The announcement of Count Lienstahl's arrival at Wiesbaden was received
with rejoicing. “Now we shall open the season in earnest. We shall have
balls, picnics, races, hurdle-matches, gypsy parties, excursions by
land and water. _He_ 'll manage everything and everybody.” Such were the
exclamations that resounded along the Promenade as the party drove up
to the hotel. Within less than an hour the Count had been to Beberich
to visit the reigning Duke, he had kissed hands with half-a-dozen serene
highnesses, made his bow to the chief minister and the Governor of
Wiesbaden, and come back to dinner all smiles and delight at the
condescension and kindness of the court and the capital.
If Lienstahl's popularity was great, he only shared a very humble
portion of public attention when they appeared at the _table d'hote_.
There Lizzy Davis attracted every look, and the fame of her beauty was
already wide-spread. Such was the eagerness to obtain place at the
table that the most extravagant bribes were offered for a seat, and a
well-known elegant of Vienna actually paid a waiter five louis to cede
his napkin to him and let him serve in his stead. Beecher was anything
but gratified at these demonstrations. If his taste was offended, his
fears were also excited. “Something bad must come of it,” was his own
muttered reflection; and as they retired after dinner to take their
coffee, he showed very palpably his displeasure.
“Eh, _caro mio_,--all right?” said the Count, gayly, as he threw an arm
over his shoulder.
“No, by Jove!--all wrong. I don't like it. It's not the style of thing I
fancy.” And here his confusion overwhelmed him, and he stopped abruptly;
for the Count, seating himself at the piano, and rattling off a lively
prelude, began a well-known air from a popular French vaudeville, of
which the following is a rude version:--
“With a lovely face beside you,
You can't walk this world far,
But from those who 've closely eyed you,
Comes the question, Who are you?
And though Dowagers will send you
Cutting looks and glances keen,
The men will comprehend you
When you say, 'C'est ma cousine.'”
He was preparing for the second verse when Lizzy entered the room, and,
turning at once to her, he poured forth some sentences with all that
voluble rapidity he possessed.
“So,” said she, addressing Beecher, “it seems that you are shocked or
horrified, or your good taste is outraged, by certain demonstrations
of admiration for me exhibited by the worthy public of this place;
and, shall I own to you, I liked it I thought it very nice, and very
flattering, and all that, until I thought it was a little--a very
little, perhaps, but still a little--impertinent Was that your opinion?”
There was a blunt frankness about this question, uttered in such
palpable honesty of intention that Beecher felt overwhelmed at once.
“I don't know the Continent like your friend there. I can't pretend to
offer you advice and counsel like him; but if you really ask me, I 'd
say, 'Don't dine below any more; don't go to the rooms of an evening;
don't frequent the Promenade--“'
“What would you say to my taking the veil, for I fancy I 've some
vocation that way?” And then, turning to the Count, she said something
in French, at which he laughed immoderately.
Whether vexed with himself or with her, or, more probably still, annoyed
by not being able to understand what passed in a foreign language,
Beecher took his hat and left the room. Without his ever suspecting it,
a new pang was just added to his former griefs, and he was jealous! It
is very rare that a man begins by confessing a sense of jealousy to his
own heart; he usually ascribes the dislike he feels to a rival to some
defect or some blemish in his nature. He is a coarse fellow; rude,
vulgar, a coxcomb, or, worst of all, a bore. In some such disposition
as this Beecher quitted the town, and strolled away into the country.
He felt he hated the Count, and yet he could not perceive why; Lienstahl
possessed a vast number of the qualities he was generally disposed to
like. He was gay, lively, light-hearted, never out of humor, never even
thoughtful; his was that easy temperament that seemed to adapt itself
to every phase of life. What was it, then? What could it be that he
disliked about him? It was somewhat “cool,” too, of Grog, to send this
fellow over without even the courtesy of a line to himself. “Serve
him right--serve them all right--if I were to cut my lucky;” and he
ruminated long and anxiously over the thought. His present position was
anything but pleasant or flattering to him. For aught _he_ knew,
the Count and Lizzy Davis passed their time laughing at his English
ignorance of all things foreign. By dint of a good deal of such
self-tormenting, he at last reached that point whereat the very
slightest additional impulse would have determined him to decamp from
his party, and set out all alone for Italy. The terror of a day of
reckoning with Davis was, however, a dread that he could never shake
off. Grog the unforgiving, the inexorable! Grog, whose greatest boast
in his vainglorious moments was that, in the “long run,” no man ever got
the better of him, would assuredly bring him to book one day or other;
and he knew the man's nature well enough to be aware that no fear of
personal consequences would ever balk him on the road to a vengeance.
Sometimes the thought occurred to him that he would make a frank and
full confession to Lackington of all his delinquencies, even to that
terrible “count” by which the fame and fortune of his house might be
blasted forever. If he could but string up his courage to this pitch,
Lackington might “pull him through,” Lackington would see that “there
was nothing else for it,” and so on. It is marvellous what an apparent
strength of argument lies in those slang expressions familiar to certain
orders of men. These conventionalities seem to settle at once questions
which, if treated in more befitting phraseology, would present the
gravest difficulties.
He walked on and on, and at last gained a pine wood which skirted the
base of a mountain, and soon lost himself in its dark recesses. Gloomier
than the place itself was the tone of his reflections. All that he might
have been, all that lay so easily within his reach, all that life
once offered him, contrasted bitterly with what he now saw himself.
Conscience, it is true, suggested few of his present pangs; he
believed--ay, sincerely believed--that he had been more “sinned against
than sinning.” Such a one had “let him in” here; such another “had sold
him” there. In his reminiscences he saw himself trustful, generous, and
confiding, while the world--the great globe that includes Tattersalls,
Goodwood, Newmarket, and Ascot--was little better than a nest of knaves
and vagabonds.
Why could n't Lackington get him something abroad,--in the Brazils or
Lima, for instance? He was n't quite sure where they were; but they were
far away, he thought,--places too remote for Grog Davis to hunt him out,
and whence he could give the great Grog a haughty defiance. They--how
it would have puzzled him to say who “they” were--they couldn't refuse
Lackington if he asked. He was always voting and giving his proxies, and
doing all manner of things for them; he made a speech, too, last year
at Hoxton, and gave a lecture upon something that must have served
them. Lackington would begin the old story about character; “but who had
character nowadays?” “Take down the Court Guides,” cried he, aloud, “and
let _me_ give you the private life and adventures of each as you
read out the names. Talk of _me!_ why, what have I done equal to what
Lockwood, Hepton, Bulkleigh, Frank Melton, and fifty more have done? No,
no; for public life, now, they must do as a sergeant of the Ninety-fifth
told me t' other day, 'We 're obliged to take 'em little, sir, and glad
to get 'em too!'”
It might be that there was something grateful to his feelings,
reassuring to his heart, in this reflection, for he walked along now
more briskly, and his head higher than before. Without being aware, he
had already gone some miles from the town, and now found himself in one
of those long grassy alleys which traversed the dense wood in various
directions. As he looked down the narrow road which seemed like the
vast aisle of some Gothic cathedral, he felt a sort of tremulous motion
beneath his feet; and then, the moment after, he could detect the
measured tramp of a horse at speed. A slight bend of the alley had
hitherto shut out the view; but, suddenly, a dark object came sweeping
round the turn and advancing towards him.
[Illustration: 392]
Half to secure a position, and half with the thought of watching what
this might portend, Beecher stepped aside into the dense brushwood at
the side of the alley, and which effectually hid him from view. He had
barely time to make his retreat when a horse swept past him at full
stride, and with one glance he recognized him as “Klepper.” It was
Rivers, too, who rode him, sitting high over the saddle and with his
hands low, as if racing. Now, it was but that very morning Rivers had
told him that the horse was not “quite right,”--a bit heavy or so about
the eyes,--“out of sorts” he called it; and there he was now, flying
along at the top of his speed in full health and condition. It needed
but the fortieth part of this to suggest a suspicion to such a mind as
his, and with the speed of lightning there flashed across him the notion
of a “cross.” He, Annesley Beecher, was to be “put into the hole,” to
be “squared,” and “nobbled,” and all the rest of it! It did not, indeed,
occur to him how very unprofitably such an enterprise would reward its
votaries, that it would be a most gratuitous iniquity to “push him to
the wall,” that all the ingenious malevolence in the world could never
make the venture “pay;” his self-conceit smothered these reasonings, and
he determined to watch and to see how the scheme was to be developed.
He had not to wait long in suspense; at the bend of the alley where the
horse had disappeared, two horsemen were now seen slowly approaching
him. As they drew nearer, Beecher could mark that they were in close,
and what seemed confidential conversation. One he quickly recognized to
be the Count; the other, to his amazement, was Spicer, of whose arrival
at Aix he had not heard anything. They moved so slowly past the spot
where he was standing that he could gather some of the words that
escaped them, although being in French. The sound of his own name
quickly caught his ear. It was the Count spoke as they came up,--
“He is a _pauvre sire_, this Beecher, and I don't yet see what use he
can be to us.”
“Davis likes him, or, at least, he wants him,” replied Spicer, “and
that's enough for us. Depend upon it, Grog makes no mistakes.” The other
laughed; but what he replied was lost in the distance?
It was some time ere Beecher could summon resolution to leave the place
of his concealment and set out towards the town. Of all the sentiments
that swayed and controlled him, none had such a perfect mastery over
his nature as distrust. It was, in fact, the solitary lesson his life's
experience had taught him. He fancied that he could trace every mistake
he had ever made, every failure he had ever incurred, to some unlucky
movement of credulity on his own part, and that “believing” was the one
great error of his whole life. He had long been of opinion that high
station and character had no greater privileges than the power they
possessed of imposing a certain trustfulness in their pledges, and that
the great “pull” a duke had over a “leg” was that his Grace would be
believed in preference. But it also appeared to him that rogues were
generally true to each other; now, if this last hope were to be taken
away, what was there left in life to cling to? Spicer had said, “Davis
wants him.” What did that mean?--what could it mean? Simply that Grog
found him, not an associate or colleague, but a convenient tool. What an
intolerable insult, that he, the Honorable Annesley Beecher, whose great
connections rambled through half Debrett, was to be accounted a mere
outpost sentry in the corps of Grog Davis!
His anger increased as he went along. The wound to his self-esteem was
in the very tenderest spot of his nature. Had any man ever sacrificed
so much to be a sharp fellow as he had? Who had, like him, given up
friends, station, career, and prospects? Who had voluntarily surrendered
the society of his equals, and gone down to the very dregs of mankind,
just to learn that one great secret? And was it to be all in vain?
Was all his training and teaching to go for nothing? Was he, after
descending to the ranks, to discover that he never could learn
the manual exercise? How often, in the gloomiest hours of his
disappointment, had he hugged the consolation to his heart, that Grog
Davis knew and valued him! “Ask G. D. if I'm a flat,” was the proud
rejoinder he would hurl at any attempt to depreciate his shrewdness.
What was to become of him, then, if the bank that held all his fortune
were to fail? If Beecher deemed a sharp fellow the most enviable of all
mortals, so he regarded a dupe as the meanest and most miserable, and
the very thought of such a fate was almost maddening. “No, confound me!
they sha'n't have it to say that they 'landed' A. B.; they shall never
boast they nobbled me,” cried he, warming with the indignation that
worked within him. “I 'm off, and this time without beat of drum. Davis
may do his worst. I'll lie by snug for a year or two. There must be many
a safe spot in Germany or Italy, where a man may defy detection.” And
then he ran over in his mind all the successful devices he had seen
adopted for disguising a man's appearance. Howard Vane had a wig and
whiskers that left him unrecognized by his own mother; Crofton Campbell
travelled with Inspector Field in search of himself, all by means of a
nose. It was wonderful what science was accomplishing every day for the
happiness and welfare of mankind!
The plan of escape was not without its difficulties, however. First of
all, he had no money. Davis had given him merely enough to pay railroad
fares and the charges incidental to the road, and he was living at the
hotel on credit. This was a serious obstacle, but it was also one which
had so often before occurred in Beecher's experience that he was not so
much dismayed by it as many another might have been. “Money was always
to be had somehow,” was a golden rule of his philosophy, the somehow
meaning that it resolved itself into a simple question of skill and
address of the individual in want of it Aix was a considerable town,
much frequented by strangers, and must, doubtless, possess all the
civilizing attributes of other cities,--namely, Jews, money-lenders, and
discounters. Then, the landlord of the inn; it was always customary to
give him the preference in these cases. _He 'd_ surely not refuse an
advance of a few hundred francs to a man who came accompanied as he was.
Klepper alone was good security for ten times more than he needed. Must
it be confessed that he felt elevated in his own esteem when he had
resolved upon this scheme? It savored of shrewdness,--that great
touchstone of capacity which he revered so highly. “They shall see if
I'm a flat, this time,” chuckled he to himself as he went along; and
he stepped out briskly in the excitement of self-approval. Then he went
over in his mind all the angry commentaries that would be passed upon
his flight,--the passionate fury of Grog, the amazement of Spicer,
the almost incredulous surprise of the Count,--till at last he came to
Lizzy; and then, for the first time in all his calculations, a sense
of shame sent the color to his cheek, and he blushed till his face grew
crimson. “Ay, by Jove! what will _she_ think!” muttered he, in a voice
of honest truthfulness. How he should appear to her--how he should stand
in her estimation--after such an ignoble desertion, was a thought not
to be encountered by self-praises of his cunning. What would her “pluck”
say to his “cowardice,” was a terrible query.