The Daltons Volume I Part 51

"A better child never breathed," said Dalton, drinking off his gla.s.s.

"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 pa.s.sed 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 Fogla.s.s, 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 Fogla.s.s, 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 b.a.l.l.s, 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 Fogla.s.s, 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."

Fogla.s.s p.r.o.nounced 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, Fogla.s.s subjected him. Shall we own, too, that the punch had some share in the intricacy, Dalton's memory and Fogla.s.s's perceptions growing gradually more and more nebulous as the evening wore on. Without at all wis.h.i.+ng 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 Fogla.s.s 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. G.o.dfrey, 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 divertiss.e.m.e.nts ending in a residence abroad, with its manifold discomforts and incongruities, poor Fogla.s.s 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. Fogla.s.s, whose mission was to pump Peter Dalton out of every family secret and circ.u.mstance, 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 t.i.tle 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 Fogla.s.s, 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 Fogla.s.s, 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 Fogla.s.s, who had converted the Cross of the Empress into a very different relations.h.i.+p.

"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 Fogla.s.s. "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 embarra.s.sed 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 gla.s.s), "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, Fogla.s.s 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 a.s.sisted 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'