Davenport Dunn, a Man of Our Day. Volume 1

“Well, perhaps it is,” said Conway, laughing. “The Russians said it was mercy t’ other day, when they went about shooting the wounded. There’s no accounting for the way men are pleased to see things.”

“I ‘d like to have your definition of honesty,” said Beecher, slightly piqued by the last remark.

“How can you expect me to give you one? Have I not just told you I was for more than three years on the turf, had a racing stable, and dealt with trainers and jocks?” He paused for a second or two, and then, in a stronger voice, went on: “I cannot believe that the society of common soldiers is a very high standard by which to measure either manners or motives; and yet I pledge my word to it, that my comrades, in comparison with my old companions of the turf, were unexceptionable gentlemen. I mean that, in all that regards truthfulness, fair dealing, and honorable intercourse, it would be insult to compare them.”

“Ah, you see,” said Beecher, “you got it ‘all hot,’ as they say. You ‘re not an unprejudiced juryman. They gave you a bucketing, – I heard all about it. If Corporal Trim had n’t been doctored, you ‘d have won twelve thousand at Lancaster.”

Conway smiled good-humoredly at the explanation thus suggested, but said nothing.

“Bother it for racing,” said Kellett “I never knew any real taste for horses or riding where there was races. Instead of caring for a fine, showy beast, a little thick in the shoulder, square in the joints, and strong in the haunch, they run upon things like greyhounds, all drawn up behind and low before; it’s a downright misery to mount one of them.”

“But it’s a real pleasure to see him come in first, when your book tells you seven to one in your favor. Talk of sensations,” said he, enthusiastically; “where is there the equal of that you feel when the orange and blue you have backed with a heavy pot comes pelting round the corner, followed by two, – then three, – all punishing, your own fellow holding on beautifully, with one eye a little thrown backward to see what’s coming, and that quiet, calm look about the mouth that says, ‘I have it.’ Every note of the wild cheer that greets the winner is applause to your own heart; that deafening yell is your own song of triumph.”

“Listen to him! – that ‘s his hobby,” cried Kellett, whose eyes glistened with excitement at the description, and who really felt an honest admiration for the describer. “Ah, Beecher, my boy! – you ‘re at home there.”

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

Whether it was that the expression was new and strange to him, or that the energy of the speaker astonished him, but Conway certainly turned his eyes towards him in some surprise; a sentiment which Beecher at once interpreting as interest, went on, —

“You,” said he, – “you had many a chance; I never had one. You might have let them all in, you might have landed them all – so they tell me, at least – if you’d have withdrawn Eyetooth. He was own brother to Aurelius, and sure to win. Well, if you ‘d have withdrawn him for the Bexley, you’d have netted fifty thousand. Grog – I mean a fellow ‘well up’ among the legs – told me so.”

“Your informant never added what every gentleman in England would have said of me next day,” said Conway. “It would have been neither more nor less than a swindle. The horse was in perfect health and top condition, – why should I not have run him?”

“For no other reason that I know, except that you ‘d have been richer by fifty thousand for not doing it.”

“Well,” said Conway, quietly, “it’s not a very pleasant thing to be crippled in this fashion; but I ‘d rather lose the other arm than do what you speak of. And if I did n’t know that many gentlemen get a loose way of talking of fifty things they ‘d never seriously think of doing, I ‘d rather feel disposed to be offended at what you have just said.”

“Offended! of course not, – I never dreamed of anything offensive. I only meant to say that they call me a flat; but hang me if I’d have let them off as cheaply as you did.”

“Then they’re at perfect liberty to call me a flat also,” said Conway, laughing. “Indeed, I suspect I have given them ample reason to think me one.”

The look of compassionate pity Beecher bestowed on him as he uttered these words was as honest as anything in his nature could be.

It was in vain Bella tried to get back the conversation to the events of the campaign, to the scenes wherein poor Jack was an actor. Beecher’s perverse activity held them chained to incidents which, to him, embraced all that was worth living for. “You must have had some capital things in your time, though. You had some race-horses, and were well in with Tom Nolan’s set,” said he to Conway.

“Shall I tell you the best match I ever had, – at least, the one gave me most pleasure?”

“Do, by all means,” said Beecher, eagerly, “though I guess it already. It was against Vickersley, even for ten thousand, at York.”

“No,” said the other, smiling.

“Well, then, it was the Cotswold, – four miles in two heats. You won it with a sister to Ladybird.”

“Nor that, either; though by these reminiscences you show me how accurately you have followed my humble fortunes.”

“There ‘s not a man has done anything on the turf for fifty years I can’t give you his history; not a horse I won’t tell you all his performances, just as if you were reading it out of the ‘Racing Calendar.’ As ‘Bell’s Life’ said t’ other day, ‘If Annesley Beecher can’t answer that question,’ – and it was about Running Rein, – ‘no man in England can.’ I’m ‘The Fellow round the corner’ that you always see alluded to in ‘Bell.’”

“Indeed!” exclaimed Conway, with assumed deference.

“That I am, – Kellett knows it. Ask old Paul there, – ask Grog, – ask any one you like, whether A. B. is up to a thing or two. But we ‘re forgetting this match, – the best thing you said you ever had.”

“I ‘m not so sure you ‘ll be of my mind when you hear it,” said Conway, smiling. “It was a race we had t’ other day in the Crimea, – a steeplechase, over rather a stiff course, with Spanish ponies; and I rode against Lord Broodale, Sir Harry Curtis, and Captain Marsden, and won five pounds and a dozen of champagne. My comrades betted something like fifty shillings on the match, and there would have been a general bankruptcy in the company if I had lost. Poor Jack mortgaged his watch and a pilot coat that he was excessively proud of, – it was the only bit of mufti in the battalion, I think; but he came off all right, and treated us all to a supper with his winnings, which, if I don’t mistake, did n’t pay more than half the bill.”

“Good luck to him, and here’s his health,” cried Kellett, whose heart, though proof against all ordinary appeals to affection, could not withstand this assault of utter recklessness and improvidence. “He’s my own flesh and blood, there’s no denying it.”

If Conway was astounded at this singular burst of paternal affection, he did not the less try to profit by it, and at once began to recount the achievements of his comrade, Jack Kellett. The old man listened half doggedly at first, but gradually, as the affection of others for his son was spoken of, he relaxed, and heard, with an emotion he could not easily repress, how Jack was beloved by the whole regiment, – that to be his companion in outpost duty, to be stationed with him in a battery, was a matter of envy. “I won’t say,” said Conway, “that every corps and every company has not fellows brave as he; but show me one who ‘ll carry a lighter spirit into danger, and as soft a heart amid scenes of cruelty and bloodshed. So that if you asked who in our battalion is the pluckiest, who the most tenderhearted, who the most generous, and who the least given to envy, you’d have the one answer, ‘Jack Kellett,’ without a doubt.”

“And what will it all do for him?” broke in the old man, resorting once more to his discontent.

“What will it do for him? What has it done for him? Is it nothing that in a struggle history will make famous a man’s name is a household word; that in a war where deeds of daring are so rife, his outnumbers those of any other? It’s but a few weeks back a Sardinian staff-officer, coming to our head-quarters on business, asked if the celebrated ‘Bersagliere’ was there, – so they call riflemen, – and desired to see him; and, better than that, though he didn’t know Jack’s name, none doubted who was meant, but Jack Kellett was sent for on the instant. Now, that I call fame.”

“Will it get him his commission?” said Beecher, knowingly, as though by one shrewd stroke of intelligence he had embraced the entire question.

“A commission can be had for four hundred and fifty pounds, and some man in Parliament to ask for it. But what Jack has done cannot be bought by mere money. Do you go out there, Mr. Beecher, just go and see for yourself – it’s well worth the while – what stuff fellows are made of that face danger every day and night, without one thought above duty, never expecting, never dreaming that anything they do is to have its personal benefit, and would far rather have their health drunk by their comrades than be quoted in the ‘Times.’ You’ll find your old regiment there, – you were in the Fusilier Guards, weren’t you?”

“Yes, I tried soldiering, but I did n’t like it,” said Beecher; “and it was better in my day than now, they tell me.”

A movement of impatience on Conway’s part was suddenly interrupted by Kellett, saying, “He means that the service is n’t what it was; and indeed he’s right there. I remember the time there wasn’t a man in the Eighty-fifth could n’t carry away three bottles of Bennett’s strong port, and play as good a rubber, afterwards, as Hoyle himself.”

“It’s the snobbery I was thinking of,” said Beecher; “fellows go into the army now who ought to be counter-jumping.”

“I don’t know what they ought to be doing,” broke in Conway, angrily, “but I could tell you something of what they are doing; and where you are to find men to do it better, I ‘m not so clear. I said a few moments back, you ought to go out to the Crimea; but I beg to correct myself, – it is exactly what you ought not to do.”

“Never fear, old fellow; I never dreamed of it. Give you any odds you like, you ‘ll never see my arrival quoted at Balaklava.”

“A thousand pardons, Miss Kellett,” whispered Conway, as he arose, “but you see how little habit I have of good company; I’m quite ashamed of my warmth. May I venture to come and pay you a morning visit before I go back?”

“Oh, by all means; but why not an evening one? You are more certain to find us.”

“Then an evening one, if you’ll allow me;” and shaking Kellett’s hand warmly, and with a cold bow to Beecher, he withdrew.

“Wasn’t he a flat!” cried Beecher, as the door closed after him. “The Smasher – that was the name he went by – went through an estate of six thousand a year, clean and clear, in less than four years, and there he is now, a private soldier with one arm!”

“Faith, I like him; he’s a fine fellow,” said Kellett, heartily.

“Ask Grog Davis if he’d call him a fine fellow,” broke in Beecher, sneeringly; “there’s not such a spoon from this to Newmarket. Oh, Paul, my hearty, if I had but one, just one of the dozen chances he has thrown away! But, as Grog says, ‘a crowbar won’t make a cracksman;’ nor will a good stable of horses, and safe jocks ‘bring a fellow round,’ if he hasn’t it here.” And he touched his forehead with his forefinger most significantly.

Meanwhile Charles Conway sauntered slowly back to town, on the whole somewhat a sadder man than he had left it in the morning. His friend Jack had spoken much to him of his father and sister, and why or to what extent he knew not, but somehow they did not respond to his own self-drawn picture of them. Was it that he expected old Kellett would have been a racier version of his son, – the same dashing, energetic spirit, – seeing all for the best in life, and accepting even its reverses in a half-jocular humor? Had he hoped to find in him Jack’s careless, easy temper, – a nature so brimful of content as to make all around sharers in its own blessings; or had he fancied a “fine old Irish gentleman” of that thoroughbred school he had so often heard of?

Nor was he less disappointed with Bella; he thought she had been handsomer, or, at least, quite a different kind of beauty. Jack was blue-eyed and Saxon-looking, and he fancied that she must be a “blonde,” with the same frank, cheery expression of her brother; and he found her dark-haired and dark-skinned, almost Spanish in her look, – the cast of her features grave almost to sadness. She spoke, too, but little, and never once reminded him, by a tone, a gesture, or a word, of his old comrade.

Ah! how these self-created portraits do puzzle and disconcert us through life! How they will obtrude themselves into the foreground, making the real and the actual but mere shadows in the distance! What seeming contradiction, too, do they create as often as we come into contact with the true, and find it all so widely the reverse of what we dreamed of! How often has the weary emigrant sighed over his own created promised land in the midst of the silent forest or the desolate prairie! How has the poor health-seeker sunk heavy-hearted amid scenes which, had he not misconstrued them to himself, he had deemed a paradise!

These “phrenographs” are very dangerous paintings, and the more so that we sketch them in unconsciously.

“Jack is the best of them; that’s clear,” said Conway, as he walked along; and yet, with all his affection for him, the thought did not bring the pleasure it ought to have done.

CHAPTER XV. A HOME SCENE

When Paul Kellett described Mr. Davenport Dunn’s almost triumphal entry into Dublin, he doubtless fancied in his mind the splendors that awaited him at home; the troops of servants in smart liveries, the homage of his household, and the costly entertainment which most certainly should celebrate his arrival. Public rumor had given to the hospitalities of that house a wide extended fame. The fashionable fishmonger of the capital, his Excellency’s “purveyor” of game, the celebrated Italian warehouse, all proclaimed him their best customer. “Can’t let you have that turbot, sir, till I hear from Mr. Dunn.” “Only two pheasants to be had, sir, and ordered for Mr. Dunn.” “The white truffles only taken by one gentleman in town. None but Mr. Dunn would pay the price.” The culinary traditions of his establishment threw the Castle into the background, and Kellett revelled in the notion of the great festivity that now welcomed his return. “Lords and earls – the biggest salmon in the market – the first men of the land – and lobster sauce – ancient names and good families – with grouse, and ‘Sneyd’s Twenty-one’ – that ‘s what you may call life! It is wonderful, wonderful!” Now, when Paul enunciated the word “wonderful” in this sense, he meant it to imply that it was shameful, distressing, and very melancholy for the prospects of humanity generally. And then he amused himself by speculating whether Dunn liked it all, – whether the unaccustomed elegance of these great dinners did not distress and pain him rather than give pleasure, and whether the very consciousness of his own low origin wasn’t a poison that mingled in every cup he tasted.

“It’s no use talking,” muttered he to himself; “a man must be bred to it, like everything else. The very servants behind his chair frighten him; he’s, maybe, eating with his knife, or he’s putting salt where he ought to put sugar, or he does n’t take the right kind of wine with his meat. Beecher says he ‘d know any fellow just by that, and then it’s ‘all up’ with him. Wonderful, wonderful!”

How would it have affected these speculations had Kellett known that, while he was indulging them, Dunn had quietly issued by a back door from his house, and, having engaged a car, set out towards Clontarf? A drearier drive of a dreary evening none need wish for. Occasional showers were borne on the gusty wind, swooping past as though hurrying to some elemental congress far away, while along the shore the waves beat with that irregular plash that betokens wild weather at sea. The fitful moonlight rather heightened than diminished the dismal aspect of the scenery. For miles the bleak strand stretched away, no headland nor even a hillock marking the coast; the spectral gable of a ruined church being the only object visible against the leaden sky. Little garlands of paper, the poor tributes of the very poor, decorated the graves and the head-stones, and, as they rustled in the night wind, sounded like ghostly whisperings. The driver piously crossed himself as they passed the “un-cannie” spot, but Dunn took no heed of it. To wrap his cloak tighter about him, to shelter more closely beneath his umbrella, were all that the dreary scene exacted from him; and except when a vivid flash of lightning made the horse swerve from the road and dash down into the rough shingle of the strand, he never adverted to the way or the weather.

“What’s this, – where are we going?” cried he, impatiently.

“‘T is the flash that frightened the beast, yer honner,” said the man; “and if it was plazin’ to you, I ‘d rather tarn back again.”

“Turn back – where to?”

“To town, yer honner.”

“Nothing of the kind; drive on, and quickly too. We have five miles yet before us, and it will be midnight ere we get over them at this rate.”

Sulkily and unwillingly did he obey; and, turning from the shore, they entered upon a low, sandy road that traversed a wide and dreary tract, barely elevated a few feet above the sea. By degrees the little patches of grass and fern disappeared, and nothing stretched on either side but low sand hummocks, scantily covered with rushes. Sea-shells crackled beneath the wheels as they went, and after a while the deep booming of the sea thundering heavily along a sandy shore, apprised them that they had crossed the narrow neck of land which divided two bays.

“Are you quite certain you I ‘ve taken the right road, my man?” cried Dunn, as he observed something like hesitation in the other’s manner.

“It ought to be somewhere hereabout we turn off,” said the man, getting down to examine more accurately from beneath. “There was a little cross put up to show the way, but I don’t see it.”

“But you have been here before. Ton told me you knew the place.”

“I was here onst, and, by the same token, I swore I ‘d never come again. I lamed the best mare I ever put a collar on, dragging through this deep sand. Wirra, wirra! why the blazes would n’t he live where other Christians do! There it is now; I see a light. Ah! bother them, it’s out again.”

Pushing forward as well as he might in the direction he had seen the light, he floundered heavily on, the wheels sinking nearly to the axles, and the horse stumbling at every step.

“Your horse is worth nothing, my good fellow; he has n’t strength to keep his legs,” said Dunn, angrily.

“Good or bad, I ‘ll give you lave to broil me on a gridiron if ever ye catch me coming the same road again. Ould Duun won’t have much company if he waits for me to bring them.”

“I ‘ll take good care not to tempt you!” said Dunn, angrily.

And now they plodded on in moody silence till they issued forth upon a little flat space, bounded on three sides by the sea, in the midst of which a small two-storied house stood, defended from the sea by a rough stone breakwater that rose above the lower windows.

“There it is now, bad luck to it!” said the carman, savagely, for his horse was so completely exhausted that he was obliged to walk at his head and lift him at every step.

“You may remain here till I want you,” said Dunn, getting down and plodding his way through the heavy sand. Flakes of frothy seadrift swept past him as he went, and the wild wind carried the spray far inland in heavy showers, beating against the walls and windows of the lonely house, and making the slates rattle. A low wall of large stones across the door showed that all entrance by that means was denied; and Dunn turned towards the back of the house, where, sheltered by the low wall, a small door was detectable. He knocked several times at this before any answer was returned; when, at last, a harsh voice from within called out, —

“Don’t ye hear who it is? confound ye! Open the door at once!” and Dunn was admitted into a large kitchen, where in a great straw chair beside the fire was seated the remains of a once powerful man, and who, although nearly ninety years of age, still preserved a keen eye, a searching look, and a quick impatience of manner rarely observable at his age.

“Well, father, how are you?” said Dunn, taking him affectionately by both hands, and looking kindly in his face.

“Hearty, – stout and hearty,” said the old man. “When did you arrive?”

“A couple of hours ago. I did not wait for anything but a biscuit and a glass of wine, when I set out here to see you. And you are well?”

“Just as you see: an odd pain or so across the back, and a swimming of the head, – a kind of giddiness now and then, that’s all. Put the light over there till I have a look at you. You ‘re thinner, Davy, – a deal thinner, than when you went away.”

“I have nothing the matter with me; a little tired or so, that’s all,” said Dunn, hastily. “And how are things doing here, father, since I left?”

“There’s little to speak of,” said the old man. “There never is much doing at this season of the year. You heard, of course, that Gogarty has lost his suit; they ‘re moving for a new trial, but they won’t get it. Lanty Moore can’t pay up the rest of the purchase for Slanestown, and I told Hankes to buy it in. Kelly’s murderer was taken on Friday last, near Kilbride, and offers to tell, God knows what, if they won’t hang him; and Sir Gilbert North is to be the new Secretary, if, as the ‘Evening Mail’ says, Mr. Davenport Dunn concurs in the appointment” – and here the old man laughed till his eyes ran over. “That’s all the news, Davy, of the last week; and now tell me yours. The papers say you were dining with kings and queens, and driving about in royal coaches all over the Continent, – was it true, Davy?”

“You got my letters, of course, father?”

“Yes; and I could n’t make out the names, they were all new and strange to me. I want to have from yourself what like the people are, – are they as hard-working, are they as ‘cute as our own? There’s just two things now in the world, – coal and industry, – sorra more than that And so you dined with the King of France?”

“With the Emperor, father. I dined twice; he took me over to Fontainebleau and made me stay the day.”

“You could tell him many a thing he’d never hear from another, Davy; you could explain to him what’s doing here, and how he might imitate it over there, – rooting out the old vermin and getting new stock in the land, – eh, Davy?”

“He needs no counsels, at least from such as me,” said Dunn.

“Faith, he might have worse, far worse. An Encumbered Estate Court would do all his work for him well, and the dirty word ‘Confiscation’ need never be uttered!”

“He knows the road he wants to go,” said Dunn, curtly.

“So he may; but that does n’t prove it ‘s the best way.”

“Whichever path he takes he’ll tread it firmly, father, and that’s more than half the battle. If you only saw what a city he has made Paris – ”

“That’s just what I don’t like. What’s the good of beautifying and gilding or ornamenting what you ‘re going to riddle with grape and smash with round shot? It’s like dressing a sweep in a field-marshal’s uniform, And we all know where it will be to-morrow or next day.”

“That we don’t, sir. You ‘re not aware that these spacious thoroughfares, these wide squares, these extended terraces, are so contrived that columns may march and manoeuvre in them, squadrons charge, and great artillery act through them. The proudest temples of that splendid city serve as bastions; the great Louvre itself is less a palace than a fortress.”

“Ay, ay, ay,” cackled the old man, to whom these revelations opened a new vista of thought. “But what’s the use of it, after all, Davy? He must trust somebody; and when it comes to that with anybody in life, where ‘s his security, tell me that? But let us talk about home. Is it true the Ministry is going out?”

“They’re safer than ever; take my word for it, father, that these fellows know the trick of it better than all that went before them. They ‘ll just do whatever the nation and the ‘Times’ dictate to them; a little slower, mayhap, than they are ordered, but they ‘ll do it They have no embarrassments of a policy of any kind; and the only pretence of a principle they possess is to sit on the Treasury benches.”