“Ask Grog Davis if he'd call him a fine fellow,” broke in Beecher, sneeringly; “there's not such a spoon from this to Newmarket. Oh, Paul, my hearty, if I had but one, just one of the dozen chances he has thrown away! But, as Grog says, 'a crowbar won't make a cracksman;' nor will a good stable of horses, and safe jocks 'bring a fellow round,' if he hasn't it here.” And he touched his forehead with his forefinger most significantly.
Meanwhile Charles Conway sauntered slowly back to town, on the whole somewhat a sadder man than he had left it in the morning. His friend Jack had spoken much to him of his father and sister, and why or to what extent he knew not, but somehow they did not respond to his own self-drawn picture of them. Was it that he expected old Kellett would have been a racier version of his son,—the same dashing, energetic spirit,—seeing all for the best in life, and accepting even its reverses in a half-jocular humor? Had he hoped to find in him Jack's careless, easy temper,—a nature so brimful of content as to make all around sharers in its own blessings; or had he fancied a “fine old Irish gentleman” of that thoroughbred school he had so often heard of?
Nor was he less disappointed with Bella; he thought she had been handsomer, or, at least, quite a different kind of beauty. Jack was blue-eyed and Saxon-looking, and he fancied that she must be a “blonde,” with the same frank, cheery expression of her brother; and he found her dark-haired and dark-skinned, almost Spanish in her look,—the cast of her features grave almost to sadness. She spoke, too, but little, and never once reminded him, by a tone, a gesture, or a word, of his old comrade.
Ah! how these self-created portraits do puzzle and disconcert us through life! How they will obtrude themselves into the foreground, making the real and the actual but mere shadows in the distance! What seeming contradiction, too, do they create as often as we come into contact with the true, and find it all so widely the reverse of what we dreamed of! How often has the weary emigrant sighed over his own created promised land in the midst of the silent forest or the desolate prairie! How has the poor health-seeker sunk heavy-hearted amid scenes which, had he not misconstrued them to himself, he had deemed a paradise!
These “phrenographs” are very dangerous paintings, and the more so that we sketch them in unconsciously.
“Jack is the best of them; that's clear,” said Conway, as he walked along; and yet, with all his affection for him, the thought did not bring the pleasure it ought to have done.
CHAPTER XV. A HOME SCENE
When Paul Kellett described Mr. Davenport Dunn's almost triumphal entry into Dublin, he doubtless fancied in his mind the splendors that awaited him at home; the troops of servants in smart liveries, the homage of his household, and the costly entertainment which most certainly should celebrate his arrival. Public rumor had given to the hospitalities of that house a wide extended fame. The fashionable fishmonger of the capital, his Excellency's “purveyor” of game, the celebrated Italian warehouse, all proclaimed him their best customer. “Can't let you have that turbot, sir, till I hear from Mr. Dunn.” “Only two pheasants to be had, sir, and ordered for Mr. Dunn.” “The white truffles only taken by one gentleman in town. None but Mr. Dunn would pay the price.” The culinary traditions of his establishment threw the Castle into the background, and Kellett revelled in the notion of the great festivity that now welcomed his return. “Lords and earls—the biggest salmon in the market—the first men of the land—and lobster sauce—ancient names and good families—with grouse, and 'Sneyd's Twenty-one'—that 's what you may call life! It is wonderful, wonderful!” Now, when Paul enunciated the word “wonderful” in this sense, he meant it to imply that it was shameful, distressing, and very melancholy for the prospects of humanity generally. And then he amused himself by speculating whether Dunn liked it all,—whether the unaccustomed elegance of these great dinners did not distress and pain him rather than give pleasure, and whether the very consciousness of his own low origin wasn't a poison that mingled in every cup he tasted.
“It's no use talking,” muttered he to himself; “a man must be bred to it, like everything else. The very servants behind his chair frighten him; he's, maybe, eating with his knife, or he's putting salt where he ought to put sugar, or he does n't take the right kind of wine with his meat. Beecher says he 'd know any fellow just by that, and then it's 'all up' with him. Wonderful, wonderful!”