Three days passed over,—three days varied with all the incidents that go to make up a longer existence,—and Beecher and his fair charge were still in Aix. If they forbore to speak to each other of the strange situation in which they found themselves, they were not the less full of it. Neither telegraph nor letter came from Davis, and Beecher's anxiety grew hourly greater. There was scarcely an eventuality his mind had not pictured. Davis was arrested and carried off to prison in Brussels,—was waylaid and murdered in the Ardennes,—was ill, dying in some unheard-of village,—involved in some other row, and obliged to keep secret,—arrested on some old charge; in fact, every mishap that a fertile fancy could devise had befallen him, and now only remained the question what was he himself to do with Lizzy Davis.
Whether it was that her present life was an agreeable change from the discipline of the Three Fountains, or that the new objects of interest about her engaged her to the exclusion of much thought, or that some higher philosophy of resignation supported her, but certain is it she neither complained of the delay nor exhibited any considerable impatience at her father's silence. She went about sightseeing, visited churches and galleries, strolled on the Promenade, before dinner, and finished with the theatre at night, frankly owning that it was a kind of do-nothing existence that she enjoyed greatly. Her extraordinary beauty was already a town talk; and the passages of the hotel were crowded as she went down to her carriage, and to her box at the opera were directed almost every glass in the house. This, however, is a homage not always respectful; and in the daring looks of the men, and the less equivocal glances of the women, Beecher read the judgment that had been pronounced upon her. Her manner, too, in public had a certain fearless gayety about it that was sure to be severely commented on, while the splendor of her dress was certain to be not more mercifully interpreted.
To have the charge of a casket of jewels through the thieves' quarter of London was the constant similitude that rose to Beecher's mind as he descended the stairs at her side. To be obliged to display her to the wondering gaze of some hundred idlers, the dissipated and debauched loungers of a watering-place, men of bad lives and worse tongues; to mark the staring insolence of some, and the quizzical impertinence of others; to see how narrowly each day they escaped some more overt outrage from that officious politeness that is tendered to those in equivocal positions, were tortures that half maddened him. Nor could he warn her of the peril they stood in, or dare to remonstrate about many little girlish ways which savored of levity. The scene of the theatre in Brussels was never off his mind, and the same one idea continually haunted him, that poor Hamilton's fate might be his own. The characterless men of the world are always cowards as to responsibility,—they feel that there is a flaw in their natures that must smash them if pressed upon; and so was it here. Beecher's life was actual misery, and each morning he awoke the day seemed full of menace and misfortune to him. In his heart, he knew that if an emergency arose he should be found wanting; he 'd either not think of the right thing, or have pluck for it if he even thought it; and then, whatever trouble or mishap he came through, there still remained worse behind,—the settlement with Grog himself at the end.
Like most persons who seek the small consolation of falling back on their own foresight, he called to mind how often he had said to himself that nothing but ill could come of journeying with Grog Davis,—he knew it, he was sure of it. A fellow to conspire with about a “plant”—a man to concert with on a race or a “safe thing with the cards”—was not exactly a meet travelling-companion, and he fretted over the fatal weakness that had induced his acceptance of him. They had only just started, and their troubles had already begun! Even if Davis himself were there, matters might not be so bad. Grog was always ready to “turn out” and have a shot with any one. It was a sort of pastime he rather liked when nothing else was stirring, it seemed like keeping his hand in; but, confound the fellow! he had gone off, and left in his place one who had a horror of hair-triggers, and shuddered at the very thought of a shot-wound.
He was far too conversant with the habits of demi-monde existence not to see that the plot was thickening, and fresh dangers clustering round him. The glances in the street were hourly growing more familiar,—the looks were half recognitions. Half a dozen times in the morning, well-dressed and well-bearded strangers had bolted into their sitting-room in mistake, and while apologizing for their blunder, delayed unnecessarily long over the explanation.
The waiter significantly mentioned that Prince Bottoffsky was then stopping at the hotel, with seven carriages and eighteen servants. The same intelligent domestic wondered they never went to see Count Czapto witch's camellias,—“he had sent a bouquet of them that very day to her Ladyship.” And Beecher groaned in his spirit as the fellow produced it.
“I see how it's all to end,” muttered he, as he paced the room, unable any longer to conceal the misery that was consuming him. “One of those confounded foreigners will come swaggering up to talk to her on the Promenade, and then I'm 'in for it.' It's all Davis's fault. It's all her fault. Why can't she look like other people,—dress like them,—walk like them? What stuff and nonsense it is for her to be going about the world like a Princess Royal! It was only last night she wore a Brussels lace shawl at the opera that cost five thousand francs; and when it caught on a nail in the box and was torn, she laughed, and said, 'Annette will be charmed with this disaster, for she was always coveting this lace, and wondering when she was to have it.' That's the fine 'bring-ing-up' old Grog is so proud of! If she were a Countess in her own right, with ten thousand a year, she 'd be a bad bargain!”
Ah, Beecher! your heart never went with you when you made this cruel speech; you uttered it in spleen and bitterness, but not in sincerity; for already in that small compartment of your nature where a few honest affections yet lingered she was treasured, and, had you known how to do it, you would have loved her. Poor devil as he was, Life was a hard battle to him,—always over head and ears in debt; protested bills meeting him at every moment; duns rising before him at every turn. Levity was to him, as to many, a mere mask over Fear, and he walked the world in the hourly terror that any moment might bring him to shame and ruin. If he were a few minutes alone, his melancholy was almost despair; and over and over had he pictured to his mind a scene in the police-court, where he was called on to find full and sufficient bail for his appearance on trial. From such sorrowing thoughts he made his escape to rush into society—anywhere, anyhow; and, by the revulsion of his mind, came that rattling and boisterous gayety that made him seem the most light-hearted fellow in existence. Such men are always making bonfires of their household gods, and have nothing to greet them when they are at home.
What a fascination must Lizzy Davis have exercised over such a mind! Her beauty and her gracefulness would not have been enough without her splendid dressing, and that indescribable elegance of manner which was native to her. Then how she amused him!—what droll caricatures did she sketch of the queer originals of the place,—the bearded old colonels, or the pretentious loungers that frequented the “Cursaal”! How witty the little epigrams by which she accompanied them, and how charmingly at a moment would she sit down at the piano and sing for him anything, from a difficult “scena” from Verdi to some floating barcarole of Venice! She could—let us tell it in one breath—make him laugh; and oh, dearly valued reader! what would you or I give for the company of any one who could do as much? The world is full of learned people and clever people. There are Bourse men, and pre-Raphaelite men, and Old-red-sandstone men, and Greek-particle men; but where are the pleasant people one used to chat with long ago, who, though talking of mere commonplaces, threw out little sparks of fun,—fireflies in the dark copses,—giving to what they said that smack of epigram that spiced talk but never over-seasoned it, whose genial sympathy sent a warm life-blood through every theme, and whose outspoken heartiness refreshed one after a cold bath of polite conventionalities? If they still exist upon this earth, they must be hiding themselves, wisely seeing it is not an age to suit them; they lie quiet under the ice, patiently hibernating till another summer may call them forth to vitality.
Now Lizzy Davis could make Beecher laugh in his lowest and gravest moments; droll situations and comical conceits came in showers over her mind, and she gave them forth with all the tact of a consummate actress. Her mimicry, too, was admirable; and thus he who rarely reflected and never read, found in her ready talents resources against all weariness and ennui. What a girl she was!—how perfectly she would become any—the very highest—station! what natural dignity in her manner!—and—Then, after a pause, he murmured, “What a fortune she'd make on the stage! Why, there's nothing to compare with her,—she's as much beyond them all in beauty as in genius!” And so he set about thinking how, by marrying her, a man might make a “deuced good thing of it.” There's no saying what Webster wouldn't offer; and then there was America, always a “safe card;” not that it would do for himself to think of such a thing. Lackington would never speak to him again. All his family would cut him dead; he had n't an acquaintance would recognize him after such disgrace.
“Old Grog is so confoundedly well known,” muttered he,—“the scoundrel is so notorious!” Still, there were fellows would n't mind that,—hard-up men, who had done everything, and found all failure. He knew—“Let us see,” said he to himself, beginning to count on his fingers all the possible candidates for her hand. “There's Cranshaw Craven at Caen, on two hundred a year; he'd marry her, and never ask to see her if she 'd settle twenty thousand francs a year on him. Brownlow Gore would marry her, and for a mere five hundred too, for he wants to try that new martingale at Ems; he's certain he 'd break the bank with less. Foley would marry her; but, to be sure, he has a wife somewhere, and she might object to that! I'd lay an even fifty,” cried he, in ecstasy at the bright thought, “Tom Beresford would marry her just to get out of the Fleet!”
“What does that wonderful calculation mean?” cried she, suddenly, as she saw him still reckoning on his fingers. “What deep process of reasoning is my learned guardian engaged in?”
“I 'd give you a long time to guess,” said he, laughing.
“Am I personally concerned in it?” asked she.
“Yes, that you are!”
“Well,” said she, after a pause, “you are counting over the days we have passed, or are still to pass here?”
“No, not that!”
“You are computing, perhaps, one by one, all your fashionable friends who would be shocked by my levity—that 's the phrase, I believe,—meaning those outspoken impertinences you encourage me to utter about everything and everybody!”
“Far from it. I was—”
“Oh! of course, you were charmed,” broke she in; “and so you ought to be, when one performs so dangerous a trick to amuse you. The audience always applauds the rope-dancer that perils his neck; and you 'd be worse than ungrateful not to screen me when I 'm satirized. But it may relieve somewhat the load of obligation when I say that I utter these things just to please myself. I bear the world no ill-will, it is true; but I 'm very fond of laughing at it.”
“In the name and on behalf of that respectable community, let me return you my thanks,” said he, bowing.
“Remember,” said she, “how little I really know of what I ridicule, and so let my ignorance atone for my ill-nature; and now, to come back, what was it that you were counting so patiently on your fingers? Not my faults, I'm certain, or you'd have had both hands.”
“I'm afraid I could scarcely tell you,” said he, “though somehow I feel that if I knew you a very little longer, I could tell you almost anything.”
“I wish you could tell me that this pleasant time was coming. What is this?” asked she, as the waiter entered, and presented her with a visiting-card.
“Monsieur the Count desires to know if Mademoiselle will receive him,” said the man.
“What, how? What does this mean?” exclaimed Beecher, in terror and astonishment.
“Yes,” said she, turning to the waiter; “say, 'With pleasure.'”
“Gracious mercy!” exclaimed Beecher, “you don't know what you 're doing. Have you seen this person before?”
“Never!”
“Never heard of him!”
“Never,” said she, with a faint smile, for the sight of his terror amused her.
“But who is he, then? How has he dared—”
“Nay,” said she, holding behind her back the visiting-card, which he endeavored to snatch from her hand,—“this is my secret!”
“This is intolerable!” cried Beecher. “What is your father to think of your admitting a person to visit you,—an utter stranger,—a fellow Heaven knows—”
At this moment, as if to answer in the most palpable form the question he was propounding, a somewhat sprucely dressed man, middle-aged and comely, entered; and, passing Beecher by with the indifference he might have bestowed on a piece of furniture, advanced to where Lizzy was standing, and, taking her band, pressed it reverently to his lips.
So far from resenting the liberty, she smiled most courteously on him, and motioned to him to take a seat on the sofa beside her.
“I can't stand this, by Jove!” said Beecher, aloud; while, with an assumption of courage his heart little responded to, he walked straight up to the stranger. “You understand English, I hope?” said he, in very indifferent French.
“Not a syllable,” replied the other, in the same language.
“I only know 'All right';” and he laughed pleasantly as he uttered the words in an imitation of English.
“Come, I 'll not torture you any longer,” said Lizzy, laughing; “read that.” And she handed him the card, whereon, in her father's writing, there was, “See the Count; he'll tell you everything.—C. D.”
“I have heard the name before.—Count Lienstahl,” said Beecher to himself. “Has he seen your father? Where is he?” asked he, eagerly.
“He'll inform me on all, if you'll just give him time,” said she; while the Count, with an easy volubility, was pouring out a flow of words perfectly unintelligible to poor Beecher.
Whether it was the pleasure of the tidings he brought, or the delicious enjoyment of once more hearing and replying in that charming tongue that she loved so dearly, but Lizzy ceased even to look at Beecher, and only occupied herself with her new acquaintance.
Now, while we leave her thus pleasantly engaged, let us present the visitor to our reader.
Nothing could be less like the traditional “Continental Count” than the plump, close-shaven, blue-eyed gentlemen who sat beside Lizzy Davis, with an expression of bonhomie in his face that might have graced a squire of Devon. He was neither frogged nor moustached; his countenance neither boded ill to the Holy Alliance, nor any close intimacy with billiards or dice-boxes. A pleasant, easy-tempered, soft-natured man he seemed, with a ready smile and a happy laugh, and an air of yielding good-humor about him that appeared to vouch for his being one none need ever dispute with. If there were few men less generally known throughout Europe, there was not one whose origin, family, fortune, and belonging were wrapped in more complete obscurity. Some said he was a Pomeranian, others called him a Swede; many believed him Russian, and a few, affecting deeper knowledge, declared he was from Dalmatia. He was a Count, however, of somewhere, and as certainly was he one who had the entrée to all the best circles of the Continent, member of its most exclusive clubs, and the intimate of those who prided themselves on being careful in their friendships. While his manners were sufficiently good to pass muster anywhere, there was about him a genial kindliness, a sort of perennial pleasantry, that was welcome everywhere; he brought to society that inestimable gift of adhesiveness by which cold people and stiff people are ultimately enabled to approximate and understand each other. No matter how dull and ungenial the salon, he was scarcely across the doorway when you saw that an element of social kindliness had just been added, and in his little caressing ways and coaxing inquiries you recognized one who would not let condescension crush nor coldness chill him. If young people were delighted to see one so much their senior indulging in all the gay and light frivolities of life, older folk were gratified to find themselves so favorably represented by one able to dance, sing, and play like the youngest in company. So artfully, too, did he contribute his talent to society, that no thought of personal display could ever attach to him. It was all good-nature; he played to amuse you,—he danced to gratify some one else; he was full of little attentions of a thousand kinds, and you no more thought of repayment than you'd have dreamed of thanking the blessed sun for his warmth or his daylight. Such men are the bonbons of humanity, and even they who do not care for sweet things are pleased to see them.
If his birth and origin were mysterious, far more so were his means of life. Nobody ever heard of his agent or his banker. He neither owned nor earned, and yet there he was, as well dressed, as well cared for, and as pleasant a gentleman as you could see. He played a little, but it was notorious that he was ever a loser. He was too constantly a winner in the great game of life to be fortunate as a gambler, and he could well afford to laugh at this one little mark of spitefulness in Fortune. Racing and races were a passion with him; but he loved sport for itself, not as a speculation,—so, at least, he said; and when he threw his arm over your shoulder, and said anything in that tone of genial simplicity that was special to him, I 'd like to have seen the man—or, still more, the woman—who would n't have believed him.
The turf—like poverty—teaches one to know strange bed-fellows; and this will explain how the Count and Grog Davis became acquaintances, and something more.
The grand intelligence who discovered the great financial problem of France—the Crédit Mobilier—has proclaimed to the world that the secret lay in the simple fact that there were industrial energies which needed capital, and capital which needed industry, and that all he avowed to accomplish was to bring these two distant but all necessary elements into close union and co-operation. Now, something of the same kind moved Grog and the Count to cement their friendship; each saw that the other supplied some want of his own nature, and before they had passed an hour together they ratified an alliance. An instinct whispered to each, “We are going the same journey in life, let us travel together;” and some very profitable tours did they make in company!
His presence now was on a special mission from Davis, whom he just met at Treves, and who despatched him to request his daughter to come on to Carlsruhe, where he would await her. The Count was charged to explain, in some light easy way of his own, why her father had left Brussels so abruptly; and he was also instructed to take Annesley Beecher into his holy keeping, and not suffer him to fall into indiscretions, or adventure upon speculations of his own devising.
Lizzy thought him “charming,”—far more worldly-wise people than Lizzy had often thought the same. There was a bubbling fountain of good-humor about him that seemed inexhaustible. He was always ready for any plan that promised pleasure. Unlike Beecher, who knew nobody, the Count walked the street in a perpetual salutation,—bowing, hand-shaking, and sometimes kissing, as he went; and in that strange polyglot that he talked he murmured as he went, “Ah, lieber Freund!”—“Come sta?”—“Addio!”—“Mon meilleur ami!” to each that passed; so that veritably the world did seem only peopled with those who loved him.
As for Beecher, notwithstanding a certain distrust at the beginning, he soon fell captive to a manner that few resisted; and though the intercourse was limited to shaking hands and smiling at each other, the Count's pleasant exclamation of “All right!” with a jovial slap on the shoulder, made him feel that he was a “regular trump,” and a man “to depend on.”
One lurking thought alone disturbed this esteem,—he was jealous of his influence over Lizzy; he marked the pleasure with which she listened to him, the eager delight she showed when he came, her readiness to sing or play for him. Beecher saw all these in sorrow and bitterness; and though twenty times a day he asked himself, “What the deuce is it to me,—how can it possibly matter to me whom she cares for?” the haunting dread never left his mind, and became his very torturer. But why should he worry himself about it at all? The fellow did what he liked with every one. Rivers, the sulky training-groom, that would not have let a Royal Highness see “the horse,” actually took Klepper out and galloped him for the Count. The austere landlady of the inn was smiles and courtesy to him; even to that unpolished class, the hackney coachmen, his blandishments extended, and they vied with each other who should serve him.
“We are to start for Wiesbaden to-morrow,” said Lizzy to Beecher.
“Why so,—who says so?”
“The Count”
“Si, si, andiamo,—all right!” cried the Count, laughing; and the march was ordered.
The announcement of Count Lienstahl's arrival at Wiesbaden was received with rejoicing. “Now we shall open the season in earnest. We shall have balls, picnics, races, hurdle-matches, gypsy parties, excursions by land and water. He 'll manage everything and everybody.” Such were the exclamations that resounded along the Promenade as the party drove up to the hotel. Within less than an hour the Count had been to Beberich to visit the reigning Duke, he had kissed hands with half-a-dozen serene highnesses, made his bow to the chief minister and the Governor of Wiesbaden, and come back to dinner all smiles and delight at the condescension and kindness of the court and the capital.
If Lienstahl's popularity was great, he only shared a very humble portion of public attention when they appeared at the table d'hote. There Lizzy Davis attracted every look, and the fame of her beauty was already wide-spread. Such was the eagerness to obtain place at the table that the most extravagant bribes were offered for a seat, and a well-known elegant of Vienna actually paid a waiter five louis to cede his napkin to him and let him serve in his stead. Beecher was anything but gratified at these demonstrations. If his taste was offended, his fears were also excited. “Something bad must come of it,” was his own muttered reflection; and as they retired after dinner to take their coffee, he showed very palpably his displeasure.
“Eh, caro mio,—all right?” said the Count, gayly, as he threw an arm over his shoulder.
“No, by Jove!—all wrong. I don't like it. It's not the style of thing I fancy.” And here his confusion overwhelmed him, and he stopped abruptly; for the Count, seating himself at the piano, and rattling off a lively prelude, began a well-known air from a popular French vaudeville, of which the following is a rude version:—
He was preparing for the second verse when Lizzy entered the room, and, turning at once to her, he poured forth some sentences with all that voluble rapidity he possessed.
“So,” said she, addressing Beecher, “it seems that you are shocked or horrified, or your good taste is outraged, by certain demonstrations of admiration for me exhibited by the worthy public of this place; and, shall I own to you, I liked it I thought it very nice, and very flattering, and all that, until I thought it was a little—a very little, perhaps, but still a little—impertinent Was that your opinion?”
There was a blunt frankness about this question, uttered in such palpable honesty of intention that Beecher felt overwhelmed at once.
“I don't know the Continent like your friend there. I can't pretend to offer you advice and counsel like him; but if you really ask me, I 'd say, 'Don't dine below any more; don't go to the rooms of an evening; don't frequent the Promenade—“'
“What would you say to my taking the veil, for I fancy I 've some vocation that way?” And then, turning to the Count, she said something in French, at which he laughed immoderately.
Whether vexed with himself or with her, or, more probably still, annoyed by not being able to understand what passed in a foreign language, Beecher took his hat and left the room. Without his ever suspecting it, a new pang was just added to his former griefs, and he was jealous! It is very rare that a man begins by confessing a sense of jealousy to his own heart; he usually ascribes the dislike he feels to a rival to some defect or some blemish in his nature. He is a coarse fellow; rude, vulgar, a coxcomb, or, worst of all, a bore. In some such disposition as this Beecher quitted the town, and strolled away into the country. He felt he hated the Count, and yet he could not perceive why; Lienstahl possessed a vast number of the qualities he was generally disposed to like. He was gay, lively, light-hearted, never out of humor, never even thoughtful; his was that easy temperament that seemed to adapt itself to every phase of life. What was it, then? What could it be that he disliked about him? It was somewhat “cool,” too, of Grog, to send this fellow over without even the courtesy of a line to himself. “Serve him right—serve them all right—if I were to cut my lucky;” and he ruminated long and anxiously over the thought. His present position was anything but pleasant or flattering to him. For aught he knew, the Count and Lizzy Davis passed their time laughing at his English ignorance of all things foreign. By dint of a good deal of such self-tormenting, he at last reached that point whereat the very slightest additional impulse would have determined him to decamp from his party, and set out all alone for Italy. The terror of a day of reckoning with Davis was, however, a dread that he could never shake off. Grog the unforgiving, the inexorable! Grog, whose greatest boast in his vainglorious moments was that, in the “long run,” no man ever got the better of him, would assuredly bring him to book one day or other; and he knew the man's nature well enough to be aware that no fear of personal consequences would ever balk him on the road to a vengeance.
Sometimes the thought occurred to him that he would make a frank and full confession to Lackington of all his delinquencies, even to that terrible “count” by which the fame and fortune of his house might be blasted forever. If he could but string up his courage to this pitch, Lackington might “pull him through,” Lackington would see that “there was nothing else for it,” and so on. It is marvellous what an apparent strength of argument lies in those slang expressions familiar to certain orders of men. These conventionalities seem to settle at once questions which, if treated in more befitting phraseology, would present the gravest difficulties.
He walked on and on, and at last gained a pine wood which skirted the base of a mountain, and soon lost himself in its dark recesses. Gloomier than the place itself was the tone of his reflections. All that he might have been, all that lay so easily within his reach, all that life once offered him, contrasted bitterly with what he now saw himself. Conscience, it is true, suggested few of his present pangs; he believed—ay, sincerely believed—that he had been more “sinned against than sinning.” Such a one had “let him in” here; such another “had sold him” there. In his reminiscences he saw himself trustful, generous, and confiding, while the world—the great globe that includes Tattersalls, Goodwood, Newmarket, and Ascot—was little better than a nest of knaves and vagabonds.
Why could n't Lackington get him something abroad,—in the Brazils or Lima, for instance? He was n't quite sure where they were; but they were far away, he thought,—places too remote for Grog Davis to hunt him out, and whence he could give the great Grog a haughty defiance. They—how it would have puzzled him to say who “they” were—they couldn't refuse Lackington if he asked. He was always voting and giving his proxies, and doing all manner of things for them; he made a speech, too, last year at Hoxton, and gave a lecture upon something that must have served them. Lackington would begin the old story about character; “but who had character nowadays?” “Take down the Court Guides,” cried he, aloud, “and let me give you the private life and adventures of each as you read out the names. Talk of me! why, what have I done equal to what Lockwood, Hepton, Bulkleigh, Frank Melton, and fifty more have done? No, no; for public life, now, they must do as a sergeant of the Ninety-fifth told me t' other day, 'We 're obliged to take 'em little, sir, and glad to get 'em too!'”
It might be that there was something grateful to his feelings, reassuring to his heart, in this reflection, for he walked along now more briskly, and his head higher than before. Without being aware, he had already gone some miles from the town, and now found himself in one of those long grassy alleys which traversed the dense wood in various directions. As he looked down the narrow road which seemed like the vast aisle of some Gothic cathedral, he felt a sort of tremulous motion beneath his feet; and then, the moment after, he could detect the measured tramp of a horse at speed. A slight bend of the alley had hitherto shut out the view; but, suddenly, a dark object came sweeping round the turn and advancing towards him.
Half to secure a position, and half with the thought of watching what this might portend, Beecher stepped aside into the dense brushwood at the side of the alley, and which effectually hid him from view. He had barely time to make his retreat when a horse swept past him at full stride, and with one glance he recognized him as “Klepper.” It was Rivers, too, who rode him, sitting high over the saddle and with his hands low, as if racing. Now, it was but that very morning Rivers had told him that the horse was not “quite right,”—a bit heavy or so about the eyes,—“out of sorts” he called it; and there he was now, flying along at the top of his speed in full health and condition. It needed but the fortieth part of this to suggest a suspicion to such a mind as his, and with the speed of lightning there flashed across him the notion of a “cross.” He, Annesley Beecher, was to be “put into the hole,” to be “squared,” and “nobbled,” and all the rest of it! It did not, indeed, occur to him how very unprofitably such an enterprise would reward its votaries, that it would be a most gratuitous iniquity to “push him to the wall,” that all the ingenious malevolence in the world could never make the venture “pay;” his self-conceit smothered these reasonings, and he determined to watch and to see how the scheme was to be developed. He had not to wait long in suspense; at the bend of the alley where the horse had disappeared, two horsemen were now seen slowly approaching him. As they drew nearer, Beecher could mark that they were in close, and what seemed confidential conversation. One he quickly recognized to be the Count; the other, to his amazement, was Spicer, of whose arrival at Aix he had not heard anything. They moved so slowly past the spot where he was standing that he could gather some of the words that escaped them, although being in French. The sound of his own name quickly caught his ear. It was the Count spoke as they came up,—
“He is a pauvre sire, this Beecher, and I don't yet see what use he can be to us.”
“Davis likes him, or, at least, he wants him,” replied Spicer, “and that's enough for us. Depend upon it, Grog makes no mistakes.” The other laughed; but what he replied was lost in the distance?
It was some time ere Beecher could summon resolution to leave the place of his concealment and set out towards the town. Of all the sentiments that swayed and controlled him, none had such a perfect mastery over his nature as distrust. It was, in fact, the solitary lesson his life's experience had taught him. He fancied that he could trace every mistake he had ever made, every failure he had ever incurred, to some unlucky movement of credulity on his own part, and that “believing” was the one great error of his whole life. He had long been of opinion that high station and character had no greater privileges than the power they possessed of imposing a certain trustfulness in their pledges, and that the great “pull” a duke had over a “leg” was that his Grace would be believed in preference. But it also appeared to him that rogues were generally true to each other; now, if this last hope were to be taken away, what was there left in life to cling to? Spicer had said, “Davis wants him.” What did that mean?—what could it mean? Simply that Grog found him, not an associate or colleague, but a convenient tool. What an intolerable insult, that he, the Honorable Annesley Beecher, whose great connections rambled through half Debrett, was to be accounted a mere outpost sentry in the corps of Grog Davis!
His anger increased as he went along. The wound to his self-esteem was in the very tenderest spot of his nature. Had any man ever sacrificed so much to be a sharp fellow as he had? Who had, like him, given up friends, station, career, and prospects? Who had voluntarily surrendered the society of his equals, and gone down to the very dregs of mankind, just to learn that one great secret? And was it to be all in vain? Was all his training and teaching to go for nothing? Was he, after descending to the ranks, to discover that he never could learn the manual exercise? How often, in the gloomiest hours of his disappointment, had he hugged the consolation to his heart, that Grog Davis knew and valued him! “Ask G. D. if I'm a flat,” was the proud rejoinder he would hurl at any attempt to depreciate his shrewdness. What was to become of him, then, if the bank that held all his fortune were to fail? If Beecher deemed a sharp fellow the most enviable of all mortals, so he regarded a dupe as the meanest and most miserable, and the very thought of such a fate was almost maddening. “No, confound me! they sha'n't have it to say that they 'landed' A. B.; they shall never boast they nobbled me,” cried he, warming with the indignation that worked within him. “I 'm off, and this time without beat of drum. Davis may do his worst. I'll lie by snug for a year or two. There must be many a safe spot in Germany or Italy, where a man may defy detection.” And then he ran over in his mind all the successful devices he had seen adopted for disguising a man's appearance. Howard Vane had a wig and whiskers that left him unrecognized by his own mother; Crofton Campbell travelled with Inspector Field in search of himself, all by means of a nose. It was wonderful what science was accomplishing every day for the happiness and welfare of mankind!
The plan of escape was not without its difficulties, however. First of all, he had no money. Davis had given him merely enough to pay railroad fares and the charges incidental to the road, and he was living at the hotel on credit. This was a serious obstacle, but it was also one which had so often before occurred in Beecher's experience that he was not so much dismayed by it as many another might have been. “Money was always to be had somehow,” was a golden rule of his philosophy, the somehow meaning that it resolved itself into a simple question of skill and address of the individual in want of it Aix was a considerable town, much frequented by strangers, and must, doubtless, possess all the civilizing attributes of other cities,—namely, Jews, money-lenders, and discounters. Then, the landlord of the inn; it was always customary to give him the preference in these cases. He 'd surely not refuse an advance of a few hundred francs to a man who came accompanied as he was. Klepper alone was good security for ten times more than he needed. Must it be confessed that he felt elevated in his own esteem when he had resolved upon this scheme? It savored of shrewdness,—that great touchstone of capacity which he revered so highly. “They shall see if I'm a flat, this time,” chuckled he to himself as he went along; and he stepped out briskly in the excitement of self-approval. Then he went over in his mind all the angry commentaries that would be passed upon his flight,—the passionate fury of Grog, the amazement of Spicer, the almost incredulous surprise of the Count,—till at last he came to Lizzy; and then, for the first time in all his calculations, a sense of shame sent the color to his cheek, and he blushed till his face grew crimson. “Ay, by Jove! what will she think!” muttered he, in a voice of honest truthfulness. How he should appear to her—how he should stand in her estimation—after such an ignoble desertion, was a thought not to be encountered by self-praises of his cunning. What would her “pluck” say to his “cowardice,” was a terrible query.
Let us now return to the Hermitage, and the quiet lives of those who dwelt there. Truly, to the traveller gazing down from some lofty point of the Glengariff road upon that lowly cottage deep buried in its beech wood, and only showing rare glimpses of its trellised walls, nothing could better convey the idea of estrangement from the world and its ambitions. From the little bay, where the long low waves swept in measured cadence on the sands, to the purple-clad mountains behind, the scene was eminently calm and peaceful. The spot was precisely one to suggest the wisdom of that choice which prefers tranquil obscurity to the struggle and conflict of the great world. What a happy existence would you say was theirs, who could drop down the stream of a life surrounded with objects of such beauty, free to indulge each rising fancy, and safe from all the collisions of mankind!—how would one be disposed to envy the unbroken peacefulness that no ambitions ruffled, no rude disappointments disturbed! And yet such speculations as these are ever faulty, and wherever the human heart throbs, there will be found its passions, its hopes and fears. Beneath that quiet roof there dwelt all the elements that make the battle of life; and high aspirings and ignoble wishes, and love and fear, and jealousy, and wealth-seeking lived there, as though the spot were amidst the thundering crash of crowded streets and the din of passing thousands!
Sybella Kellett had been domesticated there about two months, and between Lady Augusta and herself there had grown a sort of intimacy,—short, indeed, of friendship, but in which each recognized good qualities in the other.
Had Miss Kellett been older, less good-looking, less grace-ful in manner, or generally less attractive, it is just possible that—we say it with all doubt and deference—Lady Augusta might have been equally disposed to feel satisfied. She suspected “Mr. Dunn must have somewhat mistaken the object of her note,” or “overlooked the requirements they sought for.” Personal attractions were not amongst the essentials she had mentioned. “My Lord,” too, was amazed at his recommending a “mere girl,”—she couldn't be more than “twenty,”—and, consequently, “totally deficient in the class of knowledge he desired.”
Two months,—no very long period,—however, sufficed to show both father and daughter that they had been, to some extent, mistaken. Not only had she addressed herself to the task of an immense correspondence, but she had drawn out reports, arranged prospectuses, and entered into most complicated financial details with a degree of clearness that elicited marked compliment from the different bodies with whom this intercourse was maintained. The Glengariff Joint Stock Company, with its half-million capital, figured largely in the public journals. Landscapes of the place appeared in the various illustrated papers, and cleverly written magazine articles drew attention to a scheme that promised to make Ireland a favored portion of the empire. Her interest once excited, Sybella Kellett's zeal was untiring.
Already she anticipated the time when the population of that poor village—now barely subsisting in direst poverty—should become thriving and happy. The coast-fisheries—once a prolific source of wealth—were to be revived; fishing-craft and tackle and curing-houses were all to be provided; means of transporting the proceeds to the rich markets of England procured; she had also discovered traces of lead in the neighborhood; and Dunn was written to, to send down a competent person to investigate the matter. In fact, great as was her industry, it seemed only second to an intelligence that adapted itself to every fresh demand and every new exigency, without a moment's interruption. To the old Lord her resources appeared inexhaustible, and gradually he abandoned the lead and guidance he had formerly given to his plans, and submitted everything to her will and dictation. It did not, indeed, escape his shrewdness that her zeal was more warmly engaged by the philanthropy than by the profit of these projects. It was to the advancement of the people, the relief of their misery, the education of their children, the care of their sick, that she looked as the great reward of all that they proposed. “What a lesson we shall teach the rest of Ireland if we 'succeed'!” was the constant exclamation she uttered. “How we shall be sought after to explain this and reveal that! What a proud day for us will it be when Glengariff shall be visited as the model school of the empire!”
Thus fed and fostered by her hopes, her imagination knew no bounds, and the day seemed even too short for the duties it exacted. Even Lady Augusta could not avoid catching some of the enthusiasm that animated her, only restraining her expectations, however, by the cautious remark, “I wonder what Mr. Dunn will say. I am curious to know how he will pronounce upon it all.”
The day at last came when this fact was to be ascertained, and the post brought the brief but interesting intelligence that Mr. Davenport Dunn would reach the Hermitage for dinner.
Lord Glengariff would have felt excessively offended could any one have supposed him anxious or uneasy on the score of Dunn's coming. That a great personage like himself should be compelled occasionally in life to descend to the agencies of such people was bad enough, but that he should have any misgivings about his co-operation or assistance, was really intolerable; and yet, we blush to confess, these were precisely the thoughts which troubled his Lordship throughout the whole of that long day.
“Not that Dunn has ever forgotten himself with me,—not that he has ever shown himself unmindful of our respective stations,—so much I must say,” were the little scraps of consolation that he repeated over and over to himself, while grave doubts really oppressed him that we had fallen upon evil days, when men of that stamp usurped almost all the influence that swayed society. No easy matter was it, either, to resolve what precise manner to assume towards him. A cold and dignified bearing might possibly repel all confidence, and an easy familiarity be just as dangerous as surrendering the one great superiority his position conferred. It was true his Lordship had never yet experienced any difficulty on such a score,—of all men, he possessed a consummate sense of his own dignity, and suffered none to infringe it; but “this fellow Dunn had been spoiled.” Great men—greater men than Lord Glengariff himself—had asked him to dinner. He had passed the thresholds of certain fine houses in Piccadilly, and well-powdered lackeys in Park Lane had called “Mr. Dunn's carriage.” Now, the Irishman that has soared to the realm of whitebait with a minister, or even a Star and Garter luncheon with a Secretary of State, becomes, to the eyes of his home-bred countrymen, a very different person from the celebrity of mere Castle attentions and Phoenix Park civilities. Dunn was this, and more. He lounged into the Irish Office as into his own lodgings, and he walked into the most private chambers of Downing Street as if by right. Consulted or not, he had the reputation of holding the patronage of all Ireland in his hands; and assuredly they who attained promotion were not slow in testifying to what quarter they owed their gratitude. Some of that mysterious grandeur that clung to the old religions of the Greeks seems to hover round the acts of a great Government, till the Ministers, like Priests or Augurs, appear less equals and fellow-men than stewards and dispensers of immense bounties intrusted to their keeping. There was about Dunn's manner much to foster this illusion. He was a blending of mystery with the deepest humility, but with a very evident desire that you should neither believe one nor the other. It was the same conscious power looming through the affected modesty of his pretensions that offended Lord Glengariff, and made him irritable in all his intercourse with him.
Let us take a passing glance at Lady Augusta. And why, may we ask, has she taken such pains about her toilette to-day? Not that her dress is unusually rich or costly, but she has evidently made a study of the “becoming,” and looks positively handsome. She remembered something of a fuchsia in her hair, long, long ago; and now, by mere caprice of course, she has interwoven one in those dark clusters, never glossier nor more silky. Her calm, cold features, too, have caught up a gentler expression, and her voice is softer and lower. Her maid can make nothing of it. Lady Augusta has been so gracious and so thoughtful, and asked about her poor old sick grandmother. Well, these sunlights are meant to show what the coldest landscapes may become when smiled on by brighter skies!
And Sybella. Pale and melancholy, and in mourning, she, too, has caught up a sense of pleasure at the coming visit, and a faint line of color tinges her white cheek. She is very glad that Mr. Dunn is expected. “She has to thank him for many kindnesses; his prompt replies to her letters; his good nature to poor Jack, for whom he has repeatedly written to the Horse Guards; not to speak of the words of encouragement and hope he has addressed to herself. Yes, he is, indeed, her friend; perhaps her only friend in the world.”
And now they are met in the drawing-room, waiting with anxiety for some sounds that may denote the great man's coming. The three windows open to the ground; the rich sward, spangled here and there with carnations or rich-scented stocks, slopes down towards a little river, from the bridge over which a view is caught of the Glen-gariff road; and to this spot each as silently loitered, and as listlessly turned back again without a word.
“We are waiting for Mr. Dunn, Augusta, ain't we?” asked Lord Glengariff, as if the thought had just suddenly struck him for the first time.
“Yes,” replied she, gravely; “he promised us his company to-day at dinner.”
“Are you quite sure it was to-day he mentioned?” said he, with an affected indifference in his tone.
“Miss Kellett can inform us with certainty.”
“He said Thursday, and in time for dinner,” said Sybella, not a little puzzled by this by-play of assumed forgetfulness.
“The man who makes his own appointments ought to keep them. I am five minutes beyond the half-hour,” said Lord Glengariff, as he looked at his watch.
“I suspect you are a little fast,” observed Lady Augusta.
“There!—I think I heard the crack of a postilion's whip,” cried Sybella, as she went outside the window to listen. Lady Augusta followed, and was soon at her side.
“You appear anxious for Mr. Dunn's coming. Is he a very intimate friend of yours, Miss Kellett?” said she, with a keen, quick glance of her dark eyes.
“He was the kind friend of my father, when he lived, and, since his death, he has shown himself not less mindful of me. There—I hear the horses plainly! Can't you hear them now, Lady Augusta?”
“And how was this kindness evidenced,—in your own case I mean?” said Lady Augusta, not heeding her question.
“By advice, by counsel, by the generous interference which procured for me my present station here, not to speak of the spirit of his letters to me.”
“So then you correspond with him?” asked she, reddening suddenly.
“Yes,” said she, turning her eyes fully on the other. And thus they stood for some seconds, when, with a slight, but very slight, motion of impatience, Lady Augusta said,—
“I was not aware—I mean, I don't remember your having mentioned this circumstance to me.”
“I should have done so if I thought it could have had any interest for you,” said Sybella, calmly. “Oh, there is the carriage coming up the drive; I knew I was not mistaken.”
Lady Augusta made no reply, but returned hastily to the house. Bella paused for a few seconds, and followed her.
No sooner was Mr. Dunn's carriage seen approaching the little bridge over the stream than Lord Glengariff rang to order dinner.
“It will be a rebuke he well merits,” said he, “to find the soup on the table as he drives up.”
There was something more than a mere movement of irritation in this; his Lordship regarded it as a fine stroke of policy, by which Dunn's arrival, tinged with constraint and awkwardness, should place that gentleman at a disadvantage during the time he stayed, Lord Glengariff's favorite theory being that “these people were insufferable when at their ease.”
Ah, my Lord, your memory was picturing the poor tutor of twenty years before, snubbed and scoffed at for his ungainly ways and ill-made garments,—the man heavy in gait and awkward in address, sulky when forgotten, and shy when spoken to,—this was the Davenport Dunn of your thoughts; there the very door he used to creep through in bashful confusion, yonder the side-table where he dined in a mockery of consideration. Little, indeed, were you prepared for him whose assured voice was already heard outside giving orders to his servant, and who now entered the drawing-room with all the ease of a man of the world.
“Ah, Dunn, most happy to see you here. No accident, I trust, occurred to detain you,” said Lord Glengariff, meeting him with a well-assumed cordiality, and then, not waiting for his reply, went on: “My daughter, Lady Augusta, an old acquaintance—if you have not forgotten her. Miss Kellett you are acquainted with.”
Mr. Dunn bowed twice, and deeply, before Lady Augusta, and then, passing across the room, shook hands warmly with Sybella.
“How did you find the roads, Dunn?” asked his Lordship, still fishing about for some stray word of apology; “rather heavy, I fear, at this season.”
“Capital roads, my Lord, and excellent horses. We came along at a rate which would have astonished the lumbering posts of the Continent.”
“Dinner, my Lord,” said the butler, throwing wide the folding-doors.
“Will you give Lady Augusta your arm, Dunn?” said Lord Glengariff, as he offered his own to Miss Kellett.
“We have changed our dinner-room, Mr. Dunn,” said Lady Augusta, as they walked along; thus by a mere word suggesting “bygones and long ago.”
“And with advantage, I should say,” replied he, easily, as he surveyed the spacious and lofty apartment into which they had just entered. “The old dinner-room was low-ceilinged and gloomy.”
“Do you really remember it?” asked she, with a pleasant smile.
“An over-good memory has accompanied me through life, Lady Augusta,” said he. And then, as he remarked the rising color of her cheek, quickly added, “It is rarely that the faculty treats me to such grateful recollections as the present.”
Lord Glengariffs table was a good specimen of country-house living. All the materials were excellent, and the cookery reasonably good; his wine was exquisite,—the years and epochs connoisseurship loves to dwell upon; but Mr. Dunn ate sparingly and drank little. He had passed forty without gourmand tastes, and no man takes to epicurism after that. His Lordship beheld, not without secret dissatisfaction, his curdiest salmon declined, his wonderful “south-down” sent away scarcely tasted, and, horror of horrors! saw water mixed with his 1815 claret as if it were a “little Bordeaux wine” at a Swiss table d'hôte.
“Mr. Dunn has no appetite for our coarse country fare, Augusta,” said Lord Glengariff; “you must take him over the cliffs, to-morrow, and let him feel the sharp Glengariff air. There's nothing but hunger for it.”
“Pardon me, my Lord, if I say that I accept with gratitude the proposed remedy, though I don't acknowledge a just cause for it. I am always a poor eater.”
“Tell him of Beverley, Augusta, tell him of Beverley,” said my Lord.
“Oh, it was simply a case similar to your own,” said she, hesitatingly, “and, in all probability, incurred in the same way. The Duke of Beverley, a very hard-worked man, as you know, always at Downing Street at ten, and never leaving it till night, came here two years ago, to pass a few weeks with us, and although hale and stout, to look at, could eat nothing,—that is, he cared for nothing. It was in vain we put in requisition all our little culinary devices to tempt him; he sat down with us, and, like yourself, would fain persuade us that he dined, but he really touched nothing; and, in utter despair, I determined to try what a course of open air and exercise would do.”
“She means eight hours a day hard walking, Dunn,” chimed in Lord Glengariff; “a good grouse-shooter's pace, too, and cross country.”
“Well, confess that my remedy succeeded,” said she, triumphantly.
“That it did. The Duke went back to town fifteen years younger. No one knew him; the Queen did not know him. And to this day he says, 'Whenever I'm hipped or out of sorts, I know what a resource I have in the Glengariff heather.'”
It is possible that Davenport Dunn listened with more of interest to this little incident because the hero of it was a Duke and a Cabinet Minister.
Assuredly the minor ills of life, the petty stomachic miseries, and such like, are borne with a more becoming patience when we know that they are shared by peers and great folk. Not by you, valued reader, nor even by me,—we have no such weaknesses,—but by the Davenport Dunns of this world, one of whom we are now treating. It was pleasant, too, to feel that he not only had a ducal ailment, but that he was to be cured like his Grace! And so he listened eagerly, as Lady Augusta went on to tell of the various localities, strange and unpronounceable, that they used to visit, and how his Grace loved to row across such an arm of the lake, and what delight he took in the ascent of such a mountain. “But you shall judge for yourself, Mr. Dunn,” said she, smiling, “and I now engage you for to-morrow, after breakfast.” And with that she rose, and, accompanied by Sybella, passed into the drawing-room. Dunn was about to follow, when Lord Glengariff called out, “I'm of the old school, Dunn, and must have half an hour with my bottle before I join the ladies.”
We do not stop to explain—perhaps we should not succeed to our wishes if we tried—why it was that Dunn was more genial, better satisfied, and more at his ease than when the dinner began; but so it was that as he filled the one glass of claret be meant to indulge in, he felt that he had been exaggerating to his own mind the disagreeables of this visit, and that everybody was kinder, pleasanter, and more natural than he had expected.
“Jesting apart, Dunn,” said his Lordship, “Augusta is right. What you require is rest,—perfect repose; never to read or write a letter for three weeks, not look at a newspaper, nor receive a telegraphic despatch. Let us try if Glengariff cannot set you up. The fact is, we can't spare you.”
“Your opinion is too flattering by half, my Lord; but really, any one—I mean any one whose views are honest, and whose intentions are upright—can complete the work I have begun. There is no secret,—no mystery in it.”
“Come, come, this is over-modest. We all know that your head alone could carry on the vast number of these great schemes which are now in operation amongst us. Could you really tell the exact number of companies of which you are Director?”
“I 'm afraid to say that I could,” said Dunn, smiling.
“Of course you could n't. It is marvellous, downright marvellous, how you get through it. You rise early, of course?”
“Yes, my Lord, at five, summer and winter; light my own fire, and sit down to the desk till eight; by that time I have finished my correspondence on business topics. I then take a cup of tea and a little dry toast. This is my preparation for questions of politics, which usually occupy me till eleven. From that hour till three I receive deputations,—heads of companies, and such like. I then take my ride, weather permitting, and usually contrive to call at the Lodge, till nigh dinner-hour. If alone, my meal is a frugal one, and soon despatched; and then begins the real work of the day. A short nap of twenty minutes refreshes me, and I address myself with energy to my task. In these quiet hours, undisturbed and uninterrupted,—for I admit none, not one, at such seasons,—my mind is clear and unclouded, and I can work, without a sense of fatigue, till past midnight; it has even happened that morning has broke upon me without my being aware of it.”
“No health, no constitution, could stand that, Dunn,” said Lord Glengariff, with a voice artfully modulated to imply deep interest.
“Men are mere relays on the road of life; when one sinks, wearied or worn out, a fresh one comes forth ready to take his place in the traces.”
“That may be—that may be, in the mass of cases; but there are exceptional men, Dunn,—men who—men, in fact, whose faculties have such an adaptiveness to the age we live in—do you perceive my meaning?—men of the situation, as the French say.” Here his Lordship began to feel that he was getting upon very ticklish ground, and by no means sure how he was to get safely back again, when, with a violent plunge, he said, “That fellow Washington was one of those men, Louis Napoleon is another, and you—I don't hesitate to say it—you are also an instance of what I mean.”
Dunn's pale face flushed up as he muttered some broken words of depreciating meaning.
“The circumstances, I am aware, are different. You have not to revolutionize a country, but you have undertaken just as hard a task: to remodel its social state,—to construct out of the ruined materials of a bankrupt people the elements of national wealth and greatness. Let no man tell me, sir, that this is not a bolder effort than the other. Horse, foot, and dragoons, as poor Grattan used to say, won't aid you here. To your own clear head and your own keen intellect must you trust.”
“My dear Lord,” broke in Dunn, in a voice not devoid of emotion, “you exaggerate both my labor and my capacity. I saw that the holders of Irish property were not the owners, and I determined that they should be so. I saw that the people were improvident, less from choice than necessity, and I gave them banks. I saw land unproductive for want of capital, and I established the principle of loans for drainage and other improvements. I perceived that our soil and our climate favor certain species of cultivation, and as certainly deny some others. I popularized this knowledge.”
“And you call this nothing! Why, sir, where's the statesman can point to such a list of legislative acts? Peel himself has left no such legacy behind him.”
“Ah, my Lord, this is too flattering,—too flattering by half.” And Dunn sipped his wine and looked down. “By the way, my Lord,” said he, after a pause, “how has my recommendation in the person of Miss Kellett succeeded?”
“A very remarkable young woman,—a singularly gifted person indeed,” said the old Lord, pompously. “Some of her ideas are tinctured, it is true, with that canting philanthropy we are just now infected with,—that tendency to discover all the virtue in rags and all the vice in purple; but, with this abatement to her utility, I must say she possesses a very high order of mind. She comes of a good family, doesn't she?”
“None better. The Kelletts of Kellett's Court were equal to any gentry in this county.”
“And left totally destitute?”
“A mere wreck of the property remains, and even that is so cumbered with claims and so involved in law that I scarcely dare to say that they have an acre they can call their own.”
“Poor girl! A hard case,—a very hard case. We like her much, Dunn. My daughter finds her very companionable; her services, in a business point of view, are inestimable. All those reports you have seen are hers, all those drawings made by her hand.”
“I am aware, my Lord, how much zeal and intelligence she has displayed,” said Dunn, who had no desire to let the conversation glide into the great Glengariff scheme, “and I am also aware how gratefully she feels the kindness she has met with under this roof.”
“That is as it should be, Dunn, and I am rejoiced to hear it. It is in no spirit of self-praise I say it, but in simple justice,—we do—my daughter and myself, both of us—do endeavor to make her feel that her position is less that of dependant than—than—companion.”
“I should have expected nothing less from your Lordship nor Lady Augusta,” said Dunn, gravely.
“Yes, yes; you knew Augusta formerly; you can appreciate her high-minded and generous character, though I think she was a mere child when you saw her first.”
“Very young indeed, my Lord,” said Dunn, coloring faintly.
“She is exactly, however, what she then promised to be,—an Arden, a genuine Arden, sir; no deceit, no double; frank, outspoken; too much so, perhaps, for our age of mock courtesy, but a noble-hearted girl, and one fit to adorn any station.”
There was an honest, earnest sincerity in the old Lord's manner that made Dunn listen with respect to the sentiments be uttered, though in his heart the epithet “girl,” as applied to Lady Augusta, seemed somewhat ill chosen.
“I see you take no wine, so that, if you have no objection, we'll join the ladies.”
“Your Lordship was good enough to tell me that I was to make myself perfectly at home here; may I begin at once to avail myself of your kindness, and say that for this evening I beg to retire early? I have a number of letters to read, and some to answer.”
“Really, Lady Augusta will feel quite offended if you slight her tea-table.”
“Nay, my Lord. It is only for this evening, and I am sure you will make my excuses becomingly.”
“It shall be as you please,” said the old Lord, with a rather stiff courtesy.
“Thank you, my Lord; thank you. I assure you it is very rarely the sacrifice to duty costs me so keenly. Goodnight.”