Davenport Dunn, a Man of Our Day. Volume 1

“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.

CHAPTER XIV. A DINNER AT PAUL KELLETT’S

To all you gentlemen who live at home at ease there are few things less troublesome than the arrangement of what is called a dinner-party. Some difficulty may possibly exist as to the guests. Lady Mary may be indisposed. It might not be quite right to ask Sir Harry to meet the Headleys. A stray embarrassment or two will arise to require a little thought or a little management The material details, however, give no care. There is a stereotyped mode of feeding one’s friends, out of which it is not necessary, were it even possible, to issue. Your mock-turtle may have a little more or less the flavor of Madeira; your salmon be somewhat thicker in the shoulder; your sirloin be a shade more or less underdone; your side dishes a little more or less uneatable than your neighbor’s; but, after all, from the caviare to the cheese, the whole thing follows an easy routine, and the dinner of No. 12 is the fac-simile of the dinner at No. 13; and the same silky voice that whispers “Sherry, sir?” has its echo along the whole street The same toned-down uniformity pervades the intellectual elements of the feast; all is quiet, jogtrot, and habitual; a gentle atmosphere of murmuring dulness is diffused around, very favorable to digestion, and rather disposing to sleep.

How different are all these things in the case of the poor man, especially when he happens to be a reduced gentleman, whose memories of the past are struggling and warring with exigencies of the present and the very commonest necessities are matters of grave difficulty.

Kellett was very anxious to impress his son’s friend with a sense of his social standing and importance, and he told Bella “not to mind spending the whole week’s allowance, just to show the soldier what Jack’s family was.” A leg of mutton and a little of Kinnahan’s port constituted, in his mind, a very high order of entertainment; and these were at once voted. Bella hoped that after the first outburst of this ostentatious fit he would fall back in perfect indifference about the whole matter; but far from it, – his waking thought in the morning was the dinner; and when she remarked to him at breakfast on the threatening aspect of the clouds, his reply was, “No matter, dear, if we have plenty of capers.” Even the unhappy possibility of Beecher’s “dropping in” was subordinate to his wish to cut a figure on the occasion; and he pottered about from the dining-room to the kitchen, peeped into saucepans, and scrutinized covered dishes with a most persistent activity. Nor was Bella herself quite averse to all this. She saw in the distance – remotely it might be – the glimmering of a renewed interest about poor Jack. “The pleasure this little incident imparts,” thought she, “will spread its influence wider. He ‘ll talk of him too; he ‘ll be led on to let him mingle with our daily themes. Jack will be one of us once more after this;” and so she encouraged him to make of the occasion a little festival.

What skill did she not practise, what devices of taste not display, to cover over the hard features of their stern poverty! The few little articles of plate which remained after the wreck of their fortune were placed on the sideboard, conspicuous amongst which was a cup “presented by his brother officers to Captain Paul Kellett, on his retirement from the regiment, with which he had served thirty-eight years,” – a testimonial only exhibited on the very most solemn occasions. His sword and sash – the same he wore at Waterloo – were arrayed over the fireplace, and his Talavera chako – grievously damaged by a French sabre – hung above them. “If he begins about ‘that expedition,’” – it was thus he always designated the war in the Crimea, – “Bella, I ‘ll just give him a touch of the real thing, as we had it in the Peninsula! Faith, it wasn’t digging holes in the ground we were then;” and he laughed to himself at the absurdity of the conceit.

The few flowers which the garden owned at this late season, humble and common as they were, figured on the chimney-piece, and not a resource of ingenuity was neglected to make that little dinner-room look pleasant and cheery. Fully a dozen times had Kellett gone in and out of the room, never weary of admiring it, and as constantly muttering to himself some praise of Bella, to whose taste it was all owing. “I ‘d put the cup in the middle of the table, Bella. The wallflowers would do well enough at the sideboard. Well, maybe you ‘re right, darling; it is less pretentious, to be sure. And be careful, dear, that old Betty has a clean apron. May I never, but she’s wearing the same one since Candlemas! And don’t leave her any corks to draw; she’s the devil for breaking them into the bottle. I ‘ll sit here, where I can have the screw at my hand. There ‘s a great convenience in a small room, after all. By the good day, here ‘s Beecher!” exclaimed he, as that worthy individual approached the door.

“What’s all this for, Kellett, old boy? Are you expecting the Viceroy, or celebrating a family festival, eh? What does it mean?”

“‘T is a mutton chop I was going to give a friend of Jack’s, – a young fellow that brought me a letter from him yesterday.”

“Oh! your son Jack. By the way, what’s his regiment, – Light Dragoons, is n’t it?”

“No; the Rifles,” said Kellett, with a short cough.

“He’s pretty high up for his lieutenancy by this, ain’t he?” said Beecher, rattling on. “He Joined before Alma, didn’t he?”

“Yes; he was at the battle,” said Kellett, dryly; for though he had once or twice told his honorable friend that Jack was in the service, he had not mentioned that he was in the ranks. Not that Annesley Beecher would have, in the least, minded the information. The fact could not by possibility have touched himself; it never could have compelled him to mount guard, do duty in the trenches, eat Commissariat biscuit, or submit to any of the hardships soldiery inflicts; and he ‘d have heard of Jack’s fate with all that sublime philosophy which teaches us to bear tranquilly the calamities of others.

“Why don’t you stir yourself to get him a step? There’s nothing to be had without asking! ay, worse than asking, – begging, worrying, importuning. Get some fellow in one of the offices to tell you when there’s a vacancy, and then up and at them. If they say, ‘We are only waiting for an opportunity, Captain Kellett,’ you reply, ‘Now’s your time then, Groves of the Forty-sixth is gone “toes up;” Simpson, of the Bays, has cut his lucky this morning.’ That’s the way to go to work.”

“You are wonderful!” exclaimed Kellett, who really did all but worship the worldly wisdom of his friend.

“I ‘d ask Lackington, but he ‘s no use to any one. Just look at my own case.” And now he launched forth into the theme he really loved and never found wearisome. His capacity for anything – everything, his exact fitness for fifty opposite duties, his readiness to be a sinecurist, and his actual necessity for a salary, were subjects he could be eloquent on; devoting occasional passing remarks to Lackington’s intense stupidity, who never exerted himself for him, and actually “thought him a flat.” “I know you won’t believe – but he does, I assure you – he thinks me a flat!”

Before Kellett could fully rally from the astounding force of such an unjustifiable opinion, his guest, Conway, knocked at the door.

“I say, Kellett, there comes an apology from your friend.”

“How so?” asked Kellett, eagerly.

“I just saw a soldier come up to the door, and the chances are it ‘s an officer’s servant with a note of excuse.”

The door opened as he spoke, and Conway entered the room. Kellett met him with an honest cordiality, and then, turning to Beecher, said, —

“My son’s friend and comrade, – Mr. Annesley Beecher;” and the two men bowed to each other, and exchanged glances that scarcely indicated much pleasure at the acquaintance.

“Why, he ‘s in the ranks, Kellett,” whispered Beecher, as he drew him into the window.

“So is my son,” said Kellett, with a gulp that half choked him.

“The deuce he is; you never told me that. And is this our dinner company?”

“I was just going to explain – Oh, here’s Bella!” and Miss Kellett entered, giving such a cordial greeting to the soldier that made Beecher actually astounded.

“What’s his name, Kellett?” said Beecher, half languidly.

“A good name, for the matter of that; he’s called Conway.”

“Conway – Conway?” repeated Beecher, aloud; “we have fortieth cousins, Conways. There was a fellow called Conway in the Twelfth Lancers that went a tremendous pace; they nicknamed him the ‘Smasher,’ I don’t know why. Do you?” said he, addressing the soldier.

“I ‘ve heard it was from an awkward habit he had of putting his heel on snobs.”

“Oh! you know him, perhaps?” said Beecher, affectedly.

“Why, as I was the man myself, I ought, according to the old adage, to say I knew but little of him.”

“You Conway of the Twelfth! the same that owned Brushwood and Lady Killer, that won the Riddlesworth?”

“You’re calling up old memories to me,” said the youth, smiling, “which, after all, I ‘d just as soon forget.”

“And you were an officer in the Lancers!” exclaimed Kellett, eagerly.

“Yes; I should have had my troop by this if I hadn’t owned those fortunate three-year-olds Mr. Beecher has just reminded me of. Like many others, whom success on the turf has misled, I went on madly, quite convinced I had fortune with me.”

“Ah!” said Beecher, moralizing, “there’s no doing a good stroke of work without the legs. Cranley tried it, Hawchcome tried it, Ludborough tried it, but it won’t do. As Grog Davis says, ‘you must not ignore existing interests.’”

“There’s another name I have n’t heard for many a year. What a scoundrel that fellow was! I ‘ve good ground for believing that this Davis it was poisoned Sir Aubrey, the best horse I ever owned. Three men of his stamp would make racing a sport unfit for gentlemen.”

“Miss Kellett, will you allow me?” said Beecher, offering his arm, and right well pleased that the announcement of dinner cut short the conversation.

“A nice fellow that friend of your brother’s,” muttered he, as he led her along; “but what a stupid thing to go and serve in the ranks! It’s about the last step I ‘d ever have thought of taking.”

“I’m certain of it,” said Bella, with an assent so ready as to sound like flattery.

As the dinner proceeded, old Kellett’s astonishment continued to increase at the deference paid by Beecher to every remark that fell from Conway. The man who had twice won “the Bexley,” and all but won “the Elms;” he who owned Sir Aubrey, and actually took the odds against all “Holt’s stable,” was no common celebrity. In vain was it Conway tried to lead the conversation to his friend Jack, – what they had seen, and where they had been together, – Beecher would bring them back to the Turf and the “Racing Calendar.” There were so many dark things he wanted to know, so much of secret history he hoped to be enlightened in; and whenever, as was often the case, Conway did not and could not give him the desired information, Beecher slyly intimated by a look towards Kellett that he was a deep fellow; while he muttered to himself, “Grog Davis would have it out of him, notwithstanding all his cunning.”

Bella alone wished to hear about the war. It was not alone that her interest was excited for her brother, but in the great events of that great struggle her enthusiastic spirit found ample material for admiration. Conway related many heroic achievements, not alone of British soldiers, but of French and even Russians. Gallantry, as he said, was of no nation in particular, – there were brave fellows everywhere; and he told, with all the warmth of honest admiration, how daringly the enemy dashed into the lines at night and confronted certain death, just for the sake of causing an interruption to the siege, and delaying, even for a brief space, the advance of the works. Told, as these stories were, with all the freshness which actual observation confers, and in a spirit of unexaggerated simplicity, still old Kellett heard them with the peevish jealousy of one who felt that they were destined to eclipse in their interest the old scenes of Spain and Portugal. That any soldiers lived nowadays like the old Light Division, that there were such fellows as the fighting Fifth, or Crawfurd’s Brigade, no man should persuade him; and when he triumphantly asked if they had n’t as good a general as Sir Arthur Welles-ley, he fell back, laughing contemptuously at the idea of such being deemed war at all, or the expedition, as he would term it, being styled a campaign.

“Remember, Captain Kellett, we had a fair share of your old Peninsular friends amongst us, – gallant veterans, who had seen everything from the Douro to Bayonne.”

“Well, and did n’t they laugh at all this? did n’t they tell you fairly it was not fighting?”

“I ‘m not so sure they did,” said Conway, laughing good-naturedly. “Gordon told an officer in my hearing, that the charge up the heights at the Alma reminded him strongly of Harding’s ascent of the hills at Albuera.”

“No, no, don’t say that; I can’t stand it!” cried Kellett, peevishly; “sure if it was only that one thinks they were Frenchmen – Frenchmen, with old Soult at their head – at Albuera – ”

“There’s nothing braver than a Russian, sir, depend on ‘t,” said the youth, with a slight warmth in his tone.

“Brave if you like; but, you see, he isn’t a soldier by nature, like the Frenchman; and yet we beat the French, thrashed him from the sea to the Pyrenees, and over the Pyrenees into France.”

“What’s the odds? You’d not do it again; or, if you did, not get Nap to abdicate. I ‘d like to have two thousand to fifty on the double event,” said Beecher, chuckling over an imaginary betting-book.

“And why not do it again?” broke in Bella. “Is it after listening to what we have heard this evening that we have cause for any faint-heartedness about the spirit of our soldiery? Were Cressy or Agincourt won by braver fellows than now stand entrenched around Sebastopol?”

“I don’t like it; as Grog says, ‘never make a heavy book on a waiting race!’”

“I conclude, then,” said Conway, “you are one of those who augur ill of our success in the present war?”

“I ‘d not stake an even fifty, on either side,” said Beecher, who had shrewd suspicions that it was what he ‘d have called a “cross,” and that Todleben and Lord Raglan could make “things comfortable” at any moment. “I see Miss Bella’s of my mind,” added he, as he perceived a very peculiar smile just parting her lips.

“I suspect not, Mr. Beecher,” said she, slyly.

“Why did you laugh, then?”

“Shall I tell you? It was just this, then, passing in my mind. I was wondering within myself whether the habit of reducing all men’s motives to the standard of morality observable in the ‘ring’ more often lead to mistakes, or the contrary.”

“I sincerely trust that it rarely comes right,” broke in Conway. “I was close upon four years on the turf, as they call it; and if I had n’t been ruined in time, I ‘d have ended by believing that an honest man was as great a myth as anything we read of amongst the heathen gods.”

“That all depends upon what you call honest,” said Beecher.

“To be sure it does; you ‘re right there,” chimed in Kellett; and Beecher, thus seconded, went on, —

“Now, I call a fellow honest when he won’t put his pal into a hole; when he ‘ll tell him whenever he has got a good thing, and let him have his share; when he’ll warn him against a dark lot, and not let him ‘in’ to oblige any one, – that’s honesty.”