Kitabı oku: «A Day's Ride: A Life's Romance», sayfa 15

CHAPTER XXII. INCIDENTS OF THE SECOND DAY’S JOURNEY

We continued our journey the next morning, but it was not without considerable difficulty that I succeeded in maintaining my former place in the cabriolet. That stupid old woman fancied that princes were born to be bored, and suggested accordingly that I should travel inside with her, leaving the macaw and the toy terriers to keep company with Miss Herbert. It was only by insisting on an outside place as a measure of health that I at last prevailed, telling her that Dr. Corvisart was peremptory on two points regarding me. “Let him,” said he, “have abundance of fresh air, and never be without some young companion.”

And so we were again in our little leathern tent, high up in the fresh breezy atmosphere, above dusty roads, and with a glorious view over that lovely country that forms the approach to the Black Forest. The road was hilly, and the carriage-way a heavy one; but we had six horses, who trotted along briskly, shaking their merry bells, and flourishing their scarlet tassels, while the postilions cracked their whips or broke out into occasional bugle performances, principally intended to announce to the passing peasants that we were very great folk, and well able to pay for all the noise we required.

I was not ashamed to confess my enjoyment in thus whirling along at some ten miles the hour, remembering how that great sage Dr. Johnson had confessed to a like pleasure, and, animated by the inspiriting air and the lovely landscape, could not help asking Miss Herbert if she did not feel it “very jolly.”

She assented with a sort of constrained courtesy that by no means responded to the warmth of my own sensations, and I felt vexed and chafed accordingly.

“Perhaps you prefer travelling inside?” said I, with some pique.

“No, sir.”

“Perhaps you dislike travelling altogether?”

“No, sir.”

“Perhaps – ” But I checked myself, and with a somewhat stiff air, I said, “Would you like a book?”

“If it would not be rude to read, sir, while you – ”

“Oh, not at all, never mind me, I have more than enough to think of. Here are some things by Dumas, and Paul Féval, and some guide-book trash.” And with that I handed her several volumes, and sank back into my corner in sulky isolation.

Here was a change! Ten minutes ago all Nature smiled on me; from the lark in the high heavens to the chirping grasshopper in the tall maize-field, it was one song of joy and gladness. The very clouds as they swept past threw new and varied light over the scene, as though to show fresh effects of beauty on the landscape, – the streams went by in circling eddies, like smiles upon a lovely face, – and now all was sad and crape-covered! “What has wrought this dreary change?” thought I; “is it possible that the cold looks of a young woman, good-looking, I grant, but no regular downright beauty after all, can have altered the aspect of the whole world to you? Are you so poor a creature in yourself, Potts, so beggared in your own resources, so barren in all the appliances of thought and reflection, that if your companion, whoever she or he may be, sulk, you must needs reflect the humor? Are you nothing but the mirror that displays what is placed before it?”

I set myself deliberately to scan the profile beside me; her black veil, drawn down on the side furthest from me, formed a sort of background, which displayed her pale features more distinctly. All about the brow and orbit was beautifully regular, but the mouth was, I fancied, severe; there was a slight retraction of the upper lip that seemed to imply over-firmness, and then the chin was deeply indented, – “a sign,” Lavater says, “of those who have a will of their own.” “Potts,” thought I, “she ‘d rule you, – that’s a nature would speedily master yours. I don’t think there’s any softness either, any of that yielding gentleness there, that makes the poetry of womanhood; besides, I suspect she’s worldly, – those sharply cut nostrils are very worldly! She is, in fact,” – and here I unconsciously uttered my thoughts aloud, – “she is, in fact, one to say, ‘Potts, how much have you got a-year? Let us have it in figures.’”

“So you are still ruminating over the life of that interesting creature,” said she, laying down her book to laugh; “and shall I confess, I lay awake half the night, inventing incidents and imagining situations for him.”

“For whom?” said I, innocently.

“For Potts, of course. I cannot get him out of my head such as I first fancied he might be, and I see now, by your unconscious allusion to him, that he has his place in your imagination also.”

“You mistake, Miss Herbert, – at least you very much misapprehend my conception of that character. The Potts family has a high historic tradition. Sir Constantine Potts was cup-bearer to Henry H., and I really see no reason why ridicule should attach to one who may be, most probably, his descendant.”

“I ‘m very sorry, sir, if I should have dared to differ with you; but when I heard the name first, and in connection with two such names as Algernon Sydney, and when I thought by what strange accident did they ever meet in the one person – ”

“You are very young, Miss Herbert, and therefore not removed from the category of the teachable,” said I, with a grand didactic look. “Let me guard you, therefore, against the levity of chance inferences. What would you say if a person named Potts were to make the offer of his hand? I mean, if he were a man in all respects acceptable, a gentleman captivating in manner and address, agreeable in person, graceful and accomplished, – what would you reply to his advances?”

“Really, sir, I am shocked to think of the humble opinion I may be conveying of my sense and judgment, but I’m afraid I should tell him it is impossible I could ever permit myself to be called Mrs. Potts.”

“But, in Heaven’s name, why? – I ask you why?”

“Oh, sir! don’t be angry with me; it surely does not deserve such a penalty; at the worst, it is a mere caprice on my part.”

“I am not angry, young lady, I am simply provoked; I am annoyed to think that a prejudice so unworthy of you should exercise such a control over your judgment.”

“I am quite ashamed, sir, to have been the occasion of so much displeasure to you. I hope and trust you will ascribe it to my ignorance of life and the world.”

“If you are dissatisfied with yourself, Miss Herbert, I have no more to say,” said I, taking up a book, and pretending to read, while I felt such a disgust with myself that if I had n’t been strapped up with a leather apron up to my chin, I think I should have thrown myself headlong down and let the wheel pass over me. “What is it, Potts, that is corrupting and destroying the naturally fine and noble nature you are certainly endowed with? Is it this confounded elevation to princely rank? If you were not a Royal Highness, would you have dared to utter such cruelties as these? Would you, in your most savage of moods, have presumed to make that pale cheek paler, and forced a tear-drop into that liquid eye? I always used to think that the greatest effort of a man was to keep him on a level with those born above him. I now find it is far harder to stoop than to stand on tiptoe. Such a pain in the back comes of always bending, and it is so difficult to do it gracefully!”

I was positively dying to be what the French call bon prince, and yet I didn’t know how to set about it. I could not take off one of my decorations, – a cross or a ribbon, – for I had none; nor give it, because she, being a woman, could n’t wear it. I could n’t make her one of the court ladies, for there was no court; and yet it was clear something should be done, if one only knew what it was. “I suppose now,” said I to myself, “a real R. H. would see his way here at once; the right thing to do, the exact expression to use would occur as naturally to his mind as all this embarrassment presents itself to mine. ‘Whenever your head cannot guide you,’ says a Spanish proverb, ‘ask your heart;’ and so I did, and my heart spoke thus: ‘Tell her, Potts, who you are, and what; say to her, “Listen, young lady, to the words of truth from one who could tell you far more glibly, far more freely, and far more willingly, a whole bushel of lies. It will sit light on his heart that he deceive the old lady inside, but you he cannot, will not deceive. Do not deem the sacrifice a light one; it cost St. George far less to go out dragon-hunting than it costs me to slay this small monster who ever prompts me to feats of fancy."’”

“I am very sorry to be troublesome, sir, but as we change horses here, I will ask you to assist me to alight; the weather looks very threatening, and some drops of rain have already fallen.”

These words roused me from my revery to action, and I got down, not very dexterously either, for I slipped, and made the postilion laugh, and then I helped her, who accomplished the descent so neatly, so gracefully, showing the least portion of such an ankle, and accidentally giving me such a squeeze of the hand! The next moment she was lost to me, the clanking steps were drawn up, the harsh door banged to, and I was alone, – all alone in the world.

Like a sulky eagle, sick of the world, I climbed up to my eyry. I no longer wished for sunshine or scenery; nay, I was glad to see the postboys put on their overcoats and prepare for a regular down-pour. I liked to think there are some worse off than even Potts. In half an hour they will be drenched to the skin, and I ‘ll not feel a drop of it!

The little glass slide at my back was now withdrawn, and Miss Herbert’s pale, sweet face appeared at it. She was saying that Mrs. Keats urgently entreated I would come inside, that she was so uneasy at my being exposed to such a storm.

I refused, and was about to enter into an account of my ascent of Mont Blanc, when the slide was closed and my listener lost to me.

“Is it possible, Potts,” said I, “that she has detected this turn of yours for the imaginative line, and that she will not encourage it, even tacitly? Has she said, ‘There is a young man of genius, gifted marvellously with the richest qualities, and yet such is the exuberance of his fancy that he is positively its slave. Not content to let him walk the earth like other men, she attaches wings to him and carries him off into the upper air. I will endeavor, however hard the task, to clip his feathers and bring him back to the common haunts of men’? Try it, fair enchantress, try it!”

The rain was now coming down in torrents, and with such swooping gusts of wind that I was forced to fasten the leather curtain in front of me, and sit in utter darkness, denied even the passing pleasure of seeing the drenched postboys bobbing up and down on the wet saddles. I grew moody and sad. Every Blue Devil of my acquaintance came to pay his visit to me, and brought a few more of his private friends. I bethought me that I was hourly travelling away further and further from my home; that all this long road must surely be retraced one day or other, though not in a carriage and post, but probably in a one-horse cart, with a mounted gendarme on either side of it, and a string to my two wrists in their bridle hands. I thought of that vulgar herd of mankind so ready to weep over a romance, and yet send the man who acts one to a penal settlement. I thought how I should be described as the artful knave, the accomplished swindler. As if I was the first man who ever took an exaggerated estimate of his own merits! Go into the House of Commons, visit the National Gallery, dine at a bar or a military mess, frequent, in one word, any of the haunts of men, and with what pièces pour servir à l’histoire of self-deception will you come back loaded!

The sliding window at my back was again drawn aside, and I heard Miss Herbert’s voice, —

“If I am not giving you too much trouble, sir, would you kindly see if I have not dropped a bracelet – a small jet bracelet – in the coupé?”

“I ‘m in the dark here, but I’ll do my best to find it.”

“We are very nearly so, too,” said she; “and Mrs. Keats is fast asleep, quite unmindful of the thunder.”

With some struggling I managed to get down on my knees, and was soon engaged in a very vigorous search. To aid me, I lighted a lucifer match, and by its flickering glare I saw right in front of me that beautiful pale face, enclosed as it were in a frame by the little window. She blushed at the fixedness of my gaze, for I utterly forgot myself in my admiration, and stared as though at a picture. My match went out, and I lit another. Alas! there she was still, and I could not force myself to turn away, but gazed on in rapture.

“I’m sorry to give you this trouble, sir,” said she, in some confusion. “Pray never mind it. It will doubtless be found this evening when we arrive.”

Another lucifer, and now I pretended to be in most eager pursuit; but somehow my eyes would look up and rest upon her sweet countenance.

“A diamond bracelet, you said?” muttered I, not knowing what I was saying.

“No, sir, mere jet, and of no value whatever, save to myself. I am really distressed at all the inconvenience I have occasioned you. I entreat you to think no more of it.”

My match was out, and I had not another. “Was ever a man robbed of such ecstasy for a mere pennyworth of stick and a little sulphur? O Fortune! is not this downright cruelty?”

As I mumbled my complaints, I searched away with an honest zeal, patting the cushions all over, and poking away into most inscrutable pockets and recesses, while she, in a most beseeching tone, apologized for her request and besought me to forget it.

“Found! found!” cried I, in true delight, as I chanced upon the treasure at my feet.

“Oh, sir, you have made me so happy, and I am so much obliged, and so grateful to you!”

“Not another word, I beseech you,” whispered I; “you are actually turning my head with ecstasy. Give me your hand, let me clasp it on your arm, and I am repaid.”

“Will you kindly pass it to me, sir, through the window?” said she, timidly.

“Ah!” cried I, in anguish, “your gratitude has been very fleeting.”

She muttered something I could not catch, but I heard the rustle of her sleeve against the window-frame, and dark as it was, pitch dark, I knew her hand was close to me. Opening the bracelet, I passed it round her wrist as reverently as though it were the arm of a Queen of Spain, one touch of whom is high treason. I trembled so, that it was some seconds before I could make the clasp meet. This done, I felt she was withdrawing her hand, when, with something like that headlong impulse by which men set their lives on one chance, I seized the fingers in my grasp, and implanted two rapturous kisses on them. She snatched her hand hastily away, closed the window with a sharp bang, and I was alone once more in my darkness, but in such a flutter of blissful delight that even the last reproving gesture could scarcely pain me. It mattered little to me that day that the lightning felled a great pine and threw it across the road, that the torrents were so swollen that we only could pass them with crowds of peasants around the carriage with ropes and poles to secure it, that four oxen were harnessed in front of our leaders to enable us to meet the hurricane, or that the postboys were paid treble their usual fare for all their perils to life and limb. I cared for none of these, Enough for me that, on this day, I can say with Schiller,

 
“Ich habe genossen das irdische Gluck,
Ich habe gelebt and geliebt!”
 

CHAPTER XXIII. JEALOUSY UNSUPPORTED BY COURAGE

We arrived at a small inn on the bordera of the Titi-see at nightfall; and though the rain continued to come down unceasingly, and huge masses of cloud hung half-way down the mountain, I could see that the spot was highly picturesque and romantic. Before I could descend from my lofty eminence, so strapped and buttoned and buckled up was I, the ladies had time to get out and reach their rooms. When I asked to be shown mine, the landlord, in a very free-and-easy tone, told me that there was nothing for me but a double-bedded room, which I must share with another traveller. I scouted this proposition at once with a degree of force, and, indeed, of violence, that I fancied must prove irresistible; but the stupid German, armed with native impassiveness, simply said, “Take it or leave it, it’s nothing to me,” and left me to look after his business. I stormed and fumed. I asked the chambermaid if she knew who I was, and sent for the Hausknecht to tell him that all Europe should ring with this indignity. I more than hinted that the landlord had sealed his own doom, and that his miserable cabaret had seen its last days of prosperity.

I asked next, where was the Jew pedler? I felt certain he was a fellow with pencil-cases and pipe-beads, who owned the other half of the territory. Could he not be bought up? He would surely sleep in the cow-house, if it were too wet to go up a tree!

François came to inform me that he was out fishing; that he fished all day, and only came home after dark; his man had told him so much.

“His man? Why, has he a servant?” asked I.

“He’s not exactly like a servant, sir; but a sort of peasant with a green jacket and a tall hat and leather gaiters, like a Tyrolese.”

“Strolling actors, I ‘ll be sworn,” mattered I; “fellows taking a week’s holiday on their way to a new engagement How long have they been here?”

“Came on Monday last in the diligence, and are to remain till the twentieth; two florins a day they give for everything.”

“What nation are they?”

“Germans, sir, regular Germans; never a pipe ont of their mouths, master and man. I learned all this from his servant, for they have put up a bed for me in his room.”

A sudden thought now struck me: “Why should not François give up his bed to this stranger, and occupy the one in my room?” This arrangement would suit me better, and it ought to be all the same to Hamlet or Groetz, or whatever he was. “Just lounge about the door, François,” said I, “till he comes back; and when you see him, open the thing to him, civilly, of course; and if a crown piece, or even two, will help the negotiation, slip it slyly into his hand. You understand?”

François winked like a man who had corrupted customhouse officers in his time, and even bribed bigger functionaries at a pinch.

“If he’s in trade, you know, François, just hint that if he sends in his pack in the course of the evening, the ladies might possibly take a fancy to something.”

Another wink.

“And throw out – vaguely, of course, very vaguely – that we are swells, but in strict incog.”

A great scoundrel was François; he was a Swiss, and could cheat any one, and, like a regular rogue, never happier than when you gave him a mission of deceit or duplicity. In a word, when I gave him his instructions, I regarded the negotiation as though it were completed, and now addressed myself to the task of looking after our supper, which, with national obstinacy, the landlord declared could not be ready before nine o’clock. As usual, Mrs. Keats had gone to bed immediately on arriving; but when sending me a “good-night” by her maid, she added, “that whenever supper was served, Miss Herbert would come down.”

We had no sitting-room save the common room of the inn, a long, low-ceilinged, dreary chamber, with a huge green-tile stove in one corner, and down the centre a great oak table, which might have served about forty guests. At one end of this three covers were laid for us, the napkins enclosed in bone circlets, and the salt in great leaden receptacles, like big ink-bottles; a very ancient brass lamp giving its dim radiance over all. It was wearisome to sit down on the straight-backed wooden chairs, and not less irksome to walk on the gritty, sanded floor, and so I lounged in one of the windows, and watched the rain. As I looked, I saw the figure of a man with a fishing-basket and rod on his shoulder approaching the house. I guessed at once it was our stranger, and, opening the window a few inches, I listened to hear the dialogue between him and François. The window was enclosed in the same porch as the door, so that I could hear a good deal of what passed. François accosted him familiarly, questioned him as to his sport, and the size of the fish he had taken. I could not hear the reply, but I remarked that the stranger emptied his basket, and was despatching the contents in different directions: some were for the curé, and some for the postmaster, some for the brigadier of the gendarmerie, and one large trout for the miller’s daughter.

“A good-looking wench, I’ll be sworn,” said François, as he heard the message delivered.

Again the stranger said something, and I thought, from the tone, angrily, and François responded; and then I saw them walk apart for a few seconds, during which François seemed to have all the talk to himself, – a good omen, as it appeared to me, of success, and a sure warranty that the treaty was signed. Francois, however, did not come to report progress, and so I closed the window and sat down.

“So you have got company to-night, Master Ludwig,” said the stranger, as he entered, followed by the host, who speedily seemed to whisper that one of the arrivals was then before him. The stranger bowed stiffly but courteously to me, which I returned not less haughtily; and I now saw that he was a man about thirty-five, but much freckled, with a light-brown beard and moustache. On the whole, a good-looking fellow, with a very upright carriage, and something of a cavalry soldier in the swing of his gait.

“Would you like it at once, Herr Graf?” said the host, obsequiously.

“Oh, he ‘s a count, is he?” said I, with a sneer to myself. “These countships go a short way with me.”

“You had better consult your other guests; I am ready when they are,” said the stranger.

Now, though the speech was polite and even considerate, I lost sight of the courtesy in thinking that it implied we were about to sup in common, and that the third cover was meant for him.

“I say, landlord,” said I, “you don’t intend to tell me that you have no private sitting-room, but that ladies of condition must needs come down and sup here with” – I was going to say, “Heaven knows who;” but I halted, and said – “with the general company.”

“That, or nothing!” was the sturdy response. “The guests in this house eat here, or don’t eat at all; eh, Herr Graf?”

“Well, so far as my experience goes, I can corroborate you,” said the stranger, laughing; “though, you may remember, I have often counselled you to make some change.”

“That you have; but I don’t want to be better than my father and my grandfather; and the Archduke Charles stopped here in their time, and never quarrelled with his treatment.”

I told the landlord to apprise the young lady whenever supper was ready, and I walked to a distant part of the room and sat down.

In about two minutes after, Miss Herbert appeared, and the supper was served at once. I had not met her since the incident of the bracelet, and I was shocked to see how cold she was in her manner, and how resolute in repelling the most harmless familiarity towards her.

I wanted to explain to her that it was through no fault of mine we were to have the company of that odious stranger, that it was one of the disagreeables of these wayside hostels, and to be borne with patience, and that though he was a stage-player, or a sergeant of dragoons, he was reasonably well-bred and quiet I did contrive to mumble out some of this explanation; but, instead of attending to it, I saw her eyes following the stranger, who had just draped a large riding-cloak over a clothes-horse behind her chair, to serve as a screen. Thanks are all very well, but I ‘m by no means certain that gratitude requires such a sweet glance as that, not to mention that I saw the expression in her eyes for the first time.

I thought the soup would choke me. I almost hoped it might. Othello was a mild case of jealousy compared to me, and I felt that strangling would not half glut my vengeance. And how they talked! – he complimenting her on her accent, and she telling him how her first governess was a Hanoverian from Celle, where they are all such purists. There was nothing they did not discuss in those detestable gutturals, and as glibly as if it bad been a language meet for human lips. I could not eat a mouthful, but I drank and watched them. The fellow was not long in betraying himself: he was soon deep in the drama. He knew every play of Schiller by heart, and quoted the Wallenstein, the Bobbers, Don Carlos, and Maria Stuart at will; so, too, was he familiar with Goethe and Leasing. He had all the swinging intonation of the boards, and declaimed so very professionally that, as he concluded a passage, I cried out, without knowing it, —

“Take that for your benefit, – it’s the best you have given yet.”

Oh, Lord, how they laughed! She covered up her face and smothered it; but he lay back, and, holding the table with both hands, he positively shouted and screamed aloud. I would have given ten years of life for the courage to have thrown my glass of wine in his face; but it was no use. Nature had been a niggard to me in that quarter, and I had to sit and hear it, – exactly so, sit and hear it, – while they made twenty attempts to recover their gravity and behave like ladies and gentlemen, and when, no sooner would they look towards me, than off they were again as bad as before.

I revolved a dozen cutting sarcasms, all beginning with, “Whenever I feel assured that you have sufficiently regained the customary calm of good society;” but the dessert was served ere I could complete the sentence, and now they were deep in the lyric poets, Uhland, and Körner, and Freiligrath, and the rest of them. As I listened to their enthusiasm, I wondered why people never went into raptures over a cold in the head. But it was not to end here: there was an old harpsichord in the room, and this he opened and set to work on in that fearful two-handed fashion your German alone understands. The poor old crippled instrument shook on its three legs, while the fourth fell clean off, and the loose wires jangled and jarred like knives in a tray; but he only sang the louder, and her ecstasies grew all the greater too.

Heaven reward you, dear old Mrs. Keats, when you sent word down that you could n’t sleep a wink, and begging them to “send that noisy band something and let them go away;” and then Miss Herbert wished him a sweet goodnight, and he accompanied her to the door, and then there was more good-night, and I believe I had a short fit; but when I came to myself, he was sitting smoking his cigar opposite me.

“You are no relative, no connection of the young lady who has just left the room?” said he to me with a grave manner, so significant of something under it that I replied hastily, “None, – none whatever.”

“Was that servant who spoke to me in the porch, as I came in this evening, yours?”

“Yes.” This I said more boldly, as I suspected he was coming to the question François had opened.

“He mentioned to me,” said he, slowly, and puffing his cigar at easy intervals, “that you desire your servant should sleep in the same room with you. I am always happy to meet the wishes of courteous fellow-travellers, and so I have ordered my servant to give you his bed; he will sleep upstairs in what was intended for you. Good-night.” And with an insolent nod he lounged out of the room and left me.