The Daltons Volume I Part 27

"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 grat.i.tude."

"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 s.p.a.ce," 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 suns.h.i.+ne 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 pa.s.sion 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 companions.h.i.+p with the great and t.i.tled, she had a.s.sociated 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 ign.o.ble 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 companions.h.i.+p! 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 pa.s.sing 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 n.o.body 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 G.o.d 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 n.o.body 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 wis.h.i.+ng 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 Baithers.h.i.+n 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; n.o.body 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 s.p.a.ce," 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.