Kitabı oku: «A Day's Ride: A Life's Romance», sayfa 12

CHAPTER XVI. UNPLEASANT TURN TO AN AGREEABLE CONVERSE

There is no denying it, I have led a life of far more than ordinary happiness. The white squares in the checker of my existence have certainly equalled the black ones, and it is not every man can say as much. I suspect I owe a great share of this enjoyment to temperament, to a disposition not so much remarkable for opposing difficulties as for deriving all the possible pleasure from any fortunate conjuncture. This gift I know I possess. I am not one of those strong natures which, by their intrinsic force, are ever impressing their own image on the society they live in. I am a weak, frail, yielding creature, but my very pliancy has given me many a partnership in emotions which, with a more rugged temperament, I had not partaken of. When one has wept over a friend’s misfortunes and awakes to the consciousness that no ill has befallen himself, he feels as some great millionnaire might feel who has bestowed a thousand pounds in charity and yet knows he is never the poorer. With the proud consciousness of this fresh title to men’s admiration, he has the secret satisfaction of knowing that he will go clothed in purple as before, and fare to-day as sumptuously as yesterday. Do you, most generous of readers, call this selfishness? It is the very reverse. It is the grand culminating point of human sympathy.

I have a great deal more to say about myself. It is a theme I am really fond of, but I am not exactly sure that you are like-minded, or that this is the fittest place for it. I return to events.

It was on a bright, breezy morning of the early autumn that a heavy old German travelling-carriage, – a wagon! – rattled over the uneven pavement of Kalbbratonstadt, and soon gaining one of the long forest alleys, rolled noiselessly over the smooth sward. Within sat an elderly lady with a due allowance of air-cushions, toy-terriers, and guide-books; in the rumble were a man and a maid; and in the cabriolet in front were a pale but placid girl, with large gray eyes and long lashes, and he who now writes these lines beside her. They who had only known me a few months back as a freshman of Trinity would not have recognized me now, as I sat with a long-peaked travelling-cap, a courier’s belt and bag at my side, and the opening promise of a small furry moustache on my upper lip; not to say that I had got up a sort of supercilious air of contemptuous pity for the foreigner, which I had observed to be much in favor with the English abroad. It cost me dear to do this, and nothing but the consciousness that it was one of the requirements of my station could have made me assume it, for in my heart of hearts, I revelled in enjoyment of all around me. I liked the soft breezy balmy air, the mellow beech wood, the grassy turf overgrown with violets, the wild notes of the frightened wood-pigeon, the very tramp-tramp of the massive horses, with their scarlet tassels and their jingling bells; all pleased and interested me. Not to speak of her, who, at my side, felt a very child’s delight at every novelty of the way.

“What would I have said to any one who, only a fortnight ago, had promised me such happiness as this?” said I to my companion, as we drove along, while the light branches rustled pleasantly over the roof of the carriage, darkening the shade around us, or occasionally deluging us with the leaves as we passed.

“And are you then so very happy?” asked she, with a pleasant smile.

“Can you doubt it? or rather is it that, as the emotion does not extend to yourself, you do doubt it?”

“Oh, as for me,” cried she, joyfully, “it is very different. I have never travelled till now – seen nothing, actually nothing. The veriest commonplaces of the road, the peasants’ costumes, their wayside cottages, the little shrines they kneel at, are all objects of picturesque interest to me, and I am ready to exclaim at each moment, ‘Oh! why cannot we stop here? shall we ever see anything so beautiful again as this?’”

“And hearing you talk thus, you can ask me am I so very happy!” said I, reproachfully.

“What I meant was, is it not stupid to have no companion of your own turn of mind, none with whom you could talk, without condescending to a tone beneath you, just as certain stories are reduced to words of one syllable for little children?”

“Mademoiselle is given to sarcasm, I see,” said I, half peevishly.

“Nothing of the kind,” said she, blushing slightly. “It was in perfect good faith. I wished you a more suitable companion. Indeed, after what I had heard from his Excellency about you, I was terrified at the thought of my own insufficiency.”

“And pray what did he say of me?” asked I, in a flutter of delight.

“Are you very fond of flattery?”

“Immensely!”

“Is it not possible that praise of you could be so exaggerated as to make you feel ashamed?”

“I should say, perfectly impossible; that is, to a mind regulated as mine, over-elation could never happen. Tell me, therefore, what he said?”

“I can’t remember one-half of it; he remarked how few men in the career – I conclude he meant diplomacy – could compare with you; that you had such just views about the state of Europe, such an accurate appreciation of publie men. I can’t say how many opportunities you mustn’t have had, and what valuable uses you have not put them to. In a word, I felt that I was about to travel with a great statesman and a consummate man of the world, and was-terrified accordingly.”

“And now that the delusion is dispelled, how do you feel?”

“But is it dispelled? Am I not shocked with my own temerity in daring to talk thus lightly with one so learned?”

“If so,” said I, “you conceal your embarrassment wonderfully.”

And then we both laughed; but I am not quite sure it was at the same joke.

“Do you know where you are going?” said I, taking out a travelling-map as a means of diverting our conversation into some higher channel.

“Not in the least”

“Nor care?”

“Nor care.”

“Well, I must say, it is a most independent frame of mind. Perhaps you could extend this fine philosophy, and add, ‘Nor with whom!’”

I was not at all conscious of what an impertinence I had uttered till it was out; nor, indeed, even then, till I remarked that her cheek had become scarlet, and her eyes double as dark as their wont.

“Yes,” said she, “there is one condition for which I should certainly stipulate, – not to travel with any one who could needlessly offend me.”

I could have cried with shame; I could have held my hand in the flame of a fire to expiate my rude speech. And so I told her; while I assured her at the same time, with marvellous consistency, that it was not rude at all; that it was entirely misconception on her part; that nous autres diplomates– Heaven forgive me the lying assumption! – had a way of saying little smartnesses that don’t mean much; that we often made our coin ring on the table, though it turned out bad money when it came to be looked at; that Talleyrand did it, and Walewsky did it, and I did it, – we all did it!

Now, there was one most unlucky feature in all this. It was only a few minutes before this passage occurred, that I said to myself, “Potts, here is one whose frank, fresh, generous nature claims all your respect and devotion. No nonsense of your being this, that, and t’other here. Be truthful and be honest; neither pretend to be man of fortune nor man of fashion; own fairly to her by what chance you adventured upon this strange life; tell her, in a word, you are the son of Potts, – Potts the 'pothecary, – and neither a hero nor a plenipotentiary!”

I have no doubt, most amiable of readers, that nothing can seem possibly more easy than to have done all this. You deem it the natural and ordinary course; just as, foi instance, a merchant in good credit and repute would feel no repugnance to calling all his creditors together to inspect his books, and see that, though apparently solvent, he was, in truth, utterly bankrupt. And yet there is some difficulty in doing this. Does not the law of England expressly declare that no man need criminate himself? Who accuses you, then, Potts? And then I bethought me of the worthy old alderman, who, on learning that “Robinson Crusoe” was a fiction, exclaimed, “It may be so; but I have lost the greatest pleasure of my life in hearing it.” What a profound philosophy was there in that simple avowal! With what illusions are we not cheered on through life! how unreal the joys that delight and the triumphs that elate us; for we are all hypochondriacs, and are as often cured with bread pills as with bold remedies. “Yes,” thought I, “this young girl is happy in the thought that her companion is a person of rank, station, and influence; she feels a sort of self-elation in being associated with one endowed with all worldly advantages. Shall I rob her of this illusion? Shall I rudely deprive her of what imparts a charm to her existence, and gives a sort of romantic interest to her daily life? Harsh and needless would be the cruelty!”

While I thus argued with myself, she had opened her guide-book, and was eagerly reading away about the road we were travelling. “We are to halt at Bömerstein, are we not?” asked she.

“Yes,” said I, “we rest there for the night. It is one of those little villages of which a German writer has given us a striking picture.”

“Auerstadt,” broke she in.

“So you have read him? You read German?”

“Yes, tolerably; that is, well enough for Schiller and Uhland, but not well enough for Jean Paul and Goethe.”

“Never mind; trust me for a guide; you shall now venture upon both.”

“But how will you be able to give up time valuable as yours to such teachings? Would it be fair of me, besides, to steal hours that ought to be devoted to your country?”

Though I had not the slightest imaginable ground to suspect any secret sarcasm in this speech, my guilty conscience made me feel it as a perfect torture. “She knows me,” thought I, “and this sneer at my pretended importance is intended to overwhelm me.”

“As to my country’s claims,” said I, haughtily, “I make light of them. All that I have seen of life only shows the shallowness of what is called the public service. I am resolved to leave it, and forever.”

“And for what?”

“A life of retirement, – obscurity if you will.”

“It is what I should do if I were a man.”

“Indeed!”

“Yes. I have often reflected over the delight I have felt in walking through some man’s demesne, revelling in the enjoyment of its leafy solitude, its dreary shade, its sunlit vistas, and I have thought, ‘If all these things, not one of which are mine, can bring such pleasure to my heart, why should I not adopt the same philosophy in life, and be satisfied with enjoying without possessing? A very humble lot would suffice for one, nothing but great success could achieve the other.’”

“What becomes, then, of that great stimulus to good they call labor?”

“Oh, I should labor, too. I ‘d work at whatever I was equal to. I ‘d sew, and knit, and till my garden, and be as useful as possible.”

“And I would write,” said I, enthusiastically, as though I were plotting out my share in this garden of Eden. “I would write all sorts of things: reviews, and histories, and stories, and short poems, and, last of all, the ‘Confessions of Algernon Sydney Potts.’”

“Oh, what a shocking title! How could such names have met together? That shocking epithet Potts would vulgarize it all!”

“I really cannot agree with you,” said I, angrily. “Without,” said she, “you meant it for a sort of quiz; and that Potts was to be a creature of absurdity and folly, a pretender and a snob.”

I felt as if I was choking with passion; but I tried to laugh, and say, “Yes, of course.”

“That would be good fun enough,” went she on. “I ‘d like, if I could, to contribute to that. You should invent the situations, and leave me occasionally to supply the reflective part.”

“It would be charming; quite delightful.”

“Shall we do it, then-? Let us try it, by all means. We might begin by imagining Potts in search of this, that, or t’other, – love, happiness, solitude, climate, scenery, anything, in short. Let us fancy him on a journey, try and personate him; that would be the real way. Do you, for instance, be Potts, and I ‘ll be his sister Susan. It will be the best fun in the world, as we go along, to see everything, note everything, and discuss everything Potts-wise.”

“It would be too ridiculous, too absurd,” said I, sick with anger.

“Not a bit; we are travelling with our old grandmother, we are making the tour of Europe, and keeping our journal. Every evening we compare notes of what we have seen. Pray do so; I ‘m quite wild to try it.”

“Really,” said I, gravely, “it is a sort of trifling I should find it very difficult to descend to. I see no reason, besides, to associate the name of Potts with what you are pleased to call snobbery!”

“Could you help it? Could you, with all the best will in the world, make Potts a man of distinction? Would n’t he, in spite of you, be low, vulgar, inquisitive, and obtrusive? Wouldn’t you find him thrusting himself forward, twenty times a day, into positions he had no right to? Would n’t the creature be a butt and a dupe – ”

“Shall I own,” burst I in, “that it gives me no exalted idea of your taste, if I find that you select for ridicule a person on the mere showing that his name is a monosyllable? And, once for all, I repudiate all share in the scheme, and beg that I may not hear more of it.”

I turned away as I said this. She resumed her book, and we spoke no more to each other till we reached our halting-place for the night.

CHAPTER XVII. MRS. KEATS MOVES MY INDIGNATION

I am forced to the confession, Mrs. Keats was not what is popularly called an agreeable old lady. She spoke seldom, she smiled never, and she had a way of looking at you, a sort of cold astonishment, seeming to say, “How is this? explain yourself,” that kept me in a perpetual terror.

My morning’s tiff with Miss Herbert had neither been condoned nor expiated when we sat down to dinner, as stiff a party of three as can well be imagined; scarcely a word was interchanged as we ate.

“If you drink wine, sir, pray order it,” said Mrs. Keats to me, in a voice that might have suited an invitation to prussic acid.

“This little wine of the country is very pleasant, madam,” said I, courteously, “and I can even venture to recommend it.”

“Not to me, sir. I drink water.”

“Perhaps Miss Herbert will allow me?”

“Excuse me; I also drink water.”

After a very dreary and painful pause, I dared to express a faint hope that Mrs. Keats had not been fatigued by the day’s Journey.

She looked at me for a second or two before replying, and then said: “I am really not aware, sir, that I have manifested any such signs of weariness as would warrant your inquiry. If I should have, however – ”

“Oh, I beg you will pardon me, madam,” broke I in, apologetically; “my question was not meant for more than a mere ordinary politeness, a matter-of-course expression of my solicitude.”

“It will save us both some trouble in future, sir, if I re-mark that I am no friend to matter-of-course civilities, and never reply to them.”

I felt as though my head and face had been passed across the open door of a blast furnace. I was in a perfect flame, and dared not raise my eye from my plate.

“The waiter is asking if you will take coffee, sir,” said the inexorable old lady to me, as I sat almost stunned and stupid.

“Yes – with brandy – a full glass of brandy in it,” cried I, in the half-despair of one who knew not how to rally himself.

“I think we may retire, Miss H.,” said Mrs. Keats, rising with a severe dignity that seemed to say, “We are not bound to assist at an orgy.” And with a stern stare and a defiant little bow she moved towards the door. I was so awestruck that I never moved from my place, but stood resting my hand on my chair, till she said, “Do you mean to open the door, sir, or am I to do it for myself?”

I sprang forward at once, and flung it wide, my face all scarlet with shame.

She passed out, and Miss Herbert followed her. Her dress, however, catching in the doorway, she turned back to extricate it; I seized the moment to stoop down and say, “Do let me see you for one moment this evening, – only one moment.”

She shook her head in silent negative, and went away.

I sat down at the table, and filled myself a large goblet of wine; I drank it off, and replenished it It was only this morning, a few brief hours ago, and I would not have changed fortunes with the Emperor of France. Life seemed to open before me like some beautiful alley in a garden, with a glorious vista in the distance. I would not have bartered the place in that cabriolet for the proudest throne in Europe. She was there beside me, listening in rapt attention, as I discoursed voyages, travels, memoirs, poetry, and personal adventures. With every changeful expression of lovely sympathy did she follow me through all. I was a hero to us both, myself as much captivated as she was; and now the brief drama was over, the lights were put out, and the theatre closed! How had I destroyed this golden delusion, – why had I quarrelled with her, and for what? For a certain Potts, a creature who, in reality, had no existence; “For who is Potts?” said I. “Potts is no more a substance than Caleb Williams or Peregrine Pickle; Potts is the lay figure that the artist dresses in any costume he requires – a Rachero to-day, a Railway Director to-morrow. What an absurdity in the importance we lend to mere names! Here, for instance, I take the label off the port, and I hang it round the neck of the claret decanter: have I changed the quality of the vintage? have I brought Bordeaux to the meridian of Oporto? Not a bit of it And yet a man is to be more the victim of an accident than a bottle of wine, and his intrinsic qualities – strength, flavor, and richness – are not to be tested, but simply implied from the label round his neck! How narrow-minded, after all, of her, who ought to have known better! It is thus, however, we educate our women; this is part and parcel of the false system by which we fancy we make them companionable. The North American Indians are far in advance of us in all this: they assign them their proper places and fitting duties; they feel that, in this life of ours, order and happiness depend on the due distribution of burdens, and the Snapping Alligator never feels his squaw more truly his helpmate than when she is skinning eels for his dinner.”

How I hated that old woman; I don’t think I ever detested a human creature so much as that I have often speculated as to whether venomous reptiles have any gratification imparted to them when they inflict a poisonous wound. Is the mosquito the happier for having stung one’s nose? And, in the same spirit, I should like to know, do the disagreeable people of this world sleep the better from the consciousness of having offended us? Is there that great ennobling sense of a mission fulfilled for every cheek they set on fire and every heart they depress? and do they quench hope and extinguish ambition with the same zeal that the Sun or the Phoenix put out a fire?

“‘If you drink wine, sir, pray order it,’” said I, mimicking her imperious tone. “Yes, madam, I do drink wine, and I mean to order it, and liberally. I travel at the expense of that noble old paymaster who only wags his tail the more, the more he has to pay – the British Lion. I go down in the extraordinaires. I ‘m on what is called a special service. ‘Keep an account of your expenses, Paynter!’ Confound his insolence, he would say 'Paynter.’ By the way, I have never looked how he calls me in my passport. I ‘m curious to see if I be Paynter there.” I had left the bag containing this and my money in my room, and I rang the bell, and told the waiter to fetch it.

The passport set forth in due terms all the dignities, honors, and decorations of the great man who granted it, and who bespoke for the little man who travelled by it all aid and assistance possible, and to let him pass freely, &c. “Mr. Ponto, – British subject.” “Ponto, What an outrage! This comes of a man making his maître d’hôtel his secretary. That stupid French flunkey has converted me into a water-dog. This may explain a good deal of the old lady’s rudeness; how could she be expected to be even ordinarily civil to a man called Ponto? She ‘d say at once, ‘His father was an Italian, and, of course, a courier, or a valet; or he was a foundling, and called after a favorite spaniel.’ Ill rectify this without loss of time. If she has not the tact to discover the man of education and breeding by the qualities he displays in intercourse, she shall be brought to admit them by the demands of his self-respect.”

I opened my writing-desk and wrote just two lines, – a polite request for a few moments of interview, signed “A. S. Pottinger.” I wrote the name in a fine text hand, as though to say, “No more blunders, madam, this is large as print.”

“Take this to your mistress, François,” said I to the courier.

“Gone to bed, sir.”

“Gone to bed! why, it’s only eight o’clock.”

A shrug and a smile were all he replied.

“And Miss Herbert, – can I speak to her?”

“Fear not, sir; she went to her room, and told Clementina not to disturb her.”

“It is of consequence, however, that I should see her. I want to make arrangements for to-morrow, – the hour we are to start – ”

“Oh! but we are to stop here over to-morrow; I thought monsieur knew that,” said the fellow, with the insolent grin of a menial at knowing more than his betters.

“Oh, to be sure we are,” said I, laughingly, and affecting to have suddenly remembered it. “I forgot all about it, François; you are quite right. Take a glass of wine, Francois, – or take the bottle with you, that’s better.” And I handed him a flask of Hocheimer of eight florins, right glad to get rid of his presence and escape further scrutiny from his prying glances.

How relieved I felt when the fellow closed the door after him and left me to “blow off the steam” of my indignation all alone! And was I not indignant? Only to fancy this insolent old woman giving her orders without so much as condescending to communicate with me! I am left to learn her whim by a mere accident, or not learn it at all, and exhibit myself ready to depart at the inn door, and then hear, for the first time, that I may unpack again.

This was unquestionably a studied rudeness, and demanded an equally studied reprisal. She means to discredit my station, and disparage my influence; how shall I reply to her? A vast variety of expedients offered themselves to my mind: I could go off, leaving a fearful letter behind me, – a document that would cut her to the very soul with the sarcastic bitterness of its tone; but could I leave without a reconciliation with Miss Herbert, – without the fond hope of our meeting as friends. I meant a great deal more, though I would n’t trust myself to say so. Besides, were I to go away, there were financial considerations to be entertained. I could not, of course, carry off that crimson bag with its gold and silver contents, and yet it was very hard to tear myself from such a treasure.

I say it under correction, for I have never been rich, and, consequently, never in the position to assert it positively; but I declare my firm conviction to be that no man has ever tasted the unbounded pleasures of a careless liberality on a Journey, who has not travelled at some other person’s expense. Be as wealthy as you like, let your portmanteau be stuffed full of circular notes, and there will be present at moments of payment the thought, “If I do not allow myself to be cheated here, I shall have all the more to squander there.” But, drawing from the bag of another, no such mean reflection obtrudes. You might as well defraud your lungs of a long inspiration out of the fear of taking more than your share of the atmosphere. There is enough, and will be enough there when you are dust and ashes.

In fact, if I had on one side the “three courses” of the great statesman, I had on the other full thirty reasons against each, and, therefore, I resolved to suspend action and do nothing. And let me here passingly remark that, much as we hear every day about the merits of promptitude and quick-wittedness, in nine cases out of ten in life, I ‘d rather “give the move than take it.” The waiting policy is a rare one; it is the secret of success in love, and of victory in an equity court And so I determined I 'd wait and see what should come of it. I appealed to myself thus: “Potts, you are eminently a man of the world, one who accepts life as it is, with all its crosses and untoward incidents; who knows well that he must play bad cards even oftener than good ones. No impatience, therefore, no rashness; give at least twenty-four hours’ thought to any important decision, and let a night’s sleep intervene between your first conception of a plan and its adoption.” Oh, if the people who are fretting themselves about what is to happen this day ten years, would only remember what a long time it is, – that is, counting by the number of events that will occur between this and to-morrow, – not to say what incidents are happening at the antipodes that will yet bring joy or sorrow to their hearts, – they would keep more of their sympathies for present use, and perhaps be the happier for doing so.