We arrived at a small inn on the bordera of the Titi-see at nightfall;
and though the rain continued to come down unceasingly, and huge masses
of cloud hung half-way down the mountain, I could see that the spot was
highly picturesque and romantic. Before I could descend from my lofty
eminence, so strapped and buttoned and buckled up was I, the ladies had
time to get out and reach their rooms. When I asked to be shown mine,
the landlord, in a very free-and-easy tone, told me that there was
nothing for me but a double-bedded room, which I must share with another
traveller. I scouted this proposition at once with a degree of force,
and, indeed, of violence, that I fancied must prove irresistible; but
the stupid German, armed with native impassiveness, simply said, “Take
it or leave it, it's nothing to me,” and left me to look after his
business. I stormed and fumed. I asked the chambermaid if she knew who I
was, and sent for the Hausknecht to tell him that all Europe should ring
with this indignity. I more than hinted that the landlord had sealed
his own doom, and that his miserable cabaret had seen its last days of
prosperity.
I asked next, where was the Jew pedler? I felt certain he was a fellow
with pencil-cases and pipe-beads, who owned the other half of the
territory. Could he not be bought up? He would surely sleep in the
cow-house, if it were too wet to go up a tree!
François came to inform me that he was out fishing; that he fished all
day, and only came home after dark; his man had told him so much.
“His man? Why, has he a servant?” asked I.
“He's not exactly like a servant, sir; but a sort of peasant with a
green jacket and a tall hat and leather gaiters, like a Tyrolese.”
“Strolling actors, I 'll be sworn,” mattered I; “fellows taking a week's
holiday on their way to a new engagement How long have they been here?”
“Came on Monday last in the diligence, and are to remain till the
twentieth; two florins a day they give for everything.”
“What nation are they?”
“Germans, sir, regular Germans; never a pipe ont of their mouths, master
and man. I learned all this from his servant, for they have put up a bed
for me in his room.”
A sudden thought now struck me: “Why should not François give up his bed
to this stranger, and occupy the one in my room?” This arrangement would
suit _me_ better, and it ought to be all the same to Hamlet or Groetz,
or whatever he was. “Just lounge about the door, François,” said I,
“till he comes back; and when you see him, open the thing to him,
civilly, of course; and if a crown piece, or even two, will help the
negotiation, slip it slyly into his hand. You understand?”
François winked like a man who had corrupted customhouse officers in his
time, and even bribed bigger functionaries at a pinch.
“If he's in trade, you know, François, just hint that if he sends in
his pack in the course of the evening, the ladies might possibly take a
fancy to something.”
Another wink.
“And throw out--vaguely, of course, very vaguely--that we are swells,
but in strict _incog._”
A great scoundrel was François; he was a Swiss, and could cheat any
one, and, like a regular rogue, never happier than when you gave him
a mission of deceit or duplicity. In a word, when I gave him his
instructions, I regarded the negotiation as though it were completed,
and now addressed myself to the task of looking after our supper, which,
with national obstinacy, the landlord declared could not be ready
before nine o'clock. As usual, Mrs. Keats had gone to bed immediately
on arriving; but when sending me a “good-night” by her maid, she added,
“that whenever supper was served, Miss Herbert would come down.”
We had no sitting-room save the common room of the inn, a long,
low-ceilinged, dreary chamber, with a huge green-tile stove in one
corner, and down the centre a great oak table, which might have served
about forty guests. At one end of this three covers were laid for us,
the napkins enclosed in bone circlets, and the salt in great leaden
receptacles, like big ink-bottles; a very ancient brass lamp giving
its dim radiance over all. It was wearisome to sit down on the
straight-backed wooden chairs, and not less irksome to walk on the
gritty, sanded floor, and so I lounged in one of the windows, and
watched the rain. As I looked, I saw the figure of a man with a
fishing-basket and rod on his shoulder approaching the house. I guessed
at once it was our stranger, and, opening the window a few inches, I
listened to hear the dialogue between him and François. The window was
enclosed in the same porch as the door, so that I could hear a good deal
of what passed. François accosted him familiarly, questioned him as to
his sport, and the size of the fish he had taken. I could not hear the
reply, but I remarked that the stranger emptied his basket, and was
despatching the contents in different directions: some were for the
curé, and some for the postmaster, some for the brigadier of the
gendarmerie, and one large trout for the miller's daughter.
“A good-looking wench, I'll be sworn,” said François, as he heard the
message delivered.
Again the stranger said something, and I thought, from the tone,
angrily, and François responded; and then I saw them walk apart for
a few seconds, during which François seemed to have all the talk to
himself,--a good omen, as it appeared to me, of success, and a sure
warranty that the treaty was signed. Francois, however, did not come to
report progress, and so I closed the window and sat down.
“So you have got company to-night, Master Ludwig,” said the stranger,
as he entered, followed by the host, who speedily seemed to whisper that
one of the arrivals was then before him. The stranger bowed stiffly but
courteously to me, which I returned not less haughtily; and I now
saw that he was a man about thirty-five, but much freckled, with a
light-brown beard and moustache. On the whole, a good-looking fellow,
with a very upright carriage, and something of a cavalry soldier in the
swing of his gait.
“Would you like it at once, Herr Graf?” said the host, obsequiously.
“Oh, he 's a count, is he?” said I, with a sneer to myself. “These
countships go a short way with _me_.”
“You had better consult your other guests; _I_ am ready when _they_
are,” said the stranger.
Now, though the speech was polite and even considerate, I lost sight of
the courtesy in thinking that it implied we were about to sup in common,
and that the third cover was meant for him.
“I say, landlord,” said I, “you don't intend to tell me that you have no
private sitting-room, but that ladies of condition must needs come
down and sup here with”--I was going to say, “Heaven knows who;” but I
halted, and said--“with the general company.”
“That, or nothing!” was the sturdy response. “The guests in this house
eat here, or don't eat at all; eh, Herr Graf?”
“Well, so far as my experience goes, I can corroborate you,” said the
stranger, laughing; “though, you may remember, I have often counselled
you to make some change.”
“That you have; but I don't want to be better than my father and my
grandfather; and the Archduke Charles stopped here in _their_ time, and
never quarrelled with his treatment.”
I told the landlord to apprise the young lady whenever supper was ready,
and I walked to a distant part of the room and sat down.
In about two minutes after, Miss Herbert appeared, and the supper was
served at once. I had not met her since the incident of the bracelet,
and I was shocked to see how cold she was in her manner, and how
resolute in repelling the most harmless familiarity towards her.
I wanted to explain to her that it was through no fault of mine we were
to have the company of that odious stranger, that it was one of the
disagreeables of these wayside hostels, and to be borne with patience,
and that though he was a stage-player, or a sergeant of dragoons, he was
reasonably well-bred and quiet I did contrive to mumble out some of this
explanation; but, instead of attending to it, I saw her eyes following
the stranger, who had just draped a large riding-cloak over a
clothes-horse behind her chair, to serve as a screen. Thanks are all
very well, but I 'm by no means certain that gratitude requires such a
sweet glance as that, not to mention that I saw the expression in her
eyes for the first time.
I thought the soup would choke me. I almost hoped it might. Othello was
a mild case of jealousy compared to me, and I felt that strangling would
not half glut my vengeance. And how they talked!--he complimenting
her on her accent, and she telling him how her first governess was
a Hanoverian from Celle, where they are all such purists. There was
nothing they did not discuss in those detestable gutturals, and as
glibly as if it bad been a language meet for human lips. I could not
eat a mouthful, but I drank and watched them. The fellow was not long in
betraying himself: he was soon deep in the drama. He knew every play of
Schiller by heart, and quoted the Wallenstein, the Bobbers, Don Carlos,
and Maria Stuart at will; so, too, was he familiar with Goethe and
Leasing. He had all the swinging intonation of the boards, and declaimed
so very professionally that, as he concluded a passage, I cried out,
without knowing it,--
“Take that for your benefit,--it's the best you have given yet.”
Oh, Lord, how they laughed! She covered up her face and smothered it;
but he lay back, and, holding the table with both hands, he positively
shouted and screamed aloud. I would have given ten years of life for the
courage to have thrown my glass of wine in his face; but it was no use.
Nature had been a niggard to me in that quarter, and I had to sit and
hear it,--exactly so, sit and hear it,--while they made twenty attempts
to recover their gravity and behave like ladies and gentlemen, and when,
no sooner would they look towards me, than off they were again as bad as
before.
I revolved a dozen cutting sarcasms, all beginning with, “Whenever I
feel assured that you have sufficiently regained the customary calm
of good society;” but the dessert was served ere I could complete the
sentence, and now they were deep in the lyric poets, Uhland, and
Körner, and Freiligrath, and the rest of them. As I listened to their
enthusiasm, I wondered why people never went into raptures over a cold
in the head. But it was not to end here: there was an old harpsichord
in the room, and this he opened and set to work on in that fearful
two-handed fashion your German alone understands. The poor old crippled
instrument shook on its three legs, while the fourth fell clean off, and
the loose wires jangled and jarred like knives in a tray; but he only
sang the louder, and her ecstasies grew all the greater too.
Heaven reward you, dear old Mrs. Keats, when you sent word down that
you could n't sleep a wink, and begging them to “send that noisy band
something and let them go away;” and then Miss Herbert wished him a
sweet goodnight, and he accompanied her to the door, and then there was
more good-night, and I believe I had a short fit; but when I came to
myself, he was sitting smoking his cigar opposite me.
“You are no relative, no connection of the young lady who has just
left the room?” said he to me with a grave manner, so significant of
something under it that I replied hastily, “None,--none whatever.”
“Was that servant who spoke to me in the porch, as I came in this
evening, yours?”
“Yes.” This I said more boldly, as I suspected he was coming to the
question François had opened.
“He mentioned to me,” said he, slowly, and puffing his cigar at easy
intervals, “that you desire your servant should sleep in the same
room with you. I am always happy to meet the wishes of courteous
fellow-travellers, and so I have ordered my servant to give you _his_
bed; he will sleep upstairs in what was intended for _you_. Good-night.”
And with an insolent nod he lounged out of the room and left me.