Davenport Dunn, a Man of Our Day. Volume 2

Doubtless, too, there was some reason in the reflection; and in the smiling faces and grateful glances around her she found a ready confirmation of the sentiment. Happily for her at the moment, she did not know how soon such pleasures pall, and, as happily for ourselves, too, is it the law of our being that they should do so, and that no enjoyment is worth the name which has cost no effort to procure, nor any happiness a boon which has not demanded an exertion to arrive at. If Beecher was startled at the sight of all these costly purchases, his mind was greatly relieved as Grog whispered him that Herr Koch, the banker, had opened a credit for him, on which he might draw as freely as he pleased. The word “Lackington” was a talisman which suddenly converted a sea of storm and peril into a lovely lake only ruffled by a zephyr.

At last the pleasant dinner drew to a close; and as the coffee was brought in, the noise of a carriage beneath the windows attracted them.

“That’s my trap,” said Davis; “I ordered it for half past eight, exactly.”

“But there ‘s no train at this hour,” began Lizzy.

“I know that; but I mean to post all night, and reach Carlsruhe for the first departure in the morning. I ‘m due in London on Monday morning, – eh, my Lord?”

“Yes, that you are,” said Beecher; “Dublin, Tuesday evening.”

“Just so,” said Davis, as he arose; “and I mean to keep my time like a pendulum. Can I do any little commission for your Ladyship as I pass through town, – anything at Howell and James’s, anything from Storr’s?”

“I never heard of them – ”

“Quite time enough, Lizzy,” broke in Beecher; “not to say that we might stock a very smart warehouse with the contents of the next room. Don’t forget the courier, – he can join us at Rome; and remember, we shall want a cook. The ‘Mowbray’ have an excellent fellow, and I ‘m sure an extra fifty would seduce him, particularly as he hates England, detests a club, and can’t abide the ‘Sundays;’ and my Lady will require something smarter than Annette as a maid.”

“Oh, I could n’t part with Annette!”

“Nor need you; but you must have some one who can dress hair in a Christian fashion.”

“And what do you call that?” asked Grog, with a stare of insolent meaning.

“My Lord is quite right in the epithet; for I copied my present coiffure from a picture of a Jewish girl I bought this morning, and I fancy it becomes me vastly.”

There was in the easy coquetry of this speech what at once relieved the awkwardness of a very ticklish moment, and Beecher rewarded her address with a smile of gratitude.

“And the house in Portland Place to be let?” murmured Davis, as he read from his note-book. “What of that box in the Isle of Wight?”

“I rather think we shall keep it on; my sister-in-law liked it, and might wish to go there.”

“Let her buy it or take a lease of it, then,” said Grog. “You ‘ll see, when you come to look into it, she has been left right well off.”

Beecher turned away impatiently, and made no reply.

“All that Herefordshire rubbish of model farm and farming-stock had better be sold at once. You are not going into that humbug like the late Lord, I suppose?”

“I have come to no determination about Lackington Court as yet,” said Beecher, coldly.

“The sooner you do, then, the better. There’s not a more rotten piece of expense in the world than southdowns and shorthorns, except it be Cochin-China hens and blue tulips.”

“Let Fordyce look to my subscriptions at the clubs.”

“Pure waste of money when you are not going back there.”

“But who says that I am not?” asked Beecher, angrily.

“Not yet a bit, at all events,” replied Davis, and with a grin of malicious meaning so significant that Beecher actually sickened with terror.

“It will be quite time enough to make further arrangements when I confer with the members of my family,” said Beecher, haughtily.

To this speech Davis only answered by another grin, that spoke as plain as words could, “Even the high tone will have no effect upon me.” Luckily this penance was not long to endure, for Lizzy had drawn her father aside, and was whispering a few last words to him. It was in a voice so low and subdued they spoke that nothing could be heard; but Beecher imagined or fancied he heard Grog mutter, “‘Pluck’ will do it; ‘pluck’ will do anything.” A long, affectionate embrace, and a fondly uttered “Good-bye, girl,” followed, and then, shaking hands with Beecher, Davis lighted his cigar and departed.

Lizzy opened the window, and, leaning over the balcony, watched the carriage as it sped along the valley, the lights appearing and disappearing at intervals. What thoughts were hers as she stood there? Who knows? Did she sorrow after him, the one sole being who had cared for her through life; did her heart sadden at the sense of desertion; was the loneliness of her lot in life then uppermost in her mind; or did she feel a sort of freedom in the thought that now she was to be self-guided and self-dependent? I know not. I can only say that, though a slight flush colored her cheek, she shed no tears; and as she closed the window and returned into the room, her features were calm and emotionless.

“Why did not papa take the route by Strasburg? It is much the shortest?”

“He couldn’t,” said Beecher, with a triumphant bitterness, – “he could n’t. He can’t go near Paris.”

“By Verviers, then, and Belgium?” said she, reddening.

“He’d be arrested in Belgium and tried for his life. He has no road left but down the Rhine to Rotterdam.”

“Poor fellow!” said she, rising, “it must be a real peril that turns him from his path.” There was an accent on the pronoun that almost made the speech a sarcasm; at all events, ere Beecher could notice it, she had left the room.

“Now, if Fortune really meant to do me a good turn,” said Beecher to himself, “she ‘d just shove my respected father-in-law, writing-desk, pocket-book, and all, into the ‘Rheingau,’ never to turn up again.” And with this pious sentiment, half wish, half prayer, he went downstairs and strolled into the street.

As the bracing night air refreshed him, he walked along briskly towards Lindenthal, his mind more at ease than before. It was, indeed, no small boon that the terror of Grog’s presence was removed. The man who had seen him in all his transgressions and his shortcomings was, in reality, little else than an open volume of conscience, ever wide spread before him. How could he presume in such a presence to assert one single high or honorable motive? What honest sentiment dare be enunciate? He felt in his heart that the Viscount Lackington with ten thousand a year was not the Honorable Annesley Beecher with three hundred. The noble Lord could smile at the baits that to the younger son were irresistible temptations. There was no necessity that he should plot, scheme, and contrive; or if he did, it should be for a higher prize, or in a higher sphere and with higher antagonists. And yet Grog would not have it so. Let him do what he would, there was the inexorable Davis ever ready to bring down Lackington to the meridian of Beecher! Amidst all the misfortunes of his life, the ever having known this man was the worst, – the very worst!

And now he began to go over in his mind some of the most eventful incidents of this companionship. It was a gloomy catalogue of debauch and ruin. Young fellows entrapped at the very outset in life, led on to play, swindled, “hocussed,” menaced with exposure, threatened with who knows what perils of public scandal if they refused to sign this or that “promise to pay.” Then all the intrigues to obtain the money; the stealthy pursuit of the creditor to the day of his advancement or his marriage; the menaces measured out to the exigencies of the case, – now a prosecution, now a pistol. What a dreadful labyrinth of wickedness was it, and how had he threaded through it undetected! He heaved a heavy sigh as he muttered a sort of thanksgiving that it was all ended at last, – all over! “If it were not for Grog, these memories need never come back to me,” said he. “Nobody wants to recall them against me, and the world will be most happy to dine with the Viscount Lackington without a thought of the transgressions of Annesley Beecher! If it were not for Grog, – if it were not for Grog!” and so ran the eternal refrain at the close of each reflection. “At all events,” said he, “I ‘ll ‘put the Alps between us;’” and early on the following morning the travelling-carriage stood ready at the door, and amidst the bowings and reverences of the hotel functionaries, the “happy pair” set out for Italy.

Do not smile in any derision at the phrase, good reader; the words are classic by newspaper authority; and whatever popular preachers may aver to the contrary, we live in a most charming world, where singleness is blessed and marriage is happy, public speaking is always eloquent, and soldiery ever gallant. Still, even a sterner critic might have admitted that the epithet was not misapplied; for there are worse things in life than to be a viscount with a very beautiful wife, rolling pleasantly along the Via Mala on Collinge’s best patent, with six smoking posters, on a bright day of November. This for his share; as to hers, I shall not speak of it. And yet, why should I not? Whatever may be the conflict in the close citadel of the heart, how much of pleasure is derivable from the mere aspect of a beautiful country as one drives rapidly along, swift enough to bring the changes of scene agreeably before the eye, and yet not too fast to admit of many a look at some spot especially beautiful. And then how charming to lose oneself in that-dreamland, where, peopling the landscape with figures of long, long ago, we too have our part, and ride forth at daybreak from some deep-vaulted portal in jingling mail, or gaze from some lone tower over the wide expanse that forms our baronial realm, – visions of ambition, fancies of a lowly, humble life, alternating as the rock-crowned castle or the sheltered cot succeed each other! And lastly, that strange, proud sentiment we feel as we sweep past town and village, where human life goes on in its accustomed track, – the crowd in the market-place, the little group around the inn, the heavy wagon unloading at the little quay, the children hastening on to school, – all these signs of a small, small world of its own, that we, in our greatness, are never again to gaze on, our higher destiny bearing us ever onward to grander and more pretentious scenes.

“And this is Italy?” said Lizzy, half aloud, as, emerging from the mists of the Higher Alps, the carriage wound its zigzag descent from the Splügen, little glimpses of the vast plain of Lombardy coming into view at each turn of the way, and then the picturesque outlines of old ruinous Chiavenna, its tumble-down houses, half hid in trellised vines, and farther on, again, the head of the Lake of Como, with its shores of rugged rock.

“Yes, and this miserable dog-hole here is called Campo Dolcino!” said Beecher, as he turned over the leaves of his “John Murray.” “That’s the most remarkable thing about these Italians; they have such high-sounding names for everything, and we are fools enough to be taken in by the sound.”

“It is a delusion that we are rather disposed to indulge in, generally,” said Lizzy. “The words, ‘your Majesty’ or ‘your Highness,’ have their own magic in them, even when the representatives respond but little to the station.”

“It was your father, I fancy, taught you that lesson,” said he, peevishly.

“What lesson do you mean?”

“To hold people of high rank cheaply; to imagine that they must be all cheats and impositions.”

“No,” said she, calmly but resolutely. “If he taught me anything on this subject, it was to attribute to persons of exalted station very lofty qualities. What I have to fear is that my expectation will be far above the reality. I can imagine what they might be, but I ‘m not so sure it is what I shall find them.”

“You had better not say so to my sister-in-law,” said Beecher, jeeringly.

“It is not my intention,” said she, with the same calm voice.

“I make that remark,” resumed he, “because she has what some people would call exaggerated notions about the superiority of the well-born over all inferior classes; indeed, she is scarcely just in her estimate of low people.”

“Low people are really to be pitied!” said she, with a slight laugh; and Beecher stole a quick glance at her, and was silent.

He was not able long to maintain this reserve. The truth was, he felt an invincible desire to recur to the class in life from which Lizzy came, and to speak disparagingly of all who were humbly born. Not that this vulgarity was really natural to him, – far from it. With all his blemishes and defects he was innately too much a gentleman to descend to this. The secret impulse was to be revenged of Grog Davis; to have the one only possible vengeance on the man that had “done him;” and even though that was only to be exacted through Davis’s daughter, it pleased him. And so he went on to tell of the prejudices – absurd, of course – that persons like Lady Georgina would persist in entertaining about common people. “You ‘ll have to be so careful in all your intercourse with her,” said he; “easy, natural, of course, but never familiar; she would n’t stand it.”

“I will be careful,” said Lizzy, calmly.

“The chances are, she ‘ll find out some one of the name, and ask you, in her own half-careless way, ‘Are you of the Staffordshire Davises? or do you belong to the Davises of such a place?’”

“If she should, I can only reply that I don’t know,” said Lizzy.

“Oh! but you must n’t say that,” laughed out Beecher, who felt a sort of triumph over what he regarded as his wife’s simplicity.

“You would not, surely, have me say that I was related to these people?”

“No, not exactly that; but, still, to say that you didn’t know whether you were or not, would be a terrible blunder! It would amount to a confession that you were Davises of nowhere at all.”

“Which is about the truth, perhaps,” said she, in the same tone.

“Oh! truth is a very nice thing, but not always pleasant to tell.”

“But don’t you think you could save me from an examination in which I am so certain to acquit myself ill, by simply stating that you have married a person without rank, station, or fortune? These facts once understood, I feel certain that her Ladyship will never allude to them unpleasantly.”

“Then there ‘s another point,” said Beecher, evidently piqued that he had not succeeded in irritating her, – “there ‘s another point, and you must be especially careful about it, – never, by any chance, let out that you were educated at a school, or a pensionnat, or whatever they call it. If there ‘s anything she cannot abide, it is the thought of a girl brought up at a school; mind, therefore, only say, ‘my governess.’”

She smiled and was silent.

“Then she’ll ask you if you had been ‘out,’ and when you were presented, and who presented you. She ‘ll do it so quietly and so naturally, you ‘d never guess that she meant any impertinence by it.”

“So much the better, for I shall not feel offended.”

“As to the drawing-room,” rejoined Beecher, “you must say that you always lived very retiredly, – never came up to town; that your father saw very little company.”

“Is not this Chiavenna we ‘re coming to?” asked Lizzy, a slight – but very slight – flush rising to her cheek. And now the loud cracking of the postilions’ whips drowned all other sounds as the horses tore along through the narrow streets, making the frail old houses rock and shiver as they passed. A miserable-looking vetturino carriage stood at the inn door, and was dragged hastily out of the way to make room for the more pretentious equipage. Scarcely had the courier got down than the whole retinue of the inn was in motion, eagerly asking if “Milordo” would not alight, if his “Eccellenza” would not take some refreshment.

But his “Eccellenza” would do neither; sooth to say, he was not in the best of humors, and curtly said, “No, I want nothing but post-horses to get out of this wretched place.”

“Is n’t that like an Englishman?” said a voice from the vetturino carriage to some one beside him.

“But I know him,” cried the other, leaping out. “It’s the new Viscount Lackington.” And with this he approached the carriage, and respectfully removing his hat, said, “How d’ye do, my Lord?”

“Ah, Spicer! you here?” said Beecher, half haughtily. “Off to England, I suppose?”

“No, my Lord, I ‘m bound for Rome.”

“So are we, too. Lady Lackington and myself,” added be, correcting at once a familiar sort of a glance that Spicer found time to bestow upon Lizzy. “Do you happen to know if Lady Georgina is there?”

“Yes, my Lord, at the Palazzo Gondi, on the Pintian;” and here Spicer threw into his look an expression of respectful homage to her Ladyship.

“Palazzo Gondi; will you try and remember that address?” said Beecher to his wife. And then, waving his hand to Spicer, he added, “Good-bye, – meet you at Rome some of these days,” and was gone.

CHAPTER XXVIII. AT ROME

In a small and not very comfortably furnished room looking out upon the Pintian Hill at Rome, two ladies were seated, working, – one in deep mourning, whose freshness indicated a recent loss; the other in a strangely fashioned robe of black silk, whose deep cape and rigid absence of ornament recalled something of the cloister. The first was the widowed Viscountess Lackington; the second the Lady Grace Twining, a recent convert to Rome, and now on her way to some ecclesiastical preferment in the Church, either as “Chanoinesse,” or something equally desirable. Lady Lackington looked ill and harassed; there were not on her face any traces of deep sorrow or affliction, but the painful marks of much thought. It was the expression of one who had gone through a season of trial wherein she had to meet events and personages all new and strange to her. It was only during the last few days of Lord Lackington’s illness that she learned the fact of a contested claim to the title, but, brief as was the time, every post brought a mass of letters bearing on this painful topic. While the lawyers, therefore, showered their unpleasant and discouraging tidings, there was nothing to be heard of Beecher; none knew where he was, or how a letter was to reach him. All her own epistles to him remained unacknowledged. Fordyce’s people could not trace him, neither could Mr. Dunn, and there was actually the thought of asking the aid of that inquisitorial service whose detective energies are generally directed in the pursuit of guilt.

If Annesley Beecher might be slow to acknowledge the claims of fraternal affection, there was no one could accuse him of any lukewarmness to his own interests, and though it was now two months and upwards since the Viscount’s death, yet he had never come forward to assert his new rank and station. Whatever suspicions might have weighed down the mind of the Viscountess regarding this mysterious disappearance, the language of all the lawyers’ letters was assuredly ill calculated to assuage. They more than hinted that they suspected some deep game of treachery and fraud. Beecher’s long and close intimacy with the worst characters of the turf – men notorious for their agency in all the blackest intrigues – was continually brought up. His life of difficulty and strait, his unceasing struggle to meet his play engagements, driving him to the most ruinous compacts, all were quoted to show that to a man of such habits and with such counsellors any compromise would be acceptable that offered present and palpable advantages in lieu of a possible and remote future.

The very last letter the Viscountess received from Fordyce contained this startling passage: “It being perfectly clear that Mr. Beecher would only be too ready to avail himself of his newly acquired privileges if he could, we must direct our sole attention to those circumstances which may explain why he could not declare himself the Viscount Lackington. Now, the very confident tone lately assumed by the Conway party seems to point to this mysterious clew, and everything I learn more and more disposes me to apprehend a shameful compromise.”

It was with the letter that contained this paragraph before her Lady Lackington now sat, affecting to be engaged in her work, but in reality reading over, for the fiftieth time, the same gloomy passage.

“Is it not incredible that, constituted as the world now is, with its railroads and its telegraphs, you cannot immediately discover the whereabouts of any missing individual?” said Lady Lackington.

“I really think he must have been murdered,” said Lady Grace, with the gentlest of accents, while she bent her head over the beautiful altar-cloth she was embroidering.

“Nonsense, – absurdity! such a crime would soon have publicity enough.”

Lady Grace gave a smile of compassionate pity at the speech, but said nothing.

“I can’t imagine how you could believe such a thing possible,” said the Viscountess, tartly.

“I can only say, my dear, that no later than last night Monsignore assured me that, through M. Mazzini and the Bible societies, you can make away with any one in Europe, and, indeed, in most parts of the world besides. Don’t smile so contemptuously, my dear. Remember who it is says this. Of course, as he remarks, the foolish newspapers have their own stupid explanations always ready, at one moment calling it a political crime, at another the act of insanity, and so on. They affected this language about Count Rossi, and then about the dear and sainted Archbishop of Paris; but what true believer ever accepted this?”

“Monsignore would not hold this language to me,” said Lady Lackington, haughtily.

“Very probably not, dearest; he spoke in confidence when he mentioned it to me.”

“I mean, that he would hesitate ere he forfeited any respect I entertain for his common-sense by the utterance of such wild absurdity. What is it, Turner?” asked she, suddenly, as her maid entered.

“Four packing-cases have just come, my Lady, with Mr. Spicer’s respectful compliments, and that he will be here immediately, – he has only gone to change his dress.”

“Why don’t he come at once? I don’t care for his dress.”

“No, my Lady, of course not,” said Turner, and retired.

“I must say he has made haste,” said Lady Lackington, languidly. “It was only on the eighth or the ninth, I think, he left this, and as he had to get all my mourning things, – I had actually nothing, – and to go down to Lackington Court, and then to Wales, and after that to the Isle of Wight, what with lawyers and other tiresome people to talk to, he has really not done badly.”

“I hope he has brought the chalice,” sighed Lady Grace.

“I hope he has brought some tidings of my respectable brother-in-law,” said the Viscountess, in a tone that seemed to say where the really important question lay.

“And the caviare, – I trust he has not forgotten the caviare. It is the only thing Monsignore eats at breakfast in Advent.”

An insolent gesture of the head was all the acknowledgment Lady Lackington vouchsafed to this speech. At last she spoke: “When he can get horse-racing out of his head, Spicer is a very useful creature.”

“Very, indeed,” said Lady Grace.

“The absurd notion that he is a sporting character is the parent of so many other delusions; he fancies himself affluent, and, stranger still, imagines he’s a gentleman.” And the idea so amused her Ladyship that she laughed aloud at it.

“Mr. Spicer, my Lady,” said a servant, flinging wide the door; and in a most accurate morning-dress, every detail of which was faultless, that gentleman bowed his way across the room with an amount of eagerness that might possibly exact a shake of the hand, but, if unsuccessful, might easily subside into a colder acceptance. Lady Lackington vouchsafed nothing beyond a faint smile, and the words, “How d’ye do?” as with a slight gesture she motioned to him the precise chair he was to seat himself on. Before taking his place, Mr. Spicer made a formal bow to Lady Grace, who, with a vacant smile, acknowledged the courtesy, and went on with her work.

“You have made very tolerable haste, Spicer,” said Lady Lackington. “I scarcely expected you before Saturday.”

“I have not been to bed for six nights, my Lady.”

“You ‘ll sleep all the better for it to-night, perhaps.”

“We had an awful gale of wind in crossing to Calais, – the passage took eight hours.”