Davenport Dunn, a Man of Our Day. Volume 1

As they talked thus, they gained the outskirts of the city, and gradually left the lamps and the well-lighted shops behind. Their way now led along a dreary road by the sea-side, towards the little bathing-village of Clontarf, beyond which, in a sequestered spot called the Green Lanes, their humble home stood. It was a long and melancholy walk; the sorrowful sounds of the sea beating on the shingly strand mingling with the dreary plashing of the rain; while farther out, a continuous roar as the waves rolled over the “North Bull,” added all the terrors of storm to the miseries of the night.

“The winter is setting in early,” said Kellett “I think I never saw a severer night.”

“A sad time for poor fellows out at sea!” said the girl, as she turned her head towards the dreary waste of cloud and water now commingled into one.

“‘T is exactly like our own life, out there,” cried he: “a little glimpse of light glimmering every now and then through the gloom, but yet not enough to cheer the heart and give courage; but all black darkness on every side.”

“There will come a daybreak at last,” said the girl, assuredly.

“Faith! I sometimes despair about it in our own case,” said he, sighing drearily. “To think of what I was once, and what I am now! buffeted about and ill used by a set of scoundrels that I ‘d not have suffered to sit down in my kitchen. Keep that rag of a shawl across your chest; you ‘ll be destroyed entirely, Bella.”

“We’ll soon be within shelter now, and nothing the worse for this weather, either of us,” replied she, almost gayly. “Over and over again have you told me what severe seasons you have braved in the hunting-field; and, after all, papa, one can surely endure as much for duty as in pursuit of pleasure, – not to say that our little cottage never looks more homelike than after a night like this.”

“It’s snug enough for a thing of the kind,” murmured he, half reluctantly.

“And Betty will have such a nice fire for us, and we shall be as comfortable and as happy as though it were a fine house, and we ourselves fine folk to live in it.”

“The Kelletts of Kellett’s Court, and no better blood in Ireland,” said he, sternly. “It was in the same house my grandfather, Morgan Kellett, entertained the Duke of Portland, the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland; and this day, as I stand here, there isn’t a chap in the Castle-yard would touch his hat to me!”

“And what need have we of them, papa? Will not our pride of good blood teach us other lessons than repining? Can’t we show the world that a gentleman born bears his altered fortunes with dignity?”

“Ye’re right, Bella; that’s the very thing they must acknowledge. There is n’t a day passes that I don’t make the clerks in the ‘Long Room’ feel the difference between us. ‘No liberties, no familiarities, my lads,’ I say, – ‘keep your distance; for, though my coat is threadbare, and my hat none of the best, the man inside there is Paul Kellett of Kellett’s Court.’ And if they ask where that is, I say, ‘Look at the Gazetteer,’ – it’s mighty few of them has their names there: ‘Kellett’s Court, the ancient seat of the Kellett family, was originally built by Strongbow, Earl of Pembroke.’”

“Well, here we are, papa, in a more humble home; but you’ll see how cheery it will be.”

And so saying, she pushed open a little wicket, and, passing through a small garden, gained the door of a little one-storied cottage, almost buried in honeysuckle.

“Yes, Betty, wet through!” said she, laughing, as the old woman held up her hands in horror; “but get papa his slippers and that warm dressing-gown, and I ‘ll be back in a minute.”

“Arrah! why didn’t you take a car for her?” said the old woman, with that familiarity which old and tried service warrants. “Sure the child will get her death from this!”

“She wouldn’t let me; she insisted on walking on her feet.”

“Ayeh, ayeh!” mattered the crone, as she placed his slippers on the fender, “sure ye oughtn’t to mind her. She’d get a fever rather than cost you a shilling. Look at the shoes she’s wearin’.”

“By the good day! you’ll drive me mad, clean mad!” cried he, savagely. “Don’t you know in your heart that we have n’t got it? Devil a rap farthing; that we’re as poor as a church mouse; that if it wasn’t for this beggarly place – ”

“Now, Betty,” cried the girl, entering, – “now for our tea, and that delicious potato-cake that I see browning there before the fire.”

Poorly, even meanly dressed as she was, there was in her that gentle look, and graceful, quiet bearing that relieved the sombre aspect of a room which spoke but too plainly of narrow fortune; and as her father looked at her, the traces of recent displeasure passed from his face, and her eyes brightened up, while he said, —

“You bring a blessing with the very sound of your voice, darling.” And he kissed her twice as he spoke.

“It is so comfortable to be here, and so snug,” said she, seating herself at his side, “and to know that to-morrow is Sunday, and that we have our holiday, each of us. Come, papa, confess this little room and its bright fire are very cheery! And I have got a newspaper for you. I told Mrs. Hawksey there was nothing such a treat to you as a newspaper, and she gave me one.”

“Ah! the ‘Trumpet of Liberty,’” said he, opening it. “We’ll have it after tea, Bella. Is there anything about our own county in it, – Cork, I mean?”

“I have not looked in it yet; but we ‘ll go through it honestly, papa, for I know how conscientious you are not to lose a paragraph.”

“‘T is that same makes a man agreeable in society. You know everything if you read the papers, – accidents and marriages, the rate of the money-market, the state of the crops, who is dining with the Queen, and who is skating on the Serpentine, who is ruined at Newmarket, and who drowned at sea, and then all about the play-houses and the wonderful panoramas; so that, let conversation turn how it will, you ‘re ready for it, and that ‘s the reason, Bella, you must go through every bit of it. It’s like hunting, and the very field perhaps you don’t try is just the one you ‘d find a fox in!”

“Well, you ‘ll see. I ‘ll beat every cover for you!” said she, laughing; “and Mrs. Hawksey desires to have it back, for there is something about the Alderman having said or done – I don’t know what or where.”

“How I hate the very name of an Alderman!” said Kellett, peevishly; “regular vagabonds, with gilt coaches and red cloaks, running about prating of taxes and the pipe-water! The devil a thing I feel harder to bear in my poverty than to think you ‘re a visiting governess in an Alderman’s family. Paul Kellett’s daughter a visiting governess!”

“And very proud am I to be thought equal to the charge,” said she, resolutely; “not to say how grateful to you for having enabled me to undertake it.”

“Myself in the Customs is nothing; that I’d put up with. Many a reduced gentleman did the same. Sam Crozier was a marker at a billiard-table in Tralee, and Ennis Magrath was an overseer on the very road he used to drive his four-in-hand. ‘Many a time,’ says he, ‘I cursed that fresh-broken stone, but I never thought I ‘d be measuring it!’ ‘T is the Encumbered Court has brought us all down, Bella, and there’s no disgrace in being ruined with thousands of others. Just begin with the sales of estates, and tell us who is next for sentence. God forgive me, but I feel a kind of pleasure in hearing that we ‘re all swamped together.”

The girl smiled as though the remark were merely uttered in levity and deserved no more serious notice; but a faint sigh, which she could not repress, betrayed the sorrow with which she had heard it.

She opened the paper and glanced at its contents. They were as varied and multifarious as are usually to be found in weekly “channels of information.” What struck her, however, most was the fact that, turn where she would, the name of Davenport Dunn was ever conspicuous. Sales of property displayed him as the chief creditor or petitioner; charities paraded him as the first among the benevolent; Joint-stock companies exhibited him as their managing director; mines, and railroads, and telegraph companies, harbor committees, and boards of all kinds, gave him the honors of large type; while in the fashionable intelligence from abroad, his arrivals and departures were duly chronicled, and a letter of our own correspondent from Venice communicated the details of a farewell dinner given him, with a “Lord” in the chair, by a number of those who had so frequently partaken of his splendid hospitalities while he resided in that city.

“Well – well – well!” said Kellett, with a pause between each exclamation, “this is more than I can bear. Old Jerry Dunn’s son, – the brat of a boy I remember in the Charter’ School! He used to be sent at Christmas time up to Ely Place, when my father was in town, to get five shillings for a Christmas-box; and I mind well the day he was asked to stay and dine with my sister Matty and myself, and he taught us a new game with six little bits of sticks; how we were to do something, I forget what, – but I know how it ended, – he won every sixpence we had. Matty had half a guinea in gold and some tenpenny pieces, and I had, I think, about fifteen shillings, and sorrow a rap he left us; and, worse still, I mortgaged my school maps, and got a severe thrashing for having lost them from Old White in Jervas Street; and poor Matty’s doll was confiscated in the same way, and carried off with a debt of three-and-fourpence on her head. God forgive him, but he gave us a sorrowful night, for we cried till daybreak.”

“And did you like him as a playfellow?” asked she.

“Now, that’s the strangest thing of all,” said Kellett, smiling. “Neither Matty nor myself liked him; but he got a kind of influence over us that was downright fascination. No matter what we thought of doing before he came, when he once set foot in the room everything followed his dictation. It was n’t that he was overbearing or tyrannical in the least; just as little could you say that he was insinuating or nattering; but somehow, by a kind of instinct, we fell into his ways, and worked out all his suggestions just as if we were mere agents of his will. Resistance or opposition we never dreamed of while he was present; but after he was gone away, once or twice there came the thought that there was something very like slavery in all this submission, and we began to concert how we might throw off the yoke.

“‘I won’t play toll-bar any more,’ said I, resolutely; ‘all my pocket-money is sure to go before it is over.’

“‘And I,’ said Matty, ‘won’t have poor “Mopsy” tried for a murder again; every time she’s hanged, some of the wax comes off her neck.’”

“We encouraged each other vigorously in these resolves; but before he was half an hour in the house ‘Mopsy’ had undergone the last sentence of the law, and I was insolvent.”

“What a clever rogue he must have been!” said Bella, laughing.

“Was n’t he clever!” exclaimed Kellett. “You could not say how, – nobody could say how, – but he saw everything the moment he came into a new place, and marked every one’s face, and knew, besides, the impression he made on them, just as if he was familiar with them for years.”

“Did you continue to associate with him as you grew up?” asked she.

“No; we only knew each other as children. There was a distressing thing – a very distressing thing – occurred one day; I’m sure to this very hour I think of it with sorrow and shame, for I can’t believe he had any blame in it. We were playing in a room next my father’s study, and running every now and then into the study; and there was an old-fashioned penknife – a family relic, with a long bloodstone handle – lying on the table; and when the play was over, and Davy, as we called him, had gone home, this was missing. There was a search made for it high and low, for my father set great value on it. It was his great-great-grandmother’s, I believe; at all events, no one ever set eyes on it afterwards, and nothing would persuade my father but that Davy stole it! Of course he never told us that he thought so, but the servant did, and Matty and myself cried two nights and a day over it, and got really sick.

“I remember well; I was working by myself in the garden, Matty was ill and in bed, when I saw a tall old man, dressed like a country shopkeeper, shown into the back parlor, where my father was sitting. There was a bit of the window open, and I could hear that high words were passing between them, and, as I thought, my father getting the worst of it; for the old fellow kept repeating, ‘You ‘ll rue it, Mister Kellett, – you ‘ll rue it yet!’ And then my father said, ‘Give him a good horsewhipping, Dunn; take my advice, and you ‘ll spare yourself some sorrow, and save him from even worse hereafter.’ I ‘ll never forget the old fellow’s face as he turned to leave the room. ‘Davy will live to pay you off for this,’ said he; ‘and if you ‘re not to the fore, it will be your children, or your children’s children, will have to ‘quit the debt!’

“We never saw Davy from that hour; indeed, we were strictly forbidden ever to utter his name; and it was only when alone together, that Matty and I would venture to talk of him, and cry over – and many a time we did – the happy days when we had him for our playfellow. There was a species of martyrdom now, too, in his fate, that endeared him the more to our memories; every play he had invented, every spot he was fond of, every toy he liked, were hallowed to our minds like relics. At last poor Matty and I could bear it no longer, and we sat down and wrote a long letter to Davy, assuring him of our fullest confidence in his honor, and our broken-heartedness at separation from him. We inveighed stoutly against parental tyranny, and declared ourselves ready for open rebellion, if he, that was never deficient in a device, could only point out the road. We bribed a stable-boy, with all our conjoined resources of pocket-money, to convey the epistle, and it came back next morning to my father, enclosed in one from Davy himself, stating that he could never countenance acts of disobedience, or be any party to a system by which children should deceive their parents. I was sent off to a boarding-school the same week, and poor Matty committed to the charge of Miss Morse, a vinegar-faced old maid, that poisoned the eight best years of her life!”

“And when did you next hear of him?”

“Of Davy? Let me see; the next time I heard of him was when he attempted to enter college as a sizar, and failed. Somebody or other mentioned it at Kellett’s Court, and said that old Dunn was half out of his mind, insisting that some injustice was dealt out to his son, and vowing he ‘d get the member for somewhere to bring the matter before Parliament. Davy was wiser, however; he persuaded his father that, by agitating the question, they would only give notoriety to what, if left alone, would speedily be forgotten; and Davy was right I don’t think there’s three men now in the kingdom that remember one word about the sizarship, or, if they do, that would be influenced by it in any dealings they might have with Mr. Davenport Dunn.”

“What career did he adopt after that?”

“He became a tutor, I think, in Lord Glengariff’s family. There was some scandal about him there, – I forget it now, – and then he went off to America, and spent some years there, and in Jamaica, where he was employed as an overseer, I think; but I can’t remember it all. My own knowledge of him next was seeing the name ‘D. Dunn, solicitor,’ on a neat brass-plate in Tralee, and hearing that he was a very acute fellow in election contests, and well up to dealing with the priests.”

“And now he has made a large fortune?”

“I believe you well; he’s the richest man in Ireland. There’s scarce a county he has n’t got property in. There’s not a town, nor a borough, where he has n’t some influence, and in every class, too, – gentry, clergy, shopkeepers, people: he has them all with him, and nobody seems to know how he does it.”