THE lamp in Kate Dalton's chamber was still burning when the morning
dawned, and by its uncertain flicker might be seen the two sisters, who,
clasped in each other's arms, sat upon the low settle-bed. Nelly, pale
and motionless, supported Kate, as, overcome by watching and emotion,
she had fallen into a heavy slumber. Not venturing to stir, lest she
should awaken her, Nelly had leaned against the wall for support, and,
in her unmoved features and deathly pallor, seemed like some monumental
figure of sorrow.
It was not alone the grief of an approaching separation that oppressed
her. Sad as it was to part from one to whom she had been mother and
sister too, her affliction was tinged with a deeper coloring in her
fears for the future. Loving Kate dearer than anything in the world, she
was alive to all the weak traits of her character: her credulity,
her trustfulness, her fondness for approbation, even from those whose
judgments she held lightly, her passion for admiration even in trifles,
were well known to her; and while, perhaps, these very failings, like
traits of childish temperament, had actually endeared her the more
to Nelly, she could not but dread their effect when they came to be
exercised in the world of strangers.
Not that Nelly could form the very vaguest conception of what that world
was like. Its measures and its perils, its engagements and hazards,
were all unknown to her. It had never been even the dream-land of
her imagination. Too humble in spirit, too lowly by nature, to feel
companionship with the great and titled, she had associated all
her thoughts with those whose life is labor; with them were all her
sympathies. There was a simple beauty in the unchanging fortune of the
peasant's life such as she had seen in the Schwarzwald, for instance
that captivated her. That peaceful domesticity was the very nearest
approach to happiness, to her thinking, and she longed for the day when
her father might consent to the obscurity and solitude of some nameless
“Dorf” in the dark recesses of that old forest. With Frank and Kate,
such a lot would have been a paradise. But one was already gone, and she
was now to lose the other too. “Strange turn of fortune,” as she said,
“that prosperity should be more cruel than adversity. In our days of
friendless want and necessity we held together; it is only when the
promise of brighter destinies is dawning that we separate. It is but
selfishness after all,” thought she, “to wish for an existence like
this; such humble and lowly fortunes might naturally enough become 'lame
Nelly,' but Frank, the high-hearted, daring youth, with ambitious hopes
and soaring aspirations, demands another and a different sphere of
action; and Kate, whose attractions would grace a court, might well
sorrow over a lot of such ignoble obscurity. What would not my sorrow
and self-reproach be if I saw that, in submitting to the same monotony
of this quietude, they should have become wearied and careless, neither
taking pleasure in the simple pastimes of the people, nor stooping to
their companionship! And thus all may be for the best,” said she, half
aloud, “if I could but feel courage to think so. We may each of us be
but following his true road in life.”
A long intimacy with affliction will very frequently be found to impress
even a religiously-disposed mind with a strong tinge of fatalism. The
apparent hopelessness of all effort to avert calamity, or stem the tide
of evil fortune, often suggests, as its last consolation, the notion of
a predetermined destiny, to which we are bound to submit with patient
trustfulness; a temperament of great humility aids this conviction.
Both of these conditions were Nelly's; she had “supped sorrow” from her
cradle, while her estimate of herself was the very lowest possible. “I
suppose it is so,” said she again; “all is for the best.”
She already pictured to herself the new spring this change of fortune
would impart to her father's life: with what delight he would read the
letters from his children; how he would once more, through them, taste
of that world whose pleasures he was so fondly attached to. “I never
could have yielded him a gratification like this,” said Nelly, as the
tears rose in her eyes. “I am but the image of our fallen fortunes, and
in me, 'poor lame Nelly,' he can but see reflected our ruined lot. All
is for the best it must be so!” sighed she, heavily; and just as the
words escaped, her father, with noiseless step, entered the chamber.
“To be sure it is, Nelly darling,” said he, as he sat down near her,
“and glad I am that you 've come to reason at last. 'T is plain enough
this is n't the way the Daltons ought to be passing their life, in a
little hole of a place, without society or acquaintance of any kind. You
and I may bear it, not but it's mighty hard upon me sometimes, too, but
Kate there just look at her and say, is it a girl like that should be
wasting away her youth in a dreary village? Lady Hester tells me and
sure nobody should know better that there never was the time in the
world when real beauty had the same chance as now, and I 'd like to see
the girl that could stand beside her. Do you know, Nelly,” here he drew
closer, so as to speak in a whisper, “do you know, that I do be fancying
the strangest things might happen to us yet, that Frank might be a great
general, and Kate married to God knows what sort of a grandee, with
money enough to redeem Mount Dalton, and lay my old bones in the
churchyard with my ancestors? I can't get it out of my head but it will
come about, somehow. What do you think yourself?”
“I'm but an indifferent castle-builder, papa,” said she, laughing
softly. “I rarely attempt anything beyond a peasant hut or a shealing.”
“And nobody could make the one or the other more neat and comfortable,
that I 'll say for you, Nelly. It would have a look of home about it
before you were a day under the roof.”
The young girl blushed deeply; for, humble as the praise might have
sounded to other ears, to hers it was the most touching she could have
listened to.
“I 'm not flattering you a bit. 'T is your own mother you take after;
you might put her down in the bleakest spot of Ireland, and 't is a
garden she 'd make it. Let her stop for shelter in a cabin, and before
the shower was over you 'd not know the place. It would be all swept
and clean, and the dishes ranged neatly on the dresser; and the pig she
could n't abide a pig turned out, and the hens driven into the cowshed,
and the children's faces washed, and their hair combed, and, maybe, the
little gossoon of five years old upon her knee, saying his 'Hail, Mary,'
or his 'A B C,' while she was teaching his mother how to wind the
thread off the wheel; for she could spin a hank of yarn as well as any
cottier's wife in the townland. The kind creature she was! But she never
had a taste for real diversion; it always made her low-spirited and
sad.”
“Perhaps the pleasures you speak of were too dearly purchased, papa,”
said Nelly.
“Indeed, maybe they were,” said he, dubiously, and as though the thought
had now occurred for the first time; “and, now that you say it, I begin
to believe it was that same that might have fretted her. The way she was
brought up made her think so, too. That brother was always talking about
wastefulness, and extravagance, and so on; and, if it was in her nature,
he 'd have made her as stingy as himself; and look what it comes to
after all. We spent it when we had it, the Daltons are a good warrant
for that; and there was he grubbing and grabbing all his days, to leave
it after him to a rich man, that does n't know whether he has so many
thousands more or not.”
Nelly made no reply, not wishing to encourage, by the slightest apparent
interest, the continuance on the theme which invariably suggested her
father's gloomiest reveries.
“Is that her trunk, Nelly?” said Dalton, breaking silence after a
long interval, and pointing to an old and journey-worn valise that lay
half-open upon the floor.
“Yes, papa,” said Nelly, with a sigh.
“Why, it's a mean-looking, scrubby bit of a thing; sure it 's not the
size of a good tea-chest,” said he, angrily.
“And yet too roomy for all its contents, papa. Poor Kate's wardrobe is a
very humble one.”
“I 'd like to know where 's the shops here; where 's the milliners and
the haberdashers? Are we in College Green or Grafton Street, that we
can just send out and have everything at our hand's turn? 'T is n't on
myself I spend the money. Look at these gaiters; they 're nine years old
next March; and the coat on my back was made by Peter Stevens, that 's
in his grave now. The greatest enemy ever I had could not face me down
that I only took care of myself. If that was my way would I be here now?
See the rag I 'm wearing round my throat, a piece of old worsted like a
rug a thing--”
He stopped, and stammered, and then was silent altogether, for he
suddenly remembered it was Nelly herself who had worked the article in
question.
“Nay, papa,” broke she in, with her own happy smile, “you may give it to
Andy to-morrow, for I 've made you a smart new one, of your own favorite
colors, too, the Dalton green and white.”
“Many a time I 've seen the same colors coming in first on the Corralin
course!” cried Dalton, with enthusiasm; for at the impulse of a new word
his mind could turn from a topic of deep and painful interest to one in
every way its opposite. “You were too young to remember it; but you were
there, in the 'landau,' with your mother, when Baithershin won the Murra
handicap, the finest day's flat racing I have it from them that seen the
best in England that ever was run in the kingdom. I won eight hundred
pounds on it, and, by the same token, lost it all in the evening at
'blind hookey' with old Major Haggs, of the 5th Foot, not to say a
trifle more besides. And that 's her trunk!” said he, after another
pause, his voice dropping at the words, as though to say, “What a change
of fortune is there! I wonder neither of you hadn't the sense to take
my old travelling chest; that's twice the size, and as heavy as a lead
coffin, besides. Sorrow one would ever know if she hadn't clothes for a
whole lifetime! Two men wouldn't carry it upstairs when it's empty.”
“When even this valise is too large, papa?”
“Oh dear, oh dear!” broke in Dalton; “you've no contrivance, after all.
Don't you see that it 's not what 's inside I 'm talking about, at all,
but the show before the world? Did n't I live at Mount Dalton on the
fat of the laud, and every comfort a gentleman could ask, five years and
eight months after I was ruined? And had n't I credit wherever I went,
and for whatever I ordered? And why? Because of the house and place! I
was like the big trunk beyond; nobody knew how little there was in it.
Oh, Nelly dear, when you 've seen as much of life as me, you 'll know
that one must be up to many a thing for appearance' sake.”
Nelly sighed, but made no reply. Perhaps in secret she thought how much
trouble a little sincerity with the world would save us.
“We 'll be mighty lonesome after her,” said he, after a pause.
Nelly nodded her head in sadness.
“I was looking over the map last night, and it ain't so far away, after
all,” said Dalton. “'T is n't much more than the length of my finger on
the paper.”
“Many a weary mile may lie within that space,” said Nelly, softly.
“And I suppose we'll hear from her every week, at least?” said Dalton,
whose mind vacillated between joy and grief, but still looked for its
greatest consolations from without.
Poor Nelly was, however, little able to furnish these. Her mind saw
nothing but sorrow for the present; and, for the future, difficulty, if
not danger.
“You give one no comfort at all,” said Dalton, rising impatiently.
“That's the way it will be always now, when Kate goes. No more gayety in
the house; not a song nor a merry laugh! I see well what a dreary life
there is before me.”
“Oh, dearest papa, I 'll do my very best, not to replace her, for that
I never could do; but to make your days less wearisome. It will be
such pleasure, too, to talk of her, and think of her! To know of her
happiness, and to fancy all the fair stores of knowledge she will bring
back with her when she comes home at last!”
“If I could only live to see them back again, Frank and Kate, one at
each side of me, that 's all I ask for in this world now,” muttered he,
as he stole noiselessly away and closed the door behind him.