“Not come in yet, sir; but he is sure to be back soon,” said Mr. Clowes,
the butler, to Terry Driscoll, as he stood in the hall of Mr. Davenport
Dunn's house, about eleven o'clock of the same night we have spoken of
in our last chapter.
“You're expecting him, then?” asked Driscoll, in his own humble manner.
“Yes, sir,” said Clowes, looking at his watch; “he ought to be here
now. We have a deal of business to get through to-night, and several
appointments to keep; but he'll see you, Mr. Driscoll. He always gives
directions to admit _you_ at once.”
“Does he really?” asked Driscoll, with an air of perfect innocence.
“Yes,” said Clowes, in a tone at once easy and patronizing, “he likes
_you_. You are one of the very few who can amuse him. Indeed, I don't
think I ever heard him laugh, what I 'd call a hearty laugh, except when
you 're with him.”
“Isn't that quare, now!” exclaimed Driscoll. “Lord knows it's little fun
is in me now!”
“Come in and take a chair; charge you nothing for the sitting,” said
Clowes, laughing at his own smartness as he led the way into a most
comfortably furnished little room which formed his own sanctum.
The walls were decorated with colored prints and drawings of great
projected enterprises,--peat fuel manufactories of splendid
pretensions, American packet stations on the west coast, of almost regal
architecture, vied with ground-plans of public parks and ornamental
model farms; fish-curing institutions, and smelting-houses, and
beetroot-sugar buildings, graced scenes of the very wildest desolation,
and, by an active representation of life and movement, seemed to typify
the wealth and prosperity which enterprise was sure to carry into
regions the very dreariest and least promising.
“A fine thing, that, Mr. Driscoll!” said Clowes, as Terry stood
admiring a large and highly colored plate, wherein several steam-engines
were employed in supplying mill-streams with water from a vast lake,
while thousands of people seemed busily engaged in spade labor on
its borders. “That is the 'Lough Corrib Drainage and Fresh Strawberry
Company,' capital eight hundred thousand pounds! Chemical analysis
has discovered that the soil of drained lands, treated with a suitable
admixture of the alkaline carbonates, is peculiarly favorable to
the growth of the strawberry,--a fruit whose properties are only now
receiving their proper estimate. The strawberry, you are perhaps not
aware, is a great anti-scorbutic. Six strawberries, taken in a glass of
diluted malic acid of a morning, fasting, would restore the health
of those fine fellows we are now daily losing in such numbers in the
Crimea. I mean, of course, a regular treatment of three months of
this regimen, with due attention to diet, cleanliness, and habit of
exercise,--all predisposing elements removed, all causes of mental
anxiety withdrawn. To this humane discovery this great industrial
speculation owes its origin. There you see the engines at full work; the
lake is in process of being drained, the water being all utilized by the
mills you see yonder, some of which are compressing the strawberry pulp
into a paste for exportation. Here are the people planting the shoots;
those men in blue, with the watering-pots, are the alkaline feeders, who
supply the plant with the chemical preparation I mentioned, the strength
being duly marked by letters, as you see. B. C. P. means bi-carbonate of
potash; S. C. S., sub-carbonate of soda; and so on. Already, sir,” said
he, raising his voice, “we have contracts for the supply of twenty-eight
tons a week, and we hope,” added he, with a tremulous fervor in his
voice, “to live to see the time when the table of the poorest peasant in
the land will be graced by the health-conducing condiment.”
“With all my heart and soul I wish you success,” said Driscoll; while
he muttered under his breath what sounded like a fervid prayer for the
realization of this blessed hope.
“Of that we are pretty certain, sir,” said Clowes, pompously; “the
shares are now one hundred and twelve,--paid up in two calls, thirty-six
pounds ten shillings, _He_,” said Clowes, with a jerk of his thumb
towards Mr. Dunn's room, meant to indicate its owner,--“_he_ don't like
it; calls it a bubble, and all that, but I have, known him mistaken,
sir,--ay, and more than once. You may remember that vein of yellow
marble--giallo antico, they call it--found on Martin's property--That's
his knock; here he comes now,” cried he, hurrying away to meet his
master, and leaving the story of his blunder unrelated. “All right,”
said Clowes, re-entering, hastily; “you can go in now. He seems in a
precious humor to-night,” added he, in a low whisper; “something or
other has gone wrong with him.”
Driscoll had scarcely closed the inner door of cloth that formed
the last security of Davenport Dunn's privacy, when he perceived the
correctness of Mr. Clowes's information. Dunn's brow was dark and
clouded, his face slightly flushed, and his eye restless and excited.
“What is it so very pressing, Driscoll, that could n't wait till
to-morrow?” said he, peevishly, and not paying the slightest attention
to the other's courteous salutation.
“I thought this was the time you liked best,” said Driscoll, quietly;
“you always said, 'Come to me when I've done for the day--'”
“But who told you I had done for the day? That pile of letters has yet
to be answered; many of them I have not even read. The Attorney-General
will be here in a few minutes about these prosecutions too.”
“That's a piece of good luck, anyhow,” said Driscoll, quickly.
“How so? What d' ye mean?”
“Why, we could just get a kind of travelling opinion out of him about
this case.”
“What nonsense you talk!” said Dunn, angrily; “as if a lawyer of
standing and ability would commit himself by pronouncing on a most
complicated question, the details of which he was to gather from _you!_”
The look and emphasis that accompanied the last word were to the last
degree insulting, but they seemed to give no offence whatever to him to
whom they were addressed; on the contrary, he met them with a twinkle
of the eye, and a droll twist of the mouth, as he muttered half to
himself,--
“Yes, God help me, I 'll never set the Liffey on fire!”
“You might, though, if you had it heavily insured,” said Dunn, with a
savage irony in his manner that might well have provoked rejoinder;
but Driscoll was proof against whatever he didn't want to resent, and
laughed pleasantly at the sarcasm.
“You were dining at the Lodge, I suppose, to-day?” asked he, eager to
get the conversation afloat at any cost.
“No, at Luscombe's,--the Chief Secretary's,” said Dunn, curtly.
“They say he's a clever fellow,” said Driscoll.
“They are heartily welcome to this opinion who think so,” broke in Dunn,
peevishly. “Let them call him a fortunate one if they like, and they 'll
be nearer the mark.--What of this affair?” said he, at last “Have you
found out Conway?”
“No; but I learned that he dined and passed the evening with ould Paul
Kellett He came over to Ireland to bring him some news of his son, who
served in the same regiment, and so I went out to Kellett to pump them;
but for some reason or other they're as close as wax. The daughter beats
all ever you saw! She tried a great stroke of cunning with me, but it
wouldn't do.”
“It was your poor head and the spotted fever,--eh?” said Dunn, laughing.
“Yes,” said Driscoll; “I never was rightly myself since that” And he
laughed heartily.
“This is too slow for me, Driscoll; you must find out the young fellow
at once, and let me see him. I have read over the statement again, and
it is wonderfully complete. Hatch-ard has it now before him, and will
give me his opinion by Sunday next On that same day Mr. Beecher is to
dine with me; now if you could manage to have Conway here on Monday
morning, I 'd probably be in a condition to treat openly with him.”
“You're going too fast,--too fast, entirely,” said Driscoll; “sure, if
Conway sees the road before him, he may Just thravel it without us at
all.”
“I 'll take care he shall not know which path to take, Driscoll; trust
me for that. Remember that the documents we have are all-essential to
him. Before he sees one of them our terms must be agreed on.”
“I'll have ten thousand paid down on the nail. 'Tis eight years I am
collectin' them papers. I bought that shooting-lodge at Banthry,
that belonged to the Beechers, just to search the old cupboard in the
dinner-room. It was plastered over for fifty years, and Denis Magrath
was the only man living knew where it was.”
“I am aware of all that. The discovery--if such it prove--was all your
own, Driscoll; and as to the money remuneration, I 'll not defraud you
of a sixpence.”
“There was twelve hundred pounds,” continued Driscoll, too full of his
own train of thought to think of anything else, “for a wretched ould
place with the roof fallin' in, and every stack of it rotten! Eight
years last Michaelmas,--that's money, let me tell you! and I never got
more than thirty pounds any year out of it since.”
“You shall be paid, and handsomely paid.”
“Yes,” said Terry, nodding.
“You can have good terms on either side.”
“Yes, or a little from both,” added Driscoll, dryly.