A Day's Ride Part 35

And what an absurdity is our whole code on this subject! A man is actually expected to court, solicit, and even wors.h.i.+p the object that he is after all called upon to pay for. You do not smirk at the salmon in your fishmonger's window, or ogle the lamb at your butcher's; you go in boldly and say, "How much the pound?" If you sighed outside for a week, you 'd get it never the cheaper. Why not then make an honest market of what is so salable? What a saving of time to know that the splendid creature yonder, with the queenly air, can only be had at ten thousand a year, but that the spicy article with the black ringlets will go for two! Instead of all the heart-burnings and blank disappointments we see now, we should have a practical, contented generation; and in the same spirit that a man of moderate fortune turns away from the seductions of turtle and whitebait, while he orders home his mutton chop, he would avert his gaze from beauty, and fix his affections on the dumpy woman that can be "got a bargain."

Why did not the poet say, Venality, thy name is Woman? It would suit the prosody about as well, and the purpose better. The Turks are our masters in all this; they are centuries--whole centuries in advance of us. How I wish some Babbage would make a calculation of the hours, weeks, years, centuries of time, are lost in what is called love-making! Time, we are told, is money; and here, at once, is the fund to pay off our national debt. Take the "time that's lost in wooing" by a nation, say of twenty-eight or thirty millions, and at the cheapest rate of labor--take the prison rate if you like--and see if I be not right. Let the population who now heave sighs pound oyster-sh.e.l.ls, let those who pick quarrels pick oak.u.m, and we need no income-tax!

"I'll not sing any more," broke in Catinka. "I don't think you have been listening to me."

"Listening to you!" said I, contemptuously; "certainly not. When I want a siren, I take a pit ticket and go to the opera; seven-and-sixpence is the price of Circe, and dear at the money." With this rude rebuff I waved her off, and walked along once more alone.

At a sudden bend in the road we found Vaterchen seated under a tree waiting for us, and evidently not a little uneasy at our long absence.

"What is this?" said he, angrily, to Catinka. "Why have you remained so long behind?"

"We sat down to rest at a well," said she, "and then he took out a great bag of money to count, and there was so much in it, so many pieces of bright gold, that one could not help turning them over and over, and gazing at them."

"And wors.h.i.+pping them too, girl!" cried he, indignantly, while he turned on me a look of sorrow and reproach. I returned his stare haughtily, and he arose and drew me to one side.

"Am I, then, once more mistaken in my judgment of men? Have _you_, too, duped me?" said he, in a voice that shook with agitation. "Was it for this you offered us the solace of your companions.h.i.+p? Was it for this you condescended to journey with us, and deigned to be our host and entertainer?"

The appeal came at an evil moment: a vile, contemptible scepticism was at work within me. The rasp and file of doubt were eating away at my heart, and I deemed "all men liars."

"And is it to me--Potts--you address such words as these, you consummate old humbug? What is there about me that denotes dupe or fool?"

The old man shook his head, and made a gesture to imply he had not understood me; and now I remembered that I had uttered this rude speech in English, and not in German. With the memory of this fact came also the consciousness of its cruel meaning. What if I should have wronged him? What if the poor old fellow be honest and upright? What if he be really striving to keep this girl in the path of virtue? I came close to him, and fixed my eyes steadfastly on his face. He looked at me fearlessly, as an honest man might look. He never tried to turn away, nor did he make the slightest effort to evade me. He seemed to understand all the import of my scrutiny, for he said, at last,--

"Well, are you satisfied?"

"I am, Vaterchen," said I, "fully satisfied. Let us be friends." And I took his hand and shook it heartily.

"You think me honest?" asked he.

"I do think so."

"And I am not more honest than she is. No," said he, resolutely, "Tintefleck is true-hearted."

"What of _me?_" cried she, coming up and leaning her arm on the old man's shoulder,--"what of _me?_"

"I have said that you are honest, and would not deceive!"

"Not _you_, Vaterchen,--not _you_," said she, kissing him. And then, as she turned away, she gave me a look so full of meaning, and so strange, withal, that if I were to speak for an hour I could not explain it. It seemed to mean sorrow and reproach and wounded pride, with a dash of pity, and above all and everything, defiance; ay, that was its chief character, and I believe I winced under it.

"Let us step out briskly," said Vaterchen. "Constance is a good eleven miles off yet."

"He looks tired already," said she, with a glance at me.

"I? I'm as fresh as when I started," said I. And I made an effort to appear brisk and lively, which only ended in making them laugh heartily.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII. 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 a.s.sured 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 surpa.s.sed 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 amus.e.m.e.nt; but, to a man like myself, these chance companions.h.i.+ps 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 a.s.sured 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 Ca.s.sel; 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 ign.o.ble position.

Vaterchen kicked him again and again. In an instant all were upon us.

Carters, pedlers, and image men a.s.sailed 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 n.o.body came near enough to give her a chance with her knife, which she a.s.sured 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 pa.s.sed such a night, and sincerely trust that I may never pa.s.s 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 coa.r.s.e 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 pa.s.sport 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.