Davenport Dunn, a Man of Our Day. Volume 2

The room was speedily filled with staff officers and surgeons, in the midst of whom was a civilian, travel-stained and tired-looking, who pressed eagerly forward, saying, as he beheld Classon, “Who is this man, – what is he doing here?”

“An humble missionary, – a weak vessel,” said Paul, whiningly. “In a paroxysm of his pain he caught me thus, and has held me ever since. There – at last I am free!” And as he said these words, the sick man’s fingers unclasped and liberated him.

“There has been foul play here,” said Mr. Reggie, the stranger in civilian dress. “See! that box has been rifled; the floor is covered with papers. This man must be detained.”

“In bonds or in a dungeon, it matters not,” said Paul, holding up his hands as if about to open a lengthy discourse; but he was hurried away ere he could continue.

“He is certainly no worse,” said one of the surgeons, as he felt Conway’s pulse and examined the action of his heart; “but I am far from saying that he will recover!”

“If I do not greatly mistake,” said Reggis, “our friend the missionary is the man through whose kind offices I was betrayed within the Russian lines; but I’ ll look to this later. As it was, I have had little to complain of my treatment in Sebastopol, and my detention was of the shortest.”

“And Miss Kellett, – is she free also?” asked one of the bystanders.

“Yes; we came back together. She is up at headquarters, giving Lord Raglan an account of her capture.”

“What is it, Conway?” asked one of the surgeons, suddenly startled by the intensity of the anxiety in his face. “Are you in pain?”

He shook his head in dissent.

“You are thirsty, perhaps? Will you have something to drink?”

“No,” said he, with the faintest possible utterance.

“What is it, then, my poor fellow?” said he, affectionately.

“So it was not a dream!” gasped out Conway.

“What was it you fancied to be a dream?”

“All, – everything but this!” And he pointed to a deep wound from a sabre-cut in his shoulder.

“Ay, and that, too, will be as a dream some years hence!” said the other, cheeringly.

It was evident, now, that the excitement of talking and seeing so many persons about him was injurious, and the surgeons silently motioned to the bystanders to retire.

“May I remain with him?” asked the lawyer. “If he could give his consent to certain measures, sign one or two papers, years of litigation might be saved.”

Conway had meanwhile beckoned to the surgeon to approach him; and then, as the other leaned over the bed, he whispered, —

“Was it true what I have just heard, – was she really here?”

“Miss Kellett, do you mean? Yes; she carried up the news to you herself? It was she that tied the handkerchief on your wounded artery, too, and saved your life.”

“Here, – in the Crimea? It cannot – cannot be!” sighed Conway.

“She is not the only noble-hearted woman who has left home and friends to brave perils and face hardships, though, I own, she stands alone for heroism and daring.”

“So, then, it was not a delusion, – I did actually see her in the trenches?” said Conway, eagerly.

“She was in the advanced parallel the night the Russians surprised the 5th. She was the first to give the alarm of the attack.”

“Only think, doctor, of what happened to me that night! I was sent up at speed to say that reinforcements were coming up. Two companies of the Royals were already in march. My horse had twice fallen with me, and, being one-armed, I was a good deal shaken, and so faint when I arrived that I could scarcely deliver my message. It was just then a woman – I could only perceive, in the darkness, that she seemed young – gave me her brandy-flask; after drinking, I turned to give it back to her, but she was gone. There was no time to search for her at such a moment, and I was about to ride away, when a ‘carcasse,’ exploding on one of the redoubts, lit up the whole scene for a considerable space around, and whom should I see but Jack Kellett’s sister, cheering the men and encouraging them to hold their ground?

I could have sworn to her features, as I could now to yours; but that she could really be there seemed so utterly impossible that I fancied it was a delusion. Nay,” added he, after a pause, “let me tell the whole truth. I thought it was a warning! Ay, doctor, the weight is off my heart now that I have confessed this weakness.” As Conway spoke, he seemed, indeed, as though he had relieved himself of some mighty care; for already his eye had regained its lustre, and his bold features recovered their wonted expression. “Now,” cried he, with a renovated vigor, “I have done with false terrors about second sight, and the rest of it I am myself again.”

“You can listen to my tidings, then,” said Reggis, seating himself at the bedside, and at once beginning a narrative, to which I am obliged to own Conway did not always pay a becoming attention, his thoughts still reverting to very different scenes and incidents from those which the lawyer recounted. Indeed, more than once was the narrator’s patience sorely tried and tested. “I am doing my very best to be brief, sir. I am limiting myself strictly to a mere outline of the case,” said he, in something of piqué: “It might interest you, – it ought to interest you!”

“If the doctor yonder will promise me health and years to enjoy all this same good fortune, so it will interest me,” cried Conway. “What does the income amount to?”

“If we only recover the English estates, it will be something under twelve thousand a year. If we succeed with, the Irish, it will be about three more.”

“And how far are we on the road to this success?” “One verdict is already won. The first action for ejectment on title has been brought, and we are the victors. Upon this, all your counsel are agreed, your claim to the Viscounty rests.”

“I can scarcely credit – scarcely picture it to myself,” said Conway, half aloud. “My mind is confused by the thought of all the things I wish to do, if this be true. First of all, I want to purchase Jack Kellett’s commission.”

“If you mean Miss Kellett’s brother, he is already gazetted an ensign, and on his way to join his regiment in India.”

“And how do you know this?”

“She told me so herself.”

“She! When and where have you seen her?”

“Here, at headquarters; in Sebastopol, where we were prisoners together; at the camp yesterday, where we parted.”

“My poor head cannot bear this,” said Conway, painfully; “I am struggling between the delight of all these good tidings and a terrible dread that I am to awake and find them but a dream. You said that she was here in the camp?”

“That she is. If you but heard the cheer that greeted her arrival! It began at the advanced pickets, and swelled loader and louder, till, like the roar of the sea, it seemed to make the very air tremble. There, hear that! As I live, it is the same shout again.”

“Here comes the General and his staff into the court below,” said the doctor, hurrying away to receive them.

As the sounds of a distant cheer died away, the noise of horses’ feet resounded through the courtyard, and the clank of musketry in salute announced the arrival of an officer of rank.

“I declare they are coming this way,” cried Mr. Reggis, rising in some confusion, “and I heard your name spoken. Coming, I have no doubt, to see you.”

“The General of your division, Conway, come to ask after you,” said an aide-de-camp, entering, and then standing aside to make place for a venerable, soldier-like man, whose snow-white hair would have graced a patriarch.

“I have come to shake your hand, Conway,” said he, “and to tell you we are all proud of you. There is nothing else talked of through our own or the French camp than that daring feat of yours; and England will soon hear of it.”

A deep blush of manly shame covered Conway’s face as he listened to these words; but he could not speak.

“I have been talking the matter over with the General Commanding-in-chief,” resumed he, “who agrees with me that the Horse Guards might, possibly, recognizing your former rank of Captain, make you now a Brevet-major, and thus qualify you for the Bath.”

“Time enough, General, for that,” said Conway. “I have a very long arrear of folly and absurdity to wipe out ere I have any pretension to claim high rewards.”

“Well, but if all that I hear be true, we are likely to lose your services here; they have a story abroad about a peerage and a vast fortune to which you have succeeded. Indeed, I heard this moment from Miss Kellett – ”

“Is she here, sir? – can I see her?” cried Conway, eagerly.

“Yes. She has come over to say good-bye; for, I regret to say, she too is about to leave us to join her brother at Calcutta.”

A sickly paleness spread itself over Conway’s cheeks, and he muttered, “I must see her – I must speak with her at once.”

“So you shall, my poor fellow,” said the other, affectionately; “and I know of no such recompense for wounds and suffering as to see her gentle smile and hear her soft voice. She shall come to you immediately.”

Conway covered his face with his hand, to conceal the emotion that stirred him, and heard no more. Nor was he conscious that, one by one, the persons around him slipped noiselessly from the room, while into the seat beside his bed glided a young girl’s figure, dressed in deep black, and veiled.

“Such a fate!” muttered he, half aloud. “All this, that they call my good fortune, comes exactly when I do not care for it.”

“And why so?” asked a low, soft voice, almost in his very ear.

“Is this, indeed, you?” cried he, eagerly. “Was it your hand I felt on my temples as I lay wounded outside the trenches? Was it your voice that cheered me as they carried me to the rear?”

She slightly bent her head in assent, and murmured, “Your old comrade’s sister could not do less.”

“And now you are about to leave me,” said he, with an overwhelming sorrow in the tone.

She turned away her head slightly, and made no answer.

“I, who am utterly alone here,” said he, in a broken voice. “Is this, too, like my old comrade’s sister?” There was a peevishness in the way he spoke this of which he seemed himself to be ashamed the moment the words were uttered; and he quickly added, “What a fellow I am to say this to you! – you, who have done so much for me, – you, who promised to be a daughter to my poor mother when I am gone!”

“But you are not to take this gloomy view,” said she, hastily; “the surgeons all pronounce you better; they agree that your wounds progress favorably, and that, in a week or two, you may be removed to Constantinople, and thence to England.”

He gave a faint, sickly smile of most melancholy meaning.

“And what will not the cheery, bracing air of those Welsh mountains do, aided by the kind care of that best of nurses, a fond mother?”

“And where will you be by that time?” asked he, eagerly.

“Journeying away eastward to some far-away land, still more friendless!” said she, sadly.

“This, then, is the sum of all my good fortune, that when life opens fairly for me, it shall be bereft of all that I care for!” cried he, wildly.

Terrified by the excited tone in which he spoke, as well as by the feverish lustre of his eyes, Sybella tried to calm and soothe him, but he listened – if, indeed, he heard her – with utter apathy.

“Come!” cried he, at last, “if your resolve be taken, so is mine. If you leave for India, I shall never quit the Crimea.”

“It is not thus I expected one to speak who loves his mother as you do,” said she, reproachfully.

“Ah, Sybella, it would indeed have been a happy day for me when I should have returned to her in honor, could I but have said, ‘You have not alone a son beneath your roof, but a dear daughter also.’ If all that they call my great luck had brought this fortune, then had I been indeed a fellow to be envied. Without that hope there is not another that I want to cling to.”

She tried gently to withdraw her hand from his, but he held it in his grasp, and continued, —

“You, who never heard of me till the first day we met, know little of the stored-up happiness your very name has afforded me for many a day, – how, days long, Jack talked of you to me as we rambled together, how the long nights of the trenches were beguiled by telling of you, – till at length I scarcely knew whether I had not myself known and loved you for years. I used to fancy, too, how every trait of poor Jack – his noble ardor, his generous devotion – might be displayed amidst the softer and more graceful virtues of womanhood; and at last I came to know you, far and away above all I have ever dreamed of.”

“Let me go, – let me say good-bye,” said she, in a faint whisper.

“Bear with me a few moments longer, Sybella,” cried he, passionately. “With all their misery, they are the happiest of my life.”

“This is unfair, – it is almost ungenerous of you,” said she, with scarcely stifled emotion, and still endeavoring to withdraw her hand.

“So it is!” cried he, suddenly; “it is unmanly and ignoble both, and it is only a poor, selfish sick man could stoop to plead so abjectly.” He relinquished her hand as he spoke, and then, grasping it suddenly, he pressed it to his lips, and burst into tears. “A soldier should be made of better stuff, Sybella,” said he, trying to smile. “Goodbye, – good-bye.”

“It is too late to say so now,” said she, faintly; “I will not go.”

“Not go, – not leave me, Sybella?” cried he. “Oh that I may have heard you aright! Did you say you would remain with me, and for how long?”

“Forever!” said she, stooping down and kissing his forehead. The next moment she was gone.

“Come, Conway,” said the doctor, “cheer up, my good fellow; you ‘ll be all right in a week or so. You ‘ve got something worth living for, too, if all accounts be true.”

“More than you think for, doctor,” said Conway, heartily, – “far more than you think for.”

“The lawyer talks of a peerage and a fine estate.”

“Far more than that,” cried Conway; “a million times better.”

The surgeon turned a look of half apprehension on the sick man, and, gently closing the shutters, he withdrew.

Dark as was that room, and silent as it was, what blissful hopes and blessed anticipations crowded and clustered around that low “sick-bed”! What years of happiness unfolded themselves before that poor brain, which no longer felt a pang, save in the confusion of its bright imaginings! How were wounds forgotten and sufferings unminded in those hours wherein a whole future was revealed!

At last he fell off to sleep, and to dream of a fair white hand that parted the hair upon his forehead, and then gently touched his feverish cheek. Nor was it all a dream; she was at his bedside.

CHAPTER XXXIII. “GROG” IN COUNCIL

“What dreary little streets are those that lead from the Strand towards the Thames! Pinched, frail, semi-genteel, and many-lodgered are the houses, mysteriously indicative of a variously occupied population, and painfully suggesting, by the surging conflict of busy life at one end, and the dark flowing river at the other, an existence maintained between struggle and suicide.” This, most valued reader, if no reflection of mine, but was the thought that occupied the mind of one who, in not the very best of humors, and of a wet and dreary night, knocked, in succession, at half the doors in the street in search after an acquaintance.

“Yes, sir, the second back,” said a sleepy maid-servant at last; “he is just come in.”

“All right,” said the stranger. “Take that carpet-bag and writing-desk upstairs to his room, and say that Captain Davis is coming after them.’”

“You owe me a tip, Captain,” said the cabman, catching the name as he was about to mount his box. “Do you remember the morning I drove you down to Blackwall to catch the Antwerp boat, I went over Mr. Moss, the sheriff’s officer, and smashed his ankle, and may I never taste bitters again if I got a farthing for it.”

“I remember,” said Davis, curtly. “Here’s a crown. I ‘d have made it a sovereign if it had been his neck you ‘d gone over.”

“Better luck next time, sir, and thank you,” said the man, as he drove away.

The maid was yet knocking for admission when Grog arrived at the door. “Captain Fisk, sir, – Captain Fisk, there ‘s a gent as says – ”

“That will do,” said Davis, taking the key from her hand and opening the door for himself.

“Old Grog himself, as I’m a living man!” cried a tall, much whiskered and moustached fellow, who was reading a “Bell’s Life” at the fire.

“Ay, Master Fisk, – no other,” said Davis, as he shook his friend cordially by the hand. “I ‘ve had precious work to find you out I was up at Duke Street, then they sent me to the Adelphi; after that I tried Ling’s, in the Hay-market, and it was a waiter there – ”

“Joe,” broke in the other.

“Exactly. Joe told me that I might chance upon you here.”

“Well, I ‘m glad to see you, old fellow, and have a chat about long ago,” said Fisk, as he placed a square green bottle and some glasses on the table. How well you ‘re looking, too; not an hour older than when I saw you four years ago!”

“Ain’t I, though!” muttered Grog. “Ay, and like the racers, I ‘ve got weight for age, besides. I’m a stone and a half heavier than I ought to be, and there’s nothing worse than that to a fellow that wants to work with his head and sleep with one eye open.”

“You can’t complain much on that score, Kit; you never made so grand a stroke in your life as that last one, – the marriage, I mean.”

“It was n’t bad,” said Davis, as he mixed his liquor; “nor was it, exactly, the kind of hazard that every man could make. Beecher was a troublesome one, – a rare troublesome one; nobody could ever say when he ‘d run straight.”

“I always thought him rotten,” said the other, angrily.

“Well, he is and he isn’t,” said Grog, deliberately.

“He has got no pluck,” said Fisk, indignantly.

“He has quite enough.”

“Enough – enough for what?”

“Enough for a lord. Look here, Master Fisk, so long as you have not to gain your living by anything, it is quite sufficient if you can do it moderately well. Many a first-rate amateur there is, who wouldn’t be thought a tenth-rate artist.”

“I ‘d like to know where you had been to-day if it was n’t for your pluck,” said Fisk, doggedly.

“In a merchant’s office in the City, belike, on a hundred and twenty pounds a year; a land steward down in Dorsetshire, at half the salary; skipper of a collier from North Shields, or an overseer in Jamaica. These are the high prizes for such as you and me; and the droll part of the matter is, they will talk of us as ‘such lucky dogs,’ whenever we attain to one of these brilliant successes. Gazette my son-in-law as Ambassador to Moscow, and nobody thinks it strange; announce, in the same paper, that Kit Davis has been made a gauger, and five hundred open mouths exclaim, ‘How did he obtain that? Who the deuce got it for him? Does n’t he fall on his legs!’ and so on.”

“I suppose we shall have our turn one of these days,” muttered the other, sulkily.

“I hope not. I ‘d rather have things as they are,” said Grog, gravely.

“Things as they are! And why so, I ‘d wish to ask?”

“Look at it this way, Tom Fisk,” said Grog, squaring his arms on the table and talking with slow deliberation; “if you were going to cut into a round game, wouldn’t you rather take a hand where the players were all soft ones, with plenty of cash, or would you prefer sitting down with a set of downy coves, all up to every dodge, and not a copper farthing in the company? Well, that’s exactly what the world would be if the Manchester fellows had their way; that’s exactly what it is, this very hour we ‘re sitting here, in America. There’s nobody on the square there. President, judges, editors, Congressmen, governors, are all rogues; and they’ve come to that pass, that any fellow with a dash of spirit about him must come over to Europe to gain his livelihood. I have it from their own lips what I ‘m telling you, for I was a-thinking about going over there myself; but they said, ‘Don’t go, sir,’ – they always say ‘sir,’ – ‘don’t go, sir. Our Western fellows are very wide awake; for every trump you ‘d have up your sleeve, they ‘d have two in their boots!’”

“For my own part,” said Fisk, “I ‘d not go live amongst them if you ‘d make me Minister at Washington, and so I told Simmy Hankes this morning, when he came in such high feather about his appointment as consul – I forget where to.”

“Hankes – Hankes! The same fellow that used to be with Robins?”

“Just so; and for some years back Davenport Dunn managing man.”

Grog gave a very slight start, and then asked, carelessly, why he was leaving Dunn’s employment.

“Dunn’s going to shut up shop. Dunn is to be a peer, next week, and retires from business. He is to be in Tuesday’s ‘Gazette,’ so Hankes tells me.”

“He has done the thing well, I suppose?” said Davis, coolly.

“Hankes says something like two millions sterling. Pretty well for a fellow that started without a sixpence.”

“I wonder he could n’t have done something better for Hankes than that paltry place.”

“So he might, and so he would; but you see, Simmy did n’t like waiting. He’s a close fellow, and one can’t get much out of him; but I can perceive that he was anxious to get off the coach.”

“Did n’t like the pace, – didn’t trust the tackle overmuch,” said Grog, carelessly.

“Something of that kind, I ‘ve no doubt,” rejoined Fisk.

“Have you any pull over this same Hankes, Tom?” said Grog, confidentially.

“Well, I can’t say I have. We were pals together long ago; we did a little in the racing line, – in a very small way, of course. Then he used to have a roulette-table at Doncaster; but somehow there was no ‘go’ in him: he was over-cautious, and always saying, ‘I ‘d rather take to “business;”’ and as I hated business, we separated.”

“It’s odd enough that I can’t remember the fellow. I thought I knew every one that was on the ‘lay’ these five-and-thirty years.”

“He wasn’t Hankes at the time I speak of; he was a Jew at that period, and went by the name of Simeon.”

“Simeon, Simeon, – not the fellow that used to come down to Windsor, with the Hexquite Habannar cigars?”

And Grog mimicked not alone the voice, but the face of the individual alluded to, till Fisk burst into a roar of laughter.

“That’s Simmy, – that’s the man,” cried Fisk, as he dried his eyes.

“Don’t I know him! I had a class at that time, – young fellows in the Blues. I used to give them lessons in billiards; and Simmy, as you call him, discounted for the mess on a sliding scale, – ten per cent for the Major, and sixty for cornets the first year they joined. He was good fun, Simmy; he fancied he would have been a first-rate actor, and used to give scenes out of ‘Othello,’ in Kean’s manner: that was the only soft thing about him, and many a fellow got a bill done by applauding ‘Now is the winter of our discontent’!” And Grog gave a low growling sort of a laugh at his reminiscences.

“You ‘ll see him to-morrow; he’s to breakfast here,” said Fisk, rather amused at the prospect of a recognition between such men.

“He would never play ‘Shylock,’” continued Grog, following out his reminiscences, “though we all told him he ‘d make a great hit in the part. The Jew, you see, – the Jew couldn’t stand that. And so Mr. Simmy Hankes is no other than Simeon! It was an old theory of mine, whenever I saw a fellow doing wonderfully well in the world, without any help from friends or family, to fancy that one time or other he must have belonged to what they are so fond of calling ‘the Hebrew persuasion’!”

“I wouldn’t rake up old memories with him, Grog, if I were you,” said Fisk, coaxingly.

“It ain’t my way, Tom Fisk,” said Davis, curtly.

“He ‘ll be at his ease at once when he perceives that you don’t intend to rip up old scores; and he ‘ll be just as delicate with you.”

“Delicate with me?” cried Grog, bursting out into a fit of immoderate laughter. “Well, if that ain’t a good one! I wonder what he is! Do you imagine Fitzroy Kelly is ashamed of being thought a lawyer, or Brodie of being a surgeon? You must be precious soft, my worthy friend, if you suppose that I don’t know what the world thinks and says of me. No, no, there’s no need of what you call delicacy at all. You used to be made of other stuff than this, Tom Fisk. It’s keeping company with them snobs of half-pay officers, clerks in the Treasury, and Press reporters-has spoiled you; the demi-gents of the ‘Garottaman Club’ have ruined hundreds.”