The Daltons Volume I Part 18

"Upon my soul and conscience I don't understand a word of it all!" said Dalton, whose bewildered looks gave a perfect concurrence to the speech.

"Is it that I have a right to all the money?"

"Exactly, sir; Sir Stafford feels that he is simply carrying out the wishes of your relative, Mr. G.o.dfrey--"

"But this has nothing to do with the little difference between Sir Stafford and myself? I mean, it leaves us just where we were before."

"Sir Stafford hopes that henceforth a better understanding will subsist between you and himself; and that you, seeing how blameless he has been in the whole history of your losses, will receive this act as an evidence of his desire to cultivate your friends.h.i.+p."

"And this two hundred a year?"

"Is Mr. G.o.dfrey's bequest."

"But depending on Sir Stafford to pay or not, as he likes."

"I have already told you, sir, that he conceives he has no option in the matter; and that the mere expression of a desire on Mr. G.o.dfrey's part becomes to him a direct injunction."

"Faith, he was mighty long in finding it out, then," said Dalton, laughing.

"I believe I have explained myself on that head," replied Prichard; "but I am quite ready to go over the matter again."

"G.o.d forbid! my head is 'moidered' enough already, not to make it worse. Explanations, as they call them, always puzzle me more; but if you 'd go over the subject to my daughter Nelly, her brain is as clear as the Lord Chancellor's. I'll just call her up here; for, to tell you the truth, I never see my way right in anything till Nelly makes it out for me."

Mr. Prichard was probably not grieved at the prospect of a more intelligent listener, and readily a.s.sented to the proposition, in furtherance of which Dalton left the room to seek his daughter. On descending to the little chamber where he had left the two girls in waiting beside the dwarf's sick-bed, he now discovered that they had gone, and that old Andy had replaced them, a change which, to judge from Hansel's excited looks and wild utterance, was not by any means to his taste.

"Was machst du hier?" cried he, sternly, to the old man.

"Whisht! alannah! Take a sleep, acushla!" whined old Andy, as, under the delusion that it was beside an infant his watch was established, he tried to rock the settle-bed like a cradle, and then croned away in a cracked voice one of his own native ditties:

"I saw a man weeping and makin' sad moan, He was crying and grievin', For he knew their deceiving An' rockin' a cradle for a child not his own."

"Was fur katzen jammer! What for cats' music mak'st thou there?"

"Where 's the girls, Andy?" whispered Daltou in the old man's ear.

"They 're gone," muttered he.

"Gone where? where did they go?"

"Fort mit ihm. Away with him. Leave him not stay. Mein head is heavy, and mein brain turn round!" screamed Hansel.

"Will ye tell me where they 're gone, I say?" cried Daiton, angrily.

"Hushoo! husho!" sang out the old man, as he fancied he was composing his charge to sleep; and then made signs to Dalton to be still and not awaken him.

With an angry muttering Dalton turned away and left the chamber, totally regardless of Hanserl's entreaties to take Andy along with him.

"You're just good company for each other!" said he, sulkily, to himself.

"But where 's these girls, I wonder?"

"Oh, papa, I have found you at last!" cried Kate, as, bounding down the stairs half a dozen steps at a time, she threw her arm round him. "She's here! she's upstairs with us; and so delightful, and so kind, and so beautiful. I never believed any one could be so charming."

"And who is she, when she's at home?" said Dalton, half sulkily.

"Lady Hester, of course, papa. She came while we were sitting with Hanserl, came quite alone to see him and us; and when she had talked to him for a while, so kindly and so sweetly, about his wound, and his fever, and his home in the Tyrol, and his mother, and everything, she turned to Nelly and said, 'Now, my dears, for a little conversation with yourselves. Where shall we go to be quite alone and uninterrupted?' We did n't know what to say, papa; for we knew that you and the strange gentleman were busy in the sitting-room, and while I was thinking what excuse to make, Nelly told her that our only room was occupied. 'Oh, I don't care for that in the least,' said she; 'let us shut ourselves up in your dressing-room.' Our dressing-room! I could have laughed and cried at the same moment she said it; but Nelly said that we had none, and invited her upstairs to her bedroom; and there she is now, papa, sitting on the little bed, and making Nelly tell her everything about who we are, and whence we came, and how we chanced to be living here."

"I wonder Nelly had n't more sense," said Dalton, angrily; "not as much as a curtain on the bed, nor a bit of carpet on the floor. What 'll she think of us all?"

"Oh, papa, you're quite mistaken; she called it a dear little snuggery; said she envied Nelly so much that lovely view over Eberstein and the Schloss, and said what would she not give to lead our happy and peaceful life, away from that great world she despises so heartily. How sad to think her duties tie her down to a servitude so distasteful and repulsive!"

"Isn't my Lady the least taste in life of a humbug, Kitty?" whispered Dalton, as his eyes twinkled with malicious drollery.

"Papa, papa! you cannot mean--"

"No harm if she is, darling. I'm sure the pleasantest, ay, and some of the worthiest people ever I knew were humbugs, that is, they were always doing their best to be agreeable to the company; and if they strained their consciences a bit, small blame to them for that same."

"Lady Hester is far above such arts, papa; but you shall judge for yourself. Come in now, for she is so anxious to know you."

Kate, as she spoke, had opened the door of the little bedroom, and, drawing her arm within her father's, gently led him forward to where Lady Hester was seated upon the humble settle.

"It's a nice place they showed you into, my Lady," said Dalton, after the ceremony of introduction was gone through; "and there was the drawing-room, or the library, and the breakfast-parlor, all ready to receive you."

"We heard that you were engaged with a gentleman on business, papa."

"Well, and if I was, Nelly, transacting a small matter about my estates in Ireland, sure it was in my own study we were."

"I must be permitted to say that I am very grateful for any accident which has given me the privilege of an intimate with my dear young friends," said Lady Hester, in her very sweetest of manners; "and as to the dear little room itself, it is positively charming."

"I wish you 'd see Mount Dalton, my Lady. There '& a window, and it is n't bigger than that there, and you can see seven baronies out of it and a part of three counties, Killikelly's flour-mills, and the town of Drumcoolaghan in the distance; not to speak of the Shannon winding for miles through as elegant a bog as ever you set eyes upon."

"Indeed!" smiled her Ladys.h.i.+p, with a glance of deep interest.

"'T is truth, I 'm telling you, my Lady," continued he; "and, what's more, 'twas our own, every stick and stone of it. From Crishnamuck to Ballymodereena on one side, and from the chapel at Dooras down to Drumcoolaghan, 'twas the Dalton estate."

"What a princely territory!"

"And why not? Weren't they kings once, or the same as kings? Did n't my grandfather, Pearce, hold a court for life and death in his own parlor?

Them was the happy and the good times, too," sighed he, plaintively.

"But I trust your late news from Ireland is favorable?"

"Ah! there isn't much to boast about. The old families is dying out fast, and the properties changing hands. A set of English rogues and banker-fellows that made their money in dirty lanes and alleys."

A sort of imploring, beseeching anxiety from his daughter Kate here brought Dalton to a dead stop, and he pulled up as suddenly as if on the brink of a precipice.

"Pray, go on, Mr. Dalton," said Lady Hester, with a winning smile; "you cannot think how much you have interested me. You are aware that we really know nothing about poor dear Ireland; and I am so delighted to learn from one so competent to teach."

"I did n't mean any offence, my Lady," stammered out Dalton, in confusion. "There 's good and bad everywhere; but I wish to the Lord the cotton-spinners would n't come among us, and their steam-engines, and their black chimneys, and their big factories; and they say we are not far from that now."

A gentle tap at the door which communicated with the sitting-room was heard at this moment, and Dalton exclaimed,