusters, never glossier nor more silky. Her calm, cold features, too, have caught up a gentler expression, and her voice is softer and lower. Her maid can make nothing of it. Lady Augusta has been so gracious and so thoughtful, and asked about her poor old sick grandmother. Well, these sunlights are meant to show what the coldest landscapes may become when smiled on by brighter skies!

And Sybella. Pale and melancholy, and in mourning, she, too, has caught up a sense of pleasure at the coming visit, and a faint line of color tinges her white cheek. She is very glad that Mr. Dunn is expected. “She has to thank him for many kindnesses; his prompt replies to her letters; his good nature to poor Jack, for whom he has repeatedly written to the Horse Guards; not to speak of the words of encouragement and hope he has addressed to herself. Yes, he is, indeed, her friend; perhaps her only friend in the world.”

And now they are met in the drawing-room, waiting with anxiety for some sounds that may denote the great man’s coming. The three windows open to the ground; the rich sward, spangled here and there with carnations or rich-scented stocks, slopes down towards a little river, from the bridge over which a view is caught of the Glen-gariff road; and to this spot each as silently loitered, and as listlessly turned back again without a word.

“We are waiting for Mr. Dunn, Augusta, ain’t we?” asked Lord Glengariff, as if the thought had just suddenly struck him for the first time.

“Yes,” replied she, gravely; “he promised us his company to-day at dinner.”

“Are you quite sure it was to-day he mentioned?” said he, with an affected indifference in his tone.

“Miss Kellett can inform us with certainty.”

“He said Thursday, and in time for dinner,” said Sybella, not a little puzzled by this by-play of assumed forgetfulness.

“The man who makes his own appointments ought to keep them. I am five minutes beyond the half-hour,” said Lord Glengariff, as he looked at his watch.

“I suspect you are a little fast,” observed Lady Augusta.

“There! – I think I heard the crack of a postilion’s whip,” cried Sybella, as she went outside the window to listen. Lady Augusta followed, and was soon at her side.

“You appear anxious for Mr. Dunn’s coming. Is he a very intimate friend of yours, Miss Kellett?” said she, with a keen, quick glance of her dark eyes.

“He was the kind friend of my father, when he lived, and, since his death, he has shown himself not less mindful of me. There – I hear the horses plainly! Can’t you hear them now, Lady Augusta?”

“And how was this kindness evidenced, – in your own case I mean?” said Lady Augusta, not heeding her question.

“By advice, by counsel, by the generous interference which procured for me my present station here, not to speak of the spirit of his letters to me.”

“So then you correspond with him?” asked she, reddening suddenly.

“Yes,” said she, turning her eyes fully on the other. And thus they stood for some seconds, when, with a slight, but very slight, motion of impatience, Lady Augusta said, —

“I was not aware – I mean, I don’t remember your having mentioned this circumstance to me.”

“I should have done so if I thought it could have had any interest for you,” said Sybella, calmly. “Oh, there is the carriage coming up the drive; I knew I was not mistaken.”

Lady Augusta made no reply, but returned hastily to the house. Bella paused for a few seconds, and followed her.

No sooner was Mr. Dunn’s carriage seen approaching the little bridge over the stream than Lord Glengariff rang to order dinner.

“It will be a rebuke he well merits,” said he, “to find the soup on the table as he drives up.”

There was something more than a mere movement of irritation in this; his Lordship regarded it as a fine stroke of policy, by which Dunn’s arrival, tinged with constraint and awkwardness, should place that gentleman at a disadvantage during the time he stayed, Lord Glengariff’s favorite theory being that “these people were insufferable when at their ease.”

Ah, my Lord, your memory was picturing the poor tutor of twenty years before, snubbed and scoffed at for his ungainly ways and ill-made garments, – the man heavy in gait and awkward in address, sulky when forgotten, and shy when spoken to, – this was the Davenport Dunn of your thoughts; there the very door he used to creep through in bashful confusion, yonder the side-table where he dined in a mockery of consideration. Little, indeed, were you prepared for him whose assured voice was already heard outside giving orders to his servant, and who now entered the drawing-room with all the ease of a man of the world.

“Ah, Dunn, most happy to see you here. No accident, I trust, occurred to detain you,” said Lord Glengariff, meeting him with a well-assumed cordiality, and then, not waiting for his reply, went on: “My daughter, Lady Augusta, an old acquaintance – if you have not forgotten her. Miss Kellett you are acquainted with.”

Mr. Dunn bowed twice, and deeply, before Lady Augusta, and then, passing across the room, shook hands warmly with Sybella.

“How did you find the roads, Dunn?” asked his Lordship, still fishing about for some stray word of apology; “rather heavy, I fear, at this season.”

“Capital roads, my Lord, and excellent horses. We came along at a rate which would have astonished the lumbering posts of the Continent.”

“Dinner, my Lord,” said the butler, throwing wide the folding-doors.

“Will you give Lady Augusta your arm, Dunn?” said Lord Glengariff, as he offered his own to Miss Kellett.

“We have changed our dinner-room, Mr. Dunn,” said Lady Augusta, as they walked along; thus by a mere word suggesting “bygones and long ago.”

“And with advantage, I should say,” replied he, easily, as he surveyed the spacious and lofty apartment into which they had just entered. “The old dinner-room was low-ceilinged and gloomy.”

“Do you really remember it?” asked she, with a pleasant smile.

“An over-good memory has accompanied me through life, Lady Augusta,” said he. And then, as he remarked the rising color of her cheek, quickly added, “It is rarely that the faculty treats me to such grateful recollections as the present.”

Lord Glengariffs table was a good specimen of country-house living. All the materials were excellent, and the cookery reasonably good; his wine was exquisite, – the years and epochs connoisseurship loves to dwell upon; but Mr. Dunn ate sparingly and drank little. He had passed forty without gourmand tastes, and no man takes to epicurism after that. His Lordship beheld, not without secret dissatisfaction, his curdiest salmon declined, his wonderful “south-down” sent away scarcely tasted, and, horror of horrors! saw water mixed with his 1815 claret as if it were a “little Bordeaux wine” at a Swiss table d’hôte.

“Mr. Dunn has no appetite for our coarse country fare, Augusta,” said Lord Glengariff; “you must take him over the cliffs, to-morrow, and let him feel the sharp Glengariff air. There’s nothing but hunger for it.”

“Pardon me, my Lord, if I say that I accept with gratitude the proposed remedy, though I don’t acknowledge a just cause for it. I am always a poor eater.”

“Tell him of Beverley, Augusta, tell him of Beverley,” said my Lord.

“Oh, it was simply a case similar to your own,” said she, hesitatingly, “and, in all probability, incurred in the same way. The Duke of Beverley, a very hard-worked man, as you know, always at Downing Street at ten, and never leaving it till night, came here two years ago, to pass a few weeks with us, and although hale and stout, to look at, could eat nothing, – that is, he cared for nothing. It was in vain we put in requisition all our little culinary devices to tempt him; he sat down with us, and, like yourself, would fain persuade us that he dined, but he really touched nothing; and, in utter despair, I determined to try what a course of open air and exercise would do.”

“She means eight hours a day hard walking, Dunn,” chimed in Lord Glengariff; “a good grouse-shooter’s pace, too, and cross country.”

“Well, confess that my remedy succeeded,” said she, triumphantly.

“That it did. The Duke went back to town fifteen years younger. No one knew him; the Queen did not know him. And to this day he says, ‘Whenever I’m hipped or out of sorts, I know what a resource I have in the Glengariff heather.’”

It is possible that Davenport Dunn listened with more of interest to this little incident because the hero of it was a Duke and a Cabinet Minister.

Assuredly the minor ills of life, the petty stomachic miseries, and such like, are borne with a more becoming patience when we know that they are shared by peers and great folk. Not by you, valued reader, nor even by me, – we have no such weaknesses, – but by the Davenport Dunns of this world, one of whom we are now treating. It was pleasant, too, to feel that he not only had a ducal ailment, but that he was to be cured like his Grace! And so he listened eagerly, as Lady Augusta went on to tell of the various localities, strange and unpronounceable, that they used to visit, and how his Grace loved to row across such an arm of the lake, and what delight he took in the ascent of such a mountain. “But you shall judge for yourself, Mr. Dunn,” said she, smiling, “and I now engage you for to-morrow, after breakfast.” And with that she rose, and, accompanied by Sybella, passed into the drawing-room. Dunn was about to follow, when Lord Glengariff called out, “I’m of the old school, Dunn, and must have half an hour with my bottle before I join the ladies.”

We do not stop to explain – perhaps we should not succeed to our wishes if we tried – why it was that Dunn was more genial, better satisfied, and more at his ease than when the dinner began; but so it was that as he filled the one glass of claret be meant to indulge in, he felt that he had been exaggerating to his own mind the disagreeables of this visit, and that everybody was kinder, pleasanter, and more natural than he had expected.

“Jesting apart, Dunn,” said his Lordship, “Augusta is right. What you require is rest, – perfect repose; never to read or write a letter for three weeks, not look at a newspaper, nor receive a telegraphic despatch. Let us try if Glengariff cannot set you up. The fact is, we can’t spare you.”

“Your opinion is too flattering by half, my Lord; but really, any one – I mean any one whose views are honest, and whose intentions are upright – can complete the work I have begun. There is no secret, – no mystery in it.”

“Come, come, this is over-modest. We all know that your head alone could carry on the vast number of these great schemes which are now in operation amongst us. Could you really tell the exact number of companies of which you are Director?”

“I ‘m afraid to say that I could,” said Dunn, smiling.

“Of course you could n’t. It is marvellous, downright marvellous, how you get through it. You rise early, of course?”

“Yes, my Lord, at five, summer and winter; light my own fire, and sit down to the desk till eight; by that time I have finished my correspondence on business topics. I then take a cup of tea and a little dry toast. This is my preparation for questions of politics, which usually occupy me till eleven. From that hour till three I receive deputations, – heads of companies, and such like. I then take my ride, weather permitting, and usually contrive to call at the Lodge, till nigh dinner-hour. If alone, my meal is a frugal one, and soon despatched; and then begins the real work of the day. A short nap of twenty minutes refreshes me, and I address myself with energy to my task. In these quiet hours, undisturbed and uninterrupted, – for I admit none, not one, at such seasons, – my mind is clear and unclouded, and I can work, without a sense of fatigue, till past midnight; it has even happened that morning has broke upon me without my being aware of it.”

“No health, no constitution, could stand that, Dunn,” said Lord Glengariff, with a voice artfully modulated to imply deep interest.

“Men are mere relays on the road of life; when one sinks, wearied or worn out, a fresh one comes forth ready to take his place in the traces.”

“That may be – that may be, in the mass of cases; but there are exceptional men, Dunn, – men who – men, in fact, whose faculties have such an adaptiveness to the age we live in – do you perceive my meaning? – men of the situation, as the French say.” Here his Lordship began to feel that he was getting upon very ticklish ground, and by no means sure how he was to get safely back again, when, with a violent plunge, he said, “That fellow Washington was one of those men, Louis Napoleon is another, and you – I don’t hesitate to say it – you are also an instance of what I mean.”

Dunn’s pale face flushed up as he muttered some broken words of depreciating meaning.

“The circumstances, I am aware, are different. You have not to revolutionize a country, but you have undertaken just as hard a task: to remodel its social state, – to construct out of the ruined materials of a bankrupt people the elements of national wealth and greatness. Let no man tell me, sir, that this is not a bolder effort than the other. Horse, foot, and dragoons, as poor Grattan used to say, won’t aid you here. To your own clear head and your own keen intellect must you trust.”

“My dear Lord,” broke in Dunn, in a voice not devoid of emotion, “you exaggerate both my labor and my capacity. I saw that the holders of Irish property were not the owners, and I determined that they should be so. I saw that the people were improvident, less from choice than necessity, and I gave them banks. I saw land unproductive for want of capital, and I established the principle of loans for drainage and other improvements. I perceived that our soil and our climate favor certain species of cultivation, and as certainly deny some others. I popularized this knowledge.”

“And you call this nothing! Why, sir, where’s the statesman can point to such a list of legislative acts? Peel himself has left no such legacy behind him.”

“Ah, my Lord, this is too flattering, – too flattering by half.” And Dunn sipped his wine and looked down. “By the way, my Lord,” said he, after a pause, “how has my recommendation in the person of Miss Kellett succeeded?”

“A very remarkable young woman, – a singularly gifted person indeed,” said the old Lord, pompously. “Some of her ideas are tinctured, it is true, with that canting philanthropy we are just now infected with, – that tendency to discover all the virtue in rags and all the vice in purple; but, with this abatement to her utility, I must say she possesses a very high order of mind. She comes of a good family, doesn’t she?”

“None better. The Kelletts of Kellett’s Court were equal to any gentry in this county.”

“And left totally destitute?”

“A mere wreck of the property remains, and even that is so cumbered with claims and so involved in law that I scarcely dare to say that they have an acre they can call their own.”

“Poor girl! A hard case, – a very hard case. We like her much, Dunn. My daughter finds her very companionable; her services, in a business point of view, are inestimable. All those reports you have seen are hers, all those drawings made by her hand.”

“I am aware, my Lord, how much zeal and intelligence she has displayed,” said Dunn, who had no desire to let the conversation glide into the great Glengariff scheme, “and I am also aware how gratefully she feels the kindness she has met with under this roof.”

“That is as it should be, Dunn, and I am rejoiced to hear it. It is in no spirit of self-praise I say it, but in simple justice, – we do – my daughter and myself, both of us – do endeavor to make her feel that her position is less that of dependant than – than – companion.”

“I should have expected nothing less from your Lordship nor Lady Augusta,” said Dunn, gravely.

“Yes, yes; you knew Augusta formerly; you can appreciate her high-minded and generous character, though I think she was a mere child when you saw her first.”

“Very young indeed, my Lord,” said Dunn, coloring faintly.

“She is exactly, however, what she then promised to be, – an Arden, a genuine Arden, sir; no deceit, no double; frank, outspoken; too much so, perhaps, for our age of mock courtesy, but a noble-hearted girl, and one fit to adorn any station.”

There was an honest, earnest sincerity in the old Lord’s manner that made Dunn listen with respect to the sentiments be uttered, though in his heart the epithet “girl,” as applied to Lady Augusta, seemed somewhat ill chosen.

“I see you take no wine, so that, if you have no objection, we’ll join the ladies.”

“Your Lordship was good enough to tell me that I was to make myself perfectly at home here; may I begin at once to avail myself of your kindness, and say that for this evening I beg to retire early? I have a number of letters to read, and some to answer.”

“Really, Lady Augusta will feel quite offended if you slight her tea-table.”

“Nay, my Lord. It is only for this evening, and I am sure you will make my excuses becomingly.”

“It shall be as you please,” said the old Lord, with a rather stiff courtesy.

“Thank you, my Lord; thank you. I assure you it is very rarely the sacrifice to duty costs me so keenly. Goodnight.”