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

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

      “He never married?” said Lady Lackington.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

      “You never saw him?”

      “No.”

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

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

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

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

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

      “The Chancellor!” exclaimed Lady Grace.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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