The Daltons Volume I Part 49

Now, however, the glow of delight which a letter used to bring up was changed for a deep blush of anxiety and shame, anxiety, she knew not wherefore or how; of shame, because Nelly's writing on the address was quaint and old-fashioned; while the paper and the seal bespoke the very lowliest acquaintance with epistolary elegance. The letter she used to grasp at with a high-beating heart she now clutched with greater eagerness, but in terror lest others should see and mark its vulgar exterior!

How differently, too, did the contents affect her! So long as they referred to herself, in her own latest narrative of her life, she read with avidity and pleasure. Nelly's innocent wonderment was a very delightful sensation; her affectionate partic.i.p.ation in her happiness was all grateful; even her gentle warnings against the seductions of such a career were not unpleasing; but the subject changed to home, and what an alteration came over her spirit! How dark and dismal became the picture, how poverty-stricken each incident and event, what littleness in every detail, how insignificant the occupations that interested them!

How great the surprise she felt at their interest in such trifles; how astonished that their hopes and fears, their wishes or their dreads, could take so mean a form! This came with peculiar force before her, from a paragraph that closed Nelly's last letter, and which ran thus:

"Think of our happiness, dearest Kate! We have just seen one who saw you lately, one of your Florence acquaintances; and I believe I might go further and say friends, for the terms in which he spoke of you evinced sincere and true regard. It was so kind of him to find us out, just to come and tell us about you; indeed, he remained a day here for no other purpose, since his diplomatic duties were urging him to England with speed."

When Kate had read thus far, she stopped, her face and neck crimson with shame, and her heart beating almost audibly. With lightning rapidity she ran over to herself three or four names of ministers and envoys who had lately left Florence, trembling to think it might be the gorgeous Russian, Naradskoi, the princely Neapolitan, Carnporese, or the haughty Spaniard, Don Hernandez Orloes, who had visited their humble interior.

What a humiliation for her, if she were ever to see them again! Home, at that instant, presented itself before her but as the witness of her shame: how sordid and miserable did its poverty appear, and with what vulgarity a.s.sociated! Her poor old father, around whose neck but a moment before she would have hung with rapture, she shrank from with very terror: his dress, his look, his accent every word he spoke, every allusion he made, were tortures to her; and Nelly even Nelly how she blushed to fancy her humble guise and poor exterior; the little dress of colored wool, from the pockets of which her carving-tools appeared; and then how the scene rose before her! her father producing Nelly's last work, some little group in clay or wood. She pictured to herself his pride, her sister's bashfulness, the stranger's pretended admiration!

Till now, these emotions had never seen a counterfeit. Oh, how she shuddered as her thoughts took more and more the colors of reality, and the room itself, and its poverty-struck furniture, rose before her! At last she read on:

"His visit was of course a great honor, and probably, had he come on any other errand but to speak of you, we should have been half overwhelmed with the condescension; but in very truth, Kate, I quite forgot all his greatness and his grandeur, and lost sight of his ever holding any higher mission than to bring news of my dearest sister. Papa, of course, asked him to dinner. I believe he would have invited the Czar himself under like circ.u.mstances; but, fortunately for us, for him, and perhaps for you too, he was too deaf to hear the request, and politely answered that he would send my letter to you with pleasure, under his own diplomatic seal; and so we parted. I ought to add that Mr. Fogla.s.s intends speedily to return to Florence."

Three or four times did Kate read this name over before she could persuade herself that she had it aright. Fogla.s.s! she had never even heard of him. The name was remarkable enough to remember, as belonging to a person of diplomatic rank, and yet it was quite new to her. She turned to Lady Hester's invitation book, but no such name was there.

What form her doubts might have taken there is no knowing, when Mr.

Albert Jekyl was seen to cross the courtyard, and enter the house.

Knowing that if any could, he would be the person to resolve the difficulty, she hastened downstairs to meet him.

"Mr. Jekyl," cried she, hurriedly, "is there such a man as Mr. Fogla.s.s in this breathing world of ours?"

"Of course there is, Miss Dalton," said he, smiling at her eagerness.

"A minister or an envoy at some court?"

"Not that I have ever heard," repeated he, with a more dubious smile.

"Well, a secretary of emba.s.sy, perhaps? something of that kind? Who is he? what is he? where does he belong to?"

"You mean Bob, Miss Dalton," said he, at once puffing out his cheeks and running his hand through his hair, till it became a very good resemblance of the ex-Consul's wig, while, by a slight adjustment of his waistcoat, he imitated the pretentious presence of the mock royalty.

"'You mean Bob, madam,'" said he, mimicking his measured intonation and pompous tone, "'Old Fogey, as Mathews always called me. Mathews and I and Townsend were always together, dined at Greenwich every Sunday regularly. What nights they were! Flows of reason, and feasts of eh?

yes, that's what they were.'"

"I must remind you that I never saw him," said she, laughing; "though I'm certain, if I should hereafter, it will not be very hard to recognize him. Now, who is he?"

"He himself says, a grandson of George the Fourth. Less interested biographers call him a son of Fogla.s.s and Crattles, who, I believe, were not even coachmakers to royalty. He was a consul at Ezmeroum, or some such place. At least, they showed him the name on a map, and bade him find it out; but he found out something more, it seems, that there was neither pay nor perquisites, neither pa.s.sports nor peculation; and he has brought back his wisdom once again to besiege the Foreign Office.

But how do you happen to ask about him?"

"Some of my friends met him in Germany," said she, hesitatingly. She might have blushed, had Jekyl looked at her; but he knew better, and took pains to bestow his glances in another direction.

"It would be kind to tell them that the man is a most prying, inquisitive sort of creature, who, if he only had the sense of hearing, would be as mischievous as Purvis."

"I fancy they will see but little of him," said she, with a saucy toss of the head. "He made their acquaintance by affecting to know me. I 'm sure I 've no recollection of having ever seen him."

"Of course you never knew him, Miss Dalton!" replied he, with a subdued horror in his voice as he spoke.

"A letter for you, Mademoiselle," said the servant to Kate; "and the man waits for an answer."

Kate broke the seal with some trepidation. She had no correspondents nearer than her home, and wondered what this might mean. It was in a strange commotion of spirit that she read the following lines:

"Mrs. Montague Ricketts presents her respectful compliments to Miss Dalton, and begs to know at what hour to-day Mrs. M. R. may wait upon Miss D., to present a letter which has been committed to Mrs. R.'s hands for personal delivery. It may secure an earlier hour of audience if Mrs.

R. mentions that the precious doc.u.ment is from Miss D.'s father."

What could this possibly mean? It was but that very same day the post brought her a letter from Nelly. Why had not her father said what he wished to say, in that? What need of this roundabout, mysterious mode of communicating?

The sight of the servant still in waiting for the answer recalled her from these cross-questionings, and she hurried away to consult Lady Hester about the reply.

"It's very shocking, my dear child," said she, as she listened to the explanation. "The Ricketts, they tell me, is something too dreadful; and we have escaped her hitherto. You could n't be ill, could you?"

"But the letter?" said Kate, half smiling, half provoked.

"Oh, to be sure the letter! But Buccellini, you know, might take the letter, and leave it, with unbroken seal, near you; you could read it just as well. I 'm sure I read everything Sir Stafford said in his without ever opening it. You saw that yourself, Kate, or, with your scepticism, I suppose, you 'd not believe it, for you are very sceptical; it is your fault of faults, my dear. D'Esmonde almost shed tears about it, the other day. He told me that you actually refused to believe in the Madonna della Torre, although he showed you the phial with the tears in it!"

"I only said that I had not seen the Virgin shed them," said Kate.

"True, child! but you saw the tears; and you heard D'Esmonde remark, that when you saw the garden of a morning, all soaked with wet, the trees and flowers dripping, you never doubted that it had rained during the night, although you might not have been awake to hear or see it."

Kate was silent; not that she was unprepared with an answer, but dreaded to prolong a discussion so remote from the object of her visit.

"Now, Protestant that I am," said Lady Hester, with the triumphant tone of one who rose above all the slavery of prejudice, "Protestant that I am, I believe in the 'Torre.' The real distinction to make is, between what is above, and what is contrary to, reason, Kate. Do you understand me, child?"

"I'm sure Mrs. Ricketts's visit must be both," Kate said, adroitly bringing back the original theme.

"Very true; and I was forgetting the dear woman altogether. I suppose you must receive her, Kate; there 's no help for it! Say three o'clock, and I'll sit in the small drawing-room, and, with the gallery and the library between us, I shall not hear her dreadful voice."

"Has she such?" asked Kate, innocently.

"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 eyegla.s.s 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. n.o.body 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 a.s.suredly looked forward to with more of curiosity than pleasure.

CHAPTER x.x.xI. A CONVIVIAL EVENING

IT is not necessary that the reader should partic.i.p.ate in Kate Dalton's mystification regarding her father's letter, that doc.u.ment being simply a piece of Ricketts strategy, and obtained to secure an admission to the Mazzarini Palace, which, notwithstanding Lord Norwood's a.s.surances, still regained an impregnable fortress to all her a.s.saults.

Fogla.s.s was then commissioned to induce Mr. Dalton to write something, anything, to his daughter, to be transmitted under the Emba.s.sy 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 Fogla.s.s 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. Fogla.s.s in the mock agonies of gout.

"How devilish kind of you, how very considerate!" said Fogla.s.s, 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?"