Davenport Dunn, a Man of Our Day. Volume 2 (of 2)Lever, Charles
General
Davenport Dunn, a Man of Our Day. Volume 2 (of 2)
Lever, Charles
Aristocracy (Social class) -- Great Britain -- Fiction; Capitalists and financiers -- Fiction
Before Lord Glengariff could well recover from the astonishment of this
cold and calculating patience, Mr. Hankes pushed his way through the
crowd, with an open letter in his hand.
It was a telegram just received, with an account of an attack made by
the mob on Mr. Dunn's house in Dublin. Like all such communications, the
tidings were vague and unsatisfactory: “A terrific attack by mob on
No. 18. Windows smashed, and front door broken, but not forced. Police
repulsed; military sent for.”
“So much for popular gratitude, my Lord,” said Dunn, as he handed the
slip of paper to the Earl. “Fortunately, it was never the prize on which
I had set my heart. Mr. Hankes,” said he, in a bland, calm voice, “the
crowd seems scarcely diminished outside. Will you kindly affix a notice
on the door, to state that, to convenience the public, the Bank will on
this day continue open till five o'clock?”
“By Heaven! they don't deserve such courtesy!” cried the old Lord,
passionately. “Be as just as you please, but show them no generosity. If
it be thus they treat the men who devote their best energies, their very
lives, to the country, I, for one, say it is not a land to live in, and
I spurn them as countrymen!”
“What would you have, my Lord? The best troops have turned and fled
under the influence of a panic; the magic words, 'We are mined!' once
routed the very column that had stormed a breach! You don't expect to
find the undisciplined masses of mankind more calmly courageous than the
veterans of a hundred fights.”
A wild hoarse cheer burst forth in the street at this moment, and
drowned all other sounds.
“What is it now? Are they going to attack us here?” cried the Earl.
The cry again arose, louder and wilder, and the shouts of “Dunn forever!
Dunn forever!” burst from a thousand voices.
“The placard has given great satisfaction, sir,” said Hankes,
reappearing. “Confidence is fully restored.”
And, truly, it was strange to see how quickly a popular sentiment spread
its influence; for they who now came forward to exchange their notes
for gold no longer wore the sturdy air of defiance of the earlier
applicants, but approached half reluctantly, and with an evident sense
of shame, as though yielding to an ignoble impulse of cowardice and
fear. The old Earl's haughty stare and insolent gaze were little
calculated to rally the diffident; for with his double eyeglass he
scanned each new-comer with the air of a man saying, “I mark, and I 'll
not forget you!”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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