Davenport Dunn, a Man of Our Day. Volume 1

“You ‘d better take your friend’s advice, sir,” said the Captain. “It will be dirty weather out there, and you ‘ll be snugger under cover.” Beecher, however, declined; and the Captain, crossing the deck, repeated the same counsel to the other passenger.

“No, I thank you,” said he, gayly; “but if one of your men could spare me a cloak or a cape, I ‘d be much obliged, for I am somewhat ill-provided against wet weather.”

“I can let you have a rug, with pleasure,” said Beecher, overhearing the request; while he drew from a recess beneath the binnacle one of those serviceable aids to modern travel in the shape of a strong woollen blanket.

“I accept your offer most willingly, and the more so as I suspect I have had the honor of being presented to you,” said the stranger. “Do I address Mr. Annesley Beecher?”

“Eh? – I’m not aware – I’m not quite sure, by this light,” began Beecher, in considerable embarrassment, which the other as quickly perceived, and remedied by saying, —

“I met you at poor Kellett’s. My name is Conway.”

“Oh, Conway, – all right,” said Beecher, laughing. “I was afraid you might be a ‘dark horse,’ as we say. Now that I know your colors, I’m easy again.”

Conway laughed too at the frankness of the confession, and they turned to walk the deck together.

“You mentioned Kellett. He ‘s gone ‘toes up,’ is n’t he?” said Beecher.

“He is dead, poor fellow,” said Conway, gravely. “I expected to have met you at his funeral.”

“So I should have been had it come off on a Sunday,” said Beecher, pleasantly; “but as in seeing old Paul ‘tucked in’ they might have nabbed me, I preferred being reported absent without leave.”

“These were strong reasons, doubtless,” said Conway, dryly.

“I liked the old fellow, too,” said Beecher. “He was a bit of a bore, to be sure, about Arayo Molinos, and Albuera, and Soult, and Beresford, and the rest of ‘em; but he was a rare good one to help a fellow at a pinch, and hospitable as a prince.”

“That I ‘m sure of!” chimed in Conway.

“I know it, I can swear to it; I used to dine with him every Sunday, regularly as the day came. I’ll never forget those little tough legs of mutton, – wherever he found them there’s no saying, – and those hard pellets of capers, like big swan-shot, washed down with table beer and whiskey-grog, and poor Kellett thinking all the while he was giving you haunch of venison and red hermitage.”

“He ‘d have given them just as freely if he had them,” broke in Conway, half gruffly.

“That he would! He did so when he had it to give, – at least, so they tell me, for I never saw the old place at Kellett’s Town, or Castle Kellett – ”

“Kellett’s Court was the name.”

“Ay, to be sure, Kellett’s Court. I wonder how I could forget it, for I’m sure I heard it often enough.”

“One forgets many a thing they ought to remember,” said Conway, significantly.

“Hit him again, he hasn’t got no friends!” broke in Beecher, laughing jovially at this rebuke of himself. “You mean, that I ought to have a fresher memory about all old Paul’s kindnesses, and you ‘re right there; but if you knew how hard the world has hit me, how hot they ‘ve been giving it to me these years back, you ‘d perhaps not lean so heavily on me. Since the Epsom of ‘42,” said he, solemnly, “I never had one chance, not one, I pledge you my sacred word of honor. I ‘ve had my little ‘innings,’ you know, like every one else, – punted for five-pun-notes with the small ones, but never a real chance. Now, I call that hard, deuced hard.”

“I suppose it is hard,” said Conway; but, really, it would have been very difficult to say in what sense his words should be taken.

“And when a fellow finds himself always on the wrong side of the road,” said Beecher, who now fancied that he was taking a moralist’s view of life, and spoke with a philosophic solemnity, – “I say, when a fellow sees that, do what he will, he’s never on the right horse, he begins to be soured with the world, and to think that it’s all a regular ‘cross.’ Not that I ever gave in. No! ask any of the fellows up at Newmarket – ask the whole ring – ask – ” he was going to say Grog Davis, when he suddenly remembered the heavy judgment Conway had already fulminated on that revered authority, and then, quickly correcting himself, he said, “Ask any of the legs you like what stuff A. B. ‘s made of, – if he ain’t hammered iron, and no mistake!”

“But what do you mean when you say you never gave in?” asked Conway, half sternly.

“What do I mean?” said Beecher, repeating the words, half stunned by the boldness of the question, – “what do I mean? Why, I mean that they never saw me ‘down,’ – that no man can say Annesley Beecher ever said ‘die.’ Have n’t I had my soup piping hot, – spiced and peppered too! Was n’t I in for a pot on Blue Nose, when Mope ran a dead heat with Belshazzar for the Cloudeslie, – fifteen to three in fifties twice over, and my horse running in bandages, and an ounce of corrosive sublimate in his stomach! Well, you ‘d not believe it, – I don’t ask any one to believe it that did n’t see it, – but I was as cool as I am here, and I walked up to Lady Tinkerton’s drag and ate a sandwich; and when she said, ‘Oh! Mr. Beecher, do come and tell me what to bet on,’ I said to her, ‘Quicksilver’s the fastest of metals, but don’t back it just now.’ They had it all over the course in half an hour: ‘Quicksilver’s the fastest of metals – ‘”

“I’m afraid I don’t quite catch your meaning.”

“It was alluding to the bucketing, you know. They ‘d just given Blue Nose corrosive sublimate, which is a kind of quicksilver.”

“Oh, I perceive,” said Conway.

“Good, – wasn’t it?” said Beecher, chuckling. “Let A. B. alone to ‘sarve them out,’ – that’s what all the legs said!” And then he heaved a little sigh, as though to say that, after all, even wit and smartness were only a vanity and a vexation of spirit, and that a “good book” was better than them all.

“I detest the whole concern,” said Conway. “So long as gentlemen bred and trained to run their horses in honorable rivalry, it was a noble sport, and well became the first squirearchy of the world; but when it degenerated into a field for every crafty knave and trickster, – when the low cunning of the gambler succeeded to the bold daring of the true lover of racing, – then the turf became no better than the rouge et noir table, without even the poor consolation of thinking that chance was any element in the result.”

“Why, what would you have? It’s a game where the best player wins, that’s all,” broke in Beecher.

“If you mean it is always a contest where the best horse carries away the prize, I enter my denial to the assertion. If it were so, the legs would have no existence, and all that classic vocabulary of ‘nobbling,’ ‘squaring,’ and so on, have no dictionary.”

“It’s all the same the whole world over,” broke in Beecher. “The wide-awake ones will have the best seat on the coach.”

Conway made no reply; but the increased energy with which he puffed his cigar bespoke the impatience he was suffering under.

“What became of the daughter?” asked Beecher, abruptly; and then, not awaiting the answer, went on: “A deuced good-looking girl, if properly togged out, but she had n’t the slightest notion of dressing herself.”

“Their narrow fortune may have had something to say to that,” said Conway, gravely.

“Where there’s a will, there’s a way, – that ‘s my idea. I was never so hard up in life but I could make my tailor torn me out like a gentleman. I take it,” added he, returning to the former theme, “she was a proud one. Old Kellett was awfully afraid of doing many a thing from the dread of her knowing it. He told me so himself.”

“Indeed!” exclaimed Conway, with evident pleasure in the tone.

“I could have helped him fifty ways. I knew fellows who would have ‘done’ his bills, – small sums, of course, – and have shoved him along pleasantly enough, but she would n’t have it at any price.”

“I was not aware of that,” remarked Conway, inviting, by his manner, further revelations.

Beecher, however, mistaking the source of the interest he had thus excited, and believing that his own craft and shrewdness were the qualities that awakened respect, went on to show how conversant he was with all financial operations amongst Jews and money-lenders, proudly declaring that there was not a “man on town” knew the cent per centers as he did.

“I’ve had my little dealings with them,” said he, with some vanity in the manner. “I ‘ve had my paper done when there was n’t a fellow on the ‘turf’ could raise a guinea. You see,” added he, lowering his voice to a whisper that implied secrecy, “I could do them a service no money could repay. I was up to all that went on in life and at the clubs. When Etheridge got it so heavy at the ‘Rag,’ I warned Fordyce not to advance him beyond a hundred or two. I was the only gentleman knew Brookdale’s horse could win ‘the Ripsley.’ The legs, of course, knew it well before the race came off. Jemmy could have had ten thousand down for his ‘book.’ Ah! if you and I had only known each other six years ago, what a stroke of work we might have done together! Even now,” said he, with increased warmth of voice, “there’s a deuced deal to be done abroad. Brussels and Florence are far from worked out; not among the foreigners, of course, but our own fellows, – the young Oxford and Cambridge ‘saps,’ – the green ones waiting for their gazette in the Guards! Where are you bound for? – what are you doing?” asked he, as if a sudden thought had crossed his mind.

“I am endeavoring to get back to the Crimea,” said Conway, smiling at the prospect which the other had with such frankness opened to him.

“The Crimea!” exclaimed Beecher, “why, that is downright madness; they ‘re fighting away there just as fresh as ever. The very last paper I saw is filled with an account of a Russian sortie against our lines, and a lot of our fellows killed and wounded.”

“Of course there are hard knocks – ”

“It’s all very well to talk of it that way, but I think you might have been satisfied with what you saw, I ‘d just as soon take a cab down to Guy’s, or the Middlesex Hospital, and ask one of the house-surgeons to cut me up at his own discretion, as go amongst those Russian savages. I tell you it don’t pay, – not a bit of it!”

“I suppose, as to the paying part, you ‘re quite right; but, remember, there are different modes of estimating the same thing. Now, I like soldiering – ”

“No accounting for tastes,” broke in Beecher. “I knew a fellow who was so fond of the Queen’s Bench Prison he would n’t let his friends clear him out; but, seriously speaking, the Crimea ‘s a bad book.”

“I should be a very happy fellow to-night if I knew how I could get back there. I ‘ve been trying in various ways for employment in any branch of the service. I ‘d rather be a driver in the Wagon Train than whip the neatest four-in-hand over Epsom Downs.”

“There ‘s only one name for that,” said Beecher; “at least, out of Hanwell.”