Kitabı oku: «Arthur O'Leary: His Wanderings And Ponderings In Many Lands», sayfa 13

‘Yesterday morning an express reached the minister for the home affairs that the celebrated escroc, the Chevalier Duguet, whose famous forgery on the Neapolitan bank may be in the memory of our readers, was actually practising his art under a feigned name in Brussels, where, having obtained his entrée among some respectable families of the lower town, he has succeeded in obtaining large sums of money under various pretences. His skill at play is, they say, the least of his many accomplishments.’

She threw down the paper in a fit of laughter at these words, and called out, ‘Is it not too absurd? That’s Gustav’s doing; anything for a quiz, no matter what. He once got himself and Prince Carl of Prussia brought up before the police for hooting the king.’

‘But Duguet,’ said I – ‘what has he to do with Duguet?’

‘Don’t you see that’s a feigned name,’ replied she – ‘assumed by him as if he had half-a-dozen such? Read on, and you’ll learn it all.’

I took the paper, and continued where she ceased reading —

‘This Duguet is then, it would appear, identical with a very well-known Polish Count Czaroviski, who with his lady had been passing some weeks at the Hôtel de France. The police have, however, received his signalement, and are on his track.’

‘But why, in Heaven’s name, should he spread such an odious calumny on himself?’ said I.

‘Dear me, how very simple you are! I thought he had told you all. As a mere escroc, money will always bribe the authorities to let him pass; as a political offender, and as such the importance of his mission would proclaim him, nothing would induce the officials to further his escape – their own heads would pay for it. Once over the frontier, the ruse will be discovered, the editors obliged to eat their words and be laughed at, and Gustav receive the Black Eagle for his services. But see, here’s another.’

‘Among the victims at play of the well-known Chevalier Duguet – or, as he is better known here, the Count Czaroviski – is a simple Englishman, resident at the Hôtel de France, and from whom it seems he has won every louis-d’or he possessed in the world. This miserable dupe, whose name is O’Learie, or O’Leary – ’

At these words the countess leaned back on the sofa and laughed immoderately.

‘Have you, then, suffered so deeply?’ said she, wiping her eyes; ‘has Gustav really won all your louis-d’ors?’

‘This is too bad, far too bad,’ said I; ‘and I really cannot comprehend how any intrigue could induce him so far to asperse his character in this manner. I, for my part, can be no party to it.’

As I said this, my eyes fell on the latter part of the paragraph, which ran thus: —

‘This poor boy – for we understand he is no more – has been lured to his ruin by the beauty and attraction of Madame Czaroviski.’

I crushed the odious paper without venturing to see more, and tore it in a thousand pieces; and, not waiting an instant, hurried to my room and seized a pen. Burning with indignation and rage, I wrote a short note to the editor, in which I not only contradicted the assertions of his correspondent, but offered a reward of a hundred louis for the name of the person who had invented the infamous calumny.

It was some time before I recovered my composure sufficiently to return to the countess, whom I now found greatly excited and alarmed at my sudden departure. She insisted with such eagerness on knowing what I had done that I was obliged to confess everything, and show her a copy of the letter I had already despatched to the editor. She grew pale as death as she read it, flushed deeply, and then became pale again, while she sank faint and sick into a chair.

‘This is very noble conduct of yours,’ said she, in a low, hollow voice; ‘but I see where it will lead to. Czaroviski has great and powerful enemies; they will become yours also.’

‘Be it so,’ said I, interrupting her. ‘They have little power to injure me; let them do their worst.’

‘You forget, apparently,’ said she, with a most bewitching smile, ‘that you are no longer free to dispose of your liberty: that as my protector you cannot brave dangers and difficulties which may terminate in a prison.’ ‘What, then, would you have me do?’ ‘Hasten to the editor at once; erase so much of your letter as refers to the proposed reward. The information could be of no service to you if obtained – some misérable, perhaps some spy of the police, the slanderer. What could you gain by his punishment, save publicity? A mere denial of the facts alleged is quite sufficient; and even that,’ continued she, smiling, ‘how superfluous is it after all! A week – ten days at farthest – and the whole mystery is unveiled. Not that I would dissuade you from a course I see your heart is bent upon, and which, after all, is a purely personal consideration.’

‘Yes,’ said I, after a pause, ‘I’ll take your advice; the letter shall be inserted without the concluding paragraph.’ The calumnious reports on the count prevented madame dining that day at the table d’hôte; and I remarked, as I took my place at table, a certain air of constraint and reserve among the guests, as though my presence had interdicted the discussion of a topic which occupied all Brussels. Dinner over, I walked into the park to meditate on the course I should pursue under present circumstances, and deliberate with myself how far the habits of my former intimacy with the countess might or might not be admissible during her husband’s absence. The question was solved for me sooner than I anticipated, for a waiter overtook me with a short note, written with a pencil; it ran thus: —

‘They play the Zauberflotte to-night at the Opera. I shall go at eight: perhaps you would like a seat in the carriage? Duischka.’

‘Whatever doubts I might have conceived about my conduct, the manner of the countess at once dispelled them. A tone of perfect ease, and almost sisterly confidence marked her whole bearing; and while I felt delighted and fascinated by the freedom of our intercourse, I could not help thinking how impossible such a line of acting would have been in my own more rigid country, and to what cruel calumnies and aspersions it would have subjected her. ‘Truly,’ thought I, ‘if they manage these things – as Sterne says they do – “better in France,” they also far excel in them in Poland.’ And so my Polish grammar and the canzonettes and the drives to Boitsfort all went on as usual, and my dream of happiness, interrupted for a moment, flowed on again in its former channel with increased force.

A fortnight had now elapsed without any letter from the count, save a few hurried lines written from Magdeburg; and I remarked that the countess betrayed at times a degree of anxiety and agitation I had not observed in her before. At last the secret cause came out. We were sitting together in the park, eating ice after dinner, when she suddenly rose and prepared to leave the place.

‘Has anything happened to annoy you?’ said I hurriedly. ‘Why are you going?’

‘I can bear it no longer!’ cried she, as she drew her veil down and hastened forward, and without speaking another word, continued her way towards the hotel. On reaching her apartments, she burst into a torrent of tears, and sobbed most violently.

‘What is it?’ said I, having followed her, maddened by the sight of such sorrow. ‘For heaven’s sake tell me! Has any one dared – ’

‘No, no,’ replied she, wiping the tears away with her handkerchief, ‘nothing of the kind. It is the state of doubt, of trying, harassing uncertainty I am reduced to here, which is breaking my heart. Don’t you see that whenever I appear in public, by the air of insufferable impudence of the men, and the still more insulting looks of the women, how they dare to think of me? I have borne it as well as I was able hitherto; I can do so no longer.’

‘What!’ cried I impetuously, ‘and shall one dare to – ’

‘The world will always dare what may be dared in safety,’ interrupted she, laying her hand on my arm. ‘They know that you could not make a quarrel on my account without compromising my honour; and such an occasion to trample on a poor weak woman could not be lost. Well, well; Gustav may write to-morrow or next day. A little more patience; and it is the only cure for these evils.’

There was a tone of angelic sweetness in her voice as she spoke these words of resignation, and never did she seem more lovely in my eyes.

‘Now, then, as I shall not go to the opera, what shall we do to pass the time? You are tired – I know you are – of Polish melodies and German ballads. Well, well; then I am. I have told you that we Poles are as great gamblers as yourselves. What say you to a game at piquet?’

‘By all means,’ said I, delighted at the prospect of anything to while away the hours of her sorrowing.

‘Then you must teach me,’ rejoined she, laughing, ‘for I don’t know it. I’m wretchedly stupid about all these things, and never could learn any game but écarté.’

‘Then écarté be it,’ said I; and in a few minutes more I had arranged the little table, and down we sat to our party.

‘There,’ said she, laughing, and throwing her purse on the table, ‘I can only afford to lose so much; but you may win all that if you’re fortunate.’ A rouleau of louis escaped at the instant, and fell about the table.

‘Agreed,’ said I, indulging the quiz. ‘I am an inveterate gambler, and always play high. What shall be our stakes?’

‘Fifty, I suppose,’ said she, still laughing: ‘we can increase our bets afterwards.’

After some little badinage, we each placed a double louis-d’or on the board, and began. For a while the game employed our attention; but gradually we fell into conversation, the cards gradually dropped listlessly from our hands, the tricks remained unclaimed, and we could never decide whose turn it was to deal.

‘This wearies you, I see,’ said she; ‘perhaps you’d like to stop?’

‘By no means,’ said I. ‘I like the game, of all things.’ This I said rather because I was a considerable winner at the time than from any other motive; and so we played on till eleven o’clock, at which hour I usually took my leave, and by which time my gains had increased to some seventy louis.

‘Is it not fortunate,’ said she, laughing, ‘that eleven has struck? You ‘d certainly have won all my gold; and now you must leave off in the midst of your good fortune – and so, bonsoir, et à revanche.’

Each evening now saw our little party at écarté usurp the place of the drive and the opera; and though our successes ran occasionally high at either side, yet on the whole neither was a winner; and we jested about the impartiality with which fortune treated us both. At last, one evening, eleven struck when I was a greater winner than ever, and I thought I saw a little pique in her manner at the enormous run of luck I had experienced throughout.

‘Come,’ said she, laughing, ‘you have really wounded a national feeling in a Polish heart – you have asserted a superiority at a game of skill. I must beat you;’ and with that she placed five louis on the table. She lost. Again the same stake followed, and again the same fortune, notwithstanding that I did all in my power to avoid winning – of course without exciting her suspicions.

‘And so,’ said she, as she dealt the cards, ‘Ireland is really so picturesque as you say?’

‘Beautifully so,’ replied I, as, warmed up by a favourite topic, I launched forth into a description of the mountain scenery of the south and west. The rich emerald green of the valleys, the wild fantastic character of the mountains, the changeful skies, were all brought up to make a picture for her admiration; and she did indeed seem to enjoy it with the highest zest, only interrupting me in my harangue by the words, ‘Je marque le Roi,’ to which circumstance she directed my attention by a sweet smile, and a gesture of her taper finger. And thus hour followed hour; and already the grey dawn was breaking, while I was just beginning an eloquent description of the Killeries, and the countess suddenly looking at her watch, cried out —

‘How very dreadful! only think of three o’clock!’

True enough, it was that hour; and I started up to say good-night, shocked at myself for so far transgressing, and yet secretly flattered that my conversational powers had made time slip by uncounted.

‘And the Irish are really so clever, so gifted as you say?’ said she, as she held out her hand to wish me good-night.

‘The most astonishing quickness is theirs,’ replied I, half reluctant to depart; ‘nothing can equal their intelligence and shrewdness.’

‘How charming! Bonsoir,’ said she, and I closed the door.

What dreams were mine that night! What delightful visions of lake scenery and Polish countesses, of mountain gorges and blue eyes, of deep ravines and lovely forms! I thought we were sailing up Lough Corrib; the moon was up, spangling and flecking the rippling lake; the night was still and calm, not a sound save the cuckoo being heard to break the silence. As I listened I started, for I thought, instead of her wonted note, her cry was ever, ‘Je marque le Roi.’

Morning came at last; but I could not awake, and endeavoured to sink back into the pleasant realm of dreams, from which daylight disturbed me. It was noon when at length I succeeded in awaking perfectly.

‘A note for monsieur,’ said a waiter, as he stood beside the bed.

I took it eagerly. It was from the countess; its contents were these: —

‘My dear Sir, – A hasty summons from Count Czaroviski has compelled me to leave Brussels without wishing you good-bye, and thanking you for all your polite attentions. Pray accept these hurried acknowledgments, and my regret that circumstances do not enable me to visit Ireland, in which, from your description, I must ever feel the deepest interest.

‘The count sends his most affectionate greetings. – Yours ever sincerely,

‘Duischka Czaroviski née Gutzaff.’

‘And is she gone?’ said I, starting up in a state of frenzy.

‘Yes, sir; she started at ten o’clock.’

‘By what road?’ cried I, determined to follow her on the instant.

‘Louvain was the first stage.’

In an instant I was up, and dressed; in ten minutes more I was rattling over the stones to my banker’s.

‘I want three hundred napoleons at once,’ said I to the clerk.

‘Examine Mr. O’Leary’s account,’ was the dry reply of the functionary.

‘Overdrawn by fifteen hundred francs,’ said the other.

‘Overdrawn? Impossible!’ cried I, thunderstruck. ‘I had a credit for six hundred pounds.’

‘Which you drew out by cheque this morning,’ said the clerk. ‘Is not that your handwriting?’

‘It is,’ said I faintly, as I recognised my own scrawl, dated the evening before.

I had lost above seven hundred, and had not a sou left to pay post-horses.

I sauntered back sadly to the ‘France,’ a sadder man than ever in my life before. A thousand tormenting thoughts were in my brain; and a feeling of contempt for myself, somehow, occupied a very prominent place. Well, well; it’s all past and gone now, and I must not awaken buried griefs.

I never saw the count and countess again; and though I have since that been in St. Petersburg, the grand-duke seems to have forgotten my services, and a very pompous-looking porter in a bear-skin did not look exactly the kind of person to whom I should wish to communicate my impression about ‘Count Potoski’s house being my own.’

CHAPTER XI, A FRAGMENT OF FOREST LIFE

I am half sorry already that I have told that little story of myself. Somehow the recollection is painful. And now I would rather hasten away from Brussels, and wander on to other scenes; and yet there are many things I fain would speak of, and some people, too, worth a mention in passing. I should like to have taken you a moonlight walk through the Grande Place, and after tracing against the clear sky the delicate outline of the beautiful spire, whose gilded point seemed stretching away towards the bright star above it, to have shown you the interior of a Flemish club in the old Salle de Loyauté. Primitive, quaint fellows they are, these Flemings; consequential, sedate, self-satisfied, simple creatures; credulous to any extent of their own importance, but kindly withal; not hospitable themselves, but admirers of the virtue in others; easily pleased, when the amusement costs little; and, in a word, a people admirably adapted by nature to become a kind of territorial coinage alternately paid over by one great State to another, as the balance of Europe inclines to this side or that; with industry enough always to be worth robbing, and with a territory perfectly suitable to pitched battles – two admirable reasons for Belgium being a species of Houns-low Heath or Wormwood Scrubs, as the nations of the Continent feel disposed for theft or fighting. It was a cruel joke, however, to make them into a nation. One gets tired of laughing at them at last; and even Sancho’s Island of Barataria had become a nuisance, were it long-lived.

Well, I must hasten away now. I can’t go back to the ‘France’ yet awhile, so I’ll even take to the road. But what road? that’s the question. What a luxury it would be, to be sure, to have some person of exquisite taste, who could order dinner every day in the year, arranging the carte by a physiognomical study of your countenance, and plan out your route by some innate sense of your desires. Arthur O’Leary has none such, however, his whole philosophy in life being to throw the reins on the hack Fortune’s neck, and let the jade take her own way. Not that he has had any reason to regret his mode of travel. No: his nag has carried him pleasantly on through life, now cantering softly over the even turf, now picking her way more cautiously among bad ground and broken pebbles; and if here and there an occasional side leap or a start has put him out of saddle, it has scarcely put him out of temper; for one great secret has he at least learned – and, after all, it’s one worth remembering – very few of the happiest events and pleasantest circumstances in our lives have not their origin in some incident, which, had we been able, we had prevented happening. So then, while taking your mare Chance over a stiff country, be advised by me: give her plenty of head, sit close, and when you come to a ‘rasper,’ let her take her own way over it. So convinced am I of the truth of this axiom, that I should not die easy if I had not told it. And now, if anything should prevent these Fragments being printed, I leave a clause in my will to provide for three O’Leary treatises, to establish this fact being written, for which my executors are empowered to pay five pounds sterling for each. Why, were it not for this, I had been married, say at the least some fourteen times, in various quarters of the globe, and might have had a family of children, black and white, sufficient to make a set of chessmen among then. There’s no saying what might have happened to me. It would seem like boasting, if I said that the Emperor of Austria had some notions of getting rid of Metternich to give me the ‘Foreign Affairs,’ and that I narrowly escaped once commanding the Russian fleet in the Baltic. But of these at another time. I only wish to keep the principle at present in view, that Fortune will always do better for us than we could do for ourselves; but to this end there must be no tampering or meddling on our part. The goddess is not a West-End physician, who, provided you are ever prepared with your fee, blandly permits you all the little excesses you are bent on. No: she is of the Abernethy school, somewhat rough occasionally, but always honest; never suffering any interference from the patient, but exacting implicit faith and perfect obedience. As for me, I follow the regimen prescribed for me, without a thought of opposition; and wherever I find myself in this world, be it China or the Caucasus, Ghuznee, Genoa, or Glasnevin, I feel for the time that’s my fitting place, and endeavour to make the best of it.

The pedestrian alone, of all travellers, is thus taken by the hand by Fortune. Your extra post, with a courier on the box, interferes sadly with the current of all those little incidents of the road which are ever happening to him who takes to the ‘byways’ of the world. The odds are about one hundred to one against you that, when seated in your carriage, the postillion in his saddle and the fat courier outside, the words en route being given, you arrive at your destination that evening, without any accident or adventure whatever of more consequence than a lost shoe from the near leader, a snapped spring, or a heartburn from the glass of bad brandy you took at the third stage. A blue post with white stripes on it tells you that you are in Prussia; or a yellow-and-brown pole, that the Grand-Duke of Nassau is giving you the hospitality of his territory – save which you have no other evidence of change. The village inn, and its little circle of celebrities, opens not to you those peeps at humble life so indicative of national character: you stop not at the wayside chapel in the sultry heat of noon to charm away your peaceful hour of reflection, now turning from the lovely Madonna above the altar to the peasant girl who kneels in supplication beneath, now contrasting the stern features of some painted martyr with the wrinkled front and weather-beaten traits of some white-haired beggar, now musing over the quiet existence of the humble figure whose heavy sabots wake the echoes of the vaulted aisle, or watching, perhaps, that venerable priest who glides about before the altar in his white robes, and disappears by some unseen door, seeming like a phantom of the place. The little relics of village devotion, so touching in their poverty, awake no thought within you of the pious souls in yonder hamlet. The old curé himself, as he jogs along on his ambling pony, suggests nothing save the figure of age and decrepitude. You have not seen the sparkling eyes and flushed cheeks of his humble flock, who salute him as he passes, nor gazed upon that broad high forehead, where benevolence and charity have fixed their dwelling. The foot-sore veteran or the young conscript have not been your fellow-travellers; mayhap you would despise them. Their joys and sorrows, their hopes, their fears, their wishes, all move in a humble sphere, and little suit the ears of those whose fortune is a higher one.

Not that the staff and the knapsack are the passports to only such as these. My experience would tell very differently. With some of the most remarkable men I ever met, my acquaintance grew on the road; some of the very pleasantest moments of my life had their origin in the chances of the wayside; the little glimpses I have ever enjoyed of national character have been owing to these same accidents; and I have often hailed some casual interruption to my route, some passing obstacle to my journey, as the source of an adventure which might afford me the greatest pleasure. I date this feeling to a good number of years back, and in a great measure to an incident that occurred to me when first wandering in this country. It is scarcely a story, but as illustrating my position I will tell it.

Soon after my Polish adventure – I scarcely like to be more particular in my designation of it – I received a small remittance from England, and started for Namur. My Uncle Toby’s recollections had been an inducement for the journey, had I not the more pleasant one in my wish to see the Meuse, of whose scenery I had already heard so much.

The season was a delightful one – the beginning of autumn; and truly the country far surpassed all my anticipations. The road to Dinant led along by the river, the clear stream rippling at one side; at the other, the massive granite rocks, rising to several hundred feet, frowned above you; some gnarled oak or hardy ash, clung to the steep cliffs, and hung their drooping leaves above your head. On the opposite bank of the river, meadows of emerald green, intersected with ash rows and tall poplars, stretched away to the background of dense forest that bounded the view to the very horizon. Here and there a little farmhouse, framed in wood and painted in many a gaudy colour, would peep from the little inclosure of vines and plum-trees; more rarely still, the pointed roof and turreted gable of a venerable chateau would rise above the trees.

How often did I stop to gaze on these quaint old edifices, with their balustrades and terraces, on which a solitary peacock walked proudly to and fro – the only sound that stirred being the hissing plash of the jet d’ eau, whose sparkling drops came pattering on the broad water-lilies. And as I looked, I wondered within myself what kind of life they led who dwelt there. The windows were open to the ground, bouquets of rich flowers stood on the little tables. These were all signs of habitation, yet no one moved about, no stir or bustle denoted that there were dwellers within. How different from the country life of our great houses in England, with trains of servants and equipages hurrying hither and thither – all the wealth and magnificence of the great capital transported to some far-off county, that ennui and fastidiousness, fatigue, and lassitude, should lose none of their habitual aids! Well, for my part, the life among green trees and flowers, where the thrush sings, and the bee goes humming by, can scarcely be too homely for my taste. It is in the peaceful aspect of all Nature, the sense of calm that breathes from every leafy grove and rippling stream, that I feel the soothing influence of the country. I could sit beside the trickling stream of water, clear but brown, that comes drop by drop from some fissure in the rocky cliff and falls into the little well below, and dream away for hours. These slight and simple sounds that break the silence of the calm air are all fraught with pleasant thoughts; the unbroken stillness of a prairie is the most awful thing in all Nature.

Unoppressed in heart, I took my way along the river’s bank, my mind revolving the quiet, pleasant thoughts that silence and lovely scenery are so sure to suggest. Towards noon I sat myself down on a large flat rock beside the stream, and proceeded to make my humble breakfast – some bread and a few cresses, washed down with a little water scarce flavoured with brandy, followed by my pipe; and I lay watching the white bubbles that flowed by me, until I began to fancy I could read a moral lesson in their course. Here was a great swollen fellow, rotund and full, elbowing out of his way all his lesser brethren, jostling and pushing aside each he met with; but at last bursting from very plethora, and disappearing as though he had never been. There were a myriad of little bead-like specks, floating past noiselessly, and yet having their own goal and destination; some uniting with others, grew stronger and hardier, and braved the current with bolder fortune, while others vanished ere you could see them well. A low murmuring plash against the reeds beneath the rock drew my attention to the place, and I perceived that a little boat, like a canoe, was fastened by a hay-rope to the bank, and surged with each motion of the stream against the weeds. I looked about to see the owner, but no one could I detect; not a living thing seemed near, nor even a habitation of any kind. The sun at that moment shone strongly out, lighting up all the rich landscape on the opposite side of the river, and throwing long gleams into a dense beech-wood, where a dark, grass-grown alley entered. Suddenly the desire seized me to enter the forest by that shady path. I strapped on my knapsack at once, and stepped into the little boat. There was neither oar nor paddle, but as the river was shallow, my long staff served as a pole to drive her across, and I reached the shore safely. Fastening the craft securely to a branch, I set forward towards the wood. As I approached, a little board nailed to a tree drew my eye towards it, and I read the nearly-effaced inscription, ‘Route des Ardennes.’ What a thrill did not these words send through my heart! And was this, indeed, the forest of which Shakespeare told us? Was I really ‘under the greenwood tree,’ where fair Rosalind had rested, and where melancholy Jaques had mused and mourned? And as I walked along, how instinct with his spirit did each spot appear! There was the oak —

 
‘Whose antique root peeps out
Upon the brook that brawls along the wood.’
A little farther on I came upon —
‘The bank of osiers by the murmuring stream.’
 

What a bright prerogative has genius, that thus can people space with images which time and years erase not, making to the solitary traveller a world of bright thoughts even in the darkness of a lonely wood! And so to me appeared, as though before me, the scenes he pictured. Each rustling breeze that shook the leafy shade seemed like the impetuous passion of the devoted lover; the chirping notes of the wood-pigeon, like the flippant raillery of beauteous Rosalind; and in the low ripple of the brook I heard the complaining sounds of Jaques himself.

Sunk in such pleasant fancies I lay beneath a spreading sycamore, and with half-closed lids invoked the shades of that delightful vision before me, when the tramp of feet, moving across the low brushwood, suddenly aroused me. I started up on one knee, and listened. The next moment three men emerged from the wood into the path. The two foremost, dressed in blouses, were armed with carbines and a sabre; the last carried a huge sack on his shoulders, and seemed to move with considerable difficulty.

‘Ventre du diable!’ cried he passionately, as he placed his burden on the ground; ‘don’t hasten on this way; they’ll never follow us so far, and I am half dead with fatigue.’

‘Come, come, Gros Jean,’ said one of the others, in a voice of command, ‘we must not halt before we reach the three elms.’

‘Why not bury it here?’ replied the first speaker, ‘or else take your share of the labour?’

‘So I would,’ retorted the other violently, ‘if you could take my place when we are attacked; but, parbleu! you are more given to running away than fighting.’