Davenport Dunn, a Man of Our Day. Volume 2. Lever Charles James
to and fro in intense agitation, “and he’s just the man also, whenever anything goes wrong, not to listen to a word of explanation. ‘Why didn’t you do as I bade you?’ or, ‘As I ordered you?’ for that’s his phrase generally. ‘Who told you that you had any option in the matter? Did I take you into consultation? Play up to my hand!’ that’s his cry. ‘Play up to my hand, and never mind your own!’ Well, I have been doing so some ten or twelve years back, and a nice game I’ve made of it! Break with him! – of course I’d break with him, if any one would tell me how! Egad, sometimes I begin to think that transportation and the rest of it would not be a bit harder to bear than old Grog’s tyranny! It wears one out, – it positively drains a man’s nature dry!” There are volcanic throes, that, however they may work and struggle, throw up no lava; so with Beecher. All his passionate indignation could not rouse him to action, although his actual suffering might have prompted energy to any amount. He took out Davis’s letter and re-read it. One line which had escaped his attention before, now caught his eye on the blank leaf. It ran thus: “Take care that you do not delay at Aix after receipt of this. Benson’s fellows are after you.” A cold shudder came over Beecher as he perused the line. Benson’s fellows meant bailiffs, detectives, or something of the like. Benson was a money-lender of the most inveterate villany, – a fellow who had pursued more men of station and condition than any one living. He was the terror of the “swells.” To be in Benson’s hands meant ruin in its most irretrievable shape; and at the very moment he stood there his minions were on his track!
Ere he was well aware of it, he was back at the little window of the cottage.
“I must have this money on your own terms, Stein,” said he. “I find that Davis has some urgent need of my presence. I can’t delay here another day.”
“How many tousend gulden, milord?” asked the Jew respectfully, as he dipped his pen in the ink-bottle.
“Davis says two – I should like to say four, or even five.”
“Five if you wish it, milord; to me is it all as one – five, fifteen, or fifty; whatever sum you want.”
Beecher put his hand on the other’s wrist to detain him while he took a moment’s counsel with himself. Never had such a golden opportunity as this presented itself. Never before had he seen the man who so generously proffered his services. It was ask and have. Was he to reject such good fortune? – was he to turn his back on the very first piece of luck that had ever befallen him? What heartburnings might he be storing up for future years when he looked back to the time that, with a word, he might have made his fortune!
“But are you quite sure, friend Lazarus, that if I say eight or ten thousand, – for I don’t want more, – Davis will be as willing to back the bill?”
“I am quite sure.”
“Well, now, I am not so very certain of that; and as it is Davis will have to book up, it might be safer, perhaps, that I did n’t go beyond the amount he mentions, – eh?”
“As you will, – as you please yourself. I only say, dere is der Herr Davis’s name; he send it to me and say, ‘Milord will do de rest.’”
“So that he sent you a blank acceptance?” cried Beecher, in amazement.
“Yaas, Just as you see, – ‘Christopher Davis,’ and de flourish as usual. Ach, der Davis!” and he sighed once more.
The man who held Grog’s signature on a blank stamp assumed no common shape in Annesley Beecher’s eyes, and he continued to gaze on the old man with a strange sense of awe and astonishment. If he had not the document there before him on the table, he would not have believed it. The trustful courage of Van Amburgh, who used to place his head in the lion’s mouth, seemed poor in comparison with such heroic boldness as this; and he gazed at the writing in a sort of fascination.
“And Grog actually sent you that over by letter?” asked he again.
“Yaas, as you see,” was the calm answer.
“Well, here goes then, Abraham – Lazarus, I mean; make it out for a matter of – five – no, eight – hang it, let as say ten thousand florins when we are about it! Ten thousand, at six months, – eh?”
“Better at tree months, – we can always renew,” said Stein, calmly.
“Of course; and by that time we may want a little more liquor in the decanter, – eh! old boy?” said Beecher, laughing joyfully.
“To be sure, vaary mush more liquor as you want it.”
“What a brick!” said Beecher, clapping him on the shoulder in all the ecstasy of delight.
“Dere!” said the Jew, as he finished writing, “all is done; only to say where it be paid, – what bank at London.”
“Well, that is a bit of a puzzle, I must own!” said Beecher, rubbing his chin with an air of doubt and hesitation.
“Where do de Lord Lackington keep his account?” asked the Jew; and the question was so artfully posed that Beecher Answered promptly, —
“Harmer and Gore’s, Lombard Street, or Pall Mall, whichever you like.”
“Hanper and Gore. I know dem vaary well, – that will do; you do sign your name dere.”
“I wish I could persuade you that Annesley Beecher would be enough, – eh?”
“You write de name as der Davis say, and no oder!”
“Here goes, then! ‘In for a penny,’ as the proverb says,” muttered he; and in a bold, dashing hand, wrote “Lackington” across the bill.
“Ah!” said the Jew, as he examined it with his glass, and scanned every letter over and over; “and now, vat you say for de Cuyp, and de Mieris, and de Ostade, – vill you take ‘era all, as I say?”
“I ‘ll think over it, – I ‘ll reflect a bit first, Master Stein. As for pictures, they ‘re rather an encumbrance when a man has n’t a house to hang them in.”
“You have de vaary fine house in town, and an oder vaary fine house in de country, beside a what you call box – shoot-box – ”
“Nothing of the kind, Lazarus. I haven’t a thing as big as the crib we are standing in. Your mind is always running upon my brother; but there’s a wide difference between our fortunes, I assure you. He drew the first ticket in the lottery of life; and, by the way, that reminds me of something in Grog’s letter that I was to ask you.” And Beecher took the epistle from his pocket and ran his eye over it. “Ah! here it is! ‘Ask Stein what are the average runs at rouge-et-noir, what are the signs of an intermitting game, and what are the longest runs he remembers on one color?’ Can you answer me these?”
“Some of dem I have here,” said Stein, taking down from a shelf a small vellum-bound volume, fastened with a padlock and chain, the key of which he wore attached to his watch. “Here is de grand ‘arcanum,’” said he, laughing; “here are de calculs made in de experience of forty-one year! Where is de man in Europe can say as mush as dat? In dis book is recounted de great game of de Duc de Brancas, where he broke de bank every night of de week till Saturday, – two million tree hundred tousand francs! Caumartin, the first croupier, shot hisself, and Nogeot go mad. He reckon de moneys in de casette, for when he say on Friday night, ‘Monseigneur,’ say he, ‘we have not de full sum here, – there’s one hundred and seventy tousand francs too little,’ de Duc reply, ‘Never mind, mon cher Monsieur Nogeot, I am noways pressed, – don’t distress yourself, – only let it be pay before I go home to bed.’ Nogeot lose his reason when he hear it. Ah! here is de whole ‘Greschichte,’ and here de table of chances.”
Beecher gazed on the precious volume as Aladdin might have done on the lamp. It was the mystic key to untold riches. With that marvellous book a man needed no more in life; there lay all the “cabals,” all the “martingales,” that years of intense toil and deep study had discovered. To win that knowledge, too, what hearts had been broken, what desolation, what death! It was a record of martyrs in his eyes, and he really