“Your Lordship’s time is far too valuable to be passed in such discussion; even mine might be more profitably spent than in listening to it, My demand is now before you; in some three weeks hence it is not impossible it may await the consideration of your Lordship’s successors. In one word, if I leave this room without your distinct pledge on the subject, you will no longer reckon me amongst the followers of your party.”
“Half-past four, I protest,” said Lord Jedburg, taking up his gloves. “I shall be too late at the House. Let us conclude this to-morrow morning. Come down here at eleven.”
“Excuse me, my Lord. I leave town to-night I am going over to Ireland.”
“Yes, you ought to be there; I forgot. Well, you must leave this affair in my hands. I ‘ll speak to Croydon and Locksley about it, – both stanch friends of yours. I can make no pledge, you know, – no actual promise – ”
“Nor I either, my Lord,” said Dunn, rising. “Let me, however, ask you to accept of my excuses for Sunday at dinner.”
“I regret much that we are not to have the pleasure of your company,” said his Lordship, with a formal courtesy.
“These appointments,” said Dunn, laying down a list he had made on the table, “are, of course, in your Lordship’s hands.”
“I conclude so,” was the dry reply, as the Minister but-toned his coat.
“I wish your Lordship a very good morning. Good-bye, my Lord.” And the words had their peculiar utterance.
“Good-bye, Mr. Dunn,” said the Minister, shortly, and rang for his carriage.
Dunn had but reached the foot of the stairs, when he heard a rapid tread behind him. “I beg pardon, Mr. Dunn,” cried Bagwell, the private secretary; “his Lordship sent me to overtake you, and say that the matter you are desirous about shall be done. His Lordship also hopes you can dine with him on Sunday.”
“Oh, very well; say ‘Yes, with much pleasure.’ Has his Lordship gone?”
“Yes, by the private door. He was in a great hurry, and will, I fear, be late, after all.”
“There’s a good thing to be done just now in potash, Bagwell, at Pesaro. If you have a spare hundred or two, give me a call to-morrow morning.” And with a gesture to imply secrecy, Dunn moved away, leaving Bagwell in a dream of gold-getting.
CHAPTER XIX. THE COTTAGE NEAR SNOWDON
At an early portion of this true story, our reader was incidentally told that Charles Conway had a mother, and that she lived in Wales. Her home was a little cottage near the village of Bedgellert, a neighborhood wherein her ancestors had once possessed large estates, but of which not an acre now acknowledged her as owner. Here, on a mere pittance, she had lived for years a life of unbroken solitude. The few charities to the poor her humble means permitted had served to make her loved and respected; while her gentle manners and kind address gave her that sort of eminence which such qualities are sure to attain in remote and simple circles.
All her thoughts in life, all her wishes and ambitions, were centred in her son; and although it was to the wild and reckless extravagance of his early life that she owed the penury which now pressed her, although but for his wasteful excesses she had still been in affluence and comfort, she never attached to him the slightest blame, nor did her lips ever utter one syllable of reproach. Strong in the conviction that so long as the wild excesses of youth stamp nothing of dishonor on the character, the true nature within has sustained no permanent injury, she waited patiently for the time when, this season of self-indulgence over, the higher dictates of manly reason would assert their influence, and that Charley, having sown his wild oats, would come forth rather chastened and sobered than stained by his intercourse with the world.
If this theory of hers has its advocates, there are many – and wise people, too – who condemn it, and who deem those alone safe who have been carefully guarded from the way of temptation, and have been kept estranged from the seductions of pleasure. To ourselves the whole question resolves itself into the nature of the individual, at the same time that we had far rather repose our confidence in one who had borne his share in life’s passages, gaining his experience, mayhap, with cost, but coming honorably through the trial, than on him who, standing apart, had but looked out over the troubled ocean of human passion, nor risked himself on the sea of man’s temptations.
The former was Conway’s case: he had led a life of boundless extravagance; without any thought of the cost, he had launched out into every expensive pursuit. What we often hear applied to others figuratively, was strictly applicable to him; he never knew the value of money; he never knew that anything one desired could be overpaid for. The end came at last. With a yacht ready stored and fitted out for a Mediterranean cruise, with three horses heavily engaged at Doncaster, with a shooting-lodge filled with distinguished company in the Highlands, with negotiations all but completed for the Hooksley hounds, with speculations rife as to whether the Duchess of This or the Countess of That had secured him for a daughter or a niece, there came, one morning, the startling information from his solicitor that a large loan he had contemplated raising was rendered impossible by some casualty of the money-market Recourse must be had to the Jews; heavy liabilities incurred at Newmarket must be met at once and at any cost. A week of disaster fell exactly at this conjuncture; he lost largely at the Portland, largely on the turf; a brother officer, for whom he had given surety, levanted immensely in debt; while a local bank, in which a considerable sum of his was vested, failed. The men of sixty per cent saved him from shipwreck; but they took the craft for the salvage, and Conway was ruined.
Amidst the papers which Conway had sent to his solicitor as securities for the loan, a number of family documents had got mingled, old deeds and titles to estates of which the young man had not so much as heard, claims against property of whose existence he knew nothing. When questioned about them by the man of law, he referred him coolly to his mother, saying, frankly, “it was a matter on which he had never troubled his head.’” Mrs. Conway herself scarcely knew more. She had heard that there was a claim in the family to a peerage; her husband used to allude to it in his own dreamy, indolent fashion, and say that it ought to be looked after, and that was all.
Had the information come to the mind of an active or enterprising man of business, it might have fared differently. The solicitor to the family was, however, himself a lethargic, lazy sort of person, and he sent back the papers to Mrs. Conway, stating that he was not sure “something might not be made of them;” that is, added he, “if he had five or six thousand pounds to expend upon searches, and knew where to prosecute them.”
This was but sorry comfort, but it did not fall upon a heart high in hope or strong in expectation. Mrs. Conway had never lent herself to the impression that the claim had much foundation, and she heard the tidings with calm; and all that was remembered of the whole transaction was when some jocular allusion would be made by Charles to the time when he should succeed to his peerage, or some as light-hearted jest of the old lady as to whether she herself was to enjoy a title or not The more stirring incidents of a great campaign had latterly, however, so absorbed all the young soldier’s interest that he seemed totally to have forgotten the oft-recurring subject of joke between them. Strange enough was it, yet, that in the very letter which conveyed to his mother an account of his Tchernaya achievement, a brief postscript had the following words: —
“Since I have been confined to hospital, a person connected with the newspapers, I believe, has been here to learn the exact story of my adventure, and, curiously enough, has been pumping me about our family history. Can it be that ‘our peerage’ is looking up again? This last sabre-cut on my skull makes me rather anxious to exchange a chako for a coronet. Can you send me anything hopeful in this direction?”
It was on an answer to this letter the old lady was occupied, seated at an open window, as the sun was just setting on a calm and mellow evening in late autumn. Well understanding the temperament of him she addressed, she adverted little to the danger of his late achievement, and simply seemed to concur in his own remark when recounting it, that he who has made his name notorious from folly has, more than others, the obligation to achieve a higher and better reputation; and added, at the same time: “Charley, what I liked best in your feat was its patriotism. The sense of rendering a good and efficient service to the cause of your country was a nobler prompting than any desire for personal distinction.” From this she turned to tell him about what she well knew he loved best to hear of, – her home and her daily life, with its little round of uneventful cares, the little Welsh pony “Crw,” and his old spaniel “Belle,” and the tulips he had taken such pains about, and the well he had sunk in the native rock. She had good tidings, too, that the railroad – the dreadful railroad – was not to take the line of their happy valley, but to go off in some more “favored” direction. Of the cottage itself she had succeeded in obtaining a renewed lease, – a piece of news well calculated to delight him, “if,” as she said, “grand dreams of the peerage might not have impaired his relish for the small hut at the foot of Snowdon.” She had just reached so far when a little chaise, drawn by a mountain pony, drew up before the door, and a lady in a sort of half-mourning dress got out and rang the bell. As the old lady rose to admit her visitor, – for her only servant was at work in the garden, – she felt no small astonishment. She was known to none but the peasant neighborhood about her; she had not a single acquaintance in the country with its gentry; and although the present arrival came with little display, in her one glance at the figure of the stranger she saw her to be distinctly of a certain condition in life.
It will conduce equally to brevity and to the interests of our story if we give what followed in the words wherein Mrs. Conway conveyed it to her son: —
“Little, I thought, my dear Charley, that I should have to cross this already long letter, – little suspected that its real and only interest was to have been suggested as I drew to its close; and here, if I had the heart for it, were the place to scold you for a pretty piece of mystification you once practised upon me, when you induced me to offer the hospitality of this poor cottage to an humble gentlewoman, whose poverty would not deem even my life an existence of privation, – the sister of a fellow-soldier you called her, and made me to believe – whose the fault I am not sure – that she was some not very young or very attractive person, but one whose claim lay in her friendless lot and forlorn condition. Say what you will, such was my impression, and it could have no other source than your description.
“Yes, Charley, my mind-picture was of a thin-faced, somewhat sandy-haired lady, of some six or eight and thirty years, bony, angular, and awkward, greatly depressed, and naturally averse to intercourse with those who had not known her or her better fortunes; shall I add that I assisted my portrait by adding coarse hands, and filled up my anticipation by suspecting a very decided Irish brogue? Of course this flattering outline could not have been revealed in a vision, and must have come from your hands, deny it whenever and however you may! And now for the reality, – the very prettiest girl I ever saw, since I left off seeing pretty people, when I was young and had pretensions myself: even then I do not remember any one handsomer, and with a winning grace of manner equal, if not superior, to her beauty. You know me as a very difficult critic on the subject of breeding and maintien. I feel that I am so, even to injustice, because I look for the reserved courtesy of one era as well as the easy frankness of another. Shehas both; and she is a court lady who could adorn a cottage. Of my own atrocious sketch there was nothing about her. Stay, there was. She had the Irish accent, but by some witchery of her own I got to like it, – fancied it was musical and breathed of the sweet south; but if I go on with her perfections, I shall never come to the important question, for which you care more to hear besides, as to how I know all these things. And now, to my horror, I find how little space is left me to tell you. Well, in three words you shall have it. She has been here to see me on her way somewhere, her visit being prompted by the wish to place in my hands some very curious and very old family records, found by a singular accident in an Irish country-house. They relate to the claim of some ancestor of yours to certain lands in Ireland, and the right is asserted in the name of Baron Conway, and afterwards the Lord Viscount Lackington. I saw no further; indeed, except that they all relate to our dear peerage, they seem to possess no very peculiar interest. If it were not that she would introduce your name, push me with interminable questions as to what it was you had really done, what rewards you had or were about to reap, where you were, and, above all, how, I should have called her visit the most disinterested piece of kindness I ever heard of. Still she showed a sincere and ardent desire to serve us, and said that she would be ready to make any delay in London to communicate with our lawyer, and acquaint him fully with the circumstances of this discovery.
“I unceasingly entreated her to be my guest, were it only for a few days. I even affected to believe that I would send for our lawyer to come down and learn the curious details of the finding of the papers; but she pleaded the absolute necessity of her presence in London so strongly – she betrayed, besides, something like a deep anxiety for some coming event – that I was obliged to abandon my attempt, and limit our acquaintance by the short two hours we had passed together.
“It will take some time, and another long letter, to tell you of the many topics we talked over; for, our first greeting over, we felt towards each other like old friends.
At last she arose to leave me, and never since the evening you bade me good-bye did the same loneliness steal over my heart as when I saw her little carriage drive away from the door.
“One distressing recollection alone clouds the memory of our meeting: I suffered her to leave me without a promise to return. I could not, without infringing delicacy, have pressed her more to tell me of herself and her plans for the future, and yet even now I regret that, at any hazard, I did not risk the issue. The only pledge I could obtain was that she would write to me. I am now at the end of my paper, but not of my theme, of which you shall hear more in my next.
Meanwhile, if you are not in love with her, I am.
“Your affectionate mother,
“Marian Conway.”
We have ourselves nothing to add to the narrative of this letter save the remark that Mrs. Conway felt far more deeply than she expressed the disappointment of not being admitted to Sybella’s full confidence. The graceful captivation of the young girl’s manner, heightened in interest by her friendless and lone condition, – the perilous path in life that must be trodden by one so beautiful and unprotected, – had made a deep impression on the old lady’s heart, and she was sincere in self-reproach that she had suffered her to leave her.
She tried again and again, by recalling all that passed between them, to catch some clew to what Sybella’s future pointed; but so guardedly had the young girl shrouded every detail of her own destiny, that the effort was in vain. Sybella had given an address in town, where Mrs. Conway’s lawyer might meet her if necessary, and with a last hope the old lady had written a note to that place, entreating, as the greatest favor, that she would come down and pass some days with her at the cottage; but her letter came back to her own hands. Miss Kellett was gone.
CHAPTER XX. A SUPPER
In long-measured sweep the waves flowed smoothly in upon the low shore at Baldoyle of a rich evening in autumn, as a very old man tottered feebly down to the strand and seated himself on a rock. Leaning his crossed arms on his stout stick, he gazed steadily and calmly on the broad expanse before him. Was it that they mirrored to him the wider expanse of that world to which he was so rapidly tending; was it in that measured beat he recognized the march of time, the long flow of years he could count, and which still swept on, smooth but relentless; or was it that the unbroken surface soothed by its very sameness a brain long wearied by its world conflict? Whatever the cause, old Matthew Dunn came here every evening of his life, and, seated on the self-same spot, gazed wistfully over the sea before him.
Although his hair was snow-white and the wrinkles that furrowed his cheeks betrayed great age, his eyes yet preserved a singular brightness, and in their vivid glances showed that the strong spirit that reigned within was still unquenched. The look of defiance they wore was the very essence of the man, – one who accepted any challenge that fortune flung him, and, whether victor or vanquished, only prepared for fresh conflict.
There was none of the weariness so often observable in advanced age about his features, nothing of that expression that seems to crave rest and peace, still as little was there anything of that irritable activity which seems at times to’ counterfeit past energy of temperament; no, he was calm, stern, and self-possessed, the man who had fought this way from boyhood, and who asked neither grace nor favor of fortune as he drew nigh the end of the journey!
“I knew I’d find you here,” said a deep voice close to his ear. “How are you?”
The old man looked up, and the next moment his son was in his arms. “Davy, my own boy – Davy, I was just thinking of you; was it Friday or Saturday you said you ‘d come.”
“I thought I could have been here Saturday, father, but Lord Jedburg made a point of my dining with him yesterday; and it was a great occasion, – three Cabinet Ministers present, a new Governor-General of India too, – I felt it was better to remain.”
“Right, Davy, – always right, – them’s the men to keep company with!”
“And how are you, sir? Are you hale and stout and hearty as ever?” said Dunn, as he threw his head back, the better to look at the old man.
“As you see me, boy: a little shaky about the knees, somewhat tardy about getting up of a morning; but once launched, the old craft can keep her timbers together. But tell me the news, lad, – tell me the news, and never mind me.”
“Well, sir, last week was a very threatening one for us. No money to be had on any terms, discounts all suspended, shares failing everywhere, good houses crashing on all sides, nothing but disasters with every post; but we ‘ve worked through it, sir. Glumthal behaved well, though at the very last minute; and Lord Glengariff, too, deposited all his title-deeds at Hanbridge’s for a loan of thirty-six thousand; and then, as Downing Street also stood to us, we weathered the gale; but it was close work, father, – so close at one moment I telegraphed to Liverpool to secure a berth in the ‘Arctic.’”
A sudden start from the old man stopped him, but he quickly resumed: “Don’t be alarmed, sir; my message excited no suspicion, for I sent a fellow to New York by the packet, and now all is clear again, and we have good weather before us.”
“The shares fell mighty low in the allotment, Davy; how was that?”
“Partly from the cause I have mentioned, father, the tightness in the money market; partly that I suspect we had an enemy in the camp, that daughter of Kellett’s – ”
“Did n’t I say so? Did n’t I warn you about her? Did n’t I tell you that it was the brood of the serpent that stung us first?” cried out the old man, with a wild energy; “and with all that you would put her there with the Lord and his family, where she ‘d know all that was doing, see the letters, and maybe write the answers to them! Where was the sense and prudence of that, Davy?”
“She was an enthusiast, father, and I hoped that she’d have been content to revel in that realm, but I was mistaken.”
There was a tone of dejection in the way he spoke the last words that made the old man fix his eyes steadfastly on him. “Well, Davy, go on,” said he.
“I have no more to say, sir,” said he, in the same sad voice. “The Earl has dismissed her, and she has gone away.”
“That’s right, that’s right, – better late than never. Neither luck nor grace could come of Paul Kellett’s stock. I hope that’s the last we ‘ll hear of them; and now, Davy, how is the great world doing? How is the Queen?”
Dunn could scarcely suppress a smile as he answered this question, asked as it was in real and earnest anxiety; and for some time the old man continued to press him with eager inquiries as to the truth of various newspaper reports about royal marriages and illustrious visitors, of which it was strange how he preserved the recollection.
“You have not asked me about myself, father,” said Dunn at last, “and I think my fortunes might have had the first place in your interest.”
“Sure you told me this minute that you didn’t see the Queen,” said the old man, peevishly.
“Very true, sir, I did not, but I saw her Minister. I placed before him the services I had done his party, my long sacrifices of time, labor, and money in their cause; I showed him that I was a man who had established the strongest claim upon the Government.”
“And wouldn’t be refused, – wouldn’t be denied, eh, Davy?”
“Just so, sir. I intimated that also, so far as it was prudent to do so.”
“The stronger the better, Davy; weak words show a faint heart. ‘Tis knowing the cost of your enmity will make men your friends.”
“I believe, sir, that in such dealings my own tact is my safest guide. It is not to-day or yesterday that I have made acquaintance with men of this order. For upwards of two-and-twenty years I have treated Ministers as my equals.”
The old man heard this proud speech with an expression of almost ecstasy on his features, and grasped his son’s hand in a delight too great for words.
“Ay, father, I have made our name a cognate number in this kingdom’s arithmetic. Men talk of Davenport Dunn as one recognized in the land.”
“‘Tis true; ‘tis true as the Bible!” muttered the old man.
“And what is more,” continued the other, warming with his theme, “what I have done I have done for all time. I have laid the foundations deep, that the edifice might endure. A man of inferior ambition would have been satisfied with wealth, and the enjoyments it secures; he might have held a seat in Parliament, sat on the benches beside the Minister, mayhap have held some Lordship of This or Under-Secretaryship of that, selling his influence ere it matured, as poor farmers sell their crops standing, – but I preferred the’ patient path. I made a waiting race of it, father, and see what the prize is to be. Your son is to be a peer of Great Britain!”
The old man’s mouth opened wide, and his eyes glared with an almost unnatural brightness, as, catching his son with both arms, he tried to embrace him.
“There, dear father, – there!” said Dunn, calmly; “you must not over-excite yourself.”
“It’s too much, Davy, – it’s too much; I’ll never live to see it.”
“That you will, sir, – for a time, indeed, I was half disposed to stipulate that the title should be conferred upon yourself. It would have thus acquired another generation in date, but I remembered how indisposed you might feel to all the worry and care the mere forms of assuming it might cost you. You would not like to leave this old spot, besides – ”
“No, on no account,” said the old man, pensively.
“And then I thought that your great pride, after all, would be to hear of me, your own Davy, as Lord Castle-dunn.”
“I thought it would be plain Dunn, – Lord Dunn,” said the old man, quickly.
“If the name admitted of it, I ‘d have preferred it so.”
“And what is there against the name?” asked he angrily.
“Nothing, father; none have ever presumed to say a word against it. In talking the matter over, however, with some members of the Cabinet, one or two suggested Dunnscourt, but the majority inclined to Castledunn.”
“And what did your Lordship say?” asked the old man, with a gleeful cackle. “Oh, Davy! I never thought the day would come that I ‘d call you by any name I ‘d love so well as that you bore when a child; but see, now, it makes my old eyes run over to speak to you as ‘my Lord.’”
“It is a fair and honest pride, father,” said Dunn, caressingly. “We stormed the breach ourselves, with none to help, none to cheer us on.”
“Oh, Davy, but it does me good to call you ‘my Lord.’”
“Well, sir, you are only anticipating a week or two. Parliament will assemble after the elections, and then be prorogued; immediately afterwards there will be four elevations to the peerage, – mine one of them.”
“Yes, my Lord,” mumbled the old man, submissively.
“But this is not all, father; the same week that sees me gazetted a peer will announce my marriage with an Earl’s daughter.”
“Davy, Davy, this luck is coming too quick! Take care, my son, that there’s no pit before you.”
“I know what I am doing, sir, and so does the Lady Augusta Arden. You remember the Earl of Glengariffs name?”
“Where you were once a tutor, is it?”
“The same, sir.”
“It was they that used to be so cruel to you, Davy, wasn’t it?”
“I was a foolish boy, ignorant of the world and its ways at the time. I fancied fifty things to mean offence which never were intended to wound me.”
“Ay, they made you eat in the servants’ hall, I think.”
“Never, sir, – never; they placed me at a side table once or twice when pressed for room.”
“Well, it was the room you had somewhere in a hayloft, eh?”
“Nothing of the kind, sir. Your memory is all astray. My chamber was small, – for the cottage had not much accommodation, – but I was well and suitably lodged.”
“Well, what was it they did?” muttered he to himself. “I know it was something that made you cry the whole night after you came home.”
“Father, father! these are unprofitable memories,” said Dunn, sternly. “Were one to treasure up the score of all the petty slights he may have received in life, so that in some day of power he might acquit the debt, success would be anything but desirable.”
“I’m not so sure of that, Davy. I never forgot an injury.”
“I am more charitable, sir,” said Dunn, calmly.
“No, you ‘re not, Davy, – no, you ‘re not,” replied the old man, eagerly, “but you think it’s wiser to be never-minding; and so it would, boy, if the man that injured you was to forget it too. Ay, Davy, that’s the rub. But he won’t; he ‘ll remember to his dying day that there’s a score between you.”
“I tell you, father, that these maxims do not apply to persons of condition, all whose instincts and modes of thought are unlike those of the inferior classes.”
“They are men and women, Davy, – they are men and women.”
Dunn arose impatiently, observing that the night was growing chilly, and it were better to return to the house.
“I mean to sup with you,” said he, gayly, “if you have anything to give me.”
“A rasher and eggs, and a bladebone of cold mutton is all I have,” muttered the old man, gloomily. “I would not let them buy a chicken this week, when I saw the shares falling. Give me your arm, Davy, I’ve a slight weakness in the knees; it always took me at this season since I was a boy.” And mumbling how strange it was that one did not throw off childish ailments as one grew older, he crept slowly along towards the house.
As they entered the kitchen, Dunn remarked with astonishment how little there remained of the abundance and plenty which had so characterized it of old. No hams, no flitches hung from the rafters; no sturdy barrels of butter stood against the walls; the chicken-coop was empty; and even to the good fire that graced the hearth there was a change, for a few half-sodden turf-sods were all that lingered in the place. Several baskets and hampers, carefully corded and sealed, were ranged beside the dresser, in which Dunn recognized presents of wine, choice cordials and liqueurs, that he had himself addressed to the old man.
“Why, father, how is this?” asked he, half angrily. “I had hoped for better treatment at your hands. You have apparently not so much as tasted any of the things I sent you.”
“There they are, indeed, Davy, Just as they came for ‘Matthew Dunn, Esq., with care,’ written on them, and not a string cut!”
“And why should this be so, sir, may I ask?”
“Well, the truth is, Davy,” said he, with a sigh, “I often longed to open them, and uncork a bottle of ale, or brandy, or, maybe, sherry, and sore tempted I felt to do it when I was drinking my buttermilk of a night; but then I ‘d say to myself, ‘Ain’t you well and hearty? keep cordials for the time when you are old, and feeble, and need support; don’t be giving yourself bad habits, that maybe some fifteen or twenty years hence you’ll be sorry for.’ There’s the reason, now, and I see by your face you don’t agree with me.”
Dunn made no answer, but taking up a knife he speedily cut the cordage of a large hamper, and as speedily covered a table with a variety of bottles.
“We ‘ll drink this to the Queen’s health, father,” said he, holding up a flask of rare hock; “and this to the ‘House of Lords,’ for which estimable body I mean to return thanks; and then, father, I ‘ll give ‘Prosperity to the landed interest and the gentry of Ireland,’ for which you shall speak.”
Dunn went gayly along in this jesting fashion while he emptied the hamper of its contents, displaying along the dresser a goodly line of bottles, whose shape and corkage guaranteed their excellence. Meanwhile an old servant-woman had prepared the table, and was busily engaged with the materials of the meal.