A Day's Ride: A Life's Romance

“They were as good as their word. I had no sooner descended to a private station than I was made to feel all the severities of their displeasure. They took away my license to sell salt and tobacco, and thereby fully one half of my little income; they tried to withdraw my privilege to sell wine, but this came from the municipality, and they could not touch it. Upon information that they had suborned, they twice visited my house to search for seditious papers, and, finally, they made me such a mark of their enmity that the timid of the townsfolk were afraid to be seen with me, and gradually dropped my acquaintance. This preyed upon me most of all. I was all my life of a social habit; I delighted to gather my friends around me, or to go and visit them, and to find myself, as I was growing old, growing friendless too, was a great blow.

“I was a widower, and had none but an only daughter.”

When he had reached thus far, his voice failed him, and, after an effort or two, he could not continue, and turned away his head and buried it in his hands. Full ten minutes elapsed before he resumed, which he did with a hard, firm tone, as though resolved not to be conquered by his emotion.

“The cholera was dreadfully severe all through the Italian Tyrol; it swept from Venice to Milan, and never missed even the mountain villages, far away up the Alps. In our little hamlet we lost one hundred and eighteen souls, and my Gretchen was one of them.

“We had all grown to be very hard-hearted to each other; misfortune was at each man’s door, and he had no heart to spare for a neighbor’s grief; and yet such was the sorrow for her, that they came, in all this suffering and desolation, to try and comfort and keep me up, and though it was a time when all such cares were forgotten, the young people went and laid fresh flowers over her grave every morning. Well, that was very kind of them, and made me weep heartily; and, in weeping, my heart softened, and I got to feel that God knew what was best for all of us, and that, may-bap, he had taken her away to spare her greater sorrow hereafter, and left me to learn that I should pray to go to her. She had only been in the earth eight days, and I was sitting alone in my solitary house, for I could not bear to open the shop, and began to think that I *d never have the courage to do so again, but would go away and try some other place and some other means of livelihood, – it was while thinking thus, a sharp, loud knock came to the door, and I arose rather angrily, to answer it.

“It was a sergeant of an infantry regiment, whose detachment was on march for Peschiera; there were troubles down there, and the Government had to send off three regiments in all haste from Vienna to suppress them. The sergeant was a Bohemian, and his regiment the Kinsky. He was a rough, coarse fellow, very full of his authority, despising all villagers, and holding Italians in especial contempt. He came to order me to prepare rations and room for six soldiers, who were to arrive that evening. I answered, boldly, that I would not I had served the office of syndic in the town, and was thus forever exempt from the ‘billet,’ and I led him into my little sitting-room, and showed him my ‘brevet,’ framed and glazed, over the chimney. He laughed heartily at my little remonstrance, coolly turned the ‘brevet’ with its face to the wall, and said, —

“‘If you don’t want twelve of us instead of six, you ‘ll keep your tongue quiet, and give us a stoup of your best wine.’

“I did not wait to answer him, but seized my hat and hurried away to the Platz Commandant. He was an old enemy of mine, but I could not help it; his was the only authority I could appeal to, and he was bound to do me justice. When I reached the bureau, it was so crowded with soldiers and townsfolk, some seeking for billets, some insisting on their claim to be free, that I could not get past the door, and, after an hour’s waiting, I was fain to give up the attempt, and turned back home again, determined to make my statement in writing, which, after all, might have been the most fitting.

“I found my doors wide open when I got there, and my shop crowded with soldiers, who, either seated on the counter or squatting on their knapsacks, had helped themselves freely to my wine, even to raising the top of an old cask, and drinking it in large cups from the barrel, which they handed liberally to their comrades as they passed.

“My heart was too full to care much for the loss, though the insult pressed me sorely, and, pushing my way through, I gained the inner room to find it crowded like the shop. All was in disorder and confusion. The old musket my father had carried for many a year, and which had hung over the chimney as an heirloom, lay smashed in fragments on the floor; some wanton fellow had run his bayonet through my ‘brevet’ as syndic, and hung it up in derision as a banner; and one – he was a corporal – had taken down the wreath of white roses that lay on Gretchen’s coffin till it was laid in the earth, and placed it on his head. When I «aw this, my senses left me; I gave a wild shriek, and dashed both my hands in his face. I tried to strangle him; I would have torn him with my teeth had they not dragged me off and dashed me on the ground, where they trampled on me, and beat me, and then carried me away to prison.

“I was four days in prison before I was brought up to be examined. I did not know whether it had been four or forty, for my senses had left me and I was mad; perhaps it was the cold dark cell and the silence restored me, but I came out calm and collected. I remembered everything to the smallest incident.

“The soldiers were heard first; they agreed in everything, and their story had all the air of truth about it They owned they had taken my wine, but said that the regiment was ready and willing to pay for it so soon as I came back, and that all the rest they had done were only the usual follies of troops on a march. I began by claiming my exemption as a syndic, but was stopped at once by being told that my claim had never been submitted to the authorities, and that in my outrage on the imperial force I had forfeited all consideration on that score. My offence was easily proven. I did not deny it, and I was lectured for nigh an hour on the enormity of my crime, and then sentenced to pay a fine of a thousand zwanzigers to the Emperor, and to receive four-and-twenty blows with the stick. ‘It should have been eight-and-forty but for my age,’ he said.

“On the same stool where I sat to hear my sentence was a circus man, waiting the Platz Commandant’s leave to give some representation in the village. I knew him from his dress, but had never spoken to him nor he to me; just, however, as the Commandant had delivered the words of my condemnation, he turned to look at me, – mayhap to see how I bore up under my misfortune. I saw his glance, and I did my best to sustain it. I wanted to bear myself manfully throughout, and not to let any one know my heart was broken, which I felt it was. The struggle was, perhaps, more than I was able for, and, while the tears gushed out and ran down my cheeks, I buret out laughing, and laughed away fit after fit, making the most terrible faces all the while; so outrageously droll were my convulsions, that every one around laughed too, and there was the whole court screaming madly with the same impulse, and unable to control it.

“‘Take the fool away!’ cried the Commandant, at last, ‘and bring him to reason with a hazel rod.’ And they carried me off, and I was flogged.

“It was about a week after I was down near Commachio. I don’t know how I got there, but I was in rags, and had no money, and the circus people came past and saw me. ‘There’s the old fellow that nearly killed us with his droll face,’ said the chief. ‘I ‘ll give you two zwanzigers a day, my man, if you ‘ll only give us a few grins like that every evening. Is it a bargain?’

“I laughed. I could not keep now from laughing at everything, and the bargain was made, and I was a clown from that hour. They taught me a few easy tricks to help me in my trade, but it is my face that they care for, – none can see it unmoved.”

He turned on me as he spoke with a fearful contortion of countenance, but, moved by his story, and full only of what I had been listening to, I turned away and shed tears.

“Yes,” said he, meditatively, “many a happy heart is kindled at the fire that is consuming another. As for myself, both joy and sorrow are dead within me. I am without hope, and, stranger still, without fear.”

“But you are not without benevolence,” said I, as I looked towards the sleeping girl.

“She was so like Gretchen,” said he; and he bent down his head and sobbed bitterly.

I would have asked him some questions about her if I dared, but I felt so rebuked by the sorrow of the old man, that my curiosity seemed almost unfeeling.

“She came amongst us a mere child,” said he, “and speedily attached herself to me. I contrived to learn enough v of her dialect to understand and talk to her, and at last she began to regard me as a father, and even called me such. It was a long time before I could bear this. Every time I heard the word my grief would burst out afresh; but what won’t time do? I have come to like it now.”

“And is she good and gentle and affectionate?” asked I.

“She is far too good and true-hearted to be in such company as ours. Would that some rich person, – it should be a lady, – kind and gentle and compassionate, could see her and take her away from such associates, and this life of shame, ere it be too late! If I have a sorrow left me now, it is for her.”

I was silent; for though the wish only seemed fair and natural enough on his part, I could not help thinking how improbable such an incident would prove.

“She would repay it all,” said he. “If ever there was a nature rich in great gifts, it is hers. She can learn whatever she will, and for a word of kindness she would hold her hand in the fire for you. Hush!” whispered he, “she is stirring. What is it, darling?” said he, creeping close to her, as she lay, throwing her arms wildly open, but not removing the handkerchief from her face.

She muttered something hurriedly, and then burst into a laugh so joyous and so catching, it was impossible to refrain from joining in it.

She threw back the kerchief at once and started to her knees, gazing steadfastly, almost sternly, at me. I saw that the old man comprehended the inquiry of her glance, and as quickly whispered a few words in her ear. She listened till he had done, and then, springing towards me, she caught my hand and kissed it.

I suspect he must have rebuked the ardor of her movement, for she hung her head despondingly, and turned away from us both.

“Now for the road once more,” said Vaterchen, “for if we stay much longer here, we shall have the forest flies, which are always worse towards evening.”

It was not without great difficulty I could prevent his carrying my knapsack for me, and even the girl herself would gladly have borne some of my load. At last, however, we set forth, Tintefleck lightening the way with a merry can-zonette that had the time of a quickstep.

CHAPTER XXXI. A GENIUS FOR CARICATURE

What a pleasant little dinner we had that day! It was laid out in a little summer-house of the inn-garden. All overgrown with a fine old fig-tree, through whose leaves the summer wind played deliciously, while a tiny rivulet rippled close by, and served to cool our “Achten-thaler,” – an amount of luxury that made Tintefleck quite wild with laughter.

“Is it cold enough?” she asked archly, in her peasant dialect, each time the old man laid down his glass.

As I came gradually to pick up the occasional meaning of her words, – a process which her expressive pantomime greatly aided, – I was struck by the marvellous acuteness of a mind so totally without culture, and I could not help asking Vaterchen why he had never attempted to instruct her.

“What can I do?” said he, despondently; “there are no books in the only language she knows, and the only language she will condescend to speak. She can understand Italian, and I have read stories for her, and sonnets, too, out of Leopardi; but though she will listen in all eagerness till they are finished, no sooner over than she breaks out into some wild Calabrian song, and asks me is it not worth all the fine things I have been giving her, thrice told.”

“Could you not teach her to write?”

“I tried that. I bought a slate, and I made a bargain with her that she should have a scarlet knot for her hair when she could ask me for it in written words. Well, all seemed to go on prosperously for a time; we had got through half the alphabet very successfully, till we came to the letter H. This made her laugh immediately, it was so like a scaffold we had in the circus for certain exercises; and no sooner had I marked down the letter, than she snatched the pencil from me, and drew the figure of a man on each bar of the letter. From that hour forth, as though her wayward humor had been only imprisoned, she burst forth into every imaginable absurdity at our lessons. Every ridiculous event of our daily life she drew, and with a rapidity almost incredible. I was not very apt, as you may imagine, in acquiring the few accomplishments they thought to give me, and she caricatured me under all my difficulties.”

“Si, si,” broke she in at this; for, with a wonderful acuteness, she could trace something of a speaker’s meaning where every word was unknown to her. As she spoke, she arose, and fled down the garden at top speed.

“Why has she gone? Is she displeased at your telling me all these things about her?” asked I.

“Scarcely that; she loves to be noticed. Nothing really seems to pain her so much as when she is passed over unremarked. When such an event would occur in the circus, I have seen her sob through her sleep all the night after. I half suspect now she is piqued at the little notice you have bestowed upon her. All the better if it be so.”

“But here she comes again.”

With the same speed she now came back to us, holding her slate over her head, and showing that she rightly interpreted what the old man had said of her.

“Now for my turn!” said Vaterchen, with a smile. “She is never weary of drawing me in every absurd and impossible posture.”

“What is it to be, Tintefleck?” asked he. “How am I to figure this time?”

She shook her head without replying, and, making a sign that she was not to be questioned or interrupted, she nestled down at the foot of the fig-tree, and began to draw.

The old man now drew near me, and proceeded to give me further details of her strange temper and ways. I could mark that throughout all he said a tone of intense anxiety and care prevailed, and that he felt her disposition was exactly that which exposed her to the greatest perils for her future. There was a young artist who used to follow her through all the South Tyrol, affecting to be madly in love with her, but of whose sincerity and honor Vaterchen professed to have great misgivings. He gave her lessons in drawing, and, what was less to be liked, he made several studies of herself. “The artless way,” said the old man, “she would come and repeat to me all his raptures about her, was at first a sort of comfort to me. I felt reassured by her confidence, and also by the little impression his praises seemed to make, but I saw later on that I was mistaken. She grew each day more covetous of these flatteries, and it was no longer laughingly, but in earnest seriousness, she would tell me that the ‘Fornarina’ in some gallery had not such eyes as hers, and that some great statue that all the world admired was far inferior to her in shape. If I had dared to rebuke her vanity, or to ridicule her pretensions, all my influence would have been gone forever. She would have left us, gone who knows whither, and been lost, so that I had nothing for it but to seem to credit all she said and yet hold the matter lightly, and I said beauty had no value except when associated with rank and station. If queens and princesses be handsome, they are more fitted to adorn this high estate, but for humble folk it is as great a mockery as these tinsel gems we wear in the circus.

“‘Max says not,’ said she to me one evening, after one of my usual lectures. ‘Max says, there are queens would give their coronets to have my hair; ay, or even one of the dimples in my cheek.’

“‘Max is a villain,’ said I, before I could control my words.

“‘Max is a vero signor!’ said she, haughtily, ‘and not like one of us; and more, too, I ‘ll go and tell him what you have called him.’ She bounded away from me at this, and I saw her no more till nightfall.

“‘What has happened to you, poor child!’ said I, as I saw her lying on the floor of her room, her forehead bleeding, and her dress all draggled and torn. She would not speak to me for a long while, but by much entreating and caressing I won upon her to tell me what had befallen her. She had gone to the top of the ‘Glucksburg,’ and thrown herself down. It was a fearful height, and only was she saved by being caught by the brambles and tangled foliage of the cliff; and all this for ‘one harsh word of mine,’ she said. But I knew better; the struggle was deeper in her heart than she was aware of, and Max had gone suddenly away, and we saw no more of him.”

“Did she grieve after him?”

“I scarcely can say she did. She fretted, but I think it was for her own loneliness, and the want of that daily flattery she had grown so fond of. She became overbearing, and even insolent, too, with all her equals, and though for many a day she had been the spoiled child of the troop, many began to weary of her waywardness. I don’t know how all this might have turned out, when, just as suddenly, she changed and became everything that she used to be.”

When the old man had got thus far, the girl arose, and without saying a word, laid the slate before us. Vaterchen, not very quick-sighted, could not at once understand the picture, but I caught it at once, and laughed immoderately. She had taken the scene where I had presented Vaterchen and herself to the ladies at the tea-table, and with an intense humor, sketched all the varying emotions of the incident.’ The offended dignity of the old lady, the surprise and mortification of Miss Herbert, and my own unconscious pretension as I pointed to the “friends” who accompanied me, were drawn with the spirit of high caricature. Nor did she spare Vaterchen or herself; they were drawn, perhaps, with a more exaggerated satire than all the rest.

The old man no sooner comprehended the subject than he drew his hand across it, and turned to her with words of anger and reproach. I meant, of course, to interfere in her behalf, but it was needless; she fled, laughing, into the garden, and before many minutes were over, we heard her merry voice, with the tinkle of a guitar to assist it.

“There it is,” said Vaterchen, moodily. “What are you to do with a temperament like that?”

That was a question I was in no wise prepared to answer. Tintefleck’s temperament seemed to be the very converse of my own. I was over eager to plan out everything in life; she appeared to be just as impulsively bent on risking all.

My head was always calculating eventualities; hers, it struck me, never worried itself about difficulties till in the midst of them. Now, Jean Paul tells us that when a man detects any exaggerated bias in his character, instead of endeavoring, by daily watching, to correct it, he will be far more successful if he ally himself with some one of a diametrically opposite humor. If he be rash, for instance, let him seek companionship with the sluggish. If his tendency bear to over-imagination, let him frequent the society of realists. Why, therefore, should not I and Tintefleck be mutually beneficial? Take the two different kinds of wood in a bow: one will supply resistance, the other flexibility. It was a pleasant notion, and I resolved to test it.

“Vaterchen,” said I, “call me to-morrow, when you get ready for the road. I will keep you company as far as Constance.”

“Ah, sir,” said he, with a sigh, “you will be well weary of us before half the journey is over; but you shall be obeyed.”

CHAPTER XXXII. I RELIEVE MYSELF OF MY PURSE

Next morning, just as day was breaking, we set out on foot on our road to Constance. There was a pinkish-gray streak of light on the horizon, sure sign of a fine day, and the bright stars twinkled still in the clear half-sombre sky, and all was calm and noiseless, – nothing to be heard but the tramp of our own feet on the hard causeway.

With the cowardly caution of one who feels the water with his foot before he springs in to swim, I was glad that I made my first experiences of companionship with these humble friends while it was yet dark and none could see us. The old leaven of snobbery was unsubdued in my heart, and, as I turned to look at poor Vaterchen and then at the tinsel finery of Catinka, I bethought me of the little consideration the world extends to such as these and their belongings. “Vagabonds all!” would say some rich banker, as he rolled by in his massive travelling-carriage, creaking with imperials and jingling with bells. “Vagabonds all!” would mutter the Jew pedler, as he looked down from the banquette of the diligence. How slight is the sympathy of the realist for the poor creature whose life-labor is to please! How prone to regard him as useless, or, even worse, forgetting the while how a wiser than he has made many things in this beautiful world of ours that they should merely minister to enjoyment, gladden the eye and ear, and make our pilgrimage less weary! Where would be the crimson jay, where the scarlet bustard, where the gorgeous peacock with the nosegay on his tail, where the rose and the honeysuckle and the purple foxglove mingling with the wild thorn in our hedgerows, if the universe were of their creation, and this great globe but one big workshop? You never insist that the daisy and the daffodil should be pot-herbs; and why are there not to be wild flowers in humanity as well as in the fields? Is it not a great pride to you who live under a bell-glass, nurtured and cared for, and with your name attached to a cleft-stick at your side, – is it not a great pride to know that you are not like one of us poor dog-roses? Be satisfied, then, with that glory; we only ask to live! Shame on me for that “only”! As if there could be anything more delightful than life. Life, with all its capacities for love and friendship and heroism and self-devotion, for generous actions and noble aspirations! Life to feel life, to know that we are in a sphere specially constructed for the exercise of our senses and the play of our faculties, free to choose the road we would take, and with a glorious reward if our choice be the right one!

“‘Vagabonds!’ Yes,” thought I, “there was once on a time such a vagabond, and he strolled along from village to village, making of his flute a livelihood, – a poor performer, too, he tells us he was, but he could touch the hearts of these simple villagers with his tones as he could move the hearts of thousands more learned than they with his marvellous pathos; and this vagabond was called Oliver Goldsmith.” I have no words to say the ecstasy this thought gave me. Many a proud traveller doubtless swept past the poor wayfarer as he went, dusty and footsore, and who was, nevertheless, journeying onward to a great immortality; to be a name remembered with blessings by generations when the haughty man that scorned him was forgotten forever. “And so now,” thought I, “some splendid Russian or some Saxon Croesus will crash by and not be conscious that the thin and weary-looking youth, with the girl’s bundle on his stick and the red umbrella under his arm, that this is Potts! Ay, sir, you fancy that to be threadbare and footsore is to be vulgar-minded and ignoble, and you never so much as suspect that the heart inside that poor plaid waistcoat is throbbing with ambitions high as a Kaiser’s, and that the brain within that battered Jim Crow is the realm of thoughts profound as Bacon’s, and high-soaring as Milton’s.”

If I make my reader a sharer in these musings of mine, it is because they occupied me for some miles of the way. Vaterchen was not talkative, and loved to smoke on uninterruptedly. I fancy that, in his way, he was as great a dreamer as myself. Catinka would have talked incessantly if any one had listened, or could understand her. As it was, she recited legends and sang songs for herself, as happy as ever a blackbird was to listen to his own melody; and though I paid no especial attention to her music, still the sounds floated through all my thoughts, bathing them with a soothing flood; just as the air we breathe is often loaded with a sweet and perfumed breath ere we know it. On the whole, we journeyed along very pleasantly; and what between the fresh morning air, the brisk exercise, and the novelty of the situation, I felt in a train of spirits that made me delighted with everything. “This, after all,” thought I, “is more like the original plan I sketched out for myself. This is the true mode to see life and the world. The student of nature never begins his studies with the more complicated organizations; he sets out with what is simplest in structure, and least intricate in function; he begins with the extreme link of the chain; so, too, I start with the investigation of those whose lives of petty cares and small ambitions must render them easy of appreciation. This poor Mollusca Vaterchen, for instance, – to see is to know him; and the girl, how absurd to connect such a guileless child of nature as that with those stereotyped notions of feminine craft and subtlety!” I then went on to imagine some future biographer of mine engaged on this portion of my life, puzzled for materials, puzzled still more to catch the clew to my meaning in it “At this time,” will he say, “Potts, by one of those strange caprices which often were the mainspring of his actions, resolved to lead a gypsy life. His ardent love of nature, his heartfelt enjoyment of scenery, and, more than even these, a certain breadth and generosity of character, disposed him to sympathize with those who have few to pity and fewer to succor them. With these wild children of the roadside he lived for months, joyfully sharing the burdens they carried, and taking his part in their privations. It was here he first met Catinka.” I stopped at this sentence, and I slowly repeated to myself, “It was here he first met Catinka!” “What will he have next to record?” thought I. “Is Potts now to claim sympathy as the victim of a passion that regarded not station, nor class, nor fortune; that despised the cold conventionalities of a selfish world, and asked only a heart for a heart? Is he to be remembered as the faithful believer in his own theory, – Love, above all? Are we to hear of him clasping rapturously to his bosom the poor forlorn girl?” So intensely were my feelings engaged in my speculations, that, at this critical pass, I threw my arms around Catinka’s neck, and kissed her. A rebuke, not very cruel, not in the least angry or peevish, brought me quickly to myself; and as Vaterchen was fortunately in front and saw nothing of what passed, I speedily made my peace. I do not know how it happened, but in that same peace-making I had passed my arm round her waist, and there it remained, – an army of occupation after the treaty was signed, – and we went along, side by side, very amicably, very happily.