Davenport Dunn, a Man of Our Day. Volume 1

“Why so?” asked he. “Is the arrangement so very distasteful to you?”

“Perhaps not; perhaps I like it very well. Perhaps I find you very agreeable, very amusing, very – What shall I say?”

“Respectful.”

“If you like that epithet, I have no objection to put it in your character. Yet still do I come back to the thought that papa could scarcely have struck out this plan without some grave necessity. Now, I should like much to know what that is, or was.” Beecher made no sign of reply, and she quickly asked, “Do you know his reasons?”

“Yes,” said he, gravely; “but I prefer that you should not question me about them.”

“I can’t help that, Mr. Beecher,” said she, in that half-careless tone she sometimes used. “Just listen to me for one moment,” said she, earnestly, and fixing her eyes fully on him, – “just hear me attentively. From what I have gathered from your account of England and its habits, I am certainly now doing that which, to say the least, is most unusual and unwarrantable. Now, either there is a reason so grave for this that it makes a choice of evils imperative, – and, therefore, I ought to have my choice, – or there is another even worse interpretation – at least, a more painful one – to come.”

“Which is?” cried he.

“That I am not of that station to which such propriety attaches of necessity.”

She uttered these words with a cold sternness and determination that actually made Beecher tremble. “It was Davis’s daughter spoke there,” thought he. “They are the words of one who declares that, no matter what be the odds against her, she is ready to meet the whole world in arms. What a girl it is!” muttered he, with a sense of mingled fear and admiration.

“Well, Mr. Beecher,” said she, at length, “I do think you owe me a little frankness; short as our acquaintance has been, I, at least, have talked in all the freedom of old friendship. Pray show me that I have not been indiscreet.”

“Hang me, if I know what to say or do!” cried Beecher, in dire perplexity. “If I were to tell you why your father hurried away from Brussels, he ‘d bring me to book very soon, I promise you.”

“I do not ask that,” interrupted she, eagerly. “It is upon the other point my interest is most engaged.” He looked blankly at her, for he really did not catch to what she alluded. “I want you to tell me, in one word, who are the Davises? Who are we? If we are not recognizable by that high world you have told me of, who, then, are our equals? Remember that by an honest answer to my question you give guidance and direction to my future life. Do not shrink from fear of giving me pain, – there is no such pain as uncertainty; so be frank.”

Beecher covered his face with his hands to think over his reply. He did not dare to look at her, so fearful was he of her reading his very embarrassment.

“I will spare you, sir,” said she, smiling half superciliously; “but if you bad known me a little longer or a little better, you had seen how needless all this excessive caution on your part I have more of what you call ‘pluck’ than you give me credit for.”

“No, by Jove! that you have n’t,” cried Beecher; “you have more real courage than all the men I ever knew.”

“Show me, then, that you are not deficient in the quality, and give me a plain answer to a plain question. Who are we?”

“I have just told you,” said Beecher, whose confusion now made him stammer and stutter at every word, – “I have just told you that your father never spoke to me about his relations. I really don’t know his county, nor anything about his family.”

“Then it only remains to ask, What are we? or, in easier words, Has my father any calling or profession? Come, sir, so much you can certainly tell me.”

“Your father was a captain in a West India regiment, and, when I met him first, he was a man about town, – went to all the races, made his bets, won and lost, like the rest of us; always popular, – knew everybody.”

“A ‘sporting character,’ in short, – is n’t that the name newspapers give it?” said she, with a malicious twinkle of the eye.

“By Jove! how you hit a thing off at once!” exclaimed Beecher, in honest ecstasy at her shrewdness.

“So, then, I am at the end of the riddle at last,” said she, musingly, as she arose and walked the room in deep meditation. “Far better to have told me so many a year ago; far better to have let me conform to this station when I might have done so easily and without a pang!” A bitter sigh escaped her at the last word, and Beecher arose and joined her.

“I hope you are not displeased with me, my dear Miss Davis,” said he, with a trembling voice; “I don’t know what I’d not rather suffer than offend you.”

“You have not offended me,” said she, coldly.

“Well, I mean, than I ‘d pain you, – than I ‘d say anything that should distress you. You know, after all, it was n’t quite fair to push me so hard.”

“Are you forgetting, sir,” broke she in, haughtily, “that you have really told me next to nothing, and that I am left to gather from mere insinuations that there is something in our condition your delicacy shrinks from explaining?”

“Not a bit of it,” chimed he in, quickly. “The best men in England are on the turf, and a good book on the Oaks is n’t within reach of the income-tax. Your father’s dealings are with all the swells in the Peerage.”

“So there is a partnership in the business, sir,” said she, with a quiet irony; “and is the Honorable Mr. Beecher one of the company?”

“Well – ha – I suppose – I ought to say yes,” muttered he, in deep confusion. “We do a stroke of work together now and then – on the square, of course, I mean.”

“Pray don’t expose the secrets of the firm, sir. I am even more interested than yourself that they should be conducted with discretion. There is only one other question I have to ask; and as it purely concerns myself, you ‘ll not refuse me a reply. Knowing our station in life, as I now see you know it, by what presumption did you dare to trifle with my girlish ignorance, and lead me to fancy that I might yet move in a sphere which in your heart you knew I was excluded from?”

Overwhelmed with shame and confusion, and stunned by the embarrassment of a dull man in a difficulty, Beecher stood, unable to utter a word.

“To say the least, sir, there was levity in this,” said she, in a tone of sorrowful meaning; “but, perhaps, you never meant it so.”

“Never, upon my oath, never!” cried he, eagerly. “Whatever I said, I uttered in all frankness and sincerity. I know London town just as well as any man living, and I ‘ll stand five hundred to fifty there’s not your equal in it, – and that’s giving the whole field against the odds. All I say is, you shall go to the Queen’s Drawing-room – ”

“I am not likely to do so, sir,” said she, with a haughty gesture, and left the room.

CHAPTER XXXIV. AIX-LA-CHAPELLE

Three days passed over, – three days varied with all the incidents that go to make up a longer existence, – and Beecher and his fair charge were still in Aix. If they forbore to speak to each other of the strange situation in which they found themselves, they were not the less full of it. Neither telegraph nor letter came from Davis, and Beecher’s anxiety grew hourly greater. There was scarcely an eventuality his mind had not pictured. Davis was arrested and carried off to prison in Brussels, – was waylaid and murdered in the Ardennes, – was ill, dying in some unheard-of village, – involved in some other row, and obliged to keep secret, – arrested on some old charge; in fact, every mishap that a fertile fancy could devise had befallen him, and now only remained the question what was he himself to do with Lizzy Davis.

Whether it was that her present life was an agreeable change from the discipline of the Three Fountains, or that the new objects of interest about her engaged her to the exclusion of much thought, or that some higher philosophy of resignation supported her, but certain is it she neither complained of the delay nor exhibited any considerable impatience at her father’s silence. She went about sightseeing, visited churches and galleries, strolled on the Promenade, before dinner, and finished with the theatre at night, frankly owning that it was a kind of do-nothing existence that she enjoyed greatly. Her extraordinary beauty was already a town talk; and the passages of the hotel were crowded as she went down to her carriage, and to her box at the opera were directed almost every glass in the house. This, however, is a homage not always respectful; and in the daring looks of the men, and the less equivocal glances of the women, Beecher read the judgment that had been pronounced upon her. Her manner, too, in public had a certain fearless gayety about it that was sure to be severely commented on, while the splendor of her dress was certain to be not more mercifully interpreted.

To have the charge of a casket of jewels through the thieves’ quarter of London was the constant similitude that rose to Beecher’s mind as he descended the stairs at her side. To be obliged to display her to the wondering gaze of some hundred idlers, the dissipated and debauched loungers of a watering-place, men of bad lives and worse tongues; to mark the staring insolence of some, and the quizzical impertinence of others; to see how narrowly each day they escaped some more overt outrage from that officious politeness that is tendered to those in equivocal positions, were tortures that half maddened him. Nor could he warn her of the peril they stood in, or dare to remonstrate about many little girlish ways which savored of levity. The scene of the theatre in Brussels was never off his mind, and the same one idea continually haunted him, that poor Hamilton’s fate might be his own. The characterless men of the world are always cowards as to responsibility, – they feel that there is a flaw in their natures that must smash them if pressed upon; and so was it here. Beecher’s life was actual misery, and each morning he awoke the day seemed full of menace and misfortune to him. In his heart, he knew that if an emergency arose he should be found wanting; he ‘d either not think of the right thing, or have pluck for it if he even thought it; and then, whatever trouble or mishap he came through, there still remained worse behind, – the settlement with Grog himself at the end.

Like most persons who seek the small consolation of falling back on their own foresight, he called to mind how often he had said to himself that nothing but ill could come of journeying with Grog Davis, – he knew it, he was sure of it. A fellow to conspire with about a “plant” – a man to concert with on a race or a “safe thing with the cards” – was not exactly a meet travelling-companion, and he fretted over the fatal weakness that had induced his acceptance of him. They had only just started, and their troubles had already begun! Even if Davis himself were there, matters might not be so bad. Grog was always ready to “turn out” and have a shot with any one. It was a sort of pastime he rather liked when nothing else was stirring, it seemed like keeping his hand in; but, confound the fellow! he had gone off, and left in his place one who had a horror of hair-triggers, and shuddered at the very thought of a shot-wound.

He was far too conversant with the habits of demi-monde existence not to see that the plot was thickening, and fresh dangers clustering round him. The glances in the street were hourly growing more familiar, – the looks were half recognitions. Half a dozen times in the morning, well-dressed and well-bearded strangers had bolted into their sitting-room in mistake, and while apologizing for their blunder, delayed unnecessarily long over the explanation.

The waiter significantly mentioned that Prince Bottoffsky was then stopping at the hotel, with seven carriages and eighteen servants. The same intelligent domestic wondered they never went to see Count Czapto witch’s camellias, – “he had sent a bouquet of them that very day to her Ladyship.” And Beecher groaned in his spirit as the fellow produced it.

“I see how it’s all to end,” muttered he, as he paced the room, unable any longer to conceal the misery that was consuming him. “One of those confounded foreigners will come swaggering up to talk to her on the Promenade, and then I’m ‘in for it.’ It’s all Davis’s fault. It’s all her fault. Why can’t she look like other people, – dress like them, – walk like them? What stuff and nonsense it is for her to be going about the world like a Princess Royal! It was only last night she wore a Brussels lace shawl at the opera that cost five thousand francs; and when it caught on a nail in the box and was torn, she laughed, and said, ‘Annette will be charmed with this disaster, for she was always coveting this lace, and wondering when she was to have it.’ That’s the fine ‘bring-ing-up’ old Grog is so proud of! If she were a Countess in her own right, with ten thousand a year, she ‘d be a bad bargain!”

Ah, Beecher! your heart never went with you when you made this cruel speech; you uttered it in spleen and bitterness, but not in sincerity; for already in that small compartment of your nature where a few honest affections yet lingered she was treasured, and, had you known how to do it, you would have loved her. Poor devil as he was, Life was a hard battle to him, – always over head and ears in debt; protested bills meeting him at every moment; duns rising before him at every turn. Levity was to him, as to many, a mere mask over Fear, and he walked the world in the hourly terror that any moment might bring him to shame and ruin. If he were a few minutes alone, his melancholy was almost despair; and over and over had he pictured to his mind a scene in the police-court, where he was called on to find full and sufficient bail for his appearance on trial. From such sorrowing thoughts he made his escape to rush into society – anywhere, anyhow; and, by the revulsion of his mind, came that rattling and boisterous gayety that made him seem the most light-hearted fellow in existence. Such men are always making bonfires of their household gods, and have nothing to greet them when they are at home.

What a fascination must Lizzy Davis have exercised over such a mind! Her beauty and her gracefulness would not have been enough without her splendid dressing, and that indescribable elegance of manner which was native to her. Then how she amused him! – what droll caricatures did she sketch of the queer originals of the place, – the bearded old colonels, or the pretentious loungers that frequented the “Cursaal”! How witty the little epigrams by which she accompanied them, and how charmingly at a moment would she sit down at the piano and sing for him anything, from a difficult “scena” from Verdi to some floating barcarole of Venice! She could – let us tell it in one breath – make him laugh; and oh, dearly valued reader! what would you or I give for the company of any one who could do as much? The world is full of learned people and clever people. There are Bourse men, and pre-Raphaelite men, and Old-red-sandstone men, and Greek-particle men; but where are the pleasant people one used to chat with long ago, who, though talking of mere commonplaces, threw out little sparks of fun, – fireflies in the dark copses, – giving to what they said that smack of epigram that spiced talk but never over-seasoned it, whose genial sympathy sent a warm life-blood through every theme, and whose outspoken heartiness refreshed one after a cold bath of polite conventionalities? If they still exist upon this earth, they must be hiding themselves, wisely seeing it is not an age to suit them; they lie quiet under the ice, patiently hibernating till another summer may call them forth to vitality.

Now Lizzy Davis could make Beecher laugh in his lowest and gravest moments; droll situations and comical conceits came in showers over her mind, and she gave them forth with all the tact of a consummate actress. Her mimicry, too, was admirable; and thus he who rarely reflected and never read, found in her ready talents resources against all weariness and ennui. What a girl she was! – how perfectly she would become any – the very highest – station! what natural dignity in her manner! – and – Then, after a pause, he murmured, “What a fortune she’d make on the stage! Why, there’s nothing to compare with her, – she’s as much beyond them all in beauty as in genius!” And so he set about thinking how, by marrying her, a man might make a “deuced good thing of it.” There’s no saying what Webster wouldn’t offer; and then there was America, always a “safe card;” not that it would do for himself to think of such a thing. Lackington would never speak to him again. All his family would cut him dead; he had n’t an acquaintance would recognize him after such disgrace.

“Old Grog is so confoundedly well known,” muttered he, – “the scoundrel is so notorious!” Still, there were fellows would n’t mind that, – hard-up men, who had done everything, and found all failure. He knew – “Let us see,” said he to himself, beginning to count on his fingers all the possible candidates for her hand. “There’s Cranshaw Craven at Caen, on two hundred a year; he’d marry her, and never ask to see her if she ‘d settle twenty thousand francs a year on him. Brownlow Gore would marry her, and for a mere five hundred too, for he wants to try that new martingale at Ems; he’s certain he ‘d break the bank with less. Foley would marry her; but, to be sure, he has a wife somewhere, and she might object to that! I’d lay an even fifty,” cried he, in ecstasy at the bright thought, “Tom Beresford would marry her just to get out of the Fleet!”

“What does that wonderful calculation mean?” cried she, suddenly, as she saw him still reckoning on his fingers. “What deep process of reasoning is my learned guardian engaged in?”

“I ‘d give you a long time to guess,” said he, laughing.

“Am I personally concerned in it?” asked she.

“Yes, that you are!”