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

“I’m sure I don’t know,” said Lady Hester, pettishly; “but of course she has! Those dreadful people always have! Make the visit as brief as possible, Kate. Let it not be a pretext for anything after. Use your eyeglass on every occasion, so that you can be short-sighted enough never to know her again. I have seen you very supercilious at times, child, it is precisely the manner for this interview. It was really very wrong of your papa to write in this fashion; or your sister, or whoever it was. Nobody thinks of anything but the post, nowadays. Pray tell them so; say it makes me quite nervous; you see I am nervous to-day! There, there! I don’t want to fret you, child but everything has gone wrong to-day. Midchekoff has given away his box, and I have promised mine to the Lucchesini; and that blond flounce is much too narrow, so Celestine tells me; but I ‘m sure she has cut a piece off it to make a ‘berthe’ for herself. And then the flowers are positively odious. They are crimson, instead of cherry-color, although I told Jekyl twice over they ought to be the very tint of Lady Melgund’s nose! There, now; goodbye. Remember all I’ve been saying, and don’t forget that this is a ‘giorno infelice,’ and everything one does will prove unlucky. I hope D’Esmonde will not come today. I ‘m really not equal to controversy this morning. I should like to see Buccellini, however, and have a globule of the Elysian essence. Bye-bye; do think better about the ‘Madonna della Torre,’ and get rid of that odious Ricketts affair as speedily as may be.”

With these injunctions, Kate withdrew to indite her reply to Mrs. Ricketts, appointing three o ‘clock on that same afternoon for a visit, which she assuredly looked forward to with more of curiosity than pleasure.

CHAPTER XXXI. A CONVIVIAL EVENING

IT is not necessary that the reader should participate in Kate Dalton’s mystification regarding her father’s letter, that document being simply a piece of Ricketts strategy, and obtained to secure an admission to the Mazzarini Palace, which, notwithstanding Lord Norwood’s assurances, still regained an impregnable fortress to all her assaults.

Foglass was then commissioned to induce Mr. Dalton to write something, anything, to his daughter, to be transmitted under the Embassy seal, a magnificent mode of conveyance, which was reason enough to call into exercise those powers of penmanship which, since he had ceased to issue promissory notes, had lain in the very rustiest state of disuse. The command to obtain this credential reached Foglass just as he was about to start from Baden; but being desirous, for various little social reasons, to conciliate the Ricketts’s esteem, he at once altered his arrangements, and feigning a sudden attack of gout, a right royal malady he took himself to bed, and sent a few lines to Dalton, detailing his misfortune, and entreating a visit.

Never backward in the cause of good-nature, poor Dalton sallied forth at night, and notwithstanding the cutting blasts of a north wind, and the sharp driftings of the half-frozen snow, held on his way to the “Russie,” where, in a very humble chamber for so distinguished a guest, lay Mr. Foglass in the mock agonies of gout.

“How devilish kind of you, how very considerate!” said Foglass, as he gave one finger of his hand to shake. “So like poor Townsend this, Lord Tom, we used to call him. Not wet, though, I hope?”

“And if I was, it would n’t be the first time. But how are you yourself, where is the pain?”

“You must speak louder; there ‘s a kind of damper on the voice in this room.”

“Where ‘s the pain?” screamed Dalton.

“There there no need to roar,” whispered the other. “The pain is here over the stomach, round the ribs, the back everywhere.”

“Ah, I know it well,” said Dalton, with a wry contortion of the face. “It’s the devil entirely when it gets under the short ribs! It begins like a rat nibbling you, as it might be, biting away little bits, with now and then a big slice that makes you sing out; and then the teeth begin to get hot, and he bites quicker, and tears you besides, sure I know it, this many a year.”

To this description, of which Foglass heard nothing, he bowed blandly, and made a sign to Dalton to be seated near him.

“You’d like a little wine-and-water, I’m sure,” said he, with the air of a man who rarely figured as a host, and liked it more rarely still.

“Spirits-and-water – boiling water with sugar and a squeeze of lemon, is what I ‘ll take; and see now, you ‘d not be worse of the same yourself. I ‘ve an elegant receipt for the gout, but whether it ‘s sulphur or saltpetre ‘s in it, I don’t well remember; but I know you mix it with treacle, ash-bark, and earthworms, the yolk of four eggs, and a little rosemary. But as you might n’t like the taste of it at first, we ‘ll just begin with a jug of punch.”

The waiter had by this time made his appearance, and the order being communicated by a most expressive pantomime of drinking, and a few solitary words of German Dalton possessed, the room assumed a look of sociality, to which Dalton’s presence very mainly contributed.

In the confidence such a moment of secrecy suggested, Foglass produced an ear-trumpet, a mark of the most unbounded good faith on his part, and which, had Dalton known him better, he would have construed into a proof of implicit reliance on his honor.

“I’ve been many years at Constantinople,” said he, adjusting the instrument, “and the confounded muezzin has made me a little deaf. It’s an everlasting calling to prayers, day and night, there.”

“How they ever expect to get to heaven by tormentin’, and teasin’, is more than I know,” said Dalton.

“They ‘re Mahomedans!” said Foglass, with the air of a man uttering a profound sentiment.

“Ay, to be sure,” observed Dalton; “it’s not like Christians. Now, is it true, they tell me they never eat salt meat!”

“Never!”

“Think of that! Not a bit of corned beef, nor as much as a leg of pork – ”

“Would n’t hear of it,” interrupted Foglass. “Wine, too, is forbidden.”

“And punch?”

“Of course, punch also. A pipe, a cup of coffee, the bath, and a little opium are the luxuries of Turkish existence.”

“To the devil I fling them all four,” cried Dalton, impatiently. “How a man is to be social beside a coffeepot, or up to his neck in hot water, beats me entirely. Faix! I don’t envy the Turks!” And he sipped his glass as he spoke, like one who had fallen upon a happier destiny.

“If you ‘ll mix me a very small glass of that punch, I’d like to propose a toast,” said Foglass.

“There, now, that’s spoke like a sensible man; pleasant company and social enjoyment are the greatest enemies to the gout. Make your mind easy, and keep your heart light, and the devil a fear but your knees will get limber, and the swellin’ will leave your ankles; but weak punch and tiresome people would undermine the best constitution in the world. Taste that.”

To judge from Mr. Foglass’s face, Dalton had at least provided one element of health for his companion.

“It is very strong very strong, indeed!” said he, puckering up his eyes.

“It’s the fault of the water hereabouts,” said Dalton. “It doesn’t mix right with the spirits; so that one half the first, generally of your liquor tastes stiff, but the bottom is mild as milk.”

The explanation gave such encouragement to Foglass, that he drank away freely, and it was only when he had finished that he remembered his intention of giving a toast.

“Now, Mr. Dalton,” said he, as he sat up with a replenished glass in his hand, “I am going to redeem my pledge, and about to give you the health of the most beautiful girl in Italy, one whose attractions are the theme of every tongue, and whose ambitions may realize any height, or attain any eminence, that she pleases.”

“Here ‘s to you, Kate Dalton,” broke in the father, “my own sweet child; and if you only come back to me as you went away, the sorrow better I ask, or grander.”

“She will be a duchess; she may be a princess if she likes.”

“Who knows who knows?” said Dalton, as he hung down his head, and hammered away with his spoon at the sugar in his glass.

“Every one knows, every one sees it, Mr. Dalton,” said Foglass, authoritatively. “From the Archduke Ernest of Austria to the very pages of the court, all are her worshippers and admirers. She’ll come back to you with a proud name and a high coronet, Mr. Dalton.”

“The devil a better than Dalton ever ‘twill be! that I can tell you. ‘T is n’t yesterday we took it, the same name; there ‘s stones in the churchyard of Ballyhack can show who we are; and if she married the – the God forgive me, I was going to say the Pope, but I meant the Grand Turk she would n’t be better than she is now, as Kate Dalton.”

“Not better, certainly, but in a more exalted rank, in a position of more recognized distinction,” said Foglass, blandly.

“No; nor that neither,” cried Dalton, angrily. “The Daltons goes back to the ancient times of all. There ‘s one of our name in the Bible. I ‘m not sure where, but I believe it ‘s in the Book of Kings, or maybe the Psalms; but wherever it is, he was a real gentleman, living on his own estate, with his livery-servants, and his horses, and everything in good style about him; high on the grand jury, maybe the sheriff of the county.”

Foglass, who had followed this description but imperfectly, could only bow in a deep acknowledgment of what he did not understand.

“The man that marries Kate Dalton isn’t doing a piece of condescension, anyhow! that I can tell him. The dirty acres may slip away from us, but our good blood won’t.”

“No man has a higher veneration for blood, sir,” said Foglass, proudly; “few men have better reason for the feeling.”

“Is Fogles an old stock?” asked Dalton, eagerly.

“Foglass, like Fitzroy, sir, may mean more than loyalty would dare to avow. My father, Mr. Dalton But this is a very sad theme with me, let us change it; let us drink to a better feeling in our native land, when that abominable statute may be erased from our code, when that offspring of suspicion and distrust shall no longer be the offence and opprobrium of Englishmen. Here ‘s to its speedy and everlasting repeal!”

The word was talismanic to Dalton, connected, as it was, in his mind with but one subject. He arose at once, and holding up his goblet in the air, cried out,

“Hip! hip! hurrah! three cheers and success to it! Repeal forever!”

Foglass echoed the sentiment with equal enthusiasm, and draining his glass to the bottom, exclaimed,

“Thank you, Dalton! thank you; the heartiness of that cheer tells me we are friends; and although you know not what my feelings are indeed none can you can execrate with honest indignation those hateful unions!”