Discussions like these, once or twice a week, only confirmed Dalton in his dislike to his old abode, and Nelly at last saw that all resistance to his will was hopeless. At last he peremptorily ordered her to give Hans notice of their intended removal; for he had fixed upon a house in the Lichtenthal Alley to suit them exactly. It was a villa which had a few months before been purchased and fitted up by a young French count, whose gains at the gaming table had been enormous. Scarcely, however, had he taken possession of his sumptuous abode, than “luck” turned; he lost everything in the world, and finished his career by suicide. In a colony of gamblers, where superstition has an overweening influence, none could be found rash enough to succeed to so ill-omened a possession; and thus, for nigh half the season, the house continued shut up and unoccupied. Dalton, whose mind was strongly tinctured with fears of this kind, yet felt a species of heroism in showing that he was not to be deterred by the dangers that others avoided; and as Abel Kraus, to whom the property now belonged, continually assured him “it was just the house for him,” Peter overcame his scruples, and went to see it.
Although of small extent, it was princely in its arrangements. Nothing that French taste and elegance could supply was wanting, and it was a perfect specimen of that costly splendor which in our own day rivals all the gorgeous magnificence of “the Regency.” Indeed, it must be owned that honest Peter thought it far too fine to live in; he trod the carpets with a nervous fear of crushing the embroidery, and he sat down on the brocaded sofa with as much terror as though it were glass. How he was ever to go asleep in a bed where Cupid and angels were sculptured in such endless profusion, he couldn't imagine; and he actually shrank back with shame from his own face, as he surveyed it within the silver frame of a costly toilet-glass.
Such were his impressions as he walked through the rooms with Abel, and saw, as the covers were removed from lustres and mirrors, some new and more dazzling object at each moment reveal itself. He listened with astonishment to the account of the enormous sums lavished on these sumptuous articles, and heard how twenty, or thirty, or forty thousand francs had been given for this or that piece of luxury.
What was forty Napoleons a month for such splendor! Kraus was actually lending him the villa at such a price; and what a surprise for Nelly, when he should show her the little drawing-room in rose-damask he meant for herself; and then there was a delightful arbor in the garden to smoke in; and the whole distance from the Cursaal was not above ten minutes' walk. Peter's fancy ran over rapidly all the jollifications such a possession would entail; and if he wished, for his own sake, that there were less magnificence, he consoled himself by thinking of the effect it would have upon others. As he remarked to himself, “There 's many thinks more of the gilding than the gingerbread!”
If Nelly's sorrow at leaving Hanserl's house was deep and sincere, it became downright misery when she learned to what they were about to remove. She foresaw the impulse his extravagance would receive from such a residence, and how all the costliness of decoration would suggest wasteful outlay. Her father had not of late confided to her the circumstances of his income. He who once could not change a crown without consulting her, and calling in her aid to count the pieces and test their genuineness, would now negotiate the most important dealings without her knowledge. From his former distrust of Kraus he grew to believe him the perfection of honesty. There is something so captivating to a wasteful man in being freely supplied with money,—with receiving his advances in a spirit of apparent frankness,——that he would find it impossible to connect such liberality with a mean or interested motive. Kraus's little back room was then a kind of California, where he could dig at discretion; and if in an unusual access of prudence honest Peter would ask, “How do we stand, Abel?” Kraus was sure to be too busy to look at the books, and would simply reply, “What does it matter? How much do you want?” From such a dialogue as this Dalton would issue forth the happiest of men, muttering to himself, how differently the world would have gone with him if he “had known that little chap thirty or forty years ago.”
Without one gleam of comfort,—with terror on every side,—poor Nelly took possession of her splendor to pass days of unbroken sorrow. Gloomy as the unknown future seemed, the tidings she received of Kate and Frank were still sadder.
From her sister she never heard directly. A few lines from Madame de Heidendorf, from a country house near St. Petersburg, told her that the Prince had not succeeded in obtaining the Imperial permission, and that the marriage was deferred indefinitely. Meanwhile the betrothed Princess lived a life of strict seclusion as the etiquette required, seeing none but such members of the royal family as deigned to visit her. Poor Nelly's heart was nigh to bursting as she thought over her dear Kate,—the gay and brilliant child, the happy, joyous girl, now pining away in dreary imprisonment. This image was never out of her mind, and she would sit hour after hour in tears for her poor sister. What future happiness, however great it might be, could repay a youth passed in misery like this? What splendor could efface the impression of this dreary solitude, away from all who loved and cared for her?
Of Frank, the tidings were worse again. A short and scarcely intelligible note from Count Stephen informed her that, “although the court-martial had pronounced a sentence of death, the Emperor, rather than stain a name distinguished by so many traits of devotion to his house, had commuted the punishment to imprisonment for life at Moncacs. There was,” he added, “a slight hope that, after some years, even this might be relaxed, and banishment from the Imperial dominions substituted. Meanwhile,” said the old soldier, “I have retired forever from a career where, up to this hour, no stain of dishonor attached to me. The name which I bore so long with distinction is now branded with shame, and I leave the service to pass the few remaining days of my life wherever obscurity can best hide my sorrow and my ignominy.”
Although Nelly at once answered this afflicting letter, and wrote again and again to Vienna, to Milan, and to Prague, she never received any reply, nor could obtain the slightest clew to what the sentence on Frank referred. To conceal these terrible events from her father was her first impulse; and although she often accused herself of duplicity for so doing, she invariably came round to her early determination. To what end embitter the few moments of ease he had enjoyed for years past? Why trouble him about what is irremediable, and make him miserable about those from whom his careless indifference asks nothing and requires nothing? Time enough when the future looks brighter to speak of the sorrows of the past!
This task of secrecy was not a difficult one. Dalton's was not a nature to speculate on possible mischances so much as to hope for impossible good turns of fortune; and when he knew that Kate had sent him money, and Frank did not ask for any, the measure of his contentment was filled. Kate was a Princess, and Frank an officer of hussars; and that they were as happy as the day was long he would have taken an oath before any “justice of the quorum,” simply because he saw no reason why they ought not to be so; and when he drank their healths every day after dinner, and finished a bumper of champagne to their memory, he perfectly satisfied his conscience that he had discharged every parental duty in their behalf. His “God bless you, my darling child!” was the extent of his piety as of his affection; and so he lived in the firm belief that he had a heart overflowing with good and kind and generous sentiments. The only unpleasant feelings he had arose for Nelly. Her eyes, that in spite of all her efforts showed recent tears; her pale face; her anxious, nervous manner worried and amazed him. “There 's something strange about that girl,” he would say to himself; “she would sing the whole day long when we hadn't a shilling beyond the price of our dinner; she was as merry as a lark, cutting out them images till two or three o'clock of a morning; and now that we have lashings and leavings of everything, with all manner of diversions about us, there she sits moping and fretting the whole day.” His ingenuity could detect no explanation for this. “To be sure, she was lame, and it might grieve her to look at dancing, in which she could take no part But when did she ever show signs of an envious nature? She was growing old, too,——at least, she was six or seven-and-twenty,—and no prospect of being married; but was Nelly the girl to grieve over this? Were not all her affections and all her hopes home-bound? 'T was n't fretting to be back in Ireland that she could be!—she knew little of it before she left it.” And thus he was at the end of all his surmises without being nearer the solution.