I was so hurt by the last words of Miss Herbert to me, that I maintained
throughout the entire day what I meant to be a “dignified reserve,” but
what I half suspect bore stronger resemblance to a deep sulk. My station
had its privileges, and I resolved to take the benefit of them. I
dined alone. Yes, on that day I did fall back upon the eminence of
my condition, and proudly intimated that I desired solitude. I was
delighted to see the dismay this declaration caused. Old Mrs. Keats was
speechless with terror. I was looking at her through a chink in the door
when Miss Herbert gave my message, and I thought she would have fainted.
“What were his precise words? Give them to me exactly as he uttered
them,” said she, tremulously, “for there are persons whose intimations
are half commands.”
“I can scarcely repeat them, madam,” said the other, “but their purport
was, that we were not to expect him at dinner, that he had ordered it to
be served in his own room and at his own hour.”
“And this is very probably all your doing,” said the old lady, with
indignation. “Unaccustomed to any levity of behavior, brought up in a
rank where familiarities are never practised, he has been shocked by
your conduct with that stranger. Yes, Miss Herbert, I say shocked,
because, however harmless in intention, such freedoms are utterly
unknown in--in certain circles.”
“I am sure, madam,” replied she, with a certain amount of spirit,
“that you are laboring under a very grave misapprehension. There was no
familiarity, no freedom. We talked as I imagine people usually talk when
they sit at the same table. Mr.--I scarcely know his name--”
“Nor is it necessary,” said the old woman, tartly; “though, if you had,
probably this unfortunate incident might not have occurred. Sit down
there, however, and write a few lines in my name, hoping that his
indisposition may be very slight, and begging to know if he desire to
remain here to-morrow and take some repose.”
I waited till I saw Miss Herbert open her writing-desk, and then I
hastened off to my room to reflect over my answer to her note. Now that
the suggestion was made to me, I was pleased with the notion of passing
an entire day where we were. The place was Schaffhausen,--the famous
fall of the Rhine,--not very much as a cataract, but picturesque withal;
pleasant chestnut woods to ramble about, and a nice old inn in a wild
old wilderness of a garden that sloped down to the very river.
Strange perversity is it not; but how naturally one likes everything to
have some feature or other out of keeping with its intrinsic purport!
An inn like an old _chateau_, a chief-justice that could ride a
steeple-chase, a bishop that sings Moore's melodies, have an immense
attraction for me. They seem all, as it were, to say, “Don't fancy life
is a mere four-roomed house with a door in the middle. Don't imagine
that all is humdrum and routine and regular. Notwithstanding his wig
and stern black eyebrows, there is a touch of romance in that old
Chancellor's heart that you could n't beat out of it with his great
mace; and his Grace the Primate there has not forgotten what made
the poetry of his life in days before he ever dreamed of charges or
triennial visitations.”
By these reflections I mean to convey that I am very fond of an inn that
does not look like an inn, but resembles a faded old country-house, or a
deserted convent, or a disabled mill. This Schaffhausen Gasthaus looked
like all three. It was the sort of place one might come to in a long
vacation, to live simply and to go early to bed, take monotony as a
tonic, and fancying unbroken quiet to be better than quinine.
“Ah!” thought I, “if it had not been for that confounded German, what a
paradise might not this have been to me! Down there in that garden, with
the din of the waterfall around us, walking under the old cherry-trees,
brushing our way through tangled sweetbriers, and arbutus, and laburnum,
what delicious nonsense might I not have poured into her ear! Ay! and
not unwillingly had she heard it. That something within that never
deceives, that little crimson heart within the rose of conscience, tells
me that she liked me, that she was attracted by what, if it were not for
shame, I would call the irresistible attractions of my nature; and
now this creature of braten and beetroot has spoiled all, jarred the
instrument and unstrung the chords that might have yielded me such sweet
music.”
In thinking over the inadequacy of all human institutions, I have often
been struck by the fact that while the law gives the weak man a certain
measure of protection against the superior physical strength of the
powerful ruffian in the street, it affords none against the assaults of
the intellectual bully at a dinner-party. _He_ may maltreat you at his
pleasure, batter you with his arguments, kick you with inferences, and
knock you down with conclusions, and no help for it all!
“Ah, here comes François with the note.” I wrote one line in pencil
for answer: “am sensibly touched by your consideration, and will pass
to-morrow here.” I signed this with a P., which might mean Prince,
Potts, or Pottinger. My reply despatched, I began to think how I could
improve the opportunity. “I will bring her to book,” thought I; “I will
have an explanation.” I always loved that sort of thing,--there is
an almost certainty of emotion; now emotion begets tears; tears,
tenderness; tenderness, consolation; and when you reach consolation, you
are, so to say, a tenant in possession; your title may be disputable,
your lease invalid, still you are there, on the property, and it will
take time at least to turn you out. “After all,” thought I, “that rude
German has but troubled the water for a moment, the pure well of her
affections will by this time have regained its calm still surface, and I
shall see my image there as before.”
My meditations were interrupted, perhaps not unpleasantly. It was the
waiter with my dinner. I am not unsocial--I am eminently the reverse--I
may say, like most men who feel themselves conversationally gifted, I
like company, I see that my gifts have in such gatherings their natural
ascendancy,--and yet, with all this, I have always felt that to dine
splendidly, all alone, was a very grand thing. Mind, I don't say it is
pleasant or jolly or social, but simply that it is grand to see all that
table equipage of crystal and silver spread out for _you_ alone; to know
that the business of that gorgeous candelabrum is to light _you_; that
the two decorous men in black--archdeacons they might be, from the quiet
dignity of their manners--are there to wait upon _you_; that the whole
sacrifice, from the caviare to the cheese, was a hecatomb to _your_
greatness. I repeat, these are all grand and imposing considerations,
and there have been times when I have enjoyed these _Lucullus cum
Lucullo_ festivals more than convivial assemblages. This day was one of
these: I lingered over my dinner in delightful dalliance. I partook of
nearly every dish, but, with a supreme refinement, ate little of any,
as though to imply, “I am accustomed to a very different _cuisine_ from
this; it is not thus that I fare habitually.” And yet I was blandly
forgiving, accepting even such humble efforts to please as if they had
been successes. The Cliquot was good, and I drank no other wine, though
various flasks with tempting titles stood around me.
Dinner over and coffee served, I asked the waiter what resources the
place possessed in the way of amusement. He looked blank and even
distressed at my question: he had all his life imagined that the Falls
sufficed for everything; he had seen the tide of travel halt there to
view them for years. Since he was a boy, he had never ceased to witness
the yearly recurring round of tourists who came to see, and sketch, and
scribble about them, and so he faintly muttered out a remonstrance,--
“Monsieur has not yet visited the Falls.”
“The Falls! why, I see them from this, and if I open the window I am
stunned with their uproar.”
I was really sorry at the pain my hasty speech gave him, for he looked
suddenly faint and ill, and after a moment gasped out,--
“But monsieur is surely not going away without a visit to the cataract?
The guide-books give two hours as the very shortest time to see it
effectually.”
“I only gave ten minutes to Niagara, my good friend,” said I, “and would
not have spared even that, but that I wanted to hold a sprained ankle
under the fall.”
He staggered, and had to hold a chair to support himself.
“There is, besides, the Laufen Schloss--”
“As to castles,” broke I in, “I have no need to leave my own to see all
that mediaeval architecture can boast. No, no,” sighed I out, “if I am
to have new sensations, they must come through some other channel than
sight. Have you no theatre?”
“No, sir. None.”
“No concert-rooms, no music-garden?”
“None, sir.”
“Not even a circus?” said I, peevishly.
“There was, sir, but it was not attended. The strangers all come to see
the Falls.”
“Confound the Falls! And what became of the circus?”
“Well, they made a bad business of it; got into debt on all sides, for
oil, and forage, and printing placards, and so on, and then they beat
a sudden retreat one night, and slipped off, all but two, and, indeed,
they were about the best of the company; but somehow they lost their
way in the forest, and instead of coming up with their companions, found
themselves at daybreak at the outside of the town.”
“And these two unlucky ones, what were they?”
“One was the chief clown, sir, a German, and the other was a little
girl, a Moor they call her; but the cleverest creature to ride or throw
somersaults through hoops of the whole of them.”
“And how do they live now?”
“Very hardly, I believe, sir; and but for Tintefleck,--that's what they
call her,--they might starve; but she goes about with her guitar through
the _cafés_ of an evening, and as she has a sweet voice, she picks up
a few batzen. But the maire, I hear, won't permit this any longer, and
says that as they have no passport or papers of any kind, they must be
sent over the frontier as vagabonds.”
“Let that maire be brought before me,” said I, with a haughty
indignation. “Let me tell him in a few brief words what I think of his
heartless cruelty--But no, I was forgetting,--I am here _incog_.
Be careful, my good man, that you do not mention what I have so
inadvertently dropped; remember that I am nobody here; I am Number Five
and nothing more. Send the unfortunate creatures, however, here, and let
me interrogate them. They can be easily found, I suppose?”
“In a moment, sir. They were in the Platz just when I served the
pheasant.”
“What name does the man bear?”
“I never heard a name for him. Amongst the company he was called
Vaterchen, as he was the oldest of them all; and, indeed, they seemed
all very fond of him.”
“Let Vaterchen and Tintefleck, then, come hither. And bring fresh
glasses, waiter.”
And I spoke as might an Eastern despot giving his orders for a “nautch;”
and then, waving my hand, motioned the messenger away.