Davenport Dunn, a Man of Our Day. Volume 1

“Very dark, almost Spanish in complexion; a great deal of haughtiness in her look, but great courtesy when she pleases.”

“Would she like me?”

“Of course she would,” said he, with a smile and a bow; but a flush covered his face at the bare thought of their meeting.

“I ‘m not so certain you are telling the truth there,” said she, laughing; “and yet you know there can be no offence in telling me I should not suit some one I have never seen; do, then, be frank with me, and say what would she think of me.”

“To begin,” said he, laughing, “she ‘d say you were very beautiful – ”

“‘Exquisitely beautiful,’ was the phrase of that old gentleman that got into the next carriage; and I like it better.”

“Well, exquisitely beautiful, – the perfection of gracefulness, – and highly accomplished.”

“She’d not say any such thing; she’d not describe me like a governess; she ‘d probably say I was too demonstrative, – that’s a phrase in vogue just now, – and hint that I was a little vulgar. But I assure you,” added she, seriously, “I’m not so when I speak French. It is a stupid attempt on my part to catch up what I imagine must be English frankness when I talk the language that betrays me into all these outspoken extravagances. Let us talk French now.”

“You ‘ll have the conversation very nearly to yourself then,” said Beecher, “for I’m a most indifferent linguist.”

“Well, then, I must ask you to take my word for it, and believe that I ‘m well bred when I can afford it. But your sister, – do tell me of her.”

“She is ‘très grande dame,’ as you would call it,” said Beecher; “very quiet, very cold, extremely simple in language, dresses splendidly, and never knows wrong people.”

“Who are wrong people?”

“I don’t exactly know how to define them; but they are such as are to be met with in society, not by claim of birth and standing, but because they are very rich, or very clever, in some way or other, – people, in fact, that one has to ask who they are.”

“I understand. But that must apply to a pretty wide circle of this world’s habitants.”

“So it does. A great part of Europe, and all America,” said Beecher, laughing.

“And papa and myself, how should we come through this formidable inquiry?”

“Well,” said he, hesitating, “your father has always lived so much out of the world, – this kind of world, I mean, – so studiously retired, that the chances are that, in short – ”

“In short, they ‘d ask, ‘Who are these Davises?’” She threw into her face, as she spoke, such an admirable mimicry of proud pretension that Beecher laughed immoderately at it “And when they ‘d ask it,” continued she, “I ‘d be very grateful to you to tell me what to reply to them, since I own to you it is a most puzzling question to myself.”

“Well,” said Beecher, in some embarrassment, “it is strange enough; but though your father and I are very old friends, – as intimate as men can possibly be, – yet he has never spoken to me about his family or connections, – nay, so far has he carried his reserve, that, until yesterday, I was not aware he had a daughter.”

“You don’t mean to say he never spoke of me?”

“Never to me, at least; and, as I have told you, I believe no one possesses a larger share of his confidence than myself.”

“That was strange,” said she, in deep reflection. Then, after a few minutes, she resumed: “If I had a story of my life I ‘d tell it you; but there is really none, or next to none. As a child, I was at school in Cornwall. Later on, papa came and fetched me away to a small cottage near Walmer, where I lived with a sort of governess, who treated me with great deference, – in short, observed towards me so much respect that I grew to believe I was something very exalted and distinguished, a sort of ‘Man in the Iron Mask,’ whose pretensions had only to be known to convulse half Europe. Thence I passed over to the Pensionnat at the Three Fountains, where I found, if not the same homage, all the indications of my being regarded as a privileged individual. I had my maid; I enjoyed innumerable little indulgences none others possessed. I ‘m not sure whether the pony I rode at the riding-school was my own or not; I only know that none mounted him but myself. In fact, I was treated like one apart, and all papa’s letters only reiterated the same order, – I was to want for nothing. Of course, these teachings could impress but one lesson, – that I was a person of high rank and great fortune; and of this I never entertained a doubt. Now,” added she, with more energy, “so far as I understand its uses, I do like wealth, and so far as I can fancy its privileges, I love rank; but if the tidings came suddenly upon me that I had neither one nor the other, I feel a sort of self-confidence that tells me I should not be dispirited or discouraged.”

Beecher gazed at her with such admiration that a deep blush rose to her face, as she said, “You may put this heroism of mine to the test at once, by telling me frankly what you know about my station. Am I a Princess in disguise, Mr. Beecher, or am I only an item in the terrible category of what you have just called ‘wrong people’?”

If the dread and terror of Grog Davis had been removed from Annesley Beecher’s mind, there is no saying to what excess of confidence the impulse of the moment might have carried him. He was capable of telling her any and every thing. For a few seconds, indeed, the thought of being her trusted friend so overcame his prudence that he actually took her hand between his own, as the prelude of the revelations he was about to open; when, suddenly, a vision of Davis swept before his mind, – Davis, in one of his moods of wrath, paroxysms of passion as they were, wherein he stopped at nothing. “He ‘d send me to the dock as a felon; he ‘d shoot me down like a dog,” muttered he to himself, as, dropping her hand, he leaned back in the carriage.

She bent over and looked calmly into his face. Her own was now perfectly pale and colorless, and then, with a faint, sad smile, she said, —

“I see that you ‘d like to gratify me. It is through some sense of delicacy and reserve that you hesitate. Be it so. Let us be good friends now, and perhaps, in time, we may trust each other thoroughly.”

Beecher took her hand once more, and, bending down, kissed it fervently. What a strange thrill was that that ran through his heart, and what an odd sense of desolation was it as he relinquished that fair, soft hand, as though it were that by its grasp he held on to life and hope together! “Oh,” muttered he to himself, “why was not she – why was not he himself – twenty things that neither of them were?”

“I wish I could read your thoughts,” said she, smiling gently at him.

“I wish to heaven you could!” cried he, with an honest energy that his nature had not known for many a day.

For the remainder of the way neither spoke, beyond some chance remark upon the country or the people. It was as though the bridge between them was yet too frail to cross, and that they trusted to time to establish that interchange of thought and confidence which each longed for.

“Here we are at the end of our journey!” said he, with a sigh, as they entered Aix.

“And the beginning of our friendship,” said she, with a smile, while she held out her hand to pledge the contract.

So intently was Beecher gazing at her face that he did not notice the action.

“Won’t you have it?” asked she, laughing.

“Which,” cried he, – “the hand or the friendship?”

“I meant the friendship,” said she, quietly.

“Tickets, sir!” said the guard, entering. “We are at the station.”

Annesley Beecher was soon immersed in all those bustling cares which attend the close of a journey; and though Lizzy seemed to enjoy the confusion and turmoil that prevailed, he was far from happy amidst the anxieties about baggage and horse-boxes, the maid and the groom each tormenting him in the interests of their several departments. All was, however, safe; not a cap-case was missing; Klepper “never lost a hair;” and they drove off to the Hotel of the Four Nations in high spirits all.

CHAPTER XXXIII. THE “FOUR NATIONS” AT AIX

All the bustle of “settling down” in the hotel over, Annesley Beecher began to reflect a little on the singularity of his situation. The wondering admiration which had followed Lizzy Davis wherever she appeared on the journey seemed to have reached its climax now, and little knots and groups of lounging travellers were to be seen before the windows, curious to catch a glance at this surpassing beauty. Now, had she been his bona fide property, he was just the man to derive the most intense enjoyment from this homage at second hand; he ‘d have exulted and triumphed in it. His position was, however, a very different one, and, as merely her companion, while it exposed her to very depreciating judgments, it also necessitated on his part a degree of haughty defiance and championship for which he had not the slightest fancy whatever.

Annesley Beecher dragged into a row for Grog Davis’s daughter, Beecher fighting some confounded Count or other about Lizzy Davis, Annesley shot by some Zouave Captain who insisted on waltzing with his “friend,” – these were pleasant mind-pictures which he contemplated with the very reverse of enjoyment; and yet the question of her father’s station away, he felt it was a cause wherein even one who had no more love for the “duello” than himself might well have perilled life. All her loveliness and grace had not been wasted when they could kindle up a little gleam of chivalry in the embers of that wasted heart!

He ran over in his mind all the Lady Julias and Georginasof the fashionable world. He bethought him of each of those who had been the queens of London seasons, and yet how vastly were they all her inferiors! It was not alone that in beauty she eclipsed them, but she possessed, besides, the thousand nameless attractions of manner and gesture, a certain blended dignity and youthful gayety that made her seem the very ideal of high-born loveliness. He had seen dukes’ daughters who could not vie with her in these gifts; he had known countesses immeasurably beneath her. From these thoughts he went on to others as to her future, and the kind of fellow that might marry her; for, strangely enough, in all his homage there mingled the ever-present memory of Grog and his pursuits. Mountjoy Stubbs might marry her; he has fifty thousand a year, and his father was a pawnbroker. Lockwood Harris might marry her; he got all his money from the slave trade. There were three or four more, – all wealthy, and all equivocal in position: men to be seen in clubs, to be dined with and played with; fellows who had yachts at Cowes and grouse-lodges in Scotland, and yet in London were “nowhere.” These men could within their own sphere do all they pleased, – they could afford any extravagance they fancied; and what a delightful extravagance it would be to marry Lizzy Davis! Often as he had envied these men, he never did so more than now. They had no responsibilities of station ever hanging over them; no brothers in the Peerage to bully them about this; no sisters in waiting to worry them about that. They could always, as he phrased it, “paint their coach their own color,” without any fear of the Herald’s Office; and what better existence could a man wish for than a prolific fancy and unlimited funds to indulge it. “If I were Stubbs, I ‘d marry her.” This he said fully a dozen times over, and even confirmed it with an oath. And what an amiable race of people are the Stubbses of this habitable globe! how loosely do responsibilities sit upon them! how generously are they permitted every measure of extravagance and every violation of good taste! What a painful contrast did his mind draw between Stubbs’ condition and his own! There was a time, too, when the State repaired in some sort the injustice that younger sons groaned under, – the public service was full of the Lord Charleses and the Honorables, who looked up to a paternal Government for their support; but now there was actually a run against them. Beecher argued himself so warmly into this belief, that he said aloud, “If I asked for something to-morrow, they ‘d refuse me, just because I ‘ve a brother a Peer!”

The reader is already aware what a compensation he found for all his defeats and shortcomings in life by arraigning the injustice of the world. Downing Street, the turf, Lackington, Tattersall’s, the Horse Guards, and “the little hell in St. James’s Street” were all in a league to crush him; but he’d show them “a turn round the corner yet,” he said; and with a saucy laugh of derision at all the malevolence of fortune, he set about dressing for dinner. Beecher was not only a very good-looking fellow, but he had that stamp of man of fashion on him which all the contamination of low habits and low associates had not effaced. His address was easy and unaffected, his voice pleasantly toned, his smile sufficiently ready; and his whole manner was an agreeable blending of deference with a sort of not ungraceful self-esteem. Negatives best describe the class of men he belonged to, and any real excellence he possessed was in not being a great number of things which form, unhappily, the social defects of a large section of humanity. He was never loud, never witty, never oracular, never anecdotic; and although the slang of the turf and its followers clung to him, he threw out its “dialectics” so laughingly that he even seemed to be himself ridiculing the quaint phraseology he employed.

We cannot venture to affirm that our readers might have liked his company, but we are safe in asserting that Lizzy Davis did so. He possessed that very experience of life – London life – that amused her greatly. She caught up with an instinctive quickness the meaning of those secret springs which move society, and where, though genius and wealth are suffered to exercise their influence, the real power is alone centred in those who are great by station and hereditary claims. She saw that the great Brahmins of fashion maintained a certain exclusiveness which no pretensions ever breached, and that to this consciousness of an unassailable position was greatly owing all the dignified repose and serenity of their manner. She made him recount to her the style of living in the country houses of England, – the crowds of visitors that came and went, the field-sports, the home resources that filled up the day, while intrigues of politics or fashion went silently on beneath the surface. She recognized that in this apparently easy and indolent existence a great game was ever being played, and that all the workings of ambition, all the passions of love and hate and fear and jealousy “were on the board.”

They had dined sumptuously. The equivocal position in which they appeared, far from detracting from the deference of the hotel people, served but to increase their homage. Experience had shown that such persons as they were supposed to be spent most and paid best, and so they were served on the most splendid plate; waiters in full dress attended them; even to the bouquet of hothouse flowers left on “Mademoiselle’s” napkin, all were little evidences of that consideration of which Annesley Beecher well knew the meaning.

“Will you please to enlighten my ignorance on one point, Mr. Beecher?” said she, as they sat over their coffee. “Is it customary in this rigid England, of which you have told me so many things, for a young unmarried lady to travel alone with a gentleman who is not even a relative?”

“When her father so orders it, I don’t see that there can be much wrong in it,” said he, with some hesitation.

“That is not exactly an answer to my question; although I may gather from it that the proceeding is, at least, unusual.”

“I won’t say it’s quite customary,” said Beecher; “but taking into account that I am a very old and intimate friend of your father’s – ”

“There must, then, have been some very pressing emergency to make papa adopt such a course,” interrupted she.