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

When the hour of leave-taking has come, however, their characters have become known, their tastes and habits understood, and no mean insight obtained into their prejudices, their passions, and their pursuits. The imposing old gentleman, whose rubicund nose and white waistcoat are the guarantees for a taste in port, has already inspired the landlord with a sincere regard. “My Lady’s” half-invalid caprices about diet, and air, and sunshine, have all written themselves legibly in “the bill.” The tall son’s champagne score incurred of a night, and uncounted of a morning, are not unrecorded virtues; while even the pale young ladies, whose sketching propensities involved donkeys, and ponies, and picnics, go not unremembered.

Their hours of rising and retiring, their habits of society or seclusion, their preferences for the “Post” or the “Times,” have all silently been ministering to the estimate formed of them; so that in the commonest items of the hotel ledger are the materials for their history. And with what true charity are their characters weighed! How readily does mine host forgive the transgressions which took their origin in his own Burgundy! how blandly smile at the follies begotten of his Johannisberg! With what angelic temper does the hostess pardon the little liberties “young gentlemen from college will take!” Oh, if our dear, dear friends would but read us with half the charity, or even bestow upon our peccadilloes a tithe of this forgiveness! And why should it not be so? What are these same friends and acquaintances but guests in the same great inn which we call “the world”? and who, as they never take upon them to settle our score, need surely not trouble themselves about the “items.”

While the Daltons were still occupied in the manner our last chapter has described, the “Hotel de Russie” was a scene of considerable bustle, the preparations for departure engaging every department of the household within doors and without. There were carriage-springs to be lashed with new cordage, drag-chains new tipped with steel, axles to smear, hinges to oil, imperials to buckle on, cap-cases to be secured; and then what a deluge of small articles to be stowed away in most minute recesses, and yet be always at hand when called for! cushions and cordials, and chauffe-pieds and “Quarterlies,” smelling-boxes and slippers, and spectacles and cigar-cases, journals and “John Murrays,” to be disposed of in the most convenient places. Every corridor and landing was blocked up with baggage, and the courier wiped his forehead, and “sacre’d” in half desperation at the mountain of trunks and portmanteaus that lay before him.

“This is not ours,” said he, as he came to a very smart valise of lacquered leather, with the initials A. J. in brass on the top.

“No, that ‘s Mr. Jekyl’s,” said Mr. George’s man, Twig. “He ain’t a-goin’ with you; he travels in our britzska.”

“I’m more like de conducteur of a diligenz than a family courier,” muttered the other, sulkily. “I know noting of de baggage, since we take up strangers at every stage! and always some Teufeln poor devils that have not a sou en poche!”

“What’s the matter now, Mister Greg’ry?” said Twig, who very imperfectly understood the other’s jargon.

“The matter is, I will resign my ‘fonction’ je m’en vais dat ‘s all! This is noting besser than an ‘Eil wagen’ mil passengers! Fust of all we have de doctor, as dey call him, wid his stuff birds and beasts, his dried blumen and sticks, till de roof is like de Jardin des Plantes at Paris, and he himself like de bear in de middle. Den we have das verfluchte parroquet of milady, and Flounce, de lapdog, dat must drink every post-station, and run up all de hills for exercise. Dam! Ich bin kein Hund, and need n’t run up de hills too! Mademoiselle Celestine have a what d’ ye call ‘Affe’ a ape; and though he be little, a reg’lar teufelchen to hide de keys and de money, when he find ‘em. And den dere is de yong lady collectin’ all de stones off de road, lauter paving-stones, which she smash wid a leetle hammer! Ach Gott, what is de world grow when a Fraulein fall in love wid Felsen and Steine!”

“Monsieur Gregoire! Monsieur Gregoire!” screamed out a sharp voice from a window overhead.

“Mademoiselle,” replied he, politely touching his cap to the femme-de-chambre.

“Be good enough, Monsieur Gregoire, to have my trunks taken down; there are two in the fourgon, and a cap-case on the large carriage.”

“Hagel and Sturm! dey are under everything. How am I – ”

“I can’t possibly say,” broke she in; “but it must be done.”

“Can’t you wait, Mademoiselle, till we reach Basle?”

“I’m going away, Monsieur Gregoire. I’m off to Paris,” was the reply, as the speaker closed the sash and disappeared.

“What does she say?” inquired Twig, who, as this dialogue was carried on in French, was in total ignorance of its meaning.

“She has given her demission,” said the courier, pompously. “Resign her portefeuille, and she have made a very bad affair; dat’s all. Your gros milor is very often bien bete; he is very often rude, savage, forget his manners, and all dat but” and here his voice swelled into the full soundness of a perfect connection “but he is alway rich. Ja ja, immer reich!” said he over to himself. “Allons! now to get at her verdammte baggage, de two trunks, and de leetle box, and de ape, and de sac, and de four or five baskets. Diable d’affaire! Monsieur Tig, do me de grace to mount on high dere, and give me dat box.”

“I ‘ve nothing to say to your carriage, Mister Greg’ry. I ‘m the captain’s gentleman, and never do take any but a single-handed situation;” and with this very haughty speech Mr. Twig lighted a fresh cigar and strolled away.

“Alle bose Teufeln holen de good for nichts,” sputtered Gregoire, who now waddled into the house to seek for assistance.

Whatever apathy and indifference he might have met with from the English servants, the people of the hotel were like his bond-slaves. Old and young, men and women, the waiter, and the ostler, and the chambermaid, and that strange species of grande utilite, which in German households goes by the name of “Haus-knecht,” a compound of boots, scullion, porter, pimp, and drudge, were all at his command. Nor was he an over-mild monarch; a running fire of abuse and indignity accompanied every order he gave, and he stimulated their alacrity by the most insulting allusions to their personal defects and deficiencies.

Seated upon a capacious cap-case, with his courier’s cap set jauntily on one side, his meerschaum like a sceptre in his hand, Gregoire gave out his edicts right royally, and soon the courtyard was strewn with trunks, boxes, and bags of every shape, size, and color. The scene, indeed, was not devoid of tumult; for, while each of the helpers screamed away at the top of his throat, and Gregoire rejoined in shouts that would have done credit to a bull, the parrot gave vent to the most terrific cries and yells as the ape poked him through the bars of his cage with the handle of a parasol.

“There, that’s one of them,” cried out Monsieur Gregoire; “that round box beside you; down with it here.”

“Monsieur Gregoire! Monsieur Gre’goire!” cried Mademoiselle from the window once more.

The courier looked up, and touched his cap.

“I’m not going, Monsieur Gregoire; the affair is arranged.”

“Ah! I am charmed to hear it, Mademoiselle,” said he, smiling in seeming ecstasy, while he muttered a malediction between his teeth.

“Miladi has made submission, and I forgive everything. You must pardon all the trouble I ‘ve given you.”

“These happy tidings have made me forget it,” said he, with a smile that verged upon a grin. “Peste!” growled he, under his breath, “we ‘d unpacked the whole fourgon.”

“Ah, que vous etes aimable!” said she, sighing.

“Belle tigresse!” exclaimed he, returning the leer she bestowed; and the window was once more closed upon her exit. “I submitted to the labor, in the hope we had done with you forever,” said he, wiping his forehead; “and la voila there you are back again. Throw that ape down; away wid him, cursed beast!” cried he, venting his spite upon the minion, since he dare not attack the mistress. “But what have we here?”

This latter exclamation was caused by the sudden entrance into the courtyard of two porters carrying an enormous trunk, whose iron fastenings and massive padlock gave it the resemblance of an emigrant’s sea-chest. A few paces behind walked Mr. Dalton, followed again by Old Andy, who, with a huge oil-silk umbrella under one arm, and a bundle of cloaks, shawls, and hoods on the other, made his way with no small difficulty.

Gregoire surveyed the procession with cool amazement, and then, with a kind of mock civility, he touched his cap, and said, “You have mistak de road, saar; de diligenz-office is over de way.”

“And who told you I wanted it?” said Dalton, sternly. “Maybe I’m just where I ought to be! Isn’t this Sir Stafford Onslow’s coach?”

“Yes, saar; but you please to remember it is not de ‘Eil wagen. ‘”

“Just hold your prate, my little chap, and it will be pleasanter, and safer, ay, safer, too, d’ye mind? You see that trunk there; it ‘s to go up with the luggage and be kept dry, for there ‘s valuable effects inside.”

“Datis not a trunk; it is a sentry-house, a watch-box. No gentleman’s carriage ever support a ting of dat dimension!”

“It ‘s a trunk, and belongs to me, and my name is Peter Dalton, as the letters there will show you; and so no more about it, but put it up at once.”

“I have de orders about a young lady’s luggage, but none about a great coffin with iron hoops,” said Gregoire, tartly.

“Be quiet, now, and do as I tell you, my little chap. Put these trifles, too, somewhere inside, and this umbrella in a safe spot; and here ‘s a little basket, with a cold pie and a bottle of wine in it.”

“Himmel und Erde! how you tink milady travel mit dass schweinerei?”

“It ‘s not pork; ‘t is mutton, and a pigeon in the middle,” said Dalton, mistaking his meaning. “I brought a taste of cheese, too; but it ‘s a trifle high, and maybe it ‘s as well not to send it.”

“Is the leetle old man to go too?” asked Gregoire, with an insolent grin, and not touching the profanation of either cheese or basket.

“That ‘s my own servant, and he ‘s not going,” said Dalton; “and now that you know my orders, just stir yourself a little, my chap, for I ‘m not going to spend my time here with you.”

A very deliberate stare, without uttering a word, was all the reply Gregoire returned to this speech; and then, addressing himself to the helpers, he gave some orders in German about the other trunks. Dalton waited patiently for some minutes, but no marks of attention showed that the courier even remembered his presence; and at last he said,

“I ‘m waiting to see that trunk put up; d’ ye hear me?”

“I hear ver well, but I mind noting at all,” said Gregoire, with a grin.

“Oh, that ‘s it,” said Dalton, smiling, but with a twinkle in his gray eyes that, had the other known him better, he would scarcely have fancied, “that’s it, then!” And taking the umbrella from beneath Andy’s arm, he walked deliberately across the yard to where a large tank stood, and which, fed from a small jet d’eau, served as a watering-place for the post-horses. Some taper rods of ice now stood up in the midst, and a tolerably thick coating covered the surface of the basin.

Gregoire could not help watching the proceedings of the stranger, as with the iron-shod umbrella he smashed the ice in one or two places, piercing the mass till the water spouted up through the apertures.

“Have you any friend who live dere?” said the courier, sneeringly, as the sound of the blows resembled the noise of a door-knocker.

“Not exactly, my man,” said Dalton, calmly; “but something like it.”

“What is ‘t you do, den?” asked Gregoire, curiously.

“I’ll tell you,” said Dalton. “I’m breaking the ice for a new acquaintance;” and, as he spoke, he seized the courier by the stout leather belt which he wore around his waist, and, notwithstanding his struggles and his weight, he jerked him off the ground, and, with a swing, would have hurled him head foremost into the tank, when, the leather giving way, he fell heavily to the ground, almost senseless from shock and fright together. “You may thank that strap for your escape,” said Dalton, contemptuously, as he threw towards him the fragments of broken leather.

“I will have de law, and de polizei, and de Gericht. I will have you in de Kerker, in chains, for dis!” screamed Gregoire, half choked with passion.

“May I never see peace, but if you don’t hold your prate I ‘ll put you in it! Sit up there, and mind your business; and, above all, be civil, and do what you ‘re bid.”

“I will fort; I will away. Noting make me remain in de service,” said Gregoire, brushing off the dirt from his sleeve, and shaking his cap. “I am respectable courier travel wid de Fursten vom Koniglichen Hatisen mit Russen, Franzosen, Ostereichen; never mit barbaren, never mit de wilde animalen.”

“Don’t, now don’t, I tell you,” said Dalton, with another of those treacherous smiles whose expression the courier began to comprehend. “No balderdash! no nonsense! but go to your work, like a decent servant.”

“I am no Diener; no serve anybody,” cried the courier, indignantly.

But somehow there was that in old Dalton’s face that gave no encouragement to an open resistance, and Monsieur Gregoire knew well the case where compliance was the wisest policy. He also knew that in his vocation there lay a hundred petty vengeances more than sufficient to pay off any indignity that could be inflicted upon him. “I will wait my times,” was the reflection with which he soothed down his rage, and affected to forget the insult he had just suffered under.

Dalton, whose mind was cast in a very different mould, and who could forgive either himself or his neighbor without any great exertion of temper, turned now coolly away, and sauntered out into the street. The flush of momentary anger that colored his cheek had fled, and a cast of pale and melancholy meaning sat upon his features, for his eye rested on the little wooden bridge which crossed the stream, and where now two muffled figures were standing, that he recognized as his daughters.

They were leaning on the balustrade, and gazing at the mountain that, covered with its dense pine-wood, rose abruptly from the river-side. It had been the scene of many a happy ramble in the autumn, of many a delightful excursion, when, with Frank, they used to seek for fragments of wood that suited Nelly’s sculptures. How often had they carried their little basket up yonder steep path, to eat their humble supper upon the rock, from which the setting sun could be seen! There was not a cliff nor crag, not a mossy slope, not a grass bank, they did not know; and now, as they looked, all the past moments of pleasure were crowding upon their memory, tinged with the sad foreboding that they were never again to be renewed.

“That’s the Riesen Fels, Nelly, yonder,” said Kate, as she pointed to a tall dark rock, on whose slopes the drifting snow had settled. “How sad and dreary it is, compared with what it seemed on Frank’s birthday, when the nightingale was singing overhead, and the trickling stream came sparkling along the grass when we sat together. I can bear to part with it better thus than if all were as beautiful as then.”

Nelly sighed, and grasped her sister’s hand closer, but made no answer.

“Do you remember poor Hanserl’s song, and his little speech all about our meeting there again in the next year, Nelly?”

“I do,” said Nelly, in a low and whispering voice.

“And then Frank stood up, with his little gilt goblet, and said,

‘With hearts as free from grief or care,Here ‘s to our happy – ‘”

“Wiederkehr,” cried Hanserl, supplying the word so aptly. How we all laughed, Nelly, at his catching the rhyme!”

“I remember!” sighed Nelly, still lower.

“What are you thinking of, Nelly dearest?” said Kate, as she stood for a few seconds gazing at the sorrow-struck features of the other.

“I was thinking, dearest,” said Nelly, “that when we were met together there on that night, none of us foresaw what since has happened. Not the faintest suspicion of a separation crossed our minds. Our destinies, whatever else might betide, seemed at least bound up together. Our very poverty was like the guarantee of our unity, and yet see what has come to pass Frank gone; you, Kate, going to leave us now. How shall we speculate on the future, then, when the past has so betrayed us? How pilot our course in the storm, when, even in the calm, still sea, we have wandered from the track?”

“Nelly! Nelly! every moment I feel more faint-hearted at the thought of separation. It is as though, in the indulgence of a mere caprice, I were about to incur some great hazard. Is it thus it appears to you?”

“With what expectations do you look forward to this great world you are going to visit, Kate? Is it mere curiosity to see with your own eyes the brilliant scenes of which you have only read? Is it with the hope of finding that elegance and goodness are sisters, that refinement of manners is the constant companion of noble sentiments and right actions; or, does there lurk in your heart the longing for a sphere wherein you yourself might contest for the prize of admiration? Oh, if this have a share in your wishes, my own dear sister, beware of it. The more worthy you are of such homage, the greater is your peril! It is not that I am removed from all temptations of this kind; it is not because I have no attractions of beauty, that I speak thus even poor, lame Nelly cannot tear from her woman’s heart the love of admiration. But for me, I fear, for you, Kate, to whom these temptations will be heightened by your own deservings. You are beautiful, and you blush as I speak the word; but what if the time come when you will hear it unmoved? The modest sense of shame gone, what will replace it? Pride yes, my dear sister, Pride and Ambition! You will long for a station more in accordance with your pretensions, more suited to your tastes.”

“How you wrong me, Nelly!” burst Kate in. “The brightest dream of all this brilliant future is the hope that I may come back to you more worthy of your love; that, imbibing some of those traits whose fascinations we have already felt, I may bring beneath our humble roof some memories, at least, to beguile your toil.”

“Oh, if that time should come!”

“And it will come, dearest Nelly,” said Kate, as she threw her arms around her, and kissed her affectionately. “But, see! there is papa yonder; he is beckoning to us to join him;” and the two girls hastened forward to where Dalton was standing, at the corner of the street.

“I’m thinking we ought to go up there, now,” said Dalton, with a motion of his hand in the direction of the hotel. “Take my arm, each of you.”

They obeyed, and walked along in silence, till they reached the inn, where Dalton entered, with a certain assumed ease and confidence, that very commonly, with him, covered a weak purpose and a doubting spirit.

“Is Sir Stafford at home, or Lady Onslow?” asked he of Mr. Twig, who, with a cigar in his mouth, and a “Galignani” in his hand, never rose from the seat he occupied.

“Can’t say, sir,” was the cool response, which he delivered without lifting his eyes from the newspaper.

“Do you know, ma’am?” said he, addressing Mademoiselle Celestine, who happened to pass at the moment “do you know, ma’am, if Lady Onslow ‘s at home?”

“She never receive in de morning,” was the curt reply. And, with a very impudent stare at the two sisters, whose dress imposed no restraint upon her insolence, mademoiselle flounced past. “Come along, girls,” said Dalton, angrily, and offended that he should appear to his children as if wanting in worldly tact and knowledge “come with me;” and he proceeded boldly up stairs.

A folding-door lay open before them into a large chamber, littered with boxes, trunks, and travelling gear of all kinds. Making his way through these, while he left his daughters outside, Dalton approached a door that led into an inner room, and knocked sharply at it with his knuckles.

“You may take it away now; I ‘ve used cold water!” cried a voice from within, that at once proclaimed Dr. Grounsell.

Dalton repeated his summons more confidently.

“Go to the devil, I say,” cried the doctor; “you’ve made me cut my chin;” and the enraged Grouusell, with his face covered with lather, and streaming with blood, flung open the door in a passion. “Oh, Dalton, this you, and the ladies here!” said he, springing back ashamed, as Kate’s hearty burst of laughter greeted him. “Come in, Dalton, come in,” said he, dragging the father forward and shutting the door upon him. “I was longing to see you, man; I was just thinking how I could have five minutes’ talk with you. What answer have you given to the letter they ‘ve sent you?”

“What d’ ye think?” said Dalton, jocularly, as he seated himself in a comfortable chair.

“What do I think?” repeated he, twice or thrice over. “Egad, I don’t know what to think! I only know what to hope, and wish it may have been!”

“And what’s that?” said Dalton, with a look of almost sternness, for he was not ignorant of the doctor’s sentiments on the subject.

“A refusal, of course,” said Grounsell, who never yet was deterred by a look, a sign, or an innuendo, from any expression of his sentiments.

“And why so, sir?” rejoined Dalton, warmly.

“On every ground in the world: What has your fine, generous-hearted, dear child in common with that vile world of envy, malice, and all wickedness you ‘d throw her amongst? What similarity in thought, feeling, or instinct between her and that artificial class with whom you would associate her, with their false honor, false principle, and false delicacy nothing real and substantial about them but their wickedness? If you were a silly woman, like the mother in the ‘Vicar of Wakefield,’ I could forgive you; but a man a hardened, worldly man, that has tasted poverty, and knows the rubs of life. I ‘ve no patience with you, d – n me if I have!”

“A little more of this, and I ‘ll have none with you,” said Dalton, as he clenched his fist, and struck his knee a hard blow. “You presume to talk of us as people whose station was always what our present means imply; but I ‘d have you to know that we ‘ve better blood in our veins – ”

“Devil take your blood! you’ve made me spill mine again,” cried Grounsell, as he sliced a piece off his chin, and threw down the razor in a torrent of anger, while Dalton grinned a look of malicious satisfaction. “Could n’t your good blood have kept you above anything like dependence?”

Dalton sprang to his feet, and clutching the chair, raised it in the air; but as suddenly dashed it on the floor again, without speaking.

“Go on,” cried Grounsell, daring him. “I’d rather you ‘d break my skull than that dear girl’s heart; and that ‘s what you ‘re bent on. Ay, break her heart! no less. You can’t terrify me, man, by those angry looks. You can’t wound me, either, by retaliating, and calling me a dependant. I know I am such. I know well all the ignominy, all the shame; but I know, too, all the misery of the position. But, mark me, the disgrace and the sorrow end where they begin, with myself alone. I have none to blush for me; I stand alone in the world, a poor, scathed, sapless, leafless trunk. But it is not so with you. Come, come, Dalton, you fancy that you know something of life because you have passed so many years of it among your equals and neighbors in your own ‘country; but you know nothing absolutely nothing of the world as it exists here.”

A hearty but contemptuous laugh broke from Dalton as he heard this speech. It was indeed somewhat of a surprise to listen to such a charge. He, Peter Dalton, that knew a spavined horse, or could detect a windgall better than any man in the county; he, that never was “taken in” by a roarer, nor deceived by a crib-biter, to tell him that he knew nothing of life!

“That’ll do, doctor, that’ll do,” said he, with a most compassionating smile at the other’s ignorance. “I hope you know more about medicine than you seem to do about men and women;” and, with these words, he left the room, banging the door after him as he went, and actually ashamed that he had been betrayed into warmth by one so evidently deficient in the commonest knowledge of the world.

“I ‘m sorry I kept you waiting, girls,” said he, approaching them. “And, indeed, I might have spent my time better, too. But no matter; we must try and find out her Ladyship now, for the morning is slipping over.”