Davenport Dunn, a Man of Our Day. Volume 2

“Well, we are rather below par just now,” said the Minister, laughing, while he busied himself to select another cigar from the heap before him.

“It was just about that very enterprise I came to speak to your Lordship this morning,” said Dunn, drawing his chair closer. “I need not tell you how far the assurance of Government support has aided our success. The report of the Parliamentary Committee as to the Harbor of Refuge, the almost certain promise of her Majesty’s marine residence, the flattering reception your Lordship gave to the deputation in the matter of the American packet-station, have all done us good and efficient service. But we want more, my Lord, – we want more!”

“The deuce you do! Why, my good friend, these marks of our preference for your scheme have cost us some hundred angry addresses and recriminations from all parts of the kingdom, where, we are told, there is more picturesque scenery, more salubrious air, deeper water, and better anchorage. If you built a villa for every member of the Cabinet, and settled it on us in freehold there, it would not repay us for all we have suffered in your cause.”

“We should be both proud and happy to accommodate your Lordship’s colleagues on Jedburg Crescent,” said Dunn, bowing with a well-assumed seriousness.

“But what do you want us to do?” said his Lordship, peevishly; for he had the dislike great men generally feel to have their joke capped. It is for them to be smart, if they please, but not for the Mr. Davenport Dunns of this world to take up the clew of the facetiousness.

Mr. Dunn seemed somewhat posed by the abrupt directness of this question. Lord Jedburg went on: —

“You surely never supposed that we could send you material assistance. You are far too conversant with the working of our institutions to expect such. These things are possible in France, but they won’t do here. No, Dunn; perfectly impossible here.”

“And yet, my Lord, it is precisely in France that they ought to be impossible. Ministers in that country have no responsibility except towards their sovereign. If they become suddenly enriched, one sees at once how they have abused the confidence of their master.”

“I’ll not enter upon that question,” said his Lordship, smartly. “Tell me, rather, something about Ireland; how shall we fare there in a general election?”

“With proper exertions you may be able to hold your own,” was the dry rejoinder.

“Not more? Not any more than this?”

“Certainly not, my Lord, nor do I see how you could expect it. What you are in the habit of calling concessions to Irish interests have been little other than apologies for the blunders of your colleagues. You remove some burden imposed by yourselves, or express sorrow for some piece of legislation your own hands have inflicted – ”

“Come, come, Mr. Dunn, the only course of lectures I attend are delivered in the House of Commons; besides, I have no time for these things.” There was a tone of prompt decision in the way he uttered this that satisfied Dunn he had gone fully as far as was safe. “Now as to Ireland, we shall look for at least sixty, or perhaps seventy, sure votes. Come, where’s your list, Dunn? Out with it, man! We are rather rich in patronage just now. We can make a Bishop, a Puisne Judge, three Assistant Barristers, a Poor Law Commissioner, not to say that there are some fifty smaller things in the Revenue. Which will you have?”

“All, my Lord,” said Dunn, coolly, – “all, and some colonial appointments besides, for such of our friends as find living at home inexpedient.”

His Lordship lay back in his chair, and laughed pleasantly. “There’s Jamaica just vacant; would that suit you?”

“The Governorship? The very thing I want, and for a very old supporter of your Lordship’s party.”

“Who is he?”

“The Earl of Glengariff, my Lord, a nobleman who has never received the slightest acknowledgment for a political adherence of fifty-odd years.”

“Why, the man must be in second childhood. If I remember aright, he was – ”

“He is exactly four years your Lordship’s senior; he says you fagged for him his last half at Eton.”

“Pooh, pooh! he mistakes; it was of my father he was thinking. But to the point: what can he do for us?”

“I was alluding to what he had done, my Lord,” said Dunn, pointedly.

“Ah, Dunn, we are not rich enough for gratitude. That is the last luxury of a ‘millionnaire;’ besides, you are aware how many claimants there will be for so good a thing as this.”

“Which of them all, my Lord, can promise you ten votes in the Houses?”

“Well, is the bargain finished? Is all paid?”

“Not yet, my Lord; not yet You are averse to affording us any support to the Glengariff scheme, and, for the present, I will not hamper you with the consideration; you can, however, serve us in another way. Glumthal is very anxious about the Jew Bill; he wishes, Heaven knows why, to see his brother in the House. May I promise him that the next session will see it law? Let me just have your Lordship’s word to that effect, so that I may telegraph to him when I leave this.”

His Lordship shook his head dubiously, and said, “You forget that I have colleagues, Dunn.”

“I remember it well, my Lord, and I only asked for your own individual pledge. The fact is, my Lord, the Jews throughout the world have attached an immense importance to this question; and if Glumthal – confidentially, of course – be made the depositary of the secret, it will raise him vastly in the estimation of his co-religionists.”

“Let us see if the thing can be done. Is it practicable, and how?” “Oh, as to that, my Lord, modern legislation is carried on pretty much like a mercantile concern; you advertise your want, and it is supplied at once. Ask the newspapers. ‘How are we to admit the Jews?’ and you ‘ll get your answer as regularly as though it were a question of sport addressed to ‘Bell’s Life.’”

“Candor being the order of the day, what does Mr. Davenport Dunn want for himself?”

“I am coming to him, my Lord, but not just yet.”

“Why, really, Dunn, except that we turn Colonel Blood in your behalf, and steal the crown for you, I don’t see what more we can do.”

“It is a mere trifle in point of patronage, my Lord, though, in my ignorance of such matters, it may be, possibly, not without difficulty,” said Dunn; and, for the first time, his manner betrayed a sign of embarrassment “The Earl of Glengariff has an only unmarried daughter, a lady of great personal attractions, and remarkably gifted in point of ability; one of those persons, in short, on whom Nature has set the stamp of high birth, and fitted to be the ornament of a Court.”

“But we are all married in the Cabinet. Even the Treasury Lords have got wives,” said Lord Jedburg, laughing, and enjoying the discomfiture of Dunn’s face even more than his own jest.

“I am aware of it, my Lord,” replied Dunn, with inflexible gravity; “my ambitious hopes did not aspire so highly. What I was about to entreat was your Lordship’s assistance to have the lady I have mentioned appointed to a situation in the household, – one of her Majesty’s ladies – ”

“Impossible! perfectly impossible, Dunn!” said the Minister, flinging away his cigar in impatient anger; “really, you seem to have neither measure nor moderation in your demands. Such an interference on my part, if I were mad enough to attempt it, would meet a prompt rebuke.”

“If your Lordship’s patience had permitted me to finish, you would have heard that what I proposed was nothing beyond the barren honor of a ‘Gazette.’ On the day week that her Ladyship’s name had so appeared she would be married.”

“It does not alter the matter in the least. It is not in my province to make such a recommendation, and I refuse it flatly.”

“I am sorry for it, my Lord. Your Lordship’s refusal may inflict great evils upon the country, – the rule of an incompetent and ungenial Government, – the accession to power of men the most unscrupulous and reckless.”. “Cannot you see, sir,” said the Minister, sharply, “that I am in a position to comprehend what my office admits of, and where its limits are laid? I have told you that these appointments are not in our hands.”

“Sir Robert Peel did not say so, my Lord; he insisted – actually insisted – on his right to surround the throne with political partisans.”

“The Cabinet is not an Equity Court, to be ruled by precedents; and I tell you once more, Dunn, I should fail if I attempted it.”

“The Viscountess might obtain this favor,” said Dunn, with an obdurate persistence that was not to be resisted; “and even if unsuccessful, it would inflict no rebuff on your Lordship. Indeed, it would come more gracefully as a proposition from her Ladyship, who could also mention Lady Augusta’s approaching marriage.”

“I almost think I might leave you to finish the discussion with my wife,” said his Lordship, laughing; “I half suspect it would be the best penalty on your temerity. Are you engaged for Sunday? – well, then, dine with us. And now, that bill being adjourned,” said he, with a weary sigh, “what next?”

“I am now coming to myself, – to my own case, my Lord,” said Dunn, with the very slightest tremor in his voice. “Need I say that I wish it were in the hands of any other advocacy? I am so far fortunate, however, that I address one fully conversant with my claims on his party. For five-and-twenty years I have been the careful guardian of their interests in a country where, except in mere name, they never possessed any real popularity. Your Lordship smiles a dissent; may I enter upon the question?”

“Heaven forbid!” broke in the Minister, smiling good-humoredly.

“Well, my Lord, were I to reduce my services to a mere monetary estimate, and furnish you with a bill of costs, for what a goodly sum should I stand in the estimates. I have mainly sustained the charge of seven county elections, hardly contested. I have paid the entire charges on twenty-two borough contests. I have subsidized the provincial press in your favor at a cost of several thousand pounds out of my own pocket I have compromised three grave actions about to be brought against the Government. Of the vast sums I have contributed to local charities, schools, nunneries, societies of various denominations, all in the interest of your party, I take no account I have spent in these and like objects a princely fortune, and yet these hundreds of thousands of pounds are as nothing – mere nothing to the actual personal services I have rendered to your party. In the great revolution effected by the sale of encumbered estates, I have so watchfully guarded your interests that I have replaced the old rampant Toryism of the land by a gentry at once manageable and practicable, – men intent less upon party than personal objects, consequently available to the Minister, always accessible by an offer of direct advantage. I have, with all this, so thrown a Whig light over the rising prosperity of the country, that it might seem the result of your wise rule that stimulated men to the higher civilization they have attained to, and that a more forbearing charity and a more liberal spirit went hand in hand with improved agriculture and higher farming. To identify a party with the great march of this prosperity, to make of your policy a cause of these noble results, was the grand conception which, for a quarter of a century, I have carried out. When Mr. O’Connell kept your predecessors in power, his price was the bit-by-bit surrender of what in your hearts you believed to be bulwarks of the constitution. In return for my support what have I got? Some patronage – be it so – for my own dependants and followers, no doubt! Show me one man of my name, one man of my convictions, holding place under the Crown. No, my Lord, my power to serve your party was based on this sure foundation, that I was open to no imputation; I was the distributor of your patronage to the men best worthy to receive it, – no more.”

“Four o’clock, Dunn; time’s up,” said his Lordship. “I must go down to the House.”

“I am sorry to have detained your Lordship with so ungracious a theme.”

“Well, I do think you might have spared me some of it I know well my colleagues all know your invaluable services, – an admirable member of the party, active and able, but not quite neglected, either, eh, Dunn? – not entirely left in oblivion?”

While he spoke, he busied himself in the search for a paper amidst the heap of those before him, and could not, therefore, notice the mortification so palpably expressed on Dunn’s face.

“I can’t find it,” muttered he; “I should like, however, to show you the memorandum itself, in which your name stands recommended to her Majesty for a baronetcy.”

Dunn’s sudden start made the speaker look up; and as he turned his eyes on him, there was no mistaking the look of determined anger on his features.

“A baronetcy, my Lord,” said he, with a slow, thick utterance, “has become the recognized reward of a popular writer, or a fashionable physician, whose wives acquire a sort of Brummagem rank in calling themselves ‘My Lady;’ but men like myself, – men who have sustained a party, – men who, wielding many arms of strength, have devoted them all to the one task of maintaining in power a certain administration, which, whatever their gifts, assuredly did not possess the art of conciliating – ”

“Come, it is a peerage you want?” broke in his Lordship, whose manner betrayed a temper pushed to its last limits.

“If I am to trust your Lordship’s tone, the pretension would seem scarcely credible,” said Dunn, calmly.

“I believe I can understand how it would appear to others. I can, without great difficulty, imagine the light in which it would be viewed.”

“As to that, my Lord, any advancement to a man like me will evoke plenty of animadversion. I have done too-much for your party not to have made many enemies. The same objection would apply were I to accept the paltry acknowledgment you so graciously contemplated for me, and which I warn you not to offer me.”

Was it the naked insolence of this speech, or was it that in uttering it the proud pretension of the man summoned a degree of dignity to his manner; but certainly the Minister now looked at him with a sort of respect, he had not deigned hitherto to bestow.

“You know well, Dunn,” he began, in a tone of conciliation, “that fitness for the elevation is only one of the requirements in such a case. There are a mass of other considerations, – the ostensible claims; I mean such as can be-avowed and declared openly, – of the pretending party, – the services he has rendered to the country at large, – the merits he can show for some great public recognition. The press, whatever be its faults nowadays, has no defects on the score of frankness, and we shall have the question put in twenty different quarters, ‘What brilliant campaign has Mr. Dunn concluded?’ ‘What difficult negotiation carried to successful issue?’ ‘Where have been his great achievements in the law courts?’ To be sure, it might be said that we honor the industrial spirit of our country in ennobling one who has acquired a colossal fortune by his own unaided abilities; but Manchester and Birmingham have also their ‘millionnaires.’”

“Your Lordship’s time is far too valuable to be passed in such discussion; even mine might be more profitably spent than in listening to it, My demand is now before you; in some three weeks hence it is not impossible it may await the consideration of your Lordship’s successors. In one word, if I leave this room without your distinct pledge on the subject, you will no longer reckon me amongst the followers of your party.”

“Half-past four, I protest,” said Lord Jedburg, taking up his gloves. “I shall be too late at the House. Let us conclude this to-morrow morning. Come down here at eleven.”

“Excuse me, my Lord. I leave town to-night I am going over to Ireland.”

“Yes, you ought to be there; I forgot. Well, you must leave this affair in my hands. I ‘ll speak to Croydon and Locksley about it, – both stanch friends of yours. I can make no pledge, you know, – no actual promise – ”

“Nor I either, my Lord,” said Dunn, rising. “Let me, however, ask you to accept of my excuses for Sunday at dinner.”

“I regret much that we are not to have the pleasure of your company,” said his Lordship, with a formal courtesy.

“These appointments,” said Dunn, laying down a list he had made on the table, “are, of course, in your Lordship’s hands.”

“I conclude so,” was the dry reply, as the Minister but-toned his coat.

“I wish your Lordship a very good morning. Good-bye, my Lord.” And the words had their peculiar utterance.

“Good-bye, Mr. Dunn,” said the Minister, shortly, and rang for his carriage.

Dunn had but reached the foot of the stairs, when he heard a rapid tread behind him. “I beg pardon, Mr. Dunn,” cried Bagwell, the private secretary; “his Lordship sent me to overtake you, and say that the matter you are desirous about shall be done. His Lordship also hopes you can dine with him on Sunday.”

“Oh, very well; say ‘Yes, with much pleasure.’ Has his Lordship gone?”

“Yes, by the private door. He was in a great hurry, and will, I fear, be late, after all.”

“There’s a good thing to be done just now in potash, Bagwell, at Pesaro. If you have a spare hundred or two, give me a call to-morrow morning.” And with a gesture to imply secrecy, Dunn moved away, leaving Bagwell in a dream of gold-getting.

CHAPTER XIX. THE COTTAGE NEAR SNOWDON

At an early portion of this true story, our reader was incidentally told that Charles Conway had a mother, and that she lived in Wales. Her home was a little cottage near the village of Bedgellert, a neighborhood wherein her ancestors had once possessed large estates, but of which not an acre now acknowledged her as owner. Here, on a mere pittance, she had lived for years a life of unbroken solitude. The few charities to the poor her humble means permitted had served to make her loved and respected; while her gentle manners and kind address gave her that sort of eminence which such qualities are sure to attain in remote and simple circles.

All her thoughts in life, all her wishes and ambitions, were centred in her son; and although it was to the wild and reckless extravagance of his early life that she owed the penury which now pressed her, although but for his wasteful excesses she had still been in affluence and comfort, she never attached to him the slightest blame, nor did her lips ever utter one syllable of reproach. Strong in the conviction that so long as the wild excesses of youth stamp nothing of dishonor on the character, the true nature within has sustained no permanent injury, she waited patiently for the time when, this season of self-indulgence over, the higher dictates of manly reason would assert their influence, and that Charley, having sown his wild oats, would come forth rather chastened and sobered than stained by his intercourse with the world.

If this theory of hers has its advocates, there are many – and wise people, too – who condemn it, and who deem those alone safe who have been carefully guarded from the way of temptation, and have been kept estranged from the seductions of pleasure. To ourselves the whole question resolves itself into the nature of the individual, at the same time that we had far rather repose our confidence in one who had borne his share in life’s passages, gaining his experience, mayhap, with cost, but coming honorably through the trial, than on him who, standing apart, had but looked out over the troubled ocean of human passion, nor risked himself on the sea of man’s temptations.

The former was Conway’s case: he had led a life of boundless extravagance; without any thought of the cost, he had launched out into every expensive pursuit. What we often hear applied to others figuratively, was strictly applicable to him; he never knew the value of money; he never knew that anything one desired could be overpaid for. The end came at last. With a yacht ready stored and fitted out for a Mediterranean cruise, with three horses heavily engaged at Doncaster, with a shooting-lodge filled with distinguished company in the Highlands, with negotiations all but completed for the Hooksley hounds, with speculations rife as to whether the Duchess of This or the Countess of That had secured him for a daughter or a niece, there came, one morning, the startling information from his solicitor that a large loan he had contemplated raising was rendered impossible by some casualty of the money-market Recourse must be had to the Jews; heavy liabilities incurred at Newmarket must be met at once and at any cost. A week of disaster fell exactly at this conjuncture; he lost largely at the Portland, largely on the turf; a brother officer, for whom he had given surety, levanted immensely in debt; while a local bank, in which a considerable sum of his was vested, failed. The men of sixty per cent saved him from shipwreck; but they took the craft for the salvage, and Conway was ruined.

Amidst the papers which Conway had sent to his solicitor as securities for the loan, a number of family documents had got mingled, old deeds and titles to estates of which the young man had not so much as heard, claims against property of whose existence he knew nothing. When questioned about them by the man of law, he referred him coolly to his mother, saying, frankly, “it was a matter on which he had never troubled his head.’” Mrs. Conway herself scarcely knew more. She had heard that there was a claim in the family to a peerage; her husband used to allude to it in his own dreamy, indolent fashion, and say that it ought to be looked after, and that was all.

Had the information come to the mind of an active or enterprising man of business, it might have fared differently. The solicitor to the family was, however, himself a lethargic, lazy sort of person, and he sent back the papers to Mrs. Conway, stating that he was not sure “something might not be made of them;” that is, added he, “if he had five or six thousand pounds to expend upon searches, and knew where to prosecute them.”

This was but sorry comfort, but it did not fall upon a heart high in hope or strong in expectation. Mrs. Conway had never lent herself to the impression that the claim had much foundation, and she heard the tidings with calm; and all that was remembered of the whole transaction was when some jocular allusion would be made by Charles to the time when he should succeed to his peerage, or some as light-hearted jest of the old lady as to whether she herself was to enjoy a title or not The more stirring incidents of a great campaign had latterly, however, so absorbed all the young soldier’s interest that he seemed totally to have forgotten the oft-recurring subject of joke between them. Strange enough was it, yet, that in the very letter which conveyed to his mother an account of his Tchernaya achievement, a brief postscript had the following words: —

“Since I have been confined to hospital, a person connected with the newspapers, I believe, has been here to learn the exact story of my adventure, and, curiously enough, has been pumping me about our family history. Can it be that ‘our peerage’ is looking up again? This last sabre-cut on my skull makes me rather anxious to exchange a chako for a coronet. Can you send me anything hopeful in this direction?”

It was on an answer to this letter the old lady was occupied, seated at an open window, as the sun was just setting on a calm and mellow evening in late autumn. Well understanding the temperament of him she addressed, she adverted little to the danger of his late achievement, and simply seemed to concur in his own remark when recounting it, that he who has made his name notorious from folly has, more than others, the obligation to achieve a higher and better reputation; and added, at the same time: “Charley, what I liked best in your feat was its patriotism. The sense of rendering a good and efficient service to the cause of your country was a nobler prompting than any desire for personal distinction.” From this she turned to tell him about what she well knew he loved best to hear of, – her home and her daily life, with its little round of uneventful cares, the little Welsh pony “Crw,” and his old spaniel “Belle,” and the tulips he had taken such pains about, and the well he had sunk in the native rock. She had good tidings, too, that the railroad – the dreadful railroad – was not to take the line of their happy valley, but to go off in some more “favored” direction. Of the cottage itself she had succeeded in obtaining a renewed lease, – a piece of news well calculated to delight him, “if,” as she said, “grand dreams of the peerage might not have impaired his relish for the small hut at the foot of Snowdon.” She had just reached so far when a little chaise, drawn by a mountain pony, drew up before the door, and a lady in a sort of half-mourning dress got out and rang the bell. As the old lady rose to admit her visitor, – for her only servant was at work in the garden, – she felt no small astonishment. She was known to none but the peasant neighborhood about her; she had not a single acquaintance in the country with its gentry; and although the present arrival came with little display, in her one glance at the figure of the stranger she saw her to be distinctly of a certain condition in life.