Davenport Dunn, a Man of Our Day. Volume 1

“And where is he?”

“Serving as a soldier with his regiment in the Crimea. He was in hospital at Scutari when I first heard, but since that returned to duty with his regiment.”

“What signifies all this? The fellow himself is nothing to us!”

Dunn again waited till this burst of anger had passed, and then resumed, —

“My Lord, understand me well. You can deal with this case now; six months hence it may be clear and clean beyond all your power of interference. If Conway’s claim derive, as I have strong ground to believe it, from the elder branch, the estate and the title are both his.”

“You are a hardy fellow, a very hardy fellow, Mr. Dunn, to make such a speech as this!”

“I said, ‘If,’ my Lord – ‘If’ is everything here. The assumption is that Reginald Conway was summoned by mistake to the House of Peers in Henry the Seventh’s reign, – the true Baron Lackington being then an exile. It is from him this Conway’s descent claims.”

“I’m not going to constitute myself a Committee of Privileges, sir, and listen to all this jargon; nor can I easily conceive that the unshaken possession of centuries is to be disturbed by the romantic pretensions of a Crimean soldier. I am also aware how men of your cloth conduct these affair to their own especial advantage. They assume to be the arbiters of the destinies of great families, and they expect to be paid for their labors, – eh, is n’t it so?”

“I believe your Lordship has very accurately defined our position, though, perhaps, we might not quite agree as to the character of the remuneration.”

“How so? What do you mean?”

“I, for instance, my Lord, would furnish no bill of costs to either party. My relations with your Lordship are such as naturally give me a very deep interest in what concerns you; of Mr. Conway I know nothing.”

“So, then, you are simply moved in this present affair by a principle of pure benevolence; you are to be a sort of providence to the House of Lackington, – eh, is that it?”

“Your Lordship’s explanation is most gracious,” said Dunn, bowing.

“Come, now; let us talk seriously,” said the Viscount, in a changed tone. “What is it you propose?”

“What I would suggest, my Lord,” said Dunn, with a marked emphasis on the word, “is this. Submit the documents of this claim – we can obtain copies of the most important of them – to competent opinion, learn if they be of the value I attribute to them, see, in fact, if this claim be prosecuted, whether it is likely to succeed at law, and, if so, anticipate the issue by a compromise.”

“But what compromise?”

“Your Lordship has no heir. Your brother, who stands next in succession, need not marry. This point at once decided, Conway’s claim can take its course after Mr. Beecher’s demise. The estates secured to your Lordship for life will amply guarantee a loan to the extent you wish.”

“But they are mine, sir; they are mine this moment. I can go into the market to-morrow and raise what amount I please – ”

“Take care, my Lord, take care; a single imprudent step might spoil all. If you were to negotiate a mere ten thousand to-morrow, you might be met by the announcement that your whole property was about to be litigated, and your title to it contested. Too late to talk of compromise, then.”

“This sounds very like a threat, Mr. Dunn.”

“Then have I expressed myself most faultily, my Lord; nor was there anything less near my thoughts.”

“Would you like to see my brother? He shall call on you in Dublin; you will be there by – when?”

“Wednesday week, my Lord; and it is a visit would give me much pleasure.”

“If I were to tell you my mind frankly, Dunn,” said the Viscount, in a more assured tone, “I ‘d say, I would not give a ten-pound note to buy up this man’s whole claim. Annesley, however, has a right to be consulted; he has an interest only second to my own. See him, talk it over with him, and write, to me.”

“Where shall I address you, my Lord?”

“Florence; I shall leave this at once, – to-night,” said Lord Lackington, impatiently; for, somehow, – we are not going to investigate wherefore, – he was impatient to be off, and see no more of those he had been so intimate with.

CHAPTER XII. ANNESLEY BEECHER’S “PAL”

Lord Lackington was not much of a letter-writer; correspondence was not amongst the habits of his day. The society in which he moved, and of which, to some extent, he was a type, cared more for conversational than epistolary graces. They kept their good things for their dinner-parties, and hoarded their smart remarks on life for occasions where the success was a personal triumph. Twice or thrice, however, every year, he was obliged to write. His man of business required to be reminded of this or that necessity for money, and his brother Annesley should also be admonished, or reproved, or remonstrated with, in that tone of superiority and influence so well befitting one who pays an annuity to him who is the recipient. In fact, around this one circumstance were grouped all the fraternal feelings and brotherly interest of these two men. One hundred and twenty-five pounds sterling every half-year represented the ties of blood that united them; and while it offered to the donor the proud reflection of a generous self-sacrifice, it gave to him who received the almost as agreeable occasion for sarcastic allusion to the other’s miserly habits and sordid nature, with a contrast of what he himself had done were their places in life reversed.

It was strange enough that the one same incident should have begotten such very opposite emotions; and yet the two phrases, “If you knew all I have done for him,” and the rejoinder, “You ‘d not believe the beggarly pittance he allows me,” were correct exponents of their several feelings.

Not impossible is it that each might have made out a good case against the other. Indeed, it was a theme whereon, in their several spheres, they were eloquent; and few admitted to the confidence of either had not heard of the utter impossibility of doing anything for Annesley, – his reckless folly, his profligacy, and his waste; and, on the other hand, “the incredible meanness of Lackington, with at least twelve thousand a year, and no children to provide for, giving me the salary of an upper butler.” Each said far too much in his own praise not to have felt, at least, strong misgivings in his conscience. Each knew far too well that the other had good reason in many things he said; but so long had their plausibilities been repeated, that each ended by satisfying himself he was a paragon of fraternal affection, and, stranger still, had obtained for this opinion a distinct credence in their several sets in society; so that every peer praised the Viscount, and every hard-up younger son pitied poor Annesley, and condemned the “infamous conduct of the old coxcomb his brother.”

“That scampish fellow’s conduct is killing poor Lackington,” would say a noble lord.

“Annesley can’t stand old Lackington’s treatment much longer,” was the commentary of half-pay captains of dragoons.

Had you but listened to Lord Lackington, he would have told you of at least fifty distinct schemes he had contrived for his brother’s worldly success, all marred and spoiled by that confounded recklessness, “that utter disregard, sir, of the commonest rules of conduct that every man in life is bound to observe.” He might have been, by this time, colonel of the Fifty-something; he might have been governor of some fortunate island in the Pacific; consul-general at Sunstroke Town, in Africa, where, after three years, you retire with a full pension. If he ‘d have gone into the Church, – and there was no reason why he should n’t, – there was the living of St. Cuthbert-in-the-Vale, eight hundred a year, ready for him. Every Administration for years back had been entreated in his favor; and from Ordnance clerkships to Commissions in Lunacy he had been offered places in abundance. Sinecures in India and jobs in Ireland had been found out in his behalf, and deputy-somethings created in Bermuda just to provide for him.

The concessions he had made, the proxies he had given, “just for Annesley’s sake,” formed a serious charge against the noble Lord’s political consistency; and he quoted them as the most stunning evidences of fraternal love, and pointed out where he had gone against his conscience and his party as to a kind of martyrdom that made a man illustrious forever.

As for Annesley, his indictment had, to the full, as many counts. What he might have been, – not in a mere worldly sense, not as regards place, pension, or emolument, but what in integrity, what in fair fame, what in honorable conduct and unblemished character, if Lackington had only dealt fairly with him, – “there was really no saying.” The noble motives which might have prompted, the high aspirations that might have moved him, all the generous impulses of a splendid nature were there, thwarted, baffled, and destroyed by Lackington’s confounded stupidity. What the Viscount ought to have done, what precise species of culture he should have devoted to these budding virtues, how he ought to have trained and trellised these tender shoots of aspiring goodness, he never exactly detailed. It was only clear that, whatever the road, he had never taken it; and it was really heart-breaking to hear what the world had lost in public and private virtues, all for Lackington’s indolence and folly.

“He never gave me a chance, sir, – not one chance,” would he say. “Why, he knows Palmerston just as well as I know you; he can talk to Lord Derby as freely as I am speaking at this minute; and, would you believe it? he wouldn’t say, ‘There’s Annesley – my brother Annesley – wants that commissionership or that secretary’s place. Annesley ‘s a devilish clever fellow, – up to a thing or two, – ask Grog Davis if he ain’t. Just try to get between him and the ropes, that’s all; see if he does n’t sleep with one eye open. ‘Do you tell me there’s one of them would refuse him? Grog said to his face, at Epsom Downs, the morning Crocus was scratched, ‘My Lord,’ says he, ‘take all you can get upon Annesley; make your book on him; he’s the best horse in your lot, and it’s Grog Davis says it.’”

Very true was it that Grog Davis said so. Nay, to enjoy the pleasure of hearing him so discourse was about the greatest gratification of Annesley Beecher’s present life. He was poor and discredited. The Turf Club would not have him; he durst not show at Tattersall’s. Few would dine, none discount him; and yet that one man’s estimate of his gifts sustained him through all. “If Grog be right – and he ought to be, seeing that a more dodgy, crafty fellow never lived – I shall come all round again. He that never backed the wrong horse could n’t be far astray about men. He thinks I’ve running in me yet; he sees that I ‘ll come out one of these days in top condition, and show my number from the stand-house.” To have had the greatest opinion in Equity favorable to your cause in Chancery, to have known that Thesiger or Kelly said your case was safe, to learn that Faraday had pronounced your analysis correct, or White, of Cowes, had approved of the lines of your new yacht, – would any of them be very reassuring sensations; and yet were they as nothing to the unbounded confidence imparted to Beecher’s mind by the encouraging opinion of his friend Grog Davis. It is only justice to say that Beecher’s estimate of Davis was a feeling totally free of all the base alloy of any self-interest. With all Grog’s great abilities, with talents of the very highest order, he was the reverse of a successful man. Trainer, auctioneer, sporting character, pugilist, publican, and hell-keeper, he had been always unlucky. He had his share of good things, – more than his share. He had been in at some of the “very best-robberies” ever done at Newmarket. The horses he had “nobbled,” the jockeys “squared,” the owners “hocussed,” were legion. All the matches he had “made safe,” all the fights he had sold, would have filled five columns of “Bell’s Life.” In whatever called itself “sport” he had dabbled and cheated for years; and yet, there he was, with all his successes and all his experiences, something more than fifteen thousand pounds worse than ruined.

Worthy reader, have you stood by while some enthusiastic admirer of Turner’s later works has, in all the fervor of his zeal, encomiumized one of those strange, incomprehensible creations, where cloud and sea, atmosphere, shadow and smoke, seem madly commingled with tall masts piercing the lurid vapor, and storm-clouds drifting across ruined towers? If at first you gladly welcomed any guidance through the wondrous labyrinth, and you accepted gratefully the aid of one who could reconcile seeming incongruities, and explain apparent difficulties, what was your disappointment, at last, to discover that from some defect of organization, some absent power of judgment, you could not follow the elucidation; that you saw no power in this, no poetry in that; that no light gleamed into your soul out of all that darkness, nor any hope into your heart, from the mad confusion of that chaos? Pretty much the same mystification had it been to you to have listened to Annes-ley Beecher’s account of his friend Grog Davis. It was evident that he saw the reason for everything, – he could account for all; but, alas! the explanatory gift was denied him. The very utmost you could attain to was a glimmering perception that there were several young men of rank and station who had only half trusted the distinguished Davis, and in their sparing confidence had rescued themselves from his knavery; that very artful combinations occasionally require confederates, and confederates are not always loyal; that Grog occasionally did things with too high a hand, – in plain words, reserved for himself more than his share of the booty; and, in fact, that, with the best intentions and the most decided determination to put others “into the hole,” he fell in himself, and so completely, too, that he had never been able to show his head out of it ever since.

If, therefore, as we have said, Annesley Beecher’s explanation of these tangled skeins was none of the clearest, there was nothing daunting to himself in that difficulty. On the contrary, he deemed his intimacy with Grog as one of his greatest privileges. Grog had told him things that he would not tell to another man breathing; he had seen, in Grog’s own hand, what would, if not hang him, give him twenty years at Norfolk Island; he knew that Grog had done things no man in England but himself had ever dreamed of; in fact, as Othello’s perils had won the fair Desdemona’s love, Grog Davis’s rascalities had captivated Beecher’s admiration; and, as the recruit might gaze upon the thickly studded crosses on the breast of some glorious soldier, so did he venerate the proofs of the thousand-and-one knaveries of one who for thirty-odd years had been a “leg” and a swindler.

Let us present Captain Davis – for by that title was he popularly known – to our reader. He was a short, red-faced – very red-faced – man, with a profusion of orange-red hair, while he wore beard and whiskers in that form so common in our Crimean experiences. He was long-armed and bandy, the legs being singularly short and muscular. He affected dress, and was remarkable for more ostentation of velvet than consisted with ordinary taste, and a far greater display of rings, charms, and watch trinkets than is common even to gentlemen of the “Jewish persuasion.” The expression of the man’s face was eminently determination, and his greenish-gray eyes and thin-lipped, compressed mouth plainly declared, “Bet with me or not, – if you give me the shadow of a shade of impertinence I ‘ll fasten a quarrel upon you of which all your rank and station won’t protect you from the consequences. I can hit a sixpence at twenty paces, and I ‘ll make you feel that fact in every word you say to me. In my brevet rank of the turf you can’t disown me, and if you try, mine the fault if you succeed.” He had been out three or four times in very sanguinary affairs, so that the question as to “meeting” him was a settled point. He was one of those men to whom the epithet “dangerous” completely applies; he was dangerous alike to the young fellow entering life, unsuspectful of its wiles and ignorant of its rascalities; dangerous in the easy facility with which he would make foolish wagers, and lend even large sums on the very slightest acquaintance. He seemed so impressed with his theory that everybody ought to have all the enjoyment he liked, there was such a careless good-nature about him, such an uncalculating generosity, an air of such general kindliness, that very young men felt at once at ease in his company; and if there were sundry things in his manner that indicated coarseness or bad breeding, if his address was vulgar and his style “snobbish,” there were sufficient traits of originality about him to form a set-off for these defects, and “Old Grog” was pronounced an “out-and-out good fellow,” and always ready “to help one at a pinch.”

Such was he to the very young men just passing the threshold of life; to the older hands – fellows versed in all its acts and ways – he showed no false colors; such, then, he was, the character which no disguise conceals, – “the leg;” one whose solvency may be counted on more safely than his honesty, and whose dealings, however based on roguery, are still guided by that amount of honor which is requisite for transactions amongst thieves. There was an impression, too, – we have no warranty for saying how far it was well founded, – that Grog was behind the scenes in transactions where many high and titled characters figured; that he was confederate in affairs of more than doubtful integrity; and that, if he liked, he could make revelations such as all the dark days at Tattersall’s never equalled. “They ‘ll never push me to the wall,” he would say, “take my word for it; they ‘ll not make Grog Davis turn Queen’s evidence,” was the boastful exclamation of his after-dinner hours: and he was right. He could have told of strange doings with arsenic in the stable, and, stranger still, with hocussed negus in the back parlor; he had seen the certain favorite for the Oaks carted out stiff and cold on the morning that was to have witnessed her triumph; and he had opened the door for the ruined heir as he left his last thousand on the green baize of the hell table. He was so accustomed to all the vicissitudes of fortune – that is, he was so habituated to aid the goddess in the work of destiny – that nothing surprised him; and his red, carbuncled face and jaundiced eye never betrayed the slightest evidence of anything like emotion or astonishment

How could Beecher have felt any other than veneration for one so gifted? He approached him as might some youthful artist the threshold of Michael Angelo; he felt, when with him, that he was in the presence of one whose maxims were silver and whose precepts were gold, and that to the man who could carry away those experiences the secrets of life were no longer mysteries.

All the delight an old campaigner might have felt had the Great Duke vouchsafed to tell him of his achievements in the Peninsula – how he had planned the masterly defences of Torres Vedras, or conceived the bold advance upon Spain – would have been but a weak representation of the eager enjoyment Beecher experienced when Grog narrated some of his personal recollections: how he had squared Sir Toby at Manchester; the way he had won the York Handicap with a dead horse; and the still prouder day when, by altering the flags at Bolton, he gained twenty-two thousand pounds on the Great National Steeplechase. Nor was it without a certain vaingloriousness that Grog would speak of these, as, cigar in mouth and his hands deep in his breeches pockets, he grunted out, in broken sentences, the great triumphs of his life.

We began this chapter by saying that Lord Lackington was not an impassioned letter-writer; and here we are discoursing about Mr. Davis and his habits, as if these topics could possibly have any relation to the noble Viscount’s ways; and yet they are connected, for it was precisely to read one of his Lordship’s letters to his friend that Beecher was now Grog’s guest, seated opposite to him at the fire, in a very humble room of a very humble cottage on the strand of Irish-town. Grog had sought this retirement after the last settling at Newmarket, and had been, in popular phrase, “missing” since that event.

“Well, it’s a long one, at all events,” said Mr. Davis, as he glanced through his double eyeglass at the letter Beecher handed him, – “so long that I ‘ll be sworn it had no enclosure. When a man sends the flimsy, he spares you the flourish!”

“Right there, Grog. It’s all preach and no pay; but read it” And he lighted his cigar, and puffed away.

“‘Lake of Como, Oct 15

“What ‘s the old cove about up at Como so late in the season?”

“Read it, and you ‘ll know all,” said the other, sententiously.

“‘Dear Annesley, – I have been plotting a letter to you these half-dozen weeks; but what with engagements, the heat, and that insurmountable desire to defer whatever can by possibility be put off, all my good intentions have turned out tolerably like some of your own, – pleasant memories, and nothing more. Georgina, too, said – ’