Davenport Dunn, a Man of Our Day. Volume 1

Beecher shook his friend’s hand with a warmth that showed all his wonted cordiality, and with a hearty “Good-night!” they separated.

Grog had managed cleverly. He had done something by terror, and the rest he had accomplished by temptation. They were the two only impulses to sway that strange temperament.

CHAPTER XXI. A DARK DAY

It was the day appointed for the sale of Kellett’s Court, and a considerable crowd was assembled to witness the proceeding. Property was rapidly changing hands; new names were springing up in every county, and old ones were growing obsolete. Had the tide of conquest and confiscation flowed over the land, a greater social revolution could not have resulted; and while many were full of hope and confidence that a new prosperity was about to dawn upon Ireland, there were some who continued to deplore the extinction of the old names, and the exile of the old families, whose traditions were part of the history of the country.

Kellett’s Court was one of those great mansions which the Irish gentlemen of a past age were so given to building, totally forgetting how great the disproportion was between their house and their rent-roll. Irregular, incongruous, and inelegant, it yet, by its very size and extent, possessed a certain air of grandeur. Eighty guests had sat down to table in that oak wainscoted dinner-room; above a hundred had been accommodated with beds beneath that roof; the stables had stalls for every hunting-man that came; and the servants’ hall was a great galleried chamber, like the refectory of a convent, in everything save the moderation of the fare.

Many were curious to know who would purchase an estate burdened by so costly a residence, the very maintenance of which in repair constituted a heavy annual outlay. The gardens, long neglected and forgotten, occupied three acres, and were themselves a source of immense expense; a considerable portion of the demesne was so purely ornamental that it yielded little or no profit; and, as an evidence of the tastes and habits of its former owners, the ruins of a stand-house marked out where races once were held in the park, while hurdle fences and deep drains even yet disfigured the swelling lawn.

Who was to buy such a property was the question none could answer. The house, indeed, might be converted into a “Union,” if its locality suited; it was strong enough for a jail, it was roomy enough for a nunnery. Some averred the Government had decided on purchasing it for a barrack; others pretended that the sisterhood of the Sacred Heart had already made their bargain for it; yet to these and many other assertions not less confidently uttered there were as many demurrers.

While rumors and contradictions were still buzzed about, the Commissioner took his place on the bench, and the clerk of the Court began that tedious recital of the circumstances of the estate with whose details all the interested were already familiar, and the mere curious cared not to listen to. An informality on a former day had interfered with the sale, a fact which the Commissioner alluded to with satisfaction, as property had risen largely in value in the interval, and he now hoped that the estate would not alone clear off all the charges against it, but realize something for its former owner. A confused murmur of conversation followed this announcement. Men talked in knots and groups, consulted maps and rent-rolls, made hasty calculations in pencil, whispered secretly together, muttering frequently the words “Griffith,” “plantation measure,” “drainage,” and “copyhold,” and then, in a half-hurried, half-wearied way, the Court asked, “Is there no bidding after twenty-seven thousand five hundred?”

“Twenty-eight!” said a deep voice near the door.

A long, dreary pause followed, and the sale was over.

“Twenty-eight thousand!” cried Lord Glengariff; “the house alone cost fifty.”

“It’s only the demesne, my Lord,” said some one near; “it’s not the estate is sold.”

“I know it, sir; but the demesne contains eight hundred acres, fully wooded, and enclosed by a wall. – Who is it for, Dunn?” asked he, turning to that gentleman.

“In trust, my Lord,” was the reply.

“Of that I am aware, sir; you have said as much to the Court.”

Dunn bent over, and whispered some words in his ear.

“Indeed!” exclaimed the other, with evident astonishment; “and intending to reside?” added he.

“Eventually, I expect so,” said Dunn, cautiously, as others were now attending to the conversation.

Again Lord Glengariff spoke; but, ere he had finished, a strange movement of confusion in the body of the Court interrupted him, while a voice hoarse with passionate meaning cried out, “Is the robbery over? – is it done?” and a large, powerful man, his face flushed, and his eyes glaring wildly, advanced through the crowd to the railing beneath the bench. His waistcoat was open, and he held his cravat in one hand, having torn it off in the violence of his excitement.

“Who is this man?” asked the Commissioner, sternly.

“I’ll tell you who I am, – Paul Kellett, of Kellett’s Court, the owner of that house and estate you and your rascally miscreants have just stolen from me, – ay, stolen is the word; law or justice have nothing to do with it. Your Parliament made it law, to be sure, to pamper your Manchester upstarts who want to turn gentlemen – ”

“Does any one know him? – has he no friends who will look after him?” said the Commissioner, leaning over and addressing those beneath in a subdued voice.

“Devil a friend in the world! It’s few friends stick to the man whose property comes here. But don’t make me out mad. I ‘m in my full senses, though I had enough to turn fifty men to madness.”

“I know him, my Lord; with the permission of the Court, I ‘ll take charge of him,” said Dunn, in a tone so low as to be audible only to a few. Kellett, however, was one of them, and he immediately cried out, —

“Take charge of me! Ay, that he will. He took charge of my estate, too, and he ‘ll do by me what he did with the property, – give a bargain of me!”

A hearty burst of laughter filled the hall at this sally; for Dunn was one of those men whose prosperity always warrants the indulgence of a sarcasm. The Court, however, could no longer brook the indecorous interruption, and sternly ordered that Kellett might be removed.

“My dear Mr. Kellett, pray remember yourself; only recollect where you are; such conduct will only expose you – ”

“Expose me! do you think I’ve any shame left in me? Do you think, when a man is turned out to starve on the roads, that he cares much what people say of him?”

“This interruption is intolerable,” said the Commissioner. “If he be not speedily removed, I ‘ll order him into the custody of the police.”

“Do, in God’s name,” cried Kellett, calmly. “Anything that will keep me from laying hands on myself, or somebody else, will be a charity.”

“Come with me, Kellett, – do come along with me!” said Dunn, entreatingly.

“Not a step, – not an inch. It was going with you brought me here. This man, my Lord,” cried he, addressing the Court with a wild earnestness, – “this man said to me that this was the time to sell a property, – that land was rising every day; that if we came into the Court now, it’s not twenty, nor twenty-five, but thirty years’ purchase – ”

“I am sorry, sir,” said the Commissioner, sternly, “that you will give me no alternative but that of committing you; such continued disrespect of Court cannot longer be borne.”

“I ‘m as well in jail as anywhere else. You ‘ve robbed me of my property, I care little for my person. I’ll never believe it’s law, – never! You may sit up with your wig and your ushers and your criers, but you are just a set of thieves and swindlers, neither more nor less. Talk of shame, indeed! I think some of yourselves might blush at what you ‘re doing. There, there, I ‘m not going to resist you,” said he to the policeman; “there’s no need of roughness. Newgate is the best place for me now. Mind,” added he, turning to where the reporters for the daily press were sitting, – “mind and say that I just offered a calm protest against the injustice done me; that I was civilly remonstrating with the Court upon what every man – ”

Ere he could finish, he was quietly removed from the spot, and before the excitement of the scene had subsided, he was driving away rapidly towards Newgate.

“Drunk or mad, – which was it?” said Lord Glengariff to Davenport Dunn, whose manner was scarcely as composed as usual.

“He has been drinking, but not to drunkenness,” said Dunn, cautiously. “He is certainly to be pitied.” And now he drew nigh the bench and whispered a few words to the Commissioner.

Whatever it was that he urged – and there was an air of entreaty in his manner – did not seem to meet the concurrence of the judge. Dunn pleaded earnestly, however; and at last the Commissioner said, “Let him be brought up tomorrow, then, and having made a suitable apology to the Court, we will discharge him.” Thus ended the incident, and once more the clerk resumed his monotonous readings. Townlands and baronies were described, valuations quoted, rights of turbary defined, and an ancient squirearchy sold out of their possessions with as little commotion or excitement as a mock Claude is knocked down at Christie’s. Indeed, of so little moment was the scene we have mentioned deemed, that scarcely half a dozen lines of the morning papers were given to its recital. The Court and its doings were evidently popular with the country at large, and one of the paragraphs which readers read with most pleasure was that wherein it was recorded that estates of immense value had just changed owners, and that the Commissioner had disposed of so many thousands’ worth of landed property within the week.

Sweeping measures, of whatever nature they be, have always been in favor with the masses; never was any legislation so popular as the guillotine!

Evening was closing in, the gloomy ending of a gloomy day in winter, and Sybella Kellett sat at the window anxiously watching for her father’s return. The last two days had been passed by her in a state of feverish uneasiness. Since her father’s attendance at the custom-house ceased, – . for he had been formally dismissed at the beginning of the week, – his manner had exhibited strange alternations of wild excitement and deep depression. At times he would move hurriedly about, talking rapidly, sometimes singing to himself; at others he would sit in a state of torpor for hours. He drank, too, affecting some passing pain or some uneasiness as an excuse for the whiskey-bottle; and when gently remonstrated with on the evil consequences, became fearfully passionate and excited. “I suppose I ‘ll be called a drunkard next; there ‘s nothing more likely than I ‘ll be told it was my own sottish habits brought all this ruin upon me. ‘He ‘s a sot.’ – ‘He ‘s never sober.’ – ‘Ask his own daughter about him.’” And then stimulating himself, he would become furious with rage. As constantly, too, did he inveigh against Dunn, saying that it was he that ruined him, and that had he not listened to his treacherous counsels he might have arranged matters with his creditors. From these bursts of passion he would fall into moods of deepest melancholy, accusing his own folly and recklessness as the cause of all his misfortunes, and even pushing self-condemnation so far as to assert that it was his misconduct and waste had driven poor Jack from home and made him enlist as a soldier.

Bella could not but see that his intellect was affected and his judgment impaired, and she made innumerable pretexts to be ever near him. Now she pretended that she required air and exercise, that her spirits were low, and needed companionship. Then she affected to have little purchases to make in town, and asked him to bear her company. At length he showed a restlessness under this restraint that obliged her to relax it; he even dropped chance words as if he suspected that he was the object of some unusual care and supervision. “There’s no need of watching me,” said he, rudely, to her on the morning that preceded the sale; “I ‘m in no want of a keeper. They ‘ll see Paul Kellett ‘s not the man to quail under any calamity; the same to-day, to-morrow, and the next day. Sell him out or buy him in, and you ‘ll never know by his face that he felt it.”

He spoke very little on that morning, and scarcely tasted his breakfast. His dress was more careful than usual; and Bella, half by way of saying something, asked if he were going into Dublin.

“Into Dublin! I suppose I am, indeed,” said he, curtly, as though giving a very obvious reply. “Maybe,” added he, after a few minutes, – “maybe you forget this is the seventeenth, and that this is the day for the sale.”

“I did remember it,” said she, with a faint sigh, but not daring to ask how his presence there was needed.

“And you were going to say,” added he, with a bitter smile, “what did that matter to me, and that wasn’t wanted. Neither I am, – I ‘m neither seller nor buyer; but still I ‘m the last of the name that lived there, – I was Kellett of Kellett’s Court, and there ‘ll never be another to say the same, and I owe it to myself to be there to-day, – just as I ‘d attend a funeral, – just as I ‘d follow the hearse.”

“It will only give you needless pain, dearest father,” said she, soothingly; “pray do not go.”

“Faith, I’ll go if it gave me a fit,” said he, fiercely. “They may say when they go home, ‘Paul Kellett was there the whole time, as cool as I am now; you ‘d never believe it was the old family place – the house his ancestors lived in for centuries – was up for sale; there he was, calm and quiet If that is n’t courage, tell me what is.’”

“And yet I ‘d rather you did not go, father. The world has trials enough to tax our energies, that we should not go in search of them.”

“That’s a woman’s way of looking at it,” said he, contemptuously.

“A man with a man’s heart likes to meet danger, just to see how he ‘ll treat it.”