Davenport Dunn, a Man of Our Day. Volume 2. Lever Charles James

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      “Christopher Davis.

      “To while away the time in this dreary dog-hole, I have been sketching out a little plan of a martingale for the roulette-table. There’s only one zero at Homburg, and we can try it there as we go up. There’s a flaw in it after the twelfth ‘pass,’ but I don’t despair of getting over the difficulty. Old Stein, the money-changer, was upwards of thirty years croupier at the Cursaal, and get him to tell you the average runs, black and red, at rouge-et-noir, and what are the signs of an intermitting game; and also the six longest runs he has ever known. He is a shrewd fellow, and seeing that you come from me will be confidential.

      “There has been another fight in the Crimea, and somebody well licked. I had nothing on the match, and don’t care a brass farthing who claimed the stakes.

      “Tell Lizey that I ‘m longing to see her, and if I didn’t write it is because I ‘m keeping everything to tell her when we meet. If it was n’t for her picture, I don’t know what would have become of me since last Tuesday, when the rain set in.”

      Beecher re-read the letter from the beginning; nor was it an easy matter for him to master at once all the topics it included. Of himself and his own affairs the information was vague and unsatisfactory; but Grog knew how to keep him always in suspense, – to make him ever feel that he was swimming for his life, and he himself the only “spar” he could catch at.

      “Bring me to book about my care of his daughter!” muttered he, over and over, “just as if she was n’t the girl to take care of herself. Egad! he seems to know precious little about her. I ‘d give a ‘nap’ to show her this letter, and just hear what she ‘d say of it all. I suppose she ‘d split on me. She ‘d go and tell Davis, ‘Beecher has put me up to the whole “rig;”’ and if she did – What would happen then?” asked he, replying to the low, plaintive whistle which concluded his meditation. “Eh – what! did I say anything?” cried he, in terror.

      “Not a syllable. But I could see that you had conjured up some difficulty which you were utterly unable to deal with.”

      “Well, here it is,” said he, boldly. “This letter is from your father. It’s all full of private details, of which you know nothing, nor would you care to hear; but there is one passage – just one – that I’d greatly like to have your opinion upon. At the same time I tell you, frankly, I have no warranty from your father to let you see it; nay, the odds are he ‘d pull me up pretty sharp for doing so without his authority.”

      “That’s quite enough, Mr. Beecher, about your scruples. Now, mine go a little further still; for they would make me refuse to learn anything which my father’s reserve had kept from me. It is a very easy rule of conscience, and neither hard to remember nor to follow.”

      “At all events, he meant this for your own eye,” said Beecher, showing her the last few lines of the letter.

      She read them calmly over; a slight trembling of the lip – so slight that it seemed rather like a play of light over her face – was the only sign of emotion visible, and then, carefully folding the letter, she gave it back, saying, “Yes, I had a right to see these lines.”

      “He is fond of you, and proud of you, too,” said Beecher. A very slight nod of her head gave an assent to his remark, and she was silent. “We are to leave this at once,” continued he, “and move on to Bonn, where we shall find a letter with your father’s address, somewhere, I take it, in that neighborhood.” He waited, hoping she would say something, but she did not speak. And then he went on:

      “And then you will be once more at home, – emancipated from this tiresome guardianship of mine.”

      “Why tiresome?” asked she, suddenly.

      “Oh, by Jove! I know I’ m very slow sort of fellow as a ladies’ man; have none of the small talents of those foreigners; couldn’t tell Mozart from Verdi; nor, though I can see when a woman is well togged, could I tell you the exact name of any one part of her dress.”

      “If you really did know all these, and talked of them, I might have found you very tiresome,” said she, in that half-careless voice she used when seeming to think aloud. “And you,” asked she, suddenly, as she turned her eyes fully upon him, – “and you, are you to be emancipated then, – are you going to leave us?”

      “As to that,” replied he, in deep embarrassment, “there ‘a a sort of hitch in it I ought, if I did the right thing, to be on my way to Italy now, to see Lackington, – my brother, I mean. I came abroad for that; but Gr – your father, I should say – induced me to join him, and so, with one thing and the other, here I am, and that’s really all I know about it.”

      “What a droll way to go through life!” said she, with one of her low, soft laughs.

      “If you mean that I have n’t a will of my own, you ‘re all wrong,” said he, in some irritation. “Put me straight at my fence, and see if I won’t take it. Just say, ‘A. B., there’s the winning-post,’ and mark whether I won’t get my speed up.”

      What a strange glance was that which answered this speech! It implied no assent; as little did it mean the reverse. It was rather the look of one who, out of a maze of tangled fancies, suddenly felt recalled to life and its real interests. To poor Beecher’s apprehension it simply seemed a sort of half-compassionate pity, and it made his cheek tingle with wounded pride.

      “I know,” muttered he to himself, “that she thinks me a confounded fool; but I ain’t. Many a fellow in the ring made that mistake, and burned his fingers for it after.”

      “Well,” said she, after a moment or so of thought, “I am ready; at least, I shall be ready very soon. I ‘ll tell Annette to pack up and prepare for the road.”

      “I wish I could get you to have some better opinion of me, Miss Lizzy,” said he, seriously. “I’d give more than I ‘d like to say, that you ‘d – you ‘d – ”

      “That I’d what?” asked she, calmly.

      “That you ‘d not set me down as a regular flat,” said he, with energy.

      “I ‘m not very certain that I know what that means; but I will tell you that I think you very good tempered, very gentle-natured, and very tolerant of fifty-and-one caprices which must be all the more wearisome because unintelligible. And then, you are a very fine gentleman, and – the Honor-Able Annesley Beecher.” And holding out her dress in minuet fashion, she courtesied deeply, and left the room.

      “I wish any one would tell me whether I stand to win or not by that book,” exclaimed Beecher, as he stood there alone, nonplussed and confounded. “Would n’t she make a stunning actress! By Jove! Webster would give her a hundred a week, and a free benefit!” And with this he went off into a little mental arithmetic, at the end of which he muttered to himself, “And that does not include starring it in the provinces!”

      With the air of a man whose worldly affairs went well, he arranged his hair before the glass, put on his hat, gave himself a familiar nod, and went out.

      CHAPTER IV. LAZARUS, STEIN, GELDWECHSLER

      The Juden Gasse, in which Beecher was to find out the residence of Lazarus Stein, was a long, straggling street, beginning in the town and ending in the suburb, where it seemed as it were to lose itself. It was not till after a long and patient search that Beecher discovered a small door in an old ivy-covered wall, on which, in irregular letters, faint and almost illegible, stood the words, “Stein, СКАЧАТЬ