Davenport Dunn, a Man of Our Day. Volume 1

“Good news for the Jews, would n’t it be?” cried Davis. “Why, your outlying paper would n’t leave much of a margin to live on. You owe upwards of a hundred thousand, – that you do.”

“I could buy the whole concern to-morrow for five-and twenty thousand pounds. They can’t touch the entail, old fellow!”

“My word on’t, they ‘d have it out of you, one way or other; but never mind, there’s time enough to think of these things, – just stir yourself about this marriage.”

“I ‘ll start on Monday. I have one or two trifling matters to look after here, and then I ‘m free.”

“What’s this in the turn-down of Lackington’s letter marked ‘Strictly confidential’?

“‘I meant to have despatched this yesterday, but fortunately deferred doing so – fortunately, I say – as Davenport Dunn has just arrived here, with a very important communication, in which your interest is only inferior to my own. The explanation would be too long for a letter, and is not necessary besides, as D. will be in Dublin a day or two after this reaches you. See him at once; his address is Merrion Square North, and he will be fully prepared for your visit. Be on your guard. In truth, D., who is my own solicitor and man of business in Ireland, is somewhat of a crafty nature, and may have other interests in his head paramount to those of, yours,

“‘Lackington.’”

“Can you guess what this means, Grog? Has it any reference to the marriage scheme?”

“No; this is another match altogether,” said Grog, sententiously; “and this here Dunn – I know about him, though I never seen him – is the swellest cove going. You ain’t fit to deal with him– you ain’t!” added he, contemptuously. “If you go and talk to that fellow alone, I know how ‘t will be.”

“Come, come, I’m no flat”

Grog’s look – one of intense derision – stopped him, and after stammering and blushing deeply, he was silent.

“You think, because you have a turn of speed among cripples, that you ‘re fast,” said Grog, with one of his least amiable grins, “but I tell you that except among things of your own breeding, you’d never save a distance. Lord love ye! it never makes a fellow sharp to be ‘done;’ that’s one of the greatest mistakes people ever make. It makes him suspicious, – it keeps him on the look-out, as the sailors say; but what’s the use of being on the look-out if you haven’t got good eyes? It’s the go-ahead makes a man nowadays, and the cautious chaps have none of that. No, no; don’t you go rashly and trust yourself alone with Dunn. You ‘ll have to consider well over this, – you ‘ll have to turn it over carefully in your mind. I ‘d not wonder,” said he, after a pause, “but you ‘ll have to take me with you!”

CHAPTER XIII. A MESSAGE FROM JACK

“He’s come at last, Bella,” said Kellett, as, tired and weary, he entered the little cottage one night after dark. “I waited till I saw him come out of the station at West-land Row, and drive off to his house.”

“Did he see you, papa? – did he speak to you?” asked she, eagerly.

“See me– speak to me! It’s little he was thinking of me, darling! with Lord Glengariff shaking one of his hands, and Sir Samuel Downie squeezing the other, and a dozen more crying out, ‘Welcome home, Mr. Bunn! it is happy we are to see you looking so well; we were afraid you were forgetting poor Ireland and not coming back to us!’ And by that time the carmen took up the chorus, and began cheering and hurrahing, ‘Long life and more power to Davenport Dunn!’ I give you my word, you ‘d have thought it was Daniel O’Connell, or at least a new Lord-Lieutenant, if you saw the uproar and excitement there was about him.”

“And he – how did he take it?” asked she.

“Just as cool as if he had a born right to it all. ‘Thank you very much, – most kind of you,’ he muttered, with a little smile and a wave of his hand, as much as to say, ‘There now, that’ll do. Don’t you see that I’m travelling incog., and don’t want any more homage?’”

“Oh, no, papa, – not that, – it was rather like humility – ”

“Humility!” said he, bursting into a bitter laugh, – “you know the man well! Humility! there are not ten noblemen in Ireland this minute has the pride and impudence of that man. If you saw the way he walked down the steps to his carriage, giving a little nod here, and a little smile there, – maybe offering two fingers to some one of rank in the crowd – you’d say, ‘There’s a Prince coming home to his own country, – see how, in all their joy, he won’t let them be too familiar with him!’”

“Are you quite just – quite fair in all this, dearest papa?”

“Well, I suppose I’m not,” said he, testily. “It’s more likely the fault lies in myself, – a poor, broken-down country gentleman, looking at everything on the dark side, thinking of the time when his own family were something in the land, and Mr. Davenport Dunn very lucky if he got leave to sit down in the servants’-hall. Nothing more likely than that!” added he, bitterly, as he walked up and down the little room in moody displeasure.

“No, no, papa, you mistake me,” said she, looking affectionately at him. “What I meant was this, that to a man so burdened with weighty cares – one whose brain carries so many great schemes and enterprises – a sense of humility, proud enough in its way, might naturally mingle with all the pleasures of the moment, whispering as it were to his heart, ‘Be not carried away by this flattery, be not carried away by your own esteem; it is less you than the work you are destined for that men are honoring. While they seem to cheer the pilot, it is rather the glorious ocean to which he is guiding them that they address their salutations.’ Might not some such consciousness as this have moved him at such a time?”

“Indeed, I don’t know, and I don’t much care,” said Kellett, sulkily. “I suppose people don’t feel, nowadays, the way they used when I was young. There’s new inventions in everything.”

“Human nature is the same in all ages!” said she, faintly.

“Faith, and so much the worse for it, Bella. There’s more bad than good in life, – more cruelty and avarice and falsehood than there’s kindness, benevolence, and honesty. For one good-natured act I ‘ve met with, have n’t I met twenty, thirty, no, but fifty, specimens of roguery and double-dealing. If you want to praise the world, don’t call Paul Kellett into court, that’s all!”

“So far from agreeing with you,” cried she, springing up and drawing her arm within his, “you are exactly the very testimony I’d adduce. From your own lips have I heard more stories of generosity – more instances of self-devotion, trustfulness, and true kindness – than I have ever listened to in life.”

“Ay, amongst the poor, Bella, – amongst the poor!” said Kellett, half ashamed of his recantation.

“Be assured, then, that these traits are not peculiar to any class. The virtues of the poor, like their sufferings, are more in evidence than in any other condition, – their lives are laid bare by poverty; but I feel assured people are better than we think them, – better than they know themselves.”

“I ‘m waiting to hear you tell me that I ‘m richer too,” said Kellett, with a half-melancholy laugh, – “that I have an elegant credit in a bank somewhere, if I only knew where to draw upon it!”

“There is this wealth in the heart of man, if he but knew how to profit by it: it is to teach us this lesson that great men have arisen from time to time. The poets, the warriors, the explorers, the great in science, set us all the same task, to see the world fair as it really is, to recognize the good around us, to subdue the erroneous thoughts that, like poisonous weeds, stifle the wholesome vegetation of our hearts, and to feel that the cause of humanity is our cause, its triumphs our triumphs, its losses our losses!”

“It may be all as you say, Bella darling, but it’s not the kind of world ever I saw. I never knew men do anything but cheat each other and tell lies; and the hardest of it all,” added he, with a bitter sigh, “that, maybe, it is your own flesh and blood treats you worst!”

This reflection announced the approach of gloomy thoughts. This was about the extent of any allusion he would ever make to his son, and Bella was careful not to confirm him in the feeling by discussing or opposing it. She understood his nature well. She saw that some fortunate incident or other, even time, might dissipate what had never been more than a mere prejudice, while, if reasoned with, he was certain to argue himself into the conviction that of all the rubs he had met in life his son Jack’s conduct was the hardest and the worst.

The long and painful silence that now ensued was at length broken by a loud knocking at the door of the cottage, a sound so unusual as to startle them both.

“That’s at our door, Bella,” said he. “I wonder who it can be? Beecher couldn’t come out this time of the night.”

“There it is again,” said Bella, taking a light. “I ‘ll go and see who’s there.”

“No, let me go,” cried Kellett, taking the candle from her hand, and leaving the room with the firm step of a man about to confront a danger.

“Captain Kellett lives here, does n’t he?” said a tall young fellow, in the dress of a soldier in the Rifles.

Kellett’s heart sank heavily within him as he muttered a faint “Yes.”

“I’m the bearer of a letter for him,” said the soldier, “from his son.”

“From Jack!” burst out Kellett, unable to restrain himself. “How is he? Is he well?”

“He’s all right now; he was invalided after that explosion in the trenches, but he’s all right again. We all suffered more or less on that night;” and his eyes turned half inadvertently towards one side, where Kellett now saw that an empty coat-sleeve was hanging.

“It was there you left your arm, then, poor fellow,” said Kellett, taking him kindly by the hand. “Come in and sit down; I’m Captain Kellett. A fellow-soldier of Jack’s, Bella,” said Kellett, as he introduced him to his daughter; and the young man bowed with all the ease of perfect good-breeding.

“You left my brother well, I hope?” said Bella, whose womanly tact saw at once that she was addressing her equal.

“So well that he must be back to his duty ere this. This letter is from him; but as he had not many minutes to write, he made me promise to come and tell you myself all about him. Not that I needed his telling me, for I owe my life to your son, Captain Kellett; he carried me in on his back under the sweeping fire of a Russian battery; two rifle bullets pierced his chako as he was doing it; he must have been riddled with shot if the Russians had not stopped their fire.”

“Stopped their fire!”

“That they did, and cheered him heartily. How could they help it! he was the only man on that rude glacis, torn and gullied with shot and shell.”

“Oh, the noble fellow!” burst out the girl, as her eyes ran over.

“Is n’t he a noble fellow?” said the soldier. “We don’t want for brave fellows in that army; but show me one will do what he did. It was a shot carried off this,” said he, touching the empty sleeve of his jacket; “and I said something – I must have been wandering in my mind – about a ring my mother had given me, and it was on the finger of that poor hand. Well, what does Jack Kellett do, while the surgeon was dressing my wound, but set off to the place where I was shot down, and, under all that hailstorm of Minié-balls, brought in the limb. That’s the ring, – he rescued it at the risk of his life. There’s more than courage in that; there’s a goodness and kindness of heart worth more than all the bravery that ever stormed a battery.”

“And yet he left me, – deserted his poor father!” cried old Kellett, sobbing.