Breakfast over, I took a walk through the town. Though in a measure prepared for a scene of unbustling quietude and tranquillity, I must own that the air of repose around, far surpassed all I had imagined. The streets through which I sauntered were grass-grown and untrodden; the shops were but half open; not an equipage, nor even a horseman was to be seen. In the Platz, where a sort of fruit-market was held, a few vendors of grapes, peaches, and melons sat under large crimson umbrellas, but there seemed few purchasers, except a passing schoolboy, carefully scanning the temptations in which he was about to invest his kreutzer.
The most remarkable feature of the place, however, and it is one which, through a certain significance, has always held its place in my memory, was that, go where one would, the palace of the Grand-Duke was sure to finish the view at one extremity of the street. In fact, every alley converged to this one centre, and the royal residence stood like the governor's chamber in a panopticon jail. There did my mind for many a day picture him sitting like a huge spider watching the incautious insects that permeated his web. I imagined him fat, indolent, and apathetic, but yet, with a jailer's instincts, ever mindful of every stir and movement of the prisoners below. With a very ordinary telescope he must be master of everything that went on, and the humblest incident could not escape his notice. Was it the consciousness of this surveillance that made every one keep the house? Was it the feeling that the “Gross Herzogliche” eye never left them, that prevented men being abroad in the streets and about their affairs as in other places? I half suspected this, and set to work imagining a state of society thus scanned and scrutinized. But that the general aspect of the town so palpably proclaimed the absence of all trade and industry, I might have compared the whole to a glass hive; but they were all drones that dwelt there, there was not one “busy bee” in the whole of them.
When I rambled thus carelessly along, I came in front of a sort of garden fenced from the street by an iron railing. The laurel and arbutus, and even the oleander, were there, gracefully blending a varied foliage, and contrasting in their luxuriant liberty so pleasantly with the dull uniformity outside. Finding a gate wide open, I strolled in, and gave myself up to the delicious enjoyment of the spot. As I was deliberating whether this was a public garden or not, I found myself before a long, low, villa-like building, with a colonnade in front. Over the entrance was a large shield, which on nearer approach I recognized to contain the arms of England. This, therefore, was the legation, the residence of our minister, Sir Shalley Doubleton. I felt a very British pride and satisfaction to see our representative lodged so splendidly. With all the taxpayer's sentiment in my heart, I rejoiced to think that he who personated the nation should, in all his belongings, typify the wealth, the style, and the grandeur of England, and in the ardor of this enthusiasm, I hastened back to the inn for the despatch-bag.
Armed with this, and a card, I soon presented myself at the door. On the card I had written, “Mr. Pottinger presents his respectful compliments, and requests his Excellency will favor him with an audience of a few minutes for an explanation.”
I had made up my mind to state that my servant, in removing my smaller luggage from the train, had accidentally carried off this Foreign Office bag, which, though at considerable inconvenience, I had travelled much out of my way to restore in person. I had practised this explanation as I dressed in the morning, I had twice rehearsed it to an orange-tree in the garden, before which I had bowed till my back ached, and I fancied myself perfect in my part. It would, I confess, have been a great relief to me to have had only the slightest knowledge of the great personage before whom I was about to present myself, to have known was he short or tall, young or old, solemn or easy-mannered, had he a loud voice and an imperious tone, or was he of the soft and silky order of his craft. I'd have willingly entertained his “gentleman” at a moderate repast for some information on these points, but there was no time for the inquiry, and so I rang boldly at the bell. The door opened of itself at the summons, and I found myself in a large hall with a plaster cast of the Laocoon, and nothing else. I tried several of the doors on either side, but they were all locked. A very handsome and spacious stair of white marble led up from the middle of the hall; but I hesitated about venturing to ascend this, and once more repaired to the bell outside, and repeated my summons. The loud clang re-echoed through the arched hall, the open door gave a responsive shake, and that was all. No one came; everything was still as before. I was rather chagrined at this. The personal inconvenience was less offensive than the feeling how foreigners would comment on such want of propriety, what censures they would pass on such an ill-arranged household. I rang again, this time with an energy that made the door strike some of the plaster from the wall, and, with a noise like cannon, “What the hangman”—I am translating—“is all this?” cried a voice thick with passion; and, on looking up, I saw a rather elderly man, with a quantity of curly yellow hair, frowning savagely on me from the balcony over the stair. He made no sign of coming down, but gazed sternly at me from his eminence.
“Can I see his Excellency, the Minister?” said I, with dignity.
“Not if you stop down there, not if you continue to ring the bell like an alarm for fire, not if you won't take the trouble to come upstairs.”
I slowly began the ascent at these words, pondering what sort of a master such a man must needs have. As I gained the top, I found myself in front of a very short, very fat man, dressed in a suit of striped gingham, like an over-plethoric zebra, and wheezing painfully, in part from asthma, in part from agitation. He began again,—
“What the hangman do you mean by such a row? Have you no manners, no education? Where were you brought up that you enter a dwelling-house like a city in storm?”
“Who is this insolent creature that dares to address me in this wise? What ignorant menial can have so far forgotten my rank and his insignificance?”
“I'll tell you all that presently,” said he; “there 's his Excellency's bell.” And he bustled away, as fast as his unwieldy size would permit, to his master's room.
I was outraged and indignant There was I, Potts,—no, Pottinger,—Algernon Sydney Pottinger,—on my way to Italy and Greece, turning from my direct road to consign with safety a despatch-bag which many a less conscientious man would have chucked out of his carriage window and forgotten; there I stood to be insulted by a miserable stone-polishing, floor-scrubbing, carpet-twigging Haus-knecht? Was this to be borne? Was it to be endured? Was a man of station, family, and attainments to be the object of such indignity?
Just as I had uttered this speech aloud, a very gentle voice addressed me, saying,—
“Perhaps I can assist you? Will you be good enough to say what you want?”
I started suddenly, looked up, and whom should I see before me but that Miss Herbert, the beautiful girl in deep mourning that I had met at Milford, and who now, in the same pale loveliness, turned on me a look of kind and gentle meaning.
“Do you remember me?” said I, eagerly. “Do you remember the traveller—a pale young man, with a Glengarry cap and a plaid overcoat—who met you at Milford?”
“Perfectly,” said she, with a slight twitch about the mouth like a struggle against a smile. “Will you allow me to repay you now for your politeness then? Do you wish to see his Excellency?”
I 'm not very sure what it was I replied, but I know well what was passing through my head. If my thoughts could have spoken, it would have been in this wise,—
“Angel of loveliness, I don't care a brass farthing for his Excellency. It is not a matter of the slightest moment to me if I never set eyes on him. Let me but speak to you, tell you the deep impression you have made upon my heart; how, in my ardor to serve you, I have already been involved in an altercation that might have cost me my life; how I still treasure up the few minutes I passed beside you as the Elysian dream of all my life—”
“I am certain, sir,” broke she in while I spoke, I repeat, I know not what,—“I am certain, sir, that you never came here to mention all this to his Excellency.”
There was a severe gravity in the way that she said these words that recalled me to myself, but not to any consciousness of what I had been saying; and so, in my utter discomfiture, I blundered out something about the lost despatches and the cause of my coming.
“If you 'll wait a moment here,” said she, opening a door into a neatly furnished room, “his Excellency shall hear of your wish to see him.” And before I could answer, she was gone.
I was now alone, but in what wild perplexity and anxiety! How came she here? What could be the meaning of her presence in this place? The Minister was an unmarried man, so much my host had told me. How then reconcile this fact with the presence of one who had left England but a few days ago, as some said, to be a governess or a companion? Oh, the agony of my doubts, the terrible agony of my dire misgivings! What a world of iniquity do we live in, what vice and corruption are ever around us! It was but a year or two ago, I remember, that the “Times” newspaper had exposed the nefarious schemes of a wretch who had deliberately invented a plan to entrap those most unprotected of all females. The adventures of this villain had become part of the police literature of Europe. Young and attractive creatures, induced to come abroad by promises of the most seductive kind, had been robbed by this man of all they possessed, and deserted here and there throughout the Continent. I was so horror-stricken by the terrors my mind had so suddenly conjured up, that I could not acquire the calm and coolness requisite for a process of reasoning. My over-active imagination, as usual, went off with me, clearing obstacles with a sweeping stride, and steeplechasing through fact as though it were only a gallop over grass land.
“Poor girl, well might you look confused and overwhelmed at meeting me! well might the flush of shame have spread over your neck and shoulders, and well might you have hurried away from the presence of one who had known you in the days of your happy innocence!” I am not sure that I did n't imagine I had been her playfellow in childhood, and that we had been brought up from infancy together. My mind then addressed itself to the practical question, What was to be done? Was I to turn my head away while this iniquity was being enacted? was I to go on my way, forgetting the seeds of that misery whose terrible fruits must one day be a shame and an open ignominy? or was I to arraign this man, great and exalted as he was, and say to him, “Is it thus you represent before the eyes of the foreigner the virtues of that England we boast to be the model of all morality? Is it thus you illustrate the habits of your order? Do you dare to profane what, by the fiction of diplomacy, is called the soil of your country, by a life that you dare not pursue at home? The Parliament shall hear of it; the 'Times' shall ring with it; that magnificent institution, the common sense of England, long sick of what is called secret diplomacy, shall learn at last to what uses are applied the wiles and snares of this deceitful craft, its extraordinary and its private missions, its hurried messengers with their bags of corruption—”
I was well “into my work,” and was going along slappingly, when a very trim footman, in a nankeen jacket, said,—
“If you will come this way, sir, his Excellency will see you.”
He led me through three or four salons handsomely furnished and ornamented with pictures, the most conspicuous of which, in each room, was a life-sized portrait of the same gentleman, though in a different costume,—now in the Windsor uniform, now as a Guardsman, and, lastly, in the full dress of the diplomatic order. I had but time to guess that this must be his Excellency, when the servant announced me and retired.
It is in deep shame that I own that the aspect of the princely apartments, the silence, the implied awe of the footman's subdued words as he spoke, had so routed all my intentions about calling his Excellency to account that I stood in his presence timid and abashed. It is an ignoble confession wrung out of the very heart of my snobbery, that no sooner did I find myself before that thin, pale, gray-headed man, who in a light silk dressing-gown and slippers sat writing away, than I gave up my brief, and inwardly resigned my place as a counsel for injured innocence.
He never raised his head as I entered, but continued his occupation without noticing me, muttering below his breath the words as they fell from his pen. “Take a seat,” said he, curtly, at last. Perceiving now that he was fully aware of my presence, I sat down without reply. “This bag is late, Mr. Paynter,” said he, blandly, as he laid down his pen and looked me in the face.
“Your Excellency will permit me, in limine, to observe that my name is not Paynter.”
“Possibly, sir,” said he, haughtily; “but you are evidently before me for the first time, or you would know that, like my great colleague and friend, Prince Metternich, I have made it a rule through life never to burden my memory with whatever can be spared it, and of these are the patronymics of all subordinate people; for this reason, sir, and to this end, every cook in my establishment answers to the name of Honoré, my valet is always Pierre, my coach-. man Jacob, my groom is Charles, and all foreign messengers I call Paynter. The original of that appellation is, I fancy, superannuated or dead, but he lives in some twenty successors who carry canvas reticules as well as he.”
“The method may be convenient, sir, but it is scarcely complimentary,” said I, stiffly.
“Very convenient,” said he, complacently. “All consuls I address as Mr. Sloper. You can't fail to perceive how it saves time, and I rather think that in the end they like it themselves. When did you leave town?”
“I left on Saturday last. I arrived at Dover by the express train, and it was there that the incident befell me by which I have now the honor to stand before your Excellency.”
Instead of bestowing the slightest attention on this exordium of mine, he had resumed his pen and was writing away glibly as before. “Nothing new stirring, when you left?” said he, carelessly.
“Nothing, sir. But to resume my narrative of explanation—”
“Come to dinner, Paynter; we dine at six,” said he, rising hastily; and, opening a glass door into a conservatory, walked away, leaving me in a mingled state of shame, anger, humiliation, and, I will state, of ludicrous embarrassment, which I have no words to express.
“Dinner! No,” exclaimed I, “if the alternative were a hard crust and a glass of spring water I not if I were to fast till this time to-morrow! Dine with a man who will not condescend to acknowledge even my identity, who will not deign to call me by my name, but only consents to regard me as a pebble on the seashore, a blade of grass in a wide meadow! Dine with him, to be addressed as Mr. Paynter, and to see Pierre, and Jacob, and the rest of them looking on me as one of themselves! By what prescriptive right does this man dare to insult those who, for aught he can tell, are more than his equals in ability? Does the accident—and what other can it be than accident?—of his station confer this privilege? How would he look if one were to retort with his own impertinence? What, for instance, if I were to say, 'I always call small diplomatists Bluebottles! You 'll not be offended if, just for memory's sake, I address you as Bluebottle,—Mr. Bluebottle, of course'?”
I was in ecstasies at this thought. It seemed to vindicate all my insulted personality, all my outraged and injured identity. “Yes,” said I, “I will dine with him; six o'clock shall see me punctual to the minute, and determined to avenge the whole insulted family of the Paynters. I defy him to assert that the provocation came not from his side. I dare him to show cause why I should be the butt of his humor, any more than he of mine, I will be prepared to make use of his own exact words in repelling my impertinence, and say, 'Sir, you have exactly embodied my meaning; you have to the letter expressed what this morning I felt on being called Mr. Paynter; you have, besides this, had the opportunity of experiencing the sort of pain such an impertinence inflicts, and you are now in a position to guide you as to how far you will persist in it for the future.'”
I actually revelled in the thought of this reprisal, and longed for the moment to come in which, indolently thrown back in my chair, I should say, “Bluebottle, pass the Madeira,” with some comment on the advantage all the Bluebottles have in getting their wine duty free. Then, with what sarcastic irony I should condole with him over his wearisome, dull career, eternally writing home platitudes for blue-books, making Grotius into bad grammar, and vamping up old Puffendorf for popular reading. “Ain't you sick of it all, B. B.?” I should say, familiarly; “is not the unreality of the whole thing offensive? Don't you feel that a despatch is a sort of formula in which Madrid might be inserted for Moscow, and what was said of Naples might be predicated for Norway?” I disputed a long time with myself at what precise period of the entertainment I should unmask my battery and open fire. Should it be in the drawing-room, before dinner? Should it be immediately after the soup, with the first glass of sherry? Ought I to wait till the dessert, and that time when a sort of easy intimacy had been established which might be supposed to prompt candor and frankness? Would it not be in better taste to defer it till the servants had left the room? To expose him to his household seemed scarcely fair.
These were all knotty points, and I revolved them long and carefully, as I came back to my hotel, through the same silent street.
“Don't keep a place for me at the table d'hôte to-day, Kramm,” said I, in an easy carelessness; “I dine with his Excellency. I could n't well get off the first day, but tomorrow I promise you to pronounce upon your good cheer.”
I suppose I am not the first man who has derived consequence from the invitation it had cost him misery to accept. How many in this world of snobbery have felt that the one sole recompense for long nights of ennui was the fact that their names figured amongst the distinguished guests in the next day's “Post”?
“It is not a grand dinner to-day, is it?” asked Kramm.
“No, no, merely a family party; we are very old chums, and have much to talk over.”
“You will then go in plain black, and with nothing but your 'decorations.'”
“I will wear none,” said I, “none; not even a ribbon.” And I turned away to hide the shame and mortification his suggestion had provoked.
Punctually at six o'clock I arrived at the legation; four powdered footmen were in the hall, and a decent-looking personage in black preceded me up the stairs, and opened the double doors into the drawing-room, without, however, announcing me, or paying the slightest attention to my mention of “Mr. Pottinger.”
Laying down his newspaper as I entered, his Excellency came forward with his hand out, and though it was the least imaginable touch, and his bow was grandly ceremonious, his smile was courteous and his manner bland.
“Charmed to find you know the merit of punctuality,” said he. “To the untravelled English, six means seven, or even later. You may serve dinner, Robins. Strange weather we are having,” continued he, turning to me; “cold, raw, and uncongenial.”
We talked “barometer” till, the door opening, the maître d'hôtel announced, “His Excellency is served;” a rather unpolite mode, I thought, of ignoring his company, and which was even more strongly impressed by the fact that he walked in first, leaving me to follow.
At the table a third “cover” was just being speedily removed as we entered, a fact that smote at my heart like a blow. The dinner began, and went on with little said; a faint question from the Minister as to what the dish contained and a whispered reply constituted most of the talk, and an occasional cold recommendation to me to try this or that entrée. It was admirable in all its details, the cookery exquisite, the wines delicious, but there was an oppression in the solemnity of it all that made me sigh repeatedly. Had the butler been serving a high mass, his motions at the sideboard could scarcely have been more reverential.
“If you don't object to the open air, we 'll take our coffee on the terrace,” said his Excellency; and we soon found ourselves on a most charming elevation, surrounded on three sides with orange-trees, the fourth opening a magnificent view over a fine landscape with the Taunus mountains in the distance.
“I can offer you, at least, a good cigar,” said the Minister, as he selected with great care two from a number on a silver plateau before him. “These, I think, you will find recommendable; they are grown for myself at Cuba, and prepared after a receipt only known to one family.”
In all this there was a dignified civility, not at all like the impertinent freedom of his manner in the morning. He never, besides, addressed me as Mr. Paynter; in fact, he did not advert to a name at all, not giving me the slightest pretext for that reprisal I had come so charged with; and, as to opening the campaign myself, I 'd as soon have commenced acquaintance with a tiger by a pull at his tail. We were now alone; the servants had retired, and there we sat, silently smoking our cigars in apparent ease, but one of us, at least, in a frame of mind the very opposite to tranquillity.
What a rush and conflict of thought was in my head! Why had not she dined with us? Was her position such as that the presence of a stranger became an embarrassment? Good heaven! was I to suppose this, that, and the other? What was there in this man that so imposed on me, that when I wanted to speak I only could sigh, and that I felt his presence like some overpowering spell? It was that calm, self-contained, quiet manner—cold rather than austere, courteous without cordiality—that chilled me to the very marrow of my bones. Lecture him on the private moralities of his life! ask him to render me an account of his actions! address him as Bluebottle!—
“With such tobacco as that, one can drink Bordeaux,” said he. “Help yourself.”
And I did help myself,—freely, repeatedly. I drank for courage, as a man might drink from thirst or fever, or for strength in a moment of fainting debility. The wine was exquisite, and my heart beat more forcibly, and I felt it.
I cannot follow very connectedly the course of events; I neither know how the conversation glided into politics, nor what I said on that subject. As to the steps by which I succeeded in obtaining his Excellency's confidence, I know as little as a man does of the precise moment in which he is wet through in a Scotch mist. I have a dim memory of talking in a very dictatorial voice, and continually referring to my “entrance into public life,” with reference to what Peel “said,” and what the Duke “told me.”
“What's the use of writing home?” said his Excellency, in a desponding voice. “For the last five years I have called attention to what is going on here; nobody minds, nobody heeds it. Open any blue-book you like, and will you find one solitary despatch from Hesse-Kalbbratonstadt?”
“I cannot call one to mind.”
“Of course you can't. Would you believe it, when the Zeringer party went out, and the Schlaffdorfers came in, I was rebuked—actually rebuked—for sending off a special messenger with the news? And then came out a despatch in cipher, which being interpreted contained this stupid doggerel:—
“I ask, sir, is it thus the affairs of a great country can be carried on? The efforts of Russia here are incessant: a certain personage—I will mention no names—loves caviare, he likes it fresh, there is a special estaffette established to bring it! I learned, by the most insidious researches, his fondness for English cheese; I lost no time in putting the fact before the cabinet I represented, that while timid men looked tremblingly towards France, the thoughtful politician saw the peril of Hesse-Kalbbratonstadt I urged them to lose no time: 'The Grand-Duchess has immense influence; countermine her,' said I,—'countermine her with a Stilton;' and, would you believe it, sir, they have not so much as sent out a Cheddar! What will the people of England say one of these days when they learn, as learn they shall, that at this mission here I am alone; that I have neither secretary nor attaché, paid or unpaid; that since the Crimean War the whole weight of the legation has been thrown upon me: nor is this all; but that a systematic course of treachery—I can't call it lies—has been adopted to entrap me, if such were possible? My despatches are unreplied to, my questions all unanswered. I stand here with the peace of Europe in my hands, and none to counsel nor advise me. What will you say, sir, to the very last despatch I have received from Downing Street? It runs thus:—
“'I am instructed by his Lordship to inform you, that he views with indifference your statement of the internal condition of the grand-duchy, but is much struck by your charge for sealing-wax.
“'I have, sir, &c.'
“This is no longer to be endured. A public servant who has filled some of the most responsible of official stations,—I was eleven years at Tragotà, in the Argentine Republic; I was a chargé at Oohululoo for eight months, the only European who ever survived an autumn there; they then sent me special to Cabanhoe to negotiate the Salt-sprat treaty; after that—”
Here my senses grew muddy; the gray dim light, the soft influences of a good dinner and a sufficiency of wine, the drowsy tenor of the Minister's voice, all conspired, and I slept as soundly as if in my bed. My next conscious moment was as his Excellency moved his chair back, and said,—
“I think a cup of tea would be pleasant; let us come into the drawing-room.”
On entering the drawing-room, his Excellency presented me to an elderly lady, very thin, and very wrinkled, who received me with a cold dignity, and then went on with her crochet-work. I could not catch her name, nor, indeed, was I thinking of it; my whole mind was bent upon the question, Who could she be? For what object was she there? All my terrible doubts of the morning now rushed forcibly back to my memory, and I felt that never had I detested a human being with the hate I experienced for her. The pretentious stiffness of her manner, the haughty self-possession she wore, were positive outrages; and as I looked at her, I felt myself muttering, “Don't imagine that your heavy black moiré, or your rich falls of lace, impose upon me. Never fancy that this mock austerity deceives one who reads human nature as he reads large print. I know, and I abhor you, old woman! That a man should be to the other sex as a wolf to the fold, the sad experience of daily life too often teaches; but that a woman should be false to woman, that all the gentle instincts we love to think feminine, should be debased to treachery and degraded into snares for betrayal,—this is an offence that cries aloud to Heaven!
“No more tea,—none!” cried I, with an energy that nearly made the footman let the tray fall, and so far startled the old lady that she dropped her knitting with a faint cry. As for his Excellency, he had covered his face with the “Globe,” and, I believe, was fast asleep.
I looked about for my hat to take my leave, when a sudden thought struck me. “I will stay. I will sit down beside this old creature, and, for once at least in her miserable life, she shall hear from the lips of a man a language that is not that of the debauchee. Who knows what effect one honest word of a true-hearted man may not work? I will try, at all events,” said I, and approached her. She did not, as I expected, make room for me on the sofa beside her, and I was, therefore, obliged to take a chair in front. This was so far awkward that it looked formal; it gave somewhat the character of accusation to my position, and I decided to obviate the difficulty by assuming a light, easy, cheerful manner at first, as though I suspected nothing.
“It's a pleasant little capital, this Kalbbratonstadt,” said I, as I lay back in my chair.
“Is it?” said she, dryly, without looking up from her work.
“Well, I mean,” said I, “it seems to have its reasonable share of resources. They have their theatre, and their music garden, and their promenades, and their drives to—to—”
“You'll find all the names set down there,” said she, handing me a copy of Murray's “Handbook” that lay beside her.
“I care less for names than facts, madam,” said I, angrily, for her retort had stung me, and routed all my previous intention of a smooth approach to the fortress. “I am one of those unfashionable people who never think the better of vice because it wears French gloves, and goes perfumed with Ess bouquet.”
She took off her spectacles, wiped them, looked at me, and went on with her work without speaking.
“If I appear abrupt, madam,” said I, “in this opening, it is because the opportunity I now enjoy may never occur again, and may be of the briefest even now. We meet by what many would call an accident,—one of those incidents which the thoughtless call chance directed my steps to this place; let me hope that that which seemed a hazard may bear all the fruits of maturest combination, and that the weak words of one frail even as yourself may not be heard by you in vain. Let me, therefore, ask you one question,—only one,—and give me an honest answer to it.”
“You are a very singular person,” said she, “and seem to have strangely forgotten the very simple circumstance that we meet for the first time now.”
“I know it, I feel it; and that it may also be for the last and only time is my reason for this appeal to you. There are persons who, seeing you here, would treat you with a mock deference, address you with a counterfeit respect, and go their ways; who would say to their selfish hearts, 'It is no concern of mine; why should it trouble me?' But I am not one of these. I carry a conscience in my breast; a conscience that holds its daily court, and will even to-morrow ask me, 'Have you been truthful, have you been faithful? When the occasion served to warn a fellow-creature of the shoal before him, did you cry out, “Take soundings! you are in shallow water,” or did you with slippery phrases gloss over the peril, because it involved no danger to yourself?'”
“Would that same conscience be kind enough to suggest that your present conduct is an impertinence, sir?”
“So it might, madam; just as the pilot is impertinent when he cries out, 'Hard, port! breakers ahead!'”
“I am therefore to infer, sir,” said she, with a calm dignity, “that my approach to a secret danger—of which I can have no knowledge—is a sufficient excuse for the employment of language on your part, that, under a less urgent plea, had been offensive?”
“You are,” said I, boldly.
“Speak out, then, sir, and declare what it is.”
“Nay, madam, if the warning find no echo within, my words are useless. I have said I would ask you a question.”
“Well, sir, do so.”
“Will you answer it frankly? Will you give it all the weight and influence it should bear, and reply to it with that truthful spirit that conceals nothing?”
“What is your question, sir? You had better be speedy with it, for I don't much trust to my continued patience.”
I arose at this, and, passing behind the back of my chair, leaned my arms on the upper rail, so as to confront her directly; and then, in the voice of an accusing angel, I said, “Old woman, do you know where you are going?”
“I protest, sir,” said she, rising, with an indignation I shall not forget—“I protest, sir, you make me actually doubt if I know where I am!”
“Then let me tell you, madam,” said I, with the voice of one determined to strike terror into her heart—“let me tell you; and may my words have the power to awaken you, even now, to the dreadful consequences of what you are about!”
“Shalley! Shalley!” cried she in amazement, “is this gentleman deranged, or is it but the passing effect of your conviviality?” And with this she swept out of the room, leaving me there alone, for I now perceived—what seemed also to have escaped her—that the Minister had slipped quietly away some time before, and was doubtless at that same moment in the profoundest of slumbers.
I took my departure at once. There was no leave-taking to delay me, and I left the house in a mood little according with the spirit of one who had partaken of its hospitalities; I am constrained to admit I was the very reverse of satisfied with myself. It was cowardly and mean of me to wreak my anger on that old woman, and not upon him who was the really great offender. He it was I should have arraigned; and with the employment of a little artifice and some tact, how terrible I might have made even my jesting levity! how sarcastic my sneers at fashionable vice! Affecting utter ignorance about his life and habits, I could have incidentally thrown out little episodes of all the men who have wrecked their fortunes by abandoned habits. I would have pointed to this man who made a brilliant opening in the House, and that who had acquired such celebrity at the Bar; I would have shown the rising statesman tarnished, the future chief justice disqualified; I would have said, “Let no man, however modest his character or unfrequented his locality, imagine that the world takes no note of his conduct; in every class he is judged by his peers, and you and I, Doubleton, will as assuredly be arraigned before the bar of society as the pickpocket will be charged before the beak!”
I continued to revolve these and such like thoughts throughout the entire night. The wine I had drunk fevered and excited me, and added to that disturbed state which my own self-accusings provoked. Doubts, too, flitted across my mind whether I ought not to have maintained a perfect silence towards the others, and reserved all my eloquence for the poor girl herself. I imagined myself taking her hand between both mine, while, with averted head, she sobbed as if her heart would break, and, saying, “Be comforted, poor stricken deer! be comforted; I know all. One who is far from perfect himself, sorrows with and compassionates you; he will be your friend, your adviser, your protector. I will restore you to that home you quitted in innocence. I will bring you back to that honeysuckled porch where your pure heart expanded in home affections.” Nothing shall equal the refined delicacy of my manner; that mingled reserve and kindness—a sort of cross between a half-brother and a canon of St. Paul's—shall win her over to repentance, and then to peace. How I fancied myself at intervals of time visiting that cottage, going, as the gardener watches some cherished plant, to gaze on the growing strength I had nurtured, and enjoy the luxury of seeing the once drooping flower expanding into fresh loveliness and perfume. “Yes, Potts, this would form one of those episodes you have so often longed to realize.” And then I went on to fancy a long heroic struggle between my love and that sentiment of respect for worldly opinion which is dear to every man, the years of conflict wearing me down in health, but exalting me immensely in every moral consideration. Let the hour of crowning victory at last come, I should take her to my bosom and say, “There is rest for thee here!”
“His Excellency begs that you will call at the legation, as early as you can, this morning,” said a waiter, entering with the breakfast tray; and I now perceived that I had never gone to bed, or closed my eyes during the night.
“How did this message come?” I asked.
“By the chasseur of his Excellency.”
“And how addressed?”
“'To the gentleman who dined yesterday at the legation. '”
I asked these questions to ascertain how far he persisted in the impertinence of giving me a name that was not mine, and I was glad to find that on this occasion no transgression had occurred.
I hesitated considerably about going to him. Was I to accept that slippery morality that says, “I see no more than I please in the man I dine with,” or was I to go boldly on and denounce this offender to himself? What if he were to say, “Potts, let us play fair; put your own cards on the table, and let us see are you always on the square? Who is your father? how does he live? Why have you left home, and how? What of that horse you have—”
“No, no, not stolen—on my honor, not stolen!” “Well, ain't it ugly? Is n't the story one that any relating might, without even a spice of malevolence, make marvellously disagreeable? Is the tale such as you 'd wish to herald you into any society you desired to mix with?” It was in this high, easy, and truly companionable style that conscience kept me company, while I ate two eggs and a plate of buttered toast “After all,” thought I, “might it not prove a great mistake not to wait on him? How if, in our talk over politics last night, I may have dropped some remarkable expression, a keen appreciation of some statesman, an extraordinary prediction of some coming crisis? Maybe it is to question me more fully about my 'views' of the state of Europe.” Now I am rather given to “views of the state of Europe.” I like that game of patience, formed by shuffling up all the governments of the Continent, and then seeing who is to have the most “tricks,” who's to win all the kings, and who the knaves. “Yes,” thought I, “this is what he is at. These diplomatic people are consummately clever at pumping; their great skill consists in extracting information from others and adapting it to their own uses. Their social condition confers the great advantage of intercourse with whatever is remarkable for station, influence, and ability; and I think I hear his Excellency muttering to himself, 'remarkable man that—large views—great reach of thought—wish I could see more of him; must try what polite attentions may accomplish.' Well,” said I, with a half sigh, “it is the old story, Sic vos non vobis; and I suppose it is one of the curses on Irishmen that, from Edmund Burke to Potto, they should be doomed to cram others. I will go. What signifies it to me? I am none the poorer in dispensing my knowledge than is the nightingale in discoursing her sweet music to the night air, and flooding the groves with waves of melody: like her, I give of an affluence that never fails me.” And so I set out for the legation.
As I walked along through the garden, a trimly-dressed French maid passed me, turned, and repassed, with a look that had a certain significance. “It was monsieur dined here yesterday?” said she, interrogatively; and as I smiled assent, she handed me a very small sealed note, and disappeared.
It bore no address but the word “Mr.———;” a strange, not very ceremonious direction. “But, poor girl!” thought I, “she knows me not as Potts, but as Protector. I am not the individual, but the representative of that wide-spread benevolence that succors the weak and consoles the afflicted. I wonder has she been touched by my devotion? has she imagined—oh, that she would!—that I have followed her hither, that I have sworn a vow to rescue and to save her? Or is this note the cry of a sorrow-struck spirit, saying, 'Come to my aid ere I perish '?”
My fingers trembled as I broke the seal; I had to wipe a tear from my eye ere I could begin to read. My agitation was great; it was soon to be greater. The note contained very few words; they were these:—
“Sir,—I have not communicated to my brother, Sir Shafley Doubleton, any circumstance of your unaccountable conduct yesterday evening. I hope that my reserve will be appreciated by you, and
“I am, your faithful servant,
“'Martha Keats.”
I did not faint, but I sat down on the grass, sick and faint, and I felt the great drops of cold perspiration burst out over my forehead and temples. “So,” muttered I, “the venerable person I have been lecturing is his Excellency's own sister! My exhortations to a changed life have been addressed to a lady doubtless as rigid in morals as austere in manners.” Though I could recall none of the words I employed, I remembered but too well the lesson I intended to convey, and I shuddered with disgust at my own conduct. Many a time have I heard severest censure on the preacher who has from the pulpit scattered words of doubtful application to the sinners beneath; but here was I making a direct and most odious attack upon the life and habits of a lady of immaculate behavior! Oh, it was too—too bad! A whole year of sackcloth and ashes would not be penance for such iniquity. How could she have forgiven it? What consummate charity enabled her to pardon an offence so gross and so gratuitous? Or is it that she foresaw consequences so grave, in the event of disclosure, that she dreaded to provoke them? What might not an angry brother, in such a case, be warranted in doing? Would the world call any vengeance exorbitant? I studied her last phrase over and over, “I hope my reserve will be appreciated by you.” This may mean, “I reserve the charge,—I hold it over you as a bail bond for the future; diverge ever so little from the straight road, and I will say, 'Potts, stand forward and listen to your indictment.' She may have some terrible task in view for me, some perilous achievement, which I cannot now refuse. This old woman may be to me as was the Old Man of the Sea to Sinbad. I may be fated to carry her forever on my back, and the dread of her be a living nightmare to me.” “At such a price, existence has no value,” said I, in despair. “Worse even than the bondage is the feeling that I am no longer, to my own heart, the great creature I love to think myself. Instead of Potts the generous, the high-spirited, the confiding, the self-denying, I am Potts the timorous, the terror-stricken, and the slave.”
Out of my long and painful musings on the subject, I bethought me of a course to take. I would go to her and say:—
“Listen to this parable. I remember once, when a member of the phrenological club, a stupid jest was played off upon the society by some one presenting us with the cast of a well-known murderer's skull, and asking for our interpretations of its development. We gave them with every care and deliberation: we pointed out the fatal protuberances of crime, and indicated the depressions, which showed the absence of all prudential restraints; we demonstrated all the evidences of badness that were there, and proved that, with such a head, a man must have thought killing no murder. The rejoinder to our politeness was a small box that arrived by the mail, labelled, 'the original of the cast forwarded on the 14th.' We opened it, and found a pumpkin! The foolish jester fancied that he had cast an indelible stain upon phrenology, quite forgetting the fact that his pumpkin had personated a skull which, had it ever existed, would have presented the characteristics we gave it.” I would say, “Now, madam, make the application, and say, do you not rather commend than condemn? are you not more ready to applaud than upbraid me?”
Second thoughts rather deterred me from this plan; the figurative line is often dangerous with elderly people. It is just as likely she would mistake the whole force of my illustration, and bluntly say, “I 'd beg to remark, sir, I am not a pumpkin!”
“No; I will not adventure on this path. There is no need that I should ever meet her again, or, if I should, we may meet as utter strangers.” This resolve made, I arose boldly, and walked on towards the house.
His Excellency, I learned, was at home, and had been for some time expecting me. I found him in his morning room, in the same costume and same occupation as on the day before.
“There's the 'Times,'” said he, as I entered; “I shall be ready for you presently;” and worked away without lifting his head.
Affecting to read, I set myself to regard him with attention. Vast piles of papers lay around him on every side; the whole table, and even the floor at his feet, was littered with them. “Would,” thought I,—“would that these writers for the Radical press, these scurrilous penny-a-liners who inveigh against a bloated and pampered aristocracy, could just witness the daily life of labor of one of these spoiled children of Fortune. Here is this man, doubtless reared in ease and affluence, and see him, how he toils away, from sundown to dawn, unravelling the schemes, tracing the wiles, and exposing the snares of these crafty foreigners. Hark! he is muttering over the subtle sentence he has just written: 'I am much grieved about Maria's little girl, but I hope she will escape being marked by the malady.'” A groan that broke from me here startled him, and he looked up.
“Ah! yes, by the way, I want you, Paynter.”
“I am not Paynter, your Excellency, my name is—”
“Of course, you have your own name for your own peculiar set; but don't interrupt. I have a special service for you, and will put it in the 'extraordinaires.' I have taken a little villa on the Lake of Como for my sister, but, from the pressure of political events, I am not able to accompany her there. She is a very timid traveller, and cannot possibly go alone. You 'll take charge of her, therefore, Paynter,—there, don't be fussy,—you 'll take charge of her and a young lady who is with her, and you 'll see them housed and established there. I suppose she will prefer to travel slowly, some thirty miles or so a day, post horses always, and strictly avoiding railroads; but you can talk it over together yourselves. There was a Bobus to have come out—”
“A Bobus!”
“I mean a doctor,—I call every doctor, Bobus,—but something has detained him, or, indeed, I believe he was drowned; at all events, he's not come, and you 'll have to learn how to measure out ether and drop morphine; the 'companion' will help you. And keep an account of your expenses, Paynter,—your own expenses for F. O.,—and don't let her fall sick at any out-of-the-way place, which she has rather a knack of doing; and, above all, don't telegraph on any account. Come and dine,—six.”
“If you will excuse me at dinner, I shall be obliged. I have a sort of half engagement.”
“Come in about nine, then,” said he, “for she'd like to talk over some matters. Look out for a carriage, too; I don't fancy giving mine if you can get another. One of those great roomy German things with a cabriolet front, for Miss—I forget her name—would prefer a place outside. Kramm, the landlord, can help you to search for one; and let it be dusted and aired and fumigated and the drag examined and the axles greased,—in a word, have your brains about you, Paynter. Good-bye.” Exit as before.