From time to time, a couple of grave, judicial-looking men would arrive and pass the forenoon at the Ambras Schloss, in reading out certain documents to me. I never paid much attention to them, but my ear at moments would catch the strangest possible allegations as to my exalted political opinions, the dangerous associates I was bound up with, and the secret societies I belonged to. I heard once, too, and by mere accident, how at Steuben I had asked the jailer to procure me a horse, and thrown gold in handfuls from the windows of my prison, to bribe the townsfolk to my rescue, and I laughed to myself to think what a deal of pleading and proof it would take to rebut all these allegations, and how little likely it was I would ever engage in such a conflict.
By long dwelling on the thought of my noble devotion, and how it would read when I was dead and gone, I had extinguished within my heart all desire for other distinction, speculating only on what strange and ingenious theories men would spin for the secret clew to my motives. “True,” they would say, “Potts never cared for Harpar. He was not a man to whom Potts would have attached himself under any circumstances; they were, as individuals, totally unlike and unsympathetic. How, then, explain this extraordinary act of self-sacrifice? Was he prompted by the hope that the iniquities of the Austrian police system would receive their death-blow from his story, and that the mound that covered him in the churchyard would be the altar of Liberty to thousands? Or was Potts one of those enthusiastic creatures only too eager to carry the load of some other pilgrim in life?”
While I used thus to reason and speculate, I little knew that I had become a sort of European notoriety. Some Englishwoman, however, some vagrant tourist, had put me in her book as the half-witted creature who showed the coins and curiosities at Ambras, and mentioned how, for I know not how many years, I was never heard to utter a syllable except on questions of old armor and antiquities. In consequence I was always asked for by my travelling countrymen, and my peculiarities treated with all that playful good taste for which tourists are famous. I remember one day having refused to perform the showman to a British family. I had a headache, or was sulky, or a fit of rebellion had got hold of me, but I sauntered out into the grounds and would not see them. In my walk through a close alley of laurels, I chanced to overhear the stranger conversing with Hirsch, and making myself the subject of his inquiries; and, as I listened, I heard Hirsch say that one entire room of the château was devoted to the papers and documents in my case, and that probably it would occupy a quick reader about twelve months to peruse them. He added, that as I made no application for a trial myself, nor any of my friends showed an inclination to bestir themselves about me, the Government would very probably leave me to live and die where I was. Thereupon the Briton broke out into a worthy fit of indignant eloquence. He denounced the Hapsburgs and praised the Habeas Corpus; he raved of the power of England, our press, our public opinion, our new frigates. He said he would make Europe ring with the case. It was as bad, it was worse than Caspar Hauser's, for he was an idiot outright, and I appeared to have the enjoyment of certain faculties. He said it should appear in the “Times,” and be mentioned in the House; and as I listened, the strangest glow ran through me, a mild and pleasurable enthusiasm, to think that all the might, majesty, and power of Great Britain was about to interest itself in behalf of Potts!
The Briton kept his word; the time, too, favored him. It was a moment when wandering Englishmen were exhuming grievances throughout every land of Europe; and while one had discovered some case of religious intolerance in Norway, another beat him out of the field with the coldblooded atrocities of Naples. My Englishman chanced to be an M.P., and therefore he asked, “in his place,” if the Foreign Secretary had any information to afford the House with respect to the case of the man called Harper, or Harpar, he was not certain which, and who had been confined for upwards of ten months in a dungeon in Austria, on allegations of which the accused knew nothing whatever, and attested by witnesses with whom he had never been confronted.
In the absence of his chief, the Under-Secretary rose to assure the right honorable gentleman that the case was one which had for a considerable time engaged the attention of the department he belonged to, and that the most unremitting exertions of her Majesty's envoy at Vienna were now being devoted to obtain the fullest information as to the charges imputed to Harpar, and he hoped in a few days to be able to lay the result of his inquiry on the table of the House.
It was in about a week after this that Hirsch came to tell me that a member of her Majesty's legation at Vienna had arrived to investigate my case, and interrogate me in person. I am half ashamed to say how vain gloriously I thought of the importance thus lent me. I felt, somehow, as though the nation missed me. Waiting patiently, as it might be, for my return, and yet no tidings coming, they said, “What has become of Potts?” It was clearly a case upon which they would not admit of any mystification or deceit. “No secret tribunals, no hole-and-corner commitments with us! Where is he? Produce him. Say, with what is he charged?” I was going to be the man of the day. I knew it, I felt it; I saw a great tableau of my life unrolling itself before me. Potts, the young enthusiast after virtue,—hopeful, affectionate, confiding, giving his young heart to that fair-haired girl as freely as he would have bestowed a moss-rose; and she, making light of the gift, and with a woman's coquetry, torturing him by a jealous levity till he resented the wrong, and tore himself away. And then, Catinka,—how I tried the gold of my nature in that crucible, and would not fall in love with her before I had made her worthy of my love; and when I had failed in that, how I had turned from love to friendship, and offered myself the victim for a man I never cared about. No matter; the world will know me at last. Men will recognize the grand stuff that I am made of. If commentators spend years in exploring the recondite passages of great writers, and making out beauties where there were only obscurities, why should not all the dark parts of my nature come out as favorably, and some flattering interpreter say, “Potts was for a long time misconceived; few men were more wrongfully judged by their contemporaries. It was to a mere accident, after all, we owe it that we are now enabled to render him the justice so long denied him. His was one of those remarkable natures in which it is difficult to say whether humility or self-confidence predominated”?
Then I thought of the national excitement to discover the missing Potts; just as if I had been a lost Arctic voyager. Expeditions sent out to track me; all the thousand speculations as to whether I had gone this way or that; where and from whom the latest tidings of me could be traced; the heroic offers of new discoverers to seek me living, or, sad alternative, restore to the country that mourned me the reliquiæ Pottsi, I always grew tender in my moods of self-compassion, and I felt my eyes swimming now in pity for my fate; and let me add in this place my protest against the vulgar error which stigmatizes as selfishness the mere fact of a man's susceptibility. How, I would simply ask, can he feel for others who has no sense of sympathy with his own suffering nature? If the well of human kindness be dried up within him, how can he give to the parched throats the refreshing waters of compassion?
Deal with the fact how you may, I was very sorry for myself, and seriously doubted if as sincere a mourner would bewail me when I was gone.
If a little time had been given me, I would have endeavored to get up my snug little chamber somewhat more like a prison cell; I would have substituted some straw for my comfortable bed, and gracefully draped a few chains upon the walls and some stray torture implements out of the Armory; but the envoy came like a “thief in the night,” and was already on the stairs when he was announced.
“Oh! this is his den, is it?” cried he from without, as he slowly ascended the stairs. “Egad! he hasn't much to complain of in the matter of a lodging. I only wish our fellows were as well off at Vienna.” And with these words there entered into my room a tall young fellow, with a light brown moustache, dressed in a loose travelling suit, and with the lounging air of a man sauntering into a café. He did not remove his hat as he came in, or take the cigar from his mouth; the latter circumstance imparting a certain confusion to his speech that made him occasionally scarce intelligible. Only deigning to bestow a passing look on me, he moved towards the window, and looked out on the grand panorama of the Tyrol Alps, as they enclose the valley of Innspruck.
“Well,” said he to himself, “all this ain't so bad for a dungeon.”
The tone startled me. I looked again at him, I rallied myself to an effort of memory, and at once recalled the young fellow I had met on the South-Western line and from whom I had accidentally carried away the despatch-bag. To my beard, and my long imprisonment, I trusted for not being recognized, and I sat patiently awaiting my examination.
“An Englishman, I suppose?” asked he, turning hastily round. “And of English parents?”
“Yes,” was my reply, for I determined on brevity wherever possible.
“What brought you into this scrape?—I mean, why did you come here at all?”
“I was travelling.”
“Travelling? Stuff and nonsense! Why should fellows like you travel? What's your rank in life?”
“A gentleman.”
“Ah! but whose gentleman, my worthy friend? Ain't you a flunkey? There, it's out! I say, have you got a match to light my cigar? Thanks,—all right. Look here, now,—don't let us be beating about the bush all the day,—I believe this government is just as sick of you as you are of them. You 've been here two months, ain't it so?”
“Ten months and upwards.”
“Well, ten months. And you want to get away?”
I made no answer; indeed, his free-and-easy manner so disconcerted me that I could not speak, and he went on,—
“I suspect they have n't got much against you, or that they don't care about it; and, besides, they are civil to us just now. At all events, it can be done,—you understand?—it can be done.”
“Indeed,” said I, half superciliously.
“Yes,” resumed he, “I think so; not but you'd have managed better in leaving the thing to us, That stupid notion you all have of writing letters to newspapers and getting some troublesome fellow to ask questions in the House, that's what spoils everything! How can we negotiate when the whole story is in the 'Times' or the 'Daily News'?”
“I opine, sir, that you are ascribing to me an activity and energy I have no claim to.”
“Well, if you did n't write those letters, somebody else did. I don't care a rush for the difference. You see, here's how the matter stands. This Mr. Brigges, or Rigges, has gone off, and does n't care to prosecute, and all his allegations against you fall to the ground. Well, these people fancy they could carry on the thing themselves, you understand; we think not. They say they have got a strong case; perhaps they have; but we ask, 'What's the use of it? Sending the poor beggar to Spielberg won't save you, will it?' And so we put it to them this way: 'Draw stakes, let him off, and both can cry quits.' There, give me another light Isn't that the common-sense view of it?”
“I scarcely dare to say that I understand you aright.”
“Oh, I can guess why. I have had dealings with fellows of your sort before. You don't fancy my not alluding to compensation, eh? You want to hear about the money part of the matter?”
And he laughed aloud; but whether at my mercenary spirit or his own shrewdness in detecting it, I do not really know.
“Well, I'm afraid,” continued he, “you'll be disappointed there. These Austrians are hard up; besides, they never do pay. It's against their system, and so we never ask them.”
“Would it be too much, sir, to ask why I have been imprisoned?”
“Perhaps not; but a great deal too much for me to tell you. The confounded papers would fill a cart, and that's the reason I say, cut your stick, my man, and get away.” Again he turned to the window, and, looking out, asked, “Any shooting about here? There ought to be cocks in that wood yonder?” and without caring for reply, went on, “After all, you know what bosh it is to talk about chains and dungeons, and bread-and-water, and the rest of it. You 've been living in clover here. That old fellow below tells me that you dine with him every day; that you might have gone into Innspruck, to the theatre if you liked it—I 'll swear there are snipes in that low land next the river.—Think it over, Rigges, think it over.”
“I am not Rigges.”
“Oh, I forgot! you 're the other fellow. Well, think it over, Harpar.”
“My name is not Harpar, sir.”
“What do I care for a stray vowel or two? Maybe you call yourself Harpar, or Harper? It's all the same to us.”
“It is not the question of a vowel or two, sir; and I desire you to remark it is the graver one of a mistaken identity!” I said this with a high-sounding importance that I thought must astound him; but his light and frivolous nature was impervious to rebuke.
“We have nothing to say to that,” replied he, carelessly. “You may be Noakes or Styles. I believe they are the names of any fellows who are supposed by courtesy to have no name at all, and it's all alike to us. What I have to observe to you is this: nobody cares very much whether you are detained here or not; nobody wants to detain you. Just reflect, therefore, if it's not the best thing you can do to slope off, and make no more fuss about it?”
“Once for all, sir,” said I, still more impressively, “I am not the person against whom this charge is made. The authorities have all along mistaken me for another.”
“Well, what if they have? Does it signify one kreutzer? We have had trouble enough about the matter already, and do not embroil us any further.”
“May I ask, sir, just for information, who are the 'we' you have so frequently alluded to?”
Had I asked him in what division of the globe he understood us then to be conversing, he would not have regarded me with a look of more blank astonishment.
“Who are we?” repeated he. “Did you ask who are we?”
“Yes, sir, that was what I made bold to ask.”
“Cool, certainly; what might be called uncommon cool. To what line of life were you brought up to, my worthy gent? I have rather a curiosity about your antecedents.”
“That same curiosity cost you a trifle once before,” said I, no longer able to control myself, and dying to repay his impertinence. “I remember, once upon a time, meeting you on a railroad, and you were so eager to exhibit the skill with which you could read a man's calling, that you bet me a sovereign you would guess mine. You did so, and lost.”
“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 amusement I afforded them, notwithstanding how much more they are indebted to fiction than fact regarding me. I never assumed 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 Staffordshire; altogether, she must have passed 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 shindy in the Mauritius, and our friend Shalley isn't a conjuror. And we thought you were larking the old lady, I assure 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 shilling 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 restitution?”
“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 ignoble-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 nobody 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 friendship 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 godfathers, Potts. If they 'd have called you Peter, you 'd have been a well-conducted poor creature. Well, I'm to give you a passport. 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 pass 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 passport.
“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 class, 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 homoeopathy 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?”
“Nothing. Stay, I rather think our people at home might with propriety show my old friend Hirsch here some mark of attention for his conduct towards me. I don't know whether they give a C.B. for that sort of thing, but a sum,—a handsome sum,—something to mark the service, and the man to whom it was rendered. Don't you think 'we' could manage that?”
“I 'll see what can be done. I don't despair of success.”
“As for your share in the affair, Buller, I 'll take care that it shall be mentioned in the proper quarter. If I have a characteristic,—my friends say I have many,—but if I have one, it is that I never forget the most trifling service of the humblest of those who have aided me. You are young, and have your way to make in life. Go back, therefore, and carry with you the reflection that Potts is your friend.”
I saw he was affected at this, for he covered his face with his handkerchief and turned away, and for some seconds his shoulders moved convulsively.
“Yes,” said I, with a struggle to become humble, “there are richer men, there are men more influential by family ties and connections, there are men who occupy a more conspicuous position before the public eye, there are men who exercise a wider sway in the world of politics and party; but this I will say, that there is not one—no, not one—individual in the British dominions who, when you come to consider either the difficulties he has overcome, the strength of the prejudices he has conquered, the totally unassisted and unaided struggle he has had to maintain against not alone the errors, for errors are human, but still worse, the ungenerous misconceptions, the—I will go further, and call them the wilful misrepresentations of those who, from education and rank and condition, might be naturally supposed—indeed, confidently affirmed to be—to be—”
“I am certain of it!” cried he, grasping my hand, and rescuing me from a situation very like smothering,—“I am certain of it!” And with a hurried salutation, for his feelings were evidently overcoming him, he burst away, and descended the stairs five steps at a time; and although I was sorry he had not waited till I finished my peroration, I was really glad that the act had ended and the curtain fallen.
“What a deal of bad money passes current in this world,” said I, as I was alone; “and what a damper it is upon honest industry to think how easy it is to eke out life with a forgery!”
“What do you say to a dinner with me at the 'Swan' in Innspruck, Potts?” cried out Boiler, from the courtyard.
“Excuse me, I mean to eat my last cutlet here, with my old Jailer. It will be an event for the poor fellow as long as he lives. Good-bye, and a safe journey to you.”
I was now bound for the first port in the Mediterranean from which I could take ship for Malta; and the better to carry out my purpose, I resolved never to make acquaintance with any one, or be seduced by any companionship, till I had seen Miss Herbert, and given her the message I was charged with. This time, at least, I would be a faithful envoy; at least, as faithful as a man might be who had gone to sleep over his credentials for a twelvemonth. And so I reached Malta, and took my place by diligence over the Stelvio down to Lecco, never trusting myself with even the very briefest intercourse with my fellow-travellers, and suffering them to indulge in the humblest estimate of me, morally and intellectually,—all that I might be true to my object and firm to my fixed purpose. For the first time in my life I tried to present myself in an unfavorable aspect, and I was astonished to find the experiment by no means unpleasing, the reason being, probably, that it was an eminent success. I began to see how the surly people are such acute philosophers in life, and what a deal of selfish gratification they must derive from their uncurbed ill-humor. I reached Genoa in time to catch a steamer for Malta. It was crowded, and with what, in another mood, I might have called pleasant people; but I held myself estranged and aloof from all. I could mark many an impertinent allusion to my cold and distant manner, and could see that a young sub on his way to Join was even witty at the expense of my retiring disposition. The creature, Groves he was called, used to try to “trot me out,” as he phrased it; but I maintained both my resolve and my temper, and gave him no triumph.
I was almost sorry on the morning we dropped anchor in the harbor. The sense of doing something, anything, with a firm persistence, had given me cheerfulness and courage. However, I had now a task of some nicety before me, and addressed myself at once to its discharge. At the hotel I learned that the cottage inhabited by Mrs. Keats was in a small nook of one of the bays, and only an easy walk from the town; and so I despatched a messenger at once with Miss Crofton's note to Miss Herbert, enclosed in a short one from myself, to know if she would permit me to wait upon her, with reference to the matter in the letter. I spoke of myself in the third person and as the bearer of the letter.
While I was turning over the letters and papers in my writing-desk, awaiting her reply, I came upon Buller's note to his brother, and, without any precise idea why, I sent it by a servant to the Government House, with my card. It was completely without a purpose that I did so, and if my reader has not experienced moments of the like “inconsequence,” I should totally break down in attempting to account for their meaning.
Miss Herbert's reply came back promptly. She requested that the writer of the note she had just read would favor her with a visit at his earliest convenience.
I set forth immediately. What a strange and thrilling sensation it is when we take up some long-dropped link in life, go back to some broken thread of our existence, and try to attach it to the present! We feel young again in the bygone, and yet far older even than our real age in the thought of the changes time has wrought upon us in the meanwhile. A week or so before I had looked with impatience for this meeting, and now I grew very faint-hearted as the moment drew nigh. The only way I could summon courage for the occasion was by thinking that in the mission intrusted to me I was actually nothing. There were incidents and events not one of which touched me, and I should pass away off the scene when our interview was over, and be no more remembered by her.
It was evident that the communication had engaged her attention to some extent by the promptitude of her message to me; and with this thought I crossed the little lawn, and rang the bell at the door.
“The gentleman expected by Miss Herbert, sir?” asked a smart English maid. “Come this way, sir. She will see you in a few minutes.”
I had fully ten minutes to inspect the details of a pretty little drawing-room, one of those little female temples where scattered drawings and books and music, and, above all, the delicious odor of fresh flowers, all harmonize together, and set you a-thinking how easily life could glide by with such appliances were they only set in motion by the touch of the enchantress herself. The door opened at last, but it was the maid; she came to say that Mrs. Keats was very poorly that day, and Miss Herbert could not leave her at that moment; and if it were not perfectly convenient to the gentleman to wait, she begged to know when it would suit him to call again?
“As for me,” said I, “I have come to Malta solely on this matter; pray say that I will wait as long as she wishes. I am completely at her orders.”
I strolled out after this through one of the windows that opened on the lawn, and, gaining the seaside, I sat down upon a rock to bide her coming. I might have sat about half an hour thus, when I heard a rapid step approaching, and I had just time to arise when Miss Herbert stood before me. She started back, and grew pale, very pale, as she recognized me, and for fully a minute there we both stood, unable to speak a word.
“Am I to understand, sir,” said she, at last, “that you are the bearer of this letter?” And she held it open towards me.
“Yes,” said I, with a great effort at collectedness. “I have much to ask your forgiveness for. It is fully a year since I was charged to place that in your hands, but one mischance after another has befallen me; not to own that in my own purposeless mode of life I have had no enemy worse than my fate.”
“I have heard something of your fondness for adventure,” said she, with a strange smile that blended a sort of pity with a gentle irony. “After we parted company at Schaffhausen, I believe you travelled for some time on foot? We heard, at least, that you took a fancy to explore a mode of life few persons have penetrated, or, at least, few of your rank and condition.”
“May I ask, what do you believe that rank and condition to be, Miss Herbert?” asked I, firmly.
She blushed deeply at this; perhaps I was too abrupt in the way I spoke, and I hastened to add,—
“When I offered to be the bearer of the letter you have just read, I was moved by another wish than merely to render you some service. I wanted to tell you, once for all, that if I lived for a while in a fiction land of my own invention, with day-dreams and fancies, and hopes and ambitions all unreal, I have come to pay the due penalty of my deceit, and confess that nothing can be more humble than I am in birth, station, or fortune,—my father an apothecary, my name Potts, my means a very few pounds in the world; and yet, with all that avowal, I feel prouder now that I have made it, than ever I did in the false assumption of some condition I had no claim to.”
She held out her hand to me with such a significant air of approval, and smiled so good-naturedly, that I could not help pressing it to my lips, and kissing it rapturously.
Taking a seat at my side, and with a voice meant to recall me to a quiet and business-like demeanor, she asked me to read over Miss Crofton's letter. I told her that I knew every line of it by heart, and, more still, I knew the whole story to which it related. It was a topic that required the nicest delicacy to touch on, but with a frankness that charmed me, she said,—
“You have had the candor to tell me freely your story; let me imitate you, and reveal mine.
“You know who we are, and whence we have sprung; that my father was a simple laborer on a line of railroad, and by dint of zeal and intelligence, and an energy that would not be balked or impeded, that he raised himself to station and affluence. You have heard of his connection with Sir Elkanah Crofton, and how unfortunately it was broken off; but you cannot know the rest,—that is, you cannot know what we alone know, and what is not so much as suspected by others; and of this I can scarcely dare to speak, since it is essentially the secret of my family.”
I guessed at once to what she alluded; her troubled manner, her swimming eyes, and her quivering voice, all betraying that she referred to the mystery of her father's fate; while I doubted within myself whether it were right and fitting for me to acknowledge that I knew the secret soucre of her anxiety, she relieved me from my embarrassment by continuing thus,—
“Your kind and generous friends have not suffered themselves to be discouraged by defeat. They have again and again renewed their proposals to my mother, only varying the mode, in the hope that by some stratagem they might overcome her reasons for refusal. Now, though this rejection, so persistent as it is, may seem ungracious, it is not without a fitting and substantial cause.”
Again she faltered, and grew confused, and now I saw how she struggled between a natural reserve and an impulse to confide the soitow that oppressed her to one who might befriend her.
“You may speak freely to me,” said I, at last. “I am not ignorant of the mystery you hint at. Crofton has told me what many surmise and some freely believe in.”
“But we know it,—know it for a certainty,” cried she, clasping my hand in her eagerness. “It is no longer a surmise or a suspicion. It is a certainty,—a fact! Two letters in his handwriting have reached my mother,—one from St. Louis, in America, where he had gone first; the second from an Alpine village, where he was laid up in sickness. He had had a terrible encounter with a man who had done him some gross wrong, and he was wounded in the shoulder; after which he had to cross the Rhine, wading or swimming, and travel many miles ere he could find shelter. When he wrote, however, he was rapidly recovering, and as quickly regaining all his old courage and daring.”
“And from that time forward have you had no tidings of him?”
“Nothing but a check on a Russian banker in London to pay to my mother's order a sum of money,—a considerable one, too; and although she hoped to gain some clew to him through this, she could not succeed, nor have we now any trace of him whatever. I ought to mention,” said she, as if catching up a forgotten thread in her narrative, “that in his last letter he enjoined my mother not to receive any payment from the assurance company, nor enter into any compromise with them; and, above all, to live in the hope that we should meet again and be happy.”
“And are you still ignorant of where he now is?”
“We only know that a cousin of mine, an officer of engineers at Aden, heard of an Englishman being engaged by the Shah of Persia to report on certain silver mines at Kashan, and from all he could learn, the description would apply to him. My cousin had obtained leave of absence expressly to trace him, and promised in his last letter to bring me himself any tidings he might procure here to Malta. Indeed, when I learned that a stranger had asked to see me, I was full sure it was my cousin Harry.”
Was it that her eyes grew darker in color as this name escaped, her was it that a certain tremor shook her voice, or was it the anxiety of my own jealous humor that made me wretched as I heard of that cousin Harry, now mentioned for the first time?
“What reparation can I make you for so blank a disappointment?” said I, with a sad, half-bitter tone.
“Be the same kind friend that he would have proved himself if it had been his fortune to have come first,” said she; and though she spoke calmly, she blushed deeply! “Here,” said she, hurriedly, taking a small printed paragraph from a letter, and eagerly, as it seemed, trying to recover her former manner,—“here is a slip I have cut out of the 'Levant Herald.' I found it about two months since. It ran thus: 'The person who had contracted for the works at Pera, and who now turns out to be an Englishman, is reported to have had a violent altercation yesterday with Musted Pasha, in consequence of which he has thrown up his contract, and demanded his passport for Russia. It is rumored here that the Russian ambassador is no stranger to this rupture.' Vague as this is, I feel persuaded that he is the person alluded to, and that it is from Constantinople we must trace him.”
“Well,” cried I, “I am ready. I will set out at once.”
“Oh! can I believe you will do us this great service?” cried she, with swimming eyes and clasped hands.
“This time you will find me faithful,” said I, gravely. “He who has said and done so many foolish things as I have, must, by one good action, give bail for his future character.”
“You are a true friend, and you have all my confidence.”
“Mrs. Keats's compliments, miss,” said the maid at this moment, “and hopes the gentleman will stay to dinner with you, though she cannot come down herself.”
“She imagines you are my cousin, whom she is aware I have been expecting,” said Miss Herbert, in a whisper, and evidently appearing uncertain how to act.
“Oh!” said I, with an anguish I could not repress, “would that I could change my lot with his!”
“Very well, Mary,” said Miss Herbert; “thank your mistress from me, and say the gentleman accepts her invitation with pleasure. Is it too much presumption on my part, sir, to say so?” said she, with a low whisper, while a half-malicious twinkle lit up her eyes, and I could not speak with happiness.
Determined, however, to give an earnest of my zeal in her cause, I declared I would at once return to the town, and learn when the first packet sailed for Constantinople. The dinner hour was seven, so that I had fully five hours yet to make my inquiries ere we met at table. I wondered at myself how business-like and practical I had become; but a strong impulse now impelled me, and seemed to add a sort of strength to my whole nature.
“As Cousin Harry is the mirror of punctuality, and you now represent him, Mr. Potts,” said she, shaking my hand, “pray remember not to be later than seven.”
“Constantinople, Odessa, and the Levant.—The 'Cyclops,' five hundred horse-power, to sail on Wednesday morning, at eight o'clock. For freight or passage apply to Captain Robert B. Rogers.”
This announcement, which I found amidst a great many others in a frame over the fireplace in the coffee-room, struck me forcibly, first of all, because, not belonging to the regular mail-packets, it suggested a cheap passage; and, secondly, it promised an early departure, and the vessel was to sail on the very next morning, an amount of promptitude that I felt would gratify Miss Herbert.
Now, although I had been living for a considerable time back at the cost of the Imperial House of Hapsburg, my resources for such an expedition as was opening before me were of the most slender kind. I made a careful examination of all my worldly wealth, and it amounted to the sum of forty-three pounds some odd shillings. On terra firma I could, of course, economize to any extent. With self-denial and resolution I could live on very little. Life in the East, I had often heard, was singularly cheap and inexpensive. All I had read of Oriental habits in the “Arabian Nights” and “Tales of the Genii,” assured me that with a few dates and a watermelon a man dined fully as well as need be; and the delicious warmth of the climate rendered shelter a complete superfluity. Before forming anything like a correct budget, I must ascertain what would be the cost of my passage to Constantinople, and so I rang for the waiter to direct me to the address of the advertiser.
“That's the captain yonder, sir,” whispered the waiter; and he pointed to a stout, weather-beaten man, who, with his hands in the pockets of his pilot-coat, was standing in front of the fire, smoking a cigar.
Although I had never seen him before, the features reminded me of some one I had met with, and suddenly I bethought me of the skipper with whom I had sailed from Ireland for Milford, and who had given me a letter for his brother “Bob,”—the very Robert Rogers now before me.
“Do you know this handwriting, Captain?” said I, draw-, ing the letter from my pocket-book.
“That's my brother Joe's,” said he, not offering to take the letter from my hand, or removing the cigar from his mouth, but talking with all the unconcern in life. “That's Joe's own scrawl, and there ain't a worse from this to himself.”
“The letter is for you,” said I, rather offended at his coolness.
“So I see. Stick it up there, over the chimney; Joe has never anything to say that won't keep.”
“It is a letter of introduction, sir,” said I, still more haughtily.
“And what if it be? Won't that keep? Who is it to introduce?”
“The humble individual before you, Captain Rogers.”
“So, that's it!” said he, slowly. “Well, read it out for me; for, to tell you the truth, there's no harder navigation to me than one of Joe's scrawls.”
“I believe I can master it,” said I, opening and reading what originally had been composed and drawn up by myself. When I came to “Algernon Sydney Potts, a man so completely after your own heart,” he drew his cigar from his mouth, and, laying his hand on my shoulder, turned me slowly around till the light fell full upon me.
“No, Joseph,” said he, deliberately, “not a bit of it, my boy. This ain't my sort of chap at all!”
I almost choked with anger, but somehow there was such an apparent earnestness in the man, and such a total absence of all wish to offend, that I read on to the end.
“Well,” said he, as I concluded, “he used n't to be so wordy as that. I wonder what came over him. Mayhap he was n't well.”
What a comment on a style that might have adorned the Correct Letter Writer!
“He was, on the contrary, in the enjoyment of perfect health, sir,” said I, tartly.
“All I can pick out of it is, I ain't to offer you any money; and as there is n't any direction easier to follow, nor pleasanter to obey, here's my hand!” And he wrung mine with a grip that would have flattened a chain cable.
“What's your line, here? You ain't sodgering, are you?”
“No; I 'm travelling, for pleasure, for information, for pastime, as one might say.”
“In the general do-nothing and careless line of business? That ain't mine. No, by jingo! I don't eat my fish without matching, ay, and salting them too, I ain't ashamed to say. I 'm captain, supercargo, and pilot of my own craft; take every lunar that is taken aboard. I 've writ every line that ever is writ in the log-book, and I vaccinated every man and boy aboard for the natural small-pox with these fingers and this tool that you see here!” And he produced an old and very rusty instrument of veterinary surgery from his vest-pocket, where it lay with copper money, tobacco quids, and lucifer matches.
I quickly remembered the character for inordinate boast-fulness his brother had given me, and of which he thus, without any provocation on my part, afforded me a slight specimen. Now, perhaps, at this stage of my narrative, I might never have alluded to him at all, if it were not for the opportunity it gives me of recording how nobly and how resolutely I resisted what may be called the most trying temptation of human nature. An inveterate dram-drinker has been known to turn away from the proffered glass; an incurable gambler has been seen to decline the invitation to “cut in;” dignitaries of the church have begged off being made bishops; but is there any mention in history of an anecdote-monger suffering himself to be patiently vanquished, and retiring from the field without firing off at least an “incident that occurred to himself”? If ever a man was sorely tried, I was. Here was this coarsely minded vulgar dog, with nothing pictorial or imaginative in his nature, heaping story upon story of his own feats and achievements, in which not one solitary situation ever suggested an interest or awakened an anxiety; and I, who could have shot my tigers, crippled my leopards, hamstrung my lionesses, rescued men from drowning, and women from fire,—with little life touches to thrill the heart and force tears from the eyes of a stock-broker,—I, I say, had to stand there and listen in silence! Watching a creature banging away at a target that he never hit, with an old flint musket, while you held in your hand a short Enfield that would have driven the ball through the bull's eye, is nothing to this; and to tell the truth, it nearly choked me. Twice I had to cough down the words, “Now let me mention a personal fact.” But I did succeed, and I am proud to say I only grew very red in the face, and felt that singing noise in the ears and general state of muddle that forebodes a fit. But I rallied, and said in a voice, slow from the dignity of a self-conquest,—
“Can you take me as a passenger to Constantinople?”
“To Constantinople? Ay, to the Persian Gulf, to Point de Galle, to Cochin China, to Ross River; don't think to puzzle me with navigation, my lad.”
“Are there many other passengers?”
“I could have five hundred, if I 'd take 'em! Put Bob Rogers on a placard, and see what'll happen. If I said, 'I 'm a-going to sea on a plank to-morrow,' there's men would rather come along with me than go in the 'Queen' or the 'Hannibal.' I don't say they 're right, mind ye; but I won't say they's wrong, neither.”
“Oh, why did n't I meet this wretch when I was a child? Why didn't my father find a Helot like this, to tell lies before me, and frighten me with their horrid ugliness?” This was the thought that flashed through me as I listened. I felt, besides, that such stupid, purposeless inventions corrupted and blunted the taste for graceful narrative, just in the same way that an undeserving recipient of charity offends the pleasure of real benevolence.
“May I ask, Captain Rogers, what is the fare?” said I, with a bland courtesy.
“That depends upon the man, sir. If you was Ramsam Can-tanker-abad, I'd say five hundred gold pagodas. If you was a Cockney stripling, with a fresh-water face, and a spunyarn whisker, I 'd call it a matter of seven or eight pound.”
“And you sail at eight?”
“To the minute. When Bob Rogers says eight o'clock, the first turn of the paddles will be the first stroke of the hour.”
“Then book me, pray, for a berth; and, for surety's sake, I'll go aboard to-night!”
“Meet me, then, here, at ten o'clock, and I 'll take you off in my gig, an honor to be proud on, my lad; but as Joe's friend, I'll do it.”
I bowed my acknowledgments and went off, neither delighted with my new acquaintance, nor myself for the patience I had shown him. After all, I had secured an early passage, and was thus able to show Kate Herbert that I was not going to let the grass grow under my feet this time, and that she might reckon on my zeal to serve her in future. As I retraced my road to the cottage, I forgot all about Captain Rogers, and only thought of Kate, and the interests that were hers. It was next to a certainty that her father was yet alive; but how to find him in a strange land, with a feigned name, and most probably with every aid and appliance to complete his disguisement! It was, doubtless, a noble enterprise to devote oneself for such as she was, but not very hopeful withal; and then I went over various plans for my future guidance: what I should do if I fell sick? what if my money failed me? what if I were waylaid by Arabs, or carried away to some fearful region in the mountains, and made to feed a pet alligator or a domestic boa-constrictor? I hoped sincerely that I was overestimating my possible perils, but it was wise to give a large margin to the unknown; and so I did not curb-myself in the least.
As I entered the grounds, the night was falling, and I could see that the lamps were already lighted in the drawing-room. What surprised me, however, was to see a very smart groom, well mounted, and leading another horse up and down before the door. There was, evidently, a visitor within, and I felt indisposed to enter till he had gone away. My curiosity, however, prompted me to ask the groom the name of his master, and he replied, “The Honorable Captain Buller.”
The very essence of all jealousy is that it is unreasoning. It is well known that husbands—that much-believing and much-belied class—always suspect every one but the right man; and now, without the faintest clew to a suspicion, I grew actually sick with jealousy!
Nor was it altogether blamable in me, for as I looked through the uncurtained window, I could see the Captain, a fine-looking, rather tigerish sort of fellow, standing with his back to the fireplace, while he talked to Miss Herbert, who sat some distance off at a work-table. There was in his air that amount of jaunty ease and self-possession that said, “I 'm at home here; in this fortress I hold the chief command.” There was about him, too, the tone of an assumed superiority, which, when displayed by a man towards a woman, takes the most offensive of all possible aspects.
As he talked, he moved at last towards a window, and, opening it, held out his hand to feel if it were raining.
“I hope,” cried he, “you'll not send me back with a refusal; her Ladyship counts upon you as the chief ornament of her ball.”
“We never do go to balls, sir,” was the dry response.
“But make this occasion the exception. If you only knew how lamentably we are off for pretty people, you 'd pity us. Such garrison wives and daughters are unknown to the oldest inhabitant of the island. Surely Mrs. Keats will be quite well by Wednesday, and she 'll not be so cruel as to deny you to us for this once.”
“I can but repeat my excuses,—I never go out.”
“If you say so, I think I'll abandon all share in the enterprise. It was a point of honor with me to persuade you; in fact, I pledged myself to succeed, and if you really persist in a refusal, I 'II just pitch all these notes in the fire, and go off yachting till the whole thing is over.” And with this he drew forth a mass of notes from his sabretache, and proceeded to con over the addresses: “'Mrs. Hilyard,' 'Mr. Barnes,' 'Mr. Clintosh,' 'Lady Bladgen.' Oh, Lady Blagden! Why, it would be worth while coming only to see her and Sir John; and here are the Crosbys too; and what have we here! Oh! this is a note from Grey. You don't know my brother Grey,—he 'd amuse you immensely. Just listen to this, by way of a letter of introduction:—
“'Dear George,—Cherish the cove that will hand you this note as the most sublime snob I have ever met in all my home and foreign experiences. In a large garrison like yours, you can have no difficulty in finding fellows to give him a field-day. I commit him, therefore, to your worthy keeping, to dine him, draw him forth, and pitch him out of the window when you've done with him. No harm if it is from the topmost story of the highest barrack in Malta. His name is Potts,—seriously and truthfully Potts. Birth, parentage, and belongings all unknown to
“'Yours ever,'
“'Grey Buller.'”
“You are unfortunate, sir, in confiding your correspondence to me,” said Kate, rising from her seat, “for that gentleman is a friend—a sincere and valued friend—of my own, and you could scarcely have found a more certain way to offend me than to speak of him slightingly.”
“You can't mean that you know him—ever met him?”
“I know him and respect him, and I will not listen to one word to his disparagement. Nay, more, sir, I will feel myself at liberty, if I think it fitting, to tell Mr. Potts the honorable mode in which your brother has discharged the task of an introduction, its good faith, and gentlemanlike feeling.”
“Pray, let us have him at the mess first. Don't spoil our sport till we have at least one evening out of him.”
But she did not wait for him to finish his speech, and left the room.
It is but fair to own he took his reverses with great coolness; he tightened his sword-belt, set his cap on his head before the glass, stroked down his moustache, and then, lighting a cigar, swaggered off to the door with the lounging swing of his order.
As for myself, I hastened back to the town, and with such speed that I traversed the mile in something like thirteen minutes. I had no very clear or collected plan of action, but I resolved to ask Captain Rogers to be my friend, and see me through this conjuncture. He had just dined as I entered the coffee-room, and consented to have his brandy-and-water removed to my bedroom while I opened my business with him.
I will not, at this eleventh hour of revelations, inflict upon my reader the details, but simply be satisfied to state that I found the skipper far more practical than I looked for. He evidently, besides, had a taste for these sort of adventures, and prided himself on his conduct of them. “Go back now, and eat your dinner comfortably with your friends; leave everything to me, and I promise you one thing,—the 'Cyclops' shall not get full steam up till we have settled this small transaction.”