Davenport Dunn, a Man of Our Day. Volume 1. Lever Charles James
another compact now forming, which bodes even less favorably to you. The Church, by her Concordat, is replacing the old Holy Alliance. You ‘ll need the aid of the only power that cannot be drawn into this league, – I mean the only great power, – Russia.”
“If you will wait till we are so minded, Baron,” said Dunn, laughing, “you have plenty of time to help me with my tunnel here.” And he pointed to his plans.
“And where will the world be, – I mean your world and mine, – before the pick of the workman reaches so far?” and he placed his finger on the Splugen Alps, – “answer me that. What will be the Government of France, – I don’t ask who? Where will Naples be? What king will be convoking the Hungarian Diet? Who will be the Russian viceroy on the Danube?”
“Far more to the purpose were it if I could tell you how would the Three per Cents stand,” broke in Dunn.
“I ‘m coming to that,” said the other, dryly. “No, no,” said he, after a pause; “let us see this unhappy war finished, – let us wait till we know who are to be partners in the-great game of European politics. Lanfranchi tells me that the French and Russians who meet here come together on the best of terms; that intimacies, and even friendships. spring up rapidly between them. This fact, if repeated in Downing Street, might be heard with some misgiving.”
Though Dunn affected indifference to this remark, he winced, and walked to the window to hide his irritation.
Immediately beneath where he stood, a trellised vine-walk led down to the lake, where the boats were usually in waiting; and from this alley now a number of voices could be heard, although the speakers were entirely hidden by the foliage. The gay and laughing tones indicated a pleasure-party; and such it was, bent on a picnic to Bellaggio. Some were loud in praises of the morning, and the splendid promise of the day; others discussed how many boats they should want, and how the party was to be divided.
“The Americans with the Russians,” said Twining, slapping his legs and laughing; “great friends – capital allies – what fun! Ourselves and the O’Reillys. – Spicer, look out, and see if they are coming.”
“And do you mean to say you’ll not come?” whispered a very soft voice, after the crowd had passed on.
“Charmante Molly!” said Lord Lackington, in his most dulcet of accents, “I am quite heart-broken at the disappointment; but when I tell you that this man has come some hundreds of miles to meet me here, – that the matter is one of deepest importance – ”
“And who is he? Could you make him come too?”
“Impossible, ma belle. He is quite unsuited to this kind of thing, – a mere creature of parchments. The very sight of him would only suggest thoughts of foreclosing mortgages and renewal fines.”
“How I hate him!”
“Do, dearest, – hate him to your heart’s content, – and for nothing more than the happiness of which he robs me.”
“Well, I ‘m sure, I did think – ” And she stopped, and seemed confused.
“And what, pray, was it that you did think?” said his Lordship, most winningly.
“I thought two things, then, if you must know,” said she, archly: “first, that a great personage like your Lordship would make a very small one like this Mr. Dunn understand it was his duty to await your convenience; and my second thought was – But perhaps you don’t care to hear it?”
“Of all things. Pray go on.”
“Well, then, my second was that if I asked you to come, you’d not refuse me.”
“What an inexorable charmer it is!” cried he, in stage fashion. “Do you fancy you could ever forgive yourself if, yielding to this temptation, I were really to miss this man?”
“You told me yourself, only yesterday,” said she, “ce que femme veut– Besides, you’ll have him all day tomorrow, and the next, and – ”
“Well, so be it. See how I hug my chains!” said he, drawing her arm within his, and moving on towards the boat.
“Were you to be of that party, Baron?” asked Dunn, pointing to the crowd beside the lake.
“So I was. The Princess engaged me last night; they are going to the Plinniana and Bellaggio. Why not join us?”
“Oh, I have a score of letters to write, and double as many to read. In fact, I have kept all my work for a quiet day in this nice tranquil spot I wish I could take a week here.”
“And why not do it? Have n’t you yet learned that it is the world’s duty to wait on us? For my own part, I have always found that one emerges from these secluded places with renewed energy and awakened vigor. I heard Stadeon once say that when anything puzzled him, he went to pass a day at Maria Zell, and he never came away without hitting on the solution. They are beckoning to me; so good-bye!”
“Anything puzzled him!” muttered Dunn, repeating the words of the other’s story. “If he but knew that what puzzles me at this moment is myself!”
The very nature of the correspondence that then littered his table might well warrant what he felt. Who, and what was he, to whom great ministers wrote confidentially, and secretaries of state began, “My dear Dunn”? How had he risen to this eminence? What were the gifts by which he held, and was to maintain it? Most men who have attained to high station from small beginnings, have so conformed to the exigencies of each new change in life as to carry but little of what they started with to their position of eminence; gradually assimilating to the circumstances around them as they went, they flung the past behind them, only occupied with those qualities which should fit them for the future. Not so Davenport Dunn: he was ever present to his own eyes as the son of the very humblest parentage; as the poor boy educated by charity, struggling drearily through years of poverty, – the youth discouraged and slighted, the man repulsed and rejected. Certain incidents of his life never left him; there they were, as if photographed on his heart; and at will he could behold himself as he was turned away ignominiously from Kellett’s house; or a morning scarce less sad, as he learned his rejection for the sizarship; or the day still more bitter that Lord Glengariff put him out of doors, with words of insult and shame. Like avenging spirits, these memories travelled with him wherever he journeyed. They sat beside him as he dined at great men’s tables; they loitered with him in his lonely walks, and whispered into his ear in the dark hours of the night. No high-hearted hope, no elevating self-reliance, had sustained him through these youthful reverses; each new failure, on the contrary, seemed to have impressed him more and more strongly with the conviction that the gifts which win success in life had not been vouchsafed him; that his abilities were of that humble order which never elevate their possessor above mere mediocrity; that if he meant to strive for the great prizes of life, it must be less by addressing himself to great intellectual efforts than by a patient study of men themselves, – of their frailties, their weaknesses, and their follies. Whatever he had seen of the world had shown him how invariably the greatest minds were alloyed with some deteriorating influence, and that passions of one kind or other, ambitions more or less worthy, even the subtlety of flattery, swayed those whose intellects soared loftily among their fellows. “I cannot share in the tilt with these,” said he. “Mine are no gifts of eloquence or imaginative power; I am not versed in the mysteries of science, nor deep-read in the intricacies of law. Let me, however, see if I cannot, by dexterity, accomplish what is denied to my strength. Every man, whatever his station, covets wealth. The noblest and the meanest, the man dignified by exalted aspirations, the true creature of selfish enjoyments, are all alike enlisted in the pursuit. Let me consider how this common tendency may be best turned to account. To enrich others, it is not necessary that I should be wealthy myself. The geographer may safely dictate the route by which the explorer is to journey through a desert he has never travelled himself. The great problems of finance can be worked by suggestions in a garret, though their application may demand millions.” Starting thus from an humble attorney in a country town, he gradually grew to be known as a most capable adviser in all monetary matters. Rich men consulted him about profitable investments and safe employment of their capital;