The Daltons Volume I Part 47

"I believe so."

"Well, then, as I am going thither, perhaps you will accept of a seat in my caleche?"

There was a frankness in the way this offer was made that suddenly routed the ill-temper Frank had fallen into. No one was less disposed than himself to accept of a favor from a perfect stranger; but the tone and manner of the proffer had, somehow, disarmed it of all appearance of such; and as he stood uncertain what answer to make, the Count added: "I 'm always lucky. I was just wis.h.i.+ng for a travelling companion, and fortune has thrown us into acquaintances.h.i.+p."

"I don't know I can scarcely tell," said Frank, hesitating, "how or what to answer."

"You forget that we are comrades, Dalton or shall be, at least, in another day or two," said the Count, familiarly; "so step in, and no more about it."

The caleche had drawn up as he spoke, and the courier stood, cap in hand, beside the door, so that Frank had no time for any but an abrupt refusal, and that he could not give; he therefore bowed his head, and sprang in. The door was slammed sharply to, and the next moment the horses were rattling along over the snow, the merry bells of the harness jingling pleasantly as they went.

Probably no two beings could present a much stronger contrast than the two who now journeyed along side by side. The one, rich, highly placed, and distinguished with every gift of fortune at his command, and yet pleasure-sick, weary, and discontented; the other, poor, and almost friendless, full of hope, and ardent with all the buoyancy of youth. The Count was as jaded and tired of life as the cadet was eager to enjoy it.

Notwithstanding perhaps we should rather say in virtue of these strong contrarieties, they made admirable travelling companions, and the road slipped away unconsciously to each.

At Innspruck they halted for a day or two, and Frank accompanied his new friend to the cafes and theatres, mingling in the throng of those whose life is a round of easy dissipation. It is true that, to conform by dress and demeanor with these, Frank was obliged to spend the golden coins of Nelly's purse; louis after louis went in some one extravagance or another, sacrifices that cost him many a pang, but which, from pride, he bore up against with seeming indifference. Walstein presented him everywhere as the nephew of the old field-marshal Von Auersberg; and as nothing was more common than to see a young cadet dispensing the most lavish sums, with equipages, liveries, and servants, none seemed surprised that the youth should indulge in these habits and tastes of extravagance. His very enjoyment seemed like an earnest of being long habituated to these modes of life, for whether he played or drank, or in whatever excesses he mingled, there was ever the same joyous spirit; and Frank Dalton had all the outward signs of a youth rich in every accident of fortune. At first, thoughts of his humble home and of those by whose sacrifices he was enabled to indulge in such costly pleasures would cross his mind, and, what between shame and sorrow, he felt degraded and debased before himself; but, by degrees, the levity of action induced, as it ever will do, the levity of thinking; and he suffered himself to believe that "he was no worse than others." A more fatal philosophy than this, youth never adopted, and he who seeks a low standard rarely stops till he falls beneath even that. Frank's pride of family made him vain, and his vanity made him credulous; he therefore implicitly believed all that his new companions told him, the familiar "thee and thou" of camaraderie giving an air of friends.h.i.+p to all the flatteries.

"Were I a nephew of a field-marshal like thee, I'd not serve in an infantry corps. I 'd be in the Lichtenstein Hussars or the Lancers of the Kaiser," said one.

"So he will," cried another. "Dalton only joined the Franz Carl to get his promotion quickly. Once at Vienna, he will be an officer, and ready to exchange his regiment."

"Old Auersberg can make thee what he will, lad," said a third. "He might have been Minister of War himself, if he had liked it. The Emperor Franz loved him as a brother."

"And he is rich, too, no one knows how rich," broke in a fourth. "He commanded for many years on the Turkish frontier, in those good days when our Grenzers used to make forays upon the villages, and every Pashalic paid its blackmail for peace' sake."

"Thou are a lucky dog, Dalton, to find thy promotion and an inheritance thus secured to thee."

"When thou has a regiment, lad, don't forget us poor devils here, that have no uncles in the 'Maria Teresa' category."

"I 'll lay my life on't, that he is a colonel before I become Rittmeister," said a young lieutenant of dragoons, "and I have had five years' hard service in Galicia and Servia."

"And why not?" broke in Count Walstein, who sat silently up to this smoking his meerschaum in a corner. "Has the empire lost its aristocratic character? Are not birth and blood to have their claims, as of old?"

This speech met a ready acceptance, for the company consisted of those who either were, or affected to be, of n.o.ble extraction.

"How our fathers deceive themselves in trying to deceive us!" said a young Hungarian cadet. "I, too, was sent off to join my regiment on foot. Just fancy to walk from Arad to Presburg! I, that never went twenty miles in my life save on the saddle. They fitted me with my knapsack, just such a thing as Dalton's. I suppose about as many florins jingled in my purse as in his. They gave me their blessing and a map of the road, with each day's journey marked out upon it. And how far did I go afoot, think'st thou? Two miles and a half. There I took an 'Eil Bauer,' with four good horses and a wicker caleche, and we drove our sixty, sometimes seventy miles a day. Each night we put up at some good country house or other Honyadi's Ctzyscheny's Palfi's; all lay on the road, and I found out about fifty cousins I never knew of before, and made a capital acquaintance, too, the Prince Paul of Ettlingen, who, owning a regiment of Light Dragoons, took me into his corps, and, when I joined them at Leutmeritz, I was already an officer. What stuff it is they preach about economy and thrift! Are we the sons of peasants or petty shopkeepers? It comes well, too, from them in their princely chateaux to tell us that we must live like common soldiers. So that, while yesterday, as it were, I sat at a table covered with silver, and drank my Tokay from a Venetian gla.s.s, tomorrow I must put up with sour Melniker, or, mayhap, Bavarian beer, with black bread, and a sausage to help it down! Our worthy progenitors knew better in their own young days, or we should not have so many debts and mortgages on our estates eh, Walstein?"

"I suppose the world is pretty much alike, in every age," said the Count, laughing. "It now and then takes a virtuous fit, and affects to be better than it used to be; but I shrewdly suspect that the only difference is in the hypocritical pretension. When I entered the service and it is not so many years ago that I cannot recollect it the cant was, to resemble that rough school of the days of old Frederick and Maria Teresa. Trenck's 'Pandours,' with their scarlet breeches stuffed into their wide boot-tops, were the mode; and to wear your moustache to your shoulders to cry 'Bey'm Henker!' and 'Alle Blitzen!' every moment, were the veritable types of the soldier. Now we have changed all that.

We have the Anglomania of English grooms and equipages, top-boots, curricles, hurdle-races, champagne suppers. Dalton will be the ton in his regiment, and any extravagance he likes to launch into certain to have its followers."

The youth blushed deeply; partly in conscious pride at the flattery, partly in the heartfelt shame at its inappropriateness to himself; and even the sincerity with which his comrades drank his health, could not drown the self-reproaches he was suffering under.

"Thou art an only son, too, Dalton!" said another. "What favors fortune will shower upon one happy fellow! Here I am, one of seven; and although my father is a count of the empire, four of us have to take service in the infantry."

"What of that?" said a dark-complexioned fellow, whose high cheek-bones and sharp under-jaw bespoke a Pole. "I am a second lieutenant in the regiment that my grandfather raised and equipped at his own cost; and if I were to lose a thousand florins at lansquenet to-morrow, I 'd be broke, like the meanest 'bursch' in the corps."

"It's better to be a rich Englander," cried one.

"And with a field-marshal for a grand-uncle!" chimed in another.

"And a 'Maria Teresa' to ask for thy grade as officer," said a third.

"It's a jolly service to all of us," said a young Bohemian, who, although but a cadet, was a prince, with a princely fortune. "I ask for nothing but a war to make it the best life going."

"A war with whom?" cried several together.

"What care I with whom or where? With Prussia, if you will, to fight out our old scores about Frauconia; with Russia, if you like better, for the Danubian provinces, and her Servian supremacy; with France she 's always ready, with a cause or without one; with Italy to round off our frontier, and push our limits to the Apennines; I'd say with England, only Dalton might n't like it."

"And where would you pick your quarrel with England?" said Frank, laughing.

"Easily enough, through our amba.s.sador at the Porte, or some outlying station, where Russia is her rival."

"Hang your politics!" broke in a Hungarian. "Let us fight when the time comes, but not bother our heads about the cause. I 'd rather take my chance of a sabre-cut any day than addle my brains with too much thought. Here 's to you, Dalton, mayst soon be a Rittmeister of Hussars, lad; a prouder thing thou needst not ask for."

"Thou shalt give us a jolly supper at the 'Schwan,' Dalton, when we meet at Vienna," said another.

"And we'll pledge those fair sisters of thine and they 're both handsome, I 'll be sworn in the best Tokay Palfi's vineyard can yield."

"My regiment will be in garrison, in the Leopoldstadt, next month, and I'll remind thee of this pledge."

"And we shall be at Lintz," broke in another; "and thou mayst reckon on me, if I have to suffer an arrest for it afterwards."

"So it is agreed, Dalton, we are thy guests. For what day shall it be?"

"Ay, let us name the day," cried several together.

"When he is named an officer," said Walstein, "that will be time enough."

"Nay, nay the day month after he arrives at Vienna," cried the Bohemian.

"I have given three breakfasts and five suppers on the occasion of my promotion, and the promotion has never come yet."

"The day month after I arrive, then, be it," said Dalton. "We meet at where is it?"

"The 'Schwan,' lad, the first restaurant of Europe. Let men talk as they will of the Cadran Bleu and the Trois Freres, I'd back Hetziuger's cook against the world; and as for wine, he has Steinkammer at thirty florins the flask! And we'll drink it, too, eh, Dalton? and we'll give a 'Hoch Lebe' to that old grandfather or grand-uncle of thine. We'll add ten years to his life."

"A poor service to Dalton," said another; "but here comes Walstein's horses, and now for the last gla.s.s together before we part."

The parting seemed, indeed, to be "sweet sorrow," for each leave-taking led to one flask more, friends.h.i.+p itself appearing to make wondrous progress as the bottle went round. The third call of the postilion's bugle a summons that even German loyalty could scarcely have courage to resist at last cut short the festivities, and Frank once more found himself in the caleche, where at least a dozen hands contested for the last shake of his, and a shower of good wishes mingled with the sounds of the cras.h.i.+ng wheels.

"Glorious fellows!" cried Dalton, in an ecstasy of delight; "such comrades are like brothers."

Walstein smiled at the boy's enthusiasm, and lighted his meerschaum in silence; and thus they journeyed, each too full of his own thoughts to care for converse. It was not at such a moment that Dalton could give way to dark or serious reflections; the blandishments and caresses of his new friends were too powerful to admit of any rivalry in his mind; and even when he did revert to thoughts of home, it was to picture to himself his father's pride at seeing him in the society of these high-born youths; of Kate's delight at the degree of notice he attracted; and even Nelly poor Nelly! he fancied yielding a gentle, half-reluctant a.s.sent to a companions.h.i.+p which, if costly and expensive, was sure to be honorable and high-minded.

"What would Hanserl say, too," thought he, "if he saw me seated at the table with those whose high-sounding names are the pride of Austrian chivalry, the Thuns, the Lichtensteins, the Schwartenschilds, and the Walsteins, families old as the Hapsburgs themselves? Little Hanserl, to whom these glorious families were the great lights of history, oh, if he could have set eyes on me this last evening! when, with arms around my neck, they called me comrade!" From this he wandered on to thoughts of his uncle, investing the old field-marshal with every n.o.ble and soldierlike attribute, and, above all, fancying him as overflowing with affection and kindness. What hosts of questions did he ask about his father and his sisters; how often had he to repeat their names and paint their resemblances, going over the most minute details of family history, and recounting the simplest incidents of their daily life, for "Uncle Stephen would know all."

In such pleasant fancies he fell fast asleep, even in his dreams to carry out those imaginings that, waking, had no control of reason.

Frank Dalton was awaked from a sound sleep and a pleasant dream of home by the hoa.r.s.e voice of a mounted dragoon, ordering the postilion to halt; and, on looking out, he saw that they were drawn up close beside the angle of the great wooden bridge that crosses the Danube, under the walls of Vienna. The whole scene was one of wonderment and surprise to him. At his feet, as it were, rolled the stream of the rapid Danube; its impetuous flood splas.h.i.+ng and foaming amid the fragments of ice floated down from the mountain regions, and which every moment were s.h.i.+vered against the stone breakwaters with the crash of thunder. Beyond the river rose the fortified walls of the city, covered with a dense mult.i.tude of people, eager spectators of a grand military display, which, with all the pomp of war, poured forth beneath the dark archway of the entrance-gate, and, winding over the "glacis," crossed the bridge, and held on its course towards the Prater.

It was a clear, bright day of winter; the blue sky almost cloudless, and the sharp outline of every object stood out, crisp and well defined, in the thin atmosphere. Nothing could be more favorable for the effect of such a spectacle. The bright weapons glanced and glittered like silver, the gay trappings and brilliant uniforms showed in all their splendor, the scarlet Lancers, the blue-clad Hussars, the Cuira.s.siers, with their towering helmets, vied with each other in soldierlike bearing; while the dense ma.s.s of infantry moved along with a surging, waving motion, like a vast sea heaving with a ground-swell. It was an army complete in every detail; for, even to the "ambulances" for the wounded, everything was there.