The Daltons Volume I Part 10

"Is he not mad, or a fool?" asked Haggerstone of the innkeeper.

"Neither, sir; Hans Roeckle is an old and respected burgher of our town, and although eccentric and odd in his way, is not wanting for good sense or good nature."

"Ay! ay!" cried two or three of his townsfolk, to whom the landlord translated the Colonel's question; "Hans is a kind-hearted fellow, and if he loves his dolls and wooden images over-much, he never lacks in affection for living creatures."

While these and such-like observations were making around him, the dwarf's wounds were being dressed by his friend, Ludwig Kraus, an operation of considerable pain, that the little fellow bore with heroic tranquillity. Not a word of complaint, not a syllable of impatience escaped him; and while from his half-closed lips a low, muttered exclamation of "Saved! saved!" came forth from time to time, the bystanders deemed it the utterance of grat.i.tude for his own escape with life.

But once only did any expression of irritation burst from him, it was when Haggerstone pulled out his purse, and with an ostentatious display of munificence asked him to name his recompense. "Take me home; take me hence!" said Hans, impatiently. "Tell the rich 'Englander' that there are wounds for which sorrow would be an ample cure, but there are others which insult is sure to fester."

CHAPTER VIII. THE NIGHT EXCURSION

THE remainder of the day after the dwarf's misfortune was pa.s.sed by Lady Hester in a state of feverish irritability. Sorry as she felt for the "sad accident," her own phrase, she was still more grieved for the effects it produced upon herself; the jar and worry of excited feelings, the uncomfortableness of being anxious about anything or anybody.

Epicurean in her code of manners as of morals, she detested whatever occasioned even a pa.s.sing sensation of dissatisfaction, and hence upon the luckless colonel, the author of the present evil, fell no measured share of her displeasure. "He should have taken precautions against such a mishap; he ought to have had sufficient presence of mind to have arrested his aim; he should have fired in the air, in fact, he ought to have done anything but what he did do;" which was to agitate the nerves, and irritate the sensibilities, of a fine lady.

The conduct of the family, too, was the very reverse of soothing. Sir Stafford's gout had relapsed on hearing of the event; George Onslow's anger was such that he could not trust himself to speak of the occurrence; and as for Sydney, though full of sorrow for the dwarf, she had not a single sympathy to bestow upon her stepmother. "Were there ever such people?" she asked herself again and again. Not one had taken the trouble to ask how she bore up, or express the slightest anxiety for the consequences the shock might occasion her.

Grounsell was actually insufferable; and even hinted that if anything untoward were to happen, the very grave question might arise as to the guilt of the parties who appeared in arms without a Government permission. He reminded her Ladys.h.i.+p that they were not in England, but in a land beset with its own peculiar prejudices and notions, and in nothing so rigorous as in the penalties on accidents that took their origin in illegality.

As for the wound itself, he informed her that the bullet had "traversed the deltoid, but without dividing the brachial artery; and, for the present, sympathetic fever and subcutaneous inflammation would be the worst consequences." These tidings were neither very rea.s.suring nor intelligible; but all her cross-examination could elicit little better.

"Has Colonel Haggerstone been to see him?" asked she.

"No, madam. His groom called with a present of two florins."

"Oh! impossible, sir."

"Perfectly true, madam. I was present when the money was returned to the man by a young lady, whose attentions to the sufferer saved him the pain this indignity would have cost him."

"A young lady, did you say? How does he happen to be so fortunate in his attendance?"

"Her father chances to be this poor creature's tenant, and many mutual acts of kindness have pa.s.sed between them."

"Not even scandal could asperse her motives in the present case," said Lady Hester, with an insolent laugh. "It looked hardly human when they lifted it from the ground."

"Scandal has been guilty of as gross things, madam," said Grounsell, sternly, "but I would defy her here, although there is beauty enough to excite all her malevolence." And with this speech, delivered with a pointedness there was no mistaking, the doctor left the room.

Impressions, or what she herself would have called "feelings," chased each other so rapidly through Lady Hester's mind, that her whole attention was now directed to the young lady of whom Grounsell spoke, and whose singular charity excited all her curiosity. There is a strange tendency to imitation among those whose intelligences lie unexercised by any call of duty or necessity. No suggestion coming from within, they look without themselves for occupation and amus.e.m.e.nt. Lady Hester was a prominent disciple of this school; all her life she had been following, eager to see whether the fas.h.i.+ons that became, or the pleasures that beguiled, others, might not suit herself. If such a course of existence inevitably conduces to ennui and discontent, it is no less difficult to strive against; and they who follow in the track of others' footsteps have all the weariness of the road without the cheering excitement of the journey.

If the young lady found pleasure in charity, why should n't she?

Benevolence, too, for aught she knew, might be very becoming. There were a hundred little devices of costume and manner which might be adopted to display it. What a pretty version of the good Samaritan modernized one might give in a Shetland scarf and a cottage bonnet the very thing Chalons would like to paint; and what an effective "interior" might be made of the dwarf's chamber, crowded with rude peasant faces, all abashed and almost awe-struck as she entered.

The longer she dwelt upon the theme the more fascinating it became. "It would be really worth while to realize," said she to herself at last "so amusing and so odd, an actual adventure; besides, in point of fact, it was her duty to look after this poor creature." Just so; there never was a frivolous action, or a notion struck out by pa.s.sing folly, for which its author could not find a justification in PRINCIPLE! We are everlastingly declaring against the knaveries and deceptions practised on us in life; but if we only took count of the cheats we play off upon ourselves, we should find that there are no such impostors as our own hearts.

n.o.body was ever less likely to make this discovery than Lady Hester. She believed herself everything that was good and amiable; she knew that she was handsome. Whatever contrarieties she met with in life, she was quite certain they came not from any fault of hers; and if self-esteem could give happiness, she must have enjoyed it. But it cannot. The wide neutral territory between what we think of ourselves and others think of us is filled with daring enemies to our peace, and it is impossible to venture into it without a wound of self-love.

To make her visit to the dwarf sufficient of an adventure, it must be done in secret; n.o.body should know it but Celestine, her maid, who should accompany her. Affecting a slight indisposition, she could retire to her room in the evening, and then there would be abundant time to put her plan into execution. Even these few precautions against discovery were needless, for George did not return to dinner on that day, and Sydney made a headache an excuse for not appearing.

Nothing short of the love of adventure and the indulgence of a caprice could have induced Lady Hester to venture out in such a night. The rain fell in torrents, and swooped along the narrow streets in channels swollen to the size of rivulets. The river itself, fed by many a mountain stream, fell tumbling over the rocks with a deafening roar, amid which the cras.h.i.+ng branches of the pine-trees were heard at intervals. What would not have been her anxieties and lamentings if exposed to such a storm when travelling, surrounded with all the appliances that wealth can compa.s.s! and yet now, of her own free will, she wended her way on foot through the darkness and the hurricane, not only without complaining, but actually excited to a species of pleasure in the notion of her imaginary heroism.

The courier who preceded her, as guide, enjoyed no such agreeable illusions, but muttered to himself, as he went, certain reflections by no means complimentary, to the whims of fine ladies; while Mademoiselle Celestine inwardly protested that anything, "not positively wrong,"

would be dearly purchased by the dangers of such an excursion.

"Gregoire! Gregoire! where is he now!" exclaimed Lady Hester, as she lost sight of her guide altogether.

"Here, miladi," grunted out the courier, in evident pain; "I fail to break my neck over de stone bench."

"Where 's the lantern, Gregoire?"

"Blowed away, zum Teufel, I believe." "What 's he saying, Celestine?

what does he mean?"

But mademoiselle could only answer by a sob of agony over her capote de Paris, flattened to her head like a Highland bonnet.

"Have you no light? You must get a light, Gregoire."

"Impossible, miladi; dere 's n.o.body livin' in dese houses at all."

"Then you must go back to the inn for one; we 'll wait here till you return."

A faint shriek from Mademoiselle Celestine expressed all the terror such a proposition suggested.

"Miladi will be lost if she remain here all alone."

"Perdue! sans doute!" exclaimed Celestiue.

"I am determined to have my way. Do as I bade you, Gregoire; return for a light, and we'll take such shelter as this door affords in the meanwhile."

It was in no spirit of general benevolence that Gregoire tracked his road back to the "Russie," since, if truth must be told, he himself had extinguished the light, in the hope of forcing Lady Hester to a retreat.

Muttering a choice selection of those pleasant phrases with which his native German abounds, he trudged along, secretly resolving that he would allow his mistress a reasonable interval of time to reflect over her madcap expedition. Meanwhile, Lady Hester and her maid stood s.h.i.+vering and storm-beaten beneath the drip of a narrow eave. The spirit of opposition alone sustained her Ladys.h.i.+p at this conjuncture, for she was wet through, her shoes soaked with rain, and the cold blast that swept along seemed as if it would freeze the very blood in her heart.

Celestine could supply but little of comfort or consolation, and kept repeating the words, "Quelle aventure! quelle aventure!" in every variety of lamentation.

"He could easily have been back by this," said Lady Hester, after a long pause, and an anxious attention to every sound that might portend his coming: "I 'm certain it is full half an hour since he left us. What a night!"

"Et quelle aventure!" exclaimed Celestine, anew.

None knew better than Lady Hester the significant depreciation of the Frenchwoman's phrase, and how differently had she rated all the hazards of the enterprise if any compromise of character were to have followed it. However, it was no time for discussion, and she let it pa.s.s.

"If he should have missed the way, and not be able to find us!" she said, after another pause.

"We shall be found dead in the morning," cried Celestine; "et pour quelle a venture, mon Dieu, pour quelle aventure!"

The possibility that her fears suggested, and the increasing severity of the storm for now the thunder rolled overhead, and the very ground seemed to shake with the reverberation served to alarm Lady Hester, and for the first time she became frightened at their situation.

"We could scarcely find our way back, Celestine!" said she, rather in the tone of one asking for comfort than putting a question.