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

In all these pleadings for those she loved so dearly, no allusion ever was made by her to her own condition. A few lines at the very end of the letter were all that referred to herself. They were couched in words of much humility, excusing herself for the boldness of the appeal she had made, and apologizing for the hardihood with which it might be said she had urged her request.

“But you will forgive – you have already forgiven me, Sir Count,” wrote she; “my unlettered style and my trembling fingers have shown you that this task must have lain near to my heart, or I had not dared to undertake it. My life has been spent in a sphere of humble duties and humble companionship. How easily, then, may I have transgressed the limits of the deference that should separate us! I can but answer for my own heart, within which there exists towards you but the one feeling of devotion – deep and hopeful. “If in your kindness you should ever bestow a thought upon me, you will like to know that I am well and happy. Too lowly in condition, too rude in manners, to share the fortune of those I love so dearly, I would yet delight to hear of and from them, to know that they still bear me in their affection, and think with fondness on poor lame Nelly. Even the blessing of their presence would not repay me for the wrong I should do them by my companionship, for I am a peasant girl as much from choice as nature. Still, the sister’s heart throbs strongly within the coarse bodice, and, as I sit at my work, Frank and Kate will bear me company and cheer my solitary hours. “My humble skill is amply sufficient to supply all my wants, were they far greater than habit has made them. I live in a land dear to me by associations of thought and feeling, surrounded by those of a condition like my own, and who love and regard me. I am not without my share of duties, too, – your kindness would not wish more for me. Farewell, then, Sir Count. Your high-hearted nature has taught you to tread a lofty path in life, and strive – and with great success – for the great rewards of merit. It will be a pleasure to you yet to know that in this country of your adoption there are humble prizes for humble aspirants, and that one of these has fallen to the lot of

“Nelly Dalton.

“Any letter addressed ‘To the care of Andreas Brennen, Juden Gasse, Innspruck,’ will reach me safely. I need not say with what gratitude I should receive it.”

Such were the lines which reached the old Count’s hand on the very day he set out with his detachment for Vienna. Overcome by shame and sorrow at what he believed to be Frank Dalton’s treason, he had demanded of the Minister of War his own act of retirement from the army, and for some months had passed a life of privacy in a little village on the Styrian frontier. The wide-spread disaffection of the Austrian provinces, the open revolt of Prague, the more than threatening aspect of Hungary, and the formidable struggle then going on in Lombardy, had called back into active life almost all the retired servants of the monarchy. To give way to private grief at such a moment seemed like an act of disloyalty, and, throwing off every mere personal consideration, the old soldier repaired to the capital, and presented himself at the levée of the Archduke Joseph. He was received with enthusiasm. Covered with years as he was, no man enjoyed more of the confidence and respect of the soldiery, who regarded him as one tried and proved by the great wars of the Empire, – a Colonel of Wagram was both a patriarch and a hero. It was of great consequence, too, at that precise conjuncture, to rally round the throne all that were distinguished for fealty and devotion. He was immediately appointed to the command of a division of the army, and ordered to set out for Italy.

The complicated nature of the politics of the period, the mixture of just demand and armed menace, the blending up of fair and reasonable expectations with impracticable or impossible concessions, had so disturbed the minds of men that few were able, by their own unaided judgment, to distinguish on which side lay right and justice; nor was it easy, from the changeful councils of the monarch, to know whether the loyalty of to-day might not be pronounced treason to-morrow. Many of the minor movements of the time – even the great struggle of the Hungarians – originated in a spontaneous burst of devotion to the Emperor, – to be afterwards converted by the dark and wily policy of an unscrupulous leader into open rebellion. No wonder, then, if in such difficult and embarrassing circumstances, many strayed unconsciously from the paths of duty, – some misled by specious dreams of nationality, others from sympathy with what they thought the weaker party; and others, again, by the force of mere companionship or contact. In this way few families were to be found where one or more had not joined the patriotic party, and all the ties of affection were weak in comparison with the headlong force of popular enthusiasm. The old General von Auersberg knew nothing of these great changes; no news of them had reached his retirement; so that when he rejoined the army he was shocked to see how many had fallen away and deserted from the ancient standard of the Kaiser. Many a high name and many an ancient title were more than suspected amongst the Hungarian nobility; while in Italy they who most largely enjoyed the confidence of the Government were to be found in the ranks of the insurgents.

It might be supposed that these things would have in some degree reconciled the old Count to the imputed treason of his nephew, and that he would have found some consolation at least in the generality of the misfortune. Not so, however. His mind viewed the matter in a different light. He was willing to concede much to mistaken feelings of nationality, and to associations with a time of former independence; but these motives could have no relation to one who came into the service as he himself and Frank did, – soldiers by the grace and favor of the Emperor.

The blot this treason left upon his name was then a sore affliction to one whose whole aim in life had been to transmit an honorable reputation and an unshaken fidelity behind him. His reasoning was thus: “We have no claims of ancient services to the monarchy to adduce, —our ancestors never proved their devotion to the House of Hapsburg in times past, – we must be taken for what our own deeds stamp us.” With this decisive judgment he was ready to see Frank delivered before a court, tried and sentenced, without offering one word in his behalf. “This done,” thought he, “it remains but for me to show that I have made the only expiation in my power, and paid with my heart’s blood for another’s fault.”

Such was the resolve with which he crossed the Alps, – a resolve defeated for the moment by discovering that Frank was no longer a prisoner, but had made his escape in some unexplained manner on the eventful day of Goito.

This disappointment, and the still sadder tidings of the Emperor’s withheld permission to Kate’s marriage, came to his ears the same day, – the most sorrowful, perhaps, of his whole life. His honorable fame as a soldier tarnished, his high ambition for a great alliance dashed by disappointment, he fell back for consolation upon poor Nelly’s letter. The weak point of his character had ever been a dread of what he called his Irish cousins; the notion that his successes and supposed wealth would draw upon him a host of hungry and importunate relatives, eager to profit by the hard-won honors of his unaided career. And although year after year rolled on, and no sign was made, nor any token given, that he was remembered in the land of his forefathers, the terror was still fresh in his mind; and when at last Peter Dalton’s letter reached him, he read the lines in a torrent of anger, – the accumulation of long years of anticipation. Nelly’s epistle was a complete enigma to him. She was evidently unprotected, and yet not selfish; she was in the very humblest circumstances, and never asked for assistance; she was feelingly alive to every sorrow of her brother and sister, and had not one thought for her own calamities. What could all this mean? – was it any new phase or form of supplication, or was it really that there did exist one in the world whose poverty was above wealth, and whose simple nature was more exalted than rank or station?

With all these conflicting thoughts, and all the emotions which succeeded to the various tidings he had heard, the old Count sat overwhelmed by the cares that pressed upon him; nor was it for some hours after Midchekoff’s departure that he could rally his faculties to be “up and doing.”

The buzz and murmur of voices in an outer room first recalled him to active thought, and he learned that several officers, recently exchanged, had come to offer their thanks for his kind intervention. The duty, which was a mere ceremony, passed over rapidly, and he was once more alone, when he heard the slow and heavy tread of a foot ascending the stairs, one by one, stopping at intervals, too, as though the effort was one of great labor. Like the loud ticking of a clock to the watchful ears of sickness, there was something in the measured monotony of the sounds that grated and jarred his irritated nerves, and he called out harshly:

“Who comes there?”

No answer was returned; and, after a pause of a few seconds, the same sound recurred.

“Who’s there?” cried the old man, louder; and a faint, inaudible attempt at reply followed.

And now, provoked by the interruption, he arose to see the cause; when the door slowly opened, and Frank stood before him, pale and bloodless, with one arm in a sling, and supporting himself on a stick with the other. His wasted limbs but half filled his clothes; while in his lustreless eye and quivering lip there seemed the signs of coming death.

With an instinct of kindness, the old General drew out a chair and pressed the poor boy down upon it. The youth kissed the hand as it touched him, and then heaved a heavy sigh.

“This exertion was unfit for you, my poor boy,” said the Count, kindly. “They should not have permitted you to leave your bed.”

“It was my fault, not theirs, General. I heard that you were about to leave the village without coming to the hospital, and I thought, as perhaps – ,” here his voice faltered, and a gulping fulness of the throat seemed almost to choke him – “that as, perhaps, we might never meet again in this world, I ought to make one effort to see you, and tell you that I am not, nor ever was, a traitor!”

As though the effort had exhausted all “his strength, his arms dropped as he said the words; his head fell forward, and he would have fallen to the ground had not the old General caught him in his arms.

“You are too weak, too ill for all this, my poor fellow.” said the Count, as he held the boy’s hand in his own, and gazed affectionately at him.

“True, ever true,” muttered the youth, with half-closed lids.

“I will hear all this when you are better, Frank; when you are strong, and able to declare it manfully and openly. I will bless you, with my heart’s warmest blessing, for the words that restore us both to fair fame and honor; but you must not speak more now.”

The boy bent his head in token of submission, but never spoke.

“It will be the proudest hour of my life, Frank, when you can throw off this reproach, and stand forth a thorough Dalton, unshaken in truth and honor. But, to do this, you must be calm and quiet now, – not speak, nor even think of these things. You shall remain with me.”

Here the boy’s tears fell upon the old man’s hand. For a second or two not a word was spoken. At last he went on, —

“Yes; you shall not leave me from this hour. Our fortunes are the same. With you it remains to show that we are worthy soldiers of our Kaiser.”

Frank pressed the old Count’s hand upon his heart, as though to call its very pulses to bear witness to his fealty. This simple action seemed to have exhausted his last energy, for he now sank back in his chair and fainted.

The excitement he had gone through appeared to have utterly prostrated him, for he now lay for hours motionless and unconscious. Except a heavy sigh at long intervals, he gave no sign of life; and the surgeons, having exhausted all their resources to stimulate him, gave but faint hope of his recovery. They who only knew the old Count as the stern soldier, bold, abrupt, and peremptory, could not conceive by what magic he had been changed into a mould of almost womanly tenderness. There was no care he did not bestow on the sick youth. The first surgeons of the Staff were sent for, and all that skill and affection could suggest were enlisted in his service. The case, however, was of gloomy presage. It was the relapse fever after a wound, aggravated by mental causes of deep influence.

The greatest sympathy was felt for the old Count’s position. His comrades came or sent frequently to him. Kind messages reached him from quarters wherein once lay all his pride and glory; and a young archduke came himself to offer his new litter to convey Frank to Verona, where the Imperial headquarters were stationed. These were the very flatteries which once Von Auersberg would have prized above all that wealth could give; these were the kind of recognitions by which he measured his own career in life, making him to feel where he stood; but now one grief had so absorbed him he scarcely noticed them. He could not divest his mind, either, of the thought that the boy’s fate was intended as a judgment on himself for his own cold and ungenerous treatment of him. “I forgot,” would he say to himself, – “I forgot that he was not a castaway like myself. I forgot that the youth had been trained up amidst the flow of affectionate intercourse, loving and beloved, and I compared his position with my own.”

And such was in reality the very error he committed. He believed that by subjecting Frank to all the hard rubs which once had been his own fate he was securing the boy’s future success; forgetting the while how widely different were their two natures, and that the affections which are moulded by habits of family association are very unlike the temperament of one unfriended and unaided, seeking his fortune with no other guidance than a bold heart and strong will. The old Count was not the only one, nor will he be the last, to fall into this mistake; and it may be as well to take a warning from his error, and learn that for success in the remote and less trodden paths of life the warm affections that attach to home and family are sad obstacles.

It was ten days before Frank could be removed, and then he was carried in a litter, arriving in Verona on the fourth day. From his watchful cares beside the sick-bed, the old General was now summoned to take part in the eventful councils of the period. A great and momentous crisis had arrived, and the whole fate, not only of Austria, but of Europe, depended on the issue. The successes of the Italian arms had been, up to this point, if not decisive, at least sufficiently important to make the result a question of doubt. If the levies contributed by the States of the Church and Tuscany were insignificant in a warlike point of view, they were most expressive signs of popular feeling at least. Austria, besides, was assailed on every flank, with open treason in her capital; and the troops which might have conquered Lombardy were marching northward on Prague, or turning eastward towards Hungary. It then became a grave question whether, even at the cost of the whole Milanais, a peace should not be at once concluded, and Austria merely stipulate for certain commercial advantages, and the undisturbed possession of the Venetian States. If the more dispassionate heads that rule cabinets saw wisdom in this plan, the warmer and less calculating hearts of soldiers deemed it a base humiliation. Long accustomed to treat the Italians with a haughty contempt, they could not endure the thought of recognizing them as equals, not to say superiors. There were thus two parties in the Council, – the one eager for a speedy termination of the war, and the other burning to erase the memory of late defeats, and win back the fair provinces of their Emperor. To such an extent had this spirit of discordance at last gone, that the cabinet orders of Vienna were more than once overruled at headquarters, and the very decrees of the Government slighted by the commander-in-chief. It was a time of independent will and personal responsibility; and probably to this accident is owing the salvation of the Imperial House.

At last, when the sympathies of France and England with the cause of Italy became more than a mere suspicion, when troops marched southward towards the Alps, and diplomatic messages traversed Europe, counselling, in all the ambiguous courtesy of red tape, “wise and reasonable concessions to the fair demands of a people,” the cabinet of Vienna hastily despatched an envoy to Lombardy, with orders to concert with the generals, and treat for a peace.

Had a squadron of the enemy dashed through the streets of Verona, they could not have created one half the dismay that did the arrival of the calèche which conveyed the Imperial Commissioner. The old Field-Marshal had just returned from a review of the troops, who, as usual when he appeared, were wild with enthusiasm, when an officer of his staff announced the presence of the envoy, and in a low whisper added the object of his mission. A council was speedily called, and Von Auersberg specially invited to be present and assist in its deliberations.

The discussion lasted several hours; and, however unshaken in hope and resolute in will the old Marshals of the Empire, they found themselves no match in argument for the wily civilian, who, displaying before them the financial embarrassments of the State, showed that war implied bankruptcy, and that even victory might mean ruin. The great questions of Imperial policy, which in their zeal they had overlooked, were strongly pressed upon them; and that public opinion of Europe, which they had only fancied a bugbear and a mockery, was represented as the formidable expression of the great family of mankind, on the conduct of one of its own members. With all this it was no easy task to reconcile a bold soldier, at the head of a splendid army, to retire from the field, to confess himself beaten, and to acknowledge defeat, with an assured sense of victory in his heart The evening closed in, and still they sat in debate. Some had exchanged opposition for a dogged and cold silence; others had modified their views to a kind of half-concession; while a few rallied round their old chief, with a mistaken determination to have one more dash at the enemy should the peace be ratified on the day after. It would seem as if the Commissioner had been fully prepared for every phase of this opposition. He combated every argument in turn, and addressed himself with readiness to every objection that was offered. At last, when in a burst of mortification and anger the old Field-Marshal arose from the table, and declared that, come what might, it should never be said that he had lost the provinces of his master, the other stole close beside him, and whispered a few words in his ear. The old man started; his rugged, weather-beaten face twitched with a short, convulsive movement, and he threw himself down into a chair, with a muttered oath on his lips.

There was now a dead silence in the chamber. Every eye was turned stealthily towards the old General, by whose counsels they were wont to be guided; but he never spoke a word, and sat with his hands resting on his sword-hilt, the rattle of the scabbard against the belt, as it shook beneath his hand, being the only sound heard.

They are dreadful moments in life when men of high and daring courage see the trust they have long reposed in bold and vigorous measures rejected, and in its stead wily and crafty counsels adopted and followed. This was such a moment; and the old warriors, tried in many a battle-field, scarcely dared to meet each other’s eyes, from very shame and sorrow. It was just then that the sharp, quick trot of horses was heard from without, and the jingling sound of bells announced a post-carriage. Scarcely had it stopped, when an aide-de-camp entered, and whispered a few words to the Field-Marshal.

“No, no,” said the old man, peevishly; “we are marching on to dishonor fast enough. We want no priestly aid to hasten our steps.”

The young officer appeared to hesitate, and still lingered in the chamber.

“It is your friend, the Abbé, has arrived,” said the General, addressing the Commissioner; “and I have said we can dispense with his arguments. He can add little to what you have so ably spoken; and if we are to depose our arms, let it be at the bidding of our Emperor, and not at the beck of a priest.”

“But D’Esmonde must have come from the south,” interposed the civilian; “he may have some tidings worth hearing.”

“Let him come in, then,” said the Field-Marshal, abruptly; and the officer retired.

D’Esmonde had scarcely passed the threshold when his quick, keen glance around the room revealed to him the nature of their gloomy counsels. A dogged look of submission sat on every face, and the wily priest read in their fallen countenances all the bitterness of defeat.

The stern coldness of the reception that met him never abashed the Abbé in the least; and he made his compliments to the principal personages of the council with a suave dignity the very opposite to their uncourteous manner. Even when he had completed the little circle of his attentions, and stood in expectation of a request to be seated, his air was calm and unembarrassed, although not a word, or even a gesture, gave the invitation. All felt that this should come from the Field-Marshal himself, and none dared to usurp the prerogative of his rank. Too deeply lost in his own brooding thoughts to attend to anything else, the old General sat still, with his head bent down over the hilt of his sabre.

“His Holiness commissions me to greet you, Herr Feld-Marshal,” said the Abbé, in a low, soft voice, “and to say that those ancient medals you once spoke of shall be speedily transmitted to your palace at Milan.”

“My palace at Milan, sir!” exclaimed the old man, fiercely. “When shall I see that city again? Ask that gentleman yonder, who has just arrived from Vienna, what the cabinet counsels are; he will tell you the glorious tidings that the army will read to-morrow in a general order!”

“I have later news than even his!” said the Abbé, coolly seating himself at the table, and placing a roll of papers before him. “Baron Brockhausen,” said he, addressing the Commissioner, “if I mistake not, left Vienna on the ninth, reached Innspruck the eleventh, stayed there till the evening of the thirteenth, and only reached here some hours ago. The Prime Minister, consequently, was unaware that, on the tenth, General Durando was recalled by the Pope; that on the evening of the same day Pepe received a similar order from the King of Naples; that the Tuscan levies and the Polish legion have been remanded; and that Piedmont stands alone in the contest, with a disorganized army and divided counsels. These,” said he, pointing to the letters before him, – “these are copies of the documents I refer to, you will see from these that the right flank of the Piedmontese army is open and unprotected; that, except the banditti of Rome and Tuscany, there are no troops between this and Ferrara; and if the reinforcements that are now halted in the Tyrol be but hurried down, a great and decisive blow may be dealt at once.”

“Bey’m Blitzen! you ought to have been a general of brigade, priest!” cried the old Field-Marshal, as he clasped his hand in both his own, and pressed it with delight. “These are the noblest words I have heard to-day. Gentlemen,” said he, rising, “there is little more for a council to do. You will return at once to your several brigades. Schrann’s eight battalions of infantry, with two of Feld-Jagers, to hold themselves in readiness to march to-morrow; the Reuse Hussars to form escort to the light artillery on the Vicenza road; all the other cavalry to take up position to the right, towards Peschiera.”

“This means a renewal of hostilities, then?” said the Commissioner.

“It means that I will win back the provinces of my Emperor. Let him dispose of them after as he pleases.” And so saying, he left the room, followed by the other officers.

CHAPTER XXVIII. PLOTS, POLITICS, AND PRIESTCRAFT