A Day's Ride: A Life's Romance

The fact that I was listening to the narrative of a royal personage was not the only bond of fascination to me, for somehow the tone of the speaker’s voice sounded familiarly to my ears, and I could have sworn I had heard it before. As he was at the same side of the table with myself, I could not see him; but while he continued to talk, the impression grew each moment more strong that I must have met him previously.

I could gather – it was easy enough to do so – from the animated looks of the party, and the repeated bursts of laughter that followed his sallies, that the newly arrived officer was a wit and authority amongst his comrades. His elevated rank, too, may have contributed to this popularity. Must I own that he appeared in the character that to me is particularly offensive? He was a “narrator.” That vulgar adage of “two of a trade” has a far wider acceptance when applied to the operations of intellect than when addressed to the work of men’s hands. To see this jealousy at its height, you must look for it amongst men of letters, artists, actors, or, better still, those social performers who are the bright spirits of dinner-parties, – the charming men of society. All the animosities of political or religious hate are mild compared to the detestation this rivalry engenders; and now, though the audience was a foreign one, which I could have no pretension to amuse, I conceived the most bitter dislike for the man who had engaged their attention.

I do not know how it may be with others, but to myself there has always been this difficulty in a foreign language, that until I have accustomed myself to the tone of voice and the manner of a speaker, I can rarely follow him without occasional lapses. Now, on the present occasion, the narrator., though speaking distinctly, and with a good accent, had a very rapid utterance, and it was not till I had familiarized my ear with his manner that I could gather his words correctly. Nor was my difficulty lessened by the fact that, as he pretended to be witty and epigrammatic, frequent bursts of laughter broke from his audience and obscured his speech. He was, as it appeared, giving an account of a fishing excursion he had just taken to one of the small mountain lakes near Poppenheim, and it was clear enough he was one who always could eke an adventure out of even the most ordinary incident of daily life.

This fishing story had really nothing in it, though he strove to make out fifty points of interest or striking situations out of the veriest commonplace. At last, however, I saw that, like a practised story-teller, he was hoarding up his great incident for the finish.

“As I have told you,” said he, “I engaged the entire of the little inn for myself; there were but five rooms in it altogether, and though I did not need more than two, I took the rest, that I might be alone and unmolested. Well, it was on my second evening there, as I sat smoking my pipe at the door, and looking over my tackle for the morrow, there came up the glen the strange sound of wheels, and, to my astonishment, a travelling-carriage soon appeared, with four horses driven in hand; and as I saw in a moment, it was a lohnkutscher who had taken the wrong turning after leaving Ragatz, and mistaken the road, for the highway ceases about two miles above Poppenheim, and dwindles down to a mere mule-path. Leaving my host to explain the mistake to the travellers, I hastily re-entered the house, just as the carriage drove up. The explanation seemed a very prolix one, for when I looked out of the window, half an hour afterwards, there were the horses still standing at the door, and the driver, with a large branch of alder, whipping away the flies from them, while the host continued to hold his place at the carriage door. At last he entered my room, and said that the travellers, two foreign ladies, – he thought them Russians, – had taken the wrong road, but that the elder, what between fatigue and fear, was so overcome that she could not proceed further, and entreated that they might be afforded any accommodation – mere shelter for the night – rather than retrace their road to Ragatz.

“‘Well,’ said I, carelessly, ‘let them have the rooms on the other side of the hall; so that they only stop for one night, the intrusion will not signify.’ Not a very gracious reply, perhaps, but I did not want to be gracious. The fact was, as the old lady got out, I saw something like an elephant’s leg, in a fur boot, that quite decided me on not making acquaintance with the travellers, and I was rash enough to imagine they must be both, alike. Indeed, I was do resolute in maintaining my solitude undisturbed, that I told my host on no account whatever to make me any communication from the strangers, nor on any pretext to let me feel that they were lodged under the same roof with myself. Perhaps, if the next day had been one to follow my usual sport, I should have forgotten all about them, but it was one of such rain as made it perfectly impossible to leave the house. I doubt if I ever saw rain like it. It came down in sheets, like water splashed out of buckets, flattening the small trees to the earth, and beating down all the light foliage into the muddy soil beneath; meanwhile the air shook with the noise of the swollen torrents, and all the mountain-streams crashed and thundered away, like great cataracts. Rain can really become grand at such moments, and no more resembling a mere shower than the cry of a single brawler in the streets is like the roar of a mighty multitude. It was so fine that I determined I would go down to a little wooden bridge over the river, whence I could see the stream as it came down, tumbling and splashing, from a cleft in the mountain. I soon dressed myself in all my best waterproofs, – hat, cape, boots, and all, – and set out Until I was fully embarked on my expedition, I had no notion of the severity of the storm, and it was with considerable difficulty I could make bead against the wind and rain together, while the slippery ground made walking an actual labor.

“At last I reached the river; but of the bridge, the only trace was a single beam, which, deeply buried in the bank at one extremity, rose and fell in the surging flood, like the arm of a drowning swimmer. The stream had completely filled the channel, and swept along, with fragments of timber, and even furniture, in its muddy tide; farm produce, and implements too, came floating by, showing what destruction had been effected higher up the river. As I stood gazing on the current, I saw, at a little distance from me, a man, standing motionless beside the river, and apparently lost in thought, – so, at least, he seemed; for though not at all clad in a way to resist the storm, he remained there, wet and soaked through, totally regardless of the weather. On inquiring at the inn, I learned that this was the lohnkutscher– the vetturino– of the travellers, and who, in attempting to ascertain if the stream were fordable, had lost one of his best horses, and barely escaped being carried away himself. Until that, I had forgotten all about the strangers, who, it now appeared, were close prisoners like myself. While the host was yet speaking, the lohnkutscher came up, and in a tone of equality, that showed me he thought I was in his own line of business, asked if I would sell him one of my nags then in the stable.

“Not caring to disabuse him of his error regarding my rank, I did not refuse him so flatly as I might, and he pressed the negotiation very warmly in consequence. At last, to get rid of him, I declared that I would not break up my team, and retired into the house. I was not many minutes in my room, when a courier came, with a polite message from his mistress, to beg I would speak with her. I went at once, and found an old lady, – she was English, as her French bespoke, – very well mannered and well bred, who apologized for troubling me; but having heard from her vetturino that my horses were disengaged, and that I might, if not disposed to sell one of them, hire out the entire team, to take their carriage as far as Andeer – By the time she got thus far, I perceived that she, too, mistook me for a lohnkutscher. It just struck me what good fun it would be to carry on the joke. To be sure, the lady herself presented no inducement to the enterprise; and as I thus balanced the case, there came into the room one of the prettiest girls I ever saw. She never turned a look towards where I was standing, nor deigned to notice me at all, but passed out of the room as rapidly as she entered; still, I remembered that I had already seen her before, and passed a delightful evening in her company at a little inn in the Black Forest.”

When the narrator had got thus far in his story, I leaned forward to catch a full view of him, and saw, to my surprise, and, I own, to my misery, that he was the German count we had met at the Titi-See. So overwhelming was this discovery to me, that I heard nothing for many minutes after. All of that wretched scene between us on the last evening at the inn came full to my memory, and I bethought me of lying the whole night on the hard table, fevered with rage and terror alternately. If it were not that his narrative regarded Miss Herbert now, I would have skulked out of the room, and out of the inn, and out of the town itself, never again to come under the insolent stare of those wicked gray eyes; but in that name there was a fascination, – not to say that a sense of jealousy burned at my heart like a furnace.

The turmoil of my thought lost me a great deal of his story, and might have lost me more, had not the hearty laughter of his comrades recalled me once again to attention.

He was describing how, as a vetturino, he drove their carriage with his own spanking gray horses to Coire, and thence to Andeer. He had bargained, it seemed, that Miss Herbert should travel outside in the cabriolet, but she failed to keep her pledge, so that they only met at stray moments during the journey. It was in one of these she said laughingly to him, —

“‘Nothing would surprise me less than to learn, some fine morning, that you were a prince in disguise, or a great count of the empire, at least. It was only the other day we were honored with the incognito presence of a royal personage; I do not exactly know who, but Mrs. Keats could tell you. He left us abruptly at Schaffbausen.’

“‘You can’t mean the creature,’ said I, ‘that I saw in your company at the Titi-See?’

“‘The same,’ said she, rather angrily.

“‘Why, he is a saltimbanque; I saw him the morning I came through Constance, with some others of his troop dragged before the maire for causing a disturbance in a cabaret; one of the most consummate impostors, they told me, in Europe.’”

“An infamous falsehood, and a base liar the man who says it!” cried I, springing to my legs, and standing revealed before the company in an attitude of haughty defiance. “I am the person you have dared to defame. I have never assumed to be a prince, and as little am I a rope-dancer. I am an English gentleman, travelling for his pleasure, and I hurl back every word you have said of me with contempt and defiance.”

Before I had finished this insolent speech, some half-dozen swords were drawn and brandished in the air, very eager, as it seemed, to cut me to pieces, and the Count himself required all the united strength of the party to save me from his hands. At last I was pushed, hustled, and dragged out of the room to another smaller one on the same floor, and, the key being turned on me, left to my very happy reflections.

CHAPTER XXXVIII. THE DUEL WITH PRINCE MAX

I had no writing-materials, but I had just composed a long letter to the “Times” on “the outrageous treatment and false imprisonment of a British subject in Austria,” when my door was opened by a thin, lank-jawed, fierce-eyed man in uniform, who announced himself as the Rittmeister von Mahony, of the Keyser Hussars.

“A countryman – an Irishman,” said I, eagerly, clasping his hand with warmth.

“That is to say, two generations back,” replied he; “my grandfather Terence was a lieutenant in Trenck’s Horse, but since that none of us have ever been out of Austria.”

If these tidings fell coldly on my heart, just beginning to glow with the ardor of home and country, I soon saw that it takes more than two generations to wash out the Irishman from a man’s nature. The honest Rittmeister, with scarcely a word of English in his vocabulary, was as hearty a countryman as if he had never journeyed out of the land of Bog.

He had beard “all about it,” he said, by way of arresting the eloquent indignation that filled me; and he added, “And the more fool myself to notice the matter;” asking me, quaintly, if I had never heard of our native maxim that says, “One man ought never to fall upon forty.” “Well,” said he, with a sigh, “what’s done can’t be undone; and let us see what’s to come next? I see you are a gentleman, and the worse luck yours.”

“What do you mean by that?” asked I.

“Just this: you’ll have to fight; and if you were a ‘Gemeiner’ – a plebeian – you’d get off.”

I turned away to the window to wipe a tear out of my eye; it had come there without my knowing it, and, as I did so, I devoted myself to the death of a hero.

“Yes,” said I, “she is in this incident – she has her part in this scene of my life’s drama, and I will not disgrace her presence. I will die like a man of honor rather than that her name should be disparaged.”

He went on to tell me of my opponent, who was brother to a reigning sovereign, and himself a royal highness, – Prince Max of Swabia. “He was not,” he added, “by any means a bad fellow, though not reputed to be perfectly sane on certain topics.” However, as his eccentricities were very harmless ones, merely offshoots of an exaggerated personal vanity, it was supposed that some active service, and a little more intercourse with the world, would cure him. “Not,” added he, “that one can say he has shown many signs of amendment up to this, for he never makes an excursion of half-a-dozen days from home without coming back filled with the resistless passion of some young queen or archduchess for him. As he forgets these as fast as he imagines them, there is usually nothing to lament on the subject. Now you are in possession of all that you need know about him. Tell me something of yourself; and first, have you served?”

“Never.”

“Was your father a soldier, or your grandfather?”

“Neither.”

“Have you any connections on the mother’s side in the army?”

“I am not aware of one.”

He gave a short, hasty cough, and walked the room twice with his hands clasped at his back, and then, coming straight in front of me, said, “And your name? What’s your name?”

“Potts! Potts!” said I, with a firm energy.

“Potztausend!” cried he, with a grim laugh: “what a strange name!”

“I said Potts, Herr Rittmeister, and not Potztausend,” rejoined I, haughtily.

“And I heard you,” said he; “it was involuntarily on my part to add the termination. And who are the Pottses? Are they noble?”

“Nothing of the kind, – respectable middle-class folk; some in trade, some clerks in mercantile houses, some holding small government employments, one, perhaps the chief of the family, an eminent apothecary!”

As if I had uttered the most irresistible joke, at this word he held his hands over his face and shook with laughter.

“Heilge Joseph!” cried he, at last, “this is too good! The Prince Max going out with an apothecary’s nephew, or, maybe, his son!”

“His son upon this occasion,” said I, gravely.

He, did not reply for some minutes, and then, leaning over the back of a chair, and regarding me very fixedly, he said, —

“You have only to say who you are, and what your belongings, and nothing will come of this affair. In fact, what with your little knowledge of German, your imperfect comprehension of what the Prince said, and your own station in life, I’ll engage to arrange everything and get you off clear!”

“In a word,” said I, “I am to plead in forma, inferioris, – isn’t that it?”

“Just so,” said he, puffing out a long cloud from his pipe.

“I ‘d rather die first!” cried I, with an energy that actually startled him.

“Well,” said he, after a pause, “I think it is very probable that will come of it; but, if it be your choice, I have nothing to say.”

“Go back, Herr Rittmeister,” cried I, “and arrange the meeting for the very earliest moment.”

I said this with a strong purpose, for I felt if the event were to come off at once I could behave well.

“As you are resolved on this course,” said he, “do not make any such confidences to others as you have made to me; nothing about those Pottses in haberdashery and dry goods, but just simply you are the high and well-born Potts of Pottsheim. Not a word more.”

I bowed an assent, but so anxious was he to impress this upon me that he went over it all once more.

“As it will be for me to receive the Prince’s message, the choice of weapons will be yours. What are you most expert with? I mean, after the pistol?” said he, grinning.

“I am about equally skilled in all. Rapier, pistol, or sabre are all alike to me.”

“Der Teufel!” cried he: “I was not counting upon this; and as the sabre is the Prince’s weakest arm, we ‘ll select it.”

I bowed again, and more blandly.

“There is but one thing more,” said he, turning about just as he was leaving the room. “Don’t forget that in this case the gross provocation came from you and, therefore, be satisfied with self-defence, or, at most, a mere flesh wound. Remember that the Prince is a near connection of the Royal Family of England, and it would be irreparable ruin to you were he to fall by your hand.” And with this he went out.

Now, had he gravely bound me over not to strangle the lions in the Tower, it could not have appeared more ridiculous to me than this injunction, and if there had been in my heart the smallest fund of humor, I could have laughed at it; but, Heaven knows, none of my impulses took a mirthful turn at that moment, and there never was invented the drollery that could wring a smile from me.

I was sitting in a sort of stupor – I know not how long – when the door opened, and the Rittmeister’s head peered in.

“To-morrow morning at five!” cried he. “I will fetch you half an hour before.” The door closed, and he was off.

It was now a few minutes past eight o’clock, and there were, therefore, something short of nine hours of life left to me. I have heard that Victor Hugo is an amiable and kindly disposed man, and I feel assured, if he ever could have known the tortures he would have inflicted, he would never have designed the terrible record entitled “Le Dernier Jour d’un Condamné.” I conclude it was designed as a sort of appeal against death punishments. I doubt much of its efficacy in altering legislation, while I feel assured, that if ever it fall in the way of one whose hours are numbered, it must add indescribably to his misery.

When, how, or by whom my supper was served, I never knew. I can only remember that a very sleepy waiter roused me out of a half-drowsy revery about midnight, by asking if he were to remove the dishes, or let them remain till morning. I bade him leave them, and me also, and when the door was closed I sat down to my meal. It was cold and unappetizing. I would have deemed it unwholesome, too, but I remembered that the poor stomach it was destined for would never be called on to digest it, and that for once I might transgress without the fear of dyspepsia. My case was precisely that of the purseless traveller, who, we are told, can sing before the robber, just as if want ever suggested melody, or that being poor was a reason for song. So with me any excess was open to me just because it was impossible!

“Still,” thought I, “great criminals – and surely I am not as bad as they – eat very heartily.” And so I cut the tough fowl vigorously in two, and placed half of it on my plate. I filled myself out a whole goblet of wine, and drank it off. I repeated this, and felt better. I fell to now with a will, and really made an excellent supper. There were some potted sardines that I secretly resolved to have for my breakfast, when the sudden thought flashed across me that I was never to breakfast any more. I verily believe that I tasted in that one instant a whole life long of agony and bitterness.

There was in my friendless, lone condition, my youth, the mild and gentle traits of my nature, and my guileless simplicity, just that combination of circumstances which would make my fate peculiarly pathetic, and I imagined my countrymen standing beside the gravestone and muttering “Poor Potts!” till I felt my heart almost bursting with sorrow over myself.

“Cut off at three-and-twenty!” sobbed I; “in the very opening bud of his promise!”

“Misfortune is a pebble with many facets,” says the Chinese adage, “and wise is he who turns it around till he find the smooth one.”

“Is there such here?” thought I. “And where can it be?” With all my ingenuity I could not discover it, when at last there crossed my mind how the event would figure in the daily papers, and be handed down to remote posterity. I imagined the combat itself described in the language almost of a lion-hunt “Potts, who had never till that moment had a sword in his hand, – Potts, though at this time severely wounded, and bleeding profusely, nothing dismayed by the ferocious attack of his opponent, – Potts maintained his guard with all the coolness of a consummate swordsman.” How I wished my life might be spared just to let me write the narrative of the combat I would like, besides, to show the world how generously I could treat an adversary, with what delicacy I could respect his motives, and how nobly deal even with his injustice.

“Was that two o’clock?” said I, starting up, while the humming sound of the gong bell filled the room. “Is it possible that but three hours now stand between me and – ” I gave a shudder that made me feel as if I was standing in a fearful thorough draught, and actually looked up to see if the window were not open; but no, it was closed, the night calm, and the sky full of stars. “Oh!” exclaimed I, “if there are Pottses up amongst you yonder, I hope destiny may deal more kindly by them than down here. I trust that in those glorious regions a higher and purer intelligence prevails, and, above all things, that duelling is proclaimed the greatest of crimes.” Remnant of barbarism! it is worse ten thousand times; it is the whole suit, costume, and investure of an uncivilized age. “Poor Potts!” said I; “you went out upon your life-voyage with very generous intentions towards posterity. I wonder how it will treat you? Will it vindicate your memory, uphold your fame, and dignify your motives? Will it be said in history, ‘Amongst the memorable events of the period was the duel between the Prince Max of Swabia and an Irish gentleman named Potts. To understand fully the circumstance of this remarkable conflict, it is necessary to premise that Potts was not what is vulgarly called constitutionally brave; but he was more. He was – ‘? Ah! there was the puzzle. How was that miserable biographer ever to arrive at the secret of an organization fine and subtle as mine? If I could but leave it on record – if I could but transmit to the ages that will come after me the invaluable key to the mystery of my being – a few days would suffice – a week certainly would do it – and why should I not have time given me for this? I will certainly propose this to the Rittmeister when he comes. There can be little doubt but he will see the matter with my own eyes.”

As if I had summoned him by enchantment, there he stood at the door, wrapped in his great white cavalry cloak, and looking gigantic and ominous together.

“There is no carriage-road,” said he, “to the place we are going, and I have come thus early that we may stroll along leisurely, and enjoy the fresh air of the morning.”

Until that moment I had never believed how heartless human nature could be! To talk of enjoyment, to recall the world and its pleasures, in any way, to one situated like I, was a bold and scarcely credible cruelty; but the words did me good service; they armed me with a sardonic contempt for life and mankind; and so I protested that I was charmed with the project, and out we set.

My companion was not talkative; he was a quiet, almost depressed man, who had led a very monotonous existence, with little society among his comrades; so that he did not offer me the occasion I sought for, of saying saucy and sneering things of the world at large. Indeed, the first observation he made was, that we were in a locality that ought to be interesting to Irishmen, since an ancient shrine of St. Patrick marked the spot of the convent to which we were approaching. No remark could have been more ill-timed! to look back into the past, one ought to have some vista of the future. Who can sympathize with bygones when he is counting the minutes that are to make him one of them?