Kitabı oku: «Davenport Dunn, a Man of Our Day. Volume 1», sayfa 4

CHAPTER IV. ONE WHO WOULD BE A “SHARP FELLOW.”

One of the chief, perhaps the greatest, pleasures which Kellett’s humble lot still secured him, was a long country walk of a Sunday in company with one who had been his friend in more prosperous times. A reduced gentleman like himself, Annesley Beecher could only go abroad on this one day in the week, and thus by the pressure of adverse fortune were they thrown more closely together.

Although by no means a favorite with Bella, she was far too considerate for her father, and too mindful of the few enjoyments that remained to him, ever to interpose her real opinion. She therefore limited herself to silence, as old Kellett would pronounce some glowing eulogy of his friend, calling him “good” and “amiable” and “kind-hearted,” and extolling, as little short of miraculous, “the spirits he had, considering all he went through.” But he would add, “He was always the same, and that’s the reason everybody liked him, – everybody, that is, almost everybody!” And he would steal a sly glance at his daughter, half imploringly, as though to say, “How long are you to sit in that small minority?”

Whether the weather would permit of Beecher’s coming out to see them, whether he ‘d be able to “stay and take his bit of dinner with them,” were subjects of as great anxiety to poor Kellett each succeeding Sunday morning as though there ever had been a solitary exception to the wished-for occurrence; and Bella would never destroy the pleasure of anticipation by the slightest hint that might impair the value he attached to the event.

“There’s so many trying to get him,” he would say; “they pester his life out with invitations, – the Chancellor and Lord Killybegs and the Bishop of Drumsna always asking him to name his day; but he ‘d rather come out and take his bit of roast mutton with ourselves, and his glass of punch after it, than he ‘d eat venison and drink claret with the best of them. There’s not a table in Dublin, from the Castle down, that would n’t be proud of his company; and why not?” He would pause after uttering a challenge of this sort; and then, as his daughter would show no signs of acceptance, he would mutter on, “A real gentleman born and bred, and how anybody can mislike him is more than I am really able to comprehend!”

These little grumblings, which never produced more than a smile from Bella, were a kind of weekly homily which poor Kellett liked to deliver, and he felt, when he had uttered it, as one who had paid a just tribute to worth and virtue.

“There’s Beecher already, by Jove!” cried Kellett, as he sprang up from the breakfast-table to open the little wicket which the other was vainly endeavoring to unhasp. “How early he is!”

Let us take the opportunity to present him to our readers, – a duty the more imperative, since, to all outward semblance at least, he would appear little to warrant the flattering estimate his friend so lately bestowed upon him. About four or five-and-thirty, somewhat above the middle size, and with all the air and bearing of a man of fashion, Beecher had the gay, easy, light-hearted look of one with whom the world went habitually well; and when it did not, more was the shame of the said world! since a better, nobler, more generous fellow than himself never existed; and this he knew, however others might ungraciously hold an opposite opinion. There was not the slightest detail in his dress that could warrant the supposition of narrow fortune: his coat and his waistcoat, of one color and stuff, were faultless in make; the massive watch-chain that festooned across his chest in the last mode; his thick walking-boots the perfection of that compromise between strength and elegance so popular in our day; even to his cane, whose head was of massive gold, with his arms embossed, – all bespoke a certain affluence and abundance, the more assured from the absence of ostentation.

His hat was slightly, very slightly, set on one side, – a piece of “tigerism” pardonable, perhaps, as it displayed the rich brown curls of very silky hair, which he had disposed with consummate skill before his glass ere he issued forth. His large, full blue eyes, his handsome mouth, and a certain gentleness in his look generally, were what he himself would have called the “odds in his favor;” and very hard it would indeed have been at first sight to form an estimate in any way unfavorable to him. Bean Beecher, as he was called once, had been deemed the best-looking fellow about town, and when he entered the Life Guards, almost twenty years before the time we now present him, had been reckoned the handsomest man and best rider in the regiment. Brother of Lord Lackington, but not by the same mother, he had inaugurated that new school of dandyism which succeeded to the Brummell period, and sought fame and notoriety by splendor and extravagance rather than by the fastidious and personal elegance that characterized the former era. In this way Lord Lackington and his brother were constantly contrasted; and although each had their followers, it was generally admitted that they were both regarded as admirable types of style and fashion. Boodle’s would have preferred the Peer, the Guards’ Club and all Tattersall’s have voted for the Honorable Annesley Beecher.

Beecher started in life with all the advantages and disadvantages which attach to the position of a younger son of a noble family. On the one side he had good connections, a sure status in society, and easy admission into club life; on the other, lay the counterbalancing fact of the very slender fortune which usually falls to the lot of the younger born. The sum, in his case, barely sufficed to carry him through his minority, so that the day he came of age he had not a shilling in the world. Most men open their career in life with some one ambition or other in their hearts. Some aspire to military glory and the fame of a great general, some yearn after political eminence, and fashion to themselves the triumphs of successful statesmanship. There are lesser goals in the walks of the learned professions which have each their votaries; and sanguine spirits there are who found, in imagination, distant colonies beyond the sea, or lead lives of adventure in exploring unvisited and unknown regions. Annesley Beecher had no sympathy with any of these. The one great and absorbing wish of his heart was to be a “sharp fellow;” one who in all the dealings and traffic of life was sure to get the upper hand of his adversary, who in every trial where craft was the master, and in whatever situation wherein cunning performed a part, was certain to come out with the creditable reputation of being, “for a gentleman, the downiest cove to be met with anywhere.”

This unhappy bent was owing to the circumstance of his being early thrown amongst men who, having nothing but their wits to depend upon, had turned these same wits to very discreditable purposes. He became, it is needless to say, their easy dupe; and when utterly bereft of the small patrimony which he once possessed, was admitted as an humble brother of the honorable guild who had despoiled him.

Men select their walk in life either from the consciousness of certain qualities likely to obtain success, or by some overweening admiration of those already eminent in it. It was this latter decided Beecher’s taste. Never was there one who cherished such profound respect for a crafty fellow, for all other intellectual superiorities he could limit his esteem: for a rogue, his veneration was unbounded. From the man that invented a bubble company, to him who could turn the king at écarté– from the gifted individual who could puff up shares to an exorbitant value, to the no less fine intelligence that could “make everything safe on the Derby,” he venerated them all. His early experiences had been unhappy ones, and so constantly had he found himself duped and “done” on every hand, that he ended by believing that honesty was a pure myth; the nearest approach to the quality being a certain kind of fidelity to one’s “pall,” as he would have called it, and an unwillingness to put “your own friend in the hole,” while there were so many others available for that pleasant destiny. This little flickering flame of principle, this farthing candle of good feeling, was the solitary light that illuminated the gloom of his character.

He had joined the regiment Kellett formerly belonged to at Malta, a few weeks before the other had sold out, and having met accidentally in Ireland, they had renewed the acquaintance, stimulated by that strange sympathy which attracts to each other those whose narrow circumstances would seem, in some shape or other, the effects of a cruelty practised on them by the world. Kellett was rather flattered by the recognition of him who recalled the brighter hours of his life, while he entertained a kind of admiration for the worldly wit and cleverness of one who, in talk at least, was a match for the “shrewdest fellow going.” Beecher liked the society of a man who thus looked up to him, and who could listen unweariedly to his innumerable plans for amassing wealth and fortune, all of which only needed some little preliminary aid – some miserable thousand or two to start with – to make them as “rich as Rothschild.”

Never was there such a Tantalus view of life as he could picture, – stores of gold, mines of unbounded wealth, – immense stakes to be won here, rouge et noir banks to be broke there, – all actually craving to be appropriated, if one only had a little of that shining metal which, like the water thrown down in a pump, is the needful preliminary to securing a supply of the fluid afterwards.

The imaginative faculty plays a great part in the existence of the reduced gentleman! Kellett actually revelled in the gorgeous visions this friend could conjure up. There was that amount of plausibility in his reasonings that satisfied scruple as to practicability, and made him regard Beecher as the most extraordinary instance of a grand financial genius lost to the world, – a great Chancellor of the Exchequer born to devise budgets in obscurity!

Bella took a very different measure of him: she read him with all a woman’s nicest appreciation, and knew him thoroughly; she saw, however, how much his society pleased her father, how their Sunday strolls together rallied him from the dreary depression the week was sure to leave behind it, and how these harmless visions of imaginary prosperity served to cheer the gloom of actual poverty. She, therefore, concealed so much as she could of her own opinion, and received Beecher as cordially as she was able.

“Ah, Paul, my boy, how goes it? Miss Kellett, how d’ye do?” said Beecher, with that easy air and pleasant smile that well became him. “I thought by starting early I should just catch you at breakfast, while I also took another hour out of my Sunday, – the one day the law mercifully bestows on such poor devils as myself, – ha, ha, ba!” And he laughed heartily, as though insolvency was as droll a thing as could be.

“You bear up well, anyhow, Beecher,” said Kellett, admiringly.

“What’s the odds so long as you’re happy!” cried the other, gayly. “Never say die. They take it out in fifty per cent, but they can’t work the oracle against our good spirits, eh, Kellett? The mens sana in corpore, – what d’ye call him, my lad? – that’s the real thing.”

“Indeed, I suppose it is!” said Kellett, not very clear as to what he concurred in.

“There are few fellows, let me tell you, would be as light-hearted as I am, with four writs and a judge’s warrant hanging over them, – eh, Miss Bella, what do you say to that?” said Beecher.

She smiled half sadly and said nothing.

“Ask John Scott, – ask Bicknell Morris, or any of the ‘Legs’ you like, – if there’s a man of them all ever bore up like me. ‘Beecher’s a bar of iron,’ they ‘ll tell you; ‘that fellow can bear any amount of hammering.’ and maybe I have n’t had it! And all Lackington’s fault!”

“That’s the worst of all!” said Kellett, who had listened to the same accusation in the self-same words at least a hundred times before.

“Lackington is the greatest fool going! He does n’t see the advantage of pushing his family influence. He might have had me in for ‘Mallow.’ Grog Davis said to him one day, ‘Look now, my Lord, Annesley is the best horse in your stable, if you ‘d only stand to win on him, he is!’ But Lackington would not hear of it. He thinks me a flat! You won’t believe it, but he does!”

“Faith! he’s wrong there,” said Kellett, with all the emphasis of sincerity.

“I rather suspect he is, Master Kellett. I was trained in another school, – brought up amongst fellows would skin a cat, by Jove! What I say is, let A. B. have a chance, – just let him in once, and see if he won’t do the thing!”

“Do you wish to be in Parliament, Mr. Beecher?” asked Bella, with a smile of half-repressed drollery.

“Of course I do. First, there’s the protection, – no bad thing as times go; then it would be uncommon strange if I could n’t ‘tool the coach into the yard’ safely. They ‘d have to give me a devilish good thing. You ‘d see what a thorn I ‘d be in their sides. Ask Grog Davis what kind of fellow I am; he ‘ll tell you if I ‘m easily put down. But Lackington is a fool; he can’t see the road before him!”

“You reckon, then, on being a debater!” said she, quietly.

“A little of everything, Miss Bella,” said he, laughing; “like the modern painters, not particular for a shade or two. I ‘d not go wasting my time with that old Tory lot, – they’re all worked ont, aged and weighted, as John Scott would call them – I’d go in with the young uns, – the Manchester two-year-olds, universal – what d’ye call it? – and vote by ballot. They ‘re the fellows have ‘the tin,’ by Jove! they have.”

“Then I scarcely see how Lord Lackington would advance his family influence by promoting your views,” said she, again.

“To be sure he would. It would be the safest hedge in the world for him. He ‘d square his book by it, and stand to win, no matter what horse came in. Besides, why should they buy me, if I was n’t against them? You don’t nobble the horse in your own stable, – eh, Kellett, old boy?”

“You’re a wonderful fellow, Beecher!” said Kellett, in a most honest admiration of his friend.

“If they’d only give me a chance, Paul, – just one chance!”

It was not very easy to see what blot in the game of life he purposed to himself to “hit” when he used this expression, “if they only give me a chance;” vague and indistinct as it was, still for many a year had it served him as a beacon of hope. A shadow vision of creditors “done,” horses “nobbled,” awkward testimonies “squared,” a millenary period of bills easily discounted, with an indulgent Angel presiding over the Bankrupt Court, – these and like blessings doubtless all flitted before him as the fruits of that same “chance” which destiny held yet in store for him.

Hope is a generous fairy; she deigns to sit beside the humblest firesides, – she will linger even in the damp cell of the prison, or rest her wings on the wave-tossed raft of the shipwrecked, and in such mission is she thrice blessed! But by what strange caprice does she visit the hearts of men like this? Perhaps it is that the very spirit of her ministering is to despair of nothing.

We are by no means sure that our reader will take the same pleasure that Kellett did in Beecher’s society, and therefore we shall spare him the narrative of their walk. They strolled along for hours, now by the shingly shore, on which the waves swept smoothly, now inland, through leafy lanes and narrow roads, freckled with patchy sunlight. The day was calm and still, – one of those solemn autumnal days which lend to scenery a something of sadness in their unvarying quiet. Although so near a great city, the roads were little travelled, and they sauntered for hours scarcely meeting any one.

Wherever the smoke rose above the tall beech-trees, wherever the ornamented porch of some lone cottage peeped through the copse, or the handsome entrance-gate proclaimed the well-to-do owner of some luxurious abode, Kellett would stop to tell who it was lived there, – the wealthy merchant, the affluent banker, the alderman or city dignitary, who had amassed his fortune by this or that pursuit. Through all his stories there ran the vein of depreciation, which the once landed proprietor cherished towards the men who were the “first of their name.” He was sure to remember some trait of their humble beginnings in life, – how this one had come up barefooted to Dublin fifty years before; how that had held horses in the street for hire. It was strange, but scarcely one escaped some commentary of this kind; not that there was a spark of ill-nature in the man, but that he experienced a species of self-consolation in thinking that in all his narrow fortune he had claims of kindred and connection which none of them could compete with. Beecher’s thoughts took, meanwhile, a different course; whenever not awakened to interest by some trait of their sharpness or cunning, to which he listened with avidity, he revelled in the idea of their wealth, as a thing of which they might be despoiled: “Wouldn’t that fellow take shares in some impossible speculation? – Couldn’t the other be induced to buy some thousand pounds’ worth of valueless scrip? – Would this one kindly permit himself to ‘be cleared out’ at hazard? – Might that one be persuaded to lose a round sum at écarté?”

And thus did they view life, with widely different sympathies, it is true, but yet in a spirit that made them companionable to each other. One “grew his facts,” like raw material which the other manufactured into those curious wares by which he amused his fancy. Poverty is a stronger bond than many believe it; when men begin to confess it to each other, they take something very like an oath of fidelity.

“By the way,” said Beecher, as he bade his friend good night, “you told me you knew Dunn – Davenport Dunn?”

“To be sure I do, – know him well.”

“Couldn’t you introduce me to him? That’s a fellow might be able to assist me. I ‘m certain he could give me a chance; eh, Kellett?”

“Well; I expect him back in Ireland every day. I was asking after him no later than yesterday; but he’s still away.”

“When he comes back, however, you can mention me, of course; he’ll know who I am.”

“I’ll do it with pleasure. Good-night, Beecher, – goodnight; and I hope” – this was soliloquy as he turned back towards the door, – “I hope Dunn will do more for you than he ever has for me! or, faith, it’s not worth while to make the acquaintance.”

Bella retired to her room early, and Kellett sat moodily alone by his fire. Like a great many other “embarrassed gentlemen,” he was dragging on life amidst all the expedients of loans, bonds, and mortgages, when the bill for sale of the encumbered estates became the law of the land. What with the legal difficulties of dispossessing him, what with the changeful fortunes of a good harvest, or money a little more plentiful in the market, he might have gone on to the last in this fashion, and ended his days where he began them, in the old house of his fathers, when suddenly this new and unexpected stroke of legislation cut short all his resources at once, and left him actually a beggar on the world.

The panic created at the first moment by a law that seemed little short of confiscation, the large amount of landed property thus suddenly thrown into the market, the prejudice against Irish investment so strongly entertained by the moneyed classes in England, all tended vastly to depreciate the value of those estates which came first for sale; and many were sold at prices scarcely exceeding four or five years of their rental. An accidental disturbance in the neighborhood, some petty outrage in the locality, was enough to depreciate the value; and purchasers actually fancied themselves engaged in speculations so hazardous that nothing short of the most tempting advantages would requite them for their risk.

One of the very first estates for sale was Kellett’s Court. The charges on the property were immense, the accumulated debts of three generations of spendthrifts; the first charge, however, was but comparatively small, and yet even this was not covered by the proceeds of the sale. A house that had cost nearly forty thousand pounds, standing on its own demesne, surrounded by an estate yielding upwards of three thousand a year, was knocked down for fifteen thousand four hundred pounds.

Kellett was advised to appeal against this sale on various grounds: he was in possession of an offer of more than double for the same property in times less prosperous; he could show a variety of grounds – surprise and others – to invalidate the ruinous contract; and it was then that he once again, after a whole life, found himself in contact with Davenport Dunn, the attorney for many parties whose interests were compromised in the sale. By no possible accident could the property be sold at such a price as would leave any surplus to himself; but he hoped, indeed he was told, that he would be favorably considered by those whose interest he was defending; and this last throw for fortune was now the subject of his dreary thoughts.

There was, too, another anxiety, and a nearer one, pressing on his heart. Kellett had a son, – a fine, frank, open-hearted young fellow, who had grown up to manhood, little dreaming that he would ever be called on to labor for his own support. The idle lounging habits of a country life had indisposed him to all study, so that even his effort to enter college was met by a failure, and he was turned back on the very threshold of the University. Jack Kellett went home, vowing he ‘d nevermore trouble his head about Homer and Lucian, and he kept his word; he took to his gun and his pointers with renewed vigor, waiting until such time as he might obtain his gazette to a regiment on service. His father had succeeded in securing a promise of such an appointment, but, unhappily, the reply only arrived on the very week that Kellett’s Court was sold, and an order from the Horse Guards to lodge the purchase-money of his commission came at the very hour when they were irretrievably ruined.

Jack disappeared the next morning, and the day following brought a letter, stating that he had enlisted in the “Rifles,” and was off to the Crimea. Old Kellett concealed the sorrow that smote him for the loss of his boy, by affecting indignation at being thus deserted. So artfully did he dress up this self-deception that Bella was left in doubt as to whether or not some terrible scene had not occurred between the father and son before he left the house. In a tone that she never ventured to dispute, he forbade her to allude to Jack before him; and thus did he treasure up this grief for himself alone and his own lonely hours, cheating his sorrow by the ingenious devices of that constraint he was thus obliged to practise on himself. Like a vast number of men with whom the world has gone hardly, he liked to brood over his misfortunes, and magnify them to himself. In this way he opened a little bank of compassion that answered every draft he drew on it. Over and over to himself – like a miser revelling over his hoarded wealth – did he count all the hardships of his destiny. He loved thus to hug his misery in solitude, while he whispered to his heart, “You are a courageous fellow, Paul Kellett; there are not many who could carry your cheerful face, or walk with a head as high as you do to-day. The man that owned Kellett’s Court, and was one of the first in his county, living in a poor cottage, with sixty pounds a year! – that’s the test of what stuff a man’s made of. Show me another man in Ireland could do it! Show me one that could meet the world as uncomplainingly, and all the while never cease to be what he was born, – a gentleman.” This was the philosophy he practised; this the lesson he taught; this the paean he chanted in his own heart The various extremities to which he might – being anything other than what he was – have been tempted, the excesses he might have fallen into, the low associates he might have kept, the base habits he might have contracted, all the possible and impossible contingencies that might have befallen him, and all his difficulties therein, formed a little fiction world that he gloried to lose himself in contemplating.

It is not often that selfishness can take a form so blameless; nor is it always that self-deception can be so harmless. In this indulgence we now leave him.