All the bustle of “settling down” in the hotel over, Annesley
Beecher began to reflect a little on the singularity of his situation.
The wondering admiration which had followed Lizzy Davis wherever she
appeared on the journey seemed to have reached its climax now, and
little knots and groups of lounging travellers were to be seen before
the windows, curious to catch a glance at this surpassing beauty. Now,
had she been his _bona fide_ property, he was just the man to derive
the most intense enjoyment from this homage at second hand; he 'd have
exulted and triumphed in it. His position was, however, a very different
one, and, as merely her companion, while it exposed her to very
depreciating judgments, it also necessitated on his part a degree of
haughty defiance and championship for which he had not the slightest
fancy whatever.
Annesley Beecher dragged into a row for Grog Davis's daughter, Beecher
fighting some confounded Count or other about Lizzy Davis, Annesley
shot by some Zouave Captain who insisted on waltzing with his
“friend,”--these were pleasant mind-pictures which he contemplated with
the very reverse of enjoyment; and yet the question of her father's
station away, he felt it was a cause wherein even one who had no more
love for the “duello” than himself might well have perilled life. All
her loveliness and grace had not been wasted when they could kindle up a
little gleam of chivalry in the embers of that wasted heart!
He ran over in his mind all the Lady Julias and Georginasof the
fashionable world. He bethought him of each of those who had been the
queens of London seasons, and yet how vastly were they all her
inferiors! It was not alone that in beauty she eclipsed them, but she
possessed, besides, the thousand nameless attractions of manner and
gesture, a certain blended dignity and youthful gayety that made her
seem the very ideal of high-born loveliness. He had seen dukes'
daughters who could not vie with her in these gifts; he had known
countesses immeasurably beneath her. From these thoughts he went on to
others as to her future, and the kind of fellow that might marry her;
for, strangely enough, in all his homage there mingled the ever-present
memory of Grog and his pursuits. Mountjoy Stubbs might marry her; he has
fifty thousand a year, and his father was a pawnbroker. Lockwood Harris
might marry her; he got all his money from the slave trade. There were
three or four more,--all wealthy, and all equivocal in position: men to
be seen in clubs, to be dined with and played with; fellows who had
yachts at Cowes and grouse-lodges in Scotland, and yet in London were
“nowhere.” These men could within their own sphere do all they
pleased,--they could afford any extravagance they fancied; and what a
delightful extravagance it would be to marry Lizzy Davis! Often as he
had envied these men, he never did so more than now. _They_ had no
responsibilities of station ever hanging over them; no brothers in the
Peerage to bully them about this; no sisters in waiting to worry them
about that. They could always, as he phrased it, “paint their coach
their own color,” without any fear of the Herald's Office; and what
better existence could a man wish for than a prolific fancy and
unlimited funds to indulge it. “If I were Stubbs, I 'd marry her.” This
he said fully a dozen times over, and even confirmed it with an oath.
And what an amiable race of people are the Stubbses of this habitable
globe! how loosely do responsibilities sit upon them! how generously are
they permitted every measure of extravagance and every violation of good
taste! What a painful contrast did his mind draw between Stubbs'
condition and his own! There was a time, too, when the State repaired in
some sort the injustice that younger sons groaned under,--the public
service was full of the Lord Charleses and the Honorables, who looked up
to a paternal Government for their support; but now there was actually a
run against them. Beecher argued himself so warmly into this belief,
that he said aloud, “If I asked for something to-morrow, they 'd refuse
me, just because I 've a brother a Peer!”
The reader is already aware what a compensation he found for all his
defeats and shortcomings in life by arraigning the injustice of the
world. Downing Street, the turf, Lackington, Tattersall's, the Horse
Guards, and “the little hell in St. James's Street” were all in a league
to crush him; but he'd show them “a turn round the corner yet,” he said;
and with a saucy laugh of derision at all the malevolence of fortune, he
set about dressing for dinner. Beecher was not only a very good-looking
fellow, but he had that stamp of man of fashion on him which all the
contamination of low habits and low associates had not effaced. His
address was easy and unaffected, his voice pleasantly toned, his smile
sufficiently ready; and his whole manner was an agreeable blending of
deference with a sort of not ungraceful self-esteem. Negatives best
describe the class of men he belonged to, and any real excellence
he possessed was in not being a great number of things which form,
unhappily, the social defects of a large section of humanity. He was
never loud, never witty, never oracular, never anecdotic; and although
the slang of the turf and its followers clung to him, he threw out its
“dialectics” so laughingly that he even seemed to be himself ridiculing
the quaint phraseology he employed.
We cannot venture to affirm that our readers might have liked his
company, but we are safe in asserting that Lizzy Davis did so. He
possessed that very experience of life--London life--that amused her
greatly. She caught up with an instinctive quickness the meaning of
those secret springs which move society, and where, though genius and
wealth are suffered to exercise their influence, the real power is alone
centred in those who are great by station and hereditary claims. She saw
that the great Brahmins of fashion maintained a certain exclusiveness
which no pretensions ever breached, and that to this consciousness of
an unassailable position was greatly owing all the dignified repose
and serenity of their manner. She made him recount to her the style of
living in the country houses of England,--the crowds of visitors that
came and went, the field-sports, the home resources that filled up the
day, while intrigues of politics or fashion went silently on beneath
the surface. She recognized that in this apparently easy and indolent
existence a great game was ever being played, and that all the workings
of ambition, all the passions of love and hate and fear and jealousy
“were on the board.”
They had dined sumptuously. The equivocal position in which they
appeared, far from detracting from the deference of the hotel people,
served but to increase their homage. Experience had shown that such
persons as they were supposed to be spent most and paid best, and so
they were served on the most splendid plate; waiters in full dress
attended them; even to the bouquet of hothouse flowers left on
“Mademoiselle's” napkin, all were little evidences of that consideration
of which Annesley Beecher well knew the meaning.
“Will you please to enlighten my ignorance on one point, Mr. Beecher?”
said she, as they sat over their coffee. “Is it customary in this rigid
England, of which you have told me so many things, for a young unmarried
lady to travel alone with a gentleman who is not even a relative?”
“When her father so orders it, I don't see that there can be much wrong
in it,” said he, with some hesitation.
“That is not exactly an answer to my question; although I may gather
from it that the proceeding is, at least, unusual.”
“I won't say it's quite customary,” said Beecher; “but taking into
account that I am a very old and intimate friend of your father's--”
“There must, then, have been some very pressing emergency to make papa
adopt such a course,” interrupted she.
“Why so?” asked he. “Is the arrangement so very distasteful to you?”
“Perhaps not; perhaps I like it very well. Perhaps I find you very
agreeable, very amusing, very--What shall I say?”
“Respectful.”
“If you like that epithet, I have no objection to put it in your
character. Yet still do I come back to the thought that papa could
scarcely have struck out this plan without some grave necessity. Now, I
should like much to know what that is, or was.” Beecher made no sign of
reply, and she quickly asked, “Do you know his reasons?”
“Yes,” said he, gravely; “but I prefer that you should not question me
about them.”
“I can't help that, Mr. Beecher,” said she, in that half-careless
tone she sometimes used. “Just listen to me for one moment,” said she,
earnestly, and fixing her eyes fully on him,--“just hear me attentively.
From what I have gathered from your account of England and its habits, I
am certainly now doing that which, to say the least, is most unusual and
unwarrantable. Now, either there is a reason so grave for this that it
makes a choice of evils imperative,--and, therefore, I ought to have my
choice,--or there is another even worse interpretation--at least, a more
painful one--to come.”
“Which is?” cried he.
“That I am not of that station to which such propriety attaches of
necessity.”
She uttered these words with a cold sternness and determination that
actually made Beecher tremble. “It was Davis's daughter spoke there,”
thought he. “They are the words of one who declares that, no matter what
be the odds against her, she is ready to meet the whole world in arms.
What a girl it is!” muttered he, with a sense of mingled fear and
admiration.
“Well, Mr. Beecher,” said she, at length, “I _do_ think you owe me a
little frankness; short as our acquaintance has been, I, at least, have
talked in all the freedom of old friendship. Pray show me that I have
not been indiscreet.”
“Hang me, if I know what to say or do!” cried Beecher, in dire
perplexity. “If I were to tell you why your father hurried away from
Brussels, _he_ 'd bring me to book very soon, I promise you.”
“I do not ask that,” interrupted she, eagerly. “It is upon the other
point my interest is most engaged.” He looked blankly at her, for he
really did not catch to what she alluded. “I want you to tell me, in
one word, who are the Davises? Who are we? If we are not recognizable by
that high world you have told me of, who, then, are our equals? Remember
that by an honest answer to my question you give guidance and direction
to my future life. Do not shrink from fear of giving me pain,--there is
no such pain as uncertainty; so be frank.”
Beecher covered his face with his hands to think over his reply. He
did not dare to look at her, so fearful was he of her reading his very
embarrassment.
“I will spare you, sir,” said she, smiling half superciliously; “but if
you bad known me a little longer or a little better, you had seen how
needless all this excessive caution on your part I have more of what you
call 'pluck' than you give me credit for.”
“No, by Jove! that you have n't,” cried Beecher; “you have more real
courage than all the men I ever knew.”
“Show me, then, that you are not deficient in the quality, and give me a
plain answer to a plain question. Who are we?”
“I have just told you,” said Beecher, whose confusion now made him
stammer and stutter at every word,--“I have just told you that your
father never spoke to me about his relations. I really don't know his
county, nor anything about his family.”
“Then it only remains to ask, What are we? or, in easier words, Has my
father any calling or profession? Come, sir, so much you can certainly
tell me.”
“Your father was a captain in a West India regiment, and, when I met him
first, he was a man about town,--went to all the races, made his bets,
won and lost, like the rest of us; always popular,--knew everybody.”
“A 'sporting character,' in short,--is n't that the name newspapers give
it?” said she, with a malicious twinkle of the eye.
“By Jove! how you hit a thing off at once!” exclaimed Beecher, in honest
ecstasy at her shrewdness.
“So, then, I am at the end of the riddle at last,” said she, musingly,
as she arose and walked the room in deep meditation. “Far better to have
told me so many a year ago; far better to have let me conform to this
station when I might have done so easily and without a pang!” A bitter
sigh escaped her at the last word, and Beecher arose and joined her.
“I hope you are not displeased with me, my dear Miss Davis,” said he,
with a trembling voice; “I don't know what I'd not rather suffer than
offend you.”
“You have _not_ offended me,” said she, coldly.
“Well, I mean, than I 'd pain you,--than I 'd say anything that should
distress you. You know, after all, it was n't quite fair to push me so
hard.”
“Are you forgetting, sir,” broke she in, haughtily, “that you have
really told me next to nothing, and that I am left to gather from mere
insinuations that there is something in our condition your delicacy
shrinks from explaining?”
“Not a bit of it,” chimed he in, quickly. “The best men in England are
on the turf, and a good book on the Oaks is n't within reach of the
income-tax. Your father's dealings are with all the swells in the
Peerage.”
“So there is a partnership in the business, sir,” said she, with a quiet
irony; “and is the Honorable Mr. Beecher one of the company?”
“Well--ha--I suppose--I ought to say yes,” muttered he, in deep
confusion. “We do a stroke of work together now and then--on the square,
of course, I mean.”
“Pray don't expose the secrets of the firm, sir. I am even more
interested than yourself that they should be conducted with discretion.
There is only one other question I have to ask; and as it purely
concerns myself, you 'll not refuse me a reply. Knowing our station
in life, as I now see you know it, by what presumption did you dare to
trifle with my girlish ignorance, and lead me to fancy that I might yet
move in a sphere which in your heart you knew I was excluded from?”
Overwhelmed with shame and confusion, and stunned by the embarrassment
of a dull man in a difficulty, Beecher stood, unable to utter a word.
“To say the least, sir, there was levity in this,” said she, in a tone
of sorrowful meaning; “but, perhaps, you never meant it so.”
“Never, upon my oath, never!” cried he, eagerly. “Whatever I said, I
uttered in all frankness and sincerity. I know London town just as well
as any man living, and I 'll stand five hundred to fifty there's not
your equal in it,--and that's giving the whole field against the odds.
All I say is, you shall go to the Queen's Drawing-room--”
“I am not likely to do so, sir,” said she, with a haughty gesture, and
left the room.