Kitabı oku: «A Day's Ride: A Life's Romance», sayfa 22

CHAPTER XXXIV. A SUMPTUOUS DINNER AND AN EMPTY POCKET

Mr poor companions had but a sorry time of it on that morning. I was in a fearful temper, and made no effort to control it. The little romance of my meeting with these creatures was beginning to scale off, and, there beneath, lay the vulgar metal of their natures exposed to view. As for old Vaterchen, shuffling along in his tattered shoes, half-stupid with wine and shame together, I could n’t bear to look at him; while Tintefleck, although at the outset abashed by my rebukeful tone and cold manner, had now rallied, and seemed well disposed to assert her own against all comers. Yes, there’ was a palpable air of defiance about her, even to the way that she sang as she went along; every thrill and cadence seemed to say, “I ‘m doing this to amuse myself; never imagine that I care whether you are pleased or not.” Indeed, she left me no means of avoiding this conclusion, since at every time that I turned on her a look of anger or displeasure, her reply was to sing the louder.

“And it was only yesterday,” thought I, “and I dreamed that I could be in love with this creature, – dreamed that I could replace Kate Herbert’s image in my heart with that coarse travesty of woman’s gentleness. Why, I might as well hope to make a gentleman of old Vaterchen, and present him to the world as a man of station and eminence.”

What an insane hope was this! As well might I shiver a fragment from a stone on the road-side, and think to give it value by having it set as a ring. The caprice of keeping them company for a day might be pardonable. It was the whim of one who is, above all, a student of mankind. But why continue the companionship? A little more of such intimacy, and who is to say what I may not imbibe of their habits and their natures; and Potts, the man of sentiment, the child of impulse, romance, and poetry, become a slave of the “Ring,” a saltimbanque! Now, though I could implicitly rely upon the rigidity of my joints to prevent the possibility of my ever displaying any feats of agility, I could yet picture myself in a long-tailed blue coat and jack-boots walking round and round in the sawdust circle, with four or five other creatures of the same sort, and who have no consciousness of any function till they are made the butt of some extempore drollery by the clown.

The creative temperament has this great disadvantage, that one cannot always build castles, but must occasionally construct hovels, and sometimes even dungeons and jails; and here was I now, with a large contract order for this species of edifice, and certainly £ set to work with a will. The impatience of my mind communicated itself to my gait, and I walked along at a tremendous rate.

“I can scarcely keep up with you at this pace,” said Tintefleck; “and see, we have left poor Vaterchen a long way behind.”

I made some rude answer, – I know not what, – and told her to come on.

“I will not leave him,” said she, coming to a halt, and standing in a composed and firm attitude before me.

“Then I will,” said I, angrily. “Farewell!” And waving my hand in a careless adieu, I walked briskly onward, not even turning a look on her as I went. I think, I’m almost certain, I heard a heavy sob close behind me, but I would not look round for worlds. I was in one of those moods – all weak men know them well – when a harsh or an ungracious act appears something very daring and courageous. The very pain my conduct gave myself, persuaded me that it must be heroic, just as a devotee is satisfied after a severe self-castigation.

“Yes, Potts,” said I, “you are doing the right thing here. A little more of such association as this, and you would be little better than themselves. Besides, and above all, you ought to be ‘real.’ Now, these are not real any more than the tinsel gems and tinfoil splendors they wear on their tunics.” It broke on me, too, like a sudden light, that to be the fictitious Potts, the many-sided, many-tinted, – what a German would call “der mitviele-farben bedeckte Potts,” – I ought to be immensely rich, all my changes of character requiring great resources and unlimited “properties” as stage folk call them; whereas, “der echte wahrhaf-tige Mann Potts” might be as poor as Lazarus. Indeed, the poorer the more real, since more natural.

While I thus speculated, I caught sight of a man scaling one of the precipitous paths by which the winding road was shortened for foot-travellers; a second glance showed me that this was Harpar, who, with a heavy knapsack, was toiling along. I made a great effort to come up with him, but when I reached the high road, he was still a long distance in front of me. I could not, if there had been any one to question me, say why I wished to overtake him. It was a sort of chase suggested simply by the object in front; a rare type, if we but knew it, of one half the pursuits we follow throughout life.

As I mounted the last of these bypaths which led to the crest of the mountain, I felt certain that, with a lighter equipment, I should come up with him; but scarcely had I gained the top, than I saw him striding away vigorously on the road fully a mile away beneath me. “He shall not beat me,” said I; and I increased my speed. It was all in vain. I could not do it; and when I drew nigh Lindau at last, very weary and footsore, the sun was just sinking on the western shore of the lake.

“Which is the best inn here?” asked I of a shopkeeper who was lounging carelessly at his door.

“Yonder,” said he, “where you see that post-carriage turning into.”

“To-night,” said I, “I will be guilty of an extravagance. I will treat myself to a good supper, and an honest glass of wine.” And on these hospitable thoughts intent I unslung my knapsack, and, throwing as much of distinction as I could into my manner, strolled into the public room.

So busied was the household in attending to the travellers who arrived “extra post,” that none condescended to notice me, till at last, as the tumult subsided, a venerable old waiter approached me, and said, in a half friendly, half rebukeful tone, “It is at the ‘Swan’ you ought to be, my friend, the next turning but two to the left hand, and you ‘ll see the blue lantern over the gateway.”

“I mean to remain where I am,” said I, imperiously, “and to remember your impertinence when I am about to pay my bill. Bring me the carte.”

I was overjoyed to see the confusion and shame of the old fellow. He saw at once the grievous error he had committed, and was so overwhelmed that he could not reply. Meanwhile, with all the painstaking accuracy of a practised gourmand, I was making a careful note of what I wished for supper.

“Are you not ashamed,” said I, rebukefully, “to have ortolans here, when you know in your heart they are swallows?”

He was so abject that he could only give a melancholy smile, as though to say, “Be merciful, and spare us!”

“Bohemian pheasant, too, – come, come, this is too bad! Be frank and confess; how often has that one speckled tail done duty on a capon of your own raising?”

“Gracious Herr!” muttered he, “do not crush us altogether.”

I don’t think that he said this in actual words, but his terrified eyes and his shaking cheeks declared it.

“Never mind,” said I, encouragingly, “it will not hurt us to make a sparing meal occasionally; with the venison and steak, the fried salmon, the duck with olives, and the apricot tart, we will satisfy appetite, and persuade ourselves, if we can, that we have fared luxuriously.”

“And the wine, sir?” asked he.

“Ah, there we are difficult. No little Baden vintage, no small wine of the Bergstrasse, can impose upon us! Lieb-frauen-milch, or, if you can guarantee it, Marcobrunner will do; but, mind, no substitutes!”

He laid his hand over his heart and bowed low; and, as he moved away, I said to myself, “What a mesmerism there must be in real money, since, even with the mockery of it, I have made that creature a bond slave.” Brief as was the interval in preparing my meal, it was enough to allow me a very considerable share of reflection, and I found that, do what I would, a certain voice within would whisper, “Where are your fine resolutions now, Potts? Is this the life of reality that you had promised yourself? Are you not at the old work again? Are you not masquerading it once more? Don’t you know well enough that all this pretension of yours is bad money, and that at the first ring of it on the counter you will be found out?”

“This you may rely on, gracious sir,” said the waiter, as he laid a bottle on the table beside me with a careful hand. “It is the orange seal;” and he then added, in a whisper, “taken from the Margrave’s cellar in the revolution of ‘93, and every flask of it worth a province.”

“We shall see – we shall see,” said I, haughtily; “serve the soup!”

If I had been Belshazzar, I believe I should have eaten very heartily, and drunk my wine with a great relish, notwithstanding that drawn sword. I don’t know how it is, but if I can only see the smallest bit of terra firma between myself and the edge of a precipice, I feel as though I had a whole vast prairie to range over. For the life of me I cannot realize anything that may, or may not, befall me remotely. “Blue are the hills far off,” says the adage; and on the converse of the maxim do I aver, that faint are all dangers that are distant. An immediate peril overwhelms me; but I could look forward to a shipwreck this day fortnight with a fortitude truly heroic.

“This is a nice old half-forgotten sort of place,” thought I, “a kind of vulgar Venice, water-washed, and muddy, and dreary, and do-nothing. I ‘ll stay here for a week or so; I ‘ll give myself up to the drowsy genius loci; I’ll Germanize to the top of my bent; who is to say what metaphysical melancholy, dashed with a strange diabolic humor, may not come of constantly feeding on this heavy cookery, and eternally listening to their gurgling gutturals? I may come out a Wieland or a Herder, with a sprinkling of Henri Heine! Yes,” said I, “this is the true way to approach life; first of all develop your own faculties, and then mark how in their exercise you influence your fellow-men. Above all, however, cultivate your individuality, respect this the greatest of all the unities.”

“Ja, gnädiger Herr,” said the old waiter, as he tried to step away from my grasp, for, without knowing it, I had laid hold of him by the wrist while I addressed to him this speech. Desirous to re-establish my character for sanity, somewhat compromised by this incident, I said:

“Have you a money-changer in these parts? If so, let me have some silver for this English gold.” I put my hand in my pocket for my purse; not finding it, I tried another and another. I ransacked them all over again, patted myself, shook my coat, looked into my hat, and then, with a sudden flash of memory, I bethought me that I had left it with Catinka, and was actually without one sou in the world! I sat down, pale and almost fainting, and my arms fell powerless at my sides.

“I have lost my purse!” gasped I out, at length.

“Indeed!” said the old man, but with a tone of such palpable scorn that it actually sickened me.

“Yes,” said I, with all that force which is the peculiar prerogative of truth; “and in it all the money I possessed.”

“I have no doubt of it,” rejoined he, in the same dry tone as before.

“You have no doubt of what, old man? Or what do you mean by the supercilious quietness with which you assent to my misfortune? Send the landlord to me.”

“I will do more! I will send the police,” said he, as he shuffled out of the room.

I have met scores of men on my way through life who would not have felt the slightest embarrassment in such a situation as mine, fellows so accustomed to shipwreck, that the cry of “Breakers ahead!” or “Man the boats,” would have occasioned neither excitement nor trepidation. What stuff they are made of instead of nerves, muscles, and arteries, I cannot imagine, since, when the question is self-preservation, how can it possibly be more imminent than when not alone your animal existence is jeopardized, but the dearer and more precious life of fame and character is in peril?

For a moment I thought that though this besotted old fool of a waiter might suspect my probity the more clear-sighted intelligence of the landlord would at once recognize my honest nature, and with the confidence of a noble conviction say, “Don’t tell me that the man yonder is a knave. I read him very differently. Tell me your story, sir.” And then I would tell it. It is not improbable that my speculation might have been verified had it not been that it was a landlady and not a landlord who swayed the destinies of the inn. Oh, what a wise invention of our ancestors was the Salique law! How justly they appreciated the unbridled rashness of the female nature in command! How well they understood the one-idea’d impetuosity with which they rush to wrong conclusions!

Until I listened to the Frau von Wintner, I imagined the German language somewhat weak in the matter of epithets. She undeceived me on this head, showing resources of abusive import that would have done credit to a Homeric hero. Having given me full ten minutes of a strong vocabulary, she then turned on the waiter, scornfully asking him if, at his time of life, he ought to have let himself be imposed upon by so palpable and undeniable a swindler as myself? She clearly showed that there was no extenuation of his fault, that rogue and vagabond had been written on my face, and inscribed in my manner; not to mention that I had followed the well-beaten track of all my fraternity in fraud, and ordered everything the most costly the house could command. In fact, so strenuously did she urge this point, and so eager did she seem about enforcing a belief in her statement, that I almost began to suspect she might suggest an anatomical examination of me to sustain her case. Had she been even less eloquent, the audience would still have been with her, for it is a curious but unquestionable fact that in all little visited localities the stranger is ungraciously regarded and ill looked on.

Whenever I attempted to interpose a word in my defence, I was overborne at once. Indeed, public opinion was so decidedly against me, that I felt very happy in thinking Lynch law was not a Teutonic institution. The room was now filled with retainers of the inn, strangers, town-folk, and police, and, to judge by the violence of their gestures and the loud tones of their voices, one would have pronounced me a criminal of the worst sort.

“But what is it that he has done? What’s his offence?” I heard a voice say from the crowd, and I fancied his accent was that of a foreigner. A perfect inundation of vituperative accusation, however, now poured in, and I could gather no more. The turmoil and uproar rose and fell, and fell and rose again, till at last, my patience utterly exhausted, I burst out into a very violent attack on the uncivilized habits of a people who could thus conduct themselves to a man totally unconvicted of any offence.

“Well, well, don’t give way to passion; don’t let temper get the better of you,” said a fat, citizen-like man beside me. “The stranger there has just paid for what you have had, and all is settled.”

I thought I should have fainted as I heard these words. Indeed, until that instant, I had never brought home to my own mind the utter destitution of my state; but now, there. I stood, realizing to myself the condition of one of those we read of in our newspapers as having received five shillings from the poor-box, while D 490 is deputed to “make inquiries after him at his lodgings,” and learn particulars of his life and habits. I could have borne being sent to prison. I could have endured any amount of severity, so long as I revolted against its injustice; but the sense of being an object of actual charity crushed me utterly, and I could nearly have cried with vexation.

By degrees the crowd thinned off, and I found myself sit-, ting alone beside the table where I had dined, with the hateful old waiter, as though standing sentinel over me.

“Who is this person,” asked I, haughtily, “who, with an indelicate generosity, has presumed to interfere with the concerns of a stranger?”

“The gracious nobleman who paid for your dinner is now eating his own at No. 8,” said the old monster with a grin.

“I will call upon him when he has dined,” said I, transfixing the wretch with a look so stern, as to make rejoinder impossible; and then, throwing my plaid wrapper and my knapsack on a table near, I strolled out into the street.

Lindau is a picturesque old place, as it stands rising, as it were, out of the very waters of the Lake of Constance, and the great mountain of the Sentis, with its peak of six thousand feet high, is a fine object in the distance; while the gorge of the Upper Rhine offers many a grand effect of Alpine scenery, not the less striking when looked at with a setting sun, which made the foreground more massive and the hill tops golden; and yet I carried that in my heart which made the whole picture as dark and dreary as Poussin’s Deluge. It was all very beautiful. There, was the snow-white summit, reflected in the still water of the lake; there, the rich wood, browned with autumn, and now tinted with a golden glory, richer again; there were the white-sailed boats, asleep on the calm surface, streaked with the variegated light of the clouds above, and it was peaceful as it was picturesque. But do what I could, I could not enjoy it, and all because I had lost my purse, just as if certain fragments of a yellow metal the more or the less, ought to obscure eyesight, lull the sense of hearing, and make a man’s whole existence miserable. “And after all,” thought I, “Catinka will be here this evening, or to-morrow at furthest. Vater-chen was tired, and could not come on. It was I who left them; I, in my impatience and ill-humor. The old man doubtless knew nothing of the purse confided to the girl, nor is it at all needful that he should. They will certainly follow me, and why, for the mere inconvenience of an hour or two, should I persist in seeing the whole world so crape-covered and sad-looking? Surely this is not the philosophy my knowledge of life has taught me. I ought to know and feel that these daily accidents are but stones on the road one travels. They may, perchance, wound the foot or damage the shoe, but they rarely delay the journey, if the traveller be not faint-hearted and craven. I will treat the whole incident in a higher spirit. I will wait for their coming in that tranquil and assured condition of mind which is the ripe fruit of a real insight into mankind. Pitt said, after long years of experience, that there was more of good than of bad in human nature. Let it be the remark of some future biographer that Potts agreed with him.”

When I got back to the inn, I was somewhat puzzled what to do. It would have been impossible with any success to have resumed my former tone of command, and for the life of me I could not bring myself down to anything like entreaty. While I thus stood, uncertain how to act, the old waiter approached me, almost courteously, and said my room was ready for me when I wished it.

“I will first of all wait upon the traveller in No. 8,” said L

“He has retired for the night,” was the answer. “He seems in very delicate health, and the fatigue of the journey has overcome him.”

“To-morrow will do, then,” said I easily; and not venturing upon an inquiry as to the means by which my room was at my disposal, I took my candle and mounted the stairs.

As I lay down in my bed, I resolved I would take a calm survey of my past life: what I had done, what I had failed to do, what were the guiding principles which directed me, and whither they were likely to bear me. But scarcely had I administered to myself the preliminary oath to tell nothing but the truth, than I fell off sound asleep.

My first waking thought the next morning was to inquire if two persons had arrived in search of me – an elderly man and a young woman. I described them. None such had been seen. “They will have sought shelter in some of the humbler inns,” thought I; “I’ll up and look after them.” I searched the town from end to end; I visited the meanest halting-places of the wayfarer; I inquired at the police bureaus – at the gate – but none had arrived who bore any resemblance to those I asked after. I was vexed – only vexed at first – but gradually I found myself growing distrustful. The suspicion that the ice is not strong enough for your weight, and then, close upon that, the shock of fear that strikes you when the loud crash of a fracture breaks on the ear, are mere symbols of what one suffers at the first glimmering of a betrayal. I repelled the thought with indignation; but certain thoughts there are which, when turned out, stand like sturdy duns at the gate, and will not be sent away. This was one of them. It followed me wherever I went, importunately begging for a hearing, and menacing me with sad consequences if I were obdurate enough to listen. “You are a simpleton, Potts, a weak, foolish, erring creature! and you select as the objects of your confidence those whose lives of accident present exactly as the most irresistible of all temptations to them – the Dupe! How they must have laughed – how they must yet be laughing at you! How that old drunken fox will chuckle over your simplicity, and the minx Tintefleck indulge herself in caricatures of your figure and face! I wonder how much of truth there was in that old fellow’s story? Was he ever the syndic of his village, or was the whole narrative a mere fiction like – like – ” I covered my face with my hands in shame as I muttered out, “like one of your own, Potts?”

I was very miserable, for I could no longer stand proudly forward as the prosecutor, but was obliged to steal ignominiously into the dock and take my place beside the other prisoners. What became of all my honest indignation as I bethought me, that I, of all men, could never arraign the counterfeit and the sham?

“Let them go, then,” cried I, “and prosper if they can; I will never pursue them. I will even try and remember what pleased and interested me in their fortunes, and, if it may be, forget that they have carried away my little all of wealth.”

A loud tramping of post-horses, and the cracking of whips, drew me to the window, and I saw beneath in the court-yard, a handsome travelling britschka getting ready for the road. Oh, how suggestive is a well cushioned calèche, with its many appliances of ease and luxury, its trim imperials, its scattered litter of wrappers and guide-books, – all little episodes of those who are to journey in it!

“Who are the happy souls about to travel thus enjoy-ably?” thought I, as I saw the waiter and the courier discussing the most convenient spot to deposit a small hamper with eatables for the road; and then I heard the landlady’s voice call out:

“Take up the bill to No. 8.”

So, then, this was No. 8 who was fast getting ready to depart, – No. 8 who had interposed in my favor the evening before, and towards whom a night’s rest and some reflection had modified my feelings and changed my sentiments very remarkably.

“Will you ask the gentleman at No. 8 if I may be permitted to speak with him?” said I to the man who took in the bill.

“He ‘ll scarcely see you now, – he’s just going off.”

“Give the message as I speak it,” said I; and he disappeared.

There was a long interval before he issued forth again, and when he did so he was flurried and excited. Some overcharges had been taken off and some bad money in change to be replaced by honest coin, and it was evident that various little well-intended rogueries had not achieved their usual success.

“Go in, you ‘ll find him there,” said the waiter, insolently, as he went down to have the bill rectified.

I knocked, a full round voice cried, “Come in!” and I entered.