A Day's Ride Part 50

"You can't be--no, it's impossible. Are you really the goggle-eyed fellow that walked off with the bag for Kalbbratonstadt?"

"I did, by mistake, carry away a bag on that occasion, and so punctiliously did I repay my error that I travelled the whole journey to convey those despatches to their destination."

"I know all about it," said he, in a frank, gay manner. "Doubleton told me the whole story. You dined with him and pretended you were I don't remember whom, and then you took old Mamma Keats off to Como and made her believe you were Louis Philippe, and you made fierce love to your pretty companion, who was fool enough to like you. By Jove! what a rig you must have run! We have all laughed over it a score of times."

"If I knew who 'we' were, I am certain I should feel flattered by any amus.e.m.e.nt I afforded them, notwithstanding how much more they are indebted to fiction than fact regarding me. I never a.s.sumed to be Louis Philippe, nor affected to be any person of distinction. A flighty old lady was foolish enough to imagine me a prince of the Orleans family--"

"You,--a prince! Oh, this is too absurd!"

"I confess, sir, I cannot see the matter in this light. I presume the mistake to be one by no means difficult to have occurred. Mrs. Keats has seen a deal of life and the world--"

"Not so much as you fancy," broke he in. "She was a long time in that private asylum up at Brompton, and then down in Staffords.h.i.+re; altogether, she must have pa.s.sed five-and-twenty or thirty years in a rather restricted circle."

"Mad! Was she mad?"

"Not what one would call mad, but queer. They were all queer. Hargrave, the second brother, was the fellow that made that s.h.i.+ndy in the Mauritius, and our friend Shalley isn't a conjuror. And _we_ thought you were larking the old lady, I a.s.sure you we did."

"'We' were once more mistaken, then," said I, sneer-ingly.

"We all said, too, at the time, that Doubleton had been 'let in.' He gave you a good round sum for expenses on the road, did n't he, and you sent it all back to him."

"Every s.h.i.+lling of it"

"So he told us, and that was what puzzled us more than all the rest. Why did you give up the money?"

"Simply, sir, because it was not mine."

"Yes, yes, to be sure, I know that; but I mean, what suggested the rest.i.tution?"

"Really, sir, your question leads me to suppose that the 'we' so often referred to are not eminently remarkable for integrity."

"Like their neighbors, I take it,--neither better nor worse. But won't you tell why you gave up the tin?"

"I should be hopeless of any attempt to explain my motives, sir; so pray excuse me."

"You were right, at all events," said he, not heeding the sarcasm of my manner. "There 's no chance for the knaves, now, with the telegraph system. As it was, there were orders flying through Europe to arrest Pottinger,--I--can't forget the name. We used to have it every day in the Chancellerie: Pottinger, five feet nine, weak-looking and vulgar, low forehead, light hair and eyes, slight lisp, talks German fluently, but ill. I have copied that portrait of you twenty, ay, thirty times."

"And yet, sir, neither the name nor the description apply. I am no more Pottinger than I am ign.o.ble-looking and vulgar."

"What's the name, then?--not Harpar, nor Pottinger? But who cares a rush for the name of fellows like you? You change them just as you do the color of your coat."

"May I take the liberty of asking, sir, just for information, as you said awhile ago, how you would take it were I to make as free with you as you have been pleased to do with _me?_ To give a mock inventory of your external characteristics, and a false name to yourself?"

"Laugh, probably, if I were amused; throw you out of the window if you offended me."

"The very thing I 'd do with you this moment, if I was strong enough,"

said I, resolutely. And he flung himself into a chair, and laughed as I did not believe he could laugh.

"Well," cried he, at last, "as this room is about fifty feet or so from the ground, it's as well as it is. But now let us wind up this affair.

You want to get away from this, I suppose; and as n.o.body wants to detain you, the thing is easy enough. You need n't make a fuss about compensation, for they 'll not give a kreutzer, and you 'd better not write a book about it, because 'we' don't stand fellows who write books; so just take a friend's advice, and go off without military honors of any kind."

"I neither acknowledge the friends.h.i.+p nor accept the advice, sir. The motives which induced me to suffer imprisonment for another are quite sufficient to raise me above any desire to make a profit of it."

"I think I understand you," said he, with a cunning expression in his half-closed eyes. "You go in for being a 'character.' Haven't I hit it?

You want to be thought a strange, eccentric sort of fellow. Now there was a time the world had a taste for that kind of thing. Romeo Coates, and Brummel, and that Irish fellow that walked to Jerusalem, and half-a-dozen others, used to amuse the town in those days, but it's all as much bygone now as starched neckcloths and Hessian boots. Ours is an age of paletots and easy manners, and you are trying to revive what our grandfathers discarded and got rid of. It won't do, Pottinger; it will not."

"I am not Pottinger; my name is Algernon Sydney Potts."

"Ah! there's the mischief all out at last. What could come of such a collocation of names but a life of incongruity and absurdity! You owe all your griefs to your G.o.dfathers, Potts. If they 'd have called you Peter, you 'd have been a well-conducted poor creature. Well, I'm to give you a pa.s.sport. Where do you wish to go?"

"I wish, first of all, to go to Como."

"I think I know why. But you're on a wrong cast there. They have left that long since."

"Indeed, and for what place?"

"They 've gone to pa.s.s the winter at Malta. Mamma Keats required a dry, warm climate, and you 'll find them at a little country-house about a mile from Valetta; the Jasmines, I think it's called. I have a brother quartered in the island, and he tells me he has seen them, but they won't receive visits, nor go out anywhere. But, of course, a Royal Highness is always sure of a welcome. Prince Potts is an 'Open, sesame!'

wherever he goes."

"What atrocious tobacco this is of yours, Buller!" said I, taking a cigar from his case as it lay on the table. "I suppose that you small fry of diplomacy cannot get things in duty free, eh?"

"Try this cheroot; you 'll find it better," said he, opening a secret pocket in the case.

"Nothing to boast of," said I, puffing away, while he continued to fill up the blanks in my pa.s.sport.

"Would you like an introduction to my brother? He's on the Government staff there, and knows every one. He's a jolly sort of fellow, besides, and you 'll get on well together."

"I don't care if I do," said I, carelessly; "though, as a rule, your red-coat is very bad style,--flippant without smartness, and familiar without ease."

"Severe, Potts, but not altogether unjust; but you 'll find George above the average of his cla.s.s, and I think you 'll like him."

"Don't let him ask me to his mess," said I, with an insolent drawl.

"That's an amount of boredom I could not submit to. Caution him to make no blunder of that kind."

He looked up at me with a strange twinkle in his eyes, which I could not interpret He was either in intense enjoyment of my smartness, or Heaven knows what other sentiment then moved him. At all events, I was in ecstasy at the success of my newly discovered vein, and walked the room, humming a tune, as he wrote the letter that was to present me to his brother.

"Why had I never hit upon this plan before?" thought I. "How was it that it had not occurred that the maxim of h.o.m.oeopathy is equally true in morals as in medicine, and that _similia similibus curantur!_ So long as I was meek, humble, and submissive, Buller's impertinent presumption only increased at every moment With every fresh concession of mine he continued to encroach, and now that I had adopted his own strategy, and attacked, he fell back at once." I was proud, very proud of my discovery. It is a new contribution to that knowledge of life which, notwithstanding all my disasters, I believed to be essentially my gift.

At last he finished his note, folded, sealed, and directed it,--"The Hon. George Buller, A.D.C., Government House, Malta, favored by Algernon Sydney Potts, Esq."

"Is n't that all right?" asked he, pointing to my name. "I was within an ace of writing Hampden-Russell too." And he laughed at his own very meagre jest.

"I hope you have merely made this an introduction?" said I.

"Nothing more; but why so?"

"Because it's just as likely that I never present it! I am the slave of the humor I find myself in, and I rarely do anything that costs me the slightest effort." I said this with a close and, indeed, a servile imitation of Charles Matthews in "Used Up;" but it was a grand success, and Buller was palpably vanquished.

"Well, for George's sake, I hope your mood may be the favorable one. Is there anything more I can do for you? Can you think of nothing wherein I may be serviceable?"