Davenport Dunn, a Man of Our Day. Volume 1

“They really deserve every cultivation. All the advantages that – that – that sort of thing can bestow!”

And his Lordship smiled benignly, as though offering his own aid to the educational system.

“What they said to me was this,” said O’Reilly, dropping his voice to a tone of the most confiding secrecy: “‘Don’t be keeping them down here in Mary’s Abbey, but take them where they’ll see life. You can give them forty thousand pounds between them, Tim O’Reilly, and with that and their own good looks – ’”

“Beauty, O’Reilly – downright loveliness,” broke in my Lord.

“Well, indeed, they are handsome,” said O’Reilly, with an honest satisfaction, “and that’s exactly why I thought the advice was good. ‘Take them abroad,’ they said; ‘take them into Germany and Italy – but more especially Italy’ – for they say there’s nothing like Italy for finishing young ladies.”

“That is certainly the general impression!” said his Lordship with the barest imaginable motion of his nether lip.

“And here we are, but where we’re going afterwards, and what well do when we’re there, that thief of a Courier we have may know, but I don’t.”

“So that you gave up business, O’Reilly, and resigned yourself freely to a life of ease,” said my Lord, with a smile that seemed to approve the project.

“Yes, indeed, my Lord; but whether it’s to be a life of pleasure, I don’t know. I was in the provision trade thirty-eight years, and do you know I miss the pigs greatly.”

“Every man has a hankering of that sort. Old cosmopolite as I am, I have every now and then my longing for that window at Brookes’s, and that snug dinner-room at Boodle’s.”

“Yes, my Lord,” said O’Reilly, who hadn’t the faintest conception whether these localities were not situated in China.

“Ah, Twining, never thought to see you here,” called out his Lordship to a singularly tall man, who came forward with such awkward contortions of legs and arms, as actually to suggest the notion that he was struggling against somebody. Mr. O’Reilly modestly stole away while the friends were shaking hands, and we take the same opportunity to, present the new arrival to our reader.

Mr. Adderley Twining was a gentleman of good family and very large fortune, whose especial pleasure it was to pass off to the world for a gay, light-hearted, careless creature, of small means, and most lavish liberality. To be, in fact, perpetually struggling between a most generous temperament and a narrow purse. His cordiality was extreme, his politeness unbounded; and as he was most profuse in his pledges for the present and his promises for the future, he attained to a degree of popularity which to his own estimation was immense. This was, in fact, the one sole self-deception of his very crafty nature, and the belief that he was a universal favourite was the solitary mistake of this shrewd intelligence. Although a married man, there was so constantly some “difficulty” or other – these were his own words – about Lady Grace, that they seldom were seen together; but he spoke of her when absent in terms of the most fervent affection, but whose health, or spirits, or tastes, or engagements unhappily denied her the happiness of travelling along with him. Whenever it chanced that they were together, he scarcely mentioned her.

“And what breeze of fortune has wafted you here, Twining?” said his Lordship, delighted to chance upon a native of his own world.

“Health, my Lord, – health,” said he, with one of his ready laughs, as though everything he said or thought had some comic side in it that amused him, “and a touch of economy too, my Lord.”

“What humbug all that is, Twining. Who the deuce is so well off as yourself?” said Lord Lackington, with all that peculiar bitterness with which an embarrassed man listens to the grumblings of a wealthy one.

“Only too happy, my Lord – rejoiced if you were right. Capital news for me, eh? – excellent news!” And he slapped his lean legs with his long thin fingers, and laughed immoderately.

“Come, come, we all know that – besides a devilish good thing of your own – you got the Wrexley estate, and old Poole’s Dorsetshire property. Hang me if I ever open a newspaper without reading that you are somebody’s residuary legatee.”

“I assure you, solemnly, my Lord, I am actually hard up, pressed for money, downright inconvenienced.” And he laughed again, as though it were uncommonly droll.

“Stuff – nonsense!” said my Lord, angrily, for he really was losing temper; and to change the topic he curtly asked, “And where do you mean to pass the winter?”

“In Florence, my Lord, or Naples. We have a little den in both places.”

The “den” in Florence was a sumptuous palace on the Arno. Its brother at Naples was a royal villa near Posilippo.

“Why not Rome? Lady Lackington and myself mean to try Rome.”

“Ah, all very well for you, my Lord, but for people of small fortune – ”

There was that in the expression of his Lordship’s face that told Twining this vein might be followed too far, and so he stopped in time, and laughed away pleasantly.

“Spicer tells me,” resumed Lord Lackington, “that Florence is quite deserted; nothing but a kind of second and third rate set of people go there. Is that so?”

“Excellent people, capital society, great fun!” said Twining, in a burst of merriment.

“Spicer calls them ‘Snobs,’ and he ought to know.”

“So he ought indeed, my Lord – no one better. Admirably observed, and very just.”

“He’s in training again for that race that never comes off,” said his Lordship. “The first time I ever saw him – it was at Leamington – and he was performing the same farce, with hot baths and blankets, and jotting down imaginary bets in a small note-book.”

“How good – capital! Your Lordship has him perfectly – you know him thoroughly – great fun! Spicer, excellent creature!”

“How those fellows live is a great mystery to me. You chance upon them everywhere, in Baden or Aix in summer, in Paris or Vienna during the winter. Now, if they were amusing rogues, like that fellow I met at your house in Hampshire – ”

“Oh, Stockley, my Lord; rare fellow, quite a genius!” laughed Twining.

“Just so – Stockley; one would have them just to help over the boredom of a country house; but this creature Spicer is as devoid of amusing gifts, as tiresome, and as worn out, as if he owned ten thousand a year.”

“How good, by Jove!” cried Twining, in ecstasy. And he slapped his gaunt limbs and threw his long arms wildly about in a transport of delight.

“And who are here, Twining – any of our set?” “Not a soul, my Lord; the place isn’t known yet, that’s the reason I came here – so quiet and so cheap, make your own terms with them.

“Good fun – excellent!”

“I came to meet a man of business,” said his Lordship, with a strong emphasis on the pronoun. “He couldn’t prolong his journey farther south, and so we agreed to rendezvous here.”

“I have a little affair also to transact – a mere trifle, a nothing, in fact – with a lawyer, who promises to meet me here by the end of the month, so that we have just time to take our baths, drink the waters, and all that sort of thing, while we are waiting.”

And he rubbed his hands, and laughed away again.

“What a boon for my wife to learn that Lady Grace is here! She was getting so hipped with the place – not so much the place as the odious people – that I suspect she’d have left me to wait for Dunn all alone.”

“Dunn! Dunn! not Davenport Dunn?” exclaimed Twining.

“The very man – do you know him?”

“To be sure, he’s the fellow I’m waiting for. Capital fun, isn’t it?”

And he slapped his legs again, while he repeated the name of Dunn over and over again.

“I want to know something about this same Mr. Dunn,” said Lord Lackington, confidentially.

“So do I; like it of all things,” cried Twining. “Clever fellow-wonderful fellow – up to everything – acquainted with everybody. Great fun!”

“He occupies a very distinguished position in Ireland, I fancy,” said his Lordship, with such a marked stress on the locality as to show that such did not constitute an imperial reputation.

“Yes, yes, man of the day there; do what he likes; very popular – immensely popular!” said Twining, as he laughed on.

“So that you know no more of him than his public repute – no more than I know myself,” said his Lordship.