A Day's Ride: A Life's Romance

Twice as I sat at my breakfast did François put in his head, look at me, and retire without a word. “What is the matter? What do you mean?” cried I, impatiently, at the third intrusion.

“It is madam that wishes to know when monsieur will be at leisure to go upstairs to her.”

I almost bounded on my chair with passion. How was I, I would ask, to maintain any portion of that dignity with which I ought to surround myself if exposed to such demands as this? This absurd old woman would tear off every illusion in which I draped myself. What availed all the romance a rich fancy could conjure up, when that wicked old enchantress called me to her presence, and in a voice of thunder said, “Strip off these masqueradings, Potts, I know the whole story.” “Ay, but,” thought I, “she cannot do so; of me and my antecedents she knows positively nothing.” “Halt there!” interposes Conscience; “it is quite enough to pronounce the coin base, without being able to say at what mint it was fabricated. She knows you, Potts, she knows you.”

There is one great evil in castle-building, and I have thought very long and anxiously, and I must own fruitlessly, over how to meet it: it is that one never can get a lease of the ground to build on. One is always like an Irish cottier, a tenant at will, likely to be turned out at a moment’s notice, and dispossessed without pity or compassion. The same language applies to each: “You know well, my good fellow, you had no right to be there; pack up and be off!” It’s no use saying that it was a bit of waste land unfenced and untilled; that, until you took it in hand, it was overgrown with nettles and duckweed; that you dispossessed no one, and such like. The answer is still the same, “Where’s your title? Where’s your lease?”

Now, I am curious to hear what injury I was inflicting on that old woman at No. 12 by any self-deceptions of mine? Could the most exaggerated estimate I might form of myself, my present, or my future, in any degree affect her? Who constituted her a sort of ambulatory conscience, to call people’s hearts to account at a moment’s notice? It may be seen by the tone of these reflections, that I was fully impressed with the belief through some channel, or by some clew, Mrs. Keats knew all my history, and intended to use her knowledge tyrannically over me.

Oh that I could only retaliate! Oh that I had only the veriest fragment of her past life, out of which to construct her whole story! Just as out of a mastodon’s molar, Cuvier used to build up the whole monster, never omitting a rib, nor forgetting a vertebra! How I should like to say to her, and with a most significant sigh, “I knew poor Keats well!” Could I not make even these simple words convey a world of accusation, blended with sorrow and regret?

François again, and on the same errand. “Say I am coming; that I have only finished a hasty breakfast, and that I am coming this instant,” cried I. Nor was it very easy for me to repress the more impatient expressions which struggled for utterance, particularly as I saw, or fancied I saw, the fellow pass his hand over his mouth to hide a grin at my expense.

“Is Miss Herbert upstairs?”

“No, sir, she is in the garden.”

This was so far pleasant. I dreaded the thought of her presence at this interview, and I felt that punishment within the precincts of the jail was less terrible than on the drop before the populace; and with this consoling reflection I mounted the stairs.

CHAPTER XIX. MRS. KEATS’S MYSTERIOUS COMMUNICATION

I knocked twice before I heard the permission to enter; but scarcely had I closed the door behind me, than the old lady advanced, and, courtesying to me with a manner of most reverential politeness, said, “When you learn, sir, that my conduct has been dictated in the interest of your safety, you will, I am sure, graciously pardon many apparent rudenesses in my manner towards you, and only see in them my zeal to serve you.”

I could only bow to a speech not one syllable of which was in the least intelligible to me. She conducted me courteously to a seat, and only took her own after I was seated.

“I feel, sir,” said she, “that there will be no end to our embarrassments if I do not go straight to my object and say at once that I know you. I tell you frankly, sir, that my brother did not betray your secret. The instincts of his calling – to him second nature – were stronger than fraternal love, and all he said to me was, ‘Martha, I have found a gentleman who is going south, and who, without inconvenience, can see you safely as far as Como.’ I implicitly accepted his words, and agreed to set out immediately. I suspected nothing, – I knew nothing. It was only before going down to dinner that the paragraph in the 'Courrier du Dimanche’ met my eye, and as I read it, I thought I should have fainted. My first determination was not to appear at dinner. I felt that something or other in my manner would betray my knowledge of your secret. My next was to go down and behave with more than usual sharpness. You may have remarked that I was very abrupt, almost, shall I say, rude?”

I tried to enter a dissent at this, but did not succeed so happily as I meant; but she resumed: —

“At any cost, however, sir, I determined that I alone should be the depositary of your confidence. Miss Herbert is to me a comparative stranger; she is, besides, very young; she would be in no wise a suitable person to intrust with such a secret, and so I said, I will pretend illness, and remain here for a day; I will make some pretext of dissatisfaction about the expense of the journey; I will affect to have had some passing difference, and he can thus leave us ere he be discovered. Not that I desire this, sir, far from it; this is the brightest episode in a long life. I never imagined that I should have enjoyed such an honor; but I have only to think of your safety, and if an old woman, unobservant and unremarking as myself, could penetrate your disguise, why not others more keen-sighted and inquisitive? Don’t you agree with me?”

“There is much force in what you say, madam,” said I; with dignity, “and your words touch me profoundly.” I thought this a happy expression, for it conveyed a sort of grand condescension that seemed to hit off the occasion.

“You would never guess how I recognized you, sir,” said she.

“Never, madam.” I could have given my oath to this, if required.

“Well,” said she, with a bland smile, “it was from the resemblance to your mother!”

“Indeed!”

“Yes; you are far more like her, than your father, and you are scarcely so tall as he was.”

“Perhaps not, madam.”

“But you have his manner, sir, the graceful and captivating dignity that distinguished all your house; this would betray you to the eyes of all who have enjoyed the high privilege of knowing your family.”

The allusion to our house showed that we were royalties, and I laid my hand on my heart, and bowed as a prince ought, blandly but haughtily.

“Ah, sir,” said she, with a deep sigh, “your present enterprise fills me with apprehension. Are you not afraid, yourself, of the consequences?”

I sighed, too; and if the truth were to be told, I was very much afraid.

“But, of course, you are acting under advice, and with the counsel of those well able to guide you.”

“I cannot say I am, madam; I am free to tell you that every step I am now taking is self-suggested.”

“Oh, then, let me implore you to pause, sir,” said she, falling on her knees before me; “let me thus entreat of you not to go further in a path so full of danger.”

“Shall I confess, madam,” said I, proudly, “that I do not see these dangers you speak of?”

I thought that on this hint she would talk out, and I might be able to pierce the veil of the mystery, and discover who I was; for though very like my mother, and shorter than my father, I was sorely puzzled about my parentage; but she only went off into generalities about the state of the Continent and the condition of Europe generally. I saw now that my best chance of ascertaining something about myself was to obtain from her the newspaper that first suggested her discovery of me, and I said half carelessly, “Let me see the paragraph which struck you in the ‘Courrier.’”

“Ah, sir, you must excuse me, these ignoble writers have little delicacy in alluding to the misfortunes of the great; they seem to revenge the littleness of their own station on every such occasion.”

“You can well imagine, madam, how time has accustomed me to such petty insults: show me the paper.”

“Pray let me refuse you, sir; I would not, however blamelessly, be associated in your mind with what might offend you.”

Again I protested that I was used to such attacks, that I knew all about the wretched hireling creatures who wrote them, and that instead of offending, they positively amused me, – actually made me laugh.

Thus urged, she proceeded to search for the newspaper, and only after some minutes was it that she remembered Miss Herbert had taken it away to read in the garden. She proposed to send the servant to fetch it, but this I would not permit, pretending at last to concur in her own previously expressed contempt for the paragraph, – but secretly promising myself to go in search of it the moment I should be at liberty, – and once more she resumed the theme of my rashness, and my dangers, and all the troubles I might possibly bring upon my family, and the grief I might occasion my grandmother.

Now, as there are few men upon whom the ties of family and kindred imposed less rigid bonds, I was rather provoked at being reminded of obligations to my grandmother, and was almost driven to declare that she weighed for very little in the balance of my plans and motives. The old lady, however, rescued me from the indiscretion by a fervent entreaty that I would at least ask a certain person what he thought of my present step.

“Will you do this?” said she, with tears in her eyes. “Will you do it now?”

I promised her faithfully.

“Will you do it here, sir, at this table, and let me have the proudest memory in my life to recall the incident.”

“I should like an hour or two for reflection,” said I, pushed very hard by this insistence of hers, for I was sorely puzzled whom I was to write to.

“Oh,” said she, still tearfully, “is it not the habit of hesitating, sir, has cost your house so dearly?”

“No,” said I, “we have been always accounted prompt in action and true to our engagements.”

Heaven forgive me! but in this vainglorious speech I was alluding to the motto of the Potts crest, – “Vigilanti-bus omnia fausta;” or, as some one rendered it, “Potts answers to the night-bell.”

She smiled faintly at my remark. I wonder how she would have looked had she read the thought that suggested it.

“But you will write to him, sir?” said she, once more.

I laid my hand over what anatomists call the region of the heart, and tried to look like Charles Edward in the prints. Meanwhile my patience was beginning to fail me, and I felt that if the mystification were to last much longer, I should infallibly lose my presence of mind. Fortunately, the old lady was so full of her theme that she only asked to be let talk away without interruption, with many an allusion to the dear Count and the adored Duchess, and a fervent hope that I might be ultimately reconciled to them both, – a wish which I had tact enough to perceive required the most guarded reserve on my part.

“I know I am indiscreet, sir,” said she, at last; “but you must pardon one whose zeal outruns her reason.”

And I bowed grandly, as I might have done in extending mercy to some captive taken in battle.

“There is but one favor more, sir, I have to beg.”

“Speak it, madam. As the courtier remarked, if it be possible it is done, if impossible it shall be done.”

“Well, sir, it is that you will not leave us till you hear from – ” She hesitated as if afraid to say the name, and then added, “the Rue St. Georges. Will you give me this pledge?”

Now, though this would have been, all things considered, an arrangement very like to have lasted my life, I could not help hesitating ere I assented, not to say that our dear friend of the Rue St Georges, whoever he was, might possibly not concur in all the delusions indispensable to my happiness. I therefore demurred, – that is, in legal acceptance, I deferred assent, – as though to say, “We’ll see.”

“At all events, sir, you ‘ll accompany us to Como?”

“You have my pledge to that, madam.”

“And meanwhile, sir, you agree with me that it is better I should continue to behave towards you with a cold and distant reserve.”

“Unquestionably.”

“Barely meeting, seldom or never conversing.”

“I should say never, madam; making, in fact, any communication you may desire to reach me through the intervention of that young person, – I forget her name.”

“Miss Herbert, sir.”

“Exactly; and who appears gentle and unobtrusive.”

“She is a gentlewoman by birth, sir,” said the old lady, tetchily.

“I have no doubt of it, madam, or she would not be found in association with you.”

She courtesied deeply at the compliment, and I bowed as low, and, backing and bowing, I gained the door, dying with eagerness, to make my escape.

“Will you pardon me, sir, if, after all the agitation of this meeting, I may not feel equal to appear at dinner to-day?”

“You will charge that young person to give news of your health, however,” said I, insinuating that I expected to see Miss Herbert.

“Certainly, sir; and if it should be your pleasure that she should dine with you, to preserve appearances – ”

“You are right, madam; your remark is full of wisdom. I shall expect to meet her.” And again I bowed low, and ere she recovered from another reverential courtesy I had closed the door behind me, and was half-way downstairs.

CHAPTER XX. THE MYSTERY EXPLAINED

As between the man who achieves greatness and him who has greatness thrust upon him there lies a whole world of space, so is there an immense interval between one who is the object of his own delusions and him who forms the subject of delusion to others.

My reader may have already noticed that nothing was easier for me than to lend myself to the idle current of my fancy. Most men who build “castles in Spain,” as the old adage calls them, do so purely to astonish their friends. I indulged in these architectural extravagances in a very different spirit. I built my castle to live in it; from foundation to roof-tree, I planned every detail of it to suit my own taste, and all my study was to make it as habitable and comfortable as I could. Ay, and what’s more, live in it I did, though very often the tenure was a brief one; sometimes while breaking my egg at breakfast, sometimes as I drew on my gloves to walk out, and yet no terror of a short lease ever deterred me from finishing the edifice in the most expensive manner. I gilded my architraves and frescoed my ceilings as though all were to endure for centuries; and laid out the gardens and disposed the parterres as though I were to walk in them in my extreme old age. This faculty of lending myself to an illusion by no means adhered to me where the deception was supplied by another; from the moment I entered one of their castles, I felt myself in a strange house. I continually forgot where the stairs were, what this gallery opened on, where that corridor led to. No use was it to say, “You are at home here. You are at your own fireside.” I knew and I felt that I was not.

By this declaration I mean my reader to understand that, while ready for any exigency of a story devised by myself, I was perfectly miserable at playing a part written for me by a friend; nor was this feeling diminished by the thought that I really did not know the person I was believed to represent; nor had I the very vaguest clew to his antecedents or belongings.

As I set out in search of Miss Herbert, these were the reflections I revolved, occasionally asking myself, “Is the old lady at all touched in the upper story? Is there not something private-asylumish in these wanderings?” But still, apart from this special instance, she was a marvel of acuteness and good sense. I found Miss Herbert in a little arbor at her work; the newspaper on the bench beside her.

“So,” said she, without looking up, “you have been making a long visit upstairs. You found Mrs. Keats very agreeable, or you were so yourself.”

“Is there anything wrong hereabouts?” said I, touching my forehead with my finger.

“Nothing whatever.”

“No fancies, no delusions about certain people?”

“None whatever.”

“None of the family suspected of anything odd or eccentric?”

“Not that I have ever heard of. Why do you ask?”

“Well, it was a mere fancy, perhaps, on my part; but her manner to-day struck me as occasionally strange, – almost flighty.”

“And on what subject?”

“I am scarcely at liberty to say that; in fact, I am not at all free to divulge it,” said I, mysteriously, and somewhat gratified to remark that I had excited a most intense curiosity on her part to learn the subject of our interview.

“Oh, pray do not make any imprudent revelations to me,” said she, pettishly; “which, apart from the indiscretion, would have the singular demerit of affording me not the slightest pleasure. I am not afflicted with the malady of curiosity.”

“What a blessing to you! Now, I am the most inquisitive of mankind. I feel that if I were a clerk in a bank, I ‘d spend the day prying into every one’s account, and learning the exact state of his balance-sheet. If I were employed in the post-office, no terror of the law could restrain me from reading the letters. Tell me that any one has a secret in his heart, and I feel I could cut him open to get at it!”

“I don’t think you are giving a flattering picture of yourself in all this,” said she, peevishly.

“I am aware of that, Miss Herbert; but I am also one of those who do not trade upon qualities they have no pretension to.”

She flushed a deep crimson at this, and after a moment said, —

“Has it not occurred to you, sir, that people who seldom meet except to exchange ungracious remarks would show more judgment by avoiding each other’s society?”

Oh, how my heart thrilled at this pettish speech! In Hans Gruter’s “Courtship,” he says, “I knew she loved me, for we never met without a quarrel.” “I have thought of that, too, Miss Herbert,” said I, “but there are outward observances to be kept up, conventionalities to be respected.”

“None of which, however, require that you should come out and sit here while I am at my work,” said she, with suppressed passion.

“I came out here to search for the newspaper,” said I, taking it up, and stretching myself on the grassy sward to read at leisure.

She arose at once, and, gathering all the articles of her work into a basket, walked away.

“Don’t let me hunt you away, Miss Herbert,” said I, indolently; “anywhere else will suit me just as well. Pray don’t go.” But without vouchsafing to utter a word, or even turn her head, she continued her way towards the house.

“The morning she slapped my face,” says Hans, “filled the measure of my bliss, for I then saw she could not control her feelings for me.” This passage recurred to me as I lay there, and I hugged myself in the thought that such a moment of delight might yet be mine. The profound German explains this sentiment well. “With women,” says he, “love is like the idol worship of an Indian tribe; at the moment their hearts are bursting with devotion, they like to cut and wound and maltreat their god. With them, this is the ecstasy of their passion.”

I now saw that the girl was in love with me, and that she did not know it herself. I take it that the sensations of a man who suddenly discovers that the pretty girl he has been admiring is captivated by his attentions, are very like what a head clerk may feel at being sent for by the house, and informed that he is now one of the firm! This may seem a commercial formula to employ, but it will serve to show my meaning; and as I lay there on that velvet turf, what a delicious vision spread itself around me! At one moment we were rich, travelling in splendor through Europe, amassing art-treasures wherever we went and despoiling all the great galleries of their richest gems. I was the associate of all that was distinguished in literature and science, and my wife the chosen friend of queens and princesses. How unaffected we were, how unspoiled by fortune! Approachable by all, our graceful benevolence seemed to elevate its object and make of the recipient the benefactor. What a world of bliss this vile dross men call gold can scatter! “There – there, good people,” said I, blandly, waving my hand, “no illuminations, no bonfires; your happy faces are the brightest of all welcomes.” Then we were suddenly poor, – out of caprice, just to see how we should like it, – and living in a little cottage under Snowden, and I was writing, Heaven knows what, for the periodicals, and my wife rocking a little urchin in a cradle, whom we constantly awoke by kissing, each pretending that it was all the other’s fault, till we ratified a peace in the same fashion. Then I remembered the night, never to be forgotten, when I received my appointment as something in the antipodes, and we went up to town to thank the great man who bestowed it, and he asked us to dinner, and he was, I fancied, more than polite to my wife, and I sulked about it when we got home, and she petted and caressed me, and we were better friends than ever, and I swore I would not accept the Minister’s bounty, and we set off back again to our cottage in Wales, and there we were when I came to myself once more.

It is always pleasant – at least, I have ever felt it so, on awaking from a dream or a revery – to know that one has borne himself well in some imaginary crisis of difficulty and peril. I like to think that I was in no hurry to get into the longboat. I am glad I gave poor Dick that last fifty-pound note, – my last in the world, – and I rejoice to remember that I did not run away from that grizzly bear, but sent the four-pound ball right into the very middle of his forehead. You feel in all these that the metal of your nature has been tested, and come out pure gold; at all events, I did, and was very happy thereat. It was not till after some little time that I could get myself clear out of dreamland, and back to the actual world of small debts and difficulties, and then I bethought me of the newspaper which lay unread beside me.

I began it now, resolved to examine it from end to end, till I discovered the passage that alluded to me. It was so far pleasant reading, that it was novel and original. A very able leader set forth that nothing could equal the blessings of the Pope’s rule at Rome, – no people were so happy, so prosperous, or so contented, – that all the granaries were full, and all the jails empty, and the only persons of small incomes in the state were the cardinals, and that they were too heavenly-minded to care for it. After this, there came some touching anecdotes of that good man the late King of Naples. And then there was a letter from Frohsdorf, with fifteen francs enclosed to the inhabitants of a village submerged by an inundation. There were pleasant little paragraphs, too, about England, and all the money she was spending to propagate infidelity and spread the slave-trade, – the two great and especial objects of her policy, – after which came insults to France and injustice to Ireland. The general tone of the print was war with every one but some twenty or thirty old ladies and gentlemen living in exile somewhere in Bohemia. Now, none of these things touched me, and I was growing very weary of my search when I lighted upon the following: —

“We are informed, on authority that we cannot question, that the young C. de P. is now making the tour of Germany alone and in disguise, his object being to ascertain for himself how the various relatives of his house, on the maternal side, would feel affected by any movement in France to renew his pretensions. Strange, undignified, and ill advised as such a step must seem, there is nothing in it at all repulsive to the well-known traditions of the younger branch. Our informant himself met the P. at Mayence, and speedily recognized him, from the marked resemblance he bears to the late Duchess, his mother; he addressed him at once by his title, but was met by the cold assurance that he was mistaken, and that a casual similarity in features bad already led others into the same error. The General – for our informant is an old and honored soldier of France – confessed he was astounded at the aplomb and self-possession displayed by so young a man; and although their conversation lasted for nearly an hour, and ranged over a wide field, the C. never for an instant exposed himself to a detection, nor offered the slightest clew to his real rank and station. Indeed, he affected to be English by birth, which his great facility in the language enabled him to do. When he quitted Mayence, it was for Central Germany.”