A Day's Ride Part 22

How relieved I felt when the fellow closed the door after him and left me to "blow off the steam" of my indignation all alone! And was I not indignant? Only to fancy this insolent old woman giving her orders without so much as condescending to communicate with me! I am left to learn her whim by a mere accident, or not learn it at all, and exhibit myself ready to depart at the inn door, and then hear, for the first time, that I may unpack again.

This was unquestionably a studied rudeness, and demanded an equally studied reprisal. She means to discredit my station, and disparage my influence; how shall I reply to her? A vast variety of expedients offered themselves to my mind: I could go off, leaving a fearful letter behind me,--a doc.u.ment that would cut her to the very soul with the sarcastic bitterness of its tone; but could I leave without a reconciliation with Miss Herbert,--without the fond hope of our meeting as friends. I meant a great deal more, though I would n't trust myself to say so. Besides, were I to go away, there were financial considerations to be entertained. I could not, of course, carry off that crimson bag with its gold and silver contents, and yet it was very hard to tear myself from such a treasure.

I say it under correction, for I have never been rich, and, consequently, never in the position to a.s.sert it positively; but I declare my firm conviction to be that no man has ever tasted the unbounded pleasures of a careless liberality on a Journey, who has not travelled at some other person's expense. Be as wealthy as you like, let your portmanteau be stuffed full of circular notes, and there will be present at moments of payment the thought, "If I do not allow myself to be cheated here, I shall have all the more to squander there." But, drawing from the bag of another, no such mean reflection obtrudes. You might as well defraud your lungs of a long inspiration out of the fear of taking more than your share of the atmosphere. There is enough, and will be enough there when you are dust and ashes.

In fact, if I had on one side the "three courses" of the great statesman, I had on the other full thirty reasons against each, and, therefore, I resolved to suspend action and do nothing. And let me here pa.s.singly remark that, much as we hear every day about the merits of prompt.i.tude and quick-wittedness, in nine cases out of ten in life, I 'd rather "give the move than take it." The waiting policy is a rare one; it is the secret of success in love, and of victory in an equity court And so I determined I 'd wait and see what should come of it. I appealed to myself thus: "Potts, you are eminently a man of the world, one who accepts life as it is, with all its crosses and untoward incidents; who knows well that he must play bad cards even oftener than good ones. No impatience, therefore, no rashness; give at least twenty-four hours'

thought to any important decision, and let a night's sleep intervene between your first conception of a plan and its adoption." Oh, if the people who are fretting themselves about what is to happen this day ten years, would only remember what a long time it is,--that is, counting by the number of events that will occur between this and to-morrow,--not to say what incidents are happening at the antipodes that will yet bring joy or sorrow to their hearts,--they would keep more of their sympathies for present use, and perhaps be the happier for doing so.

CHAPTER XVIII. AN IMPATIENT SUMMONS.

I am about to make a very original observation. I hope its truth may equal its originality. It is, that the man who has never had a sister is, at his first entrance into life, far more the slave of feminine captivations than he who has been brought up in a "house full of girls."

"Oh, for shame, Mr. Potts! Is this the gallantry we have heard so much of? Is this the spirit of that chivalrous devotion you have been incessantly impressing upon us?" Wait a moment, fair creature; give me one half-minute for an explanation. He who has not had sisters has had no experiences of the behind-scene life of the female world; he has never heard one syllable about the plans and schemes and devices by which hearts are snared. He fancies Mary stuck that moss-rose in her hair in a moment of childish caprice; that Kate ran after her little sister and showed the prettiest of ankles in doing it, out of the irrepressible gayety of her buoyant spirits. In a word, he is one who only sees the play when the house is fully lighted, and all the actors in their grand costume; he has never witnessed a rehearsal, and has not the very vaguest suspicion of a prompter.

To him, therefore, who has only experienced the rough companions.h.i.+p of brothers--or worse still, has lived entirely alone--the first acquaintances.h.i.+p with the young-lady world is such a fascination as no words can describe. The gentle look, the graceful gestures, the silvery voices, all the play and action of natures so infinitely more refined than any he has ever witnessed, are inexpressibly captivating. It is not alone the occupations of their hours, light, graceful, and picturesque as they are, but all their topics, their thoughts, seem to soar out of the commonplace world he has lived in, and rise to ideal realms of poetry and beauty. I say it advisedly: I do not know of anything so truly Elysian in life as our first--our very first--experiences of this kind.

Werther's pa.s.sion for Charlotte received a powerful impulse from watching her as she cut bread-and-b.u.t.ter for the children. There are vulgar natures who will smile at this; who cannot enter into the intense far-sightedness of that poetic conception; that could in one trait of simplicity embody a whole lifetime with its enn.o.bling duties, its cheerful sacrifices, its gracefully borne cares. Let him, therefore, who could sneer at Werther, scoff at Potts, as he owns that he never felt his heart so powerfully drawn to Kate Herbert as when he watched her making tea for breakfast. Dressed in a muslin that represented mourning, her rich hair plainly enclosed in a net, with a noiseless motion, she glided about, an ideal of gentle sadness, more fascinating than I can tell. If she bore any unpleasant memory of our little difference, she did not show it; her manner was calm and even kind. She felt, perhaps, that some compensation was due to me for the rudeness of that old woman, and was not unwilling to make it.

"You know we are to rest here to-day?" said she, as she busied herself at the table.

"I heard it by a mere chance, and from the courier," said I, peevishly.

"I am not quite certain in what capacity Mrs. Keats condescends to regard me, that I am treated with such scant courtesy. Probably you would be kind enough to ascertain this point for me?"

"I shall a.s.suredly not ask," said she, with a smile.

"I certainly promised her brother--I could not do less for a colleague, not to say something more--that I 'd see this old lady safe over the Alps. They are looking out for me anxiously enough at Constantinople all this while; in fact, I suspect there will be a nice confusion there through my delay, and I 'd not be a bit surprised if they begin to believe that stupid story in the 'Nord.' I suppose you saw it?"

"No. What is it about?"

"It is about your humble servant, Miss Herbert, and hints that he has received one hundred pa.r.s.es from the sheiks of the Lebanon not to reach the Golden Horn before they have made their peace with the Grand Vizier."

"And is of course untrue?"

"Of course, every word of it is a falsehood; but there are _gobemouches_ will believe anything. Mark my words, and see if this allegation be not heard in the House of Commons, and some Tower Hamlets member start up to ask if the Foreign Secretary will lay on the table copies of the instructions given to a certain person, and supposed to be credentials of a nature to supersede the functions of our amba.s.sador at the Porte.

In confidence, between ourselves, Miss Herbert, so they are! I am intrusted with full powers about the Hatti Homayoun, as the world shall see in good time."

"Do you take your tea strong?" asked she; and there was something so odd and so inopportune in the question, that I felt it as a sort of covert sneer; but when I looked up and beheld that pale and gentle face turned towards me, I banished the base suspicion, and forgetting all my enthusiasm, said,--

"Yes, dearest; strong as brandy!"

She tried to look grave, perhaps angry; but in spite of herself, she burst out a-laughing.

"I perceive, sir," said she, "that Mrs. Keats was quite correct when she said that you appear to have moments in which you are unaware of what you say."

Before I could rally to reply, she had poured out a cup of tea for Mrs.

Keats, and left the room to carry it to her.

"'Moments in which I am unaware of what I say,'--'incoherent intervals'

Forbes Winslow would call them: in plain English, I am mad. Old woman, have you dared to cast such an aspersion on me, and to disparage me, too, in the quarter where I am striving to achieve success? For her opinion of me I am less than indifferent; for her Judgment of my capacity, my morals, my manners, I am as careless as I well can be of anything; but these become serious disparagements when they reach the ears of one whose heart I would make my own. I will insist on an explanation--no, but an apology--for this. She shall declare that she used these words in some non-natural sense,--that I am the sanest of mortals: she shall give it under her hand and seal: 'I, the undersigned, having in a moment of rash and impatient Judgment imputed to the bearer of this doc.u.ment, Algernon Sydney Potts,'--no, Pottinger--ha, there is a difficulty! If I be Pottinger, I can never re-become Potts; if Potts, I am lost,--or rather, Miss Herbert is lost to me forever. What a dire embarra.s.sment! Not to mention that in the pa.s.sport I was Ponto!"

"Mrs. Keats desired me to beg you will step up to her room after breakfast, and bring your account-books with you." This was said by Miss Herbert as she entered and took her place at the table.

"What has the old woman got in her head?" said I, angrily. "I have no account-books,--I never had such in my life. When I travel alone, I say to my courier, 'Diomede'--he is a Greek--'Diomede, pay;' and he pays.

When Diomede is not with me, I ask, 'How much?' and I give it."

"It certainly simplifies travel," said she, gravely.

"It does more, Miss Herbert: it accomplishes the end of travel. Your doctor says, 'Go abroad,--take a holiday--turn your back on Downing Street, and bid farewell to cabinet councils.' Where is the benefit of such a course, I ask, if you are to pa.s.s the vacation cursing customhouse officers, bullying landlords, and browbeating waiters? I say always, 'Give me a bad dinner if you must, but do not derange my digestion; rather a damp bed than thorns in the pillow.'"

"I am to say that you will see her, however," said she, with that matter-of-fact adhesiveness to the question that never would permit her to join in my digressions.

"Then I go under protest, Miss Herbert,--under protest, and, as the lawyers say, without prejudice,--that is, I go as a private gentleman, irresponsible and independent. Tell her this, and say, I know nothing of figures: arithmetic may suit the Board of Trade; in the Foreign Department we ignore it You may add, too, if you like, that from what you have seen of me, I am of a haughty disposition, easily offended, and very vindictive,--very!"

"But I really don't think this," said she, with a bewitching smile.

"Not to _you_ de--" I was nearly in it again: "not to _you_," said I, stammering and blus.h.i.+ng till I felt on fire. I suspect that she saw all the peril of the moment, for she left the room hurriedly, on the pretext of asking Mrs. Keats to take more tea.

"She is sensible of your devotion, Potts; but is she touched by it? Has she said to herself, 'That man is my fate, my destiny,--it is no use resisting him; dark and mysterious as he is, I am drawn towards him by an inscrutable sympathy'--or is she still struggling in the toils, muttering to her heart to be still, and to wait? Flutter away, gentle creature," said I, compa.s.sionately, "but raffle not your lovely plumage too roughly; the bars of your cage are not the less impa.s.sable that they are invisible. You _shall_ love me, and you _shall_ be mine!"

To these rapturous fancies there now succeeded the far less captivating thought of Mrs. Keats, and an approaching interview. Can any reader explain why it is, that one sits in quiet admiration of some old woman by Teniers or Holbein, and never experiences any chagrin or impatience at trials which, if only represented in life, would be positively odious? Why is it that art transcends nature, and that ugliness in canvas is more endurable than ugliness in the flesh? Now, for my own part, I'd rather have faced a whole gallery of the Dutch school, from Van Eyck to Verbagen, than have confronted that one old lady who sat awaiting me in No. 12.

Twice as I sat at my breakfast did Francois put in his head, look at me, and retire without a word. "What is the matter? What do you mean?" cried I, impatiently, at the third intrusion.

"It is madam that wishes to know when monsieur will be at leisure to go upstairs to her."

I almost bounded on my chair with pa.s.sion. How was I, I would ask, to maintain any portion of that dignity with which I ought to surround myself if exposed to such demands as this? This absurd old woman would tear off every illusion in which I draped myself. What availed all the romance a rich fancy could conjure up, when that wicked old enchantress called me to her presence, and in a voice of thunder said, "Strip off these masqueradings, Potts, I know the whole story." "Ay, but," thought I, "she cannot do so; of me and my antecedents she knows positively nothing." "Halt there!" interposes Conscience; "it is quite enough to p.r.o.nounce the coin base, without being able to say at what mint it was fabricated. She knows you, Potts, she knows you."

There is one great evil in castle-building, and I have thought very long and anxiously, and I must own fruitlessly, over how to meet it: it is that one never can get a lease of the ground to build on. One is always like an Irish cottier, a tenant at will, likely to be turned out at a moment's notice, and dispossessed without pity or compa.s.sion. The same language applies to each: "You know well, my good fellow, you had no right to be there; pack up and be off!" It's no use saying that it was a bit of waste land unfenced and untilled; that, until you took it in hand, it was overgrown with nettles and duckweed; that you dispossessed no one, and such like. The answer is still the same, "Where's your t.i.tle? Where's your lease?"

Now, I am curious to hear what injury I was inflicting on that old woman at No. 12 by any self-deceptions of mine? Could the most exaggerated estimate I might form of myself, my present, or my future, in any degree affect _her?_ Who const.i.tuted her a sort of ambulatory conscience, to call people's hearts to account at a moment's notice? It may be seen by the tone of these reflections, that I was fully impressed with the belief through some channel, or by some clew, Mrs. Keats knew all my history, and intended to use her knowledge tyrannically over me.

Oh that I could only retaliate! Oh that I had only the veriest fragment of her past life, out of which to construct her whole story! Just as out of a mastodon's molar, Cuvier used to build up the whole monster, never omitting a rib, nor forgetting a vertebra! How I should like to say to her, and with a most significant sigh, "I knew poor Keats well!" Could I not make even these simple words convey a world of accusation, blended with sorrow and regret?

Francois again, and on the same errand. "Say I am coming; that I have only finished a hasty breakfast, and that I am coming this instant,"

cried I. Nor was it very easy for me to repress the more impatient expressions which struggled for utterance, particularly as I saw, or fancied I saw, the fellow pa.s.s his hand over his mouth to hide a grin at my expense.

"Is Miss Herbert upstairs?"

"No, sir, she is in the garden."

This was so far pleasant. I dreaded the thought of her presence at this interview, and I felt that punishment within the precincts of the jail was less terrible than on the drop before the populace; and with this consoling reflection I mounted the stairs.

CHAPTER XIX. MRS. KEATS'S MYSTERIOUS COMMUNICATION