A Day's Ride: A Life's Romance

“I am charmed to hear it, sir,” said I, in some confusion, for, without the vaguest conception of wherefore, I suspected lowering weather ahead.

“May I offer you a chair, Mr. Jopplyn? Won’t you be seated? We are going to have a lovely day, I fancy, – a great change after yesterday.”

“Your name, sir,” said he, in the same solemnity as before, – “your name I apprehend to be Porringer?”

“Pottinger, if you permit me; Pottinger, not Porringer.”

“It shall be as you say, sir; I am indifferent what you call yourself.” He heaved something that sounded like a hoarse sigh, and proceeded: “I have come to settle a small account that stands between us. Is that document your writing?” As he said this, he drew, rather theatrically, from his breast-pocket the letter I had just written, and extended it towards me. “I ask, sir, – and I mean you to understand that I will suffer no prevarication, – is that document in your writing?”

I trembled all over as I took it, and for an instant I determined to disavow it; but in the same brief space I bethought me that my denial would be in vain. I then tried to look boldly, and brazen it out; I fancied to laugh it off as a mere pleasantry, and, failing in courage for each of these, I essayed, as a last resource, the argumentative and discussions! line, and said, —

“If you will favor me with an indulgent hearing for a few minutes, Mr. Jopplyn, I trust to explain to your complete satisfaction the circumstances of that epistle.”

“Take five, sir, – five,” said he, laying a ponderous silver watch on the table as he spoke, and pointing to the minute-hand.

“Really, sir,” said I, stung by the peremptory and dictatorial tone he assumed, “I have yet to learn that intercourse between gentlemen is to be regulated by clockwork, not to say that I have to inquire by what right you ask me for this explanation.”

“One minute gone,” said he, solemnly.

“I don’t care if there were fifty,” said I, passionately. “I disclaim all pretension of a perfect stranger to obtrude himself upon me, and by the mere assumption of a pompous manner and an imposing air, to inquire into my private affairs.”

“There are two!” said he, with the same solemnity.

“Who is Mr. Jopplyn, – what is he to me?” cried I, in increased excitement, “that he presents himself in my apartment like a commissary of police? Do you imagine, sir, because I am a young man, that this – this – impertinence “ – Lord, what a gulp it cost me! – “is to pass unpunished? Do you fancy that a red beard and a heavy walking-cane are to strike terror into me? You may think, perhaps, that I am unarmed – ”

“Three!” said he, with a bang of his stick on the floor that made me actually jump with the stick.

“Leave the room, sir,” said I; “it is my pleasure to be alone, – the apartment is mine, – I am the proprietor here. A very little sense of delicacy, a very small amount of good breeding, might show you, that when a gentleman declines to receive company, when he shows himself indisposed to the society of strangers – ”

“One minute more, now,” said he, in a low growl; while he proceeded to button up his coat to the neck, and make preparation for some coming event.

My heart was in my mouth; I gave a glance at the window; it was the third story, and a leap out would have been fatal. What would I not have given for one of those weapons I had so proudly proclaimed myself possessed of! There was not even a poker in the room. I made a spring at the bell-rope, and before he could interpose, gave one pull that, though it brought down the cord, resounded through the whole house.

“Time is up, Porringer,” said he, slowly, as he replaced the watch in his pocket, and grasped his murderous-looking cane.

There was a large table in the room, and I intrenched myself at once behind this, armed with a light cane chair, while I screamed murder in every language I could command. Failing to reach me across the table, my assailant tried to dodge me by false starts, now at this side, now at that. Though a large fleshy man, he was not inactive, and it required all my quickness to escape him. These manoeuvres being unsuccessful, he very quickly placed a chair beside the table and mounted upon it. I now hurled my chair at him; he warded off the blow and rushed on; with one spring I bounded under the table, reappearing at the opposite side just as he had reached mine. These tactics we now pursued for several minutes, when my enemy suddenly changed his attack, and, descending from the table, he turned it on edge; the effort required strength. I seized the moment and reached the door; I tore it open in some fashion, gained the stairs, the court, the streets, and ran ever onward with the wildness of one possessed with no time for thought, nor any knowledge to guide; I turned left and right, choosing only the narrowest lanes that presented themselves, and at last came to a dead halt at an open drawbridge, where a crowd stood waiting to pass.

“How is this? What’s all the hurry for? Where are you running this fashion?” cried a well-known voice. I turned, and saw the skipper of the packet.

“Are you armed? Can you defend me?” cried I, in terror; “or shall I leap in and swim for it?”

“I’ll stand by you. Don’t be afraid, man,” said he, drawing my arm within his; “no one shall harm you. Were they robbers?”

“No, worse, – assassins!” said I, gulping, for I was heartily ashamed of my terror, and determined to show “cause why” in the plural.

“Come in here, and have a glass of something,” said he, turning into a little cabaret, with whose penetralia he seemed not unfamiliar. “You ‘re all safe here,” said he, as he closed the door of a little room. “Let’s hear all about it, though I half guess the story already.”

I had no difficulty in perceiving, from my companion’s manner, that he believed some sudden shock had shaken my faculties, and that my intellects were for the time deranged; nor was it very easy for me to assume sufficient calm to disabuse him of his error, and assert my own perfect coherency. “You have been out for a lark,” said he, laughingly. “I see it all. You have been at one of those tea-gardens and got into a row with some stout Fleming. All the young English go through that sort of thing. Ain’t I right?”

“Never more mistaken in your life, Captain. My conduct since I landed would not discredit a canon of St. Paul’s. In fact, all my habits, my tastes, my instincts, are averse to every sort of junketing. I am essentially retiring, sensitive, And, if you will, over-fastidious in my choice of associates. My story is simply this.” My reader will readily excuse my repeating what is already known to him. It is enough if I say that the captain, although anything rather than mirthful, held his hand several times over his face, and once laughed out loudly and boisterously.

“You don’t say it was Christy Jopplyn, do you?” said he, at last. “You don’t tell me it was Jopplyn?”

“The fellow called himself Jopplyn, but I know nothing of him beyond that.”

“Why, he’s mad jealous about that wife of his; that little woman with the corkscrew curls, and the scorbutic face, that came over with us. Oh! you did not see her aboard, you went below at once, I remember; but there was, she, in her black ugly, and her old crape shawl – ”

“In mourning?”

“Yes. Always in mourning. She never wears anything else, though Christy goes about in colors, and not particular as to the tint, either.”

There came a cold perspiration over me as I heard these words, and perceived that my proffer of devotion had been addressed to a married woman, and the wife of the “most jealous man in Europe.”

“And who is this Jopplyn?” asked I, haughtily, and in all the proud confidence of my present security.

“He’s a railway contractor, – a shrewd sort of fellow, with plenty of money, and a good head on his shoulders; sensible on every point except his Jealousy.”

“The man must be an idiot,” said I, indignantly, “to rush indiscriminately about the world with accusations of this kind. Who wants to supplant him? Who seeks to rob him of the affections of his wife?”

“That’s all very well and very specious,” said he, gravely; “but if men will deliberately set themselves down at a writing-table, hammering their brains for fine sentiments, and toiling to find grand expressions for their passion, it does not require that a husband should be as jealous as Christy Jopplyn to take it badly. I don’t think I’m a rash or a hasty man, but I know what I ‘d do in such a circumstance.”

“And pray, what would you do?” said I, half impertinently.

“I ‘d just say,4 Look here, young gent, is this balderdash here your hand? Well, now, eat your words. Yes, eat them. I mean what I say. Eat up that letter, seal and all, or, by my oath, I ‘ll break every bone in your skin!’”

“It is exactly what I intend,” cried a voice, hoarse with passion; and Jopplyn himself sprang into the room, and dashed at me.

The skipper was a most powerful man, but it required all his strength, and not very gingerly exercised either, to hold off my enraged adversary. “Will you be quiet, Christy?” cried he, holding him by the throat “Will you just be quiet for one instant, or must I knock you down?”

“Do! do! by all means,” muttered I; for I thought if he were once on the ground, I could finish him off with a large pewter measure that stood on the table.

With a rough shake the skipper had at last convinced the other that resistance was useless, and induced him to consent to a parley.

“Let him only tell you” said he, “what he has told me, Christy.”

“Don’t strike, but hear me,” cried I; and safe in my stockade behind the skipper, I recounted my mistake.

“And you believe all this?” asked Jopplyn of the skipper, when I had finished.

“Believe it, – I should think I do! I have known him since he was a child that high, and I ‘ll answer for his good conduct and behavior.”

Heaven bless you for that bail bond, though endorsed in a lie, honest ship-captain! and I only hope I may live to requite you for it.

Jopplyn was appeased; but it was the suppressed wrath of a brown bear rather than the vanquished anger of a man. He had booked himself for something cruel, and he was miserable to be balked. Nor was I myself – I shame to own it – an emblem of perfect forgiveness. I know nothing harder than for a constitutionally timid man of weak proportions to forgive the bullying superiority of brute force. It is about the greatest trial human forgiveness can be subjected to; so that when Jopplyn, in a vulgar spirit of reconciliation, proposed that we should go and dine with him that day, I declined the invitation with a frigid politeness.

“I wish I could persuade you to change your plans,” said he, “and let Mrs. J. and myself see you at six.”

“I believe I can answer for him that it is impossible,” broke in the skipper; while he added in a whisper, “They never can afford any delay; they have to put on the steam at high pressure from one end of Europe to t’ other.”

What could he possibly mean by imputing such haste to my movements, and who were “they” with whom he thus associated me? I would have given worlds to ask, but the presence of Jopplyn prevented me, and so I could simply assent with a sort of foolish laugh, and a muttered “Very true, – quite correct.”

“Indeed, how you manage to be here now, I can scarcely imagine,” continued the skipper. “The last of yours that went through this took a roll of bread and a cold chicken with him into the train, rather than halt to eat his supper, – but I conclude you know best.”

What confounded mystification was passing through his marine intellects I could not fathom. To what guild or brotherhood of impetuous travellers had he ascribed me? Why should I not “take mine ease in mine inn”? All this was very tantalizing and irritating, and pleading a pressing engagement, I took leave of them both, and returned to the hotel.

I was in need of rest and a little composure. The incident of the morning had jarred my nerves and disconcerted me much. But a few hours ago, and life had seemed to me like a flowery meadow, through which, without path or track, one might ramble at will; now it rather presented the aspect of a vulgar kitchen-garden, fenced in, and divided, and partitioned off, with only a few very stony alleys to walk in. “This boasted civilization of ours,” exclaimed I, “what is it but snobbery? Our class distinctions, our artificial intercourses, our hypocritical professions, our deference for externals, – are they not the flimsiest pretences that ever were fashioned? Why has no man the courage to make short work of these, and see the world as it really is? Why has not some one gone forth, the apostle of frankness and plain speaking, the same to prince as to peasant? What I would like would be a ramble through the less visited parts of Europe, – countries in which civilization slants in just as the rays of a setting sun steal into a forest at evening. I would buy me a horse. Oh, Blonde.” thought I, suddenly, “am I not in search of you? Is it not in the hope to recover you that I am here; and, with you for my companion, am I not content to roam the world, taking each incident of the way with the calm of one who asks little of his fellow-man save a kind word as he passes, and a God-speed as he goes?” I knew perfectly that, with any other beast for my “mount,” I could not view the scene of life with the same bland composure. A horse that started, that tripped, that shied, reared, kicked, craned his neck, or even shook himself, as certain of these beasts do, would have kept me in a paroxysm of anxiety and uneasiness, the least adapted of all modes for thoughtfulness and reflection. Like an ill-assorted union, it would have given no time save for squabble and recrimination. But Blondel almost seemed to understand my mission, and lent himself to its accomplishment. There was none of the obtrusive selfishness of an ordinary horse in his ways. He neither asked you to remark the glossiness of his skin, nor the graceful curve of his neck; he did not passage nor curvet Superior to the petty arts by which vulgar natures present themselves to notice, he felt that destiny had given him a duty, and he did it.

Thus thinking, I returned once more to the spirit which had first sent me forth to ramble, to wander through the world, spectator, not actor; to be with my fellow-men in sympathy, but not in action; to sorrow and rejoice as they did, but, if possible, to understand life as a drama, in which, so long as I was the mere audience, I could never be painfully afflicted or seriously injured by the catastrophe: a wonderful philosophy, but of which, up to the present, I could not boast any pre-eminent success.

CHAPTER XII. THE DUCHY OF HESSE-KALBBRATONSTADT

I grew impatient to leave Ostend; every association connected with the place was unpleasant. I hope I am not unjust in my estimate of it I sincerely desire to be neither unjust to men nor cities, but I thought it vulgar and commonplace. I know it is hard for a watering-place to be otherwise; there is something essentially low in the green-baize and bathing-house existence, – in that semi-nude sociality, begun on the sands and carried out into deep water, which I cannot abide. I abhor, besides, a lounging population in fancy toilets, a procession of donkeys in scarlet trappings, elderly gentlemen with pocket-telescopes, and fierce old ladies with camp-stools. The worn-out debauchees come to recruit for another season of turtle and whitebait; the half-faded victims of twenty polkas per night, the tiresome politician, pale from a long session, all fiercely bent on fresh diet and sea-breezes, are perfect antipathies to me, and I would rather seek companionship in a Tyrol village than amidst these wounded and missing of a London season. With all this I wanted to get away from the vicinity of the Jopplyns, – they were positively odious to me. Is not the man who holds in his keeping one scrap of your handwriting which displays you in a light of absurdity, far more your enemy than the holder of your protested bill? I own I think so. Debt is a very human weakness; like disease, it attacks the best and the noblest amongst us. You’ may pity the fellow that cannot meet that acceptance, you may be sorry for the anxiety it occasions him, the fruitless running here and there, the protestations, promises, and even lies he goes through, but no sense of ludicrous scorn mingles with your compassion, none of that contemptuous laughter with which you read a copy of absurd verses or a maudlin love-letter.

Imagine the difference of tone in him who says: “That’s an old bill of poor Potto’s; he ‘ll never pay it now, and I ‘m sure I ‘ll never ask him.” Or, “Just read those lines; would you believe that any creature out of Ham well could descend to such miserable drivel as that? It was one Potts who wrote it.”

I wonder, could I obtain my manuscript from Jopplyn before I started. What pretext could I adduce for the request? While I thus pondered, I packed up my few wearables in my knapsack and prepared for the road. They were, indeed, a very scanty supply, and painfully suggested to my mind the estimate that waiters and hotel-porters must form of their owner. “Cruel world,” muttered I, “whose maxim is, ‘By their outsides shall ye judge them.’ Had I arrived here with a travelling-carriage and a ‘fourgon,’ what respect and deference had awaited me, – how courteous the landlord, how obliging the head-waiter! Twenty attentions which could not be charged for in the bill had been shown me; and even had I, in superb dignity, declined to descend from my carriage while the post-horses were being harnessed, a levee of respectful flunkeys would have awaited my orders. I have no doubt but there must be something very intoxicating in all this homage. The smoke of the hecatombs must have affected Jove as a sort of chloroform, or else he would never have sat there sniffing them for centuries. Are you ever destined to experience these sensations, Potts? Is there a time coming when anxious ears will strain to catch your words, and eyes watch eagerly for your slightest gestures? If such an era should ever come, it will be a great one for the masses of mankind, and an evil one for snobbery. Such a lesson as I will read the world on humility in high places, such an example will I give of one elevated, but uncorrupted by fortune.”

“Let the carriage come to the door,” said I, closing my eyes, as I sunk into my chair in revery. “Tell my people to prepare the entire of the 'Hôtel de Belle Vue’ for my arrival, and my own cook to preside in the kitchen.”

“Is this to go by the omnibus?” said the waiter, suddenly, on entering my room in haste. He pointed to my humble knapsack.

“Yes,” said I, in deep confusion, – “yes, that’s my luggage, – at least, all that I have here at this moment. Where is the bill? Very moderate, indeed,” muttered I, in a tone of approval. “I will take care to recommend your house; attendance prompt, and the wines excellent.”

“Monsieur is complimentary,” said the fellow, with a grin; “he only experimented upon a ‘small Beaune’ at one-twenty the bottle.”

I scowled at him, and he shrank again.

“And this objet is also monsieur’s,” said he, taking up a small white canvas bag which was enclosed in my railroad wrapper.

“What is it?” cried I, taking it up. I almost fell back as I saw that it was one of the despatch-bags of the Foreign Office, which in my hasty departure from the Dover train I had accidentally carried off with me. There it was, addressed to “Sir Shalley Doubleton, H.M.‘s Envoy and Minister at Hesse-Kalbbratonstadt, by the Hon. Grey Buller, Attaché,” &c.

Here was not alone what might be construed into a theft, but what it was well possible, might comprise one of the gravest offences against the law: it might be high treason itself! Who would ever credit my story, coupled as it was with the fact of my secret escape from the carriage; my precipitate entrance into the first place I could find, not to speak of the privacy I observed by not mixing with the passengers in the mail packet, by keeping myself estranged from all observation in the captain’s cabin? Here, too, was the secret of the skipper’s politeness to me: he saw the bag, and believed me to be a Foreign Office messenger, and this was his meaning, as he said, “I can answer for him, he can’t delay much here.” Yes; this was the entire mystification by which I obtained his favor, his politeness, and his protection. What was to be done in this exigency? Had the waiter not seen the bag, and with the instincts of his craft calmly perused the address on it, I believe – nay, I am quite convinced – I should have burned it and its contents on the spot. The thought of his evidence against me in the event of a discovery, however, entirely routed this notion, and, after a brief consideration I resolved to convey the bag to its destination, and trump up the most plausible explanation I could of the way it came into my possession. His Excellency, I reasoned, will doubtless be too delighted to receive his despatches to inquire very minutely as to the means by which they were recovered, nor is it quite impossible that he may feel bound to mark my zeal for the public service by some token of recognition. This was a pleasant turn to give to my thoughts, and I took it with all the avidity of my peculiar temperament. “Yes,” thought I, “it is just out of trivial incidents like this a man’s fortune is made in life. For one man who mounts to greatness by the great entrance and the state staircase, ten thousand slip in by la petite Porte. It is, in fact, only by these chances that obscure genius obtains acknowledgment How, for example, should this great diplomatist know Potts if some accident should not throw them together? Raleigh flung his laced jacket in a puddle, and for his reward he got a proud Queen’s favor. A village apothecary had the good fortune to be visiting the state apartments at the Pavilion when George the Fourth was seized with a fit; he bled him, brought him back to consciousness, and made him laugh by his genial and quaint humor. The king took a fancy to him, named him his physician, and made his fortune. I have often heard it remarked by men who have seen much of life, that nobody, not one, goes through the world without two or three such opportunities presenting themselves. The careless, the indolent, the unobservant, and the idle, either fail to remark, or are too slow to profit by them. The sharp fellows, on the contrary, see in such incidents all that they need to lead them to success. Into which of these categories you are to enter, Potts, let this incident decide.”

Having by a reference to my John Murray ascertained the whereabouts of the capital of Hesse-Kalbbratonstadt, I took my place at once on the rail for Cologne, reading myself up on its beauty and its belongings as I went There is, however, such a dreary sameness in these small Ducal states, that I am ashamed to say how little I gleaned of anything distinctive in the case before me. The reigning sovereign was, of course, married to a Grand Duchess of Russia, and he lived at a country-seat called Ludwig’s Lust, or Carl’s Lust, as it might be, “took little interest in politics,” – how should he? – and “passed much of his time in mechanical pursuits, in which he had attained considerable proficiency;” in other words, he was a middle-aged gentleman, fond of his pipe, and with a taste for carpentry. Some sort of connection with our own royal family had been the pretext for having a resident minister at his court, though what he was to do when he was there seemed not so easy to say. Even John, glorious John, was puzzled how to make a respectable half-page out of his capital, though there was a dome in the Byzantine style, with an altarpiece by Peter von Grys, the angels in the corner being added afterwards by Hans Lûders; and there was a Hof Theatre, and an excellent inn, the “Schwein,” by Kramm, where the sausages of home manufacture were highly recommendable, no less than a table wine of the host’s vineyard, called “Magenschmerzer,” and which, Murray adds, would doubtless, if known, find many admirers in England; and lastly, but far from leastly, there was a Music Garten, where popular pieces were performed very finely by an excellent German band, and to which promenade all the fashion of the capital nightly resorted.

I give you all these details, respected reader, just as I got them in my “Northern Germany,” and not intending to obtrude any further description of my own upon you; for who, I would ask, could amplify upon his Handbook? What remains to be noted after John has taken the inventory? Has he forgotten a nail or a saint’s shin-bone? With him for a guide, a man may feel that he has done his Em-ope conscientiously; and though it be hard to treasure up all the hard names of poets, painters, priests, and warriors, it is not worse than botany, and about as profitable.