Читать книгу Davenport Dunn, a Man of Our Day. Volume 2 - Lever Charles James - Страница 1

When Mr. Davenport Dunn entered the drawing-room before dinner on that day, his heart beat very quickly as he saw Lady Augusta Arden was there alone. In what spirit she remembered the scene of the morning, – whether she felt resentment towards him for his presumption, was disposed to scoff down his pretensions, or to regard them, if not with favor, with at least forgiveness, were the themes on which his mind was yet dwelling. The affable smile with which she now met him did more to resolve these doubts than all his casuistry.

“Was it not very thoughtful of me,” said she, “to release you this morning, and suffer you to address yourself to the important things which claimed your attention? I really am quite vain of my self-denial.”

“And yet, Lady Augusta,” said he, in a low tone, “I had felt more flattered if you had been less mindful of the exigency, and been more interested in what I then was speaking of.”

“What a selfish speech!” said she, laughing. “Now that my forbearance has given you all the benefits it could confer, you turn round and say you are not grateful for it. I suppose,” added she, half pettishly, “the despatch was not very pressing after all, and that this was the cause of some disappointment.”

“I am unable to say,” replied he, calmly.

“What do you mean? Surely, when you read it – ”

“But I have not read it, – there it is still, just as you saw-it,” said he, producing the packet with the seal unbroken.

“But really, Mr. Dunn,” said she, and her face flushed up as she spoke, “this does not impress me with the wonderful aptitude for affairs men ascribe to you. Is it usual to treat these messages so cavalierly?”

“It never happened with me till this morning, Lady Augusta,” said he, in the same low tone. “Carried away by an impulse which I will not try to account for, I had dared to speak to you of myself and of my future in a way that showed how eventful to both might prove the manner in which you heard me.”

“Well, Dunn,” cried Lord Glengariff, entering, “I suppose you have made a day of work of it; we have never seen you since breakfast.”

“On the contrary, my Lord,” replied he, in deep confusion, “I have taken my idleness in the widest sense. Never wrote a line, – not looked into a newspaper.”

“Wouldn’t even open a telegraphic message which came to his hands this morning,” said Lady Augusta, with a malicious drollery in her glance towards him.

“Incredible!” cried my Lord.

“Quite true, I assure your Lordship,” said Dunn, in deeper confusion, and not knowing what turn to give his explanation.

“The fact is,” broke in Lady Augusta, hurriedly, “Mr. Dunn was so implicit in his obedience to our prescription of perfect rest and repose, that he made it a point of honor not even to read a telegram without permission.”

“I must say it is very flattering to us,” said Lord Glengariff; “but now let us reward the loyalty, and let him see what his news is.”

Dunn looked at Lady Augusta, who, with the very slightest motion of her head, gave consent, and he broke open the despatch.

Dunn crushed the paper angrily in his hand when he finished reading it, and muttered some low words of angry meaning.

“Nothing disagreeable, I trust?” asked his Lordship.

“Yes, my Lord, something even worse than disagreeable,” said he; then flattening out the crumpled paper, he held it to him to read.

Lord Glengariff, putting on his spectacles, perused the document slowly, and then, turning towards Dunn, in a voice of deep agitation, said, “This is very disastrous indeed; are you prepared for it?”

Without attending to the question, Dunn took the despatch from Lord Glengariff, and handed it to Lady Augusta.

“A run for gold!” cried she, suddenly. “An attempt to break the Ossory Bank! What does it all mean? Who are they that make this attack?”

“Opponents – some of them political, some commercial, a few, perhaps, men personally unfriendly, – enemies of what they call my success!” and he sighed heavily on the last word. “Let me see,” said he, slowly, after a pause; “to-day is Thursday – to-morrow will be the 28th – heavy payments are required for the Guatemala Trunk Line, – something more than forty thousand pounds to be made up. The Parma Loan, second instalment, comes on the 80th.”

“Dinner, my Lord,” said a servant, throwing open the door.

“A thousand pardons, Lady Augusta,” said Dunn, offering his arm. “I am really shocked at obtruding these annoyances upon your notice. You see, my Lord,” added he, gayly, “one of the penalties of admitting the ‘working-men of life’ into your society.”

It was only as they passed on towards the dinner-room that Lord Glengariff noticed Miss Kellett’s absence.

“She has a headache or a cold, I believe,” said Lady Augusta, carelessly; and they sat down to dinner.

So long as the servants were present the conversation ranged over commonplace events and topics, little indeed passing, since each seemed too deeply impressed with grave forebodings for much inclination for mere talking. Once alone – and Lord Glengariff took the earliest moment to be so – they immediately resumed the subject of the ill-omened despatch.

“You are, at all events, prepared, Dunn?” said the Earl; “this onslaught does not take you by surprise?”

“I am ashamed to say it does, my Lord,” said he, with a painful smile. “I was never less suspectful of any malicious design upon me. I was, for the first time perhaps in all my life, beginning to feel strong in the consciousness that I had faithfully performed my allotted part in the world, advanced the great interests of my country and of humanity generally. This blow has, therefore, shocked me deeply.”

“What a base ingratitude!” exclaimed Lady Augusta, indignantly.

“After all,” said Dunn, generously, “let us remember that I am not a fair judge in my own cause. Others have taken, it may be, another reading of my character; they may deem me narrow-minded, selfish, and ambitious. My very success – I am not going to deny it has been great – may have provoked its share of enmity. Why, the very vastness and extent of my projects were a sort of standing reproach to petty speculators and small scheme-mongers.”

“So that it has really come upon you unawares?” said the Earl, reverting to his former remark.

“Completely so, my Lord. The tranquil ease and happiness I have enjoyed under this roof – the first real holiday in a long life of toil – are the best evidences I can offer how little I could have anticipated such a stroke.”

“Still I fervently hope it will not prove more than inconvenience,” said he, feelingly.

“Not even so much, my Lord, as regards money. I cannot believe that the movement will be general. There is no panic in the country, rents are paid, prices remunerating, markets better than we have seen them for years; the sound sense and intelligence of the people will soon detect in this attack the prompting of some personal malice. In all likelihood a few thousands will meet the whole demand.”

“I am so glad to hear you say so!” said Lady Augusta, smiling. “Really, when I think of all our persuasions to detain you here, I never could acquit us of some sort of share in any disaster your delay might have occasioned.”

“Oh, Dunn would never connect his visit here with such consequences, I ‘m certain,” said the Earl.

“Assuredly not, my Lord,” said he; and as his eyes met those of Lady Augusta, he grew red, and felt confused.

“Are your people – your agents and men of business, I mean,” said the Earl – “equal to such an emergency as the present, or will they have to look to you for guidance and direction?”

“Merely to meet the demand for gold is a simple matter, my Lord,” said Dunn, “and does not require any effort of mind or forethought. To prevent the back-water of this rushing flood submerging and engulfing other banking-houses; to defend, in a word, the lines of our rivals and enemies; to save from the consequences of their recklessness the very men who have assailed us, – these are weighty cares!”

“And are you bound in honor to take this trouble in their behalf?”

“No, my Lord, not in honor any more than in law, but bound by the debt we owe to that commercial community by whose confidence we have acquired fortune. My position at the head of the great industrial movement in this country imposes upon me the great responsibility that ‘no injury should befall the republic’ Against the insane attacks of party hate, factious violence, or commercial knavery, I am expected to do my duty, nay, more, I am expected to be provided with means to meet whatever emergency may arise, – defeat this scheme, expose that, denounce the other. Am I wrong in calling these weighty cares?”

Self-glorification was not usually one of Davenport Dunn’s weaknesses, – indeed, “self,” in any respect, was not a theme on which he was disposed to dwell, – and yet now, for reasons which may better be suspected than alleged, he talked in a spirit of even vain exultation of his plans, his station, and his influence. If it was something to display before the peer claims to national respect, which, if not so ancient, were scarcely less imposing than his own, it was more pleasing still to dilate upon a theme to which the peer’s daughter listened so eagerly. It was, besides, a grand occasion to exhibit the vast range of resources, the widespread influences, and far-reaching sympathies of the great commercial man, to show him, not the mere architect of his own fortune, but the founder of a nation’s prosperity. While he thus held forth, and in a strain to which fervor had lent a sort of eloquence, a servant entered with another despatch.

“Oh! I trust this brings you better news,” cried Lady Augusta, eagerly; and, as he broke the envelope, he thanked her with a grateful look.

“Well?” interposed she, anxiously, as he gazed at the lines without speaking, – “well?”

“Just as I said,” muttered Dunn, in a deep and suppressed voice, – “a systematic plot, a deep-laid scheme against me.”

“Is it still about the Bank?” asked the Earl, whose interest had been excited by the tenor of the recent conversation.

“Yes, my Lord; they insist on making me out a bubble speculator, an adventurer, a Heaven knows what of duplicity and intrigue. I would simply ask them: ‘Is the wealth with which this same Davenport Dunn has enriched you real, solid, and tangible; are the guineas mint-stamped; are the shares true representatives of value?’ But why do I talk of these people? If they render me no gratitude, they owe me none, – my aims were higher and greater than ever they or their interests comprehended.” From the haughty defiance of his tone, his voice fell suddenly to a low and quick key, as he said: “This message informs me that the demand upon the Ossory to-morrow will be a great concerted movement. Barnard, the man I myself returned last election for the borough, is to head it; he has canvassed the county for holders of our notes, and such is the panic that the magistrates have sent for an increased force of police and two additional companies of infantry. My man of business asks, ‘What is to be done?’”

“And what is to be done?” asked the Earl.

“Meet it, my Lord. Meet the demand as our duty requires us.”

There was a calm dignity in the manner Dunn spoke the words that had its full effect upon the Earl and his daughter. They saw this “man of the people” display, in a moment of immense peril, an amount of cool courage that no dissimulation could have assumed. As they could, and did indeed say afterwards, when relating the incident, “We were sitting at the dessert, chatting away freely about one thing or another, when the confirmed tidings arrived by telegraph that an organized attack was to be made against his credit by a run for gold. You should really have seen him,” said Lady Augusta, “to form any idea of the splendid composure he manifested. The only thing like emotion he exhibited was a sort of haughty disdain, a proud pity, for men who should have thus requited the great services he had been rendering to the country.”

It is but just to own that he did perform his part well; he acted it, too, as theatrical critics would say, “chastely;” that is, there was no rant, no exaggeration, – not a trait too much, not a tint too strong.

“I wish I knew of any way to be of service to you in this emergency, Dunn,” said the Earl, as they returned to the drawing-room; “I’m no capitalist, nor have I a round sum at my command – ”

“My dear Lord,” broke in Dunn, with much feeling, “of money I can command whatever amount I want. Baring, Hope, Rothschild, any of them would assist me with millions, if I needed them, to-morrow, which happily, however, I do not. There is still a want which they cannot supply, but which, I am proud to say, I have no longer to fear. The kind sympathy of your Lordship and Lady Augusta has laid me under an obligation – ” Here Mr. Dunn’s voice faltered; the Earl grasped his hand with a generous clasp, and Lady Augusta carried her handkerchief to her eyes as she averted her head.

“What a pack of hypocrites!” cries our reader, in disgust. No, not so. There was a dash of reality through all this deceit. They were moved, – their own emotions, the tones of their own voices, the workings of their own natures, had stirred some amount of honest sentiment in their hearts; how far it was alloyed by less worthy feeling, to what extent fraud and trickery mingled there, we are not going to tell you, – perhaps we could not, if we would.

“You mean to go over to Kilkenny, then, to-morrow, Dunn?” asked his Lordship, after a painful pause.

“Yes, my Lord, my presence is indispensable.”

“Will you allow Lady Augusta and myself to accompany you? I believe and trust that men like myself have not altogether lost the influence they once used to wield in this country, and I am vain enough to imagine I may be useful.”

“Oh, my Lord, this overwhelms me!” said Dunn, and covered his eyes with his hand.