Davenport Dunn, a Man of Our Day. Volume 1

Large white-sailed boats stole peacefully along, loaded, half-mast high, with water-melons and garden stores; the golden produce glittering in the sun, and glowing in the scarcely rippled water beneath them, while the low chant of the boatmen floated softly and lazily through the air – meet sounds in a scene where all seemed steeped in a voluptuous repose.

The two ladies whom we have mentioned were not impassioned spectators of the scene. Whenever their eyes ranged over it, no new brilliancy awoke in them, no higher colour tinged their cheek. One was somewhat advanced in life, but with many traces of beauty, and an air which denoted a lifelong habit of homage and deference.

There was that in her easy, lounging attitude, and the splendour of her dress, which seemed to intimate that Lady Lackington would still be graceful, and even extravagant, though there were none to admire the grace or be dazzled by the costliness. Her companion, though several years younger, looked, from the effects of delicate health and a suffering disposition, almost of her own age. She, too, was handsome; but it was a beauty which so much depended on tint and colour, that her days of indisposition left her almost bereft of good looks. All about her, her low, soft voice, her heavily raised eyelids, her fair and blue-veined hands, the very carriage of her head, pensively thrown forwards, were so many protestations of one who asked for sympathy and compassion; and who, whether with reason or without, firmly believed herself the most unhappy creature in existence.

If there was no great similarity of disposition to unite them, there was a bond fully as strong. They were both English of the same order, both born and bred up in a ritual that dictates its own notions of good or bad, of right and wrong, of well-bred and vulgar, of riches and poverty. Given any person in society, or any one event of their lives, and these two ladies’ opinion upon either would have been certain to harmonise and agree. The world for them had but one aspect; for the simple reason, that they had always seen it from the one same point of view. They had not often met; they had seen very little of each other for years; but the freemasonry of class supplied all the place of affection, and they were as fond and as confiding as though they were sisters.

“I must say,” said the Viscountess, in a tone full of reprobation, “that is shocking – actually shameful; and, in your place, I’d not endure it!”

“I have become so habituated to sorrow,” sighed Lady Grace

“That you will sink under it at last, my dear, if this man’s cruelties be not put an end to. You really must allow me to speak to Lackington.”

“It wouldn’t be of the slightest service, I assure you. In the first place, he is so plausible, he’d persuade any one that there was nothing to complain of, that he lived up to his fortune, that his means were actually crippled; and secondly, he’d give such pledges for the future, such promises, that it would be downright rudeness to throw a doubt on their sincerity.”

“Why did you marry him, my dear?” said Lady Lackington, with a little sigh.

“I married him to vex Ridout; we had a quarrel at that fête at Chiswick, you remember, Tollertin’s fête. Ridout was poor, and felt his poverty. I don’t believe I treated his scruples quite fairly. I know I owned to him that I had no contempt for riches – that I thought Belgrave-square, and the Opera, and Diamonds, and a smart Equipage, all very commendable things: and Jack said, ‘Then, there’s your man. Twining has twenty thousand a year.’ ‘But, he has not asked me,’ said I, laughing. Ridout turned away without a word. Half an hour later, Mr. Adderley Twining formally proposed for my hand, and was accepted.”

“And Jack Ridout is now the Marquis of Allerton,” said Lady Lackington.

“I know it!” said the other, bitterly.

“With nigh forty thousand a year.”

“I know it!” cried she, again.

“And the handsomest house and the finest park in England.”

The other burst into tears, and hid her face between her hands.

“There’s a fate in these things, my dear,” said Lady Lackington, with a slight paleness creeping over her cheek. “That’s all we can say about them.”

“What have you done with that sweet place in Hampshire?”

“Dingley? It is let to Lord Mauley.”

“And you had a house in St. James’s-square.”

“It is Burridge’s Hotel, now.”

Lady Lackington fanned her swarthy face for some seconds, and then said, “And how did you come here?”

“We saw – that is, Twining saw – an advertisement of this new establishment in the Galignani. We had just arrived at Liége, when he discovered a vetturino returning to Milan with an empty carriage; he accordingly bargained with him to take us on here – I forget for what sum – so that we left our own carriage, and half my luggage, at the Pavilion Hotel, and set off on our three weeks’ journey. We have been three weeks all but two days on the road! My maid of course refused to travel in this fashion, and went back to Paris. Courcel, his own man, rebelled too, which Twining, I must say, seemed overjoyed at, and gave him such a character for honesty in consequence, as he never could have hoped for; and so we came on, with George the footman, and a Belgian creature I picked up at the hotel, who, except to tear out my hair when she brushes it, and bruise me whenever she hooks a dress, has really no other gift under heaven.”

“And you actually came all this way by vetturino?”

Lady Grace nodded a sad assent, and sighed deeply.

“What does he mean by it, my dear? The man must have some deep, insidious design in all this; – don’t you think so?”

“I think to myself, sometimes,” replied she, sorrowfully. And now their eyes met, and they remained looking steadily at each other for some seconds. Whatever Lady Grace’s secret thoughts, or whatever the dark piercing orbs of her companion served to intimate, true is it that she blushed till her cheek became crimson; and as she arose, and walked out upon the terrace, her neck was a-flame with the emotion.

“He never married?” said Lady Lackington.

“No!” said Lady Grace, without turning her head. And there was a silence on both sides.

Oh dear! how much of the real story of our lives passes without expression – how much of the secret mechanism of our hearts moves without a sound in the machinery!

“Poor fellow!” said Lady Lackington, at last, “his lot is just as sad as your own. I mean,” added she, “that he feels it so.”

There was no answer, and she resumed. “Not but men generally treat these things lightly enough. They have their clubs, and their Houses of Parliament, and their shooting. Are you ill, dearest?” cried she, as Lady Grace tottered feebly back and sauk into a chair.

“No,” said she, in a faint voice, “I’m only tired!” And there was an inexpressible melancholy in the tone as she spoke it.

“And I’m tired too!” said Lady Lackington, drearily. “There is a tyranny in the routine of these places quite insupportable – the hours, the discipline, the diet, and, worse than all, the dreadful people one meets with.” Though Lady Grace did not seem very attentive, this was a theme the speaker loved to improve, and so she proceeded to discuss the house and its inhabitants in all freedom. French, Russians, and Italians – all were passed in review, and very smartly criticised, till she arrived at “those atrocious O’Reillys, that my Lord will persist in threatening to present to me. Now one knows horrid people when they are very rich, or very well versed in some speculation or other – mines, or railroads, or the like – and when their advice is so much actual money in your pocket – just, for instance, as my Lord knows that Mr. Davenport Dunn – ”

“Oh! he’s a great ally of Mr. Twining; at least, I have heard his name a hundred times in connexion with business matters.”

“You never saw him?”

“No.”

“Nor I, but once; but I confess to have some curiosity to know him. They tell me he can do anything he pleases with each House of Parliament, and has no inconsiderable influence in a sphere yet higher. It is quite certain that the old Duke of Wycombe’s affairs were all set to rights by his agency, and Lady Muddleton’s divorce bill was passed by his means.”

The word “divorce” seemed to rally Lady Grace from her fit of musing, and she said, “Is that certain?”

“Julia herself says so, that’s all. He got a bill, or an act, or clause, or whatever you call it, inserted, by which she succeeded in her suit, and she is now as free – as free – ”

“As I am not!” broke in Lady Grace, with a sad effort at a smile.

“To be sure, there is a little scandal in the matter, too. They say that old Lord Brookdale was very ‘soft’ himself in that quarter.”

“The Chancellor!” exclaimed Lady Grace.

“And why not, dear? You remember the old refrain, ‘No age, no station’ – what is it? – and the next line goes – ‘To sovereign beauty mankind bends the knee.’ Julia is rather proud of the triumph herself; she says it is like a victory in China, where the danger is very little and the spoils considerable!”

“Mr. Spicer, my Lady,” said a servant, entering, “wishes to know if your Ladyship will receive him.”

“Not this morning; say I’m engaged at present Tell him – But perhaps you have no objection – shall we have him in?”

“Just as you please. I don’t know him.”

Lady Lackington whispered a word or two, and then added aloud, “And one always finds them ‘useful,’ my dear!”

Mr. Spicer, when denuded of top-coat, cap, and woollen wrapper, as we saw him last, was a slightly made man, middle-sized, and middle-aged, with an air sufficiently gentlemanlike to pass muster in any ordinary assemblage. To borrow an illustration from the pursuits he was versed in, he bore the same relation to a man of fashion that a “weed” does to a “winner of the Derby” – that is to say, to an uneducated eye, there would have seemed some resemblance; and just as the “weed” counterfeits the racer in a certain loose awkwardness of stride and an ungainly show of power, so did he appear to have certain characteristics of a class that he merely mixed with on sufferance, and imitated in some easy “externals.” The language of any profession is, however, a great leveller; and whether the cant be of the “House,” Westminster Hall, the College of Physicians, the Mess Table, or the “Turf,” it is exceedingly difficult at first blush to distinguish the real practitioner from the mere pretender. Now, Spicer was what is called a Gentleman Rider, and he had all the slang of his craft, which is, more or less, the slang of men who move in a very different sphere.

As great landed proprietors of ambitious tendencies will bestow a qualification to sit in Parliament upon some man of towering abilities and small fortune, so did certain celebrities of the Turf confer a similar social qualification on Spicer; and by enabling him to “associate with the world,” empower themselves to utilise his talents and make use of his capabilities. In this great Parliament of the Field, therefore, Spicer sat; and though for a very small and obscure borough, yet he had his place, and was “ready when wanted.”

“How d’ye do, Spicer?” said Lady Lackington, arranging the folds of her dress as he came forward, and intimating by the action that he was not to delude himself into any expectation of touching her hand. “My Lord told me you were here.”

Spicer bowed, and muttered, and looked, as though he were waiting to be formally presented to the other lady in company; but Lady Lackington had not the most remote intention of bestowing on him such a mark of recognition, and merely answered the mute appeal of his features by a dry “Won’t you sit down?”

And Mr. Spicer did sit down, and of a verity his position denoted no excess of ease or enjoyment. It was not that he did not attempt to appear perfectly at home, that he did not assume an attitude of the very calmest self-possession, maybe he even passed somewhat the frontier of the lackadaisical territory he assumed, for he slapped his boot with his whip in a jaunty affectation of indifference.

“Pray, don’t do that!” said Lady Lackington; “it worries one!”

He desisted, and a very awkward silence of some seconds ensued; at length she said, “There was something or other I wanted to ask you about; you can’t help me to it, can you?”

“I’m afraid not, my Lady. Was it anything about sporting matters?”

“No, no; but now that you remind me, all that information you gave me about Glaucus was wrong, he came in ‘a bad third.’ My Lord laughed at me for losing my money on him, and said he was the worst horse of the lot.”

“Very sorry to differ with his Lordship,” said Spicer, deferentially, “but he was the favourite up to Tuesday evening, when Scott declared that he’d win with Big the Market. I then tried to get four to one on Flycatcher, to square your book, but the stable was nobbled.”

“Did you ever hear such jargon, my dear?” said Lady Lackington. “You don’t understand one syllable of it, I’m certain.”

Spicer smirked and made a slight approach to a bow, as though even this reference to him would serve for an introduction; but Lady Grace met the advance with a haughty stare and a look, that said, as plainly as any words, “At your peril, Sir!”

“Well, one thing is certain!” said Lady Lackington, “nothing that you predicted turned out afterwards. Glaucus was beaten, and I lost my three hundred pounds – only fancy, dearest, three hundred pounds, with which one could do so many things! I wanted it in fifty ways, and I never contemplated leaving it with the legs at Newmarket.”

“Not the legs, I assure you, my Lady – not the legs. I made your book with Colonel Stamford and Gore Middleton – ”

“As if I cared who won it!” said she, haughtily.

“I never knew that you tempted fortune in this fashion!” said Lady Grace, languidly.

“I do so very rarely, my dear. I think Mining Shares are better, or Guatemala State Bonds. I realised very handsomely indeed upon them two years ago. To be sure it was Dunn that gave me the hint: he dined with us at the Hôtel de Windsor, and I asked him to pay a small sum for me to Hore’s people, and when I counted the money out to him, he said, ‘Why not buy in some of those Guanaxualo shares; they’ll be up to – ’ I forget what he said – ‘before a month. Let Storr wait, and you’ll pay him in full.’ And he was quite right, aas I told you. I realised about eight hundred pounds on my venture.”

“If Glaucus had won, my Lady – ”

“Don’t tell me what I should have gained,” broke she in. “It only provokes one the more, and above all, Spicer, no more information, I detest ‘information.’ And now, what was it I had to say to you; really your memory would seem to be failing you completely. What could it be?”

“It couldn’t be that roan filly – ”

“Of course it couldn’t. I really must endeavour to persuade you that my thoughts occasionally stray beyond the stable. By the way, you sold those grey carriage-horses for nothing. You always told me they were the handsomest pair in London, and yet you say I’m exceedingly lucky to get one hundred and eighty pounds for them.”

“You forget, my Lady, that Bloomfield was a roarer – ”

“Well, you really are in a tormenting mood this morning, Spicer. Just bethink you, now, if there’s anything more you have to say, disagreeable and unpleasant, and say it at once; you have made lady Grace quite ill – ”

“No, only tired!” sighed her friend, with a melancholy smile.

“Now I remember,” cried Lady Lackington, “it was about that house at Florence. I don’t think we shall pass any time there, but in case we should, I should like that Zapponi palace, with the large terrace on the Arno, and there must be no one on the ground-floor, mind that; and I’ll not give more than I gave formerly – perhaps not so much. But, above all, remember, that if we decide to go on to Rome, that I’m not bound to it in the least, and he must new-carpet that large drawing-room, and I must have the little boudoir hung in blue, with muslin over it, not pink. Pink is odious, except in a dressing-room. You will yourself look to the stables; they require considerable alteration, and there’s something about the dining-room – what was it? – Lord Lackington will remember it. But perhaps I have given you as many directions as your head will bear.”

“I almost think so too, my Lady,” muttered he, with a half-dogged look.

“And be sure, Spicer, that we have that cook – Antoine – if we should want him. Don’t let him take a place till we decide where we shall stop.”

“You are aware that he insists on a hundred and fifty francs a month, and his wine.”

“I should like to know what good you are, if I am to negotiate with these creatures myself!” said she, haughtily. “I must say, Lady Grace will suspect that I have rather overrated your little talents, Spicer.” And Lady Grace gave a smile that might mean any amount of approval or depreciation required. “I shall not want that saddle now, and you must make that man take it back again.”

“But I fear, my Lady – ”

“There, don’t be tiresome! What is that odious bell? Oh, it’s the dinner of these creatures. You dine at the table d’hôte, I think, so pray don’t let us keep you. You can drop in to-morrow. Let me see, about two, or half-past. Good-by – good-by.”

And so Mr. Spicer retired. The bow Lady Grace vouchsafed being in reality addressed rather to one of the figures on her fan than to himself.

“One gets a habit of these kind of people,” said Lady Lackington, as the door closed after him; “but really it is a bad habit.”

“I think so too,” said Lady Grace, languidly.

“To be sure, there are now and then occasions when you can’t employ exactly a servant. There are petty negotiations which require a certain delicacy of treatment, and there, they are useful. Besides,” said she, with a half-sneering laugh, “there’s a fashion in them, and, like Blenheim spaniels, every one must have one, and the smaller the better!”

“Monsignore Clifford my Lady, to know if you receive,” said a servant, entering.

“Oh, certainly. I’m charmed, my dear Grace, to present to you the most agreeable man of all Rome. He is English, but ‘went over,’ as they call it, and is now high in the Pope’s favour.”

These words, hurriedly uttered as they were, had been scarcely spoken when the visitor entered the room. He was a tall, handsome man, of about five-and-thirty, dressed in deep black, and wearing a light blue ribbon across his white neckcloth. He advanced with all the ease of good breeding, and taking Lady Lackington’s hand, he kissed the tips of her fingers with the polished grace of a courtier.

After a formal presentation to Lady Grace, he took a seat between the two ladies.

“I am come on, for me, a sad errand, my Lady,” said he, in a voice of peculiar depth and sweetness, in which the very slightest trace of a foreign accent was detectable – “it is to say good-by!”

“You quite shock me, Monsignore. I always hoped you were here for our own time.”

“I believed and wished it also, my Lady; but I have received a peremptory order to return to Rome. His Holiness desires to see me at once. There is some intention, I understand, of naming me as the Nuncio at Florence. Of course this is a secret as yet.” And he turned to each of the ladies in succession.

“Oh, that would be charming – at least for any one happy enough to fix their residence there, and my friend Lady Grace is one of the fortunate.”

Monsignore bowed in gratitude to the compliment, but contrived, as he bent his head, to throw a covert glance at his future neighbour, with the result of which he did not seem displeased.

“I must of course, then, send you back those interesting books, which I have only in part read?”

“By no means, my Lady; they are yours, if you will honour me by accepting them. If the subject did not forbid the epithet, I should call them trifles.”

“Monsignore insists on my reading the ‘Controversy,’ dear Lady Grace; but how I am to continue my studies without his guidance – ”

“We can correspond, my Lady,” quickly broke in the other. “You can state to me whatever doubts – difficulties, perhaps, were, the better word – occur to you; I shall be but too happy and too proud to offer you the solution; and if my Lady Grace Twining would condescend to accept me in the same capacity – .”

She bowed blandly, and he went on.

“There is a little tract here, by the Cardinal Balbi – ‘Flowers of St. Joseph’ is the title. The style is simple but touching – ‘the invitation’ scarcely to be resisted.”

“I think you told me I should like the Cardinal personally,” broke in Lady Lackington.

“His Eminence is charming, my Lady – such goodness, such gentleness, and so much of the very highest order of conversational agreeability.”

“Monsignore is so polite as to promise us introductions at Rome,” continued she, addressing Lady Grace, “and amongst those, too, who are never approached by our countrymen.”

“The Alterini, the Fornisari, the Balbetti,” proudly repeated Monsignore.

“All ultra-exclusives, you understand,” whispered Lady Lacking-ton to her friend, “who wouldn’t tolerate the English.”

“How charming!” ejaculated Lady Grace, with a languid enthusiasm.

“The Roman nobility,” continued Lady Lackington, “stands proudly forward, as the only society in Europe to which the travelling English cannot obtain access.”

“They have other prejudices, my Lady – if I may so dare to call sentiments inspired by higher influences – than those which usually sway society. These prejudices are all in favour of such as regard our Church, if not with the devotion of true followers, at least with the respect and veneration that rightfully attach to the first-born of Christianity.”

“Yes,” said Lady Lackington, as, though not knowing very well to what, she gave her assent, and then added, “I own to you I have always experienced a sort of awe – a sense of – what shall I call it?”

“Devotion, my Lady,” blandly murmured Monsignore, while his eyes were turned on her with a paraphrase of the sentiment.

“Just so. I have always felt it on entering one of your churches – the solemn stillness, the gloomy indistinctness, the softened tints, the swelling notes of the organ – you know what I mean.”

“And when such emotions are etherialised, when, rising above material influences, they are associated with thoughts of what is alone thought-worthy, with hopes of what alone dignifies hope, imagine, then, the blessed beatitude, the heavenly ecstasy they inspire.”

Monsignore had now warmed to his work, and very ingeniously sketched out the advantages of a creed that accommodated itself so beautifully to every temperament – that gave so much and yet exacted so little – that poisoned no pleasures – discouraged no indulgences – but left every enjoyment open with its price attached to it, just as objects are ticketed in a bazaar. He had much to say, too, of its soothing consolations – its devices to alleviate sorrow and cheat affliction – while such was its sympathy for poor suffering humanity, that even the very caprices of temper – the mere whims of fancied depression – were not deemed unworthy of its pious care.

It is doubtful whether these ladies would have accorded to a divine of their own persuasion the same degree of favour and attention that they now bestowed on Monsignore Clifford. Perhaps his manner in discussing certain belongings of his Church was more entertaining; perhaps, too – we hint it with deference – that there was something like a forbidden pleasure in thus trespassing into the domain of Rome. His light and playful style was, however, a fascination amply sufficient to account for the interest he excited. If he dwelt but passingly on the dogmas of his Church, he was eloquently diffuse on its millinery. Copes, stoles, and vestments he revelled in; and there was a picturesque splendour in his description of ceremonial that left the best-“effects” of the opera far behind. How gloriously, too, did he expatiate on the beauty of the Madonna, the costliness of her gems, and the brilliancy of her diadem! How incidentally did he display a rapturous veneration for loveliness, and a very pretty taste in dress! In a word, as they both confessed, “he was charming.‘’ There was a downy softness in his enthusiasm, a sense of repose even in his very insistence, peculiarly pleasant to those who like to have their sensations, like their perfumes, as weak and as faint as possible.