ALONG the dark and narrow street, over which the coming night cast a
dreary shadow, a single lamp was seen to shine at the door of Ludwig
Kraus, the apothecary; a beacon, it is but fair to add, lighted less
with the hope of attracting custom than in obedience to the requirements
of the law, for Herr Kraus was a “state” official, and bound to conform
to the dictates of the government. His shop was a small triangular
space, in which there was barely room for the learned dispenser and a
single client at the same moment, thus giving to all his interviews the
secrecy of the confessional itself. Jars, phials, flasks, and drawers
rose on every side, not inscribed with the vulgar nomenclature of modern
physic, but bearing the enigmatical marks and hieroglyphics known to
Galen and Paracelsus. Arabic letters, dragons, strange monsters, and
zodiacal signs met the eye everywhere, and did not consort ill with the
spare form and high bald head of the proprietor, whose quaint-figured
dressing-gown and black velvet cap gave him a kind of resemblance to an
alchemist in his workshop. As Grounsell approached the glass door
and peeped in, the scene that presented itself rather assisted this
illusion, for straight in front of the little counter over which Kraus
was leaning, sat the dwarf, Hans Roeckle, talking away with considerable
animation, and from time to time seeming to expatiate upon the merits
of a wooden figure which he held carefully in his hands. The small,
half-lighted chamber, the passive, motionless features of the chemist,
the strange wild gestures of little Hans, as, in his tongue of
mysterious gutturals he poured out a flood of words, amazed Grounsell,
and excited his curiosity to the utmost. He continued to gaze in for a
considerable time, without being able to guess what it might mean, and
at last abandoning all conjecture he resolved to enter. Scarcely had
he touched the handle of the door, however, than the dwarf, seizing the
figure, concealed it beneath the skirt of his fur mantle, and retired
to a corner of the shop. Dr. Grounsell's errand was to obtain certain
medicines for his patient, which, from his ignorance of German, he had
taken the precaution to write down in Latin. He passed the paper in
silence over the counter, and waited patiently as the chemist spelt out
the words. Having read it through, he handed back the paper with a
few dry words, which, being in his native tongue, were totally
incomprehensible.
“You must have these things, surely,” exclaimed Grounsell; “they are the
commonest of all medicines;” and then remembering himself, he made signs
in the direction of the drawers and phials to express his meaning. Again
the chemist uttered some dozen words.
The doctor produced his purse, where certain gold pieces glittered, as
though to imply that he was willing to pay handsomely for his ignorance;
but the other pushed it away, and shook his head in resolute refusal.
“This is too bad,” muttered Grounsell, angrily. “I 'll be sworn he
has the things, and will not give them.” The chemist motioned Hans to
approach, and whispered a few words in his hearing, on which the
dwarf, removing his cap in courteous salutation, addressed Grounsell:
“High-born and much-learned Saar. De laws make no oder that doctoren
have recht to write physics.”
“What!” cried Grounsell, not understanding the meaning of this speech.
Hans repeated it more slowly, and at length succeeded in conveying the
fact that physicians alone were qualified to procure medicines.
“But I am a doctor, my worthy friend, a physician of long standing.”
“Das ist possible who knows?”
“I know, and I say it,” rejoined the other, tersely.
“Ja! ja!” responded Hans, as though to say the theme were not worth
being warm about, one way or t' other.
“Come, my dear sir,” said Grounsell, coaxingly; “pray be good enough to
explain that I want these medicines for a sick friend, who is now at the
hotel here, dangerously ill of gout.”
“Podagra gout!” exclaimed Hans, with sudden animation, “and dese are de
cure for gout?”
“They will, I hope, be of service against it.”
“You shall have dem Saar on one condition. That ist, you will visit
anoder sick man mit gout an Englessman, too verh ill verb sick; and no
rich you understan'.”
“Yes, yes; I understand perfectly; I'll see him with pleasure. Tell this
worthy man to make up these for me, and I 'll go along with you now.”
“Gut! verh good,” said Hans, as in a few words of German he expressed
to the apothecary that he might venture to transgress the law in the
present case when the season was over, and no one to be the wiser.
As Hans issued forth to show the way, he never ceased to insist upon
the fact that the present was not a case for a fee, and that the doctor
should well understand the condition upon which his visit was to be
paid; and still inveighing on this theme, he arrived at the house where
the Daltons dwelt. “Remember, too,” said Hans, “that, though they are
poor, they are of guten stamm how say you, noble?” Grounsell listened
with due attention to all Hanserl's cautions, following, not without
difficulty, his strange and guttural utterances.
“I will go before. Stay here,” said Hans, as they gained the
landing-place; and so saying, he pushed open the door and disappeared.
As Grounsell stood alone and in the dark, he wondered within himself
what strange chances should have brought a fellow-countryman into this
companionship, for there was something so grotesque in Hans's appearance
and manner, that it routed all notion of his being admitted to any
footing of friendly equality.
The door at length opened, and the doctor followed Hans into a dimly
lighted room, where Dalton lay, half dressed, upon his bed. Before
Grounsell had well passed the entrance, the sick man said, “I am afraid,
sir, that my little friend here has taken a bit of liberty with both
of us, since I believe you wanted a patient just as little as I did a
doctor.”
The anxious, lustrous eye, the flushed cheek, and tremulous lip of the
speaker gave, at the same time, a striking contradiction to his words.
Grounsell's practised glance read these signs rapidly, and drawing near
the bed, he seated himself beside it, saying, “It is quite clear, sir,
that you are not well, and although, if we were both of us in our own
country, this visit of mine would, as you observe, be a considerable
liberty, seeing that we are in a foreign land, I hope you will not deem
my intrusion of this nature, but suffer me, if I can, to be of some
service to you.”
Less the words themselves than a certain purpose-like kindliness in the
speaker's manner, induced Dalton to accept the offer, and reply to the
questions which the other proposed to him. “No, no, doctor,” said he,
after a few moments; “there is no great mischief brewing after all. The
truth is, I was fretted harassed a little. It was about a boy of mine
I have only one and he 's gone away to be a soldier with the Austrians.
You know, of course as who does n't? how hard it is to do anything for a
young man now-a-days. If family or high connection could do it, we 'd
be as well off as our neighbors. We belong to the Daltons of Garrigmore,
that you know are full blood with the O'Neals of Cappagh. But what 's
the use of blood now? devil a good it does a man. It would be better
to have your father a cotton-spinner, or an iron-master, than the
descendant of Shane Mohr na Manna.”
“I believe you are right,” observed the doctor, dryly.
“I know I am; I feel it myself, and I 'm almost ashamed to tell it. Here
am I, Peter Dalton, the last of them now; and may I never leave this
bed, if I could make a barony constable in the county where the king's
writ could n't run once without our leave.”
“But Ireland herself has changed more than your own fortunes,” remarked
Grounsell.
“That's true, that 's true,” sighed the sick man. “I don't remember the
best days of it, but I 've heard of them often and often from my father.
The fine old times, when Mount Dalton was filled with company from the
ground to the slates, and two lords in the granary; a pipe of port wine
in the hall, with a silver cup beside it; the Modereen hounds, huntsmen
and all, living at rack and manger, as many as fifty sitting down in
the parlor, and I won't say how many in the servants' hall; the finest
hunters in the west country in the stables, there was life for you! Show
me the equal of that in the wide world.”
“And what is the present condition of the scene of those festivities?”
said Grounsell, with a calm but searching look.
“The present condition?” echoed Dalton, starting up to a sitting
posture, and grasping the curtain with a convulsive grip; “I can't tell
you what it is to-day, this ninth of November, but I 'll tell what it
was when I left it, eighteen years ago. The house was a ruin; the lawn
a common; the timber cut down; the garden a waste; the tenants beggared;
the landlord an exile. That 's a pleasant catalogue, is n't it?”
“But there must come a remedy for all this,” remarked Grounsell, whose
ideas were following out a very different channel.
“Do you mean by a poor-law? Is it by taxing the half ruined to feed the
lazy? or by rooting out all that once was a gentry, to fill their places
by greedy speculators from Manchester and Leeds? Is that your remedy?
It 's wishing it well I am! No; if you want to do good to the country,
leave Ireland to be Ireland, and don't try to make Norfolk of her. Let
her have her own Parliament, that knows the people and their wants.
Teach her to have a pride in her own nationality, and not to be always
looking at herself in shame beside her rich sister. Give her a word of
kindness now and then, as you do the Scotch; but, above all, leave us to
ourselves. We understand one another; you never did, nor never will. We
quarrelled, and made friends again, and all went right with us; you
came over with your Chancery Courts, and your police, and whenever we
differed, you never stopped till we were beggared or hanged.”
“You take a very original view of our efforts at civilization, I
confess,” said Grounsell, smiling. “Civilization! Civilization! I hate
the very sound of the word; it brings to my mind nothing but county
jails, bridewells, turnpikes, and ministers' money. If it was n't for
civilization, would there be a receiver over my estate of Mount Dalton?
Would the poor tenants be racked for the rent that I always gave time
for? Would there be a big poor-house, with its ugly front staring to
the highway, as they tell me there is, and a police barrack to keep it
company, opposite? I tell you again, sir, that your meddling has done
nothing but mischief. Our little quarrels you converted into serious
animosities; our estrangements into the feuds of two opposing races; our
very poverty, that we had grown accustomed to, you taught us to regard
as a 'national disgrace,' without ever instructing us how to relieve it;
and there we are now on your hands, neither English in industry, nor
Irish in submission, neither willing to work, nor content to be hungry!”
The doctor saw by the agitated look and tone of the sick man that the
subject was one of too much excitement for him, and hastened to change
the topic by jocularly expressing a hope that he might prove more
successful with him than England had been with his countrymen.
“I doubt it, sir,” said Dalton, gravely; “not thanking you the less
for your kindness. I believe, like my poor country, that I 'm past
doctoring.” He paused for a few seconds, and then added: “It's all
fretting. It's thinking about the girls. Frank there is no fear of. That
's what ails me.”
Grounsell saw that to prolong his visit would be but to encourage a tone
of depression that must prove injurious; so promising to return to see
him in the morning, he shook Dalton's hand cordially, and followed Hans
into the adjoining room, where writing materials were prepared for him.
The two girls were standing at the fire as he entered; and simple as was
their dress, homely even to poverty, every trait of their costume, their
looks, bespoke them of gentle blood. Their anxious glances as he came
forward showed their eagerness to hear his tidings; but they did not
speak a word.
“Do not be uneasy, young ladies,” said he, hastening to relieve their
fears. “Your father's illness has nothing serious about it. A few days
will, I trust, see him perfectly restored to health. Meanwhile you are
his best physicians, who can minister to his spirits and cheer him up.”
“Since my brother left us, sir, he appeared to sink hour by hour; he
cannot get over the shock,” said Ellen.
“I never knew him to give way before,” interposed Kate. “He used to say,
when anything grieved him, 'he 'd pay some one to fret for him.”
“With better health you 'll see his old courage return,” said the
doctor, as he hastily wrote a few lines of prescription, and then laying
his head in his hand, seemed for some minutes lost in thought. There
were little comforts, mat-' ters of trifling luxury he wished to order,
and yet he hesitated, for he did not know how far they were compatible
with their means; nor could he venture upon the hazard of offending by
questioning them. As in his uncertainty he raised his eyes, they fell
upon the wooden figure which the dwarf had exhibited in the apothecary's
shop, and which now stood upon a table near. It was a child sleeping at
the foot of a cross, around which its arms were entwined. The emaciated
limbs and wasted cheek portrayed fasting and exhaustion, while in the
attitude itself, sleep seemed verging upon death.
“What is that?” asked he, hastily, as he pointed with his pen to the
object.
“A poor child was found thus, frozen to death upon the Arlberg,” said
Kate; “and my sister carved that figure from a description of the
event.”
“Your sister! This was done by you,” said Grounsell, slowly, as he
turned his gaze from the work to the artist.
“Yes,” cried Hans, whose face beamed with delight; “is it not
'lieblich?' is it not vonderful? Dass, I say, alway; none have taste now
none have de love to admire!”
Stooping down to examine it better, Grounsell was struck by the
expression of the face, whereon a smile of trustfulness and hope seemed
warring with the rigid lines of coming death; so that the impression
conveyed was more of a victory over suffering than of a terrible fate.
“She is self-taught, sir; none even so much as assisted Ler by advice,”
said Kate, proudly.
“That will be perhaps but too apparent from my efforts,” said Ellen,
smiling faintly.
[Illustration: 078]
“I'm no artist, young lady,” said Grounsell, bluntly, “but I am well
versed in every variety of the human expression in suffering, and of
mere truth to nature I can speak confidently. This is a fine work! nay,
do not blush, I am not a flatterer. May I take it with me, and show it
to others more conversant with art than I am?”
“Upon one condition you may,” said the girl, in a low, deep voice.
“Be it so; on any condition you wish.”
“We are agreed, then?”
“Perfectly.”
“The figure is yours Nay, sir your promise!”
Groimsell stammered, and blushed, and looked confused; indeed, no man
was less able to extricate himself from any position of embarrassment;
and here the difficulties pressed on every side, for while he scrupled
to accept what he deemed a gift of real value, he felt that they too had
a right to free themselves from the obligation that his presence as a
doctor imposed. At last he saw nothing better than to yield; and in
all the confusion of a bashfully awkward man, he mumbled out his
acknowledgments and catching up the figure, departed.
Hans alone seemed dissatisfied at the result, for as he cast his wistful
looks after the wooden image, his eyes swam with his tears, and he
muttered as he went some words of deep desponding cadence.