My new acquaintance never ceased to congratulate himself on what he
called the lucky accident that had led him to the barracks that morning,
and thus brought about our meeting. ‘Little as you think of me, my
dear,’ said he, ‘I’m one of the Tiernays of Timmahoo myself; faix, until
I saw you, I thought I was the last of them! There are eight generations
of us in the churchyard at Kells, and I was looking to the time when
they’d lay my bones there as the last of the race, but I see there’s
better fortune before us.’
‘But you have a family, I hope?’
‘Sorrow one belonging to me. I might have married when I was young,
but there was a pride in me to look for something higher than I had any
right--except from blood I mean, for a better stock than our own
isn’t to be found; and that’s the way years went over and I lost the
opportunity, and here I am now an old bachelor, without one to stand to
me, barrin’ it be yourself.’
The last words were uttered with a tremulous emotion, and, on turning
towards him, I saw his eyes swimming with tears, and perceived that some
strong feeling was working within him.
‘You can’t suppose I can ever forget what I owe you, Mr. Tiernay.’
‘Call me Pat, Pat Tiernay,’ interrupted he roughly.
‘I ‘ll call you what you please,’ said I, ‘if you let me add friend to
it.’
‘That’senough; we understand one another now--no more need be said.
You’ll come home and live with me It’s not long, maybe, you’ll have to
do that same; but when I go you ‘ll be heir to what I have. ‘Tis more,
perhaps, than many supposes, looking at the coat and the gaiters I am
wearin’. Mind, Maurice, I don’t want you, nor I don’t expect you, to
turn farmer like myself. You need never turn a hand to anything. You ‘ll
have your horse to ride--two, if you like it. Your time will be all your
own, so that you spend a little of it now and then with me, and as much
divarsion as ever you care for.’
I have condensed into a few words the substance of a conversation
which lasted till we reached Baldoyle; and passing through that not
over-imposing village, gained the neighbourhood of the sea-shore, along
which stretched the farm of the ‘Black Pits,’ a name derived, I was
told, from certain black holes that were dug in the sands by fishermen
in former times, when the salt tide washed over the pleasant fields
where corn was now growing. A long, low, thatched cabin, with far more
indications of room and comfort than pretension to the picturesque,
stood facing the sea. There were neither trees nor shrubs around it,
and the aspect of the spot was bleak and cheerless enough, a colouring a
dark November day did nothing to dispel.
It possessed one charm, however; and had it been a hundred times
inferior to what it was, that one would have compensated for all else--a
hearty welcome met me at the door, and the words, ‘This is your home,
Maurice,’ filled my heart with happiness.
Were I to suffer myself to dwell even in thought on this period of my
life, I feel how insensibly I should be led away into an inexcusable
prolixity. The little meaningless incidents of my daily life, all so
engraven on my memory still, occupied me pleasantly from day till
night. Not only the master of myself and my own time, I was master of
everything around me. Uncle Pat, as he loved to call himself, treated me
with a degree of respect that was almost painful to me, and only when
we were alone together did he relapse into the intimacy of equality. Two
first-rate hunters stood in my stable; a stout-built half-deck boat lay
at my command beside the quay; I had my gun and my greyhounds; books,
journals; everything, in short, that a liberal purse and a kind spirit
could confer--all but acquaintance. Of these I possessed absolutely
none. Too proud to descend to intimacy with the farmers and small
shopkeepers of the neighbourhood, my position excluded me from
acquaintance with the gentry; and thus I stood between both, unknown to
either.
For a while my new career was too absorbing to suffer me to dwell on
this circumstance. The excitement of field-sports sufficed me when
abroad, and I came home usually so tired at night that I could
barely keep awake to amuse Uncle Pat with those narratives of war and
campaigning he was so fond of hearing. To the hunting-field succeeded
the Bay of Dublin, and I passed days, even weeks, exploring every creek
and inlet of the coast--now cruising under the dark cliffs of the Welsh
shore, or, while my boat lay at anchor, wandering among the solitary
valleys of Lambay, my life, like a dream full of its own imaginings, and
unbroken by the thoughts or feelings of others! I will not go the length
of saying that I was self-free from all reproach on the inglorious
indolence in which my days were passed, or that my thoughts never
strayed away to that land where my first dreams of ambition were felt.
But a strange fatuous kind of languor had grown upon me, and the more I
retired within myself, the less did I wish for a return to that struggle
with the world which every active life engenders. Perhaps--I cannot now
say if it were so--perhaps I resented the disdainful distance with
which the gentry treated me, as we met in the hunting-field or the
coursing-ground. Some of the isolation I preferred may have had this
origin, but choice had the greater share in it, until at last my
greatest pleasure was to absent myself for weeks on a cruise, fancying
that I was exploring tracts never visited by man, and landing on spots
where no human foot had ever been known to tread.
If Uncle Pat would occasionally remonstrate on the score of these long
absences, he never ceased to supply means for them; and my sea-store and
a well-filled purse were never wanting, when the blue-peter floated from
_La Hoche_, as in my ardour I had named my cutter. Perhaps at heart
he was not sorry to see me avoid the capital and its society. The
bitterness which had succeeded the struggle for independence was now at
its highest point, and there was what, to my thinking at least, appeared
something like the cruelty of revenge in the sentences which followed
the state trials. I will not suffer myself to stray into the debatable
ground of politics, nor dare I give an opinion on matters, where, with
all the experience of fifty years superadded, the wisest heads are
puzzled how to decide; but my impression at the time was that lenity
would have been a safer and a better policy than severity, and that in
the momentary prostration of the country, lay the precise conjuncture
for those measures of grace and favour which were afterwards rather
wrung from than conceded by the English Government. Be this as it may,
Dublin offered a strange spectacle at that period. The triumphant joy
of one party--the discomfiture and depression of the other. All the
exuberant delight of success here, all the bitterness of failure there.
On one side, festivities, rejoicings, and public demonstrations; on the
other, confinement, banishment, or the scaffold.
The excitement was almost madness. The passion for pleasure, restrained
by the terrible contingencies of the time, now broke forth with
redoubled force, and the capital was thronged with all its rank, riches,
and fashion, when its gaols were crowded, and the heaviest sentences of
the law were in daily execution. The state-trials were crowded by all
the fashion of the metropolis; and the heart-moving eloquence of Curran
was succeeded by the strains of a merry concert. It was just then, too,
that the great lyric poet of Ireland began to appear in society, and
those songs which were to be known afterwards as ‘The Melodies,’ _par
excellence_, were first heard in all the witching enchantment which his
own taste and voice could lend them. To such as were indifferent to
or could forget the past, it was a brilliant period. It was the last
flickering blaze of Irish nationality, before the lamp was extinguished
for ever.
Of this society I myself saw nothing. But even in the retirement of my
humble life the sounds of its mirth and pleasure penetrated, and I
often wished to witness the scenes which even in vague description were
fascinating. It was, then, in a kind of discontent at my exclusion, that
I grew from day to day more disposed to solitude, and fonder of
those excursions which led me out of all reach of companionship or
acquaintance. In this spirit I planned a long cruise down channel,
resolving to visit the island of Valentia, or, if the wind and weather
favoured, to creep around the south-west coast as far as Bantry or
Kenmare. A man and his son, a boy of about sixteen, formed all my crew,
and were quite sufficient for the light tackle and easy rig of my craft.
Uncle Pat was already mounted on his pony, and ready to set out for
market, as we prepared to start. It was a bright spring morning--such a
one as now and then the changeful climate of Ireland brings forth in a
brilliancy of colour and softness of atmosphere that are rare in even
more favoured lands.
‘You have a fine day of it, Maurice, and just enough wind,’ said he,
looking at the point from whence it came. ‘I almost wish I was going
with you.’
‘And why not come, then?’ asked I. ‘You never will give yourself a
holiday. Do so for once, now.’
‘Not to-day, anyhow,’ said he, half sighing at his self-denial. ‘I have
a great deal of business on my hands to-day, but the next time--the very
next you’re up to a long cruise, I’ll go with you.’
‘That’s a bargain, then?’
‘A bargain. Here’s my hand on it.’
We shook hands cordially on the compact. Little knew I it was to be for
the last time, and that we were never to meet again!
I was soon aboard, and with a free mainsail skimming rapidly over the
bright waters of the bay. The wind freshened as the day wore on, and
we quickly passed the Kish light-ship, and held our course boldly down
channel. The height of my enjoyment in these excursions consisted in
the unbroken quietude of mind I felt, when removed from all chance
interruption, and left free to follow out my own fancies and indulge my
dreamy conceptions to my heart’s content. It was then I used to revel in
imaginings which sometimes soared into the boldest realms of ambition,
and at others strayed contemplatively in the humblest walks of obscure
fortune. My crew never broke in upon these musings; indeed, old Tom
Finerty’s low crooning song rather aided than interrupted them. He was
not much given to talking, and a chance allusion to some vessel afar
off, or some headland we were passing, were about the extent of his
communicativeness, and even these often fell on my ear unnoticed.
It was thus, at night, we made the Hook Tower, and on the next day
passed, in a spanking breeze, under the bold cliffs of Tramore, just
catching, as the sun was sinking, the sight of Youghal Bay and the tall
headlands beyond it.
‘The wind is drawing more to the nor’ard,’ said old Tom, as night closed
in, ‘and the clouds look dirty.’
‘Bear her up a point or two,’ said I, ‘and let us stand in for Cork
Harbour if it comes on to blow.’
He muttered something in reply, but I did not catch the words, nor,
indeed, cared I to hear them, for I had just wrapped myself in my
boat-cloak, and, stretched at full length on the shingle ballast of the
yawl, was gazing in rapture at the brilliancy of the starry sky above
me. Light skiffs of feathery cloud would now and then flit past, and
a peculiar hissing sound of the sea told, at the same time, that the
breeze was freshening. But old Tom had done his duty in mentioning this
once, and thus having disburthened his conscience, he closehauled his
mainsail, shifted the ballast a little to midships, and, putting up the
collar of his pilot-coat, screwed himself tighter into the corner beside
the tiller, and chewed his quid in quietness. The boy slept soundly in
the bow, and I, lulled by the motion and the plashing waves, fell into a
dreamy stupor, like a pleasant sleep. The pitching of the boat continued
to increase, and twice or thrice struck by a heavy sea, she lay over,
till the white waves came tumbling in over her gunwale. I heard Tom call
to his boy something about the head-sail, but for the life of me I
could not or would not arouse myself from a train of thought that I was
following.
‘She’s a stout boat to stand this,’ said Tom, as he rounded her off at a
coming wave, which, even thus escaped, splashed over us like a cataract.
‘I know many a bigger craft wouldn’t hold up her canvas under such a
gale.’
‘Here it comes, father. Here’s a squall!’ cried the boy; and with a
crash like thunder, the wind struck the sail, and laid the boat half
under.
‘She’d float if she was full of water,’ said the old man, as the craft
‘righted.’
‘But maybe the spars wouldn’t stand,’ said the boy anxiously.
‘‘Tis what I ‘m thinking,’ rejoined the father. ‘There’s a shake in the
mast, below the caps.’
‘Tell him it’s better to bear up, and go before it,’ whispered the lad,
with a gesture towards where I was lying.
‘Troth, it’s little he’d care,’ said the other; ‘besides, he’s never
plazed to be woke up.’
‘Here it comes again!’ cried the boy. But this time the squall swept
past ahead of us, and the craft only reeled to the swollen waves, as
they tore by.
‘We ‘d better go about, sir,’ said Tom to me; ‘there’s a heavy sea
outside, and it’s blowing hard now.’
‘And there’s a split in the mast as long as my arm,’ cried the boy.
‘I thought she’d live through any sea, Tom!’ said I, laughing, for it
was his constant boast that no weather could harm her.
‘There goes the spar!’ shouted he, while with a loud snap the mast gave
way, and fell with a crash over the side. The boat immediately came head
to wind, and sea after sea broke upon her bow, and fell in great floods
over us.
‘Out away the stays--clear the wreck,’ cried Tom, ‘before the squall
catches her!’
And although we now laboured like men whose lives depended on the
exertion, the trailing sail and heavy rigging, shifting the ballast as
they fell, laid her completely over; and when the first sea struck her,
over she went. The violence of the gale sent me a considerable distance
out, and for several seconds I felt as though I should never reach the
surface again. Wave after wave rolled over me, and seemed bearing me
downwards with their weight. At last I grasped something; it was a
rope--a broken halyard; but by its means I gained the mast, which
floated alongside of the yawl as she now lay keel uppermost. With what
energy did I struggle to reach her! The space was scarcely a dozen
feet, and yet it cost me what seemed an age to traverse. Through all the
roaring of the breakers, and the crashing sounds of storm, I thought I
could hear my comrades’ voices shouting and screaming; but this was in
all likelihood a mere deception, for I never saw them more!
Grasping with a death-grip the slippery keel, I hung on to the boat
through all the night. The gale continued to increase, and by daybreak
it blew a perfect hurricane. With an aching anxiety I watched for light
to see if I were near the land, or if any ship were in sight; but when
the sun rose, nothing met my eyes but a vast expanse of waves tumbling
and tossing in mad confusion, while overhead some streaked and mottled
clouds were hurried along with the wind. Happily for me, I have no
correct memory of that long day of suffering. The continual noise, but
more still, the incessant motion of sea and sky around, brought on
a vertigo, that seemed like madness; and although the instinct of
self-preservation remained, the wildest and most incoherent fancies
filled my brain. Some of these were powerful enough to impress
themselves upon my memory for years after, and one I have never yet been
able to dispel. It clings to me in every season of unusual depression
or dejection; it recurs in the half-nightmare sleep of over-fatigue, and
even invades me when, restless and feverish, I lie for hours incapable
of repose. This is the notion that my state was one of afterlife
punishment; that I had died, and was now expiating a sinful life by the
everlasting misery of a castaway. The fever brought on by thirst and
exhaustion, and the burning sun which beamed down upon my uncovered
head, soon completed the measure of this infatuation, and all sense and
guidance left me.
By what instinctive impulse I still held on my grasp, I cannot explain;
but there I clung during the whole of that long dreadful day, and the
still more dreadful night, when the piercing cold cramped my limbs, and
seemed as if freezing the very blood within me. It was no wish for life,
it was no anxiety to save myself, that now filled me. It seemed like a
vague impulse of necessity that compelled me to hang on. It was, as it
were, part of that terrible sentence which made this my doom for ever!
An utter unconsciousness must have followed this state, and a dreary
blank, with flitting shapes of suffering, is all that remains to my
recollection.
*****
Probably within the whole range of human sensations, there is not one
so perfect in its calm and soothing influence as the first burst of
gratitude we feel when recovering from a long and severe illness. There
is not an object, however humble and insignificant, that is not for
the time invested with a new interest. The air is balmier, flowers are
sweeter, the voices of friends, the smiles and kind looks, are dearer
and fonder than we have ever known them. The whole world has put on a
new aspect for us, and we have not a thought that is not teeming with
forgiveness and affection. Such, in all their completeness, were my
feelings as I lay on the poop-deck of a large three-masted ship, which,
with studding and topgallant sails all set, proudly held her course up
the Gulf of St Lawrence.
She was a Danzig barque, the _Hoffnung_, bound for Quebec, her only
passengers being a Moravian minister and his wife, on their way to join
a small German colony established near Lake Champlain. To Gottfried
Kroller and his dear little wife I owe not life alone, but nearly all
that has made it valuable. With means barely removed from absolute
poverty, I found that they had spared nothing to assist in my recovery;
for, when discovered, emaciation and wasting had so far reduced me that
nothing but the most unremitting care and kindness could have succeeded
in restoring me. To this end they bestowed not only their whole time and
attention, but every little delicacy of their humble sea-store. All
the little cordials and restoratives, meant for a season of sickness
or debility, were lavished unsparingly on me, and every instinct of
national thrift and carefulness gave way before the more powerful
influence of Christian benevolence.
I can think of nothing but that bright morning, as I lay on a mattress
on the deck, with the ‘Pfarrer’ on one side of me, and his good little
wife, Lieschen, on the other; he with his volume of ‘Wieland,’ and she
working away with her long knitting-needles, and never raising her head
save to bestow a glance at the poor sick boy, whose bloodless lips were
trying to mutter her name in thankfulness. It is like the most delicious
dream as I think over those hours, when, rocked by the surging motion
of the large ship, hearing in half distinctness the words of
the ‘Pfarrer’s’ reading, I followed out little fancies--now
self-originating, now rising from the theme of the poet’s musings.
How softly the cloud-shadows moved over the white sails and swept along
the bright deck! How pleasantly the water rippled against the vessel’s
side I With what a glad sound the great ensign napped and fluttered in
the breeze! There was light, and life, and motion on every side, and I
felt all the intoxication of enjoyment.
And like a dream was the portion of my life which followed. I
accompanied the Pfarrer to a small settlement near ‘Crown Point,’
where he was to take up his residence as minister. Here we lived amid
a population of about four or five hundred Germans, principally from
Pomerania, on the shores of the Baltic, a peaceful, thrifty, quiet
set of beings, who, content with the little interests revolving around
themselves, never troubled their heads about the great events of war or
politics. And here in all likelihood should I have been content to pass
my days, when an accidental journey I made to Albany, to receive some
letters for the Pfarrer, once more turned the fortune of my life.
It was a great incident in the quiet monotony of my life, when I set
out one morning, arrayed in a full suit of coarse, glossy black, with
buttons like small saucers, and a hat whose brim almost protected my
shoulders. I was, indeed, an object of very considerable envy to some,
and I hope, also, not denied the admiring approval of some others. Had
the respectable city I was about to visit been the chief metropolis of a
certain destination which I must not name, the warnings I received about
its dangers, dissipations, and seductions, could scarcely have been more
earnest or impressive. I was neither to speak with, nor even to look at,
those I met in the streets. I was carefully to avoid taking my meals
at any of the public eating-houses, rigidly guarding myself from the
contamination of even a chance acquaintance. It was deemed as needless
to caution me against theatres or places of amusement, as to hint to
me that I should not commit a highway robbery or a murder; and so, in
sooth, I should myself have felt it. The patriarchal simplicity in which
I had lived for above a year had not been without its affect in subduing
exaggerated feeling, or controlling that passion for excitement so
common to youth. I felt a kind of dreamy, religious languor over me,
which I sincerely believed represented a pious and well-regulated
temperament. Perhaps in time it might have become such. Perhaps with
others, more happily constituted, the impression would have been
confirmed and fixed; but in my case it was a mere lacquer, that the
first rubbing in the world was sure to brush off.
I arrived safely at Albany, and having presented myself at the bank of
Gabriel Shultze, was desired to call the following morning, when all
the letters and papers of Gottfried Kröller should be delivered to me. A
very cold invitation to supper was the only hospitality extended to
me. This I declined on pretext of weariness, and set out to explore the
town, to which my long residence in rural life imparted a high degree of
interest.
I don’t know what it may now be--doubtless a great capital, like one of
the European cities; but at that time I speak of, Albany was a strange,
incongruous assemblage of stores and wooden houses, great buildings like
granaries, with whole streets of low sheds around them, where, open to
the passer-by, men worked at various trades, and people followed out
the various duties of domestic life in sight of the public: daughters
knitted and sewed; mothers cooked, and nursed their children; men ate,
and worked, and smoked, and sang, as if in all the privacy of closed
dwellings, while a thick current of population poured by, apparently too
much immersed in their own cares, or too much accustomed to the scene,
to give it more than passing notice.
It was curious how one bred and born in the great city of Paris, with
all its sights and sounds, and scenes of excitement and display,
could have been so rusticated by time as to feel a lively interest in
surveying the motley aspect of this quaint town. There were, it is
true, features in the picture very unlike the figures in ‘Old-World’
landscape. A group of ‘red men,’ seated around a fire in the open
street, or a squaw carrying on her back a baby, firmly tied to a piece
of curved bark; a Southern-stater, with a spanking waggon-team, and two
grinning negroes behind, were new and strange elements in the life of a
city. Still, the mere movement, the actual busy stir and occupation of
the inhabitants, attracted me as much as anything else; and the shops
and stalls, where trades were carried on, were a seduction I could not
resist.
The strict puritanism in which I had lately lived taught me to regard
all these things with a certain degree of distrust. They were the
impulses of that gold-seeking passion of which Gottfried had spoken
so frequently; they were the great vice of that civilisation, whose
luxurious tendency he often deplored; and here, now, more than one-half
around me were arts that only ministered to voluptuous tastes. Brilliant
articles of jewellery; gay cloaks, worked with wampum, in Indian taste;
ornamental turning, and costly weapons, inlaid with gold and silver,
succeeded each other, street after street; and the very sight of them,
however pleasurable to the eye, set me a-moralising in a strain that
would have done credit to a son of Geneva. It might have been that, in
my enthusiasm, I uttered half aloud what I intended for soliloquy; or
perhaps some gesture, or peculiarity of manner, had the effect; but so
it was, I found myself an object of notice; and my queer-cut coat and
wide hat, contrasting so strangely with my youthful appearance and
slender make, drew many a criticism on me.
‘He ain’t a Quaker, that’s a fact,’ cried one, ‘for they don’t wear
black.’
‘He’s a down-easter--a horse-jockey chap, I’ll be bound,’ cried another.
‘They put on all manner of disguises and “masqueroonings.” I know ‘em!’
‘He’s a calf preacher--a young bottle-nosed Gospeller,’ broke in a
thick, short fellow, like the skipper of a merchant-ship. ‘Let’s have
him out for a preachment.’
‘Ay, you’re right,’ chimed in another. ‘I’ll get you a sugar hogshead in
no time’; and away he ran on the mission.
Between twenty and thirty persons had now collected; and I saw myself,
to my unspeakable shame and mortification, the centre of all their looks
and speculations. A little more _aplomb_ or knowledge of life would have
taught me coolness enough in a few words to undeceive them; but such a
task was far above me now, and I saw nothing for it but flight. Could I
only have known which way to take, I need not have feared any pursuer,
for I was a capital runner, and in high condition; but of the locality
I was utterly ignorant, and should only surrender myself to mere chance.
With a bold rush, then, I dashed right through the crowd, and set off
down the street, the whole crew after me.
[Illustration: 369]
The dusk of the closing evening was in my favour; and although
volunteers were enlisted in the chase at every corner and turning, I
distanced them, and held on my way in advance. My great object being not
to turn on my course, lest I should come back to my starting point,
I directed my steps nearly straight onward, clearing apple-stalls and
fruit-tables at a bound, and more than once taking a flying-leap over an
Indian’s fire, when the mad shout of the red man would swell the chorus
that followed me. At last I reached a network of narrow lanes and
alleys, by turning and wending through which I speedily found myself
in a quiet secluded spot, with here and there a flickering candle-light
from the windows, but no other sign of habitation. I looked anxiously
about for an open door; but they were all safe barred and fastened; and
it was only on turning a corner I spied what seemed to me a little shop,
with a solitary lamp over the entrance. A narrow canal, crossed by a
rickety old bridge, led to this; and the moment I had crossed over, I
seized the single plank which formed the footway, and shoved it into the
stream. My retreat being thus secured, I opened the door, and entered.
It was a barber’s shop; at least, so a great chair before a cracked old
looking-glass, with some well-worn combs and brushes, bespoke it; but
the place seemed untenanted, and although I called aloud several times,
no one came or responded to my summons.
I now took a survey of the spot, which seemed of the poorest imaginable.
A few empty pomatum pots, a case of razors that might have defied the
most determined suicide, and a half-finished wig, on a block painted
like a red man, were the entire stock-in-trade. On the walls, however,
were some coloured prints of the battles of the French army in Germany
and Italy. Execrably done things they were, but full of meaning and
interest to my eyes in spite of that. With all the faults of drawing and
all the travesties of costume, I could recognise different corps of the
service, and my heart bounded as I gazed on the tall shakos swarming to
a breach, or the loose jacket as it floated from the hussar in a charge.
All the wild pleasures of soldiering rose once more to my mind, and
I thought over old comrades who doubtless were now earning the high
rewards of their bravery in the great career of glory. And as I did so,
my own image confronted me in the glass, as with long lank hair, and
a great bolster of a white cravat, I stood before it. What a
contrast!--how unlike the smart hussar, with curling locks and fierce
moustache! Was I as much changed in heart as in looks? Had my spirit
died out within me? Would the proud notes of the bugle or the trumpet
fall meaningless on my ears, or the hoarse cry of ‘Charge!’ send no
bursting fulness to my temples? Ay, even these coarse representations
stirred the blood in my veins, and my step grew firmer as I walked the
room.
In a passionate burst of enthusiasm, I tore off my slouched hat and
hurled it from me. It felt like the badge of some ignoble slavery, and
I determined to endure it no longer. The noise of the act called up a
voice from the inner room, and a man, to all appearance suddenly roused
from sleep, stood at the door. He was evidently young, but poverty,
dissipation, and raggedness made the question of his age a difficult
one to solve. A light-coloured moustache and beard covered all the
lower part of his face, and his long blonde hair fell heavily over his
shoulders.
‘Well,’ cried he, half angrily, ‘what’s the matter; are you so impatient
that you must smash the furniture?’
Although the words were spoken as correctly as I have written them,
they were uttered with a foreign accent; and, hazarding the stroke, I
answered him in French by apologising for the noise.
‘What! a Frenchman,’ exclaimed he, ‘and in that dress! what can that
mean?’
‘If you’ll shut your door, and cut off pursuit of me, I’ll tell you
everything,’ said I, ‘for I hear the voices of people coming down that
street in front.’
‘I’ll do better,’ said he quickly; ‘I’ll upset the bridge, and they
cannot come over.’
‘That’s done already,’ replied I; ‘I shoved it into the stream as I
passed.’
He looked at me steadily for a moment without speaking, and then
approaching close to me, said, ‘_Parbleu!_ the act was very unlike your
costume!’ At the same time he shut the door, and drew a strong bar
across it. This done, he turned to me once more--‘Now for it: who are
you, and what has happened to you?’
‘As to what I am,’ replied I, imitating his own abruptness, ‘my dress
would almost save the trouble of explaining; these Albany folk, however,
would make a field-preacher of me, and to escape them I took to flight.’
‘Well, if a fellow will wear his hair that fashion, he must take the
consequence,’ said he, drawing out my long lank locks as they hung over
my shoulders. ‘And so you wouldn’t hold forth for them--not even give
them a stave of a conventicle chant.’ He kept his eyes riveted on me
as he spoke, and then seizing two pieces of stick from the firewood, he
beat on the table the rataplan of the French drum. ‘That’s the music
you know best, lad, eh?--that’s the air, which, if it has not led
heavenward, has conducted many a brave fellow out of this world at
least. Do you forget it?’
‘Forget it! no,’ cried I;’ but who are you; and how comes it
that--that----’ I stopped in confusion at the rudeness of the question I
had begun. ‘That I stand here, half fed, and all but naked--a barber in
a land where men don’t shave once a month. _Parbleu!_ they’d come even
seldomer to my shop if they knew how tempted I feel to draw the razor
sharp and quick across the gullet of a fellow with a well-stocked
pouch.’
As he continued to speak, his voice assumed a tone and cadence that
sounded familiar to my ears as I stared at him in amazement.
‘Not know me yet!’ exclaimed he, laughing; ‘and yet all this poverty and
squalor isn’t as great a disguise as your own, Tiernay. Come, lad, rub
your eyes a bit, and try if you can’t recognise an old comrade.’
‘I know you, yet cannot remember how or where we met,’ said I, in
bewilderment.
‘I’ll refresh your memory,’ said he, crossing his arms, and drawing
himself proudly up. ‘If you can trace back in your mind to a certain
hot and dusty day, on the Metz road, when you, a private in the Ninth
Hussars, were eating an onion and a slice of black bread for your
dinner, a young officer, well looking and well mounted, cantered up and
threw you his brandy flask. Your acknowledgment of the civility showed
you to be a gentleman; and the acquaintance thus opened soon ripened
into intimacy.’
‘But he was the young Marquis de Saint-Trône,’ said I, perfectly
remembering the incident.
‘Or Eugène Santron, of the republican army, or the barber at Albany,
without any name at all,’ said he, laughing. ‘What, Maurice, don’t you
know me yet?’
‘What! the lieutenant of my regiment? The dashing officer of hussars?’
‘Just so, and as ready to resume the old skin as ever,’ cried he, ‘and
brandish a weapon somewhat longer, and perhaps somewhat sharper, too,
than a razor.’
We shook hands with all the cordiality of old comrades, meeting far away
from home, and in a land of strangers; and although each was full of
curiosity to learn the other’s history, a kind of reserve held back the
inquiry, till Santron said, ‘My confession is soon made, Maurice: I left
the service in the Meuse, to escape being shot. One day, on returning
from a field manouvre, I discovered that my portmanteau had been opened,
and a number of letters and papers taken out. They were part of a
correspondence I held with old General Lamarre, about the restoration of
the Bourbons--a subject, I’m certain, that half the officers in the army
were interested in, and, even to Bonaparte himself, deeply implicated
in, too. No matter, my treason, as they called it, was too flagrant, and
I had just twenty minutes’ start of the order which was issued for my
arrest to make my escape into Holland. There I managed to pass several
months in various disguises, part of the time being employed as a Dutch
spy, and actually charged with an order to discover tidings of myself,
until I finally got away in an Antwerp schooner to New York. From that
time my life has been nothing but a struggle--a hard one, too,
with actual want, for in this land of enterprise and activity, mere
intelligence, without some craft or calling, will do nothing.
‘I tried fifty things: to teach riding--and when I mounted into the
saddle, I forgot everything but my own enjoyment, and caracoled, and
plunged, and passaged, till the poor beast hadn’t a leg to stand on;
fencing--and I got into a duel with a rival teacher, and ran him through
the neck, and was obliged to fly from Halifax; French--I made love to
my pupil, a pretty-looking Dutch girl, whose father didn’t smile on our
affection; and so on, I descended from a dancing-master to a waiter,
a _laquais de place_, and at last settled down as a barber, which
brilliant speculation I had just determined to abandon this very night,
for to-morrow morning, Maurice, I start for New York and France again;
ay, boy, and you’ll go with me. This is no land for either of us.’
‘But I have found happiness, at least contentment, here,’ said I
gravely.
‘What! play the hypocrite with an old comrade! shame on you, Maurice,’
cried he. ‘It is these confounded locks have perverted the boy,’ added
he, jumping up; and before I knew what he was about, he had shorn my
hair, in two quick cuts of the scissors, close to the head. ‘There,’
said he, throwing the cut-off hair towards me, ‘there lies all your
saintship; depend upon it, boy, they ‘d hunt you out of the settlement
if you came back to them cropped in this fashion.’
‘But you return to certain death, Santron,’ said I; ‘your crime is too
recent to be forgiven or forgotten.’
‘Not a bit of it; Fouché, Cassaubon, and a dozen others, now in office,
were deeper than I was. There’s not a public man in France could stand
an exposure, or hazard recrimination. It’s a thieves’ amnesty at this
moment, and I must not lose the opportunity. I’ll show you letters that
will prove it, Maurice; for, poor and ill-fed as I am, I like life just
as well as ever I did. I mean to be a general of division one of these
days, and so will you too, lad, if there’s any spirit left in you.’
Thus did Santron rattle on, sometimes of himself and his own future;
sometimes discussing mine; for while talking, he had contrived to learn
all the chief particulars of my history, from the time of my sailing
from La Rochelle for Ireland.
The unlucky expedition afforded him great amusement, and he was never
weary of laughing at all our adventures and mischances in Ireland. Of
Humbert, he spoke as a fourth or fifth-rate man, and actually shocked
me by all the heresies he uttered against our generals, and the plan of
campaign; but, perhaps, I could have borne even these better than the
sarcasms and sneers at the little life of ‘the settlement.’ He treated
all my efforts at defence as mere hypocrisy, and affected to regard
me as a mere knave, that had traded on the confiding kindness of these
simple villagers. I could not undeceive him on this head; nor, what was
more, could I satisfy my own conscience that he was altogether in the
wrong; for, with a diabolical ingenuity, he had contrived to hit on some
of the most vexatious doubts which disturbed my mind, and instinctively
to detect the secret cares and difficulties that beset me. The lesson
should never be lost on us, that the devil was depicted as a sneerer!
I verily believe the powers of temptation have no such advocacy as
sarcasm. Many can resist the softest seductions of vice; many are proof
against all the blandishments of mere enjoyment, come in what shape it
will; but how few can stand firm against the assaults of clever irony,
or hold fast to their convictions when assailed by the sharp shafts of
witty depreciation!
I am ashamed to own how little I could oppose to all his impertinences
about our village and its habits; or how impossible I found it not to
laugh at his absurd descriptions of a life which, without having ever
witnessed, he depicted with a rare accuracy. He was shrewd enough not
to push this ridicule offensively; and long before I knew it, I found
myself regarding, with his eyes, a picture in which, but a few months
back, I stood as a foreground figure. I ought to confess, that no
artificial aid was derived from either good cheer or the graces of
hospitality; we sat by a miserable lamp, in a wretchedly cold chamber,
our sole solace some bad cigars, and a can of flat, stale cider.
‘I have not a morsel to offer you to eat, Maurice, but to-morrow we’ll
breakfast on my razors, dine on that old looking-glass, and sup on two
hard brushes and the wig!’
Such were the brilliant pledges, and we closed a talk which the
nickering lamp at last put an end to.
A broken, unconnected conversation followed for a little time, but at
length, worn out and wearied, each dropped off to sleep--Eugène on the
straw settle, and I in the old chair--never to awake till the bright sun
was streaming in between the shutters, and dancing merrily on the tiled
floor.
An hour before I awoke, he had completed the sale of all his little
stock-in-trade, and with a last look round the spot where he had passed
some months of struggling poverty, out we sailed into the town.
‘We’ll breakfast at Jonathan Hone’s,’ said Santron.
‘It’s the first place here. I’ll treat you to rump-steaks, pumpkin pie,
and a gin twister that will astonish you. Then, while I’m arranging for
our passage down the Hudson, you’ll see the hospitable banker, and tell
him how to forward all his papers, and so forth, to the settlement, with
your respectful compliments and regrets, and the rest of it.’
‘But am I to take leave of them in this fashion?’ asked I.
‘Unless you want me to accompany you there, I think it’s by far the best
way,’ said he laughingly. ‘If, however, you think that my presence and
companionship will add any lustre to your position, say the word, and
I’m ready. I know enough of the barber’s craft now to make up a head _en
Puritain_, and, if you wish, I’ll pledge myself to impose upon the whole
colony.’
Here was a threat there was no mistaking; and any imputation of
ingratitude on my part were far preferable to the thought of such
an indignity. He saw his advantage at once, and boldly declared that
nothing should separate us.
‘The greatest favour, my dear Maurice, you can ever expect at my hands
is, never to speak of this freak of yours; or, if I do, to say that you
performed the part to perfection.’
My mind was in one of those moods of change when the slightest
impulse is enough to sway it, and, more from this cause, than all his
persuasion, I yielded; and the same evening saw me gliding down the
Hudson, and admiring the bold Catskills, on our way to New York.