Читать книгу Davenport Dunn, a Man of Our Day. Volume 2 - Lever Charles James - Страница 5

It was at a little village called Holbach, about fifteen miles from the right bank of the Rhine, Grog Davis had taken up his quarters while awaiting the arrival of his daughter. Near as it was to that great high-road of Europe, scarcely out of earshot of whizzing steamers and screaming trains, the spot was wonderfully secluded and unvisited. A little trout-stream, known to a few, who treasured the secret like fishermen, made the inn resorted to in the months of May and June; but for the rest of the year the “Golden Hook” had few customers, and the landlord almost abdicated his functions till spring came round again. The house, originally intended for a mill, was built over the river itself, so that the indolent angler might actually have fished from the very window. The pine-clad mountains of Nassau enclosed the narrow glen, which straggled irregularly along for miles, now narrowing to a mere strip, now expanding into little plains of fertile meadow-land, with neat cottages and speckled cattle scattered around them. A narrow belt of garden flanked the river, on whose edge a walk of trellised vines was fashioned, – a charming spot in the sultry heat of summer, with its luxuriant shade above and the rippling stream below. Davis had seen the place years before in some hurried Journey; but his retentive mind carried a full memory of the spot, and he soon found that it comprised all he was in search of, – it was easy of access, secret, and cheap.

Only too well pleased to meet with a guest at this dead season of the year, they gave up to him the choicest apartment, and treated him with every solicitude and attention.

His table was supplied well, almost luxuriously; the good wine of Ettleberg given in liberal profusion; the vine alley converted into a pistol gallery for his use; and all for such a sum per diem as would not have satisfied a waiter at the Clarendon. But it was the calm seclusion, the perfect isolation that gratified him most. Let him stroll which way he would, he never chanced upon a traveller. It was marvellous, indeed, how such a place could have escaped that prying tribe of ramblers which England each year sends forth to wrangle, dispute, and disparage everything over Europe; and yet here were precisely the very objects they usually sought after, – beautiful scenery, a picturesque peasantry, and a land romantic in all its traits and traditions.

Not that Grog cared for these: rocks, waterfalls, ruins, leafy groves, or limpid streams made no appeal to him, He lived for the life of men, their passions and their ambitions. He knew some people admired this kind of thing, and there were some who were fond of literature; others liked pictures; others, again, fancied old coins. He had no objection. They were, if not very profitable, at least, harmless tastes. All he asked was, not to be the companion of such dreamers. “Give me the fellow that knows life,” would he say; and I am afraid that the definition of that same “life” would have included some things scarcely laudable.

If the spot were one to encourage indolence and ease, Davis did not yield to this indulgence. He arose early; walked for health; shot with the pistol for practice; studied his martingale for the play-table; took an hour with the small-sword with an old maître d’armes whom he found in the village; and, without actually devoting himself to it as a task, practised himself in German by means of conversation; and, lastly, he thought deeply and intently over the future. For speculations of this kind he had no mean capacity. If he knew little of the human heart in its higher moods, he understood it well in its shortcomings and its weaknesses; to what temptations a man might yield, when to offer them, and how, were mysteries he had often brooded over. In forecastings of this order, therefore, Davis exercised himself. Strange eventualities, “cases of conscience,” that I would fain believe never occurred to you, dear reader, nor to me, arose before him, and he met them manfully.

The world is generous in its admiration of the hard-worked minister, toiling night-long at his desk, receiving and answering his twenty despatches daily, and rising in the House to explain this, refute that, confirm the other, with all the clearness of an orator and all the calmness of a clerk; but, after all, he is but a fly-wheel in that machine of government of which there are some hundred other component parts, all well fitting and proportioned. Précis writers and private secretaries cram, colleagues advise him. The routine of official life hedges him in his proper groove; and if not overcome by indolence or affected by zeal, he can scarcely blunder. Not so your man of straits and emergency, your fellow living by his wits, and wresting from the world, that fancies it does not want him, reward and recognition. It is no marvel if a proud three-decker sail round the globe; but very different is our astonishment if a cockboat come safely from the China Seas, or brave the stormy passage round the Cape. Such a craft as this was Grog, his own captain: himself the crew, he had neither owner nor underwriter; and yet, amidst the assembled navies of the world, he would have shown his bunting!

The unbroken calm of his present existence was most favorable to these musings, and left him to plan his campaign in perfect quiet Whether the people of the inn regarded him as a great minister in disgrace come, by hard study, to retrieve a lost position, a man of science deeply immersed in some abstruse problem, or a distinguished author seeking isolation for the free exercise of his imagination, they treated him not only with great respect, but a sort of deference was shown in their studious effort to maintain the silence and stillness around. When he was supposed to be at his studies, not a voice was heard, not a footfall on the stairs. There is no such flattery to your man of scapes and accidents, your thorough adventurer, as that respectful observance that implies he is a person of condition. It is like giving of free will to the highwayman the purse he expected to have a fight for. Davis delighted in these marks of deference, and day by day grew more eager in exacting them.

“I heard some noise outside there this morning, Carl,” said he to the waiter; “what was the meaning of it?” For a moment or two the waiter hesitated to explain; but after a little went on to speak of a stranger who had been a resident of the inn for some months back without ever paying his bill; the law, singularly enough, not giving the landlord the power of turning him adrift, but simply of ceasing to afford him sustenance, and waiting for some opportunity of his leaving the house to forbid his re-entering it. Davis was much amused at this curious piece of legislation, by which a moneyless guest could be starved out but not expelled, and put many questions as to the stranger, his age, appearance, and nation. All the waiter knew was that he was a venerable-looking man, portly, advanced in life, with specious manners, a soft voice, and a benevolent smile; as to his country, he could n’t guess. He spoke several languages, and his German was, though peculiar, good enough to be a native’s.

“But how does he live?” said Davis; “he must eat.”

“There’s the puzzle of it!” exclaimed Carl; “for a while he used to watch while I was serving a breakfast or a dinner, and sallying out of his room, which is at the end of the corridor, he ‘d make off, sometimes with a cutlet, – perhaps a chicken, – now a plate of spinach, now an omelette, till, at last, I never ventured upstairs with the tray without some one to protect it. Not that even this always sufficed, for he was occasionally desperate, and actually seized a dish by force.”

“Even these chances, taken at the best, would scarcely keep a man alive,” said Davis.

“Nor would they; but we suspect he must have means of getting out at night and making a ‘raid’ over the country. We constantly hear of fowls carried off; cheese and fruit stolen. There he is now, creeping along the gallery. Listen! I have left some apples outside.”

With a gesture to enforce caution, Davis arose, and placed a percussion-cap on a pistol, a motion of his hand sufficing to show that the weapon was not loaded.

“Open the door gently,” said he; and the waiter, stealing over noiselessly, turned the handle. Scarcely had the door been drawn back, when Grog saw the figure of a man, and snapped off the pistol. At the same moment he sprang from the spot, and rushed out to the corridor. The stranger, to all seeming, was not even startled by the report, but was gravely occupied in examining his sleeve to see if he had been struck. He lifted up his head, and Davis, with a start, cried out, —

“What, Paul! – Paul Classon! Is this possible!”

“Davis – old fellow! – do I see you here?” exclaimed the other, in a deep and mellow voice, utterly devoid of irritation or even excitement.

“Come in, – come in here, Paul,” said Davis, taking him by the arm; and he led him within the room. “Little I suspected on whom I was playing this scurvy trick.”

“It was not loaded,” said the other, coolly.

“Of course not”

“I thought so,” said he, with an easy smile; “they ‘ve had so many devices to frighten me.”

“Come, Paul, old fellow, pour yourself out a tumbler of that red wine, while I cut you some of this ham; we ‘ll have plenty of time for talk afterwards.”

The stranger accepted the invitation, but without the slightest show of eagerness or haste. Nay, he unfolded his napkin leisurely, and fastened a corner in one buttonhole, as some old-fashioned epicures have a trick of doing. He held his glass, too, up to the light, to enjoy the rich color of the wine, and smacked his lips, as he tasted it, with the air of a connoisseur.

“A Burgundy, Davis, eh?” asked he, sipping again.

“I believe so. In truth, I know little about these wines.”

“Oh, yes, a ‘Pomard,’ and very good of its kind. Too loaded, of course, for the time of year, except for such palates as England rears.”

Davis had now covered his friend’s plate with ham and capon, and, at last, was pleased to see him begin his breakfast.

We are not about to impose upon our reader the burden of knowing more of Mr. Classon than is requisite for the interests of our story; but while he eats the first regular meal he has tasted for two months and more, let us say a word or so about him. He was a clergyman, whose life had been one continued history of mischances. Occasionally the sun of prosperity would seem disposed to shine genially on his head; but for the most part his lot was to walk with dark and lowering skies above him.

If he held any preferment, it was to quarrel with his rector, his dean, or his bishop; to be cited before commissions, tried by surrogates, pronounced contumacious, suspended, and Heaven knows what else. He was everlastingly in litigation with churchwardens and parish authorities, discovering rights of which he was defrauded, and privileges of which he was deprived. None like him to ferret out Acts of Edward or Henry, and obsolete bequests of long-buried founders of this, that, or t’other, of which the present guardians were little better than pickpockets. Adverse decisions and penalties pressing on him, he grew libellous, he spoke, wrote, and published all manner of defamatory things, accused every one of peculation, fraud, and falsehood, and, as the spirit of attack strengthened in him by exercise, menaced this man with prosecution, and that with open exposure. Trials by law, and costs accumulated against him, and he was only out of jail here, to enter it again there. From the Courts “above” he soon descended to those “below;” he became dissipated and dissolute, his hireling pen scrupled at nothing, and he assailed anything or any one, to order. Magistrates “had him up” as the author of threatening letters or begging epistles. To-day he was the mock secretary of an imaginary charity; tomorrow he ‘d appear as a distressed missionary going out to some island in the Pacific. He was eternally before the world, until the paragraph that spoke of him grew to be headed by the words, “The Reverend Paul Classon again!” or, more briefly, “Paul Classon’s last!” His pen, all this while, was his sole subsistence; and what a bold sweep it took! – impeachment of Ministers, accusation of theft, forgery, intimation of even worse crimes against the highest names in the realm, startling announcements of statesmen bribed, ambassadors corrupted, pasquinades against bishops and judges, libellous stories of people in private life, prize fights, prophetic almanacs, mock missionary journals, stanzas to celebrate quack remedies, – even street ballads were amongst his literary efforts; while, personally, he presided at low singing-establishments, and was the president of innumerable societies in localities only known to the police. It was difficult to take up a newspaper without finding him either reported drunk and disorderly in the police-sheet, obstructing the thoroughfare by a crowd assembled to hear him, having refused to pay for his dinner or his bed, assaulted the landlady, or, crime of crimes, used intemperate language to “G 493.” At last they got actually tired of trying him for begging, and imprisoning him for battery; the law was wearied out; but the world also had its patience exhausted, and Paul saw that he must conquer a new hemisphere. He came abroad.

What a changeful life was it now that he led, – at one time a tutor, at another a commissionaire for an hotel, a railway porter, a travelling servant, a police spy, the doorkeeper of a circus company, editor of an English journal, veterinary, language master, agent for patent medicines, picture-dealer, and companion to a nervous invalid, which, as Paul said, meant a furious maniac. There is no telling what he went through of debt and difficulty, till the police actually preferred passing him quietly over the frontier to following up with penalty so incurable an offender. In this way had he wandered about Europe for years, the terror of legations, the pestilence of charitable committees. Contributions to enable the Rev. Paul Classon to redeem his clothes, his watch, his divinity library, to send him to England, to the Andes, to Africa, figured everywhere. I dare not say how often he had been rescued out of the lowest pit of despondency, or snatched like a brand from the burning; in fact, he lived in a pit, and was always on fire.

“I am delighted,” said Davis, as he replenished his friend’s plate, – “I am delighted to see that you have the same good, hearty appetite as of old, Paul.”

“Ay, Kit,” said he, with a gentle sigh, “the appetite has been more faithful than the dinner; on the same principle, perhaps, that the last people who desert us are our creditors!”

“I suspect you ‘ve had rather a hard time of it,” said Davis, compassionately.

“Well, not much to complain of, – not anything that one would call hardships,” said Classon, as he pushed his plate from him and proceeded to light a cigar; “we ‘re all stragglers, Kit, that’s the fact of it.”

“I suppose it is; but it ain’t very disagreeable to be a straggler with ten thousand a year.”

“If the having and enjoying were always centred in the same individual,” said Classon, slowly, “what you say would be unanswerable; but it’s not so, Kit. No, no; the fellows who really enjoy life never have anything. They are, so to say, guests on a visit to this earth, come to pass a few months pleasantly, to put up anywhere, and be content with everything.” Grog shook his head dissentingly, and the other went on, “Who knows the truth of what I am saying better than either of us? How many broad acres did your father or mine bequeath us? What debentures, railroad shares, mining scrip, or mortgages? And yet, Kit, if we come to make up the score of pleasant days and glorious nights, do you fancy that any noble lord of them all would dispute the palm with us? Oh,” said he, rapturously, “give me the unearned enjoyments of life, – pleasures that have never cost me a thought to provide, nor a sixpence to pay for! Pass the wine, Kit, – that bottle is better than the other;” and be smacked his lips, while his eyes closed in a sort of dreamy rapture.

“I ‘d like to hear something of your life, Paul,” said Davis. “I often saw your name in the ‘Times’ and the ‘Post,’ but I ‘d like to have your own account of it.”

“My dear Kit, I ‘ve had fifty lives. It’s the man you should understand, – the fellow that is here;” and he slapped his broad chest as he spoke. “As for mere adventures, what are they? Squalls that never interfere with the voyage, – not even worth entering in the ship’s log.”

“Where’s your wife, Paul?” asked Davis, abruptly, for he was half impatient under the aphorizing tone of his companion.

“When last I heard of her,” said Classon, slowly, as he eyed his glass to the light, “she was at Chicago, – if that be the right prosody of it, – lecturing on ‘Woman’s Rights.’ Nobody knew the subject better than Fanny.”

“I heard she was a very clever woman,” said Davis.

“Very clever,” said Classon; “discursive; not always what the French call ‘consequent,’ but, certainly, clever, and a sweet poetess.” There was a racy twinkle in that reverend eye as he said the last words, so full of malicious drollery that Davis could not help remarking it; but all Classon gave for explanation was, “This to her health and happiness!” and he drained off a bumper. “And yours, Kit, – what of her?” asked he.

“Dead these many years. Do you remember her?”

“Of course I do. I wrote the article on her first appearance at the Surrey. What a handsome creature she was then! It was I predicted her great success; it was I that saved her from light comedy parts, and told her to play Lady Teazle!”

“I ‘ll show you her born image to-morrow, – her daughter,” said Davis, with a strange choking sensation that made him cough; “she’s taller than her mother, – more style also.”

“Very difficult, that, – very difficult, indeed,” said Classon, gravely. “There was a native elegance about her I never saw equalled; and then her walk, the carriage of the head, the least gesture, had all a certain grace that was fascination.”

“Wait till you see Lizzy,” said Davis, proudly; “you ‘ll see these all revived.”

“Do you destine her for the boards, Kit?” asked Classon, carelessly.

“For the stage? No, of course not,” replied Davis, rudely.

“And yet these are exactly the requirements would fetch a high price just now. Beauty is not a rare gift in England; nor are form and symmetry; but, except in the highly born, there is a lamentable deficiency in that easy gracefulness of manner, that blended dignity and softness, that form the chief charm of woman. If she be what you say, Kit, – if she be, in short, her mother’s daughter, – it is a downright insanity not to bring her out.”

“I ‘ll not hear of it! That girl has cost me very little short of ten thousand pounds, – ay, ten thousand pounds, – schooling, masters, and the rest of it. She ‘s no fool, so I take it; it ain’t thrown away! As regards beauty, I’ll stake fifteen to ten, in hundreds, that, taking your stand at the foot of St. James’s Street on a drawing-room day, you don’t see her equal. I’m ready to put down the money to-morrow, and that’s giving three to two against the field! And is that the girl I ‘m to throw away on the Haymarket? She’s a Derby filly, I tell you, Paul, and will be first favorite one of these days.”

“Faustum sit augurium!” said Classon, as he raised his glass in a theatrical manner, and then drained it off. “Still, if I be rightly informed, the stage is often the antechamber to the peerage. The attractions that dazzle thousands form the centre of fascination for some one.”

“She may find her way to a coronet without that,” said Davis, rudely.

“Ah, indeed!” said Paul, with a slight elevation of the eyebrow; but though his tone invited a confidence, the other made no further advance’s.

“And now for yourself, Classon, what have you been at lately?” said Davis, wishing to change the subject.

“Literature and the arts. I have been contributing to a London weekly, as Crimean correspondent, with occasional letters from the gold diggings. I have been painting portraits for a florin the head, till I have exhausted all the celebrities of the three villages near us. My editor has, I believe, run away, however, and supplies have ceased for some time back.”

“And what are your plans now?”

“I have some thoughts of going back to divinity. These newly invented water-cure establishments are daily developing grander proportions; some have got German bands, some donkeys, some pleasure-boats, others rely upon lending libraries and laboratories; but the latest dodge is a chaplain.”

“But won’t they know you, Paul? Have not the newspapers ‘blown you’?”

“Ah, Davis, my dear friend,” said he, with a benevolent smile, “it’s far easier to live down a bad reputation than to live up to a good one. I ‘d only ask a week – one week’s domestication with the company of these places – to show I was a martyred saint. I have, so to say, a perennial fount of goodness in my nature that has never failed me.”

“I remember it at school,” said Davis, dryly.

“You took the clever line, Kit, ‘suum cuique;’ it would never have suited me. You were born to thrive upon men’s weaknesses, mine the part to have a vested interest in their virtues.”

“If you depend upon their virtues for a subsistence, I ‘m not surprised to see you out at elbows,” said Davis, roughly.

“Not so, Kit, – not so,” said the other, blandly, in rebuke. “There ‘s a great deal of weak good-nature always floating about life. The world is full of fellows with ‘Pray take me in’ written upon them.”

“I can only vouch for it very few have come in my way,” said Davis, with a harsh laugh.

“So much the better for them,” said Paul, gravely.

A pause of considerable duration now ensued between them, broken, at last, by Davis abruptly saying, “Is it not a strange thing, it was only last night I was saying to myself, ‘What the deuce has become of Holy Paul? – the newspapers have seemingly forgotten him. It can’t be that he is dead.’”

“Lazarus only sleepeth,” said Classon; “and, indeed, my last eleven weeks here seem little other than a disturbed sleep.”

Continuing his own train of thought, Davis went on, “If I could chance upon him now, he’s just the fellow I want, or, rather, that I may want.”

“If it is a lampoon or a satire you ‘re thinking of, Kit, I ‘ve given them up; I make no more blistering ointments, but turn all my skill to balsams. They give no trouble in compounding, and pay even better. Ah, Davis, my worthy friend, what a mistake it is to suppose that a man must live by his talents, while his real resource is his temperament. For a life of easy enjoyment, that blessed indolence that never knew a care, it is heart, not head, is needed.”

“All I can say is, that with the fellows I ‘ve been most with, heart had very little to do with them, and the best head was the one that least trusted his neighbors.”

“A narrow view, my dear friend, – a narrow view, take my word for it; as one goes on in life he thinks better of it.”

A malicious grin was all the answer Davis made to this remark. At last he turned his eyes full upon the other, and in a low but distinct voice said: “Let us have no more of this, Paul. If we are to play, let us play, as the Yankees say, without the ‘items,’ – no cheating on either side. Don’t try the Grand Benevolence dodge with me, – don’t. When I said awhile ago, I might want you, it was no more than I meant. You may be able to render me a service, – a great service.”

“Say how,” said Classon, drawing his chair nearer to him, – “say how, Kit, and you’ll not find the terms exorbitant.”

“It’s time enough to talk about the stakes when we are sure the match will come off,” said Davis, cautiously. “All I ‘ll say for the present is, I may want you.”

Classon took out a small and very greasy-looking notebook from his waistcoat-pocket, and with his pencil in hand, said, “About what time are you likely to need me? Don’t be particular as to a day or a week, but just in a rough-guessing sort of way say when.”

“I should say in less than a month from this time, – perhaps within a fortnight.”

“All right,” said Classon, closing his book, after making a brief note. “You smile,” said he, blandly, “at my methodical habits, but I have been a red-tapist all my life, Kit I don’t suppose you ‘ll find any man’s papers, letters, documents, and so forth, in such trim order as mine, – all labelled, dated, and indexed. Ah! there is a great philosophy in this practical equanimity; take my word for it, there is.”

“How far are we from Neuwied here?” asked Davis, half pettishly; for every pretension of his reverend friend seemed to jar upon his nerves.

“About sixteen or eighteen miles, I should say?”

“I must go or send over there to-morrow,” continued Davis. “The postmaster sends me word that several letters have arrived, – some to my address, some to my care. Could you manage to drive across?”

“Willingly; only remember that once I leave this blessed sanctuary I may find the door closed against my return. They ‘ve a strange legislation here – ”

“I know – I ‘ve heard of it,” broke in Davis. “I ‘ll guarantee everything, so that you need have no fears on that score. Start at daybreak, and fetch back all letters you find there for me or for the Honorable Annesley Beecher.”

“The Honorable Annesley Beecher!” said Classon, as he wrote the name in his note-book. “Dear me! the last time I heard that name was – let me see – fully twelve years ago. It was after that affair at Brighton. I wrote an article for the ‘Heart of Oak,’ on the ‘Morality of our Aristocracy.’ How I lashed their vices! how I stigmatized their lives of profligacy and crime!”

“You infernal old hypocrite!” cried Davis, with a half-angry laugh.

“There was no hypocrisy in that, Kit. If I tell you that a statue is bad in drawing, or incorrect in anatomy, I never assert thereby that I myself have the torso of Hercules or the limbs of Antinous.”

“Leave people’s vices alone, then; they ‘re the same as their debts; if you’re not going to pay them, you ‘ve no right to talk about them.”

“Only on public grounds, Kit Our duty to society, my dear friend, has its own requirements!”

“Fiddlestick!” said Davis, angrily, as he pushed his glass from before him; then, after a moment, went on: “Do you start early, so as to be back here before evening, – my mind is running on it. There’s three naps,” said he, placing the gold pieces on the table. “You’ll not want more.”

“Strange magnetism is the touch of gold to one’s palm,” said Classon, as he surveyed the money in the hollow of his hand. “How marvellous that these bits of stamped metal should appeal so forcibly to my inner consciousness!”

“Don’t get drunk with them, that’s all,” said Davis, with a stern savagery of manner, as he arose from his seat. “There’s my passport, – you may have to show it at the office. And now, good-bye, for I have a long letter to write to my daughter.”

Classon poured the last of the Burgundy into a tumbler, and drank it off, and hiccuping out, “I’ll haste me to the Capitol!” left the room.