



Produced by David Widger





THE DALTONS;

OR,

THREE ROADS IN LIFE.


By Charles Lever.

With Illustrations By Phiz.


In Two Volumes: Volume Two.

Boston:

Little, Brown, And Company.

1904.




THE DALTONS; or, THREE ROADS IN LIFE




CHAPTER I. A MORNING OF MISADVENTURES.

"Well, my Lord, are we to pass the day here," said Count Trouville,
the second of the opposite party, as Norwood returned from a fruitless
search of George Onslow, "or are we to understand that this is the
English mode of settling such matters?"

"I am perfectly ready, Monsieur le Comte, to prove the contrary, so far
as my own poor abilities extend," said Norwood, calmly.

"But your friend has disappeared, sir. You are left alone here."

"Which is, perhaps, the reason of your having dared to insult me,"
rejoined the other; "that being, perhaps, the French custom in such
affairs."

"Come, come, gentlemen," interposed an old cavalry officer, who acted
as second friend to Guilmard, "you must both see that all discussion of
this kind is irregular and unseemly. We have come here this morning for
one specific purpose,----to obtain reparation for a great injury. The
gentleman who should have offered us the amende has suddenly withdrawn
himself. I offer no opinion on the fact that he came out accompanied by
only one friend; we might, perhaps, have devised means to obviate this
difficulty. For his own absence we have no remedy. I would therefore ask
what you have to propose to us in this emergency?"

"A little patience,--nothing more. My friend must have lost his way;
some accident or other has detained him, and I expect to see him here
every instant."

"Shall we say half an hour longer, my Lord?" rejoined the other, taking
out his watch. "That will bring us to eight o'clock."

"Which, considering that our time was named'sharp six,'" interposed
Trouville, "is a very reasonable 'grace.'"

"Your expression is an impertinence, Monsieur," said Norwood, fiercely.

"And yet I don't intend to apologize for it," said the other, smiling.

"I'm glad of it, sir. It's the only thing you have said to-day with
either good sense or spirit."

"Enough, quite enough, my Lord," replied the Frenchman, gayly. "'Dans la
bonne societe, on ne dit jamais de trop.' Where shall it be, and when?"

"Here, and now," said Norwood, "if I can only find any one who will act
for me."

"Pray, my Lord, don't go in search of him," said Trouville, "or we shall
despair of seeing you here again."

"I will give a bail for my reappearance, sir, that you cannot doubt of,"
cried Norwood, advancing towards the other with his cane elevated.

A perfect burst of horror broke from the Frenchmen at this threat,
and three or four immediately threw themselves between the contending
parties.

"But for this, my Lord," said the old officer, "I should have offered
you my services."

"And I should have declined them, sir," said Norwood, promptly. "The
first peasant I meet with will suffice;" and, so saying, he hurried
from the spot, his heart almost bursting with passion. With many a
malediction of George--with curses deep and cutting on every one whose
misconduct had served to place him in his present position--he took his
way towards the high-road.

"What could have happened?" muttered he; "what confounded fit of
poltroonery has seized him? a fellow that never wanted pluck in his
life! Is it possible that he can have failed now? And this to occur at
the very moment they are beggared! Had they been rich, as they were a
few months back, I'd have made the thing pay. Ay, by Jove! I 'd have
'coined my blood,' as the fellow says in the play, and written a
swingeing check with red ink! And now I have had a bad quarrel, and
nothing to come of it! And so to walk the high-roads in search of some
one who can load a pistol."

A stray peasant or two, jogging along to Florence, a postilion with
return horses, a shabbily dressed curate, or a friar with a sack behind
him, were all that he saw for miles of distance, and he returned
once more to interrogate the calessino driver as to the stranger who
accompanied him from the city.

Any one whose misfortune it may have been to make inquiries from
an Italian vetturino of any fact, no matter how insignificant or
unimportant, will sympathize with Norwood's impatience at the evasive
and distrustful replies that now met his questions. Although the fact
could have no possible concern or interest for him, he prevaricated and
contradicted himself half-a-dozen times over, as to the stranger's age,
country, and appearance, so that, utterly baffled and provoked, the
Viscount turned away and entered the park.

"I, too, shall be reported missing, I suppose," said he, bitterly, as he
walked along a little path that skirted a piece of ornamental water. "By
Jupiter! this is a pleasant morning's work, and must have its reparation
one day or other."

A hearty sneeze suddenly startled him as he spoke; he turned hastily
about, but could see no one, and yet his hearing was not to be deceived!
He searched the spot eagerly; he examined the little boat-shed, the
copse, the underwood,--everything, in fact,--but not a trace of living
being was to be seen; at last a slight rustling sound seemed to issue
from a piece of rustic shell-work, representing a river god reclining
on his urn, and, on approaching, he distinctly detected the glitter of a
pair of eyes within the sockets of the figure.

"Here goes for a brace of balls into him," cried Norwood, adjusting a
cap on his pistol. "A piece of stonework that sneezes is far too like a
man to be trusted."

Scarcely was the threat uttered, when a tremulous scream issued from
within, and a voice, broken with terror, called out,----

"D-don't fire, my Lord. You'll m-m-murder me. I'm Purvis--Sc-Sc-Scroope
Purvis."

"How did you come to be there, then?" asked Norwood, half angrily.

"I 'll tell you when I g-get out!" was the answer; and he disappeared
from the loophole at which he carried on the conversation for some
seconds. Norwood began to fancy that the whole was some mystification of
his brain, for no trace of him was to be had; when he emerged from
the boat-house with his hat stripped of the brim, and his clothes in
tatters, his scratched face and hands attesting that his transit had not
been of the easiest. "It's like a r-r-rat-hole," cried he, puffing for
breath.

"And what the devil brought you there?" asked Norwood, rudely.

"I ca-came out to see the fight!" cried he; "and when you're inside
there you have a view of the whole park, and are quite safe, too."

"Then it was you who drove out in the calessino meant for the doctor?"
said Norwood, with the air of a man who would not brook an equivocation.

"Yes; that was a d-d-dodge of mine to get out here," said he, chuckling.

"Well, Master Purvis," said Norwood, drawing his arm within his own, "if
you can't be the 'doctor,' you shall at least be the'second.' This is a
dodge of mine; so come along, and no more about it."

"But I ca-can't; I never was--I never could be a se-se-second."

"You shall begin to-day, then, or my name's not Norwood. You've been the
cause of a whole series of mishaps and misfortunes; and, by Jove! if the
penalty were a heavier one, you should pay it."

"I tell you, I n-never saw a duel; I--I never f-fought one; I never will
fight one; I don't even know how they g-go about it."

"You shall learn, sir, that's all," said Norwood, as he hastened along,
dragging the miserable Purvis at his side.

"But for you, sir," continued he, in a voice thick with passion,--"but
for you, sir, and your inveterate taste for prying into what does not
concern you, we should have experienced no delay nor disappointment this
morning. The consequences are, that I shall have to stand where another
ought to have stood, and take to myself a quarrel in which I have had no
share."

[Illustration: 022]

"H-how is that? Do----do----do tell me all about it!" cried Purvis,
eagerly.

"I 'll tell you nothing, sir, not a syllable. Your personal adventures
on this morning must be the subject of your revelations when you get
back to Florence, if ever you do get back."

"Why, I--I'm----I'm not going to fight anybody," exclaimed he, in
terror.

"No, sir, but _I_ am; and in the event of any disastrous incident,
_your_ position may be unpleasant. If Trouville falls, you 'll have to
make for Lombardy, and cross over into Switzerland; if he shoots me,
you can take my passport; it is _vise_ for the Tyrol. As they know me
at Innsprueck, you 'd better keep to the southward,--some of the smaller
places about Botzen, or Brixen."

"But I don't know Bo-Bo-Botzen on the map! and I don't see why I'm to
sk-sk-skulk about the Continent like a refu-refu-refugee Pole!"

"Take your own time, then; and, perhaps, ten years in a fortress may
make you wiser. It's no affair of mine, you know; and I merely gave you
the advice, as I'm a little more up to these things than you are."

"But, supposing that I 'll have no-nothing to do with the matter, that I
'll not be present, that I refuse to see--"

"You shall and you must, sir; and if I hear another word of objection
out of your mouth, or if you expose me, by any show of your own
poltroonery, to the ribald insolence of these Frenchmen, by Heaven! I
'll hold your hand in my own when I fire at Count Trouville."

"And I may be mu-mu-murdered!" screamed Purvis. "An innocent man's
bl-blood shed, all for nothing!"

"Bluebeard treated his wives to the same penalty for the same crime,
Master Purvis. And now listen to me, sir, and mark well my words. With
the causes which have led to this affair you have no concern whatever;
your only business here is in the capacity of my second. Be present when
the pistols are loaded; stand by as they step the ground; and, if you
can do no more, try, at least, to look as if you were not going to be
shot at." Neither the counsel nor the tone it was delivered in were very
reassuring; and Purvis went along with his head down and his hands in
his pockets, reflecting on all the "accidents by firearms" he had read
of in the newspapers, together with the more terrible paragraphs about
fatal duels, and criminal proceedings against all concerned in them.

The Frenchmen were seated in the garden, at a table, and smoking their
cigars, as Norwood came up, and, in a few words, explained that a
countryman of his own, whom he had met by chance, would undertake the
duties of his friend.

"I have only to say, gentlemen," he added, "that he has never even
witnessed an affair of this kind; and I have but to address myself to
the loyal good faith of Frenchmen to supply any deficiencies in his
knowledge. Mr. Purvis, Messieurs."

The old Colonel, having courte