Kitabı oku: «The Daltons; Or, Three Roads In Life. Volume I», sayfa 26

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.

The narrative was a very long one; nor was it rendered more succinct by the manner of the narrator, nor the frequent interruptions to which, for explanation’s sake, Foglass subjected him. Shall we own, too, that the punch had some share in the intricacy, Dalton’s memory and Foglass’s perceptions growing gradually more and more nebulous as the evening wore on. Without at all wishing to impugn Dalton’s good faith, it must be owned that, what between his occasional reflections, his doubts, guesses, surmises, and suspicions, his speculations as to the reason of this and the cause of that, it was very difficult for a man so deeply versed in punch as Foglass to carry away anything like a clear notion of the eventful occurrences related. The strength of the potation, the hour, the length of the story, the parenthetical interruptions, which, although only bypaths, often looked exactly like the high-road, and probably, too, certain inaccuracies in the adjustment of the ear-trumpet, which grew to be very difficult at last, all contributed, – more or less, to a mystification which finally resembled nothing so much as a very confused dream.

Had the worthy ex-Consul then been put on his oath, he could n’t have said whether or not Sir Stafford had murdered the late Mr. Godfrey, or if that crime should be attributed to Dalton’s late wife. Between Sir Gilbert Stafford and Sir Stafford Onslow, he had a vague suspicion of some Siamese bond of union, but that they were cut asunder late in life, and were now drifting in different currents, he also surmised. But which of them “got the fortune,” and which had not, who held the estate at present, and how Dalton came to be there at that moment relating the story, were Chinese puzzles to him.

Murder, matrimony, debts, difficulties, and Chancery suits danced an infernal reel through his brain; and, what with the scattered fragments of Irish life thrown in incidentally, of locking dinner-parties in, and barring the sheriff out, of being chased by bailiffs, or hunting them, all these divertissements ending in a residence abroad, with its manifold discomforts and incongruities, poor Foglass was in a state which, were it only to be permanent, would have presented a spectacle of very lamentable insanity.

The nearest approach to a fact that he could come to was that Dalton ought to be enormously rich, and that now he hadn’t a sixpence; that the wealthy banker was somehow the cause, Count Stephen being not altogether blameless; and that Kate was living a life of extravagance and waste, while her father and sister were waging a hard fight with the very “grimmest” of poverty.

“L’homme propose,” &c., says the adage; and the poet tells us an instance, that “those who came to scoff remained to pray.” So in the present case, Mr. Foglass, whose mission was to pump Peter Dalton out of every family secret and circumstance, had opened such an unexpected stream of intelligence upon himself that he was actually carried away in the flood.

“You’ve been badly used, Dalton,” said he, at last. “I may say, infamously treated! Not only your fortune taken away, but your children torn from you!”

“Ay, just so.” Dalton liked sympathy too well to cavil about his title to it. “True for you, a harder case than mine you ‘ll not hear of in a summer’s day. My elegant fine place, my beautiful domain, the seat of my ancestors, or, if they were n’t, they were my wife’s, and that ‘s all the same; and to be sitting here, in a foreign country r hundreds of miles away from home. Oh dear, oh dear! but that’s a change!” For an instant the thought overwhelmed him, and he was silent; then, fixing his eyes on Foglass, he added, in a dreamy soliloquy, “Hundreds of miles away from home, drinking bad brandy, with a deaf chap in a red wig for company.”

“I call yours a case of downright oppression, Dalton,” resumed the other, who fortunately overheard nothing of the last remark. “If you had been residing in Persia or the Caucasus even in the Danubian Provinces we ‘d have made you a case for the Foreign Office. You ‘d have had your compensation, sir. Ay, faith! you ‘d have had a good round sum for the murder of your father, old what ‘s his name? You ‘d have had your claim, sir, for the loss of that fine boy the Austrians have taken from you, Mrs. Dalton’s wardrobe, and all that sort of thing. I must repeat my conviction, you ‘ve been grossly infamously treated!”

“And just to think of my own flesh and blood, Stephen, my uncle!”

“I can’t think of him, sir! I can’t bear to think of him!” cried Foglass, with enthusiasm.

“A count of the Empire!” resumed Dalton; “a field-marshal, and a something else, with his Maria Teresa!”

“At his age he might give up those habits,” said Foglass, who had converted the Cross of the Empress into a very different relationship.

“And now, there ‘s Kate,” said Dalton, who never heard his comment, “there ‘s Kate, my own favorite of them all! thinks no more about us than if we did n’t belong to her!”

“Living in splendor!” mumbled Foglass. “Boundless extravagance!”

“Just so! Wasting hundreds flinging the money about like chaff!”

“I saw a ball dress of hers myself, at Madame Fanchone’s, that was to cost three thousand francs!”

“Three thousand francs! How am I to bear it all?” exclaimed Dalton, fiercely. “Will any man tell me how an Irish gentleman, with an embarrassed estate, and in the present times, can meet such extravagance as that? Three thousand francs! and, maybe, for a flimsy rag that wouldn’t stand a shower of rain! Oh, Fogles, you don’t know the man that ‘s sitting before you, hale and stout and hearty as he looks, the trials he has gone through, and the troubles he has faced, just for his children. Denying himself every enjoyment in life!” (here he sipped his glass), “giving up every little comfort he was used to!” (another sip), “all for his family! Look at my coat; feel the wool of it. See my breeches; ‘tis like the hide of a bear they are. Take notice of my shoes; and there’s my purse, with two florins and eight kreutzers in it; and, may I never see glory, if I don’t owe a little bill in every shop that will trust me! And for what? answer me that, for what?”

Although the savage energy with which this question was put would have extorted an answer from the least willing witness, Foglass was unable to reply, and only stared in mute astonishment.

“I’ll tell you for what, Fogles,” resumed Dalton, with a stroke of his clenched fist on the table, “I’ll tell you for what! To have a son in the Hussars, and a daughter in all the height of fashion and fine life! That ‘s it, Fogles. My boy keeping company with all the first people in Austria, hand and glove with what ‘s his name? something like ‘Misty,’ or ‘Hazy’ I forget it now dining, driving, and shooting with them. And my girl, Kate. But sure you know better than myself what style she ‘s keeping! That ‘s the reason I ‘m what you see me here, pining away in solitude and small means! All for my children’s sake!”

“It is highly meritorious. It does you honor, Dalton,” said the other, emphatically.

“Well, I hope it does,” said he, with a sigh. “But how few know it, after all!”

“And has this same Sir Stafford never taken any steps towards recompensing you? Has there been nothing like an amende for the great losses you ‘ve sustained?”

“Oh, indeed, to do him justice, he made me a kind of an offer once; but you see it was hampered with so many conditions and restrictions, and the like, that I rejected it with contempt. ‘No!’ says I, ‘‘t is n’t poverty will ever make me demean the old family! The Daltons won’t suffer disgrace from me!’”

“He could have assisted you without such an alternative, Dalton.”

“Maybe he could, indeed!” sighed the other.

“I know it well; the man is one of the richest in England; the head of a great bank, besides, making thousands every week.”

“I often thought of that,” said Dalton. “Sure it would cost him little just to discount a small thing for me at three months. I’d take care to meet it, of course; and he’d never lose a sixpence by me. Indeed, he’d be gaining; for he ‘d have the commission, and the discount, and the interest, and the devil knows what besides of law expenses – ”

Here he stopped abruptly, for he had unwittingly strayed into another and very different hypothesis regarding the fate of his bill. However, he pulled up short, tossed off his punch, and said, “I only wish he ‘d do it!”

“Why not try him, then? you ought, at least, to give yourself the chance.”

“And, if he refused me, I’d have to call him out,” said Dalton, gravely; “and just see all the confusion that would lead to. My daughter on a visit there, myself here, and, maybe, obliged to go hundreds of miles to meet him, and no end to the expense, taking a friend with me, too. No, no! that would be too selfish entirely.”

“What if you were to throw out a hint, when you write to your daughter, allude to present pressure for money; speak of tenants in arrear; remittances not arrived?”

“Oh, faith! there’s no need prompting me about these things,” said Dalton, with a bitter laugh. “I know them too well already.”

“Write a few lines, then; you’ll find paper and pens on that table. I ‘ve told you that I will send it under my own seal, with the despatches.”

Dalton was very little given to letter-writing at any period; but to encounter the labor at night by candle-light, and after a few hours’ carouse, seemed to him quite out of the question. Still, the Embassy seal, whatever that might be, was no common temptation. Perhaps he fancied it to be like one of those portentous appendages which are seen attached to royal grants! Who can tell what amount of wax and ribbon his imagination bestowed upon it! Besides this, there was another motive, never again, perhaps, should he be able to write without Nelly’s knowledge. This consideration decided the question at once. Accordingly, he put on his spectacles, and seated himself gravely to the work, which proceeded thus:

DEAR KATE, I ‘m spending the evening with your friend the Ambassador of I forget where – Fogles is his name and as pleasant a man as I ever met; and he sends his regards to you and all the family, and transmits this under his own seal. Things is going on bad enough here. Not a shilling out of Crognoborraghan. Healey ran away with the November rent and the crops, and Sweeney ‘s got into the place, and won’t give it up to any one with out he gets forty pound! I ‘d give him forty of my teeth as soon, if I had them! Ryan shot Mr. Johnson coming home from work, and will be hanged on Saturday; and that ‘s in our favor, as he was a life in Honan’s lease. There ‘s no money in Ireland, Kellet tells me, and there ‘s none here. Where the blazes is it all gone to? Maybe, like the potatoes ‘t is dying out! Frank ‘s well sick of soldiering; they chained him up like a dog, with his hand to his leg, the other night for going to the play; and if he was n’t a born gentleman, he says, they ‘d have given him “four-and-twenty,” as he calls it, with a stick for impudence. Stephen ‘s no more good to him than an old umbrella, never gave him bit nor sup! Bad luck to the old Neygur I can’t speak of him. Nelly goes on carving and cutting away as before. There ‘s not a saint in the calendar she did n’t make out of rotten wood this winter, and little Hans buys them all, at a fair price, she says; but I call a Holy Family cheap at ten florins, and ‘t is giving the Virgin away to sell her for a Prussian dollar. ‘T is a nice way for one of the Daltons to be living by her own industry! I often wish for you back here; but I ‘d be sorry, after all, ye ‘d come, for the place is poorer than ever, and you ‘re in good quarters, and snug where you are. Tell me how they treat you if they’re as kind as before and how is the old man, and is the gout bad with him still? I send you in this a little bill Martin Cox, of Drumsnagh, enclosed me for sixty-two ten-and-eight. Could you get the old Baronet to put his name on it for me? Tell him ‘t is as good as the bank paper, that Cox is as respectable a man as any in Leitrim, and an estated gentleman, like myself, and of course that we’ll take care to have the cash ready for it when due. This will be a great convenience to me, and Fogles says it will be a pleasure to Sir Stafford, besides extending his connection among Irish gentlemen. If he seems to like the notion, say that your father is well known in Ireland, and can help him to a very lively business in the same way. Indeed, I ‘d have been a fortune to him myself alone, if he ‘d had the discounting of me for the last fifteen years! Never mind this, however, for bragging is not genteel; but get me his name, and send me the “bit of stiff” by return of post. If he wants to be civil, maybe he ‘ll put it into the bank himself, and send me the money; and if so, let the order be on Haller and Oelcher, for I ‘ne a long account with Koch and Elz, and maybe they ‘d keep a grip of the cash, and I ‘d just be where I was before. If I can get out of this next spring – it would be a great economy, for I owe something to everybody, and a new place always gives courage. I ‘m hesitating whether I ‘ll go to Genoa or New York, but cheapness will decide me, for I only live now for my family.

With all my affection,

Believe me your fond father,

PETER DALTON.

P. S. If Sir S. would rather have my own acceptance, let him draw for a hundred, at three months, and I ‘m ready; but don’t disappoint me, one way or other. Wood is fifteen florins a “klafter” here, now, and I ‘ve nobody to cut it when it comes home, as Andy took a slice out of his shin on Friday last with the hatchet, and is in bed ever since. Vegetables, too, is dear; and since Frank went, we never see a bit of game.

2nd P. S. If you had such a thing as a warm winter cloak that you did n’t want, you might send it to Nelly. She goes out in a thing like a bit of brown paper, and the wooden shoes is mighty unhandy with her lameness. Mind the bill.

“You are writing a rather lengthy despatch, Dalton,” said Foglass, who had twice dozed off to sleep, and woke again, only to see him still occupied with his epistle.

“It’s done now,” said Dalton, with a sigh; for, without well knowing why, he was not quite satisfied with the performance.

“I wish you ‘d just add a line, to say that Mrs. Ricketts, Mrs. Major-General Ricketts, who resides at Florence, is so desirous to know her. You can mention that she is one of the first people, but so exclusive about acquaintance, that it is almost impossible to get presented to her; but that this coming winter the Embassy will, in all likelihood, open a door to so desirable an object.”

“Lady Hester will know her, of course?” said Dalton, whose sense of proprieties was usually clear enough when selfishness did not interfere, “and I don’t see that my daughter should extend her acquaintance through any other channel.”

“Oh, very true; it’s of no consequence. I only meant it as an attention to Miss Dalton; but your observation is very just,” said Foglass, who suddenly felt that he was on dangerous ground.

“Depend upon ‘t, Fogles, my daughter is in the best society of the place, whatever it is. It ‘s not a Dalton would be left out.”

Foglass repeated his most implicit conviction in this belief, and did all in his power to efface the memory of the suggestion, but without success. Family pride was a kind of birdlime with old Dalton, and if he but touched, he could not leave it. The consequences, however, went no further than a long and intricate dissertation on the Dalton blood for several centuries back, through which Foglass slept just as soundly as the respected individuals there recorded, and was only awoke at last by Dalton rising to take leave, an event at last suggested by the empty decanter.

“And now, Fogles,” said he, summing up, “you’ll not wonder, that if we ‘re poor we ‘re proud. I suppose you never heard of a better stock than that since you were born?”

“Never, by Jove! Guelphs, Ghibellines, and Hapsburgs are nothing to them. Good-night, good-night! I ‘ll take care of your letter. It shall go to-morrow in the Embassy bag.”