“It would be very ungenerous, then, to conceal your secret,” cried Onslow; “for assuredly the art of killing time here, without killing one's self, is worth knowing.”
“The misfortune is, I cannot communicate it; that is, even giving me credit for possessing one, my skill is like that of some great medical practitioner, who has learnt to look on disease with such practised eyes that the appropriate remedy rises as it were instinctively to his mind, he knows not how or why, and who dies, without being able to transmit the knowledge to a successor. I have, somewhat in the same way, become an accomplished idler; and with such success that the dreariest day of rain that ever darkened the dirty windows of a village inn, the most scorching dog-day that ever emptied the streets of an Italian city, and sent all the inhabitants to their siesta, never hipped me. I have spent a month with perfect satisfaction in quarantine, and bobbed for three weeks in a calm at sea, with no other inconvenience than the moans of my fellow-passengers. There 's no secret in it, Mr. Onslow; or, if there be, it lies in this pretty discovery, that we are always bored by our habit of throwing ourselves on the resources of somebody else, who, in his turn, looks out for another, and so on. Now, a man in a fever never dreams of cooling his hand by laying it on another patient's cheek; yet this is what we do. To be thoroughly bored, you must associate yourself with some half-dozen tired, weary, dyspeptic twaddles, and make up a joint-stock bank of your several incapacities, learn to growl in chorus, and you'll be able to go home and practise it as a solo.”
“And have you been completely alone here of late?” said George, who began to fear that the sermon on ennui was not unaccompanied by a taste of the evil.
“Occasionally I 've chatted for half an hour with two gentlemen who reside here, a Colonel Haggerstone—”
“By the way, who is he?” broke in Onslow, eagerly.
“He has been traced back to Madras, but the most searching inquiries have failed to elicit anything further.”
“Is he the man they called Arlington's Colonel Haggerstone?”
Jekyl nodded; but with an air that seemed to say, he would not enter more deeply into the subject.
“And your other companion who is he?”
“Peter Dalton, of I am ashamed to say I forget where,” said Jekyl; who, at once assuming Dalton's bloated look, in a well-feigned Irish accent, went on: “a descendant of as ancient and as honorable a familee as any in the three kingdoms, and if a little down in the world bad luck to them that done it! just as ready as ever he was to enjoy agreeable society and the ganial flow of soul.”
“He 's the better of the two, I take it,” said Onslow.
“More interesting, certainly, just as a ruined chateau is a more picturesque object than a new police-station or a cut-stone penitentiary. There 's another feature also which ought to give him the preference. I have seen two very pretty faces from time to time as I have passed the windows, and which I conjecture to belong to his daughters.”
“Have you not made their acquaintance?” asked Onslow, in some surprise.
“I grieve to say I have not,” sighed Jekyl, softly.
“Why, the matter should not be very difficult, one might opine, in such a place, at such a time, and with—”
He hesitated, and Jekyl added,
“With such a papa, you were about to say. Well, that is precisely the difficulty. Had my excellent friend, Peter, been a native of any other country, I flatter myself I should have known how to make my advances; but with these dear Irish their very accessibility is a difficulty of no common order. Assume an air of deference and respect, and they 'll set you down for a cold formalist, with whom they can have nothing in common. Try the opposite line, and affect the free and easy, and the chances are that you have a duel to fight before you know you have offended. I confess that I have made several small advances, and thrown out repeated little hints about loneliness, and long evenings, and so forth; and although he has concurred with me in every word, yet his practice has never followed his precept. But I don't despair. What say you, if we attack the fortress as allies? I have a notion we should succeed?” “With all my heart. What's your plan?” “At this moment I have formed none, nor is there need of any. Let us go out, like the knight-errants of old, in search of adventures, and see if they will not befall us. The first step will be to make Dalton's acquaintance. Now, he always takes his walk in bad weather in the great Saal below; should he not make his appearance there to-day, as he has already absented himself for some days, I 'll call to inquire after him at his own house. You 'll accompany me. The rest we 'll leave to fortune.”
Although On slow could not see that this step could lead to anything beyond a civil reply to a civil demand, he assented readily, and promised to meet his companion at four o'clock the same evening. As for Jekyl, he took a very different view of the whole transaction, for he knew that while to him there might be considerable difficulty in establishing any footing with the Daltons, the son of the wealthy baronet would be, in all likelihood, very differently looked on. In presenting him, thought he, I shall have become the friend of the family at once. It had often before been his fortune in life to have made valuable acquaintances in this manner; and although the poor Daltons were very unlikely to figure in the category of profitable friends, they would at least afford an agreeable resource against the dulness of wintry evenings, and prevent what he himself called the “demoralization” of absence from female society. Lastly, the scheme promised to establish a close intimacy between Onslow and himself; and here was a benefit worth all the others.
CHAPTER XIII. A SUSPICIOUS VISITOR
How far were the Daltons from suspecting that they were the subject of so much and such varied solicitude, and that, while Lady Hester was fancying to herself all the fashionable beauties whom Kate would eclipse in loveliness, and what an effect charms like hers would produce on society, Sir Stafford was busily concerting with his lawyer the means of effectually benefiting them; and George Onslow for want of better speculated, as he smoked, on “the kind of people” they would prove, and wondered whether the scheme were worth the light trouble it was to cost him. Little did they know of all this, little imagine that outside of their humble roof there lived one save “dear Frank” whose thoughts included them. “The purple and fine linen” category of this world cannot appreciate the force of this want of sympathy! They, whose slightest griefs and least afflictions in life are always certain of the consolations of friends, and the even more bland solace of a fashionable physician whose woes are re-echoed by the “Morning Post,” and whose sorrows are mourned in Court Journals cannot frame to themselves the sense of isolation which narrow fortune impresses. “Poverty,” says a classical authority, “has no heavier evil than that it makes men ridiculous.” But this wound to self-love, deep and poignant though it be, is light in comparison with the crushing sense of isolation, that abstraction from sympathy in which poor men live!
The Daltons were seated around Hanserl's bed, silently ministering to the sick man, and watching with deep and anxious interest the labored respiration and convulsive twitches of his fever. The wild and rapid utterance of his lips, and the strange fancies they syllabled, often exciting him to laughter, only deepened the gravity of their countenances, and cast over the glances they interchanged a tinge of sadder meaning.
“He could n't have better luck,” muttered Dalton, sorrowfully; “just from being a friend to us! If he had never seen nor heard of us, maybe 't is happy and healthy he 'd be to-day!”
“Nay, nay, papa,” said Nelly, gently; “this is to speak too gloomily; nor is it good for us to throw on fortune the burden that we each should bear patiently.”
“Don't tell me that there is not such a thing as luck!” replied Dalton, in a tone of irritation. “I know well whether there is or no! For five-and-thirty years whatever I put my hand to in life turned out badly. It was the same whether I did anything