Davenport Dunn, a Man of Our Day. Volume 1. Lever Charles James

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ