Davenport Dunn, a Man of Our Day. Volume 1

The terrible expression of his face shocked her, and she could make no reply.

“I ‘ll wager a crown, if you search well, you ‘ll see something about sending me to jail, or, maybe, transporting me. – Who’s that knocking at the door there?” cried he, angrily, as a very loud noise resounded through the little cottage.

“‘T is a gentleman without wants to speak to the master,” said the old woman, entering.

“I ‘m engaged, and can’t see anybody,” rejoined Kellett, sternly.

“He says it’s the same if he could see Miss Bella,” reiterated the old woman.

“He can’t, then; she ‘s engaged too.”

The woman still lingered at the door, as if she expected some change of purpose.

“Don’t you hear me? – don’t you understand what I said?” cried he, passionately.

“Tell him that your master cannot see him,” said Bella.

“If I don’t make too bould, – if it’s not too free of me, – maybe you ‘d excuse the liberty I ‘m taking,” said a man, holding the door slightly open, and projecting a round bullet head and a very red face into the room.

“Oh, Mr. Driscoll,” cried Bella. “Mrs. Hawkshaw’s brother, papa,” whispered she, quietly, to her father, who, notwithstanding the announcement, made no sign.

“If Captain Kellett would pardon my intrusion,” said Driscoll, entering with a most submissive air, “he’d soon see that it was at laste with good intentions I came out all the way here on foot, and a bad night besides, – a nasty little drizzling rain and mud, – such mud!” And he held up in evidence a foot about the size of an elephant’s.

“Pray sit down, Mr. Driscoll,” said Bella, placing a chair for him. “Papa was engaged with matters of business when you knocked, – some letters of consequence.”

“Yes, miss, to be sure, and did n’t want to be disturbed,” said Driscoll, as he sat down, and wiped his heated forehead. “I ‘m often the same way myself; but when I ‘m at home, and want nobody to disturb me, I put on a little brown-paper cap I have, and that’s the sign no one’s to talk to me.”

Kellett burst into a laugh at the conceit, and Driscoll so artfully joined in the emotion that when it ceased they were already on terms of intimacy.

“You see what a strange crayture I am. God help me!” said Driscoll, sighing. “I have to try as many dodges with myself as others does be using with the world, for my poor head goes wanderin’ away about this, that, and the other, and I ‘m never sure it will think of what I want.”

“That’s a sad case,” said Kellett, compassionately.

“I was like everybody else tell I had the fever,” continued Driscoll, confidentially. “It was the spotted fever, not the scarlet fever, d’ ye mind; and when I came out of it on the twenty-ninth day, I was the same as a child, simple and innocent You ‘d laugh now if I told you what I did with the first half-crown I got. I bought a bag of marbles!”

And Kellett did laugh heartily; less, perhaps, at the circumstance than at the manner and look of him who told it.

“Ay, faith, marbles!” muttered Driscoll to himself; “‘tis a game I’m mighty fond of.”

“Will you take a little whiskey-and-water? Hot or cold?” asked Kellett, courteously.

“Just a taste, to take off the deadness of the water,” said Driscoll. “I ‘m obleeged to be as cautious as if I was walkin’ on eggs. Dr. Dodd says to me, ‘Terry,’ says he, ‘you had never much brains in your best days, but now you ‘re only a sheet of thin paper removed from an idiot, and if you touch spirits it’s all up with you.’”

“That was plain speaking, anyhow,” said Kellett, smiling.

“Yes,” said Driscoll, while he seemed struggling to call up some reminiscence: and then, having succeeded, said, “Ay, ‘There’s five-and-twenty in Swift’s this minute,’ said he, ‘with their heads shaved, and in blue cotton dressing-gowns, more sensible than yourself.’ But, you see, there was one thing in my favor, – I was always harmless.”

The compassionate expression with which Kellett listened to this declaration guaranteed how completely the speaker had engaged his sympathy.

“Well, well,” continued Driscoll, “maybe I’m just as happy, ay, happier than ever I was! Every one is kind and good-natured to me now. Nobody takes offence at what I say or do; they know well in their hearts that I don’t mean any harm.”

“That you don’t,” broke in Bella, whose gratitude for many a passing word of kindness, as he met her of a morning, willingly seized upon the opportunity for acknowledgment.

“My daughter has often told me of the kind way you always spoke to her.”

“Think of that, now,” muttered Terry to himself; “and I saying all the while to my own heart, ‘‘T is a proud man you ought to be to-day, Terry Driscoll, to be giving good-morning to Miss Kellett of Kellett’s Court, the best ould blood in your own county.’”

“Your health, Driscoll, – your health,” cried Kellett, warmly. “Let your head be where it will, your heart’s in the right place, anyhow.”

“Do you say so, now?” asked he, with all the eagerness of one putting a most anxious question.

“I do, and I ‘d swear it,” cried Kellett, resolutely. “‘Tis too clever and too ‘cute the world’s grown; they were better times when there was more good feeling and less learning.”

“Indeed – indeed, it was the remark I made to my sister Mary the night before last,” broke in Driscoll. “‘What is there,’ says I, ‘that Miss Kellett can’t teach them? They know the rule of three and What ‘s-his-name’s Questions as well as I know my prayers. You don’t want them to learn mensuration and the use of the globes?’ ‘I ‘ll send them to a school in France,’ says she; ‘it’s the only way to be genteel.’”

“To a school in France?” cried Bella; “and is that really determined on?”

“Yes, miss; they ‘re to go immediately, and ye see that was the reason I walked out here in the rain to-night I said to myself, ‘Terry,’ says I, ‘they ‘ll never say a word about this to Miss Kellett till the quarter is up; be off, now, and break it to her at once.’”

“It was so like your own kind heart,” burst out Bella.

“Yes,” muttered Driscoll, as if in a revery, “that’s the only good o’ me now, – I can think of what will be of use to others.”

“Did n’t I tell you we were in a vein of good luck, Bella?” said Kellett, between his teeth; “didn’t I say awhile ago there was more coming?”

“‘But,’ says I to Mary,” continued Driscoll, “‘you must take care to recommend Miss Kellett among your friends – ‘”

Kellett dashed his glass down with such force on the table as to frighten Driscoll, whose speech was thus abruptly cut short, and the two men sat staring fixedly at each other. The expression of poor Terry’s vacant face, in which a struggling effort to deprecate anger was the solitary emotion readable, so overcame Kellett’s passion that, stooping over, he grasped the other’s hand warmly, and said, —

“You ‘re a kind-hearted creature, and you ‘d never hurt a living soul. I ‘m not angry with you.”

“Thank you, Captain Kellett, – thank you,” cried the other, hurriedly, and wiped his brow, like one vainly endeavoring to follow out a chain of thought collectedly. “Who is this told me that you had another daughter?”

“No,” said Kellett; “I have a son.”

“Ay, to be sure! so it was a son, they said, and a fine strapping young fellow too. Where is he?”

“He ‘s with his regiment, the Rifles, in the Crimea.”

“Dear me, now, to think of that, – fighting the French, just the way his father did.”

“No,” said Kellett, smiling, “it ‘s the Russians he ‘s fighting, and the French are helping him to do it.”

“That’s better any day,” said Driscoll; “two to one is a pleasanter match. And so he’s in the Rifles?” And here he laid his head on his hand and seemed lost in thought. “Is he a captain?” asked he, after a long pause.

“No, not yet,” said Kellett, while his cheek flushed at the evasion he was practising.

“Well, maybe he will soon,” resumed the other, relapsing once more into deep thought. “There was a young fellow joined them in Cork just before they sailed, and I lent him thirty shillings, and he never paid me. I wonder what became of him? Maybe he’s killed.”