Kitabı oku: «A Day's Ride: A Life's Romance», sayfa 13

CHAPTER XVIII. AN IMPATIENT SUMMONS

I am about to make a very original observation. I hope its truth may equal its originality. It is, that the man who has never had a sister is, at his first entrance into life, far more the slave of feminine captivations than he who has been brought up in a “house full of girls.” “Oh, for shame, Mr. Potts! Is this the gallantry we have heard so much of? Is this the spirit of that chivalrous devotion you have been incessantly impressing upon us?” Wait a moment, fair creature; give me one half-minute for an explanation. He who has not had sisters has had no experiences of the behind-scene life of the female world; he has never heard one syllable about the plans and schemes and devices by which hearts are snared. He fancies Mary stuck that moss-rose in her hair in a moment of childish caprice; that Kate ran after her little sister and showed the prettiest of ankles in doing it, out of the irrepressible gayety of her buoyant spirits. In a word, he is one who only sees the play when the house is fully lighted, and all the actors in their grand costume; he has never witnessed a rehearsal, and has not the very vaguest suspicion of a prompter.

To him, therefore, who has only experienced the rough companionship of brothers – or worse still, has lived entirely alone – the first acquaintanceship with the young-lady world is such a fascination as no words can describe. The gentle look, the graceful gestures, the silvery voices, all the play and action of natures so infinitely more refined than any he has ever witnessed, are inexpressibly captivating. It is not alone the occupations of their hours, light, graceful, and picturesque as they are, but all their topics, their thoughts, seem to soar out of the commonplace world he has lived in, and rise to ideal realms of poetry and beauty. I say it advisedly: I do not know of anything so truly Elysian in life as our first – our very first – experiences of this kind.

Werther’s passion for Charlotte received a powerful impulse from watching her as she cut bread-and-butter for the children. There are vulgar natures who will smile at this; who cannot enter into the intense far-sightedness of that poetic conception; that could in one trait of simplicity embody a whole lifetime with its ennobling duties, its cheerful sacrifices, its gracefully borne cares. Let him, therefore, who could sneer at Werther, scoff at Potts, as he owns that he never felt his heart so powerfully drawn to Kate Herbert as when he watched her making tea for breakfast. Dressed in a muslin that represented mourning, her rich hair plainly enclosed in a net, with a noiseless motion, she glided about, an ideal of gentle sadness, more fascinating than I can tell. If she bore any unpleasant memory of our little difference, she did not show it; her manner was calm and even kind. She felt, perhaps, that some compensation was due to me for the rudeness of that old woman, and was not unwilling to make it.

“You know we are to rest here to-day?” said she, as she busied herself at the table.

“I heard it by a mere chance, and from the courier,” said I, peevishly. “I am not quite certain in what capacity Mrs. Keats condescends to regard me, that I am treated with such scant courtesy. Probably you would be kind enough to ascertain this point for me?”

“I shall assuredly not ask,” said she, with a smile.

“I certainly promised her brother – I could not do less for a colleague, not to say something more – that I ‘d see this old lady safe over the Alps. They are looking out for me anxiously enough at Constantinople all this while; in fact, I suspect there will be a nice confusion there through my delay, and I ‘d not be a bit surprised if they begin to believe that stupid story in the ‘Nord.’ I suppose you saw it?”

“No. What is it about?”

“It is about your humble servant, Miss Herbert, and hints that he has received one hundred parses from the sheiks of the Lebanon not to reach the Golden Horn before they have made their peace with the Grand Vizier.”

“And is of course untrue?”

“Of course, every word of it is a falsehood; but there are gobemouches will believe anything. Mark my words, and see if this allegation be not heard in the House of Commons, and some Tower Hamlets member start up to ask if the Foreign Secretary will lay on the table copies of the instructions given to a certain person, and supposed to be credentials of a nature to supersede the functions of our ambassador at the Porte. In confidence, between ourselves, Miss Herbert, so they are! I am intrusted with full powers about the Hatti Homayoun, as the world shall see in good time.”

“Do you take your tea strong?” asked she; and there was something so odd and so inopportune in the question, that I felt it as a sort of covert sneer; but when I looked up and beheld that pale and gentle face turned towards me, I banished the base suspicion, and forgetting all my enthusiasm, said, —

“Yes, dearest; strong as brandy!”

She tried to look grave, perhaps angry; but in spite of herself, she burst out a-laughing.

“I perceive, sir,” said she, “that Mrs. Keats was quite correct when she said that you appear to have moments in which you are unaware of what you say.”

Before I could rally to reply, she had poured out a cup of tea for Mrs. Keats, and left the room to carry it to her.

“‘Moments in which I am unaware of what I say,’ – ‘incoherent intervals’ Forbes Winslow would call them: in plain English, I am mad. Old woman, have you dared to cast such an aspersion on me, and to disparage me, too, in the quarter where I am striving to achieve success? For her opinion of me I am less than indifferent; for her Judgment of my capacity, my morals, my manners, I am as careless as I well can be of anything; but these become serious disparagements when they reach the ears of one whose heart I would make my own. I will insist on an explanation – no, but an apology – for this. She shall declare that she used these words in some non-natural sense, – that I am the sanest of mortals: she shall give it under her hand and seal: ‘I, the undersigned, having in a moment of rash and impatient Judgment imputed to the bearer of this document, Algernon Sydney Potts,’ – no, Pottinger – ha, there is a difficulty! If I be Pottinger, I can never re-become Potts; if Potts, I am lost, – or rather, Miss Herbert is lost to me forever. What a dire embarrassment! Not to mention that in the passport I was Ponto!”

“Mrs. Keats desired me to beg you will step up to her room after breakfast, and bring your account-books with you.” This was said by Miss Herbert as she entered and took her place at the table.

“What has the old woman got in her head?” said I, angrily. “I have no account-books, – I never had such in my life. When I travel alone, I say to my courier, ‘Diomede’ – he is a Greek – ‘Diomede, pay;’ and he pays. When Diomede is not with me, I ask, ‘How much?’ and I give it.”

“It certainly simplifies travel,” said she, gravely.

“It does more, Miss Herbert: it accomplishes the end of travel. Your doctor says, ‘Go abroad, – take a holiday – turn your back on Downing Street, and bid farewell to cabinet councils.’ Where is the benefit of such a course, I ask, if you are to pass the vacation cursing customhouse officers, bullying landlords, and browbeating waiters? I say always, ‘Give me a bad dinner if you must, but do not derange my digestion; rather a damp bed than thorns in the pillow.’”

“I am to say that you will see her, however,” said she, with that matter-of-fact adhesiveness to the question that never would permit her to join in my digressions.

“Then I go under protest, Miss Herbert, – under protest, and, as the lawyers say, without prejudice, – that is, I go as a private gentleman, irresponsible and independent. Tell her this, and say, I know nothing of figures: arithmetic may suit the Board of Trade; in the Foreign Department we ignore it You may add, too, if you like, that from what you have seen of me, I am of a haughty disposition, easily offended, and very vindictive, – very!”

“But I really don’t think this,” said she, with a bewitching smile.

“Not to you de – ” I was nearly in it again: “not to you,” said I, stammering and blushing till I felt on fire. I suspect that she saw all the peril of the moment, for she left the room hurriedly, on the pretext of asking Mrs. Keats to take more tea.

“She is sensible of your devotion, Potts; but is she touched by it? Has she said to herself, ‘That man is my fate, my destiny, – it is no use resisting him; dark and mysterious as he is, I am drawn towards him by an inscrutable sympathy’ – or is she still struggling in the toils, muttering to her heart to be still, and to wait? Flutter away, gentle creature,” said I, compassionately, “but raffle not your lovely plumage too roughly; the bars of your cage are not the less impassable that they are invisible. You shall love me, and you shall be mine!”

To these rapturous fancies there now succeeded the far less captivating thought of Mrs. Keats, and an approaching interview. Can any reader explain why it is, that one sits in quiet admiration of some old woman by Teniers or Holbein, and never experiences any chagrin or impatience at trials which, if only represented in life, would be positively odious? Why is it that art transcends nature, and that ugliness in canvas is more endurable than ugliness in the flesh? Now, for my own part, I’d rather have faced a whole gallery of the Dutch school, from Van Eyck to Verbagen, than have confronted that one old lady who sat awaiting me in No. 12.

Twice as I sat at my breakfast did François put in his head, look at me, and retire without a word. “What is the matter? What do you mean?” cried I, impatiently, at the third intrusion.

“It is madam that wishes to know when monsieur will be at leisure to go upstairs to her.”

I almost bounded on my chair with passion. How was I, I would ask, to maintain any portion of that dignity with which I ought to surround myself if exposed to such demands as this? This absurd old woman would tear off every illusion in which I draped myself. What availed all the romance a rich fancy could conjure up, when that wicked old enchantress called me to her presence, and in a voice of thunder said, “Strip off these masqueradings, Potts, I know the whole story.” “Ay, but,” thought I, “she cannot do so; of me and my antecedents she knows positively nothing.” “Halt there!” interposes Conscience; “it is quite enough to pronounce the coin base, without being able to say at what mint it was fabricated. She knows you, Potts, she knows you.”

There is one great evil in castle-building, and I have thought very long and anxiously, and I must own fruitlessly, over how to meet it: it is that one never can get a lease of the ground to build on. One is always like an Irish cottier, a tenant at will, likely to be turned out at a moment’s notice, and dispossessed without pity or compassion. The same language applies to each: “You know well, my good fellow, you had no right to be there; pack up and be off!” It’s no use saying that it was a bit of waste land unfenced and untilled; that, until you took it in hand, it was overgrown with nettles and duckweed; that you dispossessed no one, and such like. The answer is still the same, “Where’s your title? Where’s your lease?”

Now, I am curious to hear what injury I was inflicting on that old woman at No. 12 by any self-deceptions of mine? Could the most exaggerated estimate I might form of myself, my present, or my future, in any degree affect her? Who constituted her a sort of ambulatory conscience, to call people’s hearts to account at a moment’s notice? It may be seen by the tone of these reflections, that I was fully impressed with the belief through some channel, or by some clew, Mrs. Keats knew all my history, and intended to use her knowledge tyrannically over me.

Oh that I could only retaliate! Oh that I had only the veriest fragment of her past life, out of which to construct her whole story! Just as out of a mastodon’s molar, Cuvier used to build up the whole monster, never omitting a rib, nor forgetting a vertebra! How I should like to say to her, and with a most significant sigh, “I knew poor Keats well!” Could I not make even these simple words convey a world of accusation, blended with sorrow and regret?

François again, and on the same errand. “Say I am coming; that I have only finished a hasty breakfast, and that I am coming this instant,” cried I. Nor was it very easy for me to repress the more impatient expressions which struggled for utterance, particularly as I saw, or fancied I saw, the fellow pass his hand over his mouth to hide a grin at my expense.

“Is Miss Herbert upstairs?”

“No, sir, she is in the garden.”

This was so far pleasant. I dreaded the thought of her presence at this interview, and I felt that punishment within the precincts of the jail was less terrible than on the drop before the populace; and with this consoling reflection I mounted the stairs.

CHAPTER XIX. MRS. KEATS’S MYSTERIOUS COMMUNICATION

I knocked twice before I heard the permission to enter; but scarcely had I closed the door behind me, than the old lady advanced, and, courtesying to me with a manner of most reverential politeness, said, “When you learn, sir, that my conduct has been dictated in the interest of your safety, you will, I am sure, graciously pardon many apparent rudenesses in my manner towards you, and only see in them my zeal to serve you.”

I could only bow to a speech not one syllable of which was in the least intelligible to me. She conducted me courteously to a seat, and only took her own after I was seated.

“I feel, sir,” said she, “that there will be no end to our embarrassments if I do not go straight to my object and say at once that I know you. I tell you frankly, sir, that my brother did not betray your secret. The instincts of his calling – to him second nature – were stronger than fraternal love, and all he said to me was, ‘Martha, I have found a gentleman who is going south, and who, without inconvenience, can see you safely as far as Como.’ I implicitly accepted his words, and agreed to set out immediately. I suspected nothing, – I knew nothing. It was only before going down to dinner that the paragraph in the 'Courrier du Dimanche’ met my eye, and as I read it, I thought I should have fainted. My first determination was not to appear at dinner. I felt that something or other in my manner would betray my knowledge of your secret. My next was to go down and behave with more than usual sharpness. You may have remarked that I was very abrupt, almost, shall I say, rude?”

I tried to enter a dissent at this, but did not succeed so happily as I meant; but she resumed: —

“At any cost, however, sir, I determined that I alone should be the depositary of your confidence. Miss Herbert is to me a comparative stranger; she is, besides, very young; she would be in no wise a suitable person to intrust with such a secret, and so I said, I will pretend illness, and remain here for a day; I will make some pretext of dissatisfaction about the expense of the journey; I will affect to have had some passing difference, and he can thus leave us ere he be discovered. Not that I desire this, sir, far from it; this is the brightest episode in a long life. I never imagined that I should have enjoyed such an honor; but I have only to think of your safety, and if an old woman, unobservant and unremarking as myself, could penetrate your disguise, why not others more keen-sighted and inquisitive? Don’t you agree with me?”

“There is much force in what you say, madam,” said I; with dignity, “and your words touch me profoundly.” I thought this a happy expression, for it conveyed a sort of grand condescension that seemed to hit off the occasion.

“You would never guess how I recognized you, sir,” said she.

“Never, madam.” I could have given my oath to this, if required.

“Well,” said she, with a bland smile, “it was from the resemblance to your mother!”

“Indeed!”

“Yes; you are far more like her, than your father, and you are scarcely so tall as he was.”

“Perhaps not, madam.”

“But you have his manner, sir, the graceful and captivating dignity that distinguished all your house; this would betray you to the eyes of all who have enjoyed the high privilege of knowing your family.”

The allusion to our house showed that we were royalties, and I laid my hand on my heart, and bowed as a prince ought, blandly but haughtily.

“Ah, sir,” said she, with a deep sigh, “your present enterprise fills me with apprehension. Are you not afraid, yourself, of the consequences?”

I sighed, too; and if the truth were to be told, I was very much afraid.

“But, of course, you are acting under advice, and with the counsel of those well able to guide you.”

“I cannot say I am, madam; I am free to tell you that every step I am now taking is self-suggested.”

“Oh, then, let me implore you to pause, sir,” said she, falling on her knees before me; “let me thus entreat of you not to go further in a path so full of danger.”

“Shall I confess, madam,” said I, proudly, “that I do not see these dangers you speak of?”

I thought that on this hint she would talk out, and I might be able to pierce the veil of the mystery, and discover who I was; for though very like my mother, and shorter than my father, I was sorely puzzled about my parentage; but she only went off into generalities about the state of the Continent and the condition of Europe generally. I saw now that my best chance of ascertaining something about myself was to obtain from her the newspaper that first suggested her discovery of me, and I said half carelessly, “Let me see the paragraph which struck you in the ‘Courrier.’”

“Ah, sir, you must excuse me, these ignoble writers have little delicacy in alluding to the misfortunes of the great; they seem to revenge the littleness of their own station on every such occasion.”

“You can well imagine, madam, how time has accustomed me to such petty insults: show me the paper.”

“Pray let me refuse you, sir; I would not, however blamelessly, be associated in your mind with what might offend you.”

Again I protested that I was used to such attacks, that I knew all about the wretched hireling creatures who wrote them, and that instead of offending, they positively amused me, – actually made me laugh.

Thus urged, she proceeded to search for the newspaper, and only after some minutes was it that she remembered Miss Herbert had taken it away to read in the garden. She proposed to send the servant to fetch it, but this I would not permit, pretending at last to concur in her own previously expressed contempt for the paragraph, – but secretly promising myself to go in search of it the moment I should be at liberty, – and once more she resumed the theme of my rashness, and my dangers, and all the troubles I might possibly bring upon my family, and the grief I might occasion my grandmother.

Now, as there are few men upon whom the ties of family and kindred imposed less rigid bonds, I was rather provoked at being reminded of obligations to my grandmother, and was almost driven to declare that she weighed for very little in the balance of my plans and motives. The old lady, however, rescued me from the indiscretion by a fervent entreaty that I would at least ask a certain person what he thought of my present step.

“Will you do this?” said she, with tears in her eyes. “Will you do it now?”

I promised her faithfully.

“Will you do it here, sir, at this table, and let me have the proudest memory in my life to recall the incident.”

“I should like an hour or two for reflection,” said I, pushed very hard by this insistence of hers, for I was sorely puzzled whom I was to write to.

“Oh,” said she, still tearfully, “is it not the habit of hesitating, sir, has cost your house so dearly?”

“No,” said I, “we have been always accounted prompt in action and true to our engagements.”

Heaven forgive me! but in this vainglorious speech I was alluding to the motto of the Potts crest, – “Vigilanti-bus omnia fausta;” or, as some one rendered it, “Potts answers to the night-bell.”

She smiled faintly at my remark. I wonder how she would have looked had she read the thought that suggested it.

“But you will write to him, sir?” said she, once more.

I laid my hand over what anatomists call the region of the heart, and tried to look like Charles Edward in the prints. Meanwhile my patience was beginning to fail me, and I felt that if the mystification were to last much longer, I should infallibly lose my presence of mind. Fortunately, the old lady was so full of her theme that she only asked to be let talk away without interruption, with many an allusion to the dear Count and the adored Duchess, and a fervent hope that I might be ultimately reconciled to them both, – a wish which I had tact enough to perceive required the most guarded reserve on my part.

“I know I am indiscreet, sir,” said she, at last; “but you must pardon one whose zeal outruns her reason.”

And I bowed grandly, as I might have done in extending mercy to some captive taken in battle.

“There is but one favor more, sir, I have to beg.”

“Speak it, madam. As the courtier remarked, if it be possible it is done, if impossible it shall be done.”

“Well, sir, it is that you will not leave us till you hear from – ” She hesitated as if afraid to say the name, and then added, “the Rue St. Georges. Will you give me this pledge?”

Now, though this would have been, all things considered, an arrangement very like to have lasted my life, I could not help hesitating ere I assented, not to say that our dear friend of the Rue St Georges, whoever he was, might possibly not concur in all the delusions indispensable to my happiness. I therefore demurred, – that is, in legal acceptance, I deferred assent, – as though to say, “We’ll see.”

“At all events, sir, you ‘ll accompany us to Como?”

“You have my pledge to that, madam.”

“And meanwhile, sir, you agree with me that it is better I should continue to behave towards you with a cold and distant reserve.”

“Unquestionably.”

“Barely meeting, seldom or never conversing.”

“I should say never, madam; making, in fact, any communication you may desire to reach me through the intervention of that young person, – I forget her name.”

“Miss Herbert, sir.”

“Exactly; and who appears gentle and unobtrusive.”

“She is a gentlewoman by birth, sir,” said the old lady, tetchily.

“I have no doubt of it, madam, or she would not be found in association with you.”

She courtesied deeply at the compliment, and I bowed as low, and, backing and bowing, I gained the door, dying with eagerness, to make my escape.

“Will you pardon me, sir, if, after all the agitation of this meeting, I may not feel equal to appear at dinner to-day?”

“You will charge that young person to give news of your health, however,” said I, insinuating that I expected to see Miss Herbert.

“Certainly, sir; and if it should be your pleasure that she should dine with you, to preserve appearances – ”

“You are right, madam; your remark is full of wisdom. I shall expect to meet her.” And again I bowed low, and ere she recovered from another reverential courtesy I had closed the door behind me, and was half-way downstairs.