I could not hear the loud and repeated knockings which were made at my
door, as at first waiters, and then the landlord himself, endeavored
to gain admittance. At length a ladder was placed at the window, and a
courageous individual, duly armed, appeared at my casement and summoned
me to surrender. With what unspeakable relief did I learn that it was
not to apprehend or arrest me that all these measures were taken: they
were simply the promptings of a graceful benevolence; a sort of rumored
intimation having got about, that I had taken prussic acid, or was
being done to death by charcoal. Imagine a prisoner in a condemned cell
suddenly awakened, and hearing that the crowd around him consisted not
of the ordinary, the sheriff, Mr. Calcraft and Co., but a deputation of
respectable citizens come to offer the representation of their borough
or a piece of plate, and then you can have a mild conception of the
pleasant revulsion of my feelings. I thanked my public in a short
but appropriate address. I assured them, although there was a popular
prejudice about doing this sort of thing in November in England, that it
was deemed quite unreasonable at other times, and that really, in
these days of domestic arsenic and conjugal strychnine, nothing but
an unreasonable impatience would make a man self-destructive,--suicide
arguing that as a man was really so utterly valueless, it was worth
nobody's while to get rid of him. My explanation over, I ordered
breakfast.
“Why not dinner?” said the waiter. “It is close on four o'clock.”
“No,” said I; “the ladies will expect me at dinner.”
“The ladies are near Constance by this, or else the roads are worse than
we thought them.”
“Near Constance! Do you mean to say they have gone?”
“Yes, sir, at daybreak; or, indeed, I might say before daybreak.”
“Gone! actually gone!” was all that I could utter.
“They never went to bed last night, sir; the old lady was taken very
ill after tea, and all the house running here and there for doctors and
remedies, and the young lady, though she bore up so well, they tell me
she fainted when she was alone in her own room. In fact, it was a piece
of confusion and trouble until they started, and we may say, none of us
had a moment's peace till we saw them off.”
“And how came it that I was never called?”
“I believe, sir, but I'm not sure, the landlord tried to awake you. At
all events, he has a note for you now, for I saw the old lady place it
in his hand.”
“Fetch it at once,” said I; and when he left the room, I threw some
water over my face, and tried to rally all my faculties to meet the
occasion.
When the waiter reappeared with the note, I bade him leave it on the
table; I could not venture to read it while he was in the room. At
length he went away, and I opened it. These were the contents:--
“Sir,--When a person of your rank abuses the privilege of his station,
it is supposed that he means to rebuke. Although innocent of any cause
for your displeasure, I have preferred to withdraw myself from your
notice than incur the chance of so severe a reprimand a second time.
“I am, sir, with unfeigned sorrow and humility, your most devoted
follower and servant,
“Martha Keats.
“To the--de----”
This was the whole of it; not a great deal as correspondence, but matter
enough for much thought and much misery. After a long and painful review
of my conduct, one startling fact stood prominently forward, which was,
that I had done something which, had it been the act of a royal prince,
would yet have been unpardonable, but which, if known to emanate from
one such as myself, would have been a downright outrage.
I went into the whole case, as a man who detests figures might have gone
into a long and complicated account; and just as he would skip small
sums, and pay little heed to fractions, I aimed at arriving at some
grand solid balance for or against myself.
I felt, that if asked to produce my books, they might run this wise:
Potts, on the credit side, a philanthropist, self-denying, generous,
and trustful; one eager to do good, thinking no evil of his neighbor,
hopeful of everybody, anxious to establish that brotherhood amongst men
which, however varied the station, could and ought to subsist, and which
needs but the connecting link of one sympathetic existence to establish.
On the other side, Potts, I grieve to say, appeared that which Ferdinand
Mendez Pinto was said to be.
When I had rallied a bit from the stunning effect of this disagreeable
“total,” I began to wish that I had somebody to argue the matter out
with me. The way I would put my case would be thus: “Has not--from
the time of Martius Curtius down to the late Mr. Sadlier, of banking
celebrity--the sacrifice of one man for the benefit of his fellows, been
recognized as the noblest exposition of heroism? Now, although it is
much to give up life for the advantage of others, it is far more to
surrender one's identity, to abandon that grand capital Ego! which gives
a man his self-esteem and suggests his self-preservation. And who, I
would ask, does this so thoroughly as the man who everlastingly palms
himself upon the world for that which he is not? According to the
greatest happiness principle, this man may be a real boon to humanity.
He feeds this one with hope, the other with flattery; he bestows courage
on the weak, confidence on the wavering. The rich man can give of his
abundance, but it is out of his very poverty this poor fellow has
to bestow all. Like the spider, he has to weave his web from his
own vitals, and like the same spider he may be swept away by some
pretentious affectation of propriety.”
While I thus argued, the waiter came in to serve dinner. It looked
all appetizing and nice; but I could not touch a morsel. I was sick at
heart; Kate Herbert's last look as she quitted the room was ever before
me. Those dark gray eyes--which you stupid folk will go on calling
blue--have a sort of reproachful power in them very remarkable. They
don't flash out in anger like black eyes, or sparkle in fierceness like
hazel; but they emit a sort of steady, fixed, concentrated light, that
seems to imply that they have looked thoroughly into you, and come back
very sad and very sorry for the inquiry. I thought of the happy days I
had passed beside her; I recalled her low and gentle voice, her sweet
half-sad smile, and her playful laugh, and I said, “Have I lost all
these forever, and how? What stupid folly possessed me last evening?
How could I have been so idiotic as not to see that I was committing the
rankest of all enormities? How should I, in my insignificance, dare to
assail the barriers and defences which civilization has established,
and guards amongst its best prerogatives? Was this old buffoon, was this
piece of tawdry fringe and spangles, a fitting company for that fair and
gentle girl? How artistically false, too, was the position I had taken!
Interweaving into my ideal life these coarse realities, was the same
sort of outrage as shocks one in some of the Venetian churches, where
a lovely Madonna, the work of a great hand, may be seen bedizened
and disfigured with precious stones over her drapery. In this was I
violating the whole poetry of my existence. These figures were as
much out of keeping as would be a couple of Ostade's Boors in a grand
Scripture piece by Domenichino.
“And yet, Potts,” thought I, “they were _really_ living creatures. They
had hearts for Joy and sorrow and hope, and the rest of it. They
were pilgrims travelling the selfsame road as you were. They were not
illusions, but flesh and blood folk, that would shiver when cold, and
die of hunger if starved. Were they not, then, as such, of more account
than all your mere imaginings? Would not the least of their daily
miseries outweigh a whole bushel of fancied sorrow? And is it not a poor
selfishness on your part, when you deem some airy conception of your
brain of more account than that poor old man and that dark-eyed girl?
Last of all, are they hot, in all their ragged finery, more 'really true
men' than you yourself, Potts, living in a maze of delusions? They only
act when the sawdust is raked and the lamps are lighted; but you are _en
scène_ from dawn to dark, and only lay down one motley to don another.
Is not this wretched? Is it not ignoble? In all these changes of
character, how much of the real man will be left behind? Will there be
one morsel of honest flesh, when all the lacquer of paint is washed off?
And was it--oh, was it for this you first adventured out on the wide
ocean of life?”
I passed the evening and a great part of the night in such
self-accusings, and then I addressed myself to action. I bethought me of
my future, and with whom and where and how it might be passed. The bag
of money intrusted to me by the Minister to pay the charges of the road
was banging where I had placed it,--on the curtain-holder. I opened it,
and found a hundred and forty gold Napoleons, and some ten or twelve
pounds in silver. I next set to count over my own especial hoard; it was
a fraction under a thousand francs! Forty pounds was truly a very small
sum wherewith to confront a world to which I brought not any art, or
trade, or means of livelihood; I say forty, because I had not the shadow
of a pretext for touching the other sum, and I resolved at once to
transmit it to the owner. Now, what could be done with so humble a
capital? I had heard of a great general who once pawned a valuable
sword--a sword of honor it was--wherewith to buy a horse, and, so
mounted, he went forth over the Alps, and conquered a kingdom. The story
had no moral for me, for somehow I did not feel as though I were the
stuff that conquers kingdoms, and yet there must surely be a vast
number of men in life with about the same sort of faculties, merits, and
demerits as I have. There must be a numerous Potts family in every land,
well-meaning, right-intentioned, worthless creatures, who, out of a
supposed willingness to do anything, always end in doing nothing. Such
people, it must be inferred, live upon what are called their wits, or,
in other words, trade upon the daily accidents of life, and the use to
which they can turn the traits of those they meet with.
I was resolved not to descend to this; no, I bad deter-. mined to say
adieu to all masquerading, and be simply Potts, the druggist's son, one
who had once dreamed of great ambitions, but had taken the wrong road
to them. I would from this hour be an honest, truth-speaking,
simple-hearted creature. What the world might henceforth accord me of
its sympathy should be tendered on honest grounds; nay, more, in
the spirit of those devotees who inspire themselves with piety by
privations, I resolved on a course of self-mortification, I would
not rest till I had made my former self expiate all the vainglorious
wantonness of the past, and * pay in severe penance for every
transgression I had committed. I began boldly with my reformation. I sat
down and wrote thus:--
To Mr. Dycer, Stephen's-Green, Dublin.
“The gentleman who took away a dun pony from your livery stables in the
month of May last, and who, from certain circumstances, has not been
able to restore the animal, sends herewith twenty pounds as his probable
value. If Mr. D. conscientiously considers the sum insufficient, the
sender will at some future time, he hopes, make good the difference.”
Doubtless my esteemed reader will say at this place, “The fellow could
n't do less; he need not vaunt himself on a commonplace act of honesty,
which, after all, might have been suggested by certain fears of
future consequences. His indiscretion amounted to horse-stealing, and
horsestealing is a felony.”
All true, every word of it, most upright of Judges: I was simply doing
what I ought, or rather what I ought long since to have done. But now,
let me ask, is this, after all, the invariable course in life, and is
there no merit in doing what one ought when every temptation points to
the other direction? and lastly, is it nothing to do what a man ought,
when the doing costs exactly the half of all he has in the world?
Now, if I were, instead of being Potts, a certain great writer that we
all know and delight in, I would improve the occasion here by asking my
reader does he always himself do the right thing? I would say to him,
perhaps with all haste to anticipate his answer, “Of course you do. You
never pinch your children, or kick your wife out of bed; you are a model
father and a churchwarden; but I am only a poor apothecary's son brought
up in precepts of thrift and the Dublin Pharmacopoeia;” and I own to
you, when I placed the half of my twenty-pound crisp clean bank note
inside of that letter, I felt I was figuratively cutting myself in two.
But I did it “like a man,” if that be a proper phrase for an act which
I thought godlike. And oh, take my word for it, when a sacrifice has
n't cost you a coach-load of regrets and a shopful of hesitations about
making it, it is of little worth. There's a wide difference between the
gift of a sheep from an Australian farmer, or the present of a child's
pet lamb, even though the sheep be twice the size of the lamb.
I gave myself no small praise for what I had done, much figurative
patting on the back, and a vast deal of that very ambiguous consolation
which beggars in Catholic countries bestow in change for alms, by
assurance that it will be remembered to you in purgatory.
“Well,” thought I, “the occasion is n't very far off, for my purgatory
begins to-morrow.”