A Day's Ride Part 31

I cannot say how he acquitted himself, but I could gather that a very lively altercation ensued, and it seemed to me as though she resolutely refused to subject herself to any further ordeals of what academicians call a "private view." No; she was ready for the ring and the sawdust, and the drolleries of the men with chalk on their faces, but she would not accept high life on any terms. By degrees, and by arguments of his own ingenious devising, however, he did succeed, and at last she arose with a bound, and cried out, "Eccomi!"

"Remember," said I to Vaterchen, as we left the room, "I am doing that which few would have the courage to dare. It will depend upon the dignity of your conduct, the grace of your manners, the well-bred ease of your address, to make me feel proud of my intrepidity, or, sad and painful possibility, retire covered with ineffable shame and discomfiture. Do you comprehend me?"

"Perfectly," said he, standing erect, and giving even in his att.i.tude a sort of bail bond for future dignity. "Lead on!"

This was more familiar than he had been yet; but I ascribed it to the tension of nerves strung to a high purpose, and rendering him thus inaccessible to other thoughts than of the enterprise before him.

As I neared the door of Mrs. Keats's apartment, I hesitated as to how I should enter. Ought I to precede my friends, and present them as they followed? Or would it seem more easy and more a.s.sured if I were to give my arm to Tintefleck, leaving Vaterchen to bring up the rear? After much deliberation, this appeared to be the better course, seeming to take for granted that, although some peculiarities of costume might ask for explanation later on, I was about to present a very eligible and charming addition to the company.

I am scarcely able to say whether I was or was not rea.s.sured by the mode in which she accepted the offer of my arm. At first, the proposition appeared unintelligible, and she looked at me with one of those wide-eyed stares, as though to say, "What new gymnastic is this? What _tour de force_, of which I never heard before?" and then, with a sort of jerk, she threw my arm up in the air and made a pirouette under it, of some half-dozen whirls.

Half reprovingly I shook my head, and offered her my hand. This she understood at once. She recognized such a mode of approach as legitimate and proper, and with an artistic shake of her drapery with the other hand, and a confident smile, she signified she was ready to go "on."

I was once on a time thrown over a horse's head into a slate quarry; a very considerable drop it was, and nearly fatal. On another occasion I was carried in a small boat over the fall of a salmon weir, and hurried along in the flood for almost three hundred yards. Each of these was a situation of excitement and peril, and with considerable confusion as the consequence; and yet I could deliberately recount you every pa.s.sing phase of my terror, from my first fright down to my complete unconsciousness, with such small traits as would guarantee truthfulness; while, of the scene upon which I now adventured, I preserve nothing beyond the vaguest and most unconnected memory.

I remember my advance into the middle of the room. I have a recollection of a large tea-urn, and beyond it a lady in a turban; another in long ringlets there was. The urn made a noise like a small steamer, and there was a confusion of voices--about what, I cannot tell--that increased the uproar, and we were all standing up and all talking together; and there was what seemed an angry discussion, and then the large turban and the ringlets swept haughtily past me. The turban said, "This is too much, sir!" and ringlets added, "Far too much, sir!" and as they reached the door, there was Vaterchen on his head, with a branch of candles between his feet to light them out, and Tintefleck, screaming with laughter, threw herself into an arm-chair, and clapped a most riotous applause.

I stood a moment almost transfixed, then dashed out of the room, hurried upstairs to my chamber, bolted the door, drew a great clothes-press against it for further security, and then threw myself upon my bed in one of those paroxysms of mad confusion, in which a man cannot say whether he is on the verge of inevitable ruin, or has just been rescued from a dreadful fate. I would not, if even I could, recount all that I suffered that night There was not a scene of open shame and disgrace that I did not picture to myself as incurring. I was everywhere in the stocks or the pillory. I wore a wooden placard on my breast, inscribed, "Potts the Impostor." I was running at top speed before hooting and yelling crowds. I was standing with a circle of protecting policemen amidst a mob eager to tear me to pieces. I was sitting on a hard stool while my hair was being cropped _a la_ Pentonville, and a gray suit lay ready for me when it was done. But enough of such a dreary record. I believe I cried myself to sleep at last, and so soundly, too, that it was very late in the afternoon ere I awoke. It was the sight of the barricade I had erected at my door gave me a clew to the past, and again I buried my face in my hands, and wept bitterly.

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 cas.e.m.e.nt 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 a.s.sured 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 a.r.s.enic 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 n.o.body'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 n.o.blest 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 ident.i.ty, 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sail 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 coa.r.s.e 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 s.h.i.+ver 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 scene_ from dawn to dark, and only lay down one motley to don another.

Is not this wretched? Is it not ign.o.ble? 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed. 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 h.o.a.rd; 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 p.a.w.ned 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 antic.i.p.ate 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 G.o.dlike. 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 a.s.surance 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