Davenport Dunn, a Man of Our Day. Volume 2

“What do you mean by ‘under the circumstances’?”

Davis threw his cigar into the stream, pushed bottle and glasses away from him, – far enough to permit him to rest both his arms on the table, – and then, steadfastly fixing his eyes on the other, with a look of intense but not angry significance, said, “How often have I told you, Beecher, that it was no use to try a ‘double’ with me? Why, man, I know every card in your hand.”

“I give you my sacred word of honor, Grog – ”

“To be renewed at three months, I suppose?” said Davis, sneeringly. “No, no, my boy, it takes an earlier rise to get to the blind side of Kit Davis. I ‘m not angry with you for trying it, – not a bit, lad; there ‘s nothing wrong in it but the waste of time.”

“May I be hanged, drawn, and quartered, if I know what you are at, Grog!” exclaimed the other, piteously.

“Well, all I can say is I read you easier than you read me. You gave old Lazarus a thousand pounds for that book after reading that paragraph in the ‘Times.’”

“What paragraph?”

“I mean that about your brother’s title not being legal.”

“I never saw it, – never heard of it,” cried Beecher, in undisguised terror.

“Well, I suppose I ‘m to believe you,” said Davis, half reluctantly. “It was in a letter from the Crimea, stating that so confident are the friends of a certain claimant to the title and estates now enjoyed by Lord Lackington, that they have offered the young soldier who represents the claim any amount of money he pleases to purchase promotion in the service.”

“I repeat to you my word of honor, I never saw nor heard of it”

“Of course, then, I believe you,” said Grog.

Again and again did Beecher reiterate assurances of his good faith; he declared that during all his stay at Aix he had never looked into a newspaper, nor had he received one single letter, except from Davis himself; and Davis believed him, from the simple fact that such a paragraph as he quoted had no existence, – never was in print, never uttered till Grog’s own lips had fashioned it.

“But, surely, Grog, it is not a flying rumor – the invention of some penny-a-liner – would find any credence with you?”

“I don’t know,” said Davis, slowly; “I won’t say I ‘d swear to it all, but just as little would I reject it as a fable. At all events, I gave you credit for having trimmed your sails by the tidings; and if you did n’t, why, there’s no harm done, only you ‘re not so shrewd a fellow as I thought you.”

Beecher’s face grew scarlet; how near, how very near, he was of being “gazetted” the sharp fellow he had been striving for years to become, and now, by his own stupid admission, had he invalidated his claim to that high degree.

“And this is old Stein’s celebrated book? I ‘ve heard of it these five-and-thirty years, though I never saw it till now. Well, I won’t say you made a bad bargain – ”

“Indeed, Grog, – indeed, by George! I ‘m as glad as if I won five hundred to hear you say so. To tell you the truth, I was half afraid to own myself the purchaser. I said to myself, ‘Davis will chaff me so about this book, he ‘ll call me all the blockheads in Europe – ‘”

“No, no, Beecher, you ain’t a blockhead, nor will I suffer any one to call you such. There are things – there are people, too, Just as there are games – that you don’t know, but before long you ‘ll be the match of any fellow going. I can put you up to them, and I will. There’s my hand on it.”

Beecher grasped the proffered hand, and squeezed it with a warmth there was no denying. What wonderful change had come over Grog he could not guess. Whence this marvellous alteration in his manner towards him? No longer scoffing at his mistaken notions of people, or disparaging his abilities, Davis condescended now to talk and take counsel with him as an equal.

“That ‘s the king of wines,” said Davis, as he pushed a fresh bottle across the table. “When you can get Marcobrunner like that, where’s the Burgundy ever equalled it? Fill up your glass, and drink a bumper to our next venture, whatever it be!”

“‘Our next venture, whatever it be!’” echoed Beecher, as he laid the empty glass on the table.

“Another toast,” said Davis, replenishing the glasses. “‘May all of our successes be in company.’”

“I drink it with all my heart, old fellow. You ‘ve always stood like a man to me, and I ‘ll never desert you,” cried Beecher, whose head was never proof against the united force of wine and excitement.

“There never were two fellows on this earth so made to run in double harness,” said Davis, “as you and myself. Let us only lay our heads together, and there’s nothing can resist us.”

Grog now launched forth into one of those descriptions which he could throw off with a master’s hand, sketching life as a great hunting-ground, and themselves as the hunters. What zest and vigor could he impart to such a picture! – how artfully, too, could he make Beecher the foreground figure, he himself only shadowed forth as an accessory! Listening with eagerness to all he said, Beecher continued to drink deeply; the starry night, the perfumed air, the rippling sounds of the river, all combining with the wine and the converse to make up a dreamland of fascination. Nor was the enchantment less perfect that the objects described passed before him like a series of dissolving views. They represented, all of them, a life of pleasure and enjoyment, – means inexhaustible, means for every extravagance, and, what he relished fully as much, the undisputed recognition by the world to the claim of being a “sharp fellow,” – a character to which Grog’s aid was so dexterously contributed as to escape all detection.

Perhaps our reader might not have patience with us were we to follow Davis through all the devious turns and windings of this tortuous discourse. Perhaps, too, we should fail signally were we to attempt to convey in our cold narrative what came from his lips with all the marvellous power of a good story-teller, whose voice could command many an inflection, and whose crafty nature appreciated the temper of the metal beneath his beat If we could master all these, another and a greater difficulty would still remain; for how could we convey, as Davis contrived to do, that through all these gorgeous scenes of worldly success, in the splendor of a life of magnificence, amidst triumphs and conquests, one figure should ever pass before the mind’s eye, now participating in the success, now urging its completion, now, as it were, shedding a calm and chastened light over all, – a kind of angelic influence that heightened every enjoyment of the good, and averted every approach of evil?

Do not fancy, I beseech you, that this was a stroke of high art far above the pencil of Grog Davis. Amongst the accidents of his early life the “stage” had figured, and Grog had displayed very considerable talents for the career. It was only at the call of what he considered a higher ambition he had given up “the boards” for “the ring.” Besides this, he was inspired by the Marcobrunner, which had in an equal degree affected the brain of him who listened. If Grog were eloquent, Beecher was ductile. Indeed, so eagerly did he devour all that the other said, that when a moment of pause occurred, he called out, “Go on, old fellow, – go on! I could listen to you forever!”

Nor was it altogether surprising that he should like to hear words of praise and commendation from lips that once only opened in sarcasm and ridicule of him. How pleasant to know, at last, that he was really and truly a great partner in the house of Davis and Co., and not a mere commission agent, and that this partnership – how that idea came to strike him we cannot determine – was to be binding forever. How exalting, too, the sentiment that it was just at the moment when all his future looked gloomiest this friendship was ratified. The Lackington peerage might go, but there was Grog Davis, stanch and true, – the ancient estates be torn from his house, but there was the precious volume of old Lazarus, with wealth untold within its pages. Thus threading his way through these tortuous passages of thought, stumbling, falling, and blundering at every step, that poor brain lost all power of coherency and all guidance, and he wavered between a reckless defiance of the world and a sort of slavish fear of its censure.

“And Lackington, Grog, – Lackington,” cried he, at length, – “he’s as proud as Lucifer; what will he say?”

“Not so much as you think!” remarked Grog, dryly. “Lackington will take it easier than you suspect.”

“No, no, you don’t know him, – don’t know him at all. I wouldn’t stand face to face with him this minute for a round sum!”

“I ‘d not like it over-much myself!” muttered Davis, with a grim smile.

“It’s all from pride of birth and blood, and he ‘d say, ‘Debts, if you like; go ahead with Jews and the fifty per centers, but, hang it, don’t tie a stone round your throat, don’t put a double ditch between you and your own rank! Look where I am,’ he ‘d say, – ‘look where I am!’”

“Well, I hope he finds it comfortable!” muttered Grog, with a dry malice.

“Look where I am!” resumed Beecher, trying to imitate the pretentious tones of his brother’s voice. “And where is it, after all?”

“Where we ‘ll all be, one day or other,” growled out Grog, who could not help answering his own reflections.

“‘And are you sure of where you are?’ – that’s what I ‘d ask him, eh, Grog? – ‘are you sure of where you are?’”

“That would be a poser, I suspect,” said Davis, who laughed heartily; and the contagion catching Beecher, he laughed till the tears came.

“I might ask him, besides, ‘Are you quite sure how long you are to remain where you are?’ eh, Grog? What would he say to that?”

“The chances are, he ‘d not answer at all,” said Davis, dryly.

“No, no! you mistake him, he’s always ready with a reason; and then he sets out by reminding you that he’s the head of the house, – a fact that a younger brother does n’t need to have recalled to his memory. Oh, Grog, old fellow, if I were the Viscount, – not that I wish any ill to Lack-ington, – not that I ‘d really enjoy the thing at any cost to him, – but if I were – ”

“Well, let’s hear. What then?” cried Davis, as he filled the other’s glass to the top, – “what then?”

“Would n’t I trot the coach along at a very different pace. It’s not poking about Italy, dining with smoke-dried cardinals and snuffy old ‘marchesas,’ I ‘d be; but I ‘d have such a stable, old fellow, with Jem Bates to ride and Tom Ward to train them, and yourself, too, to counsel me. Would n’t we give Binsleigh and Hawksworth and the rest of them a cold bath, eh?”

“That ain’t the style of thing at all, Beecher,” said Grog, deprecatingly; “you ought to go in for the ‘grand British nobleman dodge,’ – county interests, influence with a party, and a vote in the Lords. If you were to try it, you ‘d make a right good speech. It wouldn’t be one of those flowery things the Irish fellows do, but a manly, straightforward, genuine English discourse.”

“Do you really think so, Grog?” asked he, eagerly.

“I ‘m sure of it I never mistook pace in my life; and I know what’s in you as well as if I saw it. The real fact is, you have a turn of speed that you yourself have no notion of, but it will come out one of these days if you ‘re attacked, – if they say anything about your life on the turf, your former companions, or a word about the betting-ring.”

The charm of this flattery was far more intoxicating than even the copious goblets of Marcobrunner, and Beecher’s flushed cheeks and flashing eyes betrayed how it overpowered him. Davis went on: —

“You are one of those fellows that never show ‘the stuff they ‘re made of’ till some injustice is done them, – eh?”

“True as a book!” chimed in Beecher.

“Take you fairly, and a child might lead you; but try it on to deny you what you justly have a right to, – let them attempt to dictate to you, and say, ‘Do this, and don’t do the other,’ – little they know on what back they ‘ve put the saddle. You ‘ll give them such a hoist in the air as they never expected!”

“How you read every line of me!” exclaimed Beecher, in ecstasy.

“And I ‘ll tell you more; there’s not another man breathing knows you but myself. They ‘ve always seen you in petty scrapes and little difficulties, pulling the devil by the last joint of his tail, as Jack Bush says; but let them wait till you come out for a cup race, – the Two Thousand Guinea Stakes, – then I’m not Kit Davis if you won’t be one of the first men in England.”

“I hope you ‘re right, Davis. I almost feel as if you were,” said Beecher, earnestly.

“When did you find me in the wrong, so far as judgment went? Show me one single mistake I ever made in a matter of opinion? Who was it foretold that Bramston would bolt after the Cotteswold if Rugby didn’t win? Who told the whole yard at Tattersall’s that Grimsby would sell Holt’s stable? Who saw that Rickman Turner was a coward, and would n’t fight? – and I said it, the very day they gave him ‘the Bath’ for his services in China! I don’t know much about books, nor do I pretend to; but as to men and women – men best – I ‘ll back myself against all England and the Channel Islands.”

“And I ‘ll take as much as you ‘ll spare me out of your book, Grog,” said Beecher, enthusiastically, while he filled his glass and drained it.

“You see,” said Davis, in a low, confidential tone, as if imparting a great secret, “I’ve always remarked that the way they smash a fellow in Parliament – I don’t care in which House – is always by raking up something or other he did years before. If he wrote a play, or a novel, or a book of poems, they ‘re down on him at once, about his imagination and his fancy, – that means, he never told a word of truth in his life. If he was unfortunate in business, they ‘re sure to refer to him about some change in the Law of Bankruptcy, and say, ‘There’s my honorable friend yonder ought to be able to help us by his experiences!’ Then, if a fellow has only his wits about him, how he floors them! You see there’s a great deal of capital to be made out of one of these attacks. You rise to reply, without any anger or passion; only dignity, – nothing but dignity! You appeal to the House if the assault of the right honorable baronet opposite was strictly in good taste, – whatever that means. You ask why you are signalled out to be the mark of his eloquence, or his wit, or whatever it be; and then you come out with a fine account of yourself, and all the honorable motives that nobody ever suspected you of. That’s the moment to praise everything you ever did, or meant to do, or couldn’t do; that’s the time to show them what a man they have amongst them.”

“Capital, glorious, excellent!” cried Beecher, in delight “Well, suppose now,” said Davis, “there ‘s a bill about marriages, – they ‘re always changing the law about them; it’s evidently a contract does n’t work quite smoothly for all parties, – well, there’s sure to be many a spicy remark and impertinent allusion in the debate; it’s a sore subject, and every one has a ‘raw’ on it; and, at last, somebody says something about unequal matches, alliances with an inferior class, ‘noble lords that have not scrupled to mingle the ancient blood of their race with the – the thin and washy current that flows in plebeian veins.’ I ‘m the Lord Chancellor, now,” said Grog, boldly, “and I immediately turn round and fix my eyes upon you. Up you get at once, and say, ‘I accept, my Lords, – I accept for myself, and my own case, every word the noble Duke or Marquis has just uttered. It never would have occurred to me to make my personal history the subject of your Lordships’ attention; but when thus rudely brought before you, – rudely and gratuitously introduced – ‘Here you ‘d frown at the last speaker, as much as to say, ‘You ‘ll hear more about this outside – ‘”

“Go on, – go on!” cried Beecher, with impatience.

“‘I rise in this place,’ – that has always a great impression, to say ‘this place,’ – ‘I rise in this place to say that I am prouder in the choice that shares with me the honors of my coronet, than in all the dignity and privilege that same coronet confers.’ What a cheer, what a regular hurrah follows that, for they have seen her, – ay, that have they! They have beheld her sweeping down the gilded drawing-room, – the handsomest woman in England! Where’s the Duchess with her eyes, her skin, her dignity, and her grace? Does n’t she look ‘thoroughbred in every vein of her neck’? Where did she get that graceful sweep, that easy-swimming gait, if she had n’t it in her very nature’?”

“By Heaven, it’s true, every syllable of it!” cried out Beecher, in all the wild ecstasy of delight.

“Where is the man – I don’t care what his rank might be – who would n’t envy you after you ‘d made that speech? You ‘d walk down Westminster the proudest man in England after it.”

Beecher’s features glowed with a delight that showed he had already anticipated the sense of his popularity.

“And then how the newspapers will praise you! It will be as if you built a bridge over the gulf that separates two distinct classes of people. You ‘ll be a sort of noble reformer. What was the wisest thing Louis Napoleon ever did? His marriage. Do you mark that he was always following his uncle’s footsteps in all his other policy; he saw that the only great mistake he ever made was looking out for a high match, and, like a shrewd fellow, he said, ‘I have station, rank, power, and money enough for two. It ‘s not to win the good favor of a wrinkled old Archduchess or a deaf old Princess, I ‘m going to marry. I ‘ll go in for the whole field. I ‘ll take the girl that, if I was n’t an Emperor, I ‘d be proud to call my own.’ And signs on ‘t, they all cried out, ‘See if he has n’t his heart in the right place; there’s an honest drop there! Let him be as ambitious as you like, he married just as you or I would.’ Ain’t it a fine thing,” exclaimed Grog, enthusiastically, “when one has all the middle classes in one’s favor, – the respectable ruck that’s always running, but seldom showing a winner? Get these fellows with you, and it’s like Baring’s name on the back of your bill. And now, Beecher,” said Davis, grasping the other’s hand, and speaking with a deep earnestness, – “and now that I ‘ve said what you might have done, I ‘ll tell you what I will do. I have just been sketching out this line of country to see how you ‘d take your fences, nothing more. You ‘ve shown me that you ‘re the right sort, and I ‘m not the man to forget it. If I had seen the shadow of a shade of a dodge about you, – if I ‘d have detected one line in your face, or one shake in your voice, like treachery, – so help me! I ‘d have thrown you over like winking! You fancied yourself a great man, and was stanch and true to your old friends; and now it’s my turn to tell you that I would n’t give that empty flask yonder for all your brother Lackington’s lease of his peerage! Hear me out I have it from his own lawyers, – from the fellows in Furnival’s Inn, – it’s up with him; the others are perfectly sure of their verdict There’s how it is! And now, Annesley Beecher, you were willing to marry Kit Davis’s daughter when you thought you could make her a peeress; now I say, that when you ‘ve nothing, nor haven’t a sixpence to bless yourself with, it’s Kit himself will give her to you, and say, there’s not the other man breathing he’d as soon see the husband of this same Lizzy Davis!”

The burst of emotion with which Beecher met this speech was, indeed, the result of very conflicting feelings. Shock at the terrible tidings of his brother’s downfall, and the insult to his house and name, mingled with a burst of gratitude to Davis for his fidelity; but stronger and deeper than these was another sentiment, – for, smile if you will, most sceptical reader, the man was in love, after his fashion. I do not ask of you to believe that he felt as you or I might or ought to feel the tender passion. I do not seek to persuade you that the object of his affection, mingled with all his thoughts, swayed them and etherealized them; that she was the theme of many a heart-woven story, the heroine of many an ecstatic dream: still she was one who could elicit from that nature, in all its selfishness, little traits of generous feeling, little bursts of honest sentiment, that made him appear better to his own heart. And so far has the adage truth with it, virtue is its own reward, in the conscious sense of well doing, in the peaceful calm of an unrepining spirit, and, not least of all, in that sympathy which good men so readily bestow upon even faint efforts to win their suffrage.

And so he sobbed out something that meant grief and gratitude; hope, fear, and uncertainty – worse than fear – all agitating and distracting him by turns.

Very little time did Grog give himself for calmer reflection; away he went at full speed to sketch out their future life. They were to make the tour of Europe, winning all before them. All the joyous part, all the splendor of equipage, retinue, mode of life, and outlay being dictated by Beecher; all the more business detail, the play and the money-getting, devolving upon Davis. Baden, Ems, Wiesbaden, Hamburg, and Aix, – all glowed in the descriptions like fields of foretold glory. How they were to outshine Princes in magnificence and Royal Highnesses in display; the envy of Beecher, of his unvarying luck; the splendor of all his belongings; Lizzy’s beauty, tool What a page would he fill in the great gossip calendar of Europe!

Well Davis knew how to feed the craving vanity of that weak nature, whose most ardent desire was to be deemed cunning and sharp, the cautious reserve of prudent men in his company being a tribute to his acuteness, the dearest his heart could covet Oh, if he longed for anything as success, it was for a time when his coming would spread a degree of terror at a play-table, and men would rise rather than risk their fortune against his! Should such a moment ever be his? Was that great triumph ever to befall him? And all this as the husband of Lizzy Davis!

“Ay!” said Grog, as he read and traced each succeeding emotion in that transparent nature, – “ay! that’s what may be called life; and when we ‘ve done Europe, smashed every bank on the Continent, we ‘ll cross the Atlantic, and give Jonathan a ‘touch of our quality.’ I know all their games well, and I ‘ve had my ‘three bullets and a poker’ before now on a Mississippi steamer! Your Yankee likes faro, and I’ve a new cabal to teach him; in short, my boy, there’s a roving commission of fun before us, and if it don’t pay, my name ain’t Davis!”

“Was this your scheme, then, Grog,” asked Beecher, “when you told me at Brussels that you could make a man of me?”

“It was, my boy,” cried Davis, eagerly. “You ‘ve guessed it. There was only one obstacle to the success of the plan at that time, and this exists no longer.”

“What was the obstacle you speak of?”

“Simply, that so long as you fancied yourself next in succession to a peerage, you ‘d never lay yourself down regularly to your work; you’d say, ‘Lackington can’t live forever; he’s almost twenty years my senior. I must be the Viscount yet. Why should I, therefore, cumber myself with cares that I have no need of, and involve myself amongst people I’ll have to cut one of these days? No, I’ll just make a waiting race of it, and be patient.’ Now, however, that you can’t count upon this prospect, – now that to-morrow or next day will declare to the world that Henry Hastings Beecher is just Henry Hastings Beecher, and not Viscount Lackington, and that the Honorable Annesley is just Annesley, and no more, – now, I say, that you see this clearly with your own eyes, you ‘ll buckle to, and do your work manfully. And there was another thing – ” And here Davis paused, and seemed to meditate.

“What was that, Grog? Be candid, old fellow, and tell me all.”

“So I will, then,” resumed Davis. “That other thing was this. So long as you were the great man in prospective, and might some fine day be a Lord, you could always persuade yourself – or some one else could persuade you – that Kit Davis was hanging on you just for your rank; that he wanted the intimacy of a man in your station, and so on. Now, if you ever came to believe this, there would have been an end of all confidence between us; and without confidence, what can a fellow do for his pal? This was, therefore, the obstacle; and even if you could have got over it, I couldn’t. No, hang me if I could! I was always saying to myself, ‘It’s all very nice and smooth now, Kit, between you and Beecher, – you eat, drink, and sleep together, – but wait till he turns the corner, old fellow, and see if he won’t give you the cold shoulder.”