Loe raamatut: «A Day's Ride: A Life's Romance», lehekülg 18

CHAPTER XXVIII. RESULTS OF THE EXPERIMENT

I could not hear the loud and repeated knockings which were made at my door, as at first waiters, and then the landlord himself, endeavored to gain admittance. At length a ladder was placed at the window, and a courageous individual, duly armed, appeared at my casement and summoned me to surrender. With what unspeakable relief did I learn that it was not to apprehend or arrest me that all these measures were taken: they were simply the promptings of a graceful benevolence; a sort of rumored intimation having got about, that I had taken prussic acid, or was being done to death by charcoal. Imagine a prisoner in a condemned cell suddenly awakened, and hearing that the crowd around him consisted not of the ordinary, the sheriff, Mr. Calcraft and Co., but a deputation of respectable citizens come to offer the representation of their borough or a piece of plate, and then you can have a mild conception of the pleasant revulsion of my feelings. I thanked my public in a short but appropriate address. I assured them, although there was a popular prejudice about doing this sort of thing in November in England, that it was deemed quite unreasonable at other times, and that really, in these days of domestic arsenic and conjugal strychnine, nothing but an unreasonable impatience would make a man self-destructive, – suicide arguing that as a man was really so utterly valueless, it was worth nobody’s while to get rid of him. My explanation over, I ordered breakfast.

“Why not dinner?” said the waiter. “It is close on four o’clock.”

“No,” said I; “the ladies will expect me at dinner.”

“The ladies are near Constance by this, or else the roads are worse than we thought them.”

“Near Constance! Do you mean to say they have gone?”

“Yes, sir, at daybreak; or, indeed, I might say before daybreak.”

“Gone! actually gone!” was all that I could utter.

“They never went to bed last night, sir; the old lady was taken very ill after tea, and all the house running here and there for doctors and remedies, and the young lady, though she bore up so well, they tell me she fainted when she was alone in her own room. In fact, it was a piece of confusion and trouble until they started, and we may say, none of us had a moment’s peace till we saw them off.”

“And how came it that I was never called?”

“I believe, sir, but I’m not sure, the landlord tried to awake you. At all events, he has a note for you now, for I saw the old lady place it in his hand.”

“Fetch it at once,” said I; and when he left the room, I threw some water over my face, and tried to rally all my faculties to meet the occasion.

When the waiter reappeared with the note, I bade him leave it on the table; I could not venture to read it while he was in the room. At length he went away, and I opened it. These were the contents: —

“Sir, – When a person of your rank abuses the privilege of his station, it is supposed that he means to rebuke. Although innocent of any cause for your displeasure, I have preferred to withdraw myself from your notice than incur the chance of so severe a reprimand a second time.

“I am, sir, with unfeigned sorrow and humility, your most devoted follower and servant,

“Martha Keats.

“To the – de – ”

This was the whole of it; not a great deal as correspondence, but matter enough for much thought and much misery. After a long and painful review of my conduct, one startling fact stood prominently forward, which was, that I had done something which, had it been the act of a royal prince, would yet have been unpardonable, but which, if known to emanate from one such as myself, would have been a downright outrage.

I went into the whole case, as a man who detests figures might have gone into a long and complicated account; and just as he would skip small sums, and pay little heed to fractions, I aimed at arriving at some grand solid balance for or against myself.

I felt, that if asked to produce my books, they might run this wise: Potts, on the credit side, a philanthropist, self-denying, generous, and trustful; one eager to do good, thinking no evil of his neighbor, hopeful of everybody, anxious to establish that brotherhood amongst men which, however varied the station, could and ought to subsist, and which needs but the connecting link of one sympathetic existence to establish. On the other side, Potts, I grieve to say, appeared that which Ferdinand Mendez Pinto was said to be.

When I had rallied a bit from the stunning effect of this disagreeable “total,” I began to wish that I had somebody to argue the matter out with me. The way I would put my case would be thus: “Has not – from the time of Martius Curtius down to the late Mr. Sadlier, of banking celebrity – the sacrifice of one man for the benefit of his fellows, been recognized as the noblest exposition of heroism? Now, although it is much to give up life for the advantage of others, it is far more to surrender one’s identity, to abandon that grand capital Ego! which gives a man his self-esteem and suggests his self-preservation. And who, I would ask, does this so thoroughly as the man who everlastingly palms himself upon the world for that which he is not? According to the greatest happiness principle, this man may be a real boon to humanity. He feeds this one with hope, the other with flattery; he bestows courage on the weak, confidence on the wavering. The rich man can give of his abundance, but it is out of his very poverty this poor fellow has to bestow all. Like the spider, he has to weave his web from his own vitals, and like the same spider he may be swept away by some pretentious affectation of propriety.”

While I thus argued, the waiter came in to serve dinner. It looked all appetizing and nice; but I could not touch a morsel. I was sick at heart; Kate Herbert’s last look as she quitted the room was ever before me. Those dark gray eyes – which you stupid folk will go on calling blue – have a sort of reproachful power in them very remarkable. They don’t flash out in anger like black eyes, or sparkle in fierceness like hazel; but they emit a sort of steady, fixed, concentrated light, that seems to imply that they have looked thoroughly into you, and come back very sad and very sorry for the inquiry. I thought of the happy days I had passed beside her; I recalled her low and gentle voice, her sweet half-sad smile, and her playful laugh, and I said, “Have I lost all these forever, and how? What stupid folly possessed me last evening? How could I have been so idiotic as not to see that I was committing the rankest of all enormities? How should I, in my insignificance, dare to assail the barriers and defences which civilization has established, and guards amongst its best prerogatives? Was this old buffoon, was this piece of tawdry fringe and spangles, a fitting company for that fair and gentle girl? How artistically false, too, was the position I had taken! Interweaving into my ideal life these coarse realities, was the same sort of outrage as shocks one in some of the Venetian churches, where a lovely Madonna, the work of a great hand, may be seen bedizened and disfigured with precious stones over her drapery. In this was I violating the whole poetry of my existence. These figures were as much out of keeping as would be a couple of Ostade’s Boors in a grand Scripture piece by Domenichino.

“And yet, Potts,” thought I, “they were really living creatures. They had hearts for Joy and sorrow and hope, and the rest of it. They were pilgrims travelling the selfsame road as you were. They were not illusions, but flesh and blood folk, that would shiver when cold, and die of hunger if starved. Were they not, then, as such, of more account than all your mere imaginings? Would not the least of their daily miseries outweigh a whole bushel of fancied sorrow? And is it not a poor selfishness on your part, when you deem some airy conception of your brain of more account than that poor old man and that dark-eyed girl? Last of all, are they hot, in all their ragged finery, more ‘really true men’ than you yourself, Potts, living in a maze of delusions? They only act when the sawdust is raked and the lamps are lighted; but you are en scène from dawn to dark, and only lay down one motley to don another. Is not this wretched? Is it not ignoble? In all these changes of character, how much of the real man will be left behind? Will there be one morsel of honest flesh, when all the lacquer of paint is washed off? And was it – oh, was it for this you first adventured out on the wide ocean of life?”

I passed the evening and a great part of the night in such self-accusings, and then I addressed myself to action. I bethought me of my future, and with whom and where and how it might be passed. The bag of money intrusted to me by the Minister to pay the charges of the road was banging where I had placed it, – on the curtain-holder. I opened it, and found a hundred and forty gold Napoleons, and some ten or twelve pounds in silver. I next set to count over my own especial hoard; it was a fraction under a thousand francs! Forty pounds was truly a very small sum wherewith to confront a world to which I brought not any art, or trade, or means of livelihood; I say forty, because I had not the shadow of a pretext for touching the other sum, and I resolved at once to transmit it to the owner. Now, what could be done with so humble a capital? I had heard of a great general who once pawned a valuable sword – a sword of honor it was – wherewith to buy a horse, and, so mounted, he went forth over the Alps, and conquered a kingdom. The story had no moral for me, for somehow I did not feel as though I were the stuff that conquers kingdoms, and yet there must surely be a vast number of men in life with about the same sort of faculties, merits, and demerits as I have. There must be a numerous Potts family in every land, well-meaning, right-intentioned, worthless creatures, who, out of a supposed willingness to do anything, always end in doing nothing. Such people, it must be inferred, live upon what are called their wits, or, in other words, trade upon the daily accidents of life, and the use to which they can turn the traits of those they meet with.

I was resolved not to descend to this; no, I bad deter-. mined to say adieu to all masquerading, and be simply Potts, the druggist’s son, one who had once dreamed of great ambitions, but had taken the wrong road to them. I would from this hour be an honest, truth-speaking, simple-hearted creature. What the world might henceforth accord me of its sympathy should be tendered on honest grounds; nay, more, in the spirit of those devotees who inspire themselves with piety by privations, I resolved on a course of self-mortification, I would not rest till I had made my former self expiate all the vainglorious wantonness of the past, and * pay in severe penance for every transgression I had committed. I began boldly with my reformation. I sat down and wrote thus: —

To Mr. Dycer, Stephen’s-Green, Dublin.

“The gentleman who took away a dun pony from your livery stables in the month of May last, and who, from certain circumstances, has not been able to restore the animal, sends herewith twenty pounds as his probable value. If Mr. D. conscientiously considers the sum insufficient, the sender will at some future time, he hopes, make good the difference.”

Doubtless my esteemed reader will say at this place, “The fellow could n’t do less; he need not vaunt himself on a commonplace act of honesty, which, after all, might have been suggested by certain fears of future consequences. His indiscretion amounted to horse-stealing, and horsestealing is a felony.”

All true, every word of it, most upright of Judges: I was simply doing what I ought, or rather what I ought long since to have done. But now, let me ask, is this, after all, the invariable course in life, and is there no merit in doing what one ought when every temptation points to the other direction? and lastly, is it nothing to do what a man ought, when the doing costs exactly the half of all he has in the world?

Now, if I were, instead of being Potts, a certain great writer that we all know and delight in, I would improve the occasion here by asking my reader does he always himself do the right thing? I would say to him, perhaps with all haste to anticipate his answer, “Of course you do. You never pinch your children, or kick your wife out of bed; you are a model father and a churchwarden; but I am only a poor apothecary’s son brought up in precepts of thrift and the Dublin Pharmacopoeia;” and I own to you, when I placed the half of my twenty-pound crisp clean bank note inside of that letter, I felt I was figuratively cutting myself in two. But I did it “like a man,” if that be a proper phrase for an act which I thought godlike. And oh, take my word for it, when a sacrifice has n’t cost you a coach-load of regrets and a shopful of hesitations about making it, it is of little worth. There’s a wide difference between the gift of a sheep from an Australian farmer, or the present of a child’s pet lamb, even though the sheep be twice the size of the lamb.

I gave myself no small praise for what I had done, much figurative patting on the back, and a vast deal of that very ambiguous consolation which beggars in Catholic countries bestow in change for alms, by assurance that it will be remembered to you in purgatory.

“Well,” thought I, “the occasion is n’t very far off, for my purgatory begins to-morrow.”

CHAPTER XXIX. ON FOOT AND IN LOW COMPANY

I was in a tourist locality, and easily provided myself with a light equipment for the road, resolved at once to take the footpath in life and “seek my fortune.” I use these words simply as the expression of the utter uncertainty which prevailed as to whither I should go, and what do when I got there.

If there be few more joyous things in life than to start off on foot with three or four choice companions, to ramble through some fine country rich in scenery, varied in character and interesting in story, there are few more lonely sensations than to set out by oneself, not very decided what way to take, and with very little money to take it.

One of the most grievous features of small means is, certainly, the almost exclusive occupation it gives the mind as to every, even the most trivial, incident that involves cost. Instead of dining on fish and fowl and fruit, you feel eating so many groschen and kreutzers. You are not drinking wine, your beverage is a solution of copper batzen in vinegar!’ When you poke the fire, every spark that flies up the chimney’ is a baiocco! You come at last to suspect that the sun won’t warm you for nothing, and that the very breeze that cooled your brow is only waiting round the corner to ask “for something for himself.”

When the rich man lives sparingly, the conscious power of the wealth he might employ if he pleased, sustains him. The poor fellow has no such consolation to fall back on; the closer his coat is examined, the more threadbare will it appear. If it were simply that he dressed humbly and fared coarsely, it might be borne well, but it is the hourly depreciation that poverty is exposed to, makes its true grievance. “An ill-looking” – this means, generally, ill-dressed – “an ill-looking fellow had been seen about the premises at night-fall,” says the police report “A very suspicious character had asked for a bed; his wardrobe was in a ‘spotted handkerchief.’ The waiter remembers that a fellow, much travel-stained and weary, stopped at the door that evening and asked if there was any cheap house of entertainment in the village.” Heaven help the poor wayfarer if any one has been robbed, any house broken into, any rick set fire to, while he passed through that locality. There is no need of a crowd of witnesses to convict him, since every bend in his hat, every tear in his coat, and every rent in his shoes are evidence against him.

If I thought over these things in sorrow and humiliation, it was in a very proud spirit that I called to mind how, on that same morning, I deposited the bag with all the money in Messrs. Haber’s bank, saw the contents duly counted over, replaced and sealed up, and then addressed to Her Majesty’s Minister at Kalbbratonstadt, taking a receipt for the same. “This was only just common honesty,” says the reader. Oh, if there is an absurd collocation of words, it is that! Common honesty! why, there is nothing in this world so perfectly, so totally uncommon! Never, I beseech you, undervalue the waiter who restores the ring you dropped in the coffee-room; nor hold him cheaply who gives back the umbrella you left in the cab. These seem such easy things to do, but they are not easy. Men are more or less Cornish wreckers in life, and very apt to regard the lost article as treasure-trove. I have said all this to you, amiable reader, that you may know what it cost me, on that same morning, not to be a rogue, and not to enrich myself with the goods of another.

I underwent a very long and searching self-examination to ascertain why it was I had not appropriated that bag, – an offence which, legally speaking, would only amount to a breach of trust. I said, “Is it that you had no need of the money, Potts? Did you feel that your own means were ample enough? Was it that your philosophy had made you regard gold as mere dross, and then think that the load was a burden? Or, taking higher ground, had you recalled the first teachings of your venerable parent, that good man and careful apothecary, who had given you your first perceptions of right and wrong?” I fear that I was obliged to say No, in turn, to each of these queries. I would have been very glad to be right, proud to have been a philosopher, overjoyed to feel myself swayed by moral motives, but I could not palm the imposition on my conscience, and had honestly to own that the real reason of my conduct was – I was in love! There was the whole of it!

There was an old sultan once so impressed with an ill notion of the sex, that whenever a tale of misfortune or disgrace reached him, his only inquiry as to the source of the evil was, Who was she? Now, my experiences of life have travelled in another direction, and whenever I read of some noble piece of heroism or some daring act of self-devotion, I don’t ask whether he got the Bath or the Victoria Cross, if he were made a governor here or a vice-governor there, but who was She that prompted this glorious deed? I ‘d like to know all about her: the color of her eyes, her hair; was she slender or plump; was she fiery or gentle; was it an old attachment or an acute attack coming after a paroxysm at first sight?

If I were the great chief of some great public department where all my subordinates were obliged to give heavy security for their honesty, I would neither ask for bail bonds or sureties, but I’d say, “Have you got a wife, or a sweetheart? Either will do. Let me look at her. If she be worthy an honest man’s love, I am satisfied; mount your high stool and write away.”

Oh, how I longed to stand aright in that dear girl’s eyes, that she should see me worthy of her! Had she yielded to all my wayward notions and rambling opinions, giving way either in careless indolence or out of inability to dispute them, she had never made the deep impression on my heart. It was because she had bravely asserted her own independence, never conceding where unconvinced, never yielding where unvanquished, that I loved her. What a stupid revery was that of mine when I fancied her one of those strong-minded, determined women, – a thickly shod, umbrella-carrying female, who can travel alone and pass her trunk through a custom-house. No, she was delicate, timid, and gentle; there was no over-confidence in her, nor the slightest pretension. Rule me? Not a bit of it. Guide, direct, support, confirm, sustain me; elevate my sentiments, cheer me on my road in life, making all evil odious in my eyes, and the good to seem better!

I verily believe, with such a woman, an humble condition m life offers more chances of happiness than a state of wealth and splendor. If the best prizes of life are to be picked up around a man’s fireside, moderate means, conducing as they do to a home life, would point more certainly to these than all the splendor of grand receptions. If I were, say, a village doctor, a schoolmaster; if I were able to eke out subsistence in some occupation, whose pursuit might place me sufficiently favorably in her eyes. I don’t like grocery, for instance, or even “dry goods,” but something – it’s no fault of mine if the English language be cramped and limited, and that I must employ the odious word “genteel,” but it conveys, in a fashion, all that I aim at.

I began to think how this was to be done. I might return to my own country, go back to Dublin, and become Potts and Son, – at least son! A very horrid thought and very hard to adopt.

I might take a German degree in physic, and become an English doctor, say at Baden, Ems, Geneva, or some other resort of my countrymen on the Continent. I might give lectures, I scarcely well knew on what, still less to whom; or I could start as Professor Potts, and instruct foreigners in Shakspeare. There were at least “three courses” open to me; and to consider them the better, I filled my pipe, and strolled off the high-road into a shady copse of fine beech-trees, at the foot of one of which, and close to a clear little rivulet, I threw myself at full length, and thus, like Tityrus, enjoyed the leafy shade, making my meerschaum do duty for the shepherd’s reed.

I had not been long thus, when I heard the footsteps of some persons on the road, and shortly after, the sound discontinuing, I judged that they must have crossed into the sward beneath the wood. As I listened I detected voices, and the next moment two figures emerged from the cover and stood before me: they were Vaterchen and Tintefleck.

“Sit down,” said I, pointing to each in turn to take a place at either side of me. They had, it is true, been the cause of the great calamity of my life, but in no sense was the fault theirs, and I wished to show that I was generous and open-minded. Vaterchen acceded to my repeated invitation with a courteous humility, and seated himself at a little distance off; but Tintefleck threw herself on the grass, and with such a careless abandon that her hair escaped from the net that held it, and fell in great wavy masses across my feet.

“Ay,” thought I, as I looked at the graceful outlines of her finely shaped figure, “here is the Amaryllis come to complete the tableau; only I would wish fewer spangles, and a little more simplicity.”

I saw that it was necessary to reassure Vaterchen as to my perfect sanity by some explanation as to my strange mode of travelling, and told him briefly, “that it was a caprice common enough with my countrymen to assume the knapsack, and take the road on foot; that we fancied in this wise we obtained a nearer view of life, and at least gained companionship with many from whom the accident of station might exclude us.” I said this with an artful delicacy, meant to imply that I was pointing at a very great and valuable privilege of pedestrianism.

He smiled with a sad, a very sad expression on his features, “But in what wise, highly honored sir?” – he addressed me always as Hoch Geehrter Herr, – “could you promise to yourself advantage from such associations as these? I cannot believe you would condescend to know us simply to carry away in memory the little traits that must needs distinguish such lives as ours. I would not insult my respect for you by supposing that you come amongst us to note the absurd contrast between our real wretchedness and our mock gayety; and yet what else is there to gain? What can the poor mountebank teach you beyond this?”

“Much,” said I, with fervor, as I grasped his hand, and shook it heartily; “much, if you only gave me this one lesson that I now listen to, and I learn that a man’s heart can beat as truthfully under motley as under the embroidered coat of a minister. The man who speaks as you do, can teach me much.”

He gave a short but heavy sigh, and turned away his head. He arose after a few minutes, and, going gently across the grass, spread his handkerchief over the head and face of the girl, who had at once fallen into a deep sleep.

“Poor thing,” muttered he, “it is well she can sleep! She has eaten nothing to-day!”

“But, surely,” said I, “there is some village, or some wayside inn near this – ”

“Yes, there is the ‘Eckstein,’ a little public about two miles further; but we did n’t care to reach it before nightfall. It is so painful to pass many hours in a place and never call for anything; one is ill-looked on, and uncomfortable from it; and as we have only what would pay for our supper and lodging, we thought we ‘d wear away the noon in the forest here, and arrive at the inn by close of day.”

“Let me be your travelling-companion for to-day,” said I, “and let us push forward and have our dinner together. Tes, yes, there is far less of condescension in the offer than you suspect. I am neither great nor milor, I am one of a class like your own, Vaterchen, and what I do for you today some one else will as probably do for me to-morrow.”

Say what I could, the old man would persist in believing that this was only another of those eccentricities for which Englishmen are famed; and though, with the tact of a native good breeding, he showed no persistence in opposition, I saw plainly enough that he was unconvinced by all my arguments.

While the girl slept, I asked him how he chanced upon the choice of his present mode of life, since there were many things in his tone and manner that struck me as strangely unlike what I should have ascribed to his order.

“It is a very short story,” said he; “five minutes will tell it, otherwise I might scruple to impose on your patience. It was thus I became what you see me.”

Short as the narrative was, I must keep it for another page.