The Daltons; Or, Three Roads In Life. Volume I

“Oh! that explains it. And your name?”

“Dalton. And now, sir, what may be yours, for I don’t see why this curiosity is to be one-sided,” said Frank, with an air even more insolent than the words.

“I am Count Ernest of Walstein,” said the other, without a touch of irritation.

“What rank do you hold in the service?” asked Frank, boldly.

“That of lieutenant-colonel, boy.”

“And your age may be about thirty?” said Frank, half in question and half in sarcasm.

“I was twenty-eight last August,” was the calm reply.

“By Jove! that is a service!” exclaimed Frank, “where a man scarcely ten years my senior may command a regiment!”

The other laughed, and after a brief pause, said, “People are in the habit of calling me fortunate, so that you must not suppose my case to be the rule.”

“Be it so: even as an exception, the example is a bright one. Another may do what you have done.”

“If you mean that I have earned my rank by services, boy,” said the Count, smiling, “you would make a grave mistake. My promotion had another source.”

Frank looked as though he were curious to hear the explanation, but the other gave none.

“How do you call yourself?” asked he of Frank, after a pause.

“Dalton,” replied the boy, more respectfully than before.

“We have a field-marshal of that name in the service, a most gallant old soldier, too.”

“My grand-uncle!” cried Frank, with enthusiasm.

“Indeed! So you are a grand-nephew to the Graf von Auersberg,” said the Count, taking a more deliberate view than he had yet bestowed upon him. “Then how comes it you are travelling in this fashion, and on foot?”

“I have not asked you why you journey in a caleche with three horses,” said Frank, insolently.

“It’s my habit to do so.”

“This, then, may be mine, sir,” said Frank, throwing his knapsack on his shoulder, and preparing to depart.

“Is not the Franz Carl at Vienna?” said the Count, not seeming to notice the irritation of his manner.

“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 wishing for a travelling companion, and fortune has thrown us into acquaintanceship.”

“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 friendship 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 noble 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 glass, 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.