Davenport Dunn, a Man of Our Day. Volume 1

“Yes; he was at the battle,” said Kellett, dryly; for though he had once or twice told his honorable friend that Jack was in the service, he had not mentioned that he was in the ranks. Not that Annesley Beecher would have, in the least, minded the information. The fact could not by possibility have touched himself; it never could have compelled him to mount guard, do duty in the trenches, eat Commissariat biscuit, or submit to any of the hardships soldiery inflicts; and he ‘d have heard of Jack’s fate with all that sublime philosophy which teaches us to bear tranquilly the calamities of others.

“Why don’t you stir yourself to get him a step? There’s nothing to be had without asking! ay, worse than asking, – begging, worrying, importuning. Get some fellow in one of the offices to tell you when there’s a vacancy, and then up and at them. If they say, ‘We are only waiting for an opportunity, Captain Kellett,’ you reply, ‘Now’s your time then, Groves of the Forty-sixth is gone “toes up;” Simpson, of the Bays, has cut his lucky this morning.’ That’s the way to go to work.”

“You are wonderful!” exclaimed Kellett, who really did all but worship the worldly wisdom of his friend.

“I ‘d ask Lackington, but he ‘s no use to any one. Just look at my own case.” And now he launched forth into the theme he really loved and never found wearisome. His capacity for anything – everything, his exact fitness for fifty opposite duties, his readiness to be a sinecurist, and his actual necessity for a salary, were subjects he could be eloquent on; devoting occasional passing remarks to Lackington’s intense stupidity, who never exerted himself for him, and actually “thought him a flat.” “I know you won’t believe – but he does, I assure you – he thinks me a flat!”

Before Kellett could fully rally from the astounding force of such an unjustifiable opinion, his guest, Conway, knocked at the door.

“I say, Kellett, there comes an apology from your friend.”

“How so?” asked Kellett, eagerly.

“I just saw a soldier come up to the door, and the chances are it ‘s an officer’s servant with a note of excuse.”

The door opened as he spoke, and Conway entered the room. Kellett met him with an honest cordiality, and then, turning to Beecher, said, —

“My son’s friend and comrade, – Mr. Annesley Beecher;” and the two men bowed to each other, and exchanged glances that scarcely indicated much pleasure at the acquaintance.

“Why, he ‘s in the ranks, Kellett,” whispered Beecher, as he drew him into the window.

“So is my son,” said Kellett, with a gulp that half choked him.

“The deuce he is; you never told me that. And is this our dinner company?”

“I was just going to explain – Oh, here’s Bella!” and Miss Kellett entered, giving such a cordial greeting to the soldier that made Beecher actually astounded.

“What’s his name, Kellett?” said Beecher, half languidly.

“A good name, for the matter of that; he’s called Conway.”

“Conway – Conway?” repeated Beecher, aloud; “we have fortieth cousins, Conways. There was a fellow called Conway in the Twelfth Lancers that went a tremendous pace; they nicknamed him the ‘Smasher,’ I don’t know why. Do you?” said he, addressing the soldier.

“I ‘ve heard it was from an awkward habit he had of putting his heel on snobs.”

“Oh! you know him, perhaps?” said Beecher, affectedly.

“Why, as I was the man myself, I ought, according to the old adage, to say I knew but little of him.”

“You Conway of the Twelfth! the same that owned Brushwood and Lady Killer, that won the Riddlesworth?”

“You’re calling up old memories to me,” said the youth, smiling, “which, after all, I ‘d just as soon forget.”

“And you were an officer in the Lancers!” exclaimed Kellett, eagerly.

“Yes; I should have had my troop by this if I hadn’t owned those fortunate three-year-olds Mr. Beecher has just reminded me of. Like many others, whom success on the turf has misled, I went on madly, quite convinced I had fortune with me.”

“Ah!” said Beecher, moralizing, “there’s no doing a good stroke of work without the legs. Cranley tried it, Hawchcome tried it, Ludborough tried it, but it won’t do. As Grog Davis says, ‘you must not ignore existing interests.’”

“There’s another name I have n’t heard for many a year. What a scoundrel that fellow was! I ‘ve good ground for believing that this Davis it was poisoned Sir Aubrey, the best horse I ever owned. Three men of his stamp would make racing a sport unfit for gentlemen.”

“Miss Kellett, will you allow me?” said Beecher, offering his arm, and right well pleased that the announcement of dinner cut short the conversation.

“A nice fellow that friend of your brother’s,” muttered he, as he led her along; “but what a stupid thing to go and serve in the ranks! It’s about the last step I ‘d ever have thought of taking.”

“I’m certain of it,” said Bella, with an assent so ready as to sound like flattery.

As the dinner proceeded, old Kellett’s astonishment continued to increase at the deference paid by Beecher to every remark that fell from Conway. The man who had twice won “the Bexley,” and all but won “the Elms;” he who owned Sir Aubrey, and actually took the odds against all “Holt’s stable,” was no common celebrity. In vain was it Conway tried to lead the conversation to his friend Jack, – what they had seen, and where they had been together, – Beecher would bring them back to the Turf and the “Racing Calendar.” There were so many dark things he wanted to know, so much of secret history he hoped to be enlightened in; and whenever, as was often the case, Conway did not and could not give him the desired information, Beecher slyly intimated by a look towards Kellett that he was a deep fellow; while he muttered to himself, “Grog Davis would have it out of him, notwithstanding all his cunning.”

Bella alone wished to hear about the war. It was not alone that her interest was excited for her brother, but in the great events of that great struggle her enthusiastic spirit found ample material for admiration. Conway related many heroic achievements, not alone of British soldiers, but of French and even Russians. Gallantry, as he said, was of no nation in particular, – there were brave fellows everywhere; and he told, with all the warmth of honest admiration, how daringly the enemy dashed into the lines at night and confronted certain death, just for the sake of causing an interruption to the siege, and delaying, even for a brief space, the advance of the works. Told, as these stories were, with all the freshness which actual observation confers, and in a spirit of unexaggerated simplicity, still old Kellett heard them with the peevish jealousy of one who felt that they were destined to eclipse in their interest the old scenes of Spain and Portugal. That any soldiers lived nowadays like the old Light Division, that there were such fellows as the fighting Fifth, or Crawfurd’s Brigade, no man should persuade him; and when he triumphantly asked if they had n’t as good a general as Sir Arthur Welles-ley, he fell back, laughing contemptuously at the idea of such being deemed war at all, or the expedition, as he would term it, being styled a campaign.

“Remember, Captain Kellett, we had a fair share of your old Peninsular friends amongst us, – gallant veterans, who had seen everything from the Douro to Bayonne.”

“Well, and did n’t they laugh at all this? did n’t they tell you fairly it was not fighting?”

“I ‘m not so sure they did,” said Conway, laughing good-naturedly. “Gordon told an officer in my hearing, that the charge up the heights at the Alma reminded him strongly of Harding’s ascent of the hills at Albuera.”

“No, no, don’t say that; I can’t stand it!” cried Kellett, peevishly; “sure if it was only that one thinks they were Frenchmen – Frenchmen, with old Soult at their head – at Albuera – ”

“There’s nothing braver than a Russian, sir, depend on ‘t,” said the youth, with a slight warmth in his tone.

“Brave if you like; but, you see, he isn’t a soldier by nature, like the Frenchman; and yet we beat the French, thrashed him from the sea to the Pyrenees, and over the Pyrenees into France.”

“What’s the odds? You’d not do it again; or, if you did, not get Nap to abdicate. I ‘d like to have two thousand to fifty on the double event,” said Beecher, chuckling over an imaginary betting-book.

“And why not do it again?” broke in Bella. “Is it after listening to what we have heard this evening that we have cause for any faint-heartedness about the spirit of our soldiery? Were Cressy or Agincourt won by braver fellows than now stand entrenched around Sebastopol?”

“I don’t like it; as Grog says, ‘never make a heavy book on a waiting race!’”

“I conclude, then,” said Conway, “you are one of those who augur ill of our success in the present war?”

“I ‘d not stake an even fifty, on either side,” said Beecher, who had shrewd suspicions that it was what he ‘d have called a “cross,” and that Todleben and Lord Raglan could make “things comfortable” at any moment. “I see Miss Bella’s of my mind,” added he, as he perceived a very peculiar smile just parting her lips.

“I suspect not, Mr. Beecher,” said she, slyly.

“Why did you laugh, then?”

“Shall I tell you? It was just this, then, passing in my mind. I was wondering within myself whether the habit of reducing all men’s motives to the standard of morality observable in the ‘ring’ more often lead to mistakes, or the contrary.”

“I sincerely trust that it rarely comes right,” broke in Conway. “I was close upon four years on the turf, as they call it; and if I had n’t been ruined in time, I ‘d have ended by believing that an honest man was as great a myth as anything we read of amongst the heathen gods.”

“That all depends upon what you call honest,” said Beecher.

“To be sure it does; you ‘re right there,” chimed in Kellett; and Beecher, thus seconded, went on, —

“Now, I call a fellow honest when he won’t put his pal into a hole; when he ‘ll tell him whenever he has got a good thing, and let him have his share; when he’ll warn him against a dark lot, and not let him ‘in’ to oblige any one, – that’s honesty.”

“Well, perhaps it is,” said Conway, laughing. “The Russians said it was mercy t’ other day, when they went about shooting the wounded. There’s no accounting for the way men are pleased to see things.”