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

“A play transaction, – a gambling affair, eh?”

“I fancy not; Count Guilmard does not play.”

“So far, so good,” said Grounsell. “Now, sir, how is it to be arranged? – what settlement can be effected? I speak to you frankly, perhaps bluntly, Mr. Jekyl, for my nature has few sympathies with courteous ambiguities. Can this business be accommodated without a meeting?”

Jekyl shook his head, and gave a soft, plaintive little sigh.

“Is friendly interference out of the question, sir?”

Another shake of the head, and a sigh.

“Is there any law in the country? Can the police do nothing?”

“The frontiers are always easily accessible,” simpered Jekyl, as he stole a look at his watch.

“Ay, to be sure,” broke in Grounsell, indignantly; “the very geography of the Continent assists this profligacy, and five paces over an imaginary boundary gives immunity in a case of murder! Well, sir, come along with me to the place of meeting. It is just possible that we may be of some service even yet.”

“Nothing could be more agreeable to me than the opportunity of cultivating your acquaintance, Dr. Grounsell; but I have already sent off a few lines to Lord Norwood, to apologize for my absence, – a previous engagement.”

“What! at this hour of the morning, sir!” burst out Grounsell.

“Even at this early hour, doctor, our cares commence,” said Jekyl, blandly.

“Upon this occasion they must give way to duties, then,” said Grounsell, sternly. “The word may sound strangely in your ears, sir, but I use it advisedly you have been well received and hospitably entertained by this family. They have shown you many marks of kindness and attention. Now is the opportunity to make some sort of requital. Come, then, and see if this young man cannot be rescued from peril.”

“You touch my feelings in the very tenderest spot,” said Jekyl, softly. “When gratitude is mentioned, I am a child, – a mere child.”

“Be a man, then, for once, sir; put on your hat and accompany me,” cried Grounsell.

“Would you have me break an appointment, doctor?”

“Ay, to be sure I would, sir, – at least, such an appointment as I suspect yours to be. This may be a case of life or death.”

“How very dreadful!” said Jekyl, settling his curls at the glass. “Pascal compares men to thin glass phials, with an explosive powder within them, and really one sees the force of the similitude every day; but Jean Paul improves upon it by saying that we are all burning-glasses of various degrees of density, so that our passions ignite at different grades of heat.”

“Mine are not very far from the focal distance at this moment,” said Grounsell, with savage energy; “so fetch your hat, sir, at once, or – ”

“Unless I prefer a cap, you were going to add,” interposed Jekyl, with a sweet smile.

“We must use speed, sir, or we shall be too late,” rejoined the doctor.

“I flatter myself few men understand a rapid toilet better,” said Jekyl, rising from the table; “so if you’ll amuse yourself with ‘Bell’s Life,’ ‘Punch,’ or Jules Janin, for five minutes, I ‘m your man.”

“I can be company for myself for that space, sir,” said the other, gruffly, and turned to the window; while Jekyl, disappearing behind the drapery that filled the doorway, was heard humming an opera air from within.

Grounsell was in no superlative mood of good temper with the world, nor would he have extended to the section of it he best knew the well-known eulogy on the “Bayards.” “Swindlers,” “Rakes,” and “Vagabonds” were about the mildest terms of the vocabulary he kept muttering to himself, while a grumbling thunder-growl of malediction followed each. The very aspect of the little chamber seemed to offer food for his anger; the pretentious style of its decoration jarred and irritated him, and he felt a wish to smash bronzes and brackets and statues into one common ruin.

The very visiting-cards which lay scattered over a Sèvres dish offended him; the names of all that were most distinguished in rank and station, with here and there some little civility inscribed on the corner, – “Thanks,” “Come, if possible,” or “Of course we expect you,” – showing the social request in which Jekyl stood.

“Ay,” muttered he to himself, “here is one that can neither give dinners nor balls, get places nor pensions nor orders, lend money nor lose it, and yet the world wants him, and cannot get on without him. The indolence of profligacy seeks the aid of his stimulating activity, and the palled appetite of sensualism has to borrow the relish from vice that gives all its piquancy. Without him as the fly-wheel, the whole machinery of mischief would stand still. His boast is, that, without a sou, no millionnaire is richer than he, and that every boon of fortune is at his beck. He might add, that in his comprehensive view of wickedness he realizes within himself all the vice of this good capital. I ‘d send such a fellow to the treadmill; I ‘d transport him for life; I ‘d sentence him to hunt kangaroos for the rest of his days; I’d – ” He stopped short in his violent tirade; for he suddenly bethought him how he himself was at that very moment seeking aid and assistance at his hands; and somewhat abashed by the recollection, he called out, “Mr. Jekyl, are you ready yet?”

No answer was returned to this question, and Grounsell repeated it in a louder voice. All was silent, and not even the dulcet sounds of the air from “Lucia” broke the stillness; and now the doctor, losing all patience, drew aside the curtain and looked in. The chamber was empty, and Jekyl was gone! His little portmanteau, and his still smaller carpet-bag, his hat-case, his canes – every article of his personnel– were away; and while Grounsell stood cursing the “little rascal,” he himself was pleasantly seated opposite Lady Hester and Kate in the travelling-carriage, and convulsing them with laughter at his admirable imitation of the poor doctor.

Great as was Grounsel’s anger at this trickery, it was still greater when he discovered that he had been locked in. He quite forgot the course of time passed in his meditations, and could not believe it possible that there was sufficient interval to have effected all these arrangements so speedily.

Too indignant to brook delay, he dashed his foot through the door, and passed out The noise at once summoned the people of the house to the spot, and, to Grounsell’s surprise, the police officer amongst them, who, in all the pomp of office, now barred the passage with a drawn sword.

“What is it? – what’s this?” cried he, in astonishment.

“Effraction by force in case of debt is punishable by the 127th section of the ‘Code,’” said a dirty little man, who, with the air of a shoeblack, was still a leading member of the Florence “Bar.”

“I owe nothing here, – not a farthing, sir; let me pass,” cried Grounsell.

“‘Fathers for sons of nonage or over that period, domiciliated in the same house,’” began the Advocate, reading out of a volune in his hand, “‘are also responsible.’”

“What balderdash, sir! I have no son; I never was married in my life; and as for this Mr. Jekyl, if you mean to father him on me, I’ll resist to the last drop of my blood.”

“‘Denunciation and menace, with show of arms or without,’” began the lawyer again, “‘are punishable by fine and imprisonment.’”

Grounsell was now so worked up by fury that he attempted to force a passage by main strength; but a general brandishing of knives by all the family, from seven years of age upwards, warned him that the attempt might be too serious, while a wild chorus of abusive language arose from various sympathizers who poured in from the street to witness the scene.

A father who would not pay for his own son! an “assassin,” who had no bowels for his kindred; a “Birbante,” a “Briccone,” and a dozen similar epithets, rattled on him like hail, till Grounsell, supposing that the “bite” might be in proportion to the “bark,” retreated into a small chamber, and proposed terms of accommodation. Few men take pleasure in acquitting their own debts, fewer still like to pay those of their neighbors, and Grounsell set about the task in anything but a pleasant manner. There was one redeeming feature, however, in the affair. Jekyl’s schedule could not have extracted a rebuke from the severest Commissioner of Bankruptcy. His household charges were framed on the most moderate scale of expenditure. A few crowns for his house-rent, a few “Pauls” for his eatables, and a few “Grazie” for his washing, comprised the whole charge of his establishment, and not even Hume would have sought to cut down the “estimates.” Doubtless more than one half of the demands were unjust and extortionate, and many were perhaps already acquitted; but as all the rogueries were but homoeopathic iniquities after all, their doses might be endured with patience. His haste to conclude the arrangements had, however, a very opposite tendency. The more yielding he became, the greater grew their exactions, and several times the treaty threatened to open hostilities again; and at last it was full an hour after Jekyl’s departure that Grounsell escaped from durance, and was free to follow George Onslow to Pratolino.

With his adventures in the interval the reader is sufficiently acquainted; and we now come back to that moment where, bewildered and lost, he sat down upon the bench beside the high-road.

CHAPTER II. A SAD HOUSEHOLD

It was already past noon when Grounsell reached Florence. He was delayed at the gate by the authorities examining a peasant’s cart in front of him, – a process which appeared to take a most unusual degree of care and scrutiny, – and thus gave the doctor another occasion for inveighing against the “stupid ignorance of foreigners, who throw every possible impediment in the way of traffic and intercourse.”

“What have they discovered now?” cried he, testily, as in a crowd of vehicles, of all sorts and sizes, he was jammed up like a coal-vessel in the river. “Is the peasant a revolutionary general in disguise? or has he got Bibles or British cutlery under the straw of his baroccino?”

“No, Eccellenza.” (Every one in a passion in Italy is styled Eccellenza, as an “anodyne.”) “It’s a sick man, and they don’t know what to do with him.”

“Is there a duty on ague or nervous fever?” asked he, angrily.

“They suspect he’s dead, Eccellenza; and if so, there’s no use in bringing him into the city, to bring him out again by and by.”

“And don’t they know if a man be dead or alive?”

“Not when he’s a foreigner, Illustrissimo; and such is the case here.”

“Ah, very true!” said Grounsell, dryly, as if acquiescing in the truth of the remark. “Let me have a look at him; perhaps I can assist their judgment.” And with this he descended, and made his way through the crowd, who, in all the eagerness of curiosity, thronged around the cart A peasant’s great-coat was drawn over the figure and even the face of the sick man, as he lay at full length on the mat flooring of the baroccino; and on his chest some pious hand had deposited a rosary and a wooden crucifix.

Grounsell hastily drew back the covering, and then clutching an arm of those at either side of him, he uttered a faint cry, for the pale and deathlike features before him were those of George Onslow. The instincts of the doctor, however, soon rose above every other feeling, and his hand seized the wrist and felt for the pulse. Its beatings were slow, labored, and irregular, denoting the brain as the seat of injury. Grounsell, therefore, proceeded to examine the head, which, covered with clogged and matted blood, presented a terrific appearance; yet neither there nor elsewhere was there any trace of injury by fire-arms. The history of discovery was soon told. A shepherd had detected the body as he passed the spot, and, hailing some peasants on their way to Florence, advised their taking charge of it to the city, where they would be surely recompensed. The natural suggestion of Grounsel’s mind was that, in making his escape from the gendarmes, Onslow had fallen over a cliff. To convey him home, and get him to bed, if possible, before Sir Stafford should hear of the misfortune, was his first care; and in this he succeeded. It was the time when Sir Stafford usually slept; and Grounsell was able to examine his patient, and satisfy himself that no fatal injury was done, long before the old Baronet awoke.

“Sir Stafford wishes to see you, sir; he asked for you repeatedly to-day,” said Proctor.

“Has he heard – does he know anything of this?” said Grounsell, with a gesture to the bed where George lay.