Kitabı oku: «A Day's Ride: A Life's Romance», sayfa 27
CHAPTER XXXIX. ON THE EDGE OF A TORRENT
Very conflicting and very mixed were my feelings, as I set forth alone. I had come well, very well, out of a trying emergency. I was neither driven to pretend I was something other than myself, with grand surroundings, and illustrious belongings, nor had I masqueraded under a feigned name and a false history; but as Potts, son of Potts the apothecary, I had carried my head high and borne myself creditably.
Magna est Veritas, indeed! I am not so sure of the prævalebit semper, but, assuredly, where it does succeed, the success is wonderful.
Heaven knows into what tortuous entanglements might my passion for the “imaginative” – I liked this name for it – have led me, had I given way to one of my usual temptations. In more than one of my flights have I found myself carried up into a region, and have had to sustain an atmosphere very unsuited to my respiration, and now, with the mere prudence of walking on the terra firma, and treading the common highway of life, I found I had reached my goal safely and speedily. Flowers do not assume to be shrubs, nor shrubs affect to be forest trees; the limestone and granite never pretend that they are porphyry and onyx. Nature is real, and why should man alone be untruthful and unreal? If I liked these reflections, and tried to lose myself in them, it was in the hope of shutting out others less gratifying; but, do what I would, there, before me, arose the image of Catinka, as she stood at the edge of the rivulet, that stream which seemed to cut me off from one portion of my life, and make the past irrevocably gone forever.
I am certain I was quite right in parting with that girl. Any respectable man, a father of a family, would have applauded me for severing this dangerous connection. What could come of such association except unhappiness? “Potts,” would the biographer say, – “Potts saw, with the unerring instinct of his quick perception, that this young creature would one day or other have laid at his feet the burnt-offering of her heart, and then, what could he have done? If Potts had been less endowed with genius, or less armed in honesty, he had not anticipated this peril, or, foreseeing, bad undervalued it. But he both saw and feared it. How very differently had a libertine reasoned out this situation!” And then I thought how wicked I might have been, – a monster of crime and atrocity. Every one knows the sensation of lying snugly a-bed on a stormy night, and, as the rain plashes and the wind howls, drawing more closely around him the coverlet, and the selfish satisfaction of his own comfort, heightened by all the possible hardships of others outside. In the same benevolent spirit, but not by any means so reprehensible, is it pleasant to imagine oneself a great criminal, standing in the dock, to be stared at by a horror-struck public, photographed, shaved, prison costumed, exhorted, sentenced, and tien, just as the last hammer has driven the last nail into the scaffold, and the great bell has tolled out, to find that you are sitting by your wood fire, with your curtain drawn, your uncut volume beside you, and your peculiar weakness, be it tea, or sherry-cobbler, at your elbow. I constantly take a “rise” out of myself in this fashion, and rarely a week goes over that I have not either poisoned a sister or had a shot at the Queen. It is a sort of intellectual Russian bath, in which the luxury consists in the exaggerated alternative between being scalded first and rolled in the snow afterwards. It was in this figurative snow I was now disporting myself, pleasantly and refreshingly, and yet remorse, like a sturdy dun, stood at my gate, and refused to go away.
Had I, indeed, treated her harshly, – had I rejected the offer of her young and innocent heart? Very puzzling and embarrassing question this, and especially to a man who had nothing of the coxcomb in his nature, none of that prompting of self-love that would suggest a vain reply. I felt that it was very natural she should have been struck by the attractive features of my character, but I felt this without a particle of conceit. I even experienced a sense of sorrow as I thought over it, just as a conscientious siren might have regretted that nature had endowed her with such a charming voice; and this duty – for it was a duty – discharged, I bethought me of my own future. I had a mission, which was to see Kate Herbert and give her Miss Crofton’s letter. In doing so, I must needs throw off all disguises and mockeries, and be Potts, the very creature she sneered at, the man whose mere name was enough to suggest a vulgar life and a snob’s nature! No matter what misery it may give, I will do it manfully. She may never appreciate – the world at large may never appreciate – what noble motives were hidden beneath these assumed natures, mere costumes as they were, to impart more vigor and persuasiveness to sentiments which, uttered in the undress of Potts, would have carried no convictions with them. Play Macbeth in a paletot, perform Othello in “pegtops,” and see what effect you will produce! Well, my pretended station and rank were the mere gauds and properties that gave force to my opinions. And now to relinquish these, and be the actor, in the garish light of the noonday, and a shabby-genteel coat and hat! “I will do it,” muttered I, – “I will do it, but the suffering will be intense!” When the prisoner sentenced to a long captivity is no more addressed by his name, but simply called No. 18, or 43, it is said that the shock seems to kill the sense of identity with him, and that nothing more tends to that stolid air of indifference, that hopeless inactivity of feature, so characteristic of a prison life; in the very same way am I affected when limited to my Potts nature, and condemned to confine myself within the narrow bounds of that one small identity. From what Prince Max has said at the table d’hôte at Bregenz, it was clear that Mrs. Keats had already learned I was not the young prince of the House of Orleans; but, in being disabused of one error, she seemed to have fallen into another; and it behoved me to explain that I was not a rope-dancer or a mountebank. “She, too, shall know me in my Potts nature,” said I; “she also shall recognize me in the ‘majesty of myself.’” I was not very sure of what that was, but found it in Hegel.
And when I have completed this task, I will throw myself like a waif upon the waters of life. I will be that which the moment or the event shall make me, – neither trammelled by the past nor awed by the future. I will take the world as the drama of a day. Were men to do this, what breadth and generosity would it impart to them! It is in self-seeking and advancement that we narrow our faculties and imprison our natures. A man fancies he owns a palace and a demesne, but it is the palace that owns him, obliges him to maintain a certain state, live in a certain style, surrounded with certain observances, not one of which may be, perhaps, native to him. It is the poor man, who comes to visit and gaze on his splendors, who really enjoys them; he sees them without one detracting influence, – not to say that in his heart are no corroding jealousies of some other rich man, who has a finer Claude, or a grander Rubens. Instead, besides, of owning one palace and one garden, it is the universe he owns: the vast savannah is his race-ground; Niagara his own private cascade. My heart bounded with these buoyant fancies, and I stepped out briskly on my road. Now that I had made this vow of poverty to myself, I felt very light-hearted and gay. So long as a man is struggling for place and pre-eminence in life, how can he be generous, how even gracious? “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s ox,” says the commandment, but surely it must have been your neighbor’s before it was yours, and if you have striven for it, it is likely that you have coveted it. Now, I will covet nothing, – positively nothing, – and I will see if in this noble spirit there will not be a reward proportionately ample and splendid.
My road led through that wild and somewhat dreary valley by which the Upper Rhine descends, fed by many an Alpine stream and torrent, to reach the fertile plains of Germany. It was a desolate expanse of shingle, with here and there little patches of oak scrub, or, at rare intervals, small enclosures of tillage, though how tilled, or for whom, it was hard to say, since not a trace of inhabitant could be seen, far or wide. Deep fissures, the course of many a mountain stream, cut the road at places, and through these the foot traveller had to pass on stepping-stones; while wheel carriages, descending into the chaos of rocks and stones, fared even worse, and incurred serious peril to spring and axle in the passage. On the mountain-sides, indeed, some chalets were to be seen, very high up, and scarcely accessible, but ever surrounded with little tracts of greener verdure and more varied foliage. From these heights, too, I could hear the melodious ring of the bells worn by the cattle, – sure signs of peasant comfort. “Might not a man find a life of simple cares and few sorrows, up yonder?” asked I, as I gazed upward. While I continued to look, the great floating clouds that soared on the mountain-top began to mass and to mingle together, thickening and darkening at every moment, and then, as though overweighted, slowly to descend, shutting out chalet and shady copse and crag, as they fell, on their way to the plain beneath. It was a grievous change from the bright picture a few moments back, and not the less disheartening, that the heavily charged mist now melted into rain, that soon fell in torrents. With not a rock nor a shrub to shelter under, I had nothing for it but to trudge onward to the nearest village, wherever that might be. How speedily the slightest touch of the real will chase away the fictitious and imaginary! No more dreams nor fancies now, as wet and soaked I plodded on, my knapsack seeming double its true weight, and my stick appearing to take root each time it struck the ground. The fog, too, was so dense that I was forced to feel my way as I went. The dull roar of the Rhine was the only sound for a long time; but this, at length, became broken by the crashing noise of timber carried down by the torrents, and the louder din of the torrents themselves as they came tumbling down the mountain. I would have retraced my steps to Bregenz, but that I knew the places I had passed dryshod in the morning would by this time have become impassable rivers. My situation was a dreary one, and not without peril, since there was no saying when or where a mountain cataract might not burst its way down the cliffs and sweep clean across the road towards the Rhine.
Had there been one spot to offer shelter, even the poorest and meanest, I would gladly have taken it, and made up my mind to await better weather; but there was not a bank, nor even a bush to cower under, and I was forced to trudge on. It seemed to me, at last, that I must have been walking many hours; but having no watch, and being surrounded with impenetrable fog, I could make no guess of the time, when, at length, a louder and deeper sound appeared to fill the air, and make the very mist vibrate with its din. The surging sound of a great volume of water, sweeping along through rocks and fallen trees, apprised me that I was nearing a torrent; while the road itself, covered with some inches of water, showed that the stream had already risen above its embankments. There was real danger in this; light carriages – the great lumbering diligence itself – had been known to be carried away by these suddenly swollen streams, and I began seriously to fear disaster. Wading cautiously onward, I reached what I judged to be the edge of the torrent, and felt with my stick that the water was here borne madly onward, and at considerable depth. Though through the fog I could make out the opposite bank, and see that the stream was not a wide one, I plainly perceived that the current was far too powerful for me to breast without assistance, and that no single passenger could attempt it with safety. I may have stood half an hour thus, with the muddy stream surging over my ankles, for I was stunned and stupefied by the danger, when I thought I saw through the mist two gigantic figures looming through the fog, on the opposite bank. When and how they had come there, I knew not, if they were indeed there, and if these figures were not mere spectres of my imagination. It was not till having closed my eyes, and opening them again, I beheld the same objects, that I could fully assure myself of their reality.
CHAPTER XL. I AM DRAGGED AS A PRISONER TO FELDKIRCH
The two great figures I had seen looming through the fog while standing in the stream, I at last made out to be two horsemen, who seemed in search of some safe and fordable part of the stream to cross over. Their apparent caution was a lesson by which I determined to profit, and I stood a patient observer of their proceedings. At times I could catch their voices, but without distinguishing what they said, and suddenly I heard a plunge, and saw that one had dashed boldly into the flood, and was quickly followed by the other. If the stream did not reach to their knees, as they sat, it was yet so powerful that it tested all the strength of the horses and all the skill of the riders to stem it; and as the water splashed and surged, and as the animals plunged and struggled, I scarcely knew whether they were fated to reach the bank, or be carried down in the current. As they gained about the middle of the stream, I saw that they were mounted gendarmes, heavy men with heavy equipments, favorable enough to stem the tide, but hopelessly incapable to save themselves if overturned. “Go back, – hold in, – go back! the water is far deeper here!” I cried out at the top of my voice; but either not hearing, or not heeding my warning, on they came, and, as I spoke, one plunged forward and went headlong down under the water, but, rising immediately, his horse struck boldly out, and, after a few struggles, gained the bank. The other, more fortunate, had headed up the stream, and reached the shore without difficulty.
With the natural prompting of a man towards those who had just overcome a great peril, I hastened to say how glad I felt at their safety, and from what intense fear their landing had rescued me; when one, a corporal, as his cuff bespoke, muttered a coarse exclamation of impatience, and something like a malediction on the service that exposed men to such hazards, and at the same instant the other dashed boldly up the bank, and with a bound placed his horse at my side, as though to cut off my retreat.
“Who are you?” cried the corporal to me, in a stern voice.
“A traveller,” said I, trying to look majestic and indignant.
“So I see; and of what nation?”
“Of that nation which no man insults with impunity.”
“Russia?”
“No; certainly not, – England.”
“Whence from last?”
“From Bregenz.”
“And from Constance by Lindau?” asked he quickly, as he read from a slip of paper he had Just drawn from his belt.
I assented, but not without certain misgivings, as I saw so much was known as to my movements.
“Now for your passport. Let me see it,” said the corporal again. “Just so,” said he, folding it up. “Travelling on foot, and marked ‘suspected.’”
Though he muttered these words to his companion, I perceived that he cared very little for my having overheard them.
“Suspected of what, or by whom?” asked I, angrily.
Instead of paying any attention to my question, the two men now conversed together in a low tone and confidentially.
“Come,” said I, with an assumed boldness, “if you have quite done with that passport of mine, give it to me, and let me pursue my journey.”
So eager were they in their own converse, that this speech, too, was unheeded; and now, grown rasher by impunity and impatience, I stepped stoutly forward, and attempted to take the passport from the soldier’s hand.
“Sturm und Gewitter!” swore out the fellow, while he struck me sharply on the wrist, “do you mean to try force with us?” And the other drew his sabre, and, flourishing it over his head, held the point of it within a few inches of my chest.
I cannot imagine whence came the courage that now filled my heart, for I know I am not naturally brave, but I felt for an instant that I could have stormed a breach; and, with an insulting laugh, I said, “Oh, of course, cut me down. I am unarmed and defenceless. It is an admirable opportunity for the display of Austrian chivalry.”
“Bey’m Henker! It’s very hard not to slice off his ear,” said the soldier, seeming to ask leave for this act of valor.
“Get out your cords,” said the corporal; “we ‘re losing too much time here.”
“Am I a prisoner, then?” asked I, in some trepidation.
“L suspect you are, and likely to be for some time to come,” was the gruff answer.
“On what charge – what is alleged against me?” cried I, passionately.
“What has sent many a better-looking fellow to Spielberg,” was the haughty rejoinder.
“If I am your prisoner,” said I, haughtily, – “and I warn you at once of your peril in daring to arrest a British subject travelling peacefully – You are not going to tie my hands! You are not going to treat me as a felon?” I screamed out these words in a voice of wildest passion, as the soldier, who had dismounted for the purpose, was now proceeding to tie my wrists together with a stout cord, and in a manner that displayed very little concern for the pain he occasioned me.
As escape was totally out of the question, I threw myself upon the last resource of the injured. I fell back upon eloquence. I really wish I could remember even faintly the outline of my discourse; for though not by any means a fluent German, the indignation that makes men poets converted me into a greater master of prose, and I told them a vast number of curious, but not complimentary, traits of the land they belonged to. I gave, too, a rapid historical sketch of their campaigns against the French, showing how they were always beaten, the only novelty being whether they ran away or capitulated. I reminded them that the victory over me would resound through Europe, being the only successful achievement of their arms for the last half-century. I expressed a fervent hope that the corporal would be decorated with the “Maria Theresa,” and his companion obtain the “valor medal,” for what they had done. Pensions, I hinted, were difficult in the present state of their finances, but rank and honor certainly ought to await them. I don’t know at what exact period of my peroration it was that I was literally “pulled up,” each of the horsemen holding a line fastened to my wrists, and giving me a drag forward that nearly carried me off my feet, and flat on my face. I stumbled, but recovered myself; and now saw that, bound as I was, with a gendarme on each side of me, it required all the activity I could muster, to keep my legs.
Another whispered conversation here took place across me, and I thought I heard the words Bregenz and Feldkirch interchanged, giving me to surmise that they were discussing to which place they should repair. My faint hope of returning to the former town was, however, soon extinguished, as the corporal, turning to me, said, “Our orders are to bring you alive to headquarters. We ‘ll do our best; but if, in crossing these torrents, you prefer to be drowned, it’s no fault of ours.”
“Do you mean by that,” cried I, “that I am to be dragged through the water in this fashion?”
“I mean that you are to come along as best you may.”
“It is all worthy of you, quite worthy!” screamed I, in a voice of wildest rage. “You reserve all your bravery for those who cannot resist you, – and you are right, for they are your only successes. The Turks beat you” – here they chucked me close up, and dashed into the stream. “The Prussians beat you!” I was now up to my waist in water. “The Swiss beat you!” Down I went over head and ears. “The French always – thrashed you” – down again – “at Ulm – Auster – litz – Aspern” – nearly suffocated, I yelled out, “Wagrara!” – and down I went, never to know any further consciousness till I felt myself lying on the soaked and muddy road, and heard a gruff voice saying, “Come along – we don’t intend to pass the night here!”
