A Day's Ride Part 13

"We went out, afterwards, if you mean _that_," said he, quietly, "and he ran me through here." As he spoke, he proceeded, in leisurely fas.h.i.+on, to unb.u.t.ton the wrist of his s.h.i.+rt, and, baring his arm midway, showed me a pinkish cicatrice of considerable extent. "It went, the doctor said, within a hair's-breadth of the artery."

I made no comment upon this story. From the moment I heard it, I felt as though I was travelling with the late Mr. Palmer, of Rugeley. I was as it were in the company of one who never would have scrupled to dispose of me, at any moment and in any way that his fancy suggested. My code respecting the duel was to regard it as the last, the very last, appeal in the direst emergency of dishonor. The men who regarded it as the settlement of slight differences, I deemed a.s.sa.s.sins. They were no more safe a.s.sociates for peaceful citizens than a wolf was a meet companion for a flock of South Downs. The more I ruminated on this theme, the more indignant grew my resentment, and the question a.s.sumed the shape of asking, "Is the great ma.s.s of mankind to be hectored and bullied by some half-dozen scoundrels with skill at the small sword?" Little knew I that in the ardor of my indignation I had uttered these words aloud,--spoken them with an earnest vehemence, looking my fellow-traveller full in the face, and frowning.

"Scoundrel is strong, eh?" said he, slowly; "_very_ strong!"

"Who spoke of a scoundrel?" asked I, in terror, for his confounded calm, cold manner made my very blood run chilled.

"Scoundrel is exactly the sort of word," added he, deliberately, "that once uttered can only be expiated in one way. You do not give me the impression of a very bright individual, but certainly you can understand so much."

I bowed a dignified a.s.sent; my heart was in my mouth as I did it, and I could not, to save my life, have uttered a word. My predicament was highly perilous; and all incurred by what?--that pa.s.sion for adventure that had led me forth out of a position of easy obscurity into a world of strife, conflict, and difficulty. Why had I not stayed at home? What foolish infatuation had ever suggested to me the Quixotism of these wanderings? Blondel had done it all. Were it not for Blondel, I had never met Father d.y.k.e, talked myself into a stupid wager, lost what was not my own; in fact, every disaster sprang out of the one before it, just as twig adheres to branch and branch to trunk. Shall I make a clean breast of it, and tell my companion my whole story? Shall I explain to him that at heart I am a creature of the kindliest impulses and most generous sympathies, that I overflow with good intentions towards my fellows, and that the problem I am engaged to solve is how shall I dispense most happiness? Will he comprehend me? Has he a nature to appreciate an organization so fine and subtle as mine? Will he understand that the fairy who endows us with our gifts at birth is reckoned to be munificent when she withholds only one high quality, and with me that one was courage? I mean the coa.r.s.e, vulgar, combative sort of courage that makes men prizefighters and bargees; for as to the grander species of courage, I imagine it to be my distinguis.h.i.+ng feature.

The question is, will he give me a patient hearing, for my theory requires nice handling, and some delicacy in the developing? He may cut me short in his bluff, abrupt way, and say, "Out with it, old fellow, you want to sneak out of this quarrel." What am I to reply? I shall rejoin: "Sir, let us first inquire if it be a quarrel. From the time of Atrides down to the Crimean war, there has not been one instance of a conflict that did not originate in misconceptions, and has not been prolonged by delusions! Let us take the Peloponnesian war." A short grunt beside me here cut short my argumentation. He was fast, sound asleep, and snoring loudly. My thoughts at once suggested escape. Could I but get away, I fancied I could find s.p.a.ce in the world, never again to see myself his neighbor.

The train was whirling along between deep chalk cuttings, and at a furious pace; to leap out was certain death. But was not the same fate reserved for me if I remained? At last I heard the crank-crank of the break! We were nearing a station; the earth walls at either side receded; the view opened; a spire of a church, trees, houses appeared; and, our speed diminis.h.i.+ng, we came b.u.mping, throbbing, and snorting into a little trim garden-like spot, that at the moment seemed to me a paradise.

I beckoned to the guard to let me out,--to do it noiselessly I slipped a s.h.i.+lling into his band. I grasped my knapsack and my wrapper, and stole furtively away. Oh, the happiness of that moment as the door closed without awakening him!

"Anywhere--any carriage--what cla.s.s you please," muttered I. "There, yonder," broke I in, hastily,--"where that lady in mourning has just got in."

"All full there, sir," replied the man; "step in here.": And away we went.

My compartment contained but one pa.s.senger; he wore a gold band round his oil-skin cap, and seemed the captain of a mail steamer, or Admiralty agent; he merely glanced at me as I came in, and went on reading his newspaper.

"Going north, I suppose?" said he, bluntly, after a pause of some time.

"Going to Germany?"

"No" said I, rather astonished at his giving me this destination. "I 'm for Brussels."

"We shall have a rough night of it, outside; gla.s.s is falling suddenly, and the wind has chopped round to the southward and eastward!"

"I'm sorry for it," said I. "I'm but an indifferent sailor."

"Well, I 'll tell you what to do: just turn into my cabin, you 'll have it all to yourself; lie down flat on your back the moment you get aboard; tell the steward to give you a strong gla.s.s of brandy-and-water--the captain's brandy say, for it is rare old stuff, and a perfect cordial, and my name ain't Slidders if you don't sleep all the way across."

I really had no words for such unexpected generosity; how was I to believe my ears at such a kind proposal of a perfect stranger? Was it anything in my appearance that could have marked me out as an object for these attentions? "I don't know how to thank you enough," said I, in confusion; "and when I think that we meet now for the first time--"

"What does that signify?" said he, in the same short way. "I 've met pretty nigh all of you by this time. I 've been a matter of eleven years on this station!"

"Met pretty nigh all of us!" What does that mean? Who and what are we?

He can't mean the Pottses, for I 'm the first who ever travelled even thus far! But I was not given leisure to follow up the inquiry, for he went on to say how in all that time of eleven years he had never seen threatenings of a worse night than that before us.

"Then why venture out?" asked I, timidly.

"They must have the bags over there; that's the reason," said he, curtly: "besides, who's to say when he won't meet dirty weather at sea,--one takes rough and smooth in this life, eh?"

The observation was not remarkable for originality, but I liked it. I like the reflective turn, no matter how beaten the path it may select for its exercise.

"It's a short trip,--some five or six hours at most," said he; "but it's wonderful what ugly weather one sees in it. It's always so in these narrow seas."

"Yes," said I, concurringly, "these petty channels, like the small events of our life, are often the sources of our greatest perils."

He gave a little short grunt: it might have been a.s.sent, and it might possibly have been a rough protest against further moralizing; at all events, he resumed his paper, and read away without speaking. I had time to examine him well, now, at my leisure, and there was nothing in his face that could give me any clew to the generous nature of his offer to me. No, he was a hard-featured, weather-beaten, rather stern sort of man, verging on fifty seven or eight. He looked neither impulsive nor confiding, and there was in the shape of his mouth, and the curve of the lines around it, that peremptory and almost cruel decision that marks the sea-captain. "Well," thought I, "I must seek the explanation of the riddle elsewhere. The secret sympathy that moved him must have its root in _me_; and, after all, history has never told that the dolphins who were charmed by Orpheus were peculiar dolphins, with any special fondness for music, or an ear for melody; they were ordinary creatures of the deep,--fish, so to say, taken _ex-medio acervo_ of delphinity.

The marvel of their captivation lay in the spell of the enchanter. It was the thrilling touch of _his_ fingers, the tasteful elegance of _his_ style, the voluptuous inthralment of the sounds _he_ awakened, that worked the miracle. This man of the sea has, therefore, been struck by something in my air, bearing, or address; one of those mysterious sympathies which are the hidden motives that guide half our lives, had drawn him to me, and he said to himself, 'I like that man. I have met more pretentious people, I have seen persons who desire to dominate and impose more than he, but there is that about him that somehow appeals to the instincts of my nature, and I can say I feel myself his friend already.'"

As I worked at my little theory, with all the ingenuity I knew how to employ on such occasions, I perceived that he had put up his newspaper, and was gathering together, in old traveller fas.h.i.+on, the odds and ends of his baggage.

"Here we are," said he, as we glided into the station, "and in capital time too. Don't trouble yourself about your traps. My steward will be here presently, and take all your things down to the packet along with my own. Our steam is up; so lose no time in getting aboard."

I had never less inclination to play the loiterer. The odious _attache_ was still in my neighborhood, and until I had got clear out of his reach I felt anything but security. _He_, I remembered, was for Calais, so that, by taking the Ostend boat, I was at once separating myself from his detestable companions.h.i.+p. I not only, therefore, accepted the captain's offer to leave all my effects to the charge of the steward; but no sooner had the train stopped, than I sprang out, hastened through the thronged station, and made at all my speed for the harbor.

Is it to increase the impediments to quitting one's country, and, by interposing difficulties, to give the exile additional occasion to think twice about expatriating himself, that the way from the railroad to the dock at Dover is made so circuitous and almost impossible to discover?

Are these obstacles invented in the spirit of those official details which make banns on the church-door, and a delay of three weeks precede a marriage, as though to say, Halt, impetuous youth, and bethink you whither you are going? Are these amongst the wise precautions of a truly paternal rule? If so, they must occasionally even transcend the original intention, for when I reached the pier, the packet had already begun to move, and it was only by a vigorous leap that I gained the paddle-box, and thus scrambled on board.

"Like every one of you," growled out my weather-beaten friend; "always within an ace of being left behind."

"Every one of us!" muttered I. "What can he have known of the Potts family, that he dares to describe us thus characteristically? And who ever presumed to call us loiterers or sluggards?"

"Step down below, as I told you," whispered he. "It's a dirty night, and we shall have bucketing weather outside." And with this friendly hint I at once complied, and stole down the ladder. "Show that gentleman into my stateroom, steward," called he out from above. "Mix him something warm, and look after him."

"Ay, ay, sir," was the brisk reply, as the bustling man of brandy and basins threw open a small door, and ushered me into a little den, with a mingled odor of tar, Stilton, and wet mackintoshes. "All to yourself here, sir," said he, and vanished.

CHAPTER XI. A JEALOUS HUSBAND.

I take it for granted that all special "charities" have had their origin in some specific suffering. At least, I can aver that my first thought on landing at Ostend was, "Why has no great philanthropist thought of establis.h.i.+ng such an inst.i.tution as a Refuge for the Sea-sick?"

I declare this publicly, that if I ever become rich,--a consummation which, looking to the general gentleness of my instincts, the wide benevolence of my nature, and the kindliness of my temperament, mankind might well rejoice at,--if, I repeat, I ever become rich, one of the first uses of my affluence will be to endow such an establishment.

I will place it in some one of our popular ports, say Southampton.

Surrounded with all the charms of inland scenery, rich in every rustic a.s.sociation, the patient shall never be reminded of the scene of his late sufferings. A velvety turf to stroll on, with a leafy shade above his-head, the mellow lowing of cattle in his ears, and the fragrant odors of meadow-sweet and hawthorn around, I would recall the sufferer from the dread memories of the slippery deck, the sea-washed stairs, or the sleepy state-room. For the rattle of cordage, and the hoa.r.s.e trumpet of the skipper, I would subst.i.tute the song of the thrush or the blackbird; and, instead of the thrice odious steward and his basin, I would have trim maidens of pleasing aspect to serve him with syllabubs.

I will not go on to say the hundred device I would employ to cheat memory out of a gloomy record, for I treasure the hope that I may yet live to carry out my theory, and have a copyright in my invention.

It was with sentiments deeply tinctured by the above that I tottered, rather than walked, towards the "Hotel Royal." It was a bright moonlight night, and, as if in mockery of the weather outside, as still and calm as might be. Many a picturesque effect of light and shade met me as I went: quaint old gables flaring in a strong flood of moonlight, showed outlines the strangest and oddest; twinkling lamps shone out of tall, dark-sided, old houses, from which strains of music came plaintively enough in the night air; the sounds of a prolonged revel rose loudly out of that deep-pillared chateau-like building in the Place, and in the quiet alley adjoining, I could catch the low song of a mother as she tried to sing her baby to sleep. It was all human in every touch and strain of it And did I not drink it in with rapture? Was it not in a transport of grat.i.tude that I thanked Fortune for once again restoring me to land? "O Earth, Earth!" says the Greek poet, "how art thou interwoven with that nature that first came from thee!" Thus musing, I reached the inn, where, though the hour was a late one, the household was all active and astir.

"Many pa.s.sengers arrived, waiter?" said I, in the easy, careless voice of one who would not own to sea-sickness.

"Very few, sir; the severe weather has deterred several from venturing across."

"Any ladies?"

"Only one, sir; and, poor thing! she seems to have suffered fearfully.

She had to be carried from the boat, and when she tried to walk upstairs, she almost fainted. There might have been some agitation, however, in that, for she expected some one to have met her here; and when she heard that he had not arrived, she was completely overcome."

"Very sad, indeed," said I, examining the _carte_ for supper.

"Oh yes, sir; and being in deep mourning, too, and a stranger away for the first time from her country."

I started, and felt my heart bounding against my side.