A Day's Ride: A Life's Romance

“This you may rely on, gracious sir,” said the waiter, as he laid a bottle on the table beside me with a careful hand. “It is the orange seal;” and he then added, in a whisper, “taken from the Margrave’s cellar in the revolution of ‘93, and every flask of it worth a province.”

“We shall see – we shall see,” said I, haughtily; “serve the soup!”

If I had been Belshazzar, I believe I should have eaten very heartily, and drunk my wine with a great relish, notwithstanding that drawn sword. I don’t know how it is, but if I can only see the smallest bit of terra firma between myself and the edge of a precipice, I feel as though I had a whole vast prairie to range over. For the life of me I cannot realize anything that may, or may not, befall me remotely. “Blue are the hills far off,” says the adage; and on the converse of the maxim do I aver, that faint are all dangers that are distant. An immediate peril overwhelms me; but I could look forward to a shipwreck this day fortnight with a fortitude truly heroic.

“This is a nice old half-forgotten sort of place,” thought I, “a kind of vulgar Venice, water-washed, and muddy, and dreary, and do-nothing. I ‘ll stay here for a week or so; I ‘ll give myself up to the drowsy genius loci; I’ll Germanize to the top of my bent; who is to say what metaphysical melancholy, dashed with a strange diabolic humor, may not come of constantly feeding on this heavy cookery, and eternally listening to their gurgling gutturals? I may come out a Wieland or a Herder, with a sprinkling of Henri Heine! Yes,” said I, “this is the true way to approach life; first of all develop your own faculties, and then mark how in their exercise you influence your fellow-men. Above all, however, cultivate your individuality, respect this the greatest of all the unities.”

“Ja, gnädiger Herr,” said the old waiter, as he tried to step away from my grasp, for, without knowing it, I had laid hold of him by the wrist while I addressed to him this speech. Desirous to re-establish my character for sanity, somewhat compromised by this incident, I said:

“Have you a money-changer in these parts? If so, let me have some silver for this English gold.” I put my hand in my pocket for my purse; not finding it, I tried another and another. I ransacked them all over again, patted myself, shook my coat, looked into my hat, and then, with a sudden flash of memory, I bethought me that I had left it with Catinka, and was actually without one sou in the world! I sat down, pale and almost fainting, and my arms fell powerless at my sides.

“I have lost my purse!” gasped I out, at length.

“Indeed!” said the old man, but with a tone of such palpable scorn that it actually sickened me.

“Yes,” said I, with all that force which is the peculiar prerogative of truth; “and in it all the money I possessed.”

“I have no doubt of it,” rejoined he, in the same dry tone as before.

“You have no doubt of what, old man? Or what do you mean by the supercilious quietness with which you assent to my misfortune? Send the landlord to me.”

“I will do more! I will send the police,” said he, as he shuffled out of the room.

I have met scores of men on my way through life who would not have felt the slightest embarrassment in such a situation as mine, fellows so accustomed to shipwreck, that the cry of “Breakers ahead!” or “Man the boats,” would have occasioned neither excitement nor trepidation. What stuff they are made of instead of nerves, muscles, and arteries, I cannot imagine, since, when the question is self-preservation, how can it possibly be more imminent than when not alone your animal existence is jeopardized, but the dearer and more precious life of fame and character is in peril?

For a moment I thought that though this besotted old fool of a waiter might suspect my probity the more clear-sighted intelligence of the landlord would at once recognize my honest nature, and with the confidence of a noble conviction say, “Don’t tell me that the man yonder is a knave. I read him very differently. Tell me your story, sir.” And then I would tell it. It is not improbable that my speculation might have been verified had it not been that it was a landlady and not a landlord who swayed the destinies of the inn. Oh, what a wise invention of our ancestors was the Salique law! How justly they appreciated the unbridled rashness of the female nature in command! How well they understood the one-idea’d impetuosity with which they rush to wrong conclusions!

Until I listened to the Frau von Wintner, I imagined the German language somewhat weak in the matter of epithets. She undeceived me on this head, showing resources of abusive import that would have done credit to a Homeric hero. Having given me full ten minutes of a strong vocabulary, she then turned on the waiter, scornfully asking him if, at his time of life, he ought to have let himself be imposed upon by so palpable and undeniable a swindler as myself? She clearly showed that there was no extenuation of his fault, that rogue and vagabond had been written on my face, and inscribed in my manner; not to mention that I had followed the well-beaten track of all my fraternity in fraud, and ordered everything the most costly the house could command. In fact, so strenuously did she urge this point, and so eager did she seem about enforcing a belief in her statement, that I almost began to suspect she might suggest an anatomical examination of me to sustain her case. Had she been even less eloquent, the audience would still have been with her, for it is a curious but unquestionable fact that in all little visited localities the stranger is ungraciously regarded and ill looked on.

Whenever I attempted to interpose a word in my defence, I was overborne at once. Indeed, public opinion was so decidedly against me, that I felt very happy in thinking Lynch law was not a Teutonic institution. The room was now filled with retainers of the inn, strangers, town-folk, and police, and, to judge by the violence of their gestures and the loud tones of their voices, one would have pronounced me a criminal of the worst sort.

“But what is it that he has done? What’s his offence?” I heard a voice say from the crowd, and I fancied his accent was that of a foreigner. A perfect inundation of vituperative accusation, however, now poured in, and I could gather no more. The turmoil and uproar rose and fell, and fell and rose again, till at last, my patience utterly exhausted, I burst out into a very violent attack on the uncivilized habits of a people who could thus conduct themselves to a man totally unconvicted of any offence.

“Well, well, don’t give way to passion; don’t let temper get the better of you,” said a fat, citizen-like man beside me. “The stranger there has just paid for what you have had, and all is settled.”

I thought I should have fainted as I heard these words. Indeed, until that instant, I had never brought home to my own mind the utter destitution of my state; but now, there. I stood, realizing to myself the condition of one of those we read of in our newspapers as having received five shillings from the poor-box, while D 490 is deputed to “make inquiries after him at his lodgings,” and learn particulars of his life and habits. I could have borne being sent to prison. I could have endured any amount of severity, so long as I revolted against its injustice; but the sense of being an object of actual charity crushed me utterly, and I could nearly have cried with vexation.

By degrees the crowd thinned off, and I found myself sit-, ting alone beside the table where I had dined, with the hateful old waiter, as though standing sentinel over me.

“Who is this person,” asked I, haughtily, “who, with an indelicate generosity, has presumed to interfere with the concerns of a stranger?”

“The gracious nobleman who paid for your dinner is now eating his own at No. 8,” said the old monster with a grin.

“I will call upon him when he has dined,” said I, transfixing the wretch with a look so stern, as to make rejoinder impossible; and then, throwing my plaid wrapper and my knapsack on a table near, I strolled out into the street.

Lindau is a picturesque old place, as it stands rising, as it were, out of the very waters of the Lake of Constance, and the great mountain of the Sentis, with its peak of six thousand feet high, is a fine object in the distance; while the gorge of the Upper Rhine offers many a grand effect of Alpine scenery, not the less striking when looked at with a setting sun, which made the foreground more massive and the hill tops golden; and yet I carried that in my heart which made the whole picture as dark and dreary as Poussin’s Deluge. It was all very beautiful. There, was the snow-white summit, reflected in the still water of the lake; there, the rich wood, browned with autumn, and now tinted with a golden glory, richer again; there were the white-sailed boats, asleep on the calm surface, streaked with the variegated light of the clouds above, and it was peaceful as it was picturesque. But do what I could, I could not enjoy it, and all because I had lost my purse, just as if certain fragments of a yellow metal the more or the less, ought to obscure eyesight, lull the sense of hearing, and make a man’s whole existence miserable. “And after all,” thought I, “Catinka will be here this evening, or to-morrow at furthest. Vater-chen was tired, and could not come on. It was I who left them; I, in my impatience and ill-humor. The old man doubtless knew nothing of the purse confided to the girl, nor is it at all needful that he should. They will certainly follow me, and why, for the mere inconvenience of an hour or two, should I persist in seeing the whole world so crape-covered and sad-looking? Surely this is not the philosophy my knowledge of life has taught me. I ought to know and feel that these daily accidents are but stones on the road one travels. They may, perchance, wound the foot or damage the shoe, but they rarely delay the journey, if the traveller be not faint-hearted and craven. I will treat the whole incident in a higher spirit. I will wait for their coming in that tranquil and assured condition of mind which is the ripe fruit of a real insight into mankind. Pitt said, after long years of experience, that there was more of good than of bad in human nature. Let it be the remark of some future biographer that Potts agreed with him.”

When I got back to the inn, I was somewhat puzzled what to do. It would have been impossible with any success to have resumed my former tone of command, and for the life of me I could not bring myself down to anything like entreaty. While I thus stood, uncertain how to act, the old waiter approached me, almost courteously, and said my room was ready for me when I wished it.

“I will first of all wait upon the traveller in No. 8,” said L

“He has retired for the night,” was the answer. “He seems in very delicate health, and the fatigue of the journey has overcome him.”

“To-morrow will do, then,” said I easily; and not venturing upon an inquiry as to the means by which my room was at my disposal, I took my candle and mounted the stairs.

As I lay down in my bed, I resolved I would take a calm survey of my past life: what I had done, what I had failed to do, what were the guiding principles which directed me, and whither they were likely to bear me. But scarcely had I administered to myself the preliminary oath to tell nothing but the truth, than I fell off sound asleep.

My first waking thought the next morning was to inquire if two persons had arrived in search of me – an elderly man and a young woman. I described them. None such had been seen. “They will have sought shelter in some of the humbler inns,” thought I; “I’ll up and look after them.” I searched the town from end to end; I visited the meanest halting-places of the wayfarer; I inquired at the police bureaus – at the gate – but none had arrived who bore any resemblance to those I asked after. I was vexed – only vexed at first – but gradually I found myself growing distrustful. The suspicion that the ice is not strong enough for your weight, and then, close upon that, the shock of fear that strikes you when the loud crash of a fracture breaks on the ear, are mere symbols of what one suffers at the first glimmering of a betrayal. I repelled the thought with indignation; but certain thoughts there are which, when turned out, stand like sturdy duns at the gate, and will not be sent away. This was one of them. It followed me wherever I went, importunately begging for a hearing, and menacing me with sad consequences if I were obdurate enough to listen. “You are a simpleton, Potts, a weak, foolish, erring creature! and you select as the objects of your confidence those whose lives of accident present exactly as the most irresistible of all temptations to them – the Dupe! How they must have laughed – how they must yet be laughing at you! How that old drunken fox will chuckle over your simplicity, and the minx Tintefleck indulge herself in caricatures of your figure and face! I wonder how much of truth there was in that old fellow’s story? Was he ever the syndic of his village, or was the whole narrative a mere fiction like – like – ” I covered my face with my hands in shame as I muttered out, “like one of your own, Potts?”

I was very miserable, for I could no longer stand proudly forward as the prosecutor, but was obliged to steal ignominiously into the dock and take my place beside the other prisoners. What became of all my honest indignation as I bethought me, that I, of all men, could never arraign the counterfeit and the sham?

“Let them go, then,” cried I, “and prosper if they can; I will never pursue them. I will even try and remember what pleased and interested me in their fortunes, and, if it may be, forget that they have carried away my little all of wealth.”

A loud tramping of post-horses, and the cracking of whips, drew me to the window, and I saw beneath in the court-yard, a handsome travelling britschka getting ready for the road. Oh, how suggestive is a well cushioned calèche, with its many appliances of ease and luxury, its trim imperials, its scattered litter of wrappers and guide-books, – all little episodes of those who are to journey in it!

“Who are the happy souls about to travel thus enjoy-ably?” thought I, as I saw the waiter and the courier discussing the most convenient spot to deposit a small hamper with eatables for the road; and then I heard the landlady’s voice call out:

“Take up the bill to No. 8.”

So, then, this was No. 8 who was fast getting ready to depart, – No. 8 who had interposed in my favor the evening before, and towards whom a night’s rest and some reflection had modified my feelings and changed my sentiments very remarkably.

“Will you ask the gentleman at No. 8 if I may be permitted to speak with him?” said I to the man who took in the bill.

“He ‘ll scarcely see you now, – he’s just going off.”

“Give the message as I speak it,” said I; and he disappeared.

There was a long interval before he issued forth again, and when he did so he was flurried and excited. Some overcharges had been taken off and some bad money in change to be replaced by honest coin, and it was evident that various little well-intended rogueries had not achieved their usual success.

“Go in, you ‘ll find him there,” said the waiter, insolently, as he went down to have the bill rectified.

I knocked, a full round voice cried, “Come in!” and I entered.

CHAPTER XXXV. HART CROFTON’S COMMISSION

“Well, what next? Have you bethought you of anything more to charge me with?” cried a large full man, whose angry look and manner showed how he resented these cheatings.

I staggered back sick and faint, for the individual before me was Crofton, my kind host of long ago in Ireland, and from whose hospitable roof I had taken such an unceremonious departure.

“Who are you?” cried he, again. “I had hoped to have paid everything and everybody. Who are you?”

Wishing to retire unrecognized, I stammered out something very unintelligibly indeed about my gratitude, and my hope for a pleasant journey to him, retreating all the while towards the door.

“It’s all very well to wish the traveller a pleasant journey,” said he, “but you innkeepers ought to bear in mind that no man’s journey is rendered more agreeable by roguery. This house is somewhat dearer than the 'Clarendon’ in London, or the ‘Hôtel du Rhin’ at Paris. Now, there might be, perhaps, some pretext to make a man pay smartly who travels post, and has two or three servants with him, but what excuse can you make for charging some poor devil of a foot traveller, taking his humble meal in the common room, and, naturally enough, of the commonest fare, for making him pay eight florins – eight florins and some kreutzers – for his dinner? Why, our dinner here for two people was handsomely paid at six florins a head, and yet you bring in a bill of eight florins against that poor wretch.”

I saw now that, what between the blinding effects of his indignation, and certain changes which time and the road had worked in my appearance, it was more than probable I should escape undetected, and so I affected to busy myself with some articles of his luggage that lay scattered about the room until I could manage to slip away.

“Touch nothing, my good fellow!” cried he, angrily; “send my own people here for these things. Let my courier come here – or my valet!”

This was too good an opportunity to be thrown away, and I made at once for the door; but at the same instant it was opened, and Mary Crofton stood before me. One glance showed me that I was discovered; and there I stood, speechless with shame and confusion. Rallying, however, after a moment, I whispered, “Don’t betray me,” and tried to pass out Instead of minding my entreaty, she set her back to the door, and laughingly cried out to her brother, —

“Don’t you know whom we have got here?”

“What do you mean?” exclaimed he.

“Cannot you recognize an old friend, notwithstanding all his efforts to cut us?”

“Why – what – surely it can’t be – it’s not possible – eh?” And by this time he had wheeled me round to the strong light of the window, and then, with a loud burst, he cried out, “Potts, by all that’s ragged! Potts himself! Why, old fellow, what could you mean by wanting to escape us?” and he wrung my hand with a cordial shake that at once brought the blood back to my heart, while his sister completed my happiness by saying, —

“If you only knew all the schemes we have planned to catch you, you would certainly not have tried to avoid us.”

I made an effort to say something, – anything, in short, – but not a word would come. If I was overjoyed at the warmth of their greeting, I was no less overwhelmed with shame; and there I stood, looking very pitiably from one to the other, and almost wishing that I might faint outright and so finish my misery.

With a woman’s fine tact, Mary Crofton seemed to read the meaning of my suffering, and, whispering one word in her brother’s ear, she slipped away and left us alone together.

“Come,” said he, good-naturedly, as he drew his arm inside of mine, and led me up and down the room, “tell me all about it. How have you come here? What are you doing?”

I have not the faintest recollection of what I said. I know that I endeavored to take up my story from the day I had last seen him, but it must have proved a very strange and bungling narrative, from the questions which he was forced occasionally to put, in order to follow me out.

“Well,” said he, at last, “I will own to you that, after your abrupt departure, I was sorely puzzled what to make of you, and I might have remained longer in the same state of doubt, when a chance visit that I made to Dublin led me to Dycer’s, and there, by a mere accident, I heard of you, – heard who you were, and where your father lived. I went at once and called upon him, my object being to learn if he had any tidings of you, and where you then were. I found him no better informed than myself. He showed me a few lines you had written on the morning you had left home, stating that you would probably be absent some days, and might be even weeks, but that since that date nothing had been heard of you. He seemed vexed and displeased, but not uneasy or apprehensive about your absence, and the same tone I observed in your college tutor, Dr. Tobin. He said, ‘Potts will come back, sir, one of these days, and not a whit wiser than he went. His self-esteem is to his capacity in the reduplicate ratio of the inverse proportion of his ability, and he will be always a fool.’ I wrote to various friends of ours travelling about the world, but none had met with you; and at last, when about to come abroad myself, I called again on your father, and found him just re-married.”

“Re-married!”

“Yes! he was lonely, he said, and wanted companionship, and so on; and all I could obtain from him was a note for a hundred pounds, and a promise that, if you came back within the year, you should share the business of his shop with him.”

“Never! never!” said I. “Potts maybe the fool they deem him, but there are instincts and promptings in his secret heart that they know nothing of. I will never go back. Go on.”

“I now come to my own story. I left Ireland a day or two after and came to England, where business detained me some weeks. My uncle had died and left me his heir, – not, indeed, so rich as I had expected, but very well off for a man who had passed his life on very moderate means. There were a few legacies to be paid, and one which he especially intrusted to me by a secret paper, in the hope that, by delicate and judicious management, I might be able to persuade the person in whose interest it was bequeathed to accept. It was, indeed, a task of no common difficulty, the legatee being the widow of a man who had, by my uncle’s cruelty, been driven to destroy himself. It is a long story, which I cannot now enter upon; enough that I say it had been a trial of strength between two very vindictive unyielding men which should crush the other, and my uncle, being the richer, – and not from any other reason, – conquered.

“The victory was a very barren one. It imbittered every hour of his life after, and the only reparation in his power, he attempted on his death-bed, which was to settle an annuity on the family of the man he had ruined. I found out at once where they lived, and set about effecting this delicate charge. I will not linger over my failure; but it was complete. The family was in actual distress, but nothing would induce them to listen to the project of assistance; and, in fact, their indignation compelled me to retire from the attempt in despair. My sister did her utmost in the cause, but equally in vain, and we prepared to leave the place, much depressed and cast down by our failure. It was on the last evening of our stay at the inn of the little village, a townsman of the place, whom I had employed to aid my attempt by his personal influence with the family, asked to see me and speak with me in private.

“He appeared to labor under considerable agitation, and opened our interview by bespeaking my secrecy as to what he was about to communicate. It was to this purport: A friend of his own, engaged in the Baltic trade, had just declared to him that he had seen W., the person I allude to, alive and well, walking on the quay at Riga, that he traced him to his lodging; but, on inquiring for him the next day, he was not to be found, and it was then ascertained that he had left the city. W. was, it would seem, a man easily recognized, and the other declared that there could not be the slightest doubt of his identity. The question was a grave one how to act, since the assurance company with which his life was insured were actually engaged in discussing the propriety of some compromise by paying to the family a moiety of the policy, and a variety of points arose out of this contingency; for while it would have been a great cruelty to have conveyed hopes to the family that might by possibility not be realized, yet, on the other hand, to have induced them to adopt a course on the hypothesis of his death when they believed him still living, was almost as bad.

“I thought for a long while over the matter, and with my sister’s counsel to aid me, I determined that we should come abroad and seek out this man, trusting that, if we found him, we could induce him to accept of the legacy which his family rejected. We obtained every clew we could think of to his detection. A perfect description of him, in voice, look, and manner; a copy of his portrait, and a specimen of his handwriting; and then we bethought ourselves of interesting you in the search. You were rambling about the world in that idle and desultory way in which any sort of a pursuit might be a boon, – as often in the by-paths as on the high-roads; you might chance to hit off this discovery in some remote spot, or, at all events, find some clew to it. In a word, we grew to believe that, with you to aid us, we should get to the bottom of this mystery; and now that by a lucky chance we have met you, our hopes are all the stronger.”