Davenport Dunn, a Man of Our Day. Volume 1

“Then there is no title in our family?” said she, inquiringly.

“I believe not; but you are aware that this is very largely the case in England. We are not all ‘marquises’ and ‘counts’ and ‘chevaliers,’ like foreigners.”

“I like a title; I like its distinctiveness: the sense of carrying out a destiny, transmitting certain traits of race and kindred, seems a fine and ennobling thing; and this one has not, one cannot have, who has no past. So that,” said she, after a pause, “papa is only what you would call a ‘gentleman.’”

“‘Gentleman’ is a very proud designation, believe me,” said he, evading an answer.

“And how would they address me in England, – am I ‘my Lady’?”

“No, you are Miss Davis.”

“How meanly it sounds, – it might be a governess, a maid.”

“When you are married, you take the rank and title of your husband, – a duchess, if he be a duke.”

“A duchess be it, then,” said she, in that light, volatile tone she was ever best pleased to employ, while, with a rattling gayety, she went on: “How I should love to be one of those great people you have described to me, – soaring away in all that ideal splendor which would come of a life of boundless cost, the actual and the present being only suggestive of a thousand fancied enjoyments! What glorious visions might one conjure up out of the sportiveness of an untrammelled will! Yes, Mr. Beecher, I have made up my mind, – I ‘ll be a duchess!”

“But you might have all these as a marchioness, a countess – ”

“No, I ‘ll be a duchess; you sha’n’t cheat me out of my just claims.”

“Will your Grace please to give orders about packing up, for we must be away soon after one o’clock,” said he, laughing.

“If I were not humility itself, I’d say the train should await my convenience,” said she, as she left the room with a proud and graceful dignity that would have become a queen.

For a few moments Beecher sat silent and thoughtful in his chair, and then burst out into a fit of immoderate laughing, – he laughed till his eyes ran over and his sides ached. “If this ain’t going the pace, I ‘d like to know what speed is!” cried he, aloud. “I wonder what old Grog would say if he heard her; and the best of the joke is, she is serious all the while. She is in the most perfect good faith about it all. And this comes of the absurdity of educating her out of her class. What a strange blunder for so clever a head to make! You might have guessed, Master Grog, that she never could be a ‘plater.’ Let her only enter for a grand match, and she ‘ll be ‘scratched’ from one end of England to the other. Ay, Davis, my boy, you fancy pedigrees are only cared for on the turf; but there is a Racing Calendar, edited by a certain Debrett, that you never heard of.”

Again, he thought of Davis as a peer, – “Viscount Davis!” Baron Grog, as he muttered it, came across him, and he burst out once more into laughter; then suddenly checking himself, he said, “I must take right good care, though, that he never hears of this same conversation; he’s just the fellow to say I led her on to laugh at and ridicule him; he ‘d suspect in a moment that I took her that pleasant gallop, – and if he did – ” A long, wailing whistle finished the sentence for him.

Other and not very agreeable reflections succeeded these. It was this very morning that he himself had determined on “levanting,” and there he was, more securely moored than ever. He looked at his watch, and muttered, “Eleven o’clock; by this time I should have been at Verviers, and on the Rhine before midnight. In four days more, I ‘d have had the Alps between us, and now here I am without the chance of escape; for if I bolted and left his daughter here, he’d follow me through the world to shoot me!”

He sat silent for some minutes, and then, suddenly springing up from his chair, he cried out, —

“Precious hard luck it is! but I can neither get on with this fellow nor without him;” and with this “summing up” he went off to his room to finish his preparations for the road.

CHAPTER XXXII. THE COUPÉ ON THE RAIL

Annesley Beecher felt it “deuced odd” to be the travelling companion and protector of a very beautiful girl of nineteen, to whose fresh youth every common object of the road was a thing of wonderment and curiosity; the country, the people, the scores of passengers arriving or departing, the chance incidents of the way all amused her. She possessed that power of deriving intense enjoyment from the mere aspect of life that characterizes certain minds, and while thus each little incident interested her, her gay and lively sallies animated one who without her companionship had smoked his cigar in half-sulky isolation, voting journey and fellow-travellers “most monstrous bores.” As they traversed that picturesque tract between Chaude Fontaine and Verviers, her delight and enjoyment increased. Those wonderful little landscapes which open at the exit from each tunnel, and where to the darkness and the gloom succeed, as if by magic, those rapid glances at swelling lawns, deep-bosomed woods, and winding rivers, with peaceful homesteads dotting the banks, were so many surprises full of marvellous beauty.

“Ah! Mr. Beecher,” said she, as they emerged upon one of these charming spots, “I’m half relenting about my decision in regard to greatness. I think that in those lovely valleys yonder, where the tall willows are hanging over the river, there might possibly be an existence I should like better than the life of even a duchess.”

“It’s a much easier ambition to gratify,” said he, smiling.

“It was not of that I was thinking,” said she, haughtily, “nor am I so certain you are right there. I take it people can generally be that they have set their heart on being.”

“I should like to be convinced of your theory,” cried he, “for I have been I can’t say how many years wishing for fifty things I have never succeeded in attaining.”

“What else have you done besides wishing?” asked she, abruptly.

“Well, that is a hard question,” said he, in some confusion; “and after all, I don’t see what remained to me to do but wish.”

“If that were all, it is pretty clear you had no right to succeed. When I said that people can have what they set their heart on, I meant what they so longed for that no toil was too great, no sacrifice too painful to deter them; that with eyes upturned to the summit they could breast the mountain, not minding weariness, and even when, footsore and exhausted, they sank down, they arose to the same enterprise, unshaken in courage, unbroken in faith. Have you known this?”

“I can scarcely say I have; but as to the longing and pining after a good turn of fortune, I’ll back myself against any one going.”

“That’s the old story of the child crying for the moon,” said she, laughing. “Now, what was it you longed for so ardently?”

“Can’t you guess?”

“You wanted to marry some one who would not have you, or who was beneath you, or too poor, or too some-thing-or-other for your grand relations?”

“No, not that.”

“You aspired to some great distinction as a politician, or a soldier, or perhaps a sailor?”

“No, by Jove! never dreamed of it,” burst he in, laughing at the very idea.

“You sighed for some advancement in rank, or perhaps it was great wealth?”

“There you have it! Plenty of money – lots of ready – with that all the rest comes easy.”

“It must be very delightful, no doubt, to indulge every passing caprice, without ever counting the cost; but, after a while, what a spoilt-child weariness would come over one from all this cloying enjoyment, – how tiresome would it be to shorten the journey between will and accomplishment, and make of life a mere succession of ‘tableaux’! I ‘d rather strive and struggle and win.”

“Ay, but one does n’t always win,” broke he in.

“I believe one does – if one deserves it; and even when one does not, the battle is a fine thing. How much sympathy, I ask you, have we for those classic heroes who are always helped out of their difficulties by some friendly deity? What do we feel for him who, in the thick of the fight, is sure to be rescued by a goddess in a cloud?”

“I confess I do like a good ‘book,’ ‘hedged’ well all round, and standing to win somewhere. I mean,” added he, in an explanatory tone, “I like to be safe in this world.”

“Stand on the bank of the stream, then, and let bolder hearts push across the river!”

“Well, but I ‘m rather out of patience,” said he, in a tone of half irritation. “I ‘ve had many a venture in life, and too many of them unfortunate ones.”

“How I do wonder,” said she, after a pause, “that you and papa are such great friends; for I have rarely heard of two people who take such widely different notions of life. You seem to me all caution and reserve; he, all daring and energy.”

“That’s the reason, perhaps, we suit each other so well,” said Beecher, laughing.

“It may be so,” said she, thoughtfully; and now there was silence between them.

“Have you got sisters, Mr. Beecher?” said she, at length.

“No; except I may call my brother’s wife one.”

“Tell me of her. Is she young? – is she handsome?”

“She is not young, but she is still a very handsome woman.”

“Dark or fair?”