THE remainder of the day after the dwarf's misfortune was passed by Lady
Hester in a state of feverish irritability. Sorry as she felt for the
“sad accident,” her own phrase, she was still more grieved for the
effects it produced upon herself; the jar and worry of excited feelings,
the uncomfortableness of being anxious about anything or anybody.
Epicurean in her code of manners as of morals, she detested whatever
occasioned even a passing sensation of dissatisfaction, and hence upon
the luckless colonel, the author of the present evil, fell no measured
share of her displeasure. “He should have taken precautions against
such a mishap; he ought to have had sufficient presence of mind to have
arrested his aim; he should have fired in the air, in fact, he ought to
have done anything but what he did do;” which was to agitate the nerves,
and irritate the sensibilities, of a fine lady.
The conduct of the family, too, was the very reverse of soothing. Sir
Stafford's gout had relapsed on hearing of the event; George Onslow's
anger was such that he could not trust himself to speak of the
occurrence; and as for Sydney, though full of sorrow for the dwarf, she
had not a single sympathy to bestow upon her stepmother. “Were there
ever such people?” she asked herself again and again. Not one had taken
the trouble to ask how she bore up, or express the slightest anxiety for
the consequences the shock might occasion her.
Grounsell was actually insufferable; and even hinted that if anything
untoward were to happen, the very grave question might arise as to
the guilt of the parties who appeared in arms without a Government
permission. He reminded her Ladyship that they were not in England, but
in a land beset with its own peculiar prejudices and notions, and in
nothing so rigorous as in the penalties on accidents that took their
origin in illegality.
As for the wound itself, he informed her that the bullet had “traversed
the deltoid, but without dividing the brachial artery; and, for the
present, sympathetic fever and subcutaneous inflammation would be the
worst consequences.” These tidings were neither very reassuring nor
intelligible; but all her cross-examination could elicit little better.
“Has Colonel Haggerstone been to see him?” asked she.
“No, madam. His groom called with a present of two florins.”
“Oh! impossible, sir.”
“Perfectly true, madam. I was present when the money was returned to the
man by a young lady, whose attentions to the sufferer saved him the pain
this indignity would have cost him.”
“A young lady, did you say? How does he happen to be so fortunate in his
attendance?”
“Her father chances to be this poor creature's tenant, and many mutual
acts of kindness have passed between them.”
“Not even scandal could asperse her motives in the present case,” said
Lady Hester, with an insolent laugh. “It looked hardly human when they
lifted it from the ground.”
“Scandal has been guilty of as gross things, madam,” said Grounsell,
sternly, “but I would defy her here, although there is beauty enough
to excite all her malevolence.” And with this speech, delivered with a
pointedness there was no mistaking, the doctor left the room.
Impressions, or what she herself would have called “feelings,” chased
each other so rapidly through Lady Hester's mind, that her whole
attention was now directed to the young lady of whom Grounsell spoke,
and whose singular charity excited all her curiosity. There is a strange
tendency to imitation among those whose intelligences lie unexercised
by any call of duty or necessity. No suggestion coming from within, they
look without themselves for occupation and amusement. Lady Hester was a
prominent disciple of this school; all her life she had been following,
eager to see whether the fashions that became, or the pleasures that
beguiled, others, might not suit herself. If such a course of existence
inevitably conduces to ennui and discontent, it is no less difficult to
strive against; and they who follow in the track of others' footsteps
have all the weariness of the road without the cheering excitement of
the journey.
If the young lady found pleasure in charity, why should n't she?
Benevolence, too, for aught she knew, might be very becoming. There were
a hundred little devices of costume and manner which might be adopted to
display it. What a pretty version of the good Samaritan modernized
one might give in a Shetland scarf and a cottage bonnet the very thing
Chalons would like to paint; and what an effective “interior” might
be made of the dwarf's chamber, crowded with rude peasant faces, all
abashed and almost awe-struck as she entered.
The longer she dwelt upon the theme the more fascinating it became. “It
would be really worth while to realize,” said she to herself at last “so
amusing and so odd, an actual adventure; besides, in point of fact, it
was her duty to look after this poor creature.” Just so; there never was
a frivolous action, or a notion struck out by passing folly, for
which its author could not find a justification in PRINCIPLE! We are
everlastingly declaring against the knaveries and deceptions practised
on us in life; but if we only took count of the cheats we play off upon
ourselves, we should find that there are no such impostors as our own
hearts.
Nobody was ever less likely to make this discovery than Lady Hester. She
believed herself everything that was good and amiable; she knew that she
was handsome. Whatever contrarieties she met with in life, she was quite
certain they came not from any fault of hers; and if self-esteem could
give happiness, she must have enjoyed it. But it cannot. The wide
neutral territory between what we think of ourselves and others think of
us is filled with daring enemies to our peace, and it is impossible to
venture into it without a wound of self-love.
To make her visit to the dwarf sufficient of an adventure, it must
be done in secret; nobody should know it but Celestine, her maid, who
should accompany her. Affecting a slight indisposition, she could retire
to her room in the evening, and then there would be abundant time to put
her plan into execution. Even these few precautions against discovery
were needless, for George did not return to dinner on that day, and
Sydney made a headache an excuse for not appearing.
Nothing short of the love of adventure and the indulgence of a caprice
could have induced Lady Hester to venture out in such a night. The
rain fell in torrents, and swooped along the narrow streets in channels
swollen to the size of rivulets. The river itself, fed by many a
mountain stream, fell tumbling over the rocks with a deafening roar,
amid which the crashing branches of the pine-trees were heard at
intervals. What would not have been her anxieties and lamentings
if exposed to such a storm when travelling, surrounded with all the
appliances that wealth can compass! and yet now, of her own free will,
she wended her way on foot through the darkness and the hurricane, not
only without complaining, but actually excited to a species of pleasure
in the notion of her imaginary heroism.
The courier who preceded her, as guide, enjoyed no such agreeable
illusions, but muttered to himself, as he went, certain reflections by
no means complimentary, to the whims of fine ladies; while Mademoiselle
Celestine inwardly protested that anything, “not positively wrong,”
would be dearly purchased by the dangers of such an excursion.
“Gregoire! Gregoire! where is he now!” exclaimed Lady Hester, as she
lost sight of her guide altogether.
“Here, miladi,” grunted out the courier, in evident pain; “I fail to
break my neck over de stone bench.”
“Where 's the lantern, Gregoire?”
“Blowed away, zum Teufel, I believe.” “What 's he saying, Celestine?
what does he mean?”
But mademoiselle could only answer by a sob of agony over her capote de
Paris, flattened to her head like a Highland bonnet.
“Have you no light? You must get a light, Gregoire.”
“Impossible, miladi; dere 's nobody livin' in dese houses at all.”
“Then you must go back to the inn for one; we 'll wait here till you
return.”
A faint shriek from Mademoiselle Celestine expressed all the terror such
a proposition suggested.
“Miladi will be lost if she remain here all alone.”
“Perdue! sans doute!” exclaimed Celestiue.
“I am determined to have my way. Do as I bade you, Gregoire; return
for a light, and we'll take such shelter as this door affords in the
meanwhile.”
It was in no spirit of general benevolence that Gregoire tracked his
road back to the “Russie,” since, if truth must be told, he himself had
extinguished the light, in the hope of forcing Lady Hester to a retreat.
Muttering a choice selection of those pleasant phrases with which his
native German abounds, he trudged along, secretly resolving that he
would allow his mistress a reasonable interval of time to reflect
over her madcap expedition. Meanwhile, Lady Hester and her maid stood
shivering and storm-beaten beneath the drip of a narrow eave. The spirit
of opposition alone sustained her Ladyship at this conjuncture, for she
was wet through, her shoes soaked with rain, and the cold blast that
swept along seemed as if it would freeze the very blood in her heart.
Celestine could supply but little of comfort or consolation, and kept
repeating the words, “Quelle aventure! quelle aventure!” in every
variety of lamentation.
“He could easily have been back by this,” said Lady Hester, after a long
pause, and an anxious attention to every sound that might portend his
coming: “I 'm certain it is full half an hour since he left us. What a
night!”
“Et quelle aventure!” exclaimed Celestine, anew.
None knew better than Lady Hester the significant depreciation of the
Frenchwoman's phrase, and how differently had she rated all the hazards
of the enterprise if any compromise of character were to have followed
it. However, it was no time for discussion, and she let it pass.
“If he should have missed the way, and not be able to find us!” she
said, after another pause.
“We shall be found dead in the morning,” cried Celestine; “et pour
quelle a venture, mon Dieu, pour quelle aventure!”
The possibility that her fears suggested, and the increasing severity
of the storm for now the thunder rolled overhead, and the very ground
seemed to shake with the reverberation served to alarm Lady Hester, and
for the first time she became frightened at their situation.
“We could scarcely find our way back, Celestine!” said she, rather in
the tone of one asking for comfort than putting a question.
“Impossible, miladi.”
“And Gregoire says that these houses are all uninhabited.”
“Quelle aventure!” sobbed the maid.
“What can have become of him? It is more than an hour now! What was
that, Ce'lestine? was it lightning? there, don't you see it yonder,
towards the end of the street? I declare it is Gregoire; I see the
lantern.”
A cry of joy burst from both together, for already hope had begun to
wane, and a crowd of fearful anticipations had taken its place.
Lady Hester tried to call his name, but the clattering noise of the
storm drowned the weak effort. The light, however, came nearer at
each instant, and there was no longer any doubt of their rescue, when
suddenly it turned and disappeared at an angle of the street. Lady
Hester uttered a piercing cry, and at the instant the lantern was again
seen, showing that the bearer had heard the sounds.
“Here, Gregoire, we are here!” exclaimed she, in her loudest voice, and
speaking in English.
Whoever carried the lantern seemed for a moment uncertain how to act,
for there was no reply, nor any change of position for a few seconds,
when at length the light was seen approaching where Lady Hester stood.
“I think I heard an English voice,” said one whose accents proclaimed
her to be a woman.
“Oh yes!” cried Lady Hester, passionately, “I am English. We have lost
our way. Our courier went back to the inn for a lantern, and has never
returned, and we are almost dead with cold and terror. Can you guide us
to the Hotel de Russie?”
“The house I live in is only a few yards off. It is better you should
take shelter there for the present.”
“Take care, miladi!” whispered Celestine, eagerly. “This may be a plot
to rob and murder us.”
“Have no fears on that score, mademoiselle,” said the unknown, laughing,
and speaking in French; “we are not very rich, but as surely we are
perfectly safe company.”
Few as these words were, there was in their utterance that indescribable
tone of good breeding and ease which at once reassured Lady Hester, who
now replied to her unseen acquaintance with the observance due to an
equal, and willingly accepted the arm she offered for guidance and
support.
“At the end of this little street, scarcely two minutes' walking, and
you will be there,” said the unknown.
Lady Hester scarcely heard the remark, as she ran on with voluble levity
on the dangers they had run, the terrific storm, the desertion of
the courier, her own fortitude, her maid's cowardice, what must have
happened if they had not been discovered, till at last she bethought her
of asking by what singular accident the other should have been abroad in
such a terrible night.
“A neighbor and a friend of ours is very ill, madam, and I have been to
the doctor's to fetch some medicine for him.”
“And I, too, was bent upon a charitable errand,” said Lady Hester, quite
pleased with the opportunity of parading her own merits, “to visit a
poor creature who was accidentally wounded this morning.”
“It is Hans Roeckle, our poor neighbor, you mean,” cried the other,
eagerly; “and here we are at his house.” And so saying, she pushed open
a door, to which a bell, attached on the inside, gave speedy warning of
their approach.
“Dearest Kate!” cried a voice from within, “how uneasy I have been at
your absence!” And the same moment a young girl appeared with a light,
which, as she shaded it with her hand, left her unaware of the presence
of strangers.
“Think rather of this lady, and what she must have suffered,” said Kate,
as, drawing courteously back, she presented her sister to Lady Hester.
“Or rather, what I might have suffered,” interposed Lady Hester, “but
for the fortunate accident of your coming. A few moments back, as I
stood shivering beneath the storm, I little thought that I should owe
my rescue to a countrywoman. May I learn the name of one to whom I am so
deeply indebted?”
“Dalton, madam,” said Nelly; and then with a slight confusion, added,
“we ought, perhaps, to tell the circumstances which induced my sister to
be abroad at such an hour.”
“She knows it all,” broke in Kate, “and can the more readily forgive it,
as it was her own errand. But will not this lady come near the fire?”
said she, addressing Mademoiselle Celestiue, who, as she followed the
rest into the humble chamber, was bestowing a most depreciatory glance
upon the place, the furniture, and the people.
“It is only my maid,” said Lady Hester, carelessly. “And now it is time
I should introduce myself, and say that Lady Hester Onslow owes you all
her gratitude.” Ellen courtesied respectfully at the announcement, but
Kate Dalton's cheek colored slightly, and she bent a look of more than
common admiration at the handsome figure of the stranger. An innate
reverence for rank and title was rooted in her heart, and she was
overjoyed to think that their chance acquaintance should be one of that
class so distinctively marked out for honor. Prepared to admire every
grace and fascination of the high-born, Kate watched with eager and
delighted looks the slightest gestures, the least traits of manner, of
the fashionable beauty. They were all attractions to which her heart
gave a ready response. The accent in which she spoke, the careless
elegance of her attitude as she lay back in her chair, the charming
negligence with which she wore the little portions of dress exchanged
for her own, were all inimitable graces in the eye of the simple girl.
As for Lady Hester, accustomed to all the servile offices of her own
attendants, to be punctiliously obeyed and waited on, it was yet a new
sensation to watch the zealous and eager devotion with which the two
sisters ministered to her wants. In utter forgetfulness of themselves,
they had brought forth the little resources of their humble wardrobe,
too happy, as it seemed, when they saw their services so willingly
accepted. Fortunately, they did not perceive the contemptuous looks
with which “mademoiselle” regarded their attentions, nor overheard
her exclamation of “Mon Dieu! where did they gather together these
chiffons?” as she surveyed the somewhat antiquated stores of their
toilette.
Even had Lady Hester's good breeding not prompted a gracious reception
of what was so generously offered, the very singularity of the scene
would have had its charm in her estimation. She was delighted with
everything, even to Kate Dalton's slippers, which, by a most happy
flattery, were a little too large for her. She fancied, too, that her
costume, curiously made up of shreds and patches the most incongruous,
was the dress of an Irish peasant, and was in an ecstasy at the thought
of a similar one at her next fancy ball. Besides all these internal
sources of self-satisfaction, the admiration of the two sisters was
another and more legitimate cause of pleasure; for even Ellen, with all
her natural reserve and caution, was scarcely less impressed than Kate
with the charm of those fascinations which, however destined but for one
class of society, are equally successful in all.
Ellen Dalton's life had not been devoid of trials, nor had they failed
to teach their own peculiar lessons; and yet her experiences had not
shown her how very like right feeling good breeding can be, and how
closely good manners may simulate every trait of a high and generous
nature.