“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.
“There is a tact and delicacy about these men from which our people might take a lesson,” said Lady Lackington, as the door closed after him.
“Very true,” sighed Lady Grace; “ours are really dreadful.”
A DREARY evening late in October, a cold thin rain falling, and a low wailing wind sighing through the headless branches of the trees in Merrion Square, made Dublin seem as sad-looking and deserted as need be. The principal inhabitants had not yet returned to their homes for the winter, and the houses wore that melancholy look of vacancy and desertion so strikingly depressing. One sound alone woke the echoes in that silence; it was a loud knocking at the door of a large and pretentious mansion in the middle of the north side of the square. Two persons had been standing at the door for a considerable time, and by every effort of knocker and bell endeavoring to obtain admittance. One of these was a tall, erect man of about fifty, whose appearance but too plainly indicated that most painful of all struggles between poverty and a certain pretension. White-seamed and threadbare as was his coat, he wore it buttoned to the top with a sort of military smartness, his shabby hat was set on with a kind of jaunty air, and his bushy whiskers, combed and frizzed out with care, seemed a species of protest against being thought as humble as certain details of dress might bespeak him. At his side stood a young girl, so like him that a mere glance proclaimed her to be his daughter; and although in her appearance, also, narrow means stood confessed, there was an unmistakable something in her calm, quiet features and her patient expression that declared she bore her lot with a noble and high-hearted courage.
“One trial more, Bella, and I 'll give it up,” cried he, angrily, as, seizing the knocker, he shook the strong door with the rapping, while he jingled the bell with equal violence. “If they don't come now, it is because they 've seen who it is, or, maybe——”
“There, see, papa, there's a window opening above,” said the girl, stepping out into the rain as she spoke.
“What d' ye mean,—do ye want to break in the door?” cried a harsh voice, as the wizened, hag-like face of a very dirty old woman appeared from the third story.
“I want to know if Mr. Davenport Dunn is at home,” cried the man.
“He is not; he 's abroad,—in France.”
“When is he expected back?” asked he again.
“Maybe in a week, maybe in three weeks.”
“Have any letters come for Mr. Kellett—Captain Kel-lett?” said he, quickly correcting himself.
“No!”
And a bang of the window, as the head was withdrawn, finished the colloquy.
“That's pretty conclusive, any way, Bella,” said he, with an attempt to laugh. “I suppose there's no use in staying here longer. Poor child,” added he, as he watched her preparations against the storm, “you 'll be wet to the skin! I think we must take a car,—eh, Bella? I will take a car.” And he put an emphasis on the word that sounded like a firm resolve.
“No, no, papa; neither of us ever feared rain.”
“And, by George! it can't spoil our clothes, Bella,” said he, laughing with a degree of jocularity that sounded astonishing, even to himself; for he quickly added, “But I will have a car; wait a moment here, under the porch, and I 'll get one.”
And before she could interpose a word, he was off and away, at a speed that showed the vigor of a younger man.
“It won't do, Bella,” he said, as he came back again; “there's only one fellow on the stand, and he 'll not go under half a crown. I pushed him hard for one-and-sixpence, but he 'd not hear of it, and so I thought—that was, I knew well—you would be angry with me.”
“Of course, papa; it would be mere waste of money,” said she, hastily. “An hour's walk,—at most, an hour and a half,—and there's an end of it And now let us set out, for it is growing late.”
There were few in the street as they passed along; a stray creature or so, houseless and ragged, shuffled onward; an odd loiterer stood for shelter in an archway, or a chance passer-by, with ample coat and umbrella, seemed to defy the pelting storm, while cold and dripping they plodded along in silence.
“That's old Barrington's house, Bella,” said he, as they passed a large and dreary-looking mansion at the corner of the square; “many's the pleasant evening I spent in it.”
She muttered something, but inaudibly, and they went on as before.
“I wonder what 's going on here to-day. It was Sir Dyke Morris used to live here when I knew it” And he stopped at an open door, where a flood of light poured forth into the street “That's the Bishop of Derry, Bella, that's just gone in. There's a dinner-party there to-day,” whispered he, as, half reluctant to go, he still peered into the hall.
She drew him gently forward, and he seemed to have fallen into a revery, as he muttered at intervals,—
“Great times—fine times—plenty of money—and fellows that knew how to spend it!”
Drearily plashing onward through wind and rain, their frail clothes soaked through, they seldom interchanged a word.
“Lord Drogheda lived there, Bella,” said he, stopping short at the door of a splendidly illuminated hotel; “and I remember the time I was as free and welcome in it as in my own house. My head used to be full of the strange things that happened there once. Brown, and Barry Fox, and Tisdall, and the rest of us, were wild chaps! Faith, my darling, it was n't for Mr. Davenport Dunn I cared in those times, or the like of him. Davenport Dunn, indeed!”
“It is strange that he has not written to us,” said the girl, in a low voice.
“Not a bit strange; it's small trouble he takes about us. I'll bet a five-pound note—I mean, I'll lay sixpence,” said he, correcting himself with some confusion,—“that since he left this he never as much as bestowed a thought on us. When he got me that beggarly place in the Custom House, he thought he 'd done with me out and out. Sixty pounds a year! God be with the time I gave Peter Harris, the butler, just double the money!”
As they talked thus, they gained the outskirts of the city, and gradually left the lamps and the well-lighted shops behind. Their way now led along a dreary road by the sea-side, towards the little bathing-village of Clontarf, beyond which, in a sequestered spot called the Green Lanes, their humble home stood. It was a long and melancholy walk; the sorrowful sounds of the sea beating on the shingly strand mingling with the dreary plashing of the rain; while farther out, a continuous roar as the waves rolled over the “North Bull,” added all the terrors of storm to the miseries of the night.
“The winter is setting in early,” said Kellett “I think I never saw a severer night.”
“A sad time for poor fellows out at sea!” said the girl, as she turned her head towards the dreary waste of cloud and water now commingled into one.
“'T is exactly like our own life, out there,” cried he: “a little glimpse of light glimmering every now and then through the gloom, but yet not enough to cheer the heart and give courage; but all black darkness on every side.”
“There will come a daybreak at last,” said the girl, assuredly.
“Faith! I sometimes despair about it in our own case,” said he, sighing drearily. “To think of what I was once, and what I am now! buffeted about and ill used by a set of scoundrels that I 'd not have suffered to sit down in my kitchen. Keep that rag of a shawl across your chest; you 'll be destroyed entirely, Bella.”
“We'll soon be within shelter now, and nothing the worse for this weather, either of us,” replied she, almost gayly. “Over and over again have you told me what severe seasons you have braved in the hunting-field; and, after all, papa, one can surely endure as much for duty as in pursuit of pleasure,—not to say that our little cottage never looks more homelike than after a night like this.”
“It's snug enough for a thing of the kind,” murmured he, half reluctantly.
“And Betty will have such a nice fire for us, and we shall be as comfortable and as happy as though it were a fine house, and we ourselves fine folk to live in it.”
“The Kelletts of Kellett's Court, and no better blood in Ireland,” said he, sternly. “It was in the same house my grandfather, Morgan Kellett, entertained the Duke of Portland, the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland; and this day, as I stand here, there isn't a chap in the Castle-yard would touch his hat to me!”
“And what need have we of them, papa? Will not our pride of good blood teach us other lessons than repining? Can't we show the world that a gentleman born bears his altered fortunes with dignity?”
“Ye're right, Bella; that's the very thing they must acknowledge. There is n't a day passes that I don't make the clerks in the 'Long Room' feel the difference between us. 'No liberties, no familiarities, my lads,' I say,—'keep your distance; for, though my coat is threadbare, and my hat none of the best, the man inside there is Paul Kellett of Kellett's Court.' And if they ask where that is, I say, 'Look at the Gazetteer,'—it's mighty few of them has their names there: 'Kellett's Court, the ancient seat of the Kellett family, was originally built by Strongbow, Earl of Pembroke.'”
“Well, here we are, papa, in a more humble home; but you'll see how cheery it will be.”
And so saying, she pushed open a little wicket, and, passing through a small garden, gained the door of a little one-storied cottage, almost buried in honeysuckle.
“Yes, Betty, wet through!” said she, laughing, as the old woman held up her hands in horror; “but get papa his slippers and that warm dressing-gown, and I 'll be back in a minute.”
“Arrah! why didn't you take a car for her?” said the old woman, with that familiarity which old and tried service warrants. “Sure the child will get her death from this!”
“She wouldn't let me; she insisted on walking on her feet.”
“Ayeh, ayeh!” mattered the crone, as she placed his slippers on the fender, “sure ye oughtn't to mind her. She'd get a fever rather than cost you a shilling. Look at the shoes she's wearin'.”
“By the good day! you'll drive me mad, clean mad!” cried he, savagely. “Don't you know in your heart that we have n't got it? Devil a rap farthing; that we're as poor as a church mouse; that if it wasn't for this beggarly place——”
“Now, Betty,” cried the girl, entering,—“now for our tea, and that delicious potato-cake that I see browning there before the fire.”
Poorly, even meanly dressed as she was, there was in her that gentle look, and graceful, quiet bearing that relieved the sombre aspect of a room which spoke but too plainly of narrow fortune; and as her father looked at her, the traces of recent displeasure passed from his face, and her eyes brightened up, while he said,—
“You bring a blessing with the very sound of your voice, darling.” And he kissed her twice as he spoke.
“It is so comfortable to be here, and so snug,” said she, seating herself at his side, “and to know that to-morrow is Sunday, and that we have our holiday, each of us. Come, papa, confess this little room and its bright fire are very cheery! And I have got a newspaper for you. I told Mrs. Hawksey there was nothing such a treat to you as a newspaper, and she gave me one.”
“Ah! the 'Trumpet of Liberty,'” said he, opening it. “We'll have it after tea, Bella. Is there anything about our own county in it,—Cork, I mean?”
“I have not looked in it yet; but we 'll go through it honestly, papa, for I know how conscientious you are not to lose a paragraph.”
“'T is that same makes a man agreeable in society. You know everything if you read the papers,—accidents and marriages, the rate of the money-market, the state of the crops, who is dining with the Queen, and who is skating on the Serpentine, who is ruined at Newmarket, and who drowned at sea, and then all about the play-houses and the wonderful panoramas; so that, let conversation turn how it will, you 're ready for it, and that 's the reason, Bella, you must go through every bit of it. It's like hunting, and the very field perhaps you don't try is just the one you 'd find a fox in!”
“Well, you 'll see. I 'll beat every cover for you!” said she, laughing; “and Mrs. Hawksey desires to have it back, for there is something about the Alderman having said or done—I don't know what or where.”
“How I hate the very name of an Alderman!” said Kellett, peevishly; “regular vagabonds, with gilt coaches and red cloaks, running about prating of taxes and the pipe-water! The devil a thing I feel harder to bear in my poverty than to think you 're a visiting governess in an Alderman's family. Paul Kellett's daughter a visiting governess!”
“And very proud am I to be thought equal to the charge,” said she, resolutely; “not to say how grateful to you for having enabled me to undertake it.”
“Myself in the Customs is nothing; that I'd put up with. Many a reduced gentleman did the same. Sam Crozier was a marker at a billiard-table in Tralee, and Ennis Magrath was an overseer on the very road he used to drive his four-in-hand. 'Many a time,' says he, 'I cursed that fresh-broken stone, but I never thought I 'd be measuring it!' 'T is the Encumbered Court has brought us all down, Bella, and there's no disgrace in being ruined with thousands of others. Just begin with the sales of estates, and tell us who is next for sentence. God forgive me, but I feel a kind of pleasure in hearing that we 're all swamped together.”
The girl smiled as though the remark were merely uttered in levity and deserved no more serious notice; but a faint sigh, which she could not repress, betrayed the sorrow with which she had heard it.
She opened the paper and glanced at its contents. They were as varied and multifarious as are usually to be found in weekly “channels of information.” What struck her, however, most was the fact that, turn where she would, the name of Davenport Dunn was ever conspicuous. Sales of property displayed him as the chief creditor or petitioner; charities paraded him as the first among the benevolent; Joint-stock companies exhibited him as their managing director; mines, and railroads, and telegraph companies, harbor committees, and boards of all kinds, gave him the honors of large type; while in the fashionable intelligence from abroad, his arrivals and departures were duly chronicled, and a letter of our own correspondent from Venice communicated the details of a farewell dinner given him, with a “Lord” in the chair, by a number of those who had so frequently partaken of his splendid hospitalities while he resided in that city.
“Well—well—well!” said Kellett, with a pause between each exclamation, “this is more than I can bear. Old Jerry Dunn's son,—the brat of a boy I remember in the Charter' School! He used to be sent at Christmas time up to Ely Place, when my father was in town, to get five shillings for a Christmas-box; and I mind well the day he was asked to stay and dine with my sister Matty and myself, and he taught us a new game with six little bits of sticks; how we were to do something, I forget what,—but I know how it ended,—he won every sixpence we had. Matty had half a guinea in gold and some tenpenny pieces, and I had, I think, about fifteen shillings, and sorrow a rap he left us; and, worse still, I mortgaged my school maps, and got a severe thrashing for having lost them from Old White in Jervas Street; and poor Matty's doll was confiscated in the same way, and carried off with a debt of three-and-fourpence on her head. God forgive him, but he gave us a sorrowful night, for we cried till daybreak.”
“And did you like him as a playfellow?” asked she.
“Now, that's the strangest thing of all,” said Kellett, smiling. “Neither Matty nor myself liked him; but he got a kind of influence over us that was downright fascination. No matter what we thought of doing before he came, when he once set foot in the room everything followed his dictation. It was n't that he was overbearing or tyrannical in the least; just as little could you say that he was insinuating or nattering; but somehow, by a kind of instinct, we fell into his ways, and worked out all his suggestions just as if we were mere agents of his will. Resistance or opposition we never dreamed of while he was present; but after he was gone away, once or twice there came the thought that there was something very like slavery in all this submission, and we began to concert how we might throw off the yoke.
“'I won't play toll-bar any more,' said I, resolutely; 'all my pocket-money is sure to go before it is over.'
“'And I,' said Matty, 'won't have poor “Mopsy” tried for a murder again; every time she's hanged, some of the wax comes off her neck.'”
“We encouraged each other vigorously in these resolves; but before he was half an hour in the house 'Mopsy' had undergone the last sentence of the law, and I was insolvent.”
“What a clever rogue he must have been!” said Bella, laughing.
“Was n't he clever!” exclaimed Kellett. “You could not say how,—nobody could say how,—but he saw everything the moment he came into a new place, and marked every one's face, and knew, besides, the impression he made on them, just as if he was familiar with them for years.”
“Did you continue to associate with him as you grew up?” asked she.
“No; we only knew each other as children. There was a distressing thing—a very distressing thing—occurred one day; I'm sure to this very hour I think of it with sorrow and shame, for I can't believe he had any blame in it. We were playing in a room next my father's study, and running every now and then into the study; and there was an old-fashioned penknife—a family relic, with a long bloodstone handle—lying on the table; and when the play was over, and Davy, as we called him, had gone home, this was missing. There was a search made for it high and low, for my father set great value on it. It was his great-great-grandmother's, I believe; at all events, no one ever set eyes on it afterwards, and nothing would persuade my father but that Davy stole it! Of course he never told us that he thought so, but the servant did, and Matty and myself cried two nights and a day over it, and got really sick.
“I remember well; I was working by myself in the garden, Matty was ill and in bed, when I saw a tall old man, dressed like a country shopkeeper, shown into the back parlor, where my father was sitting. There was a bit of the window open, and I could hear that high words were passing between them, and, as I thought, my father getting the worst of it; for the old fellow kept repeating, 'You 'll rue it, Mister Kellett,—you 'll rue it yet!' And then my father said, 'Give him a good horsewhipping, Dunn; take my advice, and you 'll spare yourself some sorrow, and save him from even worse hereafter.' I 'll never forget the old fellow's face as he turned to leave the room. 'Davy will live to pay you off for this,' said he; 'and if you 're not to the fore, it will be your children, or your children's children, will have to 'quit the debt!'
“We never saw Davy from that hour; indeed, we were strictly forbidden ever to utter his name; and it was only when alone together, that Matty and I would venture to talk of him, and cry over—and many a time we did—the happy days when we had him for our playfellow. There was a species of martyrdom now, too, in his fate, that endeared him the more to our memories; every play he had invented, every spot he was fond of, every toy he liked, were hallowed to our minds like relics. At last poor Matty and I could bear it no longer, and we sat down and wrote a long letter to Davy, assuring him of our fullest confidence in his honor, and our broken-heartedness at separation from him. We inveighed stoutly against parental tyranny, and declared ourselves ready for open rebellion, if he, that was never deficient in a device, could only point out the road. We bribed a stable-boy, with all our conjoined resources of pocket-money, to convey the epistle, and it came back next morning to my father, enclosed in one from Davy himself, stating that he could never countenance acts of disobedience, or be any party to a system by which children should deceive their parents. I was sent off to a boarding-school the same week, and poor Matty committed to the charge of Miss Morse, a vinegar-faced old maid, that poisoned the eight best years of her life!”
“And when did you next hear of him?”
“Of Davy? Let me see; the next time I heard of him was when he attempted to enter college as a sizar, and failed. Somebody or other mentioned it at Kellett's Court, and said that old Dunn was half out of his mind, insisting that some injustice was dealt out to his son, and vowing he 'd get the member for somewhere to bring the matter before Parliament. Davy was wiser, however; he persuaded his father that, by agitating the question, they would only give notoriety to what, if left alone, would speedily be forgotten; and Davy was right I don't think there's three men now in the kingdom that remember one word about the sizarship, or, if they do, that would be influenced by it in any dealings they might have with Mr. Davenport Dunn.”
“What career did he adopt after that?”
“He became a tutor, I think, in Lord Glengariff's family. There was some scandal about him there,—I forget it now,—and then he went off to America, and spent some years there, and in Jamaica, where he was employed as an overseer, I think; but I can't remember it all. My own knowledge of him next was seeing the name 'D. Dunn, solicitor,' on a neat brass-plate in Tralee, and hearing that he was a very acute fellow in election contests, and well up to dealing with the priests.”
“And now he has made a large fortune?”
“I believe you well; he's the richest man in Ireland. There's scarce a county he has n't got property in. There's not a town, nor a borough, where he has n't some influence, and in every class, too,—gentry, clergy, shopkeepers, people: he has them all with him, and nobody seems to know how he does it.”
“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.
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.
“To be sure he would. It would be the safest hedge in the world for him. He 'd square his book by it, and stand to win, no matter what horse came in. Besides, why should they buy me, if I was n't against them? You don't nobble the horse in your own stable,—eh, Kellett, old boy?”
“You're a wonderful fellow, Beecher!” said Kellett, in a most honest admiration of his friend.
“If they'd only give me a chance, Paul,—just one chance!”
It was not very easy to see what blot in the game of life he purposed to himself to “hit” when he used this expression, “if they only give me a chance;” vague and indistinct as it was, still for many a year had it served him as a beacon of hope. A shadow vision of creditors “done,” horses “nobbled,” awkward testimonies “squared,” a millenary period of bills easily discounted, with an indulgent Angel presiding over the Bankrupt Court,—these and like blessings doubtless all flitted before him as the fruits of that same “chance” which destiny held yet in store for him.
Hope is a generous fairy; she deigns to sit beside the humblest firesides,—she will linger even in the damp cell of the prison, or rest her wings on the wave-tossed raft of the shipwrecked, and in such mission is she thrice blessed! But by what strange caprice does she visit the hearts of men like this? Perhaps it is that the very spirit of her ministering is to despair of nothing.
We are by no means sure that our reader will take the same pleasure that Kellett did in Beecher's society, and therefore we shall spare him the narrative of their walk. They strolled along for hours, now by the shingly shore, on which the waves swept smoothly, now inland, through leafy lanes and narrow roads, freckled with patchy sunlight. The day was calm and still,—one of those solemn autumnal days which lend to scenery a something of sadness in their unvarying quiet. Although so near a great city, the roads were little travelled, and they sauntered for hours scarcely meeting any one.
Wherever the smoke rose above the tall beech-trees, wherever the ornamented porch of some lone cottage peeped through the copse, or the handsome entrance-gate proclaimed the well-to-do owner of some luxurious abode, Kellett would stop to tell who it was lived there,—the wealthy merchant, the affluent banker, the alderman or city dignitary, who had amassed his fortune by this or that pursuit. Through all his stories there ran the vein of depreciation, which the once landed proprietor cherished towards the men who were the “first of their name.” He was sure to remember some trait of their humble beginnings in life,—how this one had come up barefooted to Dublin fifty years before; how that had held horses in the street for hire. It was strange, but scarcely one escaped some commentary of this kind; not that there was a spark of ill-nature in the man, but that he experienced a species of self-consolation in thinking that in all his narrow fortune he had claims of kindred and connection which none of them could compete with. Beecher's thoughts took, meanwhile, a different course; whenever not awakened to interest by some trait of their sharpness or cunning, to which he listened with avidity, he revelled in the idea of their wealth, as a thing of which they might be despoiled: “Wouldn't that fellow take shares in some impossible speculation?—Couldn't the other be induced to buy some thousand pounds' worth of valueless scrip?—Would this one kindly permit himself to 'be cleared out' at hazard?—Might that one be persuaded to lose a round sum at écarté?”
And thus did they view life, with widely different sympathies, it is true, but yet in a spirit that made them companionable to each other. One “grew his facts,” like raw material which the other manufactured into those curious wares by which he amused his fancy. Poverty is a stronger bond than many believe it; when men begin to confess it to each other, they take something very like an oath of fidelity.
“By the way,” said Beecher, as he bade his friend good night, “you told me you knew Dunn—Davenport Dunn?”
“To be sure I do,—know him well.”
“Couldn't you introduce me to him? That's a fellow might be able to assist me. I 'm certain he could give me a chance; eh, Kellett?”
“Well; I expect him back in Ireland every day. I was asking after him no later than yesterday; but he's still away.”
“When he comes back, however, you can mention me, of course; he'll know who I am.”
“I'll do it with pleasure. Good-night, Beecher,—goodnight; and I hope”—this was soliloquy as he turned back towards the door,—“I hope Dunn will do more for you than he ever has for me! or, faith, it's not worth while to make the acquaintance.”
Bella retired to her room early, and Kellett sat moodily alone by his fire. Like a great many other “embarrassed gentlemen,” he was dragging on life amidst all the expedients of loans, bonds, and mortgages, when the bill for sale of the encumbered estates became the law of the land. What with the legal difficulties of dispossessing him, what with the changeful fortunes of a good harvest, or money a little more plentiful in the market, he might have gone on to the last in this fashion, and ended his days where he began them, in the old house of his fathers, when suddenly this new and unexpected stroke of legislation cut short all his resources at once, and left him actually a beggar on the world.
The panic created at the first moment by a law that seemed little short of confiscation, the large amount of landed property thus suddenly thrown into the market, the prejudice against Irish investment so strongly entertained by the moneyed classes in England, all tended vastly to depreciate the value of those estates which came first for sale; and many were sold at prices scarcely exceeding four or five years of their rental. An accidental disturbance in the neighborhood, some petty outrage in the locality, was enough to depreciate the value; and purchasers actually fancied themselves engaged in speculations so hazardous that nothing short of the most tempting advantages would requite them for their risk.
One of the very first estates for sale was Kellett's Court. The charges on the property were immense, the accumulated debts of three generations of spendthrifts; the first charge, however, was but comparatively small, and yet even this was not covered by the proceeds of the sale. A house that had cost nearly forty thousand pounds, standing on its own demesne, surrounded by an estate yielding upwards of three thousand a year, was knocked down for fifteen thousand four hundred pounds.
Kellett was advised to appeal against this sale on various grounds: he was in possession of an offer of more than double for the same property in times less prosperous; he could show a variety of grounds—surprise and others—to invalidate the ruinous contract; and it was then that he once again, after a whole life, found himself in contact with Davenport Dunn, the attorney for many parties whose interests were compromised in the sale. By no possible accident could the property be sold at such a price as would leave any surplus to himself; but he hoped, indeed he was told, that he would be favorably considered by those whose interest he was defending; and this last throw for fortune was now the subject of his dreary thoughts.
There was, too, another anxiety, and a nearer one, pressing on his heart. Kellett had a son,—a fine, frank, open-hearted young fellow, who had grown up to manhood, little dreaming that he would ever be called on to labor for his own support. The idle lounging habits of a country life had indisposed him to all study, so that even his effort to enter college was met by a failure, and he was turned back on the very threshold of the University. Jack Kellett went home, vowing he 'd nevermore trouble his head about Homer and Lucian, and he kept his word; he took to his gun and his pointers with renewed vigor, waiting until such time as he might obtain his gazette to a regiment on service. His father had succeeded in securing a promise of such an appointment, but, unhappily, the reply only arrived on the very week that Kellett's Court was sold, and an order from the Horse Guards to lodge the purchase-money of his commission came at the very hour when they were irretrievably ruined.
Jack disappeared the next morning, and the day following brought a letter, stating that he had enlisted in the “Rifles,” and was off to the Crimea. Old Kellett concealed the sorrow that smote him for the loss of his boy, by affecting indignation at being thus deserted. So artfully did he dress up this self-deception that Bella was left in doubt as to whether or not some terrible scene had not occurred between the father and son before he left the house. In a tone that she never ventured to dispute, he forbade her to allude to Jack before him; and thus did he treasure up this grief for himself alone and his own lonely hours, cheating his sorrow by the ingenious devices of that constraint he was thus obliged to practise on himself. Like a vast number of men with whom the world has gone hardly, he liked to brood over his misfortunes, and magnify them to himself. In this way he opened a little bank of compassion that answered every draft he drew on it. Over and over to himself—like a miser revelling over his hoarded wealth—did he count all the hardships of his destiny. He loved thus to hug his misery in solitude, while he whispered to his heart, “You are a courageous fellow, Paul Kellett; there are not many who could carry your cheerful face, or walk with a head as high as you do to-day. The man that owned Kellett's Court, and was one of the first in his county, living in a poor cottage, with sixty pounds a year!—that's the test of what stuff a man's made of. Show me another man in Ireland could do it! Show me one that could meet the world as uncomplainingly, and all the while never cease to be what he was born,—a gentleman.” This was the philosophy he practised; this the lesson he taught; this the paean he chanted in his own heart The various extremities to which he might—being anything other than what he was—have been tempted, the excesses he might have fallen into, the low associates he might have kept, the base habits he might have contracted, all the possible and impossible contingencies that might have befallen him, and all his difficulties therein, formed a little fiction world that he gloried to lose himself in contemplating.
It is not often that selfishness can take a form so blameless; nor is it always that self-deception can be so harmless. In this indulgence we now leave him.