A Day's Ride: A Life's Romance

To all these reflections came the last one. “I must be up and doing, and that speedily! I will recover Blondel, if I devote my life to the task. I will regain him, let the cost be what it may. Mounted upon that creature, I will ride up to the Rosary; the time shall be evening; a sun just sunk behind the horizon shall have left in the upper atmosphere a golden and rosy light, which shall tip his mane with a softened lustre, and shed over my own features a rich Titian-like tint. ‘I come,’ will I say, ‘to vindicate the fair fame of one who once owned your affection. It is Potts, the man of impulse, the child of enthusiasm, who now presents himself before you. Poor, if you like to call him so, in worldly craft or skill, poor in its possessions, but rich, boundlessly rich, in the stores of an ideal wealth. Blondel and I are the embodiment of this idea. These fancies you have stigmatized as lies are but the pilot balloons by which great minds calculate the currents in that upper air they are about to soar in.’”

And, last of all, there was a sophistry that possessed a great charm for my mind, in this wise: to enable a man, humble as myself, to reach that station in which a career of adventure should open before him, some ground must be won, some position gained. That I assume to be something that I am not, is simply to say that I trade upon credit. If my future transactions be all honorable and trustworthy, – if by a fiction, only known to my own heart, I acquire that eminence from which I can distribute benefits to hundreds, – who is to stigmatize me as a fraudulent trader?

Is it not a well-known fact, that many of those now acknowledged as the wealthiest of men, might, at some time or other of their lives, have been declared insolvent had the real state of their affairs been known? The world, however, had given them its confidence, and time did the rest. Let the same world be but as generous towards me! The day will come, – I say it confidently and boldly, – the day will come when I can “show my books,” and “point to my balance-sheet.” When Archimedes asked for a base on which to rest his lever, he merely uttered the great truth, that some one fixed point is essential to the success of a motive power.

It is by our use or abuse of opportunity we are either good or bad men. The physician is not less conversant with noxious drags than the poisoner; the difference lies in the fact that the one employs his skill to alleviate suffering, the other to work out evil and destruction. If I, therefore, but make some feigned station in life the groundwork from which I can become the benefactor of my fellowmen, I shall be good and blameless. My heart tells me how well and how fairly I mean by the world: I would succor the weak, console the afflicted, and lift up the oppressed; and if to carry out grand and glorious conceptions of this kind all that be needed is a certain self-delusion which may extend its influence to others, “Go in,” I say, “Potts; be all that your fancy suggests, —

Dives, honoratus, pulcher, rex deniqne regain,

– Be rich, honored and fair, a prince or a begum, – but, above all, never distrust your destiny, or doubt your star.”

CHAPTER VIII. IMAGINATION STIMULATED BY BRANDY AND WATER

So absorbed was I in the reflections of which my last chapter is the record, that I utterly forgot how time was speeding, and perceived at last, to my great surprise, that I had strayed miles away from the Rosary, and that evening was already near. The spires and roofs of a town were distant about a mile at a bend of the river, and for this I now made, determined on no account to turn back, for how could I ever again face those who had read the terrible narrative of the priest’s letter, and before whom I could only present myself as a cheat and impostor?

“No,” thought I, “my destiny points onward, – and to Blondel; nothing shall turn me from my path.” Less than an hour’s walking brought me to the town, of which I had but time to learn the name, – New Ross. I left it in a small steamer for Waterford, a little vessel in correspondence with the mail packet for Milford, and which I learned would sail that evening at nine.

The same night saw me seated on the deck, bound for England. On the deck, I say, for I had need to husband my resources, and travel with every imaginable economy, not only because my resources were small in themselves, but that, having left all that I possessed of clothes and baggage at the Rosary, I should be obliged to acquire a complete outfit on reaching England.

It was a calm night, with a starry sky and a tranquil sea; and, when the cabin passengers had gone down to their berths, the captain did not oppose my stealing “aft” to the quarter-deck, where I could separate myself from the somewhat riotous company of the harvest laborers that thronged the forepart of the vessel. He saw, with that instinct a sailor is eminently gifted with, that I was not of that class by which I was surrounded, and with a ready courtesy he admitted me to the privilege of isolation.

“You are going to enlist, I ‘ll be bound,” said he, as he passed me in his short deck walk. “Ain’t I right?”

“No,” said I; “I’m going to seek my fortune.”

“Seek your fortune!” he repeated, with a slighting sort of laugh. “One used to read about fellows doing that in story books when a child, but it’s rather strange to hear of it nowadays.”

“And may I presume to ask why should it be more strange now than formerly? Is not the world pretty much what it used to be? Is not the drama of life the same stock piece our forefathers played ages ago? Are not the actors and the actresses made up of the precise materials their ancestors were? Can you tell me of a new sentiment, a new emotion, or even a new crime? Why, therefore, should there be a seeming incongruity in reviving any feature of the past?”

“Just because it won’t do, my good friend,” said he, bluntly. “If the law catches a fellow lounging about the world in these times, it takes him up for a vagabond.”

“And what can be finer, grander, or freer than a vagabond?” I cried, with enthusiasm. “Who, I would ask you, sees life with such philosophy? Who views the wiles, the snares, the petty conflicts of the world with such a reflective calm as his? Caring little for personal indulgence, not solicitous for self-gratification, he has both the spirit and the leisure for observation. Diogenes was the type of the vagabond, and see how successive ages have acknowledged his wisdom.”

“If I had lived in his day, I’d have set him picking oakum, for all that!” he replied.

“And probably, too, would have sent the ‘blind old bard to the crank,’” said I.

“I’m not quite sure of whom you are talking,” said he; “but if he was a good ballad-singer, I’d not be hard on him.”

“O! Menin aeide Thea Peleiadeo Achilleos!” spouted I out, in rapture.

“That ain’t high Dutch,” asked he, “is it?”

“No,” said I, proudly. “It is ancient Greek, – the godlike tongue of an immortal race.”

“Immortal rascals!” he broke in. “I was in the fruit trade up in the Levant there, and such scoundrels as these Greek fellows I never met in my life.”

“By what and whom made so?” I exclaimed eagerly. “Can you point to a people in the world who have so long resisted the barbarizing influence of a base oppression? Was there ever a nation so imbued with high civilization as to be enabled for centuries of slavery to preserve the traditions of its greatness? Have we the record of any race but this, who could rise from the slough of degradation to the dignity of a people?”

“You ‘ve been a play-actor, I take it?” asked he, dryly.

“No, sir, never!” replied I, with some indignation.

“Well, then, in the Methody line? You’ve done a stroke of preaching, I ‘ll be sworn.”

“You would be perjured in that case, sir,” I rejoined, as haughtily.

“At all events, an auctioneer,” said he, fairly puzzled in his speculations.

“Equally mistaken there,” said I, calmly; “bred in the midst of abundance, nurtured in affluence, and educated with all the solicitous care that a fond parent could bestow – ”

“Gammon!” said he, bluntly. “You are one of the swell mob in distress!”

“Is this like distress?” said I, drawing forth my purse in which were seventy-five sovereigns, and handing it to him. “Count over that, and say how just and how generous are your suspicions.”

He gravely took the purse from me, and, stooping down to the binnacle light, counted over the money, scrutinizing carefully the pieces as he went.

“And who is to say this isn’t ‘swag’?” said he, as he closed the purse.

“The easiest answer to that,” said I, “is, would it be likely for a thief to show his booty, not merely to a stranger, but to a stranger who suspected him?”

“Well, that is something, I confess,” said he, slowly.

“It ought to be more, – it ought to be everything. If distrust were not a debasing sentiment, obstructing the impulses of generosity, and even invading the precincts of justice, you would see far more reason to confide in than to disbelieve me.”

“I ‘ve been done pretty often afore now,” he muttered, half to himself.

“What a fallacy that is!” cried I, contemptuously. “Was not the pittance that some crafty impostor wrung from your compassion well repaid to you in the noble self-consciousness of your generosity? Did not your venison on that day taste better when you thought of his pork chop? Had not your Burgundy gained flavor by the memory of the glass of beer that was warming the half-chilled heart in his breast? Oh, the narrow mockery of fancying that we are not better by being deceived!”

“How long is it since you had your head shaved?” he asked dryly.

“I have never been the inmate of an asylum for lunatics,” said I, divining and answering the impertinent insinuation.

“Well, I own you are a rum un,” said he, half musingly.

“I accept even this humble tribute to my originality,” said I, with a sort of proud defiance. “I am well aware how he must be regarded who dares to assert his own individuality.”

“I’d be very curious to know,” said he, after a pause of several minutes, “how a fellow of your stamp sets to work about gaining his livelihood? What’s his first step? how does he go about it?”

I gave no other answer than a smile of scornful meaning.

“I meant nothing offensive,” resumed he, “but I really have a strong desire to be enlightened on this point.”

“You are doubtless impressed with the notion,” said I, boldly, “that men possessed of some distinct craft or especial profession are alone needed by the world of their fellows. That one must be doctor or lawyer or baker or shoemaker, to gain his living, as if life had no other wants than to be clothed and fed and physicked and litigated. As if humanity had not its thousand emotional moods, its wayward impulses, its trials and temptations, all of them more needing guidance, support, direction, and counsel, than the sickest patient needs a physician. It is on this world that I throw myself; I devote myself to guide infancy, to console age, to succor the orphan, and support the widow, – morally, I mean.”

“I begin to suspect you are a most artful vagabond,” said he half angrily.

“I have long since reconciled myself to the thought of an unjust appreciation,” said I. “It is the consolation dull men accept when confronted with those of original genius. You can’t help confessing that all your distrust of me has grown out of the superiority of my powers, and the humble figure you have presented in comparison with me.”

“Do you rank modesty amongst these same powers?” he asked slyly.

“Modesty I reject,” said I, “as being a conventional form of hypocrisy.”

“Come down below,” said he, “and take a glass of brandy and water. It ‘s growing chilly here, and we shall be the better of something to cheer us.”

Seated in his comfortable little cabin, and with a goodly array of liquors before me to choose from, I really felt a self-confidence in the fact that, if I were not something out of the common, I could not then be there. “There must be in my nature,” thought I, “that element which begets success, or I could not always find myself in situations so palpably beyond the accidents of my condition.”

My host was courtesy itself; no sooner was I his guest than he adopted towards me a manner of perfect politeness. No more allusions to my precarious mode of life, never once a reference to my adventurous future. Indeed, with an almost artful exercise of good breeding, he turned the conversation towards himself, and gave me a sketch of his own life.

It was not in any respects a remarkable one; though it had its share of those mishaps and misfortunes which every sailor must have confronted. He was wrecked in the Pacific, and robbed in the Havannah; had his crew desert him at San Francisco, and was boarded by Riff pirates, and sold in Barbary just as every other blue jacket used to be; and I listened to the story, only marvelling what a dreary sameness pervades all these narratives. Why, for one trait of the truthful to prove his tale, I could have invented fifty. There were no little touches of sentiment or feeling, no relieving lights of human emotion, in his story. I never felt, as I listened, any wish that he should be saved from shipwreck, baffle his persecutors, or escape his captors; and I thought to myself, “This fellow has certainly got no narrative gusto.” Now for my turn: we had each of us partaken freely of the good liquor before us. The Captain in his quality of talker, I in my capacity of listener, had filled and refilled several times. There was not anything like inebriety, but there was that amount of exultation, a stage higher than mere excitement, which prompts men, at least men of temperaments like mine, not to suffer themselves to occupy rear rank positions, but at any cost to become foreground and prominent figures.

“You have heard of the M’Gillicuddys, I suppose?” asked I. He nodded, and I went on. “You see, then, at this moment before you, the last of the race. I mean, of course, of the elder branch, for there are swarms of the others, well to do and prosperous also, and with fine estated properties. I ‘ll not weary you with family history. I ‘ll not refer to that remote time when my ancestors wore the crown, and ruled the fair kingdom of Kerry. In the Annals of the Four Masters, and also in the Chronicles of Thealbogh O’Faudlemh, you ‘ll find a detailed account of our house. I ‘ll simply narrate for you the immediate incident which has made me what you see me, – an outcast and a beggar.

“My father was the tried and trusted friend of that noble-hearted but mistaken man, Lord Edward Fitzgerald. The famous attempt of the year 'eight was concerted between them; and all the causes of its failure, secret as they are and forever must be, are known to him who now addresses you. I dare not trust myself to talk of these times or things, lest I should by accident let drop what might prove strictly confidential. I will but recount one incident, and that a personal one, of the period. On the night of Lord Edward’s capture, my father, who had invited a friend – deep himself in the conspiracy – to dine with him, met his guest on the steps of his hall door. Mr. Hammond – this was his name – was pale and horror-struck, and could scarcely speak, as my father shook his hand. 'Do you know what has happened, Mac?’ said he to my father. ‘Lord Edward is taken, Major Sirr and his party have tracked him to his hiding-place; they have got hold of all our papers, and we are lost By this time to-morrow every man of us will be within the walls of Newgate.’

“‘Don’t look so gloomily, Tom,’ said my father. ‘Lord Edward will escape them yet; he’s not a bird to be snared so easily; and, after all, we shall find means to slip our cables too. Come in, and enjoy your sirloin and a good glass of port, and you’ll view the world more pleasantly.’ With a little encouragement of this sort he cheered him up, and the dinner passed off agreeably enough; but still my father could see that his friend was by no means at his ease, and at every time the door opened he would start with a degree of surprise that augured anxiety of some coming event. From these and other signs of uneasiness in his manner, my father drew his own conclusions, and with a quick intelligence of look communicated his suspicions to my mother, who was herself a keen and shrewd observer.

“‘Do you think, Matty,’ said he, as they sat over their wine, that I could find a bottle of the old green seal if I was to look for it in the cellar? It has been upwards of forty years there, and I never touch it save on especial occasions; but an old friend like Hammond deserves such a treat.’

“My father fancied that Hammond grew paler as he thus alluded to their old friendship, and he gave my mother a rapid glance of his sharp eye, and, taking the cellar key, he left the room. Immediately outside the door, he hastened to the stable, and saddled and bridled a horse, and, slipping quietly out, he rode for the sea-coast, near the Skerries. It was sixteen miles from Dublin, but he did the distance within the hour. And well was it for him that he employed such speed! With a liberal offer of money and the gold watch he wore, he secured a small fishing-smack to convey him over to France, for which he sailed immediately. I have said it was well that he employed such speed; for, after waiting with suppressed impatience for my father’s return from the cellar, Hammond expressed to my mother his fears lest my father might have been taken ill. She tried to quiet his apprehensions, but the very calmness of her manner served only to increase them. ‘I can bear this no longer,’ cried he, at last, rising, in much excitement, from his chair; ‘I must see what has become of him!’ At the same moment the door was suddenly flung open, and an officer of police, in full uniform, presented himself. ‘He has got away, sir,’ said he, addressing Hammond; ‘the stable-door is open, and one of the horses missing.’

“My mother, from whom I heard the story, had only time to utter a ‘Thank God!’ before she fainted. On recovering her senses, she found herself alone in the room. The traitor Hammond and the police had left her without even calling the servants to her aid.”

“And your father, – what became of him?” asked the skipper, eagerly.

“He arrived in Paris in sorry plight enough; but, fortunately, Clarke, whose influence with the Emperor was unbounded, was a distant connection of our family. By his intervention my father obtained an interview with his Majesty, who was greatly struck by the adventurous spirit and daring character of the man; not the less so because he had the courage to disabuse the Emperor of many notions and impressions he had conceived about the readiness of Ireland to accept French assistance.

“Though my father would much have preferred taking service in the army, the Emperor, who had strong prejudices against men becoming soldiers who had not served in every grade from the ranks upwards, opposed this intention, and employed him in a civil capacity. In fact, to his management were intrusted some of the most delicate and difficult secret negotiations; and he gained a high name for acuteness and honorable dealing. In recognition of his services, his name was inscribed in the Grand Livre for a considerable pension; but at the fall of the dynasty, this, with hundreds of others equally meritorious, was annulled; and my father, worn out with age and disappointment together, sank at last, and died at Dinant, where my mother was buried but a few years previously. Meanwhile he was tried and found guilty of high treason in Ireland, and all his lands and other property forfeited to the Crown. My present journey was simply a pilgrimage to see the old possessions that once belonged to our race. It was my father’s last wish that I should visit the ancient home of our family, and stand upon the hills that once acknowledged us as their ruler. He never desired that I should remain a French subject; a lingering love for his own country mingled in his heart with a certain resentment towards France, who had certainly treated him with ingratitude; and almost his last words to me were, ‘Distrust the Gaul.’ When I told you awhile back that I was nurtured in affluence, it was so to all appearance; for my father had spent every shilling of his-capital on my education, and I was under the firm conviction that I was born to a very great fortune. You may judge the terrible revulsion of my feelings when I learned that I had to face the world almost, if not actually, a beggar.

“I could easily have attached myself as a hanger-on of some of my well-to-do relations. Indeed, I will say for them, that they showed the kindest disposition to befriend me; but the position of a dependant would have destroyed every chance of happiness for me, and so I resolved that I would fearlessly throw myself upon the broad ocean of life, and trust that some sea current or favoring wind would bear me at last into a harbor of safety.”

“What can you do?” asked the skipper, curtly.

“Everything, and nothing! I have, so to say, the ‘sentiment’ of all things in my heart, but am not capable of executing one of them. With the most correct ear, I know not a note of music; and though I could not cook you a chop, I have the most excellent appreciation of a well-dressed dinner.”

“Well,” said he, laughing, “I must confess I don’t suspect these to be exactly the sort of gifts to benefit your fellow-man.”

“And yet,” said I, “it is exactly to individuals of this stamp that the world accords its prizes. The impresario that provides the opera could not sing nor dance. The general who directs the campaign might be sorely puzzled how to clean his musket or pipeclay his belt. The great minister who imposes a tax might be totally unequal to the duty of applying its provisions. Ask him to gauge a hogshead of spirits, for instance. My position is like theirs. I tell you, once more, the world wants men of wide conceptions and far-ranging ideas, – men who look to great results and grand combinations.”

“But, to be practical, how do you mean to breakfast to-morrow morning?”

“At a moderate cost, but comfortably: tea, rolls, two eggs, and a rumpsteak with fried potatoes.”

“What’s your name?” said he, taking out his note-book. “I mustn’t forget you when I hear of you next.”

“For the present, I call myself Potts, – Mr. Potts, if you please.”

“Write it here yourself,” said he, handing me the pencil. And I wrote in a bold, vigorous hand, “Algernon Sydney-Potts,” with the date.

“Preserve that autograph, Captain,” said I; “it is in no-spirit of vanity I say it, but the day will come you ‘ll refuse a ten-pound note for it.”

“Well, I’d take a trifle less just now,” said he, smiling.

He sat for some time gravely contemplating the writing, and at length, in a sort of half soliloquy, said, “Bob would like him, – he would suit Bob.” Then, lifting his head, he addressed me: “I have a brother in command of one of the P. and O. steamers, – just the fellow for you. He has got ideas pretty much like your own about success in life, and won’t be persuaded that he isn’t the first seaman in the English navy; or that he hasn’t a plan to send Cherbourg and its breakwater sky-high, at twenty-four hours’ warning.”

“An enthusiast, – a visionary, I have no doubt,” said I, contemptuously.

“Well, I think you might be more merciful in your judgment of a man of your own stamp,” retorted he, laughing. “At all events, it would be as good as a play to see you together. If you should chance to be at Malta, or Marseilles, when the Clarence touches there, just ask for Captain Rogers; tell him you know me, that will be enough.”

“Why not give me a line of introduction to him?” said I, with an easy indifference. “These things serve to clear away the awkwardness of a self-presentation.”

“I don’t care if I do,” said he, taking a sheet of paper, and beginning 'Dear Bob,’ – after which he paused and deliberated, muttering the words ‘Dear Bob’ three or four times over below his breath.

“‘Dear Bob,’” said I aloud, in the tone of one dictating to an amanuensis, – “‘This brief note will be handed to you by a very valued friend of mine, Algernon Sydney Potts, a man so completely after your own heart that I feel a downright satisfaction in bringing you together.’”

“Well, that ain’t so bad,” said he, as he uttered the last words which fell from his pen – “‘in bringing you together.’”