The Daltons; Or, Three Roads In Life. Volume I

“You need n’t,” said he, roughly. “Of course, it ‘s full of all the elegant phrases women like to cheat each other with. You said she will go; that’s enough.”

Nelly tried to speak, but the words would not come, and she merely nodded an acquiescence.

“And, of course, too, you told her Ladyship that if it wasn’t to a near relation of the family one that had a kind of right, as I may say, to ask her that I ‘d never have given my consent. Neither would I!”

“I said that you could give no higher proof of your confidence in Lady Hester’s goodness and worth, than in committing to her charge all that we hold so dear. I spoke of our gratitude” her voice faltered here, and she hesitated a second or so; our gratitude! strange word to express the feeling with which we part from what we cling to so fondly! “and I asked of her to be the mother of her who had none!”

“Oh, Nelly, I cannot go I cannot leave you!” burst out Kate, as she knelt down, and buried her head in her sister’s lap. “I feel already how weak and how unable I am to live among strangers, away from you and dear papa. I have need of you both!”

“May I never leave this spot if you’re not enough to drive me mad!” exclaimed Dalton. “You cried two nights and a day because there was opposition to your going. You fretted till your eyes were red, and your cheeks all furrowed with tears; and now that you get leave to go now that I consent to to to sacrifice ay, to sacrifice my domestic enjoyments to your benefit you turn short round and say you won’t go!”

“Nay, nay, papa,” said Nelly, mildly; “Kate but owns with what fears she would consent to leave us, and in this shows a more fitting mind to brave what may come, than if she went forth with a heart brimful of its bright anticipations, and only occupied with a future of splendor and enjoyment.”

“I ask you again, is it into the backwoods of Newfoundland is it into the deserts of Arabia she is going?” said Dalton, ironically.

“The country before her has perils to the full as great, if not greater than either,” rejoined Nelly, lowly.

“There’s a ring at the bell,” said Dalton, perhaps not sorry to cut short a discussion in which his own doubts and fears were often at variance with his words; for while opposing Nelly with all his might, he was frequently forced to coincide secretly with that he so stoutly resisted. Vanity alone rose above every other motive, and even hardened his heart against separation and absence from his favorite child, vanity to think that his daughter would be the admired beauty in the salons of the great and highly born; that she would be daily moving in a rank the most exalted; that his dear Kate would be the attraction of courts, the centre of adulation wherever she went. So blinded was he by false reasoning, that he actually fancied himself a martyr to his daughter’s future advancement, and that this inveterate egotism was a high and holy self-denial! “My worst enemy never called me selfish,” was the balm that he ever laid on his chafed spirit, and always with success. It would, however, have been rather the part of friend, than of enemy, to have whispered that selfishness was the very bane and poison of his nature. It was his impulse in all the wasteful extravagance of his early life; it was his motive in all the struggles of his adversity. To sustain a mock rank, to affect a mock position, to uphold a mock standard of gentility, he was willing to submit to a thousand privations of his children and himself; and to gratify a foolish notion of family pride, he was ready to endure anything, even to separation from all he held dearest.

“Lady Hester’s courier has come for the answer to her note, papa,” said Nelly, twice over, before Dalton heard her, for he was deep sunk in his own musings.

“Let him come in and have a glass of wine,” said Dalton. “I ‘d like to ask him a few questions about these people.”

“Oh, papa!” whispered Nelly, in a tone at once so reproachful, that the old man colored and looked away.

“I meant about what time they were to start on the journey,” said he, confusedly.

“Lady Hester told us they should leave this to-morrow, sir.”

“Short notice for us. How is Kate to have all her clothes packed, and everything arranged? I don’t think that is treating us with much respect, Nelly.”

“They have waited four days for our decision, papa remember that.”

“Ay, to be sure. I was forgetting that; and she came every day to press the matter more and more; and there was no end to the note-writing besides. I must say that nothing could beat their politeness. It was a mighty nice attention, the old man coming himself to call here; and a fine, hale, good-looking man he is! a better figure than ever his son will be. I don’t much like Mr. George, as they call him.”

“Somewhat colder, and more reserved, I think, than the other,” said Nelly. “But about this answer, papa?”

“What a hurry they’re in. Is it a return to a writ, that they must press for it this way? Well, well, I ought to be used to all manner of interruptions and disturbances by this time. Fetch me a caudle, till I seal it;” and he sighed, as he drew forth his old-fashioned watch, to which, by a massive steel chain, the great family seal was attached’, firmly persuaded that in the simple act he was about to perform he was achieving a mighty labor, at the cost of much fatigue.

“No rest for the wicked! as my old father used to say,” muttered he, in a happy ignorance whether the philosophy emanated from his parent, or from some higher authority. “One would think that at my time of life a man might look for a little peace and ease; but Peter Dalton has n’t such luck! Give me the letter,” said he, querulously. “There is Peter Dalton’s hand and seal, his act and will,” muttered he, with a half-solemnity, as he pressed the wax with his heavy signet. “‘Semper eadem;’ there ‘s the ancient motto of our house, and, faith, I believe Counsellor O’Shea was right when he translated it ‘The devil a better!’”

He read the address two or three times over to himself, as if there was something pleasurable in the very look of the words, and then he turned his glance towards Hans, as in a dreamy half-consciousness he sat still, contemplating the little statue of Marguerite.

“Is n’t it droll to think we ‘d be writing to the first in the land, and an old toy-maker sitting beside the fire all the time,” said Dalton, as he shook his head thoughtfully, in the firm conviction that he had uttered a very wise and profound remark. “Well well well! Life is a queer thing!”

“Is it not stranger still that we should have won the friendship of poor Hanserl than have attracted the notice of Lady Hester?” said Nelly. “Is it not a prouder thought that we have drawn towards us from affectionate interest the kindness that has no touch of condescension?”

“I hope you are not comparing the two,” said Dalton, angrily. “What’s the creature muttering to himself?”

“It ‘B Gretchen’s song he ‘s trying to remember,” said Kate.

“Nach ihm nur schau’ ichZum Feuster hinaus!”

said Hans, in a low, distinct voice. “‘Was kommt nach,’ what comes next, Fraulein?”

“You must ask sister Nelly, Hanserl,” said Kate; but Nelly was standing behind the massive stove, her face covered with her hands.

“Zum Fenster hinaus,” repeated he, slowly; “and then, Fraulein? and then?”

“Tell him, Nelly; tell him what follows.”

“Nach ihm nur schau’ ichZum Fenster hinaus;Nach ihm nur geh’ ichAus dem Haus!”

repeated she.

“Ja, ja!” cried Hans, delightedly,

“Nach ihm nur geh’ ichAus dem Haus!”

“What does that mean?” said Dalton, with impatience. “It’s Gretchen’s song, papa,” said Nelly.

“His figure I gaze on,

O’er and o’er;His step I followFrom the door.”

“I hope it isn’t in love the creature is,” said Dalton; and he laughed heartily at the conceit, turning at the same time his look from the dwarf, to bestow a most complacent glance at the remains of his own once handsome stature. “Oh dear! oh dear!” sighed he; “isn’t it wonderful, but there isn’t a creth or a cripple that walks the earth that hasn’t a sweetheart!”

A cough, purposely loud enough to announce his presence, here came from the courier in the antechamber, and Dalton remembered that the letter had not yet been despatched.

“Give it to him, Nelly,” said he, curtly.

She took the letter in her hand, but stood for a second or two, as if powerless to move.

“Must it be so, dearest papa?” said she, and the words almost choked her utterance.

Dalton snatched the letter from her fingers, and left the room. His voice was heard for an instant in conversation with the courier, and the moment after the door banged heavily, and all was still.

“It is done, Kate!” said she, throwing her arms around her sister’s neck. “Let us now speak of the future; we have much to say, and short time to say it; and first let us help poor Hans downstairs.”

The dwarf, clutching up the wooden image, suffered himself to be aided with all the submissiveness of a patient child, and, with one at either side of him, slowly crept down the stairs to his own chamber. Disengaging himself by a gentle effort as he gained his door, Hans removed his cap from his head and made a low and deep obeisance to each of the girls separately, while he bade them a good-night.

“Leb wohl, Hanserl, Leb wohl!” said Kate, taking his hand affectionately. “Be ever the true friend that thou hast proved hitherto, and let me think of thee, when far away, with gratitude.”

“Why this? How so, Fraulein?” said Hans, anxiously; “why farewell? Why sayest thou ‘Leb wohl,’ when it is but ‘good-night’?”

“Kate is about to leave us for a short space,” said Nelly, affecting to appear at ease and calm. “She is going to Italy, Hanserl.”

“Das schone Land! that lovely land!” muttered he, over and over. “Dahin, dahin,” cried he, pointing with his finger to the southward, “where the gold orange blooms. There would I wander too.”

“You’ll not forget me, Hanserl?” said the young girl, kindly.

“Over the great Alps and away!” said Hans, still talking to himself; “over the high snow-peaks which cast their shadows on our cold land, but have terraces for the vine and olive-garden, yonder! Thou ‘It leave us, then, Fraulein?”

“But for a little while, Hans, to come back afterwards and tell thee all I have seen.”

“They come not back from the sunshine to the shade,” said Hans, solemnly. “Thou ‘It leave not the palace for the peasant’s hut; but think of us, Fraulein; think sometimes, when the soft sirocco is playing through thy glossy hair; when sounds of music steal over thy senses among the orange groves, and near the shadows of old temples, think of this simple Fatherland and its green valleys. Think of them with whom thou wert so happy, too! Splendor thou mayst have it is thy beauty’s right; but be not proud, Fraulein. Remember what Chamisso tells us, ‘Das Noth lehrt beten,’ ‘Want teaches Prayer,’ and to that must thou come, however high thy fortune.”

“Kate will be our own wherever she be,” said Nelly, clasping her sister affectionately to her side.

“Bethink thee well, Fraulein, in thy wanderings, that the great and the beautiful are brethren of the good and the simple. The cataract and the dewdrop are kindred. Think of all that teaches thee to think of home; and remember well, that when thou losest the love of this humble hearth thou art in peril. If to any of thy childish toys thou sayest ‘Ich Hebe dich nicht mehr,’ then art thou changed indeed.” Hans sat down upon his little bed as he spoke, and covered his face with his hands.

Nelly watched him silently for a few seconds, and then with a gentle hand closed the door and led Kate away.

CHAPTER XVIII. CARES AND CROSSES

THE lamp in Kate Dalton’s chamber was still burning when the morning dawned, and by its uncertain flicker might be seen the two sisters, who, clasped in each other’s arms, sat upon the low settle-bed. Nelly, pale and motionless, supported Kate, as, overcome by watching and emotion, she had fallen into a heavy slumber. Not venturing to stir, lest she should awaken her, Nelly had leaned against the wall for support, and, in her unmoved features and deathly pallor, seemed like some monumental figure of sorrow.

It was not alone the grief of an approaching separation that oppressed her. Sad as it was to part from one to whom she had been mother and sister too, her affliction was tinged with a deeper coloring in her fears for the future. Loving Kate dearer than anything in the world, she was alive to all the weak traits of her character: her credulity, her trustfulness, her fondness for approbation, even from those whose judgments she held lightly, her passion for admiration even in trifles, were well known to her; and while, perhaps, these very failings, like traits of childish temperament, had actually endeared her the more to Nelly, she could not but dread their effect when they came to be exercised in the world of strangers.

Not that Nelly could form the very vaguest conception of what that world was like. Its measures and its perils, its engagements and hazards, were all unknown to her. It had never been even the dream-land of her imagination. Too humble in spirit, too lowly by nature, to feel companionship with the great and titled, she had associated all her thoughts with those whose life is labor; with them were all her sympathies. There was a simple beauty in the unchanging fortune of the peasant’s life such as she had seen in the Schwarzwald, for instance that captivated her. That peaceful domesticity was the very nearest approach to happiness, to her thinking, and she longed for the day when her father might consent to the obscurity and solitude of some nameless “Dorf” in the dark recesses of that old forest. With Frank and Kate, such a lot would have been a paradise. But one was already gone, and she was now to lose the other too. “Strange turn of fortune,” as she said, “that prosperity should be more cruel than adversity. In our days of friendless want and necessity we held together; it is only when the promise of brighter destinies is dawning that we separate. It is but selfishness after all,” thought she, “to wish for an existence like this; such humble and lowly fortunes might naturally enough become ‘lame Nelly,’ but Frank, the high-hearted, daring youth, with ambitious hopes and soaring aspirations, demands another and a different sphere of action; and Kate, whose attractions would grace a court, might well sorrow over a lot of such ignoble obscurity. What would not my sorrow and self-reproach be if I saw that, in submitting to the same monotony of this quietude, they should have become wearied and careless, neither taking pleasure in the simple pastimes of the people, nor stooping to their companionship! And thus all may be for the best,” said she, half aloud, “if I could but feel courage to think so. We may each of us be but following his true road in life.”

A long intimacy with affliction will very frequently be found to impress even a religiously-disposed mind with a strong tinge of fatalism. The apparent hopelessness of all effort to avert calamity, or stem the tide of evil fortune, often suggests, as its last consolation, the notion of a predetermined destiny, to which we are bound to submit with patient trustfulness; a temperament of great humility aids this conviction. Both of these conditions were Nelly’s; she had “supped sorrow” from her cradle, while her estimate of herself was the very lowest possible. “I suppose it is so,” said she again; “all is for the best.”

She already pictured to herself the new spring this change of fortune would impart to her father’s life: with what delight he would read the letters from his children; how he would once more, through them, taste of that world whose pleasures he was so fondly attached to. “I never could have yielded him a gratification like this,” said Nelly, as the tears rose in her eyes. “I am but the image of our fallen fortunes, and in me, ‘poor lame Nelly,’ he can but see reflected our ruined lot. All is for the best it must be so!” sighed she, heavily; and just as the words escaped, her father, with noiseless step, entered the chamber.

“To be sure it is, Nelly darling,” said he, as he sat down near her, “and glad I am that you ‘ve come to reason at last. ‘T is plain enough this is n’t the way the Daltons ought to be passing their life, in a little hole of a place, without society or acquaintance of any kind. You and I may bear it, not but it’s mighty hard upon me sometimes, too, but Kate there just look at her and say, is it a girl like that should be wasting away her youth in a dreary village? Lady Hester tells me and sure nobody should know better that there never was the time in the world when real beauty had the same chance as now, and I ‘d like to see the girl that could stand beside her. Do you know, Nelly,” here he drew closer, so as to speak in a whisper, “do you know, that I do be fancying the strangest things might happen to us yet, that Frank might be a great general, and Kate married to God knows what sort of a grandee, with money enough to redeem Mount Dalton, and lay my old bones in the churchyard with my ancestors? I can’t get it out of my head but it will come about, somehow. What do you think yourself?”

“I’m but an indifferent castle-builder, papa,” said she, laughing softly. “I rarely attempt anything beyond a peasant hut or a shealing.”

“And nobody could make the one or the other more neat and comfortable, that I ‘ll say for you, Nelly. It would have a look of home about it before you were a day under the roof.”

The young girl blushed deeply; for, humble as the praise might have sounded to other ears, to hers it was the most touching she could have listened to.

“I ‘m not flattering you a bit. ‘T is your own mother you take after; you might put her down in the bleakest spot of Ireland, and ‘t is a garden she ‘d make it. Let her stop for shelter in a cabin, and before the shower was over you ‘d not know the place. It would be all swept and clean, and the dishes ranged neatly on the dresser; and the pig she could n’t abide a pig turned out, and the hens driven into the cowshed, and the children’s faces washed, and their hair combed, and, maybe, the little gossoon of five years old upon her knee, saying his ‘Hail, Mary,’ or his ‘A B C,’ while she was teaching his mother how to wind the thread off the wheel; for she could spin a hank of yarn as well as any cottier’s wife in the townland. The kind creature she was! But she never had a taste for real diversion; it always made her low-spirited and sad.”

“Perhaps the pleasures you speak of were too dearly purchased, papa,” said Nelly.

“Indeed, maybe they were,” said he, dubiously, and as though the thought had now occurred for the first time; “and, now that you say it, I begin to believe it was that same that might have fretted her. The way she was brought up made her think so, too. That brother was always talking about wastefulness, and extravagance, and so on; and, if it was in her nature, he ‘d have made her as stingy as himself; and look what it comes to after all. We spent it when we had it, the Daltons are a good warrant for that; and there was he grubbing and grabbing all his days, to leave it after him to a rich man, that does n’t know whether he has so many thousands more or not.”

Nelly made no reply, not wishing to encourage, by the slightest apparent interest, the continuance on the theme which invariably suggested her father’s gloomiest reveries.

“Is that her trunk, Nelly?” said Dalton, breaking silence after a long interval, and pointing to an old and journey-worn valise that lay half-open upon the floor.

“Yes, papa,” said Nelly, with a sigh.

“Why, it’s a mean-looking, scrubby bit of a thing; sure it ‘s not the size of a good tea-chest,” said he, angrily.

“And yet too roomy for all its contents, papa. Poor Kate’s wardrobe is a very humble one.”

“I ‘d like to know where ‘s the shops here; where ‘s the milliners and the haberdashers? Are we in College Green or Grafton Street, that we can just send out and have everything at our hand’s turn? ‘T is n’t on myself I spend the money. Look at these gaiters; they ‘re nine years old next March; and the coat on my back was made by Peter Stevens, that ‘s in his grave now. The greatest enemy ever I had could not face me down that I only took care of myself. If that was my way would I be here now? See the rag I ‘m wearing round my throat, a piece of old worsted like a rug a thing – ”

He stopped, and stammered, and then was silent altogether, for he suddenly remembered it was Nelly herself who had worked the article in question.

“Nay, papa,” broke she in, with her own happy smile, “you may give it to Andy to-morrow, for I ‘ve made you a smart new one, of your own favorite colors, too, the Dalton green and white.”

“Many a time I ‘ve seen the same colors coming in first on the Corralin course!” cried Dalton, with enthusiasm; for at the impulse of a new word his mind could turn from a topic of deep and painful interest to one in every way its opposite. “You were too young to remember it; but you were there, in the ‘landau,’ with your mother, when Baithershin won the Murra handicap, the finest day’s flat racing I have it from them that seen the best in England that ever was run in the kingdom. I won eight hundred pounds on it, and, by the same token, lost it all in the evening at ‘blind hookey’ with old Major Haggs, of the 5th Foot, not to say a trifle more besides. And that ‘s her trunk!” said he, after another pause, his voice dropping at the words, as though to say, “What a change of fortune is there! I wonder neither of you hadn’t the sense to take my old travelling chest; that’s twice the size, and as heavy as a lead coffin, besides. Sorrow one would ever know if she hadn’t clothes for a whole lifetime! Two men wouldn’t carry it upstairs when it’s empty.”

“When even this valise is too large, papa?”

“Oh dear, oh dear!” broke in Dalton; “you’ve no contrivance, after all. Don’t you see that it ‘s not what ‘s inside I ‘m talking about, at all, but the show before the world? Did n’t I live at Mount Dalton on the fat of the laud, and every comfort a gentleman could ask, five years and eight months after I was ruined? And had n’t I credit wherever I went, and for whatever I ordered? And why? Because of the house and place! I was like the big trunk beyond; nobody knew how little there was in it. Oh, Nelly dear, when you ‘ve seen as much of life as me, you ‘ll know that one must be up to many a thing for appearance’ sake.”

Nelly sighed, but made no reply. Perhaps in secret she thought how much trouble a little sincerity with the world would save us.

“We ‘ll be mighty lonesome after her,” said he, after a pause.

Nelly nodded her head in sadness.

“I was looking over the map last night, and it ain’t so far away, after all,” said Dalton. “‘T is n’t much more than the length of my finger on the paper.”

“Many a weary mile may lie within that space,” said Nelly, softly.

“And I suppose we’ll hear from her every week, at least?” said Dalton, whose mind vacillated between joy and grief, but still looked for its greatest consolations from without.

Poor Nelly was, however, little able to furnish these. Her mind saw nothing but sorrow for the present; and, for the future, difficulty, if not danger.

“You give one no comfort at all,” said Dalton, rising impatiently. “That’s the way it will be always now, when Kate goes. No more gayety in the house; not a song nor a merry laugh! I see well what a dreary life there is before me.”

“Oh, dearest papa, I ‘ll do my very best, not to replace her, for that I never could do; but to make your days less wearisome. It will be such pleasure, too, to talk of her, and think of her! To know of her happiness, and to fancy all the fair stores of knowledge she will bring back with her when she comes home at last!”

“If I could only live to see them back again, Frank and Kate, one at each side of me, that ‘s all I ask for in this world now,” muttered he, as he stole noiselessly away and closed the door behind him.

CHAPTER XIX. PREPARATIONS FOR THE ROAD

IF the arrival of a great family at an hotel be a scene of unusual bustle and excitement, with teeming speculations as to the rank and the wealth of the new-comers, the departure has also its interests, and even of a higher nature. In the former case all is vague, shadowy, and uncertain. The eye of the spectator wanders from the muffled figures as they descend, to scrutinize the lackeys, and even the luggage, as indicative of the strangers’ habits and condition; and even to the shrewd perceptions of that dread functionary, the head waiter, the identity of the traveller assumes no higher form nor any more tangible shape than that they are No. 42 or 57.