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

“Hush, my dear Miss Dalton!” said Martha; “one word may wake her.”

“I’d be a butterfly!” warbled the sick lady, in a low weak treble; while a smile of angelic beatitude beamed on her features.

“Hush! be still!” said Martha, motioning the surrounders to silence.

“What shall I do, Nina? Shall I go and speak to my Lady?” asked Kate.

A significant shrug of the shoulders, more negative than affirmative, was the only answer.

“I’d be a gossamer, and you’d be the King of Thebes,” said Mrs. Ricketts, addressing a tall footman, who stood ready to assist in carrying her.

“Yes, madam,” said he, respectfully.

“She’s worse,” whispered Martha, gravely.

“And we’ll walk on the wall of China by moonlight, with Cleopatra and Mr. Cobden?”

“Certainly, madam,” said the man, who felt the question too direct for evasion.

“Has she been working slippers for the planet Ju-Ju-Jupiter yet?” asked Purvis, eagerly, as he entered the room, heated, and flushed from the weight of a portentous bag of colored wool.

“No; not yet,” whispered Martha. “You may lift her now, gently very gently, and not a word.”

And in strict obedience, the servants raised their fair burden, and bore her from the room, after Nina, who led the way with an air that betokened a more than common indifference to human suffering.

“When she gets at Ju-Jupiter,” said Purvis to Kate, as they closed the procession, “it’s a bad symptom; or when she fancies she ‘s Hec-Hec-Hec-Hec – ”

“Hecate?”

“No; not Hec-Hecate, but Hecuba – Hecuba; then it’s a month at least before she comes round.”

“How dreadful!” said Kate. And certainly there was not a grain of hypocrisy in the fervor with which she uttered it.

“I don’t think she ‘ll go beyond the San-Sandwich Islands this time, however,” added he, consolingly,

“Hush, Scroope!” cried Martha. And now they entered the small and exquisitely furnished dressing-room which was appropriated to Kate’s use; within which, and opening upon a small orangery, stood her bedroom.

Nina, who scrupulously obeyed every order of her young mistress, continued the while to exhibit a hundred petty signs of mute rebellion.

“Lady Hester wishes to see Miss Dalton,” said a servant at the outer door.

“Can you permit me for a moment?” asked Kate, in a tremor.

“Oh, of course, my dear Miss Dalton; let there be no ceremony with us,” said Martha. “Your kindness makes us feel like old friends already.”

“I feel-myself quite at home,” cried Scroope, whose head was not proof against so much wine; and then, turning to one of the servants, he added a mild request for the two bottles that were left on the drawing-room table.

Martha happily, however, overheard and revoked the order. And now the various attendants withdrew, leaving the family to themselves.

It was ill no pleasant mood that Kate took her way towards Lady Hester’s apartment. The drawing-room, as she passed through it, still exhibited some of the signs of its recent ruin, and the servants were busied in collecting fragments of porcelain and flower-pots. Their murmured comments, hushed as she went by, told her how the occurrence was already the gossip of the household. It was impossible for her not to connect herself with the whole misfortune. “But for her” But she could not endure the thought, and it was with deep humiliation and trembling in every limb that she entered Lady Hester’s chamber.

“Leave me, Celadon; I want to speak to Miss Dalton,” said Lady Hester to the hairdresser, who had just completed one half of her Ladyship’s chevelure, leaving the other side pinned and rolled up in those various preparatory stages which have more of promise than picturesque about them. Her cheek was flushed, and her eyes sparkled with an animation that betrayed more passion than pleasure.

“What is this dreadful story I ‘ve heard, child, and that the house is full of? Is it possible there can be any truth in it? Have these odious people actually dared to establish themselves here? Tell me, child speak!”

“Mrs. Ricketts became suddenly ill,” said Kate, trembling; “her dog threw down a china jar.”

“Not my Sevres jar? not the large green one, with the figures?”

“I grieve to say it was!”

“Go on. What then?” said Lady Hester, dryly.

“Shocked at the incident, and alarmed, besides, by the fall of a flower-stand, she fainted away, and subsequently was seized with what I supposed to be a convulsive attack, but to which her friends seemed perfectly accustomed, and pronounced not dangerous. In this dilemma they asked me if they might occupy my room. Of course I could not refuse, and yet felt, the while, that I had no right to extend the hospitality of this house. I saw the indelicacy of what I was doing. I was shocked and ashamed, and yet – ”

“Go on,” said Lady Hester once more, and with a stern quietude of manner that Kate felt more acutely than even an angry burst of temper.

“I have little more to say; in fact, I know not what I am saying,” cried she, gulping to repress the torrent of suffering that was struggling within her.

“Miss Dalton – ” began Lady Hester.

“Oh! why not Kate?” broke she, with a choking utterance.

“Miss Dalton,” resumed Lady Hester, and as if not hearing the entreaty, “very little knowledge of that world you have lived in for the past three or four months might have taught you some slight self-possession in difficulty. Still less acquaintance with it might have suggested the recollection that these people are no intimates of mine; so that, even were tact wanting, feeling, at least, should have dictated a line of action to you.”

“I know I have done wrong. I knew it at the time, and yet, in my inexperience, I could not decide on anything. My memory, too, helped to mislead me, for I bethought me that although these persons were not of your own rank and station, yet you had stooped lower than to them when you came to visit Nelly and myself.”

“Humph!” ejaculated Lady Hester, with a gesture that very unequivocally seemed to say that her having done so was a grievous error. Kate saw it quickly, and as suddenly the blood rushed to her cheek, coloring her throat and neck with the deep crimson of shame. A burst of pride the old Dalton pride seemed to have given way within her; and as she drew herself up to her full height, her look and attitude wore every sign of haughty indignation.

Lady Hester looked at her for a few seconds with a glance of searching import. Perhaps for a moment the possibility of a deception struck her, and that this might only be feigned; but as suddenly did she recognize the unerring traits of truth, and said,

“What! child, are you angry with me?”

“Oh no, no!” said Kate, bursting into tears, and kissing the hand that was now extended towards her, “oh no, no! but I could hate myself for what seems so like ingratitude.”

“Come, sit down here at my feet on this stool, and tell me all about it; for, after all, I could forgive them the jar and the camellias, if they ‘d only have gone away afterwards. And of course the lesson will not be thrown away upon you, not to be easily deceived again.”

“How, deceived?” exclaimed Kate. “She was very ill. I saw it myself.”

“Nonsense, child. The trick is the very stalest piece of roguery going. Since Toe Morris, as they call him the man that treads upon people, and by his apologies scrapes acquaintance with them there is nothing less original. Why, just before we left England, there was old Bankhead got into Slingsby House, merely because the newspapers might announce his death at the Earl of Grindleton’s ‘on the eighth, of a few days’ illness, deeply regretted by the noble lord, with whom he was on a visit.’ Now, that dear Ricketts woman would almost consent to take leave of the world for a similar paragraph. I ‘m sure I should know nothing of such people but that Sir Stafford’s relations have somewhat enlightened me. He has a nest of cousins down in Shropshire, not a whit better than your I was going to call them ‘your friends,’ the Rickettses.”

“It is almost incredible to suppose this could be artifice.”

“Why so, child? There is no strategy too deep for people who are always aspiring to some society above them. Besides, after all, I was in a measure prepared for this.”

“Prepared for it!”

“Yes; Jekyl told me that if they once got in, it would be next to impossible to keep them out afterwards. A compromise, he said, was the best thing; to let them have so many days each year, with certain small privileges about showing the house to strangers, cutting bouquets, and so on; or, if we preferred it, let them carry away a Teniers or a Gerard Dow to copy, and take care never to ask for it. He inclined to the latter as the better plan, because, after a certain lapse of time, it can end in a cut.”