One of the chief, perhaps the greatest, pleasures which Kellett's humble
lot still secured him, was a long country walk of a Sunday in company
with one who had been his friend in more prosperous times. A reduced
gentleman like himself, Annesley Beecher could only go abroad on this
one day in the week, and thus by the pressure of adverse fortune were
they thrown more closely together.
Although by no means a favorite with Bella, she was far too considerate
for her father, and too mindful of the few enjoyments that remained to
him, ever to interpose her real opinion. She therefore limited herself
to silence, as old Kellett would pronounce some glowing eulogy of
his friend, calling him “good” and “amiable” and “kind-hearted,”
and extolling, as little short of miraculous, “the spirits he had,
considering all he went through.” But he would add, “He was always the
same, and that's the reason everybody liked him,--everybody, that is,
almost everybody!” And he would steal a sly glance at his daughter, half
imploringly, as though to say, “How long are you to sit in that small
minority?”
Whether the weather would permit of Beecher's coming out to see them,
whether he 'd be able to “stay and take his bit of dinner with them,”
were subjects of as great anxiety to poor Kellett each succeeding
Sunday morning as though there ever had been a solitary exception to
the wished-for occurrence; and Bella would never destroy the pleasure
of anticipation by the slightest hint that might impair the value he
attached to the event.
“There's so many trying to get him,” he would say; “they pester his life
out with invitations,--the Chancellor and Lord Killybegs and the Bishop
of Drumsna always asking him to name his day; but he 'd rather come out
and take his bit of roast mutton with ourselves, and his glass of punch
after it, than he 'd eat venison and drink claret with the best of them.
There's not a table in Dublin, from the Castle down, that would n't
be proud of his company; and why not?” He would pause after uttering a
challenge of this sort; and then, as his daughter would show no signs of
acceptance, he would mutter on, “A real gentleman born and bred, and how
anybody can _mislike_ him is more than I am really able to comprehend!”
These little grumblings, which never produced more than a smile from
Bella, were a kind of weekly homily which poor Kellett liked to deliver,
and he felt, when he had uttered it, as one who had paid a just tribute
to worth and virtue.
[Illustration: 066]
“There's Beecher already, by Jove!” cried Kellett, as he sprang up
from the breakfast-table to open the little wicket which the other was
vainly endeavoring to unhasp. “How early he is!”
Let us take the opportunity to present him to our readers,--a duty the
more imperative, since, to all outward semblance at least, he would
appear little to warrant the flattering estimate his friend so lately
bestowed upon him. About four or five-and-thirty, somewhat above the
middle size, and with all the air and bearing of a man of fashion,
Beecher had the gay, easy, light-hearted look of one with whom the world
went habitually well; and when it did not, more was the shame of the
said world! since a better, nobler, more generous fellow than himself
never existed; and this _he_ knew, however others might ungraciously
hold an opposite opinion. There was not the slightest detail in his
dress that could warrant the supposition of narrow fortune: his coat
and his waistcoat, of one color and stuff, were faultless in make; the
massive watch-chain that festooned across his chest in the last mode;
his thick walking-boots the perfection of that compromise between
strength and elegance so popular in our day; even to his cane, whose
head was of massive gold, with his arms embossed,--all bespoke a
certain affluence and abundance, the more assured from the absence of
ostentation.
His hat was slightly, very slightly, set on one side,--a piece of
“tigerism” pardonable, perhaps, as it displayed the rich brown curls of
very silky hair, which he had disposed with consummate skill before
his glass ere he issued forth. His large, full blue eyes, his handsome
mouth, and a certain gentleness in his look generally, were what he
himself would have called the “odds in his favor;” and very hard it
would indeed have been at first sight to form an estimate in any way
unfavorable to him. Bean Beecher, as he was called once, had been deemed
the best-looking fellow about town, and when he entered the Life
Guards, almost twenty years before the time we now present him, had been
reckoned the handsomest man and best rider in the regiment. Brother of
Lord Lackington, but not by the same mother, he had inaugurated that new
school of dandyism which succeeded to the Brummell period, and sought
fame and notoriety by splendor and extravagance rather than by the
fastidious and personal elegance that characterized the former era. In
this way Lord Lackington and his brother were constantly contrasted; and
although each had their followers, it was generally admitted that they
were both regarded as admirable types of style and fashion. Boodle's
would have preferred the Peer, the Guards' Club and all Tattersall's
have voted for the Honorable Annesley Beecher.
Beecher started in life with all the advantages and disadvantages which
attach to the position of a younger son of a noble family. On the
one side he had good connections, a sure status in society, and easy
admission into club life; on the other, lay the counterbalancing fact of
the very slender fortune which usually falls to the lot of the younger
born. The sum, in his case, barely sufficed to carry him through his
minority, so that the day he came of age he had not a shilling in the
world. Most men open their career in life with some one ambition or
other in their hearts. Some aspire to military glory and the fame of
a great general, some yearn after political eminence, and fashion to
themselves the triumphs of successful statesmanship. There are lesser
goals in the walks of the learned professions which have each their
votaries; and sanguine spirits there are who found, in imagination,
distant colonies beyond the sea, or lead lives of adventure in exploring
unvisited and unknown regions. Annesley Beecher had no sympathy with
any of these. The one great and absorbing wish of his heart was to be a
“sharp fellow;” one who in all the dealings and traffic of life was sure
to get the upper hand of his adversary, who in every trial where craft
was the master, and in whatever situation wherein cunning performed a
part, was certain to come out with the creditable reputation of being,
“for a gentleman, the downiest cove to be met with anywhere.”
This unhappy bent was owing to the circumstance of his being early
thrown amongst men who, having nothing but their wits to depend upon,
had turned these same wits to very discreditable purposes. He became,
it is needless to say, their easy dupe; and when utterly bereft of
the small patrimony which he once possessed, was admitted as an humble
brother of the honorable guild who had despoiled him.
Men select their walk in life either from the consciousness of certain
qualities likely to obtain success, or by some overweening admiration of
those already eminent in it. It was this latter decided Beecher's taste.
Never was there one who cherished such profound respect for a crafty
fellow, for all other intellectual superiorities he could limit his
esteem: for a rogue, his veneration was unbounded. From the man
that invented a bubble company, to him who could turn the king at
_écarté_--from the gifted individual who could puff up shares to an
exorbitant value, to the no less fine intelligence that could “make
everything safe on the Derby,” he venerated them all. His early
experiences had been unhappy ones, and so constantly had he found
himself duped and “done” on every hand, that he ended by believing that
honesty was a pure myth; the nearest approach to the quality being a
certain kind of fidelity to one's “pall,” as he would have called it,
and an unwillingness to put “your own friend in the hole,” while there
were so many others available for that pleasant destiny. This little
flickering flame of principle, this farthing candle of good feeling, was
the solitary light that illuminated the gloom of his character.
He had joined the regiment Kellett formerly belonged to at Malta, a
few weeks before the other had sold out, and having met accidentally in
Ireland, they had renewed the acquaintance, stimulated by that strange
sympathy which attracts to each other those whose narrow circumstances
would seem, in some shape or other, the effects of a cruelty practised
on them by the world. Kellett was rather flattered by the recognition of
him who recalled the brighter hours of his life, while he entertained
a kind of admiration for the worldly wit and cleverness of one who, in
talk at least, was a match 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
had held horses in the street for hire. It was strange, but scarcely
one escaped some commentary of this kind; not that there was a spark
of ill-nature in the man, but that he experienced a species of
self-consolation in thinking that in all his narrow fortune he had
claims of kindred and connection which none of them could compete with.
Beecher's thoughts took, meanwhile, a different course; whenever not
awakened to interest by some trait of their sharpness or cunning, to
which he listened with avidity, he revelled in the idea of their wealth,
as a thing of which they might be despoiled: “Wouldn't that fellow take
shares in some impossible speculation?--Couldn't the other be induced
to buy some thousand pounds' worth of valueless scrip?--Would this one
kindly permit himself to 'be cleared out' at hazard?--Might that one be
persuaded to lose a round sum at _écarté_?”
And thus did they view life, with widely different sympathies, it is
true, but yet in a spirit that made them companionable to each other.
One “grew his facts,” like raw material which the other manufactured
into those curious wares by which he amused his fancy. Poverty is a
stronger bond than many believe it; when men begin to confess it to each
other, they take something very like an oath of fidelity.
“By the way,” said Beecher, as he bade his friend good night, “you told
me you knew Dunn--Davenport Dunn?”
“To be sure I do,--know him well.”
“Couldn't you introduce me to him? That's a fellow might be able to
assist me. I 'm certain he could give me a chance; eh, Kellett?”
“Well; I expect him back in Ireland every day. I was asking after him no
later than yesterday; but he's still away.”
“When he comes back, however, you can mention me, of course; he'll know
who I am.”
“I'll do it with pleasure. Good-night, Beecher,--goodnight; and I
hope”--this was soliloquy as he turned back towards the door,--“I hope
Dunn will do more for you than he ever has for _me!_ or, faith, it's not
worth while to make the acquaintance.”
Bella retired to her room early, and Kellett sat moodily alone by his
fire. Like a great many other “embarrassed gentlemen,” he was dragging
on life amidst all the expedients of loans, bonds, and mortgages, when
the bill for sale of the encumbered estates became the law of the land.
What with the legal difficulties of dispossessing him, what with the
changeful fortunes of a good harvest, or money a little more plentiful
in the market, he might have gone on to the last in this fashion, and
ended his days where he began them, in the old house of his fathers,
when suddenly this new and unexpected stroke of legislation cut short
all his resources at once, and left him actually a beggar on the world.
The panic created at the first moment by a law that seemed little short
of confiscation, the large amount of landed property thus suddenly
thrown into the market, the prejudice against Irish investment so
strongly entertained by the moneyed classes in England, all tended
vastly to depreciate the value of those estates which came first for
sale; and many were sold at prices scarcely exceeding four or five years
of their rental. An accidental disturbance in the neighborhood, some
petty outrage in the locality, was enough to depreciate the value;
and purchasers actually fancied themselves engaged in speculations
so hazardous that nothing short of the most tempting advantages would
requite them for their risk.
One of the very first estates for sale was Kellett's Court. The charges
on the property were immense, the accumulated debts of three generations
of spendthrifts; the first charge, however, was but comparatively small,
and yet even this was not covered by the proceeds of the sale. A house
that had cost nearly forty thousand pounds, standing on its own demesne,
surrounded by an estate yielding upwards of three thousand a year, was
knocked down for fifteen thousand four hundred pounds.
Kellett was advised to appeal against this sale on various grounds: he
was in possession of an offer of more than double for the same property
in times less prosperous; he could show a variety of grounds--surprise
and others--to invalidate the ruinous contract; and it was then that he
once again, after a whole life, found himself in contact with Davenport
Dunn, the attorney for many parties whose interests were compromised in
the sale. By no possible accident could the property be sold at such a
price as would leave any surplus to himself; but he hoped, indeed he was
told, that he would be favorably considered by those whose interest he
was defending; and this last throw for fortune was now the subject of
his dreary thoughts.
There was, too, another anxiety, and a nearer one, pressing on his
heart. Kellett had a son,--a fine, frank, open-hearted young fellow, who
had grown up to manhood, little dreaming that he would ever be called on
to labor for his own support. The idle lounging habits of a country
life had indisposed him to all study, so that even his effort to
enter college was met by a failure, and he was turned back on the
very threshold of the University. Jack Kellett went home, vowing he 'd
nevermore trouble his head about Homer and Lucian, and he kept his word;
he took to his gun and his pointers with renewed vigor, waiting until
such time as he might obtain his gazette to a regiment on service. His
father had succeeded in securing a promise of such an appointment, but,
unhappily, the reply only arrived on the very week that Kellett's Court
was sold, and an order from the Horse Guards to lodge the purchase-money
of his commission came at the very hour when they were irretrievably
ruined.
Jack disappeared the next morning, and the day following brought a
letter, stating that he had enlisted in the “Rifles,” and was off to the
Crimea. Old Kellett concealed the sorrow that smote him for the loss of
his boy, by affecting indignation at being thus deserted. So artfully
did he dress up this self-deception that Bella was left in doubt as to
whether or not some terrible scene had not occurred between the father
and son before he left the house. In a tone that she never ventured to
dispute, he forbade her to allude to Jack before him; and thus did
he treasure up this grief for himself alone and his own lonely hours,
cheating his sorrow by the ingenious devices of that constraint he was
thus obliged to practise on himself. Like a vast number of men with whom
the world has gone hardly, he liked to brood over his misfortunes,
and magnify them to himself. In this way he opened a little bank of
compassion that answered every draft he drew on it. Over and over to
himself--like a miser revelling over his hoarded wealth--did he count
all the hardships of his destiny. He loved thus to hug his misery in
solitude, while he whispered to his heart, “You are a courageous fellow,
Paul Kellett; there are not many who could carry your cheerful face, or
walk with a head as high as you do to-day. The man that owned Kellett's
Court, and was one of the first in his county, living in a poor cottage,
with sixty pounds a year!--that's the test of what stuff a man's made
of. Show me another man in Ireland could do it! Show me one that could
meet the world as uncomplainingly, and all the while never cease to be
what he was born,--a gentleman.” This was the philosophy he practised;
this the lesson he taught; this the paean he chanted in his own heart
The various extremities to which he might--being anything other than
what he was--have been tempted, the excesses he might have fallen into,
the low associates he might have kept, the base habits he might have
contracted, all the possible and impossible contingencies that might
have befallen him, and all his difficulties therein, formed a little
fiction world that he gloried to lose himself in contemplating.
It is not often that selfishness can take a form so blameless; nor is it
always that self-deception can be so harmless. In this indulgence we now
leave him.