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

With what interest, too, she would follow each trifling occurrence of their daily life; the progress Nelly was making in her last group; its difficulties how would she ponder over, and wonder how to meet them! With what eager curiosity would she read the commonest details of the household, the dreary burden of a winter’s tale! and how her heart bounded to hear of Frank the soldier although all the tidings were that he was with his regiment, but “spoke little of himself or the service.”

Now, however, the glow of delight which a letter used to bring up was changed for a deep blush of anxiety and shame, anxiety, she knew not wherefore or how; of shame, because Nelly’s writing on the address was quaint and old-fashioned; while the paper and the seal bespoke the very lowliest acquaintance with epistolary elegance. The letter she used to grasp at with a high-beating heart she now clutched with greater eagerness, but in terror lest others should see and mark its vulgar exterior!

How differently, too, did the contents affect her! So long as they referred to herself, in her own latest narrative of her life, she read with avidity and pleasure. Nelly’s innocent wonderment was a very delightful sensation; her affectionate participation in her happiness was all grateful; even her gentle warnings against the seductions of such a career were not unpleasing; but the subject changed to home, and what an alteration came over her spirit! How dark and dismal became the picture, how poverty-stricken each incident and event, what littleness in every detail, how insignificant the occupations that interested them!

How great the surprise she felt at their interest in such trifles; how astonished that their hopes and fears, their wishes or their dreads, could take so mean a form! This came with peculiar force before her, from a paragraph that closed Nelly’s last letter, and which ran thus:

“Think of our happiness, dearest Kate! We have just seen one who saw you lately, one of your Florence acquaintances; and I believe I might go further and say friends, for the terms in which he spoke of you evinced sincere and true regard. It was so kind of him to find us out, just to come and tell us about you; indeed, he remained a day here for no other purpose, since his diplomatic duties were urging him to England with speed.”

When Kate had read thus far, she stopped, her face and neck crimson with shame, and her heart beating almost audibly. With lightning rapidity she ran over to herself three or four names of ministers and envoys who had lately left Florence, trembling to think it might be the gorgeous Russian, Naradskoi, the princely Neapolitan, Carnporese, or the haughty Spaniard, Don Hernandez Orloes, who had visited their humble interior. What a humiliation for her, if she were ever to see them again! Home, at that instant, presented itself before her but as the witness of her shame: how sordid and miserable did its poverty appear, and with what vulgarity associated! Her poor old father, around whose neck but a moment before she would have hung with rapture, she shrank from with very terror: his dress, his look, his accent every word he spoke, every allusion he made, were tortures to her; and Nelly even Nelly how she blushed to fancy her humble guise and poor exterior; the little dress of colored wool, from the pockets of which her carving-tools appeared; and then how the scene rose before her! her father producing Nelly’s last work, some little group in clay or wood. She pictured to herself his pride, her sister’s bashfulness, the stranger’s pretended admiration! Till now, these emotions had never seen a counterfeit. Oh, how she shuddered as her thoughts took more and more the colors of reality, and the room itself, and its poverty-struck furniture, rose before her! At last she read on:

“His visit was of course a great honor, and probably, had he come on any other errand but to speak of you, we should have been half overwhelmed with the condescension; but in very truth, Kate, I quite forgot all his greatness and his grandeur, and lost sight of his ever holding any higher mission than to bring news of my dearest sister. Papa, of course, asked him to dinner. I believe he would have invited the Czar himself under like circumstances; but, fortunately for us, for him, and perhaps for you too, he was too deaf to hear the request, and politely answered that he would send my letter to you with pleasure, under his own diplomatic seal; and so we parted. I ought to add that Mr. Foglass intends speedily to return to Florence.”

Three or four times did Kate read this name over before she could persuade herself that she had it aright. Foglass! she had never even heard of him. The name was remarkable enough to remember, as belonging to a person of diplomatic rank, and yet it was quite new to her. She turned to Lady Hester’s invitation book, but no such name was there. What form her doubts might have taken there is no knowing, when Mr. Albert Jekyl was seen to cross the courtyard, and enter the house.

Knowing that if any could, he would be the person to resolve the difficulty, she hastened downstairs to meet him.

“Mr. Jekyl,” cried she, hurriedly, “is there such a man as Mr. Foglass in this breathing world of ours?”

“Of course there is, Miss Dalton,” said he, smiling at her eagerness.

“A minister or an envoy at some court?”

“Not that I have ever heard,” repeated he, with a more dubious smile.

“Well, a secretary of embassy, perhaps? something of that kind? Who is he? what is he? where does he belong to?”

“You mean Bob, Miss Dalton,” said he, at once puffing out his cheeks and running his hand through his hair, till it became a very good resemblance of the ex-Consul’s wig, while, by a slight adjustment of his waistcoat, he imitated the pretentious presence of the mock royalty. “‘You mean Bob, madam,’” said he, mimicking his measured intonation and pompous tone, “‘Old Fogey, as Mathews always called me. Mathews and I and Townsend were always together, dined at Greenwich every Sunday regularly. What nights they were! Flows of reason, and feasts of eh? yes, that’s what they were.’”

“I must remind you that I never saw him,” said she, laughing; “though I’m certain, if I should hereafter, it will not be very hard to recognize him. Now, who is he?”

“He himself says, a grandson of George the Fourth. Less interested biographers call him a son of Foglass and Crattles, who, I believe, were not even coachmakers to royalty. He was a consul at Ezmeroum, or some such place. At least, they showed him the name on a map, and bade him find it out; but he found out something more, it seems, that there was neither pay nor perquisites, neither passports nor peculation; and he has brought back his wisdom once again to besiege the Foreign Office. But how do you happen to ask about him?”

“Some of my friends met him in Germany,” said she, hesitatingly. She might have blushed, had Jekyl looked at her; but he knew better, and took pains to bestow his glances in another direction.

“It would be kind to tell them that the man is a most prying, inquisitive sort of creature, who, if he only had the sense of hearing, would be as mischievous as Purvis.”

“I fancy they will see but little of him,” said she, with a saucy toss of the head. “He made their acquaintance by affecting to know me. I ‘m sure I ‘ve no recollection of having ever seen him.”

“Of course you never knew him, Miss Dalton!” replied he, with a subdued horror in his voice as he spoke.

“A letter for you, Mademoiselle,” said the servant to Kate; “and the man waits for an answer.”

Kate broke the seal with some trepidation. She had no correspondents nearer than her home, and wondered what this might mean. It was in a strange commotion of spirit that she read the following lines:

“Mrs. Montague Ricketts presents her respectful compliments to Miss Dalton, and begs to know at what hour to-day Mrs. M. R. may wait upon Miss D., to present a letter which has been committed to Mrs. R.‘s hands for personal delivery. It may secure an earlier hour of audience if Mrs. R. mentions that the precious document is from Miss D.‘s father.”

What could this possibly mean? It was but that very same day the post brought her a letter from Nelly. Why had not her father said what he wished to say, in that? What need of this roundabout, mysterious mode of communicating?

The sight of the servant still in waiting for the answer recalled her from these cross-questionings, and she hurried away to consult Lady Hester about the reply.

“It’s very shocking, my dear child,” said she, as she listened to the explanation. “The Ricketts, they tell me, is something too dreadful; and we have escaped her hitherto. You could n’t be ill, could you?”

“But the letter?” said Kate, half smiling, half provoked.

“Oh, to be sure the letter! But Buccellini, you know, might take the letter, and leave it, with unbroken seal, near you; you could read it just as well. I ‘m sure I read everything Sir Stafford said in his without ever opening it. You saw that yourself, Kate, or, with your scepticism, I suppose, you ‘d not believe it, for you are very sceptical; it is your fault of faults, my dear. D’Esmonde almost shed tears about it, the other day. He told me that you actually refused to believe in the Madonna della Torre, although he showed you the phial with the tears in it!”

“I only said that I had not seen the Virgin shed them,” said Kate.

“True, child! but you saw the tears; and you heard D’Esmonde remark, that when you saw the garden of a morning, all soaked with wet, the trees and flowers dripping, you never doubted that it had rained during the night, although you might not have been awake to hear or see it.”

Kate was silent; not that she was unprepared with an answer, but dreaded to prolong a discussion so remote from the object of her visit.

“Now, Protestant that I am,” said Lady Hester, with the triumphant tone of one who rose above all the slavery of prejudice, “Protestant that I am, I believe in the ‘Torre.’ The real distinction to make is, between what is above, and what is contrary to, reason, Kate. Do you understand me, child?”

“I’m sure Mrs. Ricketts’s visit must be both,” Kate said, adroitly bringing back the original theme.

“Very true; and I was forgetting the dear woman altogether. I suppose you must receive her, Kate; there ‘s no help for it! Say three o’clock, and I’ll sit in the small drawing-room, and, with the gallery and the library between us, I shall not hear her dreadful voice.”

“Has she such?” asked Kate, innocently.

“I’m sure I don’t know,” said Lady Hester, pettishly; “but of course she has! Those dreadful people always have! Make the visit as brief as possible, Kate. Let it not be a pretext for anything after. Use your eyeglass on every occasion, so that you can be short-sighted enough never to know her again. I have seen you very supercilious at times, child, it is precisely the manner for this interview. It was really very wrong of your papa to write in this fashion; or your sister, or whoever it was. Nobody thinks of anything but the post, nowadays. Pray tell them so; say it makes me quite nervous; you see I am nervous to-day! There, there! I don’t want to fret you, child but everything has gone wrong to-day. Midchekoff has given away his box, and I have promised mine to the Lucchesini; and that blond flounce is much too narrow, so Celestine tells me; but I ‘m sure she has cut a piece off it to make a ‘berthe’ for herself. And then the flowers are positively odious. They are crimson, instead of cherry-color, although I told Jekyl twice over they ought to be the very tint of Lady Melgund’s nose! There, now; goodbye. Remember all I’ve been saying, and don’t forget that this is a ‘giorno infelice,’ and everything one does will prove unlucky. I hope D’Esmonde will not come today. I ‘m really not equal to controversy this morning. I should like to see Buccellini, however, and have a globule of the Elysian essence. Bye-bye; do think better about the ‘Madonna della Torre,’ and get rid of that odious Ricketts affair as speedily as may be.”

With these injunctions, Kate withdrew to indite her reply to Mrs. Ricketts, appointing three o ‘clock on that same afternoon for a visit, which she assuredly looked forward to with more of curiosity than pleasure.

CHAPTER XXXI. A CONVIVIAL EVENING

IT is not necessary that the reader should participate in Kate Dalton’s mystification regarding her father’s letter, that document being simply a piece of Ricketts strategy, and obtained to secure an admission to the Mazzarini Palace, which, notwithstanding Lord Norwood’s assurances, still regained an impregnable fortress to all her assaults.

Foglass was then commissioned to induce Mr. Dalton to write something, anything, to his daughter, to be transmitted under the Embassy seal, a magnificent mode of conveyance, which was reason enough to call into exercise those powers of penmanship which, since he had ceased to issue promissory notes, had lain in the very rustiest state of disuse. The command to obtain this credential reached Foglass just as he was about to start from Baden; but being desirous, for various little social reasons, to conciliate the Ricketts’s esteem, he at once altered his arrangements, and feigning a sudden attack of gout, a right royal malady he took himself to bed, and sent a few lines to Dalton, detailing his misfortune, and entreating a visit.

Never backward in the cause of good-nature, poor Dalton sallied forth at night, and notwithstanding the cutting blasts of a north wind, and the sharp driftings of the half-frozen snow, held on his way to the “Russie,” where, in a very humble chamber for so distinguished a guest, lay Mr. Foglass in the mock agonies of gout.

“How devilish kind of you, how very considerate!” said Foglass, as he gave one finger of his hand to shake. “So like poor Townsend this, Lord Tom, we used to call him. Not wet, though, I hope?”

“And if I was, it would n’t be the first time. But how are you yourself, where is the pain?”

“You must speak louder; there ‘s a kind of damper on the voice in this room.”

“Where ‘s the pain?” screamed Dalton.

“There there no need to roar,” whispered the other. “The pain is here over the stomach, round the ribs, the back everywhere.”

“Ah, I know it well,” said Dalton, with a wry contortion of the face. “It’s the devil entirely when it gets under the short ribs! It begins like a rat nibbling you, as it might be, biting away little bits, with now and then a big slice that makes you sing out; and then the teeth begin to get hot, and he bites quicker, and tears you besides, sure I know it, this many a year.”

To this description, of which Foglass heard nothing, he bowed blandly, and made a sign to Dalton to be seated near him.

“You’d like a little wine-and-water, I’m sure,” said he, with the air of a man who rarely figured as a host, and liked it more rarely still.

“Spirits-and-water – boiling water with sugar and a squeeze of lemon, is what I ‘ll take; and see now, you ‘d not be worse of the same yourself. I ‘ve an elegant receipt for the gout, but whether it ‘s sulphur or saltpetre ‘s in it, I don’t well remember; but I know you mix it with treacle, ash-bark, and earthworms, the yolk of four eggs, and a little rosemary. But as you might n’t like the taste of it at first, we ‘ll just begin with a jug of punch.”

The waiter had by this time made his appearance, and the order being communicated by a most expressive pantomime of drinking, and a few solitary words of German Dalton possessed, the room assumed a look of sociality, to which Dalton’s presence very mainly contributed.

In the confidence such a moment of secrecy suggested, Foglass produced an ear-trumpet, a mark of the most unbounded good faith on his part, and which, had Dalton known him better, he would have construed into a proof of implicit reliance on his honor.

“I’ve been many years at Constantinople,” said he, adjusting the instrument, “and the confounded muezzin has made me a little deaf. It’s an everlasting calling to prayers, day and night, there.”

“How they ever expect to get to heaven by tormentin’, and teasin’, is more than I know,” said Dalton.

“They ‘re Mahomedans!” said Foglass, with the air of a man uttering a profound sentiment.

“Ay, to be sure,” observed Dalton; “it’s not like Christians. Now, is it true, they tell me they never eat salt meat!”

“Never!”

“Think of that! Not a bit of corned beef, nor as much as a leg of pork – ”

“Would n’t hear of it,” interrupted Foglass. “Wine, too, is forbidden.”

“And punch?”

“Of course, punch also. A pipe, a cup of coffee, the bath, and a little opium are the luxuries of Turkish existence.”

“To the devil I fling them all four,” cried Dalton, impatiently. “How a man is to be social beside a coffeepot, or up to his neck in hot water, beats me entirely. Faix! I don’t envy the Turks!” And he sipped his glass as he spoke, like one who had fallen upon a happier destiny.

“If you ‘ll mix me a very small glass of that punch, I’d like to propose a toast,” said Foglass.

“There, now, that’s spoke like a sensible man; pleasant company and social enjoyment are the greatest enemies to the gout. Make your mind easy, and keep your heart light, and the devil a fear but your knees will get limber, and the swellin’ will leave your ankles; but weak punch and tiresome people would undermine the best constitution in the world. Taste that.”

To judge from Mr. Foglass’s face, Dalton had at least provided one element of health for his companion.

“It is very strong very strong, indeed!” said he, puckering up his eyes.

“It’s the fault of the water hereabouts,” said Dalton. “It doesn’t mix right with the spirits; so that one half the first, generally of your liquor tastes stiff, but the bottom is mild as milk.”

The explanation gave such encouragement to Foglass, that he drank away freely, and it was only when he had finished that he remembered his intention of giving a toast.

“Now, Mr. Dalton,” said he, as he sat up with a replenished glass in his hand, “I am going to redeem my pledge, and about to give you the health of the most beautiful girl in Italy, one whose attractions are the theme of every tongue, and whose ambitions may realize any height, or attain any eminence, that she pleases.”

“Here ‘s to you, Kate Dalton,” broke in the father, “my own sweet child; and if you only come back to me as you went away, the sorrow better I ask, or grander.”

“She will be a duchess; she may be a princess if she likes.”

“Who knows who knows?” said Dalton, as he hung down his head, and hammered away with his spoon at the sugar in his glass.

“Every one knows, every one sees it, Mr. Dalton,” said Foglass, authoritatively. “From the Archduke Ernest of Austria to the very pages of the court, all are her worshippers and admirers. She’ll come back to you with a proud name and a high coronet, Mr. Dalton.”

“The devil a better than Dalton ever ‘twill be! that I can tell you. ‘T is n’t yesterday we took it, the same name; there ‘s stones in the churchyard of Ballyhack can show who we are; and if she married the – the God forgive me, I was going to say the Pope, but I meant the Grand Turk she would n’t be better than she is now, as Kate Dalton.”

“Not better, certainly, but in a more exalted rank, in a position of more recognized distinction,” said Foglass, blandly.

“No; nor that neither,” cried Dalton, angrily. “The Daltons goes back to the ancient times of all. There ‘s one of our name in the Bible. I ‘m not sure where, but I believe it ‘s in the Book of Kings, or maybe the Psalms; but wherever it is, he was a real gentleman, living on his own estate, with his livery-servants, and his horses, and everything in good style about him; high on the grand jury, maybe the sheriff of the county.”

Foglass, who had followed this description but imperfectly, could only bow in a deep acknowledgment of what he did not understand.

“The man that marries Kate Dalton isn’t doing a piece of condescension, anyhow! that I can tell him. The dirty acres may slip away from us, but our good blood won’t.”

“No man has a higher veneration for blood, sir,” said Foglass, proudly; “few men have better reason for the feeling.”

“Is Fogles an old stock?” asked Dalton, eagerly.

“Foglass, like Fitzroy, sir, may mean more than loyalty would dare to avow. My father, Mr. Dalton But this is a very sad theme with me, let us change it; let us drink to a better feeling in our native land, when that abominable statute may be erased from our code, when that offspring of suspicion and distrust shall no longer be the offence and opprobrium of Englishmen. Here ‘s to its speedy and everlasting repeal!”

The word was talismanic to Dalton, connected, as it was, in his mind with but one subject. He arose at once, and holding up his goblet in the air, cried out,

“Hip! hip! hurrah! three cheers and success to it! Repeal forever!”

Foglass echoed the sentiment with equal enthusiasm, and draining his glass to the bottom, exclaimed,

“Thank you, Dalton! thank you; the heartiness of that cheer tells me we are friends; and although you know not what my feelings are indeed none can you can execrate with honest indignation those hateful unions!”

“Bad luck to it!” exclaimed Dalton, with energy. “We never had grace nor luck since we saw it!”

“Those petty German sovereigns, with their territories the size of Hyde Park!” said Foglass, with intense contempt.

“Just so. The Hessians!” chimed in Dalton, who had a faint consciousness that the other was alluding to the troops of the Electorate, once quartered in Ireland.

“Let us change the topic, Dalton,” said Foglass, pathetically, as he wiped his brow like a man dispelling a dark train of thought. “Here’s to that charming young lady I saw last evening, a worthy sister of the beautiful Miss Dalton.”

“A better child never breathed,” said Dalton, drinking off his glass. “My own poor Nelly,” muttered he, below his breath, “‘t is better than handsome ye are, true-hearted, and fond of your old father.”

“She has accomplishments, sir, that would realize a fortune; that is,” said he, perceiving the dark cloud that passed over Dalton’s features, “that is, if she were in a rank of life to need it.”

“Yes very true just so,” stammered out Dalton, not quite sure how to accept the speech. “‘Tis a fine thing to be able to make money, not that it was ever the gift of the Daltons. We were real gentlemen to the backbone; and there was n’t one of the name for five generations, barring Stephen, that could earn sixpence if he was starving.”

“But Stephen, what could he do?” inquired Foglass, curious to hear of this singular exception to the family rule.

“He took to soldiering in the Austrian army, and he ‘s a field-marshal, and I don’t know what more beside, this minute. My son Frank ‘s there now.”

“And likes it?”

“Troth, he does n’t say a great deal about that. His letter is mighty short, and tells very little more than where he ‘s quartered, how hard-worked he is, and that he never gets a minute to himself, poor fellow!”

“Miss Kate, then, has drawn the prize in the lottery of life?” said Foglass, who was anxious to bring the subject back to her.

“Faix, that’s as it may be,” said the other, thoughtfully. “Her letters is full of high life and great people, grand dances and balls, and the rest of it; but sure, if she ‘s to come back here again and live at home, won’t it come mighty strange to her?”

“But in Ireland, when you return there, the society, I conclude, is very good?” asked Foglass, gradually drawing him on to revelations of his future intentions and plans.

“Who knows if I’ll ever see it again? The estate has left us. ‘T is them Onslows has it now. It might be in worse hands, no doubt; but they ‘ve no more right to it than you have.”

“No right to it, how do you mean?”

“I mean what I say, that if every one had their own, sorrow an acre of that property would be theirs. ‘T is a long story, but if you like to hear it, you ‘re welcome. It ‘s more pleasure than pain to me to tell it, though many a man in my situation would n’t have the heart to go over it.”

Foglass pronounced his willingness at once; and, a fresh jorum of punch being concocted, Dalton commenced that narrative of his marriage, widowhood, and loss of fortune, of which the reader already knows the chief particulars, and with whose details we need not twice inflict him.