The Daltons; Or, Three Roads In Life. Volume I

“If I go wide of the mark, Colonel, I beg you to remember that I have not had a pistol in my hand for above three years; indeed, it must be nearly four years since I shot a match with Lord Norwood.”

“Lord Norwood! indeed!” said Haggerstone. “I wasn’t aware that your Ladyship had ever been his antagonist.”

Had not Lady Hester been herself anxious to hide the confusion the allusion to the viscount always occasioned her, she could not have failed to remark how uncomfortably astonished was Haggerstone at the mention of that name. Nervously eager to do something anything that might relieve her embarrassment she pulled the trigger; but the aim was an erring one, and no trace of the bullet to be seen.

“There ‘s no use in looking for it, Colonel Haggerstone,” said she, pettishly; “I’m certain I was very wide of the mark.”

“I ‘m positive I saw the plaster drop from the wall somewhere hereabouts,” said the complaisant Colonel, pointing to a spot close beside the figure. “Yes, and the twigs are broken here.”

“No matter; I certainly missed, and that’s quite enough. I told you I should, before I fired; and when one has the anticipation of failure, it is so easy to vindicate the impression.”

It was in evident chagrin at her want of success that she spoke, and all her companion’s flatteries went for nothing. Meanwhile, he presented the second pistol, which, taking hastily, and without giving herself time for an aim, she discharged with a like result.

“I ‘ll not try again,” said she, pettishly. “Either the pistols don’t suit me, or the place or the light is bad. Something is wrong, that’s certain.”

Haggerstone bit his lip in silence, and went on reloading the pistols without trusting himself to reply. A little conflict was going on within him, and all his intended flatteries for her Ladyship were warring with the desire to display his own skill, for he was a celebrated shot, and not a little vain of the accomplishment. Vanity carried the day at last, and taking up the weapon, he raised it slowly to a level with his eye. A second or two he held it thus, his hand steady as a piece of marble.

“I have taken my aim, and now you may give the word for me to fire when you please,” said he, turning his eyes from the object, and looking straight at Lady Hester.

She stared at him as if to reassure herself of the direction of his glance, and then called out “Fire!” The shot rang out clear and sharp; with it arose a shrill cry of agony, and straight before them, at the foot of the pillar, lay something which looked like a roll of clothes, only that by its panting motion it indicated life. Haggerstone sprang forward, and to his horror discovered the dwarf, Hans Roeckle, who, with his arm broken, lay actually bathed in blood. With his remaining hand he clasped the little statue to his bosom, while he muttered to himself the words “Gerettet! saved! saved!”

While Lady Hester hurried for assistance, Haggerstone bound up the bleeding vessels with his handkerchief; and in such German as he could command, asked how the accident had befallen.

A few low muttering sounds were all the dwarf uttered, but he kissed the little image with a devotion that seemed like insanity. Meanwhile the colonel’s servant, coming up, at once recognized Hans, and exclaimed, “It is the little fellow of the toy-shop, sir. I told you with what reluctance he parted with this figure. He must be mad, I think.”

The wild looks and eager expressions of the dwarf, as he clutched the image and pressed it to his heart, seemed to warrant the suspicion; and Haggerstone thought he could read insanity in every line of the poor creature’s face. To the crowd that instantaneously gathered around the inn door, and which included many of his friends and acquaintances, Hans would give no other explanation of the event than that it was a mere accident; that he was passing, and received the shot by chance; nothing more.

“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 gratitude 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 passed 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 passing 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 Ladyship 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 reassuring 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 passed 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 amusement. Lady Hester was a prominent disciple of this school; all her life she had been following, eager to see whether the fashions 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 passing 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.

Nobody 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; nobody 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 crashing 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 compass! 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 nobody 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.”