“Well, what next? Have you bethought you of anything more to charge me
with?” cried a large full man, whose angry look and manner showed how he
resented these cheatings.
I staggered back sick and faint, for the individual before me was
Crofton, my kind host of long ago in Ireland, and from whose hospitable
roof I had taken such an unceremonious departure.
“Who are you?” cried he, again. “I had hoped to have paid everything and
everybody. Who are you?”
Wishing to retire unrecognized, I stammered out something very
unintelligibly indeed about my gratitude, and my hope for a pleasant
journey to him, retreating all the while towards the door.
“It's all very well to wish the traveller a pleasant journey,” said
he, “but you innkeepers ought to bear in mind that no man's journey is
rendered more agreeable by roguery. This house is somewhat dearer than
the 'Clarendon' in London, or the 'Hôtel du Rhin' at Paris. Now, there
might be, perhaps, some pretext to make a man pay smartly who travels
post, and has two or three servants with him, but what excuse can you
make for charging some poor devil of a foot traveller, taking his humble
meal in the common room, and, naturally enough, of the commonest fare,
for making him pay eight florins--eight florins and some kreutzers--for
his dinner? Why, our dinner here for two people was handsomely paid at
six florins a head, and yet you bring in a bill of eight florins against
that poor wretch.”
I saw now that, what between the blinding effects of his indignation,
and certain changes which time and the road had worked in my appearance,
it was more than probable I should escape undetected, and so I affected
to busy myself with some articles of his luggage that lay scattered
about the room until I could manage to slip away.
“Touch nothing, my good fellow!” cried he, angrily; “send my own people
here for these things. Let my courier come here--or my valet!”
This was too good an opportunity to be thrown away, and I made at once
for the door; but at the same instant it was opened, and Mary Crofton
stood before me. One glance showed me that I was discovered; and there
I stood, speechless with shame and confusion. Rallying, however, after a
moment, I whispered, “Don't betray me,” and tried to pass out Instead of
minding my entreaty, she set her back to the door, and laughingly cried
out to her brother,--
“Don't you know whom we have got here?”
“What do you mean?” exclaimed he.
“Cannot you recognize an old friend, notwithstanding all his efforts to
cut us?”
“Why--what--surely it can't be--it's not possible--eh?” And by this time
he had wheeled me round to the strong light of the window, and then,
with a loud burst, he cried out, “Potts, by all that's ragged! Potts
himself! Why, old fellow, what could you mean by wanting to escape us?”
and he wrung my hand with a cordial shake that at once brought the blood
back to my heart, while his sister completed my happiness by saying,--
“If you only knew all the schemes we have planned to catch you, you
would certainly not have tried to avoid us.”
I made an effort to say something,--anything, in short,--but not a word
would come. If I was overjoyed at the warmth of their greeting, I was
no less overwhelmed with shame; and there I stood, looking very pitiably
from one to the other, and almost wishing that I might faint outright
and so finish my misery.
With a woman's fine tact, Mary Crofton seemed to read the meaning of my
suffering, and, whispering one word in her brother's ear, she slipped
away and left us alone together.
“Come,” said he, good-naturedly, as he drew his arm inside of mine, and
led me up and down the room, “tell me all about it. How have you come
here? What are you doing?”
I have not the faintest recollection of what I said. I know that I
endeavored to take up my story from the day I had last seen him, but
it must have proved a very strange and bungling narrative, from the
questions which he was forced occasionally to put, in order to follow me
out.
“Well,” said he, at last, “I will own to you that, after your abrupt
departure, I was sorely puzzled what to make of you, and I might have
remained longer in the same state of doubt, when a chance visit that I
made to Dublin led me to Dycer's, and there, by a mere accident, I heard
of you,--heard who you were, and where your father lived. I went at once
and called upon him, my object being to learn if he had any tidings
of you, and where you then were. I found him no better informed than
myself. He showed me a few lines you had written on the morning you
had left home, stating that you would probably be absent some days, and
might be even weeks, but that since that date nothing had been heard
of you. He seemed vexed and displeased, but not uneasy or apprehensive
about your absence, and the same tone I observed in your college tutor,
Dr. Tobin. He said, 'Potts will come back, sir, one of these days, and
not a whit wiser than he went. His self-esteem is to his capacity in the
reduplicate ratio of the inverse proportion of his ability, and he will
be always a fool.' I wrote to various friends of ours travelling about
the world, but none had met with you; and at last, when about to
come abroad myself, I called again on your father, and found him just
re-married.”
“Re-married!”
“Yes! he was lonely, he said, and wanted companionship, and so on;
and all I could obtain from him was a note for a hundred pounds, and
a promise that, if you came back within the year, you should share the
business of his shop with him.”
“Never! never!” said I. “Potts maybe the fool they deem him, but there
are instincts and promptings in his secret heart that they know nothing
of. I will never go back. Go on.”
“I now come to my own story. I left Ireland a day or two after and came
to England, where business detained me some weeks. My uncle had died and
left me his heir,--not, indeed, so rich as I had expected, but very well
off for a man who had passed his life on very moderate means. There were
a few legacies to be paid, and one which he especially intrusted to
me by a secret paper, in the hope that, by delicate and judicious
management, I might be able to persuade the person in whose interest
it was bequeathed to accept. It was, indeed, a task of no common
difficulty, the legatee being the widow of a man who had, by my uncle's
cruelty, been driven to destroy himself. It is a long story, which I
cannot now enter upon; enough that I say it had been a trial of strength
between two very vindictive unyielding men which should crush the
other, and my uncle, being the richer,--and not from any other
reason,--conquered.
“The victory was a very barren one. It imbittered every hour of his
life after, and the only reparation in his power, he attempted on his
death-bed, which was to settle an annuity on the family of the man
he had ruined. I found out at once where they lived, and set about
effecting this delicate charge. I will not linger over my failure; but
it was complete. The family was in actual distress, but nothing would
induce them to listen to the project of assistance; and, in fact, their
indignation compelled me to retire from the attempt in despair. My
sister did her utmost in the cause, but equally in vain, and we prepared
to leave the place, much depressed and cast down by our failure. It
was on the last evening of our stay at the inn of the little village,
a townsman of the place, whom I had employed to aid my attempt by his
personal influence with the family, asked to see me and speak with me in
private.
“He appeared to labor under considerable agitation, and opened
our interview by bespeaking my secrecy as to what he was about to
communicate. It was to this purport: A friend of his own, engaged in the
Baltic trade, had just declared to him that he had seen W., the person
I allude to, alive and well, walking on the quay at Riga, that he traced
him to his lodging; but, on inquiring for him the next day, he was not
to be found, and it was then ascertained that he had left the city. W.
was, it would seem, a man easily recognized, and the other declared that
there could not be the slightest doubt of his identity. The question was
a grave one how to act, since the assurance company with which his life
was insured were actually engaged in discussing the propriety of some
compromise by paying to the family a moiety of the policy, and a variety
of points arose out of this contingency; for while it would have been
a great cruelty to have conveyed hopes to the family that might by
possibility not be realized, yet, on the other hand, to have induced
them to adopt a course on the hypothesis of his death when they believed
him still living, was almost as bad.
“I thought for a long while over the matter, and with my sister's
counsel to aid me, I determined that we should come abroad and seek out
this man, trusting that, if we found him, we could induce him to accept
of the legacy which his family rejected. We obtained every clew we could
think of to his detection. A perfect description of him, in voice, look,
and manner; a copy of his portrait, and a specimen of his handwriting;
and then we bethought ourselves of interesting you in the search. You
were rambling about the world in that idle and desultory way in which
any sort of a pursuit might be a boon,--as often in the by-paths as
on the high-roads; you might chance to hit off this discovery in some
remote spot, or, at all events, find some clew to it. In a word, we grew
to believe that, with you to aid us, we should get to the bottom of this
mystery; and now that by a lucky chance we have met you, our hopes are
all the stronger.”
“You 'll think it strange,” said I, “but I already know something of
this story; the man you allude to was Sir Samuel Whalley.”
“How on earth have you guessed that?”
“I came by the knowledge on a railroad journey, where my
fellow-passengers talked over the event, and I subsequently travelled
with Sir Samuel's daughter, who came abroad to fill the station of a
companion to an elderly lady. She called herself Miss Herbert.”
“Exactly! The widow resumed her family name after W.'s suicide,--if it
were a suicide.”
“How singular to think that you should have chanced upon this link of
the chain! And do you know her?”
“Intimately; we were fellow-travellers for some days.”
“And where is she now?”
“She is, at this moment, at a villa on the Lake of Como, living with a
Mrs. Keats, the sister of her Majesty's Envoy at Kalbbratonstadt.”
“You are marvellously accurate in this narrative, Potts,” said he,
laughing; “the impression made on you by this young lady can scarcely
have been a transient one.”
I suppose I grew very red,--I felt that I was much confused by this
remark,--and I turned away to conceal my emotion. Crofton was too
delicate to take any advantage of my distress, and merely added,--
“From having known her, you will naturally devote yourself with more
ardor to serve her. May we then count upon your assistance in our
project?”
“That you may,” said I. “From this hour I devote myself to it.”
Crofton at once proposed that I should order my luggage to be placed on
his carriage, and start off with them; but I firmly opposed this plan.
First of all, I had no luggage, and had no fancy to confess as
much; secondly, I resolved to give at least one day for Vaterchen's
arrival,--I'd have given a month rather than come down to the dreary
thought of his being a knave, and Tintefleck a cheat! In fact, I
felt that if I were to begin any new project in life with so slack an
experience, that every step I took would be marked with distrust, and
tarnished with suspicion. I therefore pretended to Crofton that I had
given rendezvous to a friend at Lindau, and could not leave without
waiting for him. I am not very sure that he believed me, but he was most
careful in not dropping a word that might show incredulity; and once
more we addressed ourselves to the grand project before us.
“Come in, Mary!” cried he, suddenly rising from his chair, and going to
meet her. “Come in, and help us by your good counsel.”
It was not possible to receive me with more kindness than she showed.
Had I been some old friend who came to meet them there by appointment,
her manner could not have been more courteous nor more easy; and when
she learned from her brother how warmly I had associated myself in this
plan, she gave me one of her pleasantest smiles, and said,--
“I was not mistaken in you.”
With a great map of Europe before us on the table, we proceeded to plan
a future line of operations. We agreed to take certain places, each of
us, and to meet at certain others, to compare notes and report progress.
We scarcely permitted ourselves to feel any great confidence of success,
but we all concurred in the notion that some lucky hazard might do for
us more than all our best-devised schemes could accomplish; and, at
last, it was settled that, while they took Southern Germany and the
Tyrol, I should ramble about through Savoy and Upper Italy, and our
meeting-place be in Italy. The great railway centres, where Englishmen
of every class and gradation were much employed, offered the best
prospect of meeting with the object of our search, and these were
precisely the sort of places such a man would be certain to resort to.
Our discussion lasted so long that the Croftons put off their journey
till the following day, and we dined all together very happily, never
wearied of talking over the plan before us, and each speculating as
to what share of acute-ness he could contribute to the common stock
of investigation. It was when Crofton left the room to search for the
portrait of Whalley, that Mary sat down at my side, and said,--
“I have been thinking for some time over a project in which you can aid
me greatly. My brother tells me that you are known to Miss Herbert.
Now I want to write to her; I want to tell her that there is one who,
belonging to a family from which hers has suffered heavily, desires to
expiate so far, maybe, the great wrong, and, if she will permit it,
to be her friend. While I can in a letter explain what I feel on this
score, I am well aware how much aid it would afford me to have the
personal corroboration of one who could say, 'She who writes this is not
altogether unworthy of your affection; do not reject the offer she makes
you, or, at least, reflect and think oyer it before you refuse it' Will
you help me so far?”
My heart bounded with delight as I first listened to her plan; it was
only a moment before that I remembered how difficult, if not impossible,
it would be for me to approach Miss Herbert once more. How or in what
character could I seek her? To appear before her in any feigned part
would be, under the circumstances, ignoble and unworthy, and yet was
I, out of any merely personal consideration, any regard for the poor
creature Potts, to forego the interests, mayhap the whole happiness, of
one so immeasurably better and worthier? Would not any amount of shame
and exposure to myself be a cheap price for even a small quantity
of benefit bestowed on _her!_ What signified it that I was poor and
ragged--unknown, unrecognized--if _she_ were to be the gainer? Would
not, in fact, the very sacrifice of self in the affair be ennobling and
elevating to me, and would I not stand better in my own esteem for this
one honest act, than I had ever done after any mock success or imaginary
victory?
“I think I can guess why you hesitate,” cried she; “you fear that I will
say something indiscreet,--something that would compromise you with Miss
Herbert,--but you need not dread that; and, at all events, you shall
read my letter.”
“Far from it,” said I; “my hesitation had a very different source. I
was solely thinking whether, if you were aware of how I stood in my
relations to Miss Herbert, you would have selected me as your advocate;
and though it may pain me to make a full confession, you shall hear
everything.”
With this I told her all,--all, from my first hour of meeting her at the
railway station, to my last parting with her at Schaffhausen. I tried to
make my narrative as grave and commonplace as might be, but, do what I
would, the figure in which I was forced to present myself, overcame all
her attempts at seriousness, and she laughed immoderately. If it had not
been for this burst of merriment on her part, it is more than probable
I might have brought down my history to the very moment of telling, and
narrated every detail of my journey with Vaterchen and Tintefieck. I
was, however, warned by these circumstances, and concluded in time to
save myself from this new ridicule.
“From all that you have told me here,” said she, “I only see one
thing,--which is, that you are deeply in love with this young lady.”
“No,” said I; “I was so once, I am not so any longer. My passion has
fallen into the chronic stage, and I feel myself her friend,--only her
friend.”
“Well, for the purpose I have in mind, this is all the better I
want you, as I said, to place my letter in her hands, and, so far as
possible, enforce its arguments,--that is, try and persuade her that to
reject our offers on her behalf is to throw upon us a share of the great
wrong our uncle worked, and make us, as it were, participators in the
evil he did them. As for myself,” said she, boldly, “all the happiness
that I might have derived from ample means is dashed with remembering
what misery it has been attended with to that poor family. If you urge
that one theme forcibly, you can scarcely fail with her.”
“And what are your intentions with regard to her?” asked I.
“They will take any shape she pleases. My brother would either enable
her to return home, and, by persuading her mother to accept an annuity,
live happily under her own roof; or she might, if the spirit of
independence fires her,--she might yet use her influence over her mother
and sister to regard our proposals more favorably; or she might come
and live with us, and this I would prefer to all; but you must read my
letter, and more than once too. You must possess yourself of all its
details, and, if there be anything to which you object, there will be
time enough still to change it.”
“Here he is,--here is the portrait of our lost sheep,” said Crofton,
now entering with a miniature in his hand. It represented a bluff, bold,
almost insolently bold man in full civic robes, the face not improbably
catching an additional expression of vulgar pride from the fact that the
likeness was taken in that culminating hour of greatness when he first
took the chair as chief magistrate of his town.
“Not an over-pleasant sort of fellow to deal with, I should say,”
remarked Crofton. “There are some stern lines here about the corners
of the eyes, and certain very suspicious-looking indentations next the
mouth.”
“His eye has no forgiveness in it,” said his sister.
“Well, one thing is clear enough, he ought to be easily recognized; that
broad forehead, and those wide-spread nostrils and deeply divided chin,
are very striking marks to guide one. I cannot give you this,” said
Crofton to me, “but I 'll take care to send you an accurate copy of it
at the first favorable moment; meanwhile, make yourself master of its
details, and try if you cannot carry the resemblance in your memory.”
“Disabuse yourself, too,” said she, laughing, “of all this accessorial
grandeur, and bear in mind that you 'll not find him dressed in ermine,
or surrounded with a collar and badge. Not very like his daughter, I 'm
sure,” whispered she in my ear, as I continued to gaze steadfastly at
the portrait. “Can you trace any likeness?”
“Not the very faintest; she is beautiful,” said I, “and her whole
expression is gentleness and delicacy.”
“Well, certainly,” said Crofton, shutting up the miniature, “these are
not the distinguishing traits of our friend here, whom I should call a
hard-natured, stern, obstinate fellow, with great self-reliance, and no
great trust of others.”
“I was just thinking,” said I, “that were I to come up with such a man
as this, what chance would my poor, frail, yielding temperament have, in
influencing the rugged granite of his nature? He 'd terrify me at once.”
“Not when your object was a good and generous one,” said Miss Crofton.
“You might well enough be afraid to confront such a man as this if your
aim was to overreach and deceive him; but bear in mind the fable of the
man who had the courage to take the thorn out of the lion's paw. The
operation, we are told, was a painful one, and there might have been an
instant in which the patient felt disposed to eat his doctor; but, with
all these perils, strong in a good purpose, the surgeon persevered, and
by his skill and his courage made the king of the beasts his fast friend
for life. The lesson is worth remembering.”
I was still pondering over this apophthegm, when Crofton aroused me
by pushing across the table a great heap of gold. “This is all yours,
Potts,” said he; “and remember that as you are now my agent, travelling
for the house of Crofton and Co., that you journey at my cost.”
Of course I would not listen to this proposal, and, although urged by
Miss Crofton with all a woman's tact and delicacy, I persisted so firmly
in my refusal, that they were obliged to yield. I now had a hundred
pounds all my own; and though the sum be not a very splendid one,
I remember some French writer--I 'm not sure it is not Jules
Janin--saying, “Any man who can put his hand into his pocket and find
five Napoleons there, is rich;” and he certainly supports his theory
with considerable sophistry and cleverness, mainly depending on the
assumption that any of the reasonable daily necessities of life, even in
a luxurious point of view, are attainable with such means. Now, although
a hundred pounds would not very long supply resources for such a life,
yet, as I am not a Frenchman, nor living in Paris, still less had I
habits or tastes of a costly kind, I might very well eke out three
months pleasantly on this sum, and in these three months what might not
happen? In a “hundred days” the great Napoleon crushed the whole might
of the Austrian empire, and secured an emperor's daughter for his bride;
and in another “hundred days” he made the tour of France, from Cannes to
Rochefort, and lost an empire by the way! Wonderful things might then be
compassed within three months.
“What are you saying about three months, Potts?” asked Crofton, for
unwittingly I had uttered these words aloud.
“I was observing,” said I, “that in three months from this day, we
should arrange to meet somewhere. Where shall we say?”
“Geneva is very central; shall we name Geneva?”
“Oh, on no account Let our rendezvous be in Italy Let us say Rome.”
“Rome be it, then,” cried Crofton. “Now for another point: let us have a
wager as to who first discovers the object of our search. I 'll bet you
twenty Napoleons, Potts, to ten,--for as we are two to one, so should
the wager be.”
“I take you,” cried I, entering into his humor, “and I feel as certain
of success as if I had your money in my hands.”
“Will you have another wager with _me?_” whispered Mary Crofton, as she
came behind my chair. “It is, that you 'll not persuade Miss Herbert to
wear this ring for _my_ sake.”
“I 'll bet my life on it,” said I, taking the opal ring she drew from
her finger, as she spoke; “I'm in that mood of confidence now, I feel
there is nothing I could not promise.”
“If so, then, Potts, let me have the benefit of this fortunate interval,
and ask you to promise me one thing, which is, not to change your mind
more than twice a day; don't be angry with me, but hear me out. You are
a good-hearted fellow, and have excellent intentions; I don't think I
know one less really selfish, but, at the same time, you are so
fickle of purpose, so undecided in action, that I 'd not be the least
astonished to hear, when we asked for you to-morrow at breakfast
time, that you had started for a tour in Norway, or on a voyage to the
Southern Pacific.”
“And is this your judgment of me also, Miss Crofton?” said I, rising
from my seat.
“Oh, no, Mr. Potts. I would only suspect you of going off into the
Tyrol, or the Styrian Alps, and forgetting all about us, amidst the
glaciers and the cataracts.”
“I wish you a good-night, and a better opinion of your humble servant,”
said I, bowing.
“Don't go, Potts--wait a minute--come back. I have something to tell
you.”
I closed the door behind me, and hastened off, not, however, perfectly
clear whether I was the injured man, or one who had just achieved a
great outrage.