The Daltons Volume II Part 4

"Perfectly,--thoroughly so!"

"Well, then, just hand that note to Sir Stafford." Here he placed a sealed letter in Grounsell's hand. "Tell him what I've just told you.

Let him fairly understand the whole question, and let me have the contents this evening at the _cafe_ in the Santa Trinita,--say about nine o'clock; not later than that These fellows always gather about that hour."

"I'll take care of it," said Grounsell.

"All right!" cried Norwood, gayly, as he arose and adjusted the curls beneath his hat. "My compliments to the old gent, and tell George not to make himself uneasy. He 's in safe hands. Good-bye."

"Good-bye, my Lord, good-bye," said Grounsell, who, as he looked after him, felt, as it were, unconsciously recurring to all his former prejudices and dislikes of the n.o.ble Viscount "Those fellows," muttered he, "are as inexplicable to me as a new malady, of which I neither know the stages nor the symptoms. The signs I take for those of health may be precisely the indications of corruption; and what I deem unsound may turn out to be exactly the opposite." And so be fell into a musing fit, in which certainly his estimate of Lord Norwood continued steadily to fall lower and lower the longer he thought of him. "He must be a rogue!--he must be a scoundrel! Nature makes all its blackguards plausible, just as poison-berries are always brilliant to look at They are both intended to be the correctives of rash impressions, and I was only a fool ever to be deceived by him. Out of this, at all hazards,--that's the first thing!" muttered Grounsell to himself, as he walked hastily up and down the room. "The place is like a plague district, and we must not carry an infected rag away from it! Glorious Italy, forsooth! There's more true enlightenment, there's a higher purpose, and a n.o.bler view of life in the humblest English village, than in the proudest halls of their Eternal City!"

In such pleasant reflections on national character he entered Sir Stafford's room, and found his friend seated at a table covered with newly arrived letters; the seals were all unbroken, and the sick man was turning them over, and gazing at the different handwritings with a sad and listless apathy.

"I 'm glad you 've come, Grounsell. I have not courage for this," said he, pointing to the ma.s.s of letters before him.

"Begging impostors, one half of them, I 'll be sworn!" said Grounsell, seating himself to the work. "Was I not right? Here's a Cabinet Minister suing for your vote on an Irish question, and entreating your speedy return to England, 'where, he trusts, the object you are both interested in may be satisfactorily arranged.' Evasive rascal! Could n't he say, 'you shall have the Peerage for your support'? Would n't it be more frank and more intelligible to declare, 'We take you at your price'?

These," said he, throwing half a dozen contemptuously from him, "are all from your const.i.tuents. The 'independent borough' contains seventy electors; and if you owned the patronage of the two services, with a fair share of the public offices and India, you could n't content them.

I 'd tell them fairly, 'I have bought you already; the article is paid for and sent home. Let us hear no more about it!' This is more cheering.

Shoenhals, of Riga, stands firm, and the Rotterdam house will weather the gale. That's good news, Onslow!" said he, grasping the old man's hand. "This is from Calcutta. Prospects are brightening a little in that quarter, too. Come, come,--there's some blue in the sky. Who knows what good weather 's in store for us?"

Onslow's lip trembled, and he pa.s.sed his hand over his eyes without speaking.

"This is from Como," said Grounsell, half angrily, tossing away a highly perfumed little three-cornered note.

"Give it to me,----let me see it," said Onslow, eagerly; while with trembling fingers he adjusted his spectacles to read. Grounsell handed him the epistle, and walked to the window.

"She's quite well," read Sir Stafford, aloud; "they had delightful weather on the road, and found Como in full beauty on their arrival."

Grounsell grumbled some angry mutterings between his teeth, and shrugged up his shoulders disdainfully. "She inquires most kindly after me, and wishes me to join them there, for Kate Dalton's betrothal."

"Yet she never took the trouble to visit you when living under the same roof!" cried Grounsell, indignantly.

The old man laid down the letter, and seemed to ponder for some moments.

"What's the amount?--how much is the sum?" asked Grounsell, bluntly.

"The amount!--the sum!----of what?" inquired Sir Stafford.

"I ask, what demand is she making, that it is prefaced thus?"

"By Heaven! if you were not a friend of more than fifty years' standing, you should never address me as such again," cried Onslow, pa.s.sionately.

"Has ill-nature so absorbed your faculties that you have not a good thought or good feeling left you?"

"My stock of them decreases every day,----ay, every hour, Onslow," said he, with a deeper emotion than he had yet displayed. "It is, indeed, a sorry compromise, that if age is to make us wiser, it should make us less amiable, also!"

"You are not angry with me?--not offended, Grounsell?" said Onslow, grasping his hand in both his own.

"Not a bit of it But, as to temperament, _I_ can no more help _my_ distrust, than _you_ can conquer _your_ credulity, which is a happier philosophy, after all."

"Then come, read that letter, Grounsell," said Onslow, smiling pleasantly. "Put your prejudices aside for once, and be just, if not generous."

Grounsell took the note, and walked to the window to read it. The note was just what he expected,--a prettily turned inquiry after her husband's health, interwoven with various little pleasantries of travelling, incidents of the road, and so forth. The invitation was a mere suggestion, and Grounsell was half angry at how little there was to find fault with; for, even to the "Very sincerely yours, Hester Onslow,"

all was as commonplace as need be. Accidentally turning over the page, however, he found a small slip of silver paper,--a bank check for five hundred pounds, only wanting Onslow's signature. Grounsell crushed it convulsively in his palm, and handed the note back to Onslow, without a word.

"Well, are you convinced?--are you satisfied now?" asked Onslow, triumphantly.

"I am perfectly so!" said Grounsell, with a deep sigh. "You must write, and tell her that business requires your immediate presence in England, and that George's condition will necessitate a return by sea. Caution her that the Daltons should be consulted about this marriage, which, so far as I know, they have not been; and I would advise, also, seeing that there may be some interval before you can write again, that you should send her a check,--say for five hundred pounds."

"So you _can_ be equitable,-Grounsell," cried the other, joyously.

"And here is a letter from Lord Norwood," said Grounsell, not heeding the remark, and breaking the seal as he spoke. "Laconic, certainly.

'Let me have the enclosed by this evening.--N.' The enclosed are five acceptances for two hundred each; the 'value received' being his Lords.h.i.+p's services in upholding your son's honor. Now here, at least, Onslow, I 'll have my own way." And, with these words, he seated himself at a table and wrote:----

My Lord,--Living in a land where a.s.sa.s.sination is cheap, and even men of small fortune can keep a Bravo, I beg to return your Lords.h.i.+p's bills, without submitting them to my friend for endors.e.m.e.nt, your price being considerably above the tariff of the country, and more calculated to your own exigencies than the occasion which it was meant to remunerate. I am, yours,

Paul Grounsell.

"What have you said there, Grounsell? you look so self-satisfied, it can scarcely be over-civil."

"There,----'To the Viscount Norwood'" said Grounsell, as he sealed and addressed the note. "We are getting through our work rapidly. In a week, or even less, if George's symptoms show nothing worse, we shall get away from this; and even on the sea one feels half as though it were England."

We need not follow Grounsell through the busy days which ensued, nor track him in his various negotiations with tradespeople, bankers, house-agents, and that legionary cla.s.s which are called "commissionaires." Enough if we say that, in arranging for the departure of his friends, his impressions of Italian roguery received many an additional confirmation; and that, when the last day of their sojourn arrived, his firm conviction was that none but a millionnaire could afford to live in this the very cheapest capital of Europe!

And now they are gone! steaming calmly away across the Gulf of Genoa.

They have closed the little episode of their life in Italy, and with heavy hearts are turning homeward. The great Mazzarini Palace looks sad and forlorn; nor do we mean to linger much longer on a scene whence the actors have departed.

CHAPTER III. A LAST SCENE

One last glance at the Mazzarini Palace, and we leave it forever.

Seated in the drawing-room where Lady Hester once held sway, in the very chair around which swarmed her devoted courtiers and admirers, Mrs.

Ricketts now reclined, pretty much on the same terms, and with probably some of the same sentiments, as Louis Blanc or his friend Albert might have experienced on finding themselves domesticated within the Palace of the Luxembourg. They were, so to say, parallel circ.u.mstances. There had been a great reverse of fortune, an abdication, and a flight. The sycophants of the day before were the masters now, and none disputed the pretensions of any bold enough to a.s.sume dictation. To be sure, Mrs.

Ricketts's rule, like Ledru Rollings, was but a provisional government; for already the bills for an approaching sale of everything were posted over the front of the palace, and Racca Morlache's people were cataloguing every article with a searching accuracy, very tormenting to the beholders.

From some confused impression that they were friends of Lady Hester, and that Mrs. Ricketts's health was in a precarious condition, Sir Stafford gave orders that they should not be molested in any way, but permitted to prolong their stay to the latest period compatible with the arrangement for sale. A sense of grat.i.tude, too, mingled with these feelings; for Mrs. Ricketts had never ceased to indite euphuistic notes of inquiry after George himself,--send presents of impracticable compounds of paste and preserves, together with bottles of mixtures, lotions, embrocations, and liniments, one t.i.the of which would have invalided a regiment Gronnsell, it is true, received these civilities in a most unworthy spirit; called her "an old humbug," with a very unpolite expletive annexed to it; and all but hurled the pharmacopoeia at the head of the messenger. Still, he had other cares too pressing to suffer his mind to dwell on such trifles; and when Onslow expressed a wish that the family should not be disturbed in their occupancy, he merely muttered, "Let them stay and be d-----d;" and thought no more of them.

Now, although the palace was, so to speak, dismantled, the servants discharged, the horses sent to livery for sale, the mere residence was convenient for Mrs. Ricketts. It afforded a favorable opportunity for a general "doing up of the Villino Zoe,"--a moment for which all her late ingenuity had not been able to provide. It opened a convenient occasion, too, for supplying her own garden with a very choice collection of flowers from the Mazzarini,--fuchsias, geraniums, and orchidae, being far beyond all the inventoriai science of Morlache's men; and lastly, it conferred the pleasing honor of dating all her despatches to her hundred correspondents from the Palazzo Mazzarini, where, to oblige her dear Lady Hester, she was still lingering,----"_Se sacrificando_" as she delighted to express it, "_Jai doveri dell' amicizia_." To these cares she had now vowed herself a martyr. The General believed in her sorrows; Martha would have sworn to them; and not a whit the less sincerely that she spent hours in secreting tulip roots and hyacinths, while a deeper scheme was in perpetration,--no less than to subst.i.tute a copy of a Gerard Dow for the original, and thus transmit the genius of the Ricketts family to a late posterity. Poor Martha would have a.s.sisted in a murder at her bidding, and not had a suspicion of its being a crime!

It was an evening "at home to her few most intimate friends," when Mrs. Ricketts, using the privilege of an invalid, descended to the drawing-room in a costume which united an ingenious compromise between the habit of waking and sleeping. A short tunic, a kind of female monkey-jacket, of faded yellow satin edged with swansdown, and a cap of the same material, whose shape was borrowed from that worn by the beef-eaters, formed the upper portion of a dress to which wide fur boots, with gold ta.s.sels, and a great hanging pocket, like a sabretasche, gave a false air of a military costume. "It was singular,"

she would remark, with a bland smile, "but very becoming!" Besides, it suited every clime. She used to come down to breakfast in it at Windsor Castle. "The Queen liked it;" the Bey of Tripoli loved it; and the Hospodar of Wallachia had one made for himself exactly from the pattern.

Her guests were the same party we have already introduced to our reader in the Villino Zoe,--Haggerstone, the Pole, and Fogla.s.s being the privileged few admitted into her august presence, and who came to make up her whist-table, and offer their respectful homage on her convalescence.

The Carnival was just over, the dull season of Lent had begun, and the Rickettses' tea-table was a resource when nothing else offered. Such was the argument of Haggerstone as he took a cheap dinner with Fogla.s.s at the Luna.

"She 's an infernal bore, sir,--that I know fully as well as you can inform me; but please to tell me who is n't a bore." Then he added, in a lower voice, "Certainly it ain't _you!_"

"Yes, yes,----I agree with you," said Fogla.s.s; "she has reason to be sore about the Onslows' treatment."