Loe raamatut: «A Day's Ride: A Life's Romance», lehekülg 21

CHAPTER XXXIII. MY ELOQUENCE BEFORE THE CONSTANCE MAGISTRATES

Respectable reader, there is no use in asking you if you have ever been in the Hotel of the “Balance,” at Constance. Of course you have not. It is neither recorded in the book of John, nor otherwise known to fame. It is an obscure hostel, only visited by the very humblest wayfarers, and such poor offshoots of wretchedness as are fain to sleep on a truckle-bed and sup meanly. Vaterchen, however, spoke of it in generous terms. There was a certain oniony soup he had tasted there years ago whose flavor had not yet left his memory. He had seen, besides, the most delicious schweine fleiseh hanging down from the kitchen rafters, and it had been revealed to him in a dream that a solvent traveller might have rashers on demand.

Poor fellow! I had not the vaguest idea of the eloquence he possessed till he came to talk on these matters. From modest and distrustful, he grew assured and confident; his hesitation of speech was replaced by a fluent utterance and a rich vocabulary; and he repeatedly declared that though the exterior was unprepossessing, and the surface generally homely, there were substantial comforts obtainable which far surpassed the resources of more pretentious houses. “You are served on pewter, it is true,” said he; “but pewter is a rare material to impart relish to a savory mess.” Though we should dine in the kitchen, he gave me to understand that even in this there were advantages, and that the polite guest of the salon never knew what it was to taste that rich odor of the “roast,” or that fragrant incense that steamed up from the luscious stew, and which were to cookery what bouquet was to wine.

“I will not say that, honored sir,” continued he, “to you, in the mixed company which frequent such humble hearths there would be matter of interest and amusement; but, to a man like myself, these chance companionships are delightful. Here all are stragglers, all adventurers. Not a man that deposits his pack in the corner and draws in his chair to the circle but is a wanderer and a pilgrim of one sort or other.” He drew me an amusing picture of one of these groups, wherein, even without telling his story, each gave such insight into his life and travels as to present a sort of drama.

Whether it was that my companion had drawn too freely on his imagination, or that we had fallen on an unfortunate moment, I cannot say; but, though we found the company at the “Balance” numerous and varied, there was none of the sociality I looked for, still less of that generous warmth and good greeting which he assured me was the courtesy of such places. The men were chiefly carriers, with their mule-teams and heavy wagons, bound for the Bavarian Tyrol. There was a sprinkling of Jew pedlers, on their way to the Vorarlberg; a deserter from the Austrian army, trying to get back to Hesse Cassel; and an Italian image carrier, with a green parrot and a well-filled purse, going back to finish his days at Lucca.

Now none of these were elements of a very exalted or exclusive rank; they were each and all of them taken from the very base of the social pyramid; and yet, would it be believed that they regarded our entrance amongst them as an act of rare impudence!

A more polished company might have been satisfied with averted heads or cold looks; these were less equivocal. One called out to the landlord to know if he expected any gypsies; another, affecting to treat us as solicitors for their patronage, said he had no “batzen” to bestow on buffoonery; a third suggested we should get up our theatricals under the cart-shed outside, and beat the drum when we were ready; and the deserter, a poor weak-looking, mangy wretch with a ragged fatigue-jacket and broken boots, put his arm round Catinka’s waist, to draw her on his knee, for the which she dealt him such a slap on the face as fairly sent him on the floor, in which ignoble position.

Vaterchen kicked him again and again. In an instant all were upon us. Carters, pedlers, and image men assailed us furiously. I suppose I beat somebody; I know that several beat me. The impression left upon me when all was over was of a sort of human kaleidoscope, where the people turned every way without ceasing. Now we seemed all on our feet, now on our heads, now on the floor, now in the air, Vaterchen flying about like a demon, while Tinte-, fleck stood in a corner, with a gleaming stiletto in hand, saying something in Calabrian, which sounded like an invitation to come and be killed.

The police came at last; and, after a noisy scene of accusation and denial, the weight of evidence went against us, and we were marched off to prison, poor old Vaterchen crying like a child, for all the disgrace and misery he had brought on his benefactor: and while he kissed my hand, swearing that a whole life’s devotion would not be enough to recompense me for what he had been the means of inflicting on me, Catinka took it more easily, her chief regret apparently being, that nobody came near enough to give her a chance with her knife, which she assured us she wielded with a notable skill, and could, with a jerk, send flying through a door, like a javelin, at full six paces’ distance; nor, indeed, was it without considerable persuasion she could be induced to restore it to its sheath, which truth obliges me to own was inside her garter. Our prison, an old tower adjoining the lake, had been once the dungeon of. John Huss, and the torture chamber, as it was still called, continued to be used for mild transgressors, such as we were. A small bribe induced the jailer’s wife to take poor Tintefleck for the night into her own quarters, and Vaterchen and I were sole possessors of the gloomy old hall, which opened by a balcony, railed like a sort of cage, over the lake.

If the torture chamber had been denuded of its flesh pincers and thumb-screws, and the other ingenious devices of human cruelty, I am bound to own that its traditions as a place of suffering had not died out, as the fleas left nothing to be desired on the score of misery. Whether it was that they had been pinched by a long fast, or that we were more tender, cutaneously, than the aborigines, I know not, but I can safely aver that I never passed such a night, and sincerely trust that I may never pass such another. Though the air from the lake was cold and chilly, we preferred to crouch on the balcony to remaining within the walls; but even here our persecutors followed us.

Vaterchen slept through it all; an occasional convulsive jerk would show, at times, when one of the enemy had chanced upon some nervous fibre; but, on the whole, he bore up like one used to such martyrdom, and able to brave it. As for me, when morning broke, I looked like a strong case of confluent smallpox, with the addition that my heavy eyelids nearly closed over my eyes, and my lips swelled out like a Kaffir’s. How that young minx, Catinka, laughed at me. All the old man’s signs, warnings, menaces, were in vain; she screamed aloud with laughter, and never ceased, even as we were led into the tribunal and before the dread presence of the judge.

The judgment-seat was not imposing. It was a long, low, ill-lighted chamber, with a sort of raised counter at one end, behind which sat three elderly men, dressed like master sweeps, – that is, of the old days of climbing-boys. The prisoners were confined in a thing like a fold, and there leaned against one end of the same pen as ourselves, a square-built, thick-set man of about eight-and-forty, or fifty, dressed in a suit of coarse drab, and whom, notwithstanding an immense red beard and moustache, a clear blue eye and broad brow proclaimed to be English. He was being interrogated as we entered, but from his total ignorance of German the examination was not proceeding very glibly.

“You ‘re an Englishman, ain’t you?” cried he, as I came in. “You can speak High Dutch, perhaps?”

“I can speak German well enough to be intelligible, sir.”

“All right,” said he, in the same free-and-easy tone. “Will you explain to those old beggars there that they ‘re making fools of themselves. Here’s how it is. My passport was made out for two; for Thomas Harpar, that’s me, and Sam Bigges. Now, because Sam Rigges ain’t here, they tell me I can’t be suffered to proceed. Ain’t that stupid? Did you ever hear the like of that for downright absurdity before?”

“But where is he?”

“Well, I don’t mind telling you, because you ‘re a countryman; but I don’t like blackening an Englishman to one of those confounded foreigners. Rigges has run.”

“What do you mean by ‘run’?”

“I mean, cut his stick; gone clean away; and what’s worse, too, carried off a stout bag of dollars with him that we had for our journey.”

“Whither were you going?”

“That’s neither here nor there, and don’t concern you in any respect What you ‘ve to do is, explain to the old cove yonder, – the fellow in the middle is the worst of them, – tell him it’s all right, that I ‘m Harpar, and that the other ain’t here; or, look here, I ‘ll tell you what’s better, do you be Rigges, and it’s all right.”

I demurred flatly to this suggestion, but undertook to plead his cause on its true merits.

“And who are you, sir, that presume to play the advocate here?” said the judge, haughtily. “I fancied that you stood there to answer a charge against yourself.”

“That matter may be very easily disposed of, sir,” said I, as proudly; “and you will be very fortunate if you succeed as readily in explaining your own illegal arrest of me to the higher court of your country.”

With the eloquence which we are told essentially belongs to truth, I narrated how I had witnessed, as a mere passing traveller, the outrageous insult offered to these poor wanderers as they entered the inn. With the warm enthusiasm of one inspired by a good cause, I painted the whole incident with really scarcely a touch of embellishment, reserving the only decorative portion to a description of myself, whom I mentioned as an agent of the British government, especially employed on a peculiar service, the confirmation of which I proudly established by my passport setting forth that I was a certain “Ponto, Chargé des Dépêches.”

Now if there be one feature of continental life fixed and immutable, it is this: that wherever the German language be spoken, the reverence for a government functionary is supreme. If you can only show on documentary evidence that you are grandson of the man who made the broom that swept out a government office, it is enough. You are from that hour regarded as one of the younger children of Bureaucracy. You are under the protection of the state, and though you be but the smallest rivet in the machinery, there is no saying what mischief might not ensue if you were either lost or mislaid.

I saw in an instant the dread impression I had created, and I said, in a voice of careless insolence, “Go on, I beg of you; send me back to prison; chain me; perhaps you would like to torture me? The government I represent is especially slow in vindicating the rights of its injured officials. It has a European reputation for long-suffering, patience, and forbearance. Yes, Englishmen can be impaled, burned, flayed alive, disembowelled. By all means, avail yourselves of your bland privileges; have me led out instantly to the scaffold, unless you prefer to have me broken on the wheel!”

“Will nobody stop him!” cried the president, almost choking with wrath.

“Stop me; I suspect not, sir. It is upon these declarations of mine, made thus openly, that my country will found that demand for reparation which will one day cost you so dearly. Lead on, I am ready for the block.” And as I said this, I untied my cravat, and appeared to prepare for the headsman.

“If he will not cease, the court shall be dissolved,” called out the judge.

“Never, sir. Never, so long as I live, shall I surrender the glorious privileges of that freedom by which I assert my birthright as a Briton.”

“Well, you are as impudent a chap as ever I listened to,” muttered my countryman at my side.

“The prisoners are dismissed, the court is adjourned,” said the president, rising; and amidst a very disorderly crowd, not certainly enthusiastic in our favor, we were all hurried into the street.

“Come along down here,” said Mr. Harpar. “I ‘m in a very tidy sort of place they call the ‘Golden Pig.’ Come along, and bring the vagabonds, and let’s have breakfast together.”

I was hurt at the speech; but as my companions could not understand its coarseness, I accepted the invitation, and we followed him.

“Well, I ain’t seen your like for many a day,” said Harpar, as we went along. “If you ‘d have said the half of that to one of our ‘Beaks,’ I think I know where you ‘d be. But you seem to understand the fellows well. Mayhap you have lived much abroad?”

“A great deal. I am a sort of citizen of the world,” said I, with a jaunty easiness.

“For a citizen of the world you appear to have strange tastes in your companionship. How did you come to forgather with these creatures?”

I tried the timeworn cant about seeing life in all its gradations, – exploring the cabin as well as visiting the palace, and so on; but there was a rugged sort of incredulity in his manner that checked me, and I could not muster the glib rudeness which usually stood by me on such occasions.

“You ‘re not a man of fortune,” said he, dryly, as I finished; “one sees that plainly enough. You ‘re a fellow that should be earning his bread somehow; and the question is, – Is this the kind of life that you ought to be leading? What humbug it is to talk about knowing the world and such-like. The thing is, to know a trade, to understand some art, to be able to produce something, to manufacture something, to convert something to a useful purpose. When you ‘ve done that, the knowledge of men will come later on, never be afraid of that. It’s a school that we never miss one single day of our lives. But here we are; this is the ‘Pig.’ Now, what will you have for breakfast? Ask the vagabonds, too, and tell them there’s a wide choice here; they have everything you can mention in this little inn.”

An excellent breakfast was soon spread out before us, and though my humble companions did it the most ample justice, I sat there, thoughtful and almost sad. The words of that stranger rang in my ears like a reproach and a warning. I knew how truly he had said that I was not a man of fortune, and it grieved me sorely to think how easily he saw it. In my heart of hearts I knew it was the delusion I loved best To appear to the world at large an eccentric man of good means, free to do what he liked and go where he would, was the highest enjoyment I had ever prepared for myself; and yet here was a coarse, commonplace sort of man, – at least, his manners were unpolished and his tone underbred, – and he saw through it all at once.

I took the first opportunity to slip away unobserved from the company, and retired to the little garden of the inn, to commune with myself and be alone. But ere I had been many minutes there, Harpar joined me. He came up smoking his cigar, with the lounging, lazy air of a man at perfect leisure, and, consequently, quite free to be as disagreeable as he pleased.

“You went off without eating your breakfast,” said he, bluntly. “I saw how it was. You did n’t like my freedom with you. You fancied that I ought to have taken all that nonsense of yours about your rank and your way of life for gospel; or, at least, that I ought to have pretended to do so. That ain’t my way. I hate humbug.”

It was not very easy to reply good humoredly to such a speech as this. Indeed, I saw no particular reason to treat this man’s freedom with any indulgence, and drawing myself haughtily up, I prepared a very dry but caustic rejoinder.

“When I have learned two points,” said I, “on which you can inform me, I may be better able to answer what you have said. The first is: By what possible right do you take to task a person that you never met in your life till now? and, secondly, What benefit on earth could it be to me to impose upon a man from whom I neither want nor expect anything?”

“Easily met, both,” said he, quickly. “I’m a practical sort of fellow, who never wastes time on useless materials; that’s for your first proposition. Number two: you’re a dreamer, and you hate being awakened.”

“Well, sir,” said I, stiffly, “to a gentleman so remarkable for perspicuity, and who reads character at sight, ordinary intercourse must be wearisome. Will you excuse me if I take my leave of you here?”

“Of course, make no ceremony about it; go or stay, Just as you like. I never cross any man’s humor.”

I muttered something that sounded like a dissent to that doctrine, and he quickly added, “I mean, further than speaking my mind, that ‘s all; nothing more. If you had been a man of fair means, and for a frolic thought it might be good fun to consort for a few days with rapscallions of a travelling circus, all one could say was, it was n’t very good taste; but being, evidently, a fellow of another stamp, a young man who ought to be in his father’s shop or his uncle’s counting-house, following some honest craft or calling, – for you, I say, it was downright ruin.”

“Indeed!” said I, with an accent of intense scorn.

“Yes,” continued he, seriously, “downright ruin, There’s a poison in the lazy, good-for-nothing life of these devils, that never leaves a man’s blood. I ‘ve a notion that it would n’t hurt a man’s nature so much were he to consort with housebreakers; there’s, at least, something real about these fellows.”

“You talk, doubtless, with knowledge, sir,” said I, glad to say something that might offend him.

“I do,” said he, seriously, and not taking the smallest account of the impertinent allusion. “I know that if a man has n’t a fixed calling, but is always turning his hand to this, that, and t’ other, he will very soon cease to have any character whatsoever; he ‘ll just become as shifty in his nature as in his business. I ‘ve seen scores of fellows wrecked on that rock, and I had n’t looked at you twice till I saw you were one of them.”

“I must say, sir,” said I, summoning to my aid what I felt to be a most cutting sarcasm of manner, – “I must say, sir, that, considering how short has been the acquaintance which has subsisted between us, it would be extremely difficult for me to show how gratefully I feel the interest you have taken in me.”

“Well, I ‘m not so sure of that,” said he, thoughtfully.

“May I ask, then, how?”

“Are you sure, first of all, that you wish to show this gratitude you speak of?”

“Oh, sir, can you possibly doubt it?”

“I don’t want to doubt it, I want to profit by it.”

I made a bland bow that might mean anything, but did not speak.

“Here’s the way of it,” said he, boldly. “Rigges has run off with all my loose cash, and though there ‘s money waiting for me at certain places, I shall find it very difficult to reach them. I have come down here on foot from Wild-bad, and I can make my way in the same fashion, to Marseilles or Genoa; but then comes the difficulty, and I shall need about ten pounds to get to Malta. Could you lend me ten pounds?”

“Really, sir,” said I, coolly, “I am amazed at the innocence with which you can make such a demand on the man whom you have, only a few minutes back, so acutely depicted as an adventurer.”

“It was for that very reason I thought of applying to you. Had you been a young fellow of a certain fortune, you ‘d naturally have been a stranger to the accidents which now and then leave men penniless in out-of-the-way places, and it is just as likely that the first thought in your head would be, ‘Oh, he’s a swindler. Why has n’t he his letters of credit or his circular notes?’ But, being exactly what I take you for, the chances are, you ‘ll say: ‘What has befallen him to-day may chance to me to-morrow. Who can tell the day and the hour some mishap may not overtake him? and so I ‘ll just help him through it.’”

“And that was your calculation?”

“That was my calculation.”

“How sorry I feel to wound the marvellous gift you seem to possess of interpreting character. I am really shocked to think that for this time, at least, your acuteness is at fault.”

“Which means that you ‘ll not do it.”

I smiled a benign assent.

He looked at me for a minute or more with a sort of blank incredulity, and then, crossing his arms on his breast, moved slowly down the walk without speaking.

I cannot say how I detested this man; he had offended me in the very sorest part of all my nature; he had wounded the nicest susceptibility I possessed; of the pleasant fancies wherewith I loved to clothe myself he would not leave me enough to cover my nakedness; and yet, now that I had resented his cool impertinence, I hated myself far more than I hated him. Dignity and sarcasm, forsooth! What a fine opportunity to display them, truly! The man might be rude and underbred; he was rude and underbred! and was that any justification for my conduct towards him? Why had I not had the candor to say, “Here ‘s all I possess in the world; you see yourself that I cannot lend you ten pounds.” How I wished I had said that, and how I wished, even more ardently still, that I had never met him, never interchanged speech with him!

“And why is it that I am offended with him, – simply because he has discovered that I am Potts?” Now, these reflections were all the more bitter, since it was only twenty-four hours before that I had resolved to throw off delusion either of myself or others; that I would take my place in the ranks, and fight out my battle of life a mere soldier. For this it was that I made companionship with Vaterehen, walking the high road with that poor old man of motley, and actually speculating – in a sort of artistic way – whether I should not make love to Tintefleck! And if I were sincere in all this, how should I feel wounded by the honest candor of that plain-spoken fellow. He wanted a favor at my hands, he owned this; and yet, instead of approaching me with flattery, he at once assails the very stronghold of my self-esteem, and says, “No humbug, Potts; at least none with me!” He opens acquaintance with me on that masonic principle by which the brotherhood of Poverty is maintained throughout all lands and all peoples, and whose great maxim is, “He who lends to the poor man borrows from the ragged man.”

“I ‘ll go after him at once,” said I, aloud. “I ‘ll have more talk with him. I ‘m much mistaken if there’s not good stuff in that rugged nature.”

When I entered the little inn, I found Vaterehen fast asleep; he had finished off every flask on the table, and lay breathing stertorously, and giving a long-drawn whistle in his snore, that smacked almost of apoplexy. Tintefleck was singing to her guitar before a select audience of the inn servants, and Harpar was gone!

I gave the girl a glance of rebuke and displeasure. I aroused the old man with a kick, and imperiously demanded my bill.

“The bill has been paid by the other stranger,” said the landlord; “he has settled everything, and left a trinkgeld for the servants, so that you have nothing to pay.”

I could have almost cried with spite as I heard these words. It would have been a rare solace to my feelings if I could have put that man down for a rogue, and then been able to say to myself, how cleverly I had escaped the snares of a swindler. But to know now that he was not only honest but liberal, and to think, besides, that I had been his guest, – eaten of his salt, – it was more than I well could endure.

“Which way did he take?” asked I.

“Round the head of the lake for Lindao. I told him that the steamer would take him there to-morrow for a trifle, but he would not wait.”

“Ah me!” sighed Vaterchen, but half awake, and with one eye still closed, “and we are going to St. Gallen.”

“Who said so?” cried I, imperiously. “We are going to Lindao; at least, if I be the person who gives orders here. Follow!” And as I spoke I marched proudly on, while a slip-shod, shuffling noise of feet, and a low, half-smothered sob told me that they were coming after me.