I can recall to this very hour the sensations of headache and misery
with which I awoke the morning after this debauch. Backing pain it was,
with a sort of tremulous beating all through the brain, as though a
small engine had been set to work there, and that piston and boiler and
connecting-rod were all banging, fizzing, and vibrating amid my fevered
senses. I was, besides, much puzzled to know where I was, and how I
had come there. Controversial divinity, genealogy, horse-racing, the
peerage, and “double sixes” were dancing a wild cotillon through my
brain; and although a waiter more than once cautiously obtruded his head
into the room, to see if I were asleep, and as guardedly withdrew it
again, I never had energy to speak to him, but lay passive and still,
waiting till my mind might clear, and the cloud-fog that obscured my
faculties might be wafted away.
At last--it was towards evening--the man, possibly becoming alarmed at
my protracted lethargy, moved somewhat briskly through the room, and
with that amount of noise that showed he meant to arouse me, disturbed
chairs and fire-irons indiscriminately.
“Is it late or early?” asked I, faintly.
“Tis near five, sir, and a beautiful evening,” said he, drawing nigh,
with the air of one disposed for colloquy.
I did n't exactly like to ask where I was, and tried to ascertain the
fact by a little circumlocution. “I suppose,” said I, yawning, “for all
that is to be done in a place like this, when up, one might just as well
stay abed, eh?”
“T is the snuggest place, anyhow,” said he, with that peculiar
disposition to agree with you so characteristic in an Irish waiter.
“No society?” sighed I.
“No, indeed, sir.”
“No theatre?”
“Devil a one, sir.”
“No sport?”
“Yesterday was the last of the season, sir; and signs on it, his
Lordship and the other gentleman was off immediately after breakfast.”
“You mean Lord--Lord--” A mist was clearing slowly away, but I could not
yet see clearly.
“Lord Keldrum, sir; a real gentleman every inch of him.”
“Oh! yes, to be sure,--a very old friend of mine,” muttered I. “And so
he's gone, is he?”
“Yes, sir; and the last word he said was about your honor.”
“About me,--what was it?”
“Well, indeed, sir,” replied the waiter, with a hesitating and confused
manner, “I did n't rightly understand it; but as well as I could catch
the words, it was something about hoping your honor had more of that
wonderful breed of horses the Emperor of Roosia gave you.”
“Oh, yes! I understand,” said I, stopping him abruptly. “By the way, how
is Blondel--that is, my horse--this morning?”
“Well, he looked fresh and hearty, when he went off this morning at
daybreak--”
“What do you mean?” cried I, jumping up in my bed. “Went off? where to?”
“With Father Dyke on his back; and a neater hand he could n't wish
over him. 'Tim,' says he, to the ostler, as he mounted, 'there's a
five-shilling piece for you, for hansel, for I won this baste last
night, and you must drink my health and wish me luck with him.'”
I heard no more, but, sinking back into the bed, I covered my face with
my hands, overcome with shame and misery. All the mists that had blurred
my faculties had now been swept clean away, and the whole history of
the previous evening was revealed before me. My stupid folly, my absurd
boastfulness, my egregious story-telling,--not to call it worse,--were
all there; but, shall I acknowledge it? what pained me not less
poignantly was the fact that I ventured to stake the horse I had merely
hired, and actually lost him at the play-table.
As soon as I rallied from this state of self-accusation, I set to work
to think how I should manage to repossess myself of my beast, my loss of
which might be converted into a felony. To follow the priest and ransom
Blondel was my first care. Father Dyke would most probably not exact
an unreasonable price; he, of course, never believed one word of my
nonsensical narrative about Schamyl and the Caucasus, and he 'd not
revenge upon Potts sober the follies of Potts tipsy. It is true my purse
was a very slender one, but Blondel, to any one unacquainted with
his pedigree, could not be a costly animal; fifteen pounds--twenty,
certainly--ought to buy what the priest would call “every hair on his
tail.”
It was now too late in the evening to proceed to execute the measures I
had resolved on, and so I determined to lie still and ponder over them.
Dismissing the waiter, with an order to bring me a cup of tea about
eight o'clock, I resumed my cogitations. They were not pleasant ones:
Potts a byword for the most outrageous and incoherent balderdash and
untruth; Potts in the “Hue and Cry;” Potts in the dock; Potts in the
pillory; Potts paragraphed in “Punch;” portrait of Potts, price one
penny!--these were only a few of the forms in which the descendant of
the famous Corsican family of Pozzo di Borgo now presented himself to my
imagination.
The courts and quadrangles of Old Trinity ringing with laughter, the
coarse exaggerations of tasteless scoffers, the jokes and sneers of
stupidity, malice, and all uncharitableness, rang in my ears as if I
heard them. All possible and impossible versions of the incident
passed in review before me: my father, driven distracted by impertinent
inquiries, cutting me off with a shilling, and then dying of
mortification and chagrin; rewards offered for my apprehension;
descriptions, not in any way flatteries, of my personal appearance;
paragraphs of local papers hinting that the notorious Potts was supposed
to have been seen in our neighborhood yesterday, with sly suggestions
about looking after stable-doors, &c. I could bear it no longer. I
jumped up, and rang the bell violently.
“You know this Father Dyke, waiter? In what part of the country does he
live?”
“He's parish priest of Inistioge,” said he; “the snuggest place in the
whole county.”
“How far from this may it be?”
“It's a matter of five-and-forty miles; and by the same token, he said
he 'd not draw bridle till he got home to-night, for there was a fair
at Grague to-morrow, and if he was n't pleased with the baste he 'd sell
him there.”
I groaned deeply; for here was a new complication, entirely unlooked
for. “You can't possibly mean,” gasped I out, “that a respectable
clergyman would expose for sale a horse lent to him casually by a
friend?” for the thought struck me that this protest of mine should be
thus early on record.
The waiter scratched his head and looked confused. Whether another
version of the event possessed him, or that my question staggered his
convictions, I am unable to say; but he made no reply. “It is true,”
continued I, in the same strain, “that I met his reverence last night
for the first time. My friend Lord Keldrum made us acquainted; but
seeing him received at my noble friend's board, I naturally felt, and
said to myself, 'The man Keldrum admits to his table is the equal of any
one.' Could anything be more reasonable than that?”
“No, indeed, sir; nothing,” said the waiter, obsequiously.
“Well, then,” resumed I, “some day or other it may chance that you will
be called on to remember and recall this conversation between us; if so,
it will be important that you should have a clear and distinct memory of
the fact that when I awoke in the morning, and asked for my horse, the
answer you made me was--What was the answer you made me?”
“The answer I med was this,” said the fellow, sturdily, and with an
effrontery I can never forget,--“the answer I med was, that the man that
won him took him away.”
“You're an insolent scoundrel,” cried I, boiling over with passion, “and
if you don't ask pardon for this outrage on your knees, I 'll include
you in the indictment for conspiracy.”
So far from proceeding to the penitential act I proposed, the fellow
grinned from ear to ear, and left the room. It was a long time before I
could recover my wonted calm and composure. That this rascal's evidence
would be fatal to me if the question ever came to trial, was as clear as
noonday; not less clear was it that he knew this himself.
“I must go back at once to town,” thought I. “I will surrender myself to
the law. If a compromise be impossible, I will perish at the stake.”
I forgot there was no stake; but there was wool-carding, and
oakum-picking, and wheel-treading, and oyster-shell pounding, and other
small plays of this nature, infinitely more degrading to humanity than
all the cruelties of our barbarous ancestors.
Now, in no record of lives of adventure had I met any account of such
trials as these. The Silvio Pellicos of Pentonville are yet unwritten
martyrs. Prison discipline would vulgarize the grandest epic that ever
was conceived “Anything rather than this,” said I, aloud. “Proscribed,
outlawed, hunted down, but never, gray-coated and hair-clipped, shall a
Potts be sentenced to the 'crank,' or black-holed as refractory!--Bring
me my bill,” cried I, in a voice of indignant anger. “I will go forth
into the world of darkness and tempest; I will meet the storm and the
hurricane; better all the conflict of the elements than man's--than
man's--” I was n't exactly sure what; but there was no need of the word,
for a gust of wind had just flattened my umbrella in my face as I issued
forth, and left me breathless, as the door closed behind me.