Davenport Dunn, a Man of Our Day. Volume 1

“Pretty much, I suppose, as he used to manage Aunt Matty and yourself long ago,” said she, laughingly.

“Well, indeed, I suppose so,” said he, with a half sigh; “and if it be, all I can say is, they ‘ll be puzzled to find out his secret. He’s the deepest fellow I ever heard or read of; for there he stands to-day, without name, family, blood, or station, higher than those that had them all, – able to do more than them; and, what’s stranger still, thought more about in England than the best man amongst us.”

“You have given me quite an interest about him, papa; tell me, what is he like?”

“He’s as tall as myself, but not so strongly built; indeed, he’s slightly round-shouldered; he is dark in the complexion, and has the blackest hair and whiskers I ever saw, and rather good-looking than otherwise, – a calm, cold, patient-looking face you’d call it; he speaks very little, but his voice is soft and low and deliberate, just like one that would n’t throw away a word; and he never moves his hands or arms, but lets them hang down heavily at either side.”

“And his eyes? Tell me of his eyes?”

“They ‘re big, black, sleepy-looking eyes, seldom looking up, and never growing a bit brighter by anything that he says or hears about him. Indeed, any one seeing him for the first time would say, ‘There’s a man whose thoughts are many a mile away; he is n’t minding what’s going on about him here.’ But that is not the case; there is n’t a look, a stir, nor a gesture that he does n’t remark. There ‘s not a chair drawn closer to another, not a glance interchanged, that he has n’t noticed; and I ‘ve heard it said, ‘Many would n’t open a letter before him, he’s so sure to guess the contents from just reading the countenance.’”

“The world is always prone to exaggerate such gifts,” said she, calmly.

“So it may be, dear, but I don’t fancy it could do so here. He’s one of those men that, if he had been born to high station, would be a great politician or a great general. You see that, somehow, without any effort on his part, things come up just as he wished them. I believe, after all,” said he, with a heavy sigh, “it’s just luck! Whatever one man puts his hand to in this world goes on right and smoothly, and another has every mishap and misfortune that can befall him. He may strive, and toil, and fret his brains over it, but devil a good it is. If he is born to ill luck, it will stick to him.”

“It’s not a very cheery philosophy!” said she, gently.

“I suppose not, dear; but what is very cheery in this life, when you come to find it out? Is n’t it nothing but disappointment and vexation?”

Partly to rally him out of this vein of depression, and partly from motives of curiosity, she once more adverted to Dunn, and asked how it happened that they crossed each other again in life.

“He’s what they call ‘carrying the sale’ of Kellett’s Court, my dear. You know we ‘re in the Encumbered Estates now; and Dunn represents Lord Lackington and others that hold the mortgages over us. The property was up for sale in November, then in May last, and was taken down by Dunn’s order. I never knew why. It was then, however, he got me this thing in the Revenue, – this beggarly place of sixty-five pounds a year; and told me, through his man Hanks, – for I never met himself about it, – that he ‘d take care my interests were not overlooked. After that the Courts closed, and he went abroad; and that’s all there’s between us, or, indeed, likely to be between us; for he never wrote me as much as one line since he went away, nor noticed any one of my letters, though I sent him four, or, indeed, I believe, five.”

“What a strange man this must be!” said she, musingly. “Is it supposed that he has formed any close attachments? Are his friends devoted to him?”

“Attachments, – friendships! faith, I’m inclined to think it’s little time he’d waste on one or the other. Why, child, if what we hear be true, he goes through the work of ten men every day of his life.”

“Is he married?” asked she, after a pause.

“No; there was some story about a disappointment he met early in life. When he was at Lord Glengariff’s, I think, he fell in love with one of the daughters, or she with him, – I never knew it rightly, – but it ended in his being sent away; and they say he never got over it. Just as if Davenport Dunn was a likely man either to fall in love or cherish the memory of a first passion! I wish you saw him, Bella,” said he, laughing, “and the notion would certainly amuse you.”

“But still men of his stamp have felt – ay, and inspired – the strongest passions. I remember reading once – ” “Reading, my darling, – reading is one thing, seeing or knowing is another. The fellows that write these things must invent what is n’t likely, – what is nigh impossible, – or nobody would read it What we see of a man or woman in a book is just the exact reverse of what we ‘ll ever find in real life.”

The girl could easily have replied to this assertion; indeed, the answer was almost on her lips, when she restrained herself, and, hanging down her head, fell into a musing fit.

CHAPTER IV. ONE WHO WOULD BE A “SHARP FELLOW.”

One of the chief, perhaps the greatest, pleasures which Kellett’s humble lot still secured him, was a long country walk of a Sunday in company with one who had been his friend in more prosperous times. A reduced gentleman like himself, Annesley Beecher could only go abroad on this one day in the week, and thus by the pressure of adverse fortune were they thrown more closely together.

Although by no means a favorite with Bella, she was far too considerate for her father, and too mindful of the few enjoyments that remained to him, ever to interpose her real opinion. She therefore limited herself to silence, as old Kellett would pronounce some glowing eulogy of his friend, calling him “good” and “amiable” and “kind-hearted,” and extolling, as little short of miraculous, “the spirits he had, considering all he went through.” But he would add, “He was always the same, and that’s the reason everybody liked him, – everybody, that is, almost everybody!” And he would steal a sly glance at his daughter, half imploringly, as though to say, “How long are you to sit in that small minority?”

Whether the weather would permit of Beecher’s coming out to see them, whether he ‘d be able to “stay and take his bit of dinner with them,” were subjects of as great anxiety to poor Kellett each succeeding Sunday morning as though there ever had been a solitary exception to the wished-for occurrence; and Bella would never destroy the pleasure of anticipation by the slightest hint that might impair the value he attached to the event.

“There’s so many trying to get him,” he would say; “they pester his life out with invitations, – the Chancellor and Lord Killybegs and the Bishop of Drumsna always asking him to name his day; but he ‘d rather come out and take his bit of roast mutton with ourselves, and his glass of punch after it, than he ‘d eat venison and drink claret with the best of them. There’s not a table in Dublin, from the Castle down, that would n’t be proud of his company; and why not?” He would pause after uttering a challenge of this sort; and then, as his daughter would show no signs of acceptance, he would mutter on, “A real gentleman born and bred, and how anybody can mislike him is more than I am really able to comprehend!”

These little grumblings, which never produced more than a smile from Bella, were a kind of weekly homily which poor Kellett liked to deliver, and he felt, when he had uttered it, as one who had paid a just tribute to worth and virtue.

“There’s Beecher already, by Jove!” cried Kellett, as he sprang up from the breakfast-table to open the little wicket which the other was vainly endeavoring to unhasp. “How early he is!”

Let us take the opportunity to present him to our readers, – a duty the more imperative, since, to all outward semblance at least, he would appear little to warrant the flattering estimate his friend so lately bestowed upon him. About four or five-and-thirty, somewhat above the middle size, and with all the air and bearing of a man of fashion, Beecher had the gay, easy, light-hearted look of one with whom the world went habitually well; and when it did not, more was the shame of the said world! since a better, nobler, more generous fellow than himself never existed; and this he knew, however others might ungraciously hold an opposite opinion. There was not the slightest detail in his dress that could warrant the supposition of narrow fortune: his coat and his waistcoat, of one color and stuff, were faultless in make; the massive watch-chain that festooned across his chest in the last mode; his thick walking-boots the perfection of that compromise between strength and elegance so popular in our day; even to his cane, whose head was of massive gold, with his arms embossed, – all bespoke a certain affluence and abundance, the more assured from the absence of ostentation.

His hat was slightly, very slightly, set on one side, – a piece of “tigerism” pardonable, perhaps, as it displayed the rich brown curls of very silky hair, which he had disposed with consummate skill before his glass ere he issued forth. His large, full blue eyes, his handsome mouth, and a certain gentleness in his look generally, were what he himself would have called the “odds in his favor;” and very hard it would indeed have been at first sight to form an estimate in any way unfavorable to him. Bean Beecher, as he was called once, had been deemed the best-looking fellow about town, and when he entered the Life Guards, almost twenty years before the time we now present him, had been reckoned the handsomest man and best rider in the regiment. Brother of Lord Lackington, but not by the same mother, he had inaugurated that new school of dandyism which succeeded to the Brummell period, and sought fame and notoriety by splendor and extravagance rather than by the fastidious and personal elegance that characterized the former era. In this way Lord Lackington and his brother were constantly contrasted; and although each had their followers, it was generally admitted that they were both regarded as admirable types of style and fashion. Boodle’s would have preferred the Peer, the Guards’ Club and all Tattersall’s have voted for the Honorable Annesley Beecher.

Beecher started in life with all the advantages and disadvantages which attach to the position of a younger son of a noble family. On the one side he had good connections, a sure status in society, and easy admission into club life; on the other, lay the counterbalancing fact of the very slender fortune which usually falls to the lot of the younger born. The sum, in his case, barely sufficed to carry him through his minority, so that the day he came of age he had not a shilling in the world. Most men open their career in life with some one ambition or other in their hearts. Some aspire to military glory and the fame of a great general, some yearn after political eminence, and fashion to themselves the triumphs of successful statesmanship. There are lesser goals in the walks of the learned professions which have each their votaries; and sanguine spirits there are who found, in imagination, distant colonies beyond the sea, or lead lives of adventure in exploring unvisited and unknown regions. Annesley Beecher had no sympathy with any of these. The one great and absorbing wish of his heart was to be a “sharp fellow;” one who in all the dealings and traffic of life was sure to get the upper hand of his adversary, who in every trial where craft was the master, and in whatever situation wherein cunning performed a part, was certain to come out with the creditable reputation of being, “for a gentleman, the downiest cove to be met with anywhere.”

This unhappy bent was owing to the circumstance of his being early thrown amongst men who, having nothing but their wits to depend upon, had turned these same wits to very discreditable purposes. He became, it is needless to say, their easy dupe; and when utterly bereft of the small patrimony which he once possessed, was admitted as an humble brother of the honorable guild who had despoiled him.

Men select their walk in life either from the consciousness of certain qualities likely to obtain success, or by some overweening admiration of those already eminent in it. It was this latter decided Beecher’s taste. Never was there one who cherished such profound respect for a crafty fellow, for all other intellectual superiorities he could limit his esteem: for a rogue, his veneration was unbounded. From the man that invented a bubble company, to him who could turn the king at écarté– from the gifted individual who could puff up shares to an exorbitant value, to the no less fine intelligence that could “make everything safe on the Derby,” he venerated them all. His early experiences had been unhappy ones, and so constantly had he found himself duped and “done” on every hand, that he ended by believing that honesty was a pure myth; the nearest approach to the quality being a certain kind of fidelity to one’s “pall,” as he would have called it, and an unwillingness to put “your own friend in the hole,” while there were so many others available for that pleasant destiny. This little flickering flame of principle, this farthing candle of good feeling, was the solitary light that illuminated the gloom of his character.

He had joined the regiment Kellett formerly belonged to at Malta, a few weeks before the other had sold out, and having met accidentally in Ireland, they had renewed the acquaintance, stimulated by that strange sympathy which attracts to each other those whose narrow circumstances would seem, in some shape or other, the effects of a cruelty practised on them by the world. Kellett was rather flattered by the recognition of him who recalled the brighter hours of his life, while he entertained a kind of admiration for the worldly wit and cleverness of one who, in talk at least, was a match for the “shrewdest fellow going.” Beecher liked the society of a man who thus looked up to him, and who could listen unweariedly to his innumerable plans for amassing wealth and fortune, all of which only needed some little preliminary aid – some miserable thousand or two to start with – to make them as “rich as Rothschild.”

Never was there such a Tantalus view of life as he could picture, – stores of gold, mines of unbounded wealth, – immense stakes to be won here, rouge et noir banks to be broke there, – all actually craving to be appropriated, if one only had a little of that shining metal which, like the water thrown down in a pump, is the needful preliminary to securing a supply of the fluid afterwards.

The imaginative faculty plays a great part in the existence of the reduced gentleman! Kellett actually revelled in the gorgeous visions this friend could conjure up. There was that amount of plausibility in his reasonings that satisfied scruple as to practicability, and made him regard Beecher as the most extraordinary instance of a grand financial genius lost to the world, – a great Chancellor of the Exchequer born to devise budgets in obscurity!

Bella took a very different measure of him: she read him with all a woman’s nicest appreciation, and knew him thoroughly; she saw, however, how much his society pleased her father, how their Sunday strolls together rallied him from the dreary depression the week was sure to leave behind it, and how these harmless visions of imaginary prosperity served to cheer the gloom of actual poverty. She, therefore, concealed so much as she could of her own opinion, and received Beecher as cordially as she was able.

“Ah, Paul, my boy, how goes it? Miss Kellett, how d’ye do?” said Beecher, with that easy air and pleasant smile that well became him. “I thought by starting early I should just catch you at breakfast, while I also took another hour out of my Sunday, – the one day the law mercifully bestows on such poor devils as myself, – ha, ha, ba!” And he laughed heartily, as though insolvency was as droll a thing as could be.

“You bear up well, anyhow, Beecher,” said Kellett, admiringly.

“What’s the odds so long as you’re happy!” cried the other, gayly. “Never say die. They take it out in fifty per cent, but they can’t work the oracle against our good spirits, eh, Kellett? The mens sana in corpore, – what d’ye call him, my lad? – that’s the real thing.”

“Indeed, I suppose it is!” said Kellett, not very clear as to what he concurred in.

“There are few fellows, let me tell you, would be as light-hearted as I am, with four writs and a judge’s warrant hanging over them, – eh, Miss Bella, what do you say to that?” said Beecher.

She smiled half sadly and said nothing.

“Ask John Scott, – ask Bicknell Morris, or any of the ‘Legs’ you like, – if there’s a man of them all ever bore up like me. ‘Beecher’s a bar of iron,’ they ‘ll tell you; ‘that fellow can bear any amount of hammering.’ and maybe I have n’t had it! And all Lackington’s fault!”

“That’s the worst of all!” said Kellett, who had listened to the same accusation in the self-same words at least a hundred times before.

“Lackington is the greatest fool going! He does n’t see the advantage of pushing his family influence. He might have had me in for ‘Mallow.’ Grog Davis said to him one day, ‘Look now, my Lord, Annesley is the best horse in your stable, if you ‘d only stand to win on him, he is!’ But Lackington would not hear of it. He thinks me a flat! You won’t believe it, but he does!”

“Faith! he’s wrong there,” said Kellett, with all the emphasis of sincerity.

“I rather suspect he is, Master Kellett. I was trained in another school, – brought up amongst fellows would skin a cat, by Jove! What I say is, let A. B. have a chance, – just let him in once, and see if he won’t do the thing!”

“Do you wish to be in Parliament, Mr. Beecher?” asked Bella, with a smile of half-repressed drollery.

“Of course I do. First, there’s the protection, – no bad thing as times go; then it would be uncommon strange if I could n’t ‘tool the coach into the yard’ safely. They ‘d have to give me a devilish good thing. You ‘d see what a thorn I ‘d be in their sides. Ask Grog Davis what kind of fellow I am; he ‘ll tell you if I ‘m easily put down. But Lackington is a fool; he can’t see the road before him!”

“You reckon, then, on being a debater!” said she, quietly.

“A little of everything, Miss Bella,” said he, laughing; “like the modern painters, not particular for a shade or two. I ‘d not go wasting my time with that old Tory lot, – they’re all worked ont, aged and weighted, as John Scott would call them – I’d go in with the young uns, – the Manchester two-year-olds, universal – what d’ye call it? – and vote by ballot. They ‘re the fellows have ‘the tin,’ by Jove! they have.”

“Then I scarcely see how Lord Lackington would advance his family influence by promoting your views,” said she, again.