From time to time, a couple of grave, judicial-looking men would arrive
and pass the forenoon at the Ambras Schloss, in reading out certain
documents to me. I never paid much attention to them, but my ear at
moments would catch the strangest possible allegations as to my exalted
political opinions, the dangerous associates I was bound up with, and
the secret societies I belonged to. I heard once, too, and by mere
accident, how at Steuben I had asked the jailer to procure me a horse,
and thrown gold in handfuls from the windows of my prison, to bribe the
townsfolk to my rescue, and I laughed to myself to think what a deal of
pleading and proof it would take to rebut all these allegations, and how
little likely it was I would ever engage in such a conflict.
By long dwelling on the thought of my noble devotion, and how it would
read when I was dead and gone, I had extinguished within my heart all
desire for other distinction, speculating only on what strange and
ingenious theories men would spin for the secret clew to my motives.
“True,” they would say, “Potts never cared for Harpar. He was not a man
to whom Potts would have attached himself under any circumstances;
they were, as individuals, totally unlike and unsympathetic. How, then,
explain this extraordinary act of self-sacrifice? Was he prompted by
the hope that the iniquities of the Austrian police system would receive
their death-blow from his story, and that the mound that covered him in
the churchyard would be the altar of Liberty to thousands? Or was Potts
one of those enthusiastic creatures only too eager to carry the load of
some other pilgrim in life?”
While I used thus to reason and speculate, I little knew that I had
become a sort of European notoriety. Some Englishwoman, however, some
vagrant tourist, had put me in her book as the half-witted creature who
showed the coins and curiosities at Ambras, and mentioned how, for I
know not how many years, I was never heard to utter a syllable except
on questions of old armor and antiquities. In consequence I was always
asked for by my travelling countrymen, and my peculiarities treated with
all that playful good taste for which tourists are famous. I remember
one day having refused to perform the showman to a British family. I had
a headache, or was sulky, or a fit of rebellion had got hold of me,
but I sauntered out into the grounds and would not see them. In my walk
through a close alley of laurels, I chanced to overhear the stranger
conversing with Hirsch, and making myself the subject of his inquiries;
and, as I listened, I heard Hirsch say that one entire room of the
château was devoted to the papers and documents in my case, and that
probably it would occupy a quick reader about twelve months to peruse
them. He added, that as I made no application for a trial myself, nor
any of my friends showed an inclination to bestir themselves about me,
the Government would very probably leave me to live and die where I was.
Thereupon the Briton broke out into a worthy fit of indignant eloquence.
He denounced the Hapsburgs and praised the Habeas Corpus; he raved of
the power of England, our press, our public opinion, our new frigates.
He said he would make Europe ring with the case. It was as bad, it
was worse than Caspar Hauser's, for he was an idiot outright, and _I_
appeared to have the enjoyment of certain faculties. He said it should
appear in the “Times,” and be mentioned in the House; and as I listened,
the strangest glow ran through me, a mild and pleasurable enthusiasm, to
think that all the might, majesty, and power of Great Britain was about
to interest itself in behalf of Potts!
The Briton kept his word; the time, too, favored him. It was a moment
when wandering Englishmen were exhuming grievances throughout every
land of Europe; and while one had discovered some case of religious
intolerance in Norway, another beat him out of the field with the
coldblooded atrocities of Naples. My Englishman chanced to be an M.P.,
and therefore he asked, “in his place,” if the Foreign Secretary had
any information to afford the House with respect to the case of the man
called Harper, or Harpar, he was not certain which, and who had
been confined for upwards of ten months in a dungeon in Austria, on
allegations of which the accused knew nothing whatever, and attested by
witnesses with whom he had never been confronted.
In the absence of his chief, the Under-Secretary rose to assure
the right honorable gentleman that the case was one which had for a
considerable time engaged the attention of the department he belonged
to, and that the most unremitting exertions of her Majesty's envoy at
Vienna were now being devoted to obtain the fullest information as to
the charges imputed to Harpar, and he hoped in a few days to be able to
lay the result of his inquiry on the table of the House.
It was in about a week after this that Hirsch came to tell me that a
member of her Majesty's legation at Vienna had arrived to investigate
my case, and interrogate me in person. I am half ashamed to say how vain
gloriously I thought of the importance thus lent me. I felt, somehow, as
though the nation missed me. Waiting patiently, as it might be, for
my return, and yet no tidings coming, they said, “What has become of
Potts?” It was clearly a case upon which they would not admit of any
mystification or deceit. “No secret tribunals, no hole-and-corner
commitments with us! Where is he? Produce him. Say, with what is he
charged?” I was going to be the man of the day. I knew it, I felt it;
I saw a great tableau of my life unrolling itself before me. Potts, the
young enthusiast after virtue,--hopeful, affectionate, confiding, giving
his young heart to that fair-haired girl as freely as he would have
bestowed a moss-rose; and she, making light of the gift, and with a
woman's coquetry, torturing him by a jealous levity till he resented the
wrong, and tore himself away. And then, Catinka,--how I tried the gold
of my nature in that crucible, and would not fall in love with her
before I had made her worthy of my love; and when I had failed in that,
how I had turned from love to friendship, and offered myself the victim
for a man I never cared about. No matter; the world will know me
at last. Men will recognize the grand stuff that I am made of. If
commentators spend years in exploring the recondite passages of great
writers, and making out beauties where there were only obscurities, why
should not all the dark parts of my nature come out as favorably,
and some flattering interpreter say, “Potts was for a long
time misconceived; few men were more wrongfully judged by their
contemporaries. It was to a mere accident, after all, we owe it that we
are now enabled to render him the justice so long denied him. His was
one of those remarkable natures in which it is difficult to say whether
humility or self-confidence predominated”?
Then I thought of the national excitement to discover the missing Potts;
just as if I had been a lost Arctic voyager. Expeditions sent out to
track me; all the thousand speculations as to whether I had gone this
way or that; where and from whom the latest tidings of me could be
traced; the heroic offers of new discoverers to seek me living, or,
sad alternative, restore to the country that mourned me the _reliquiæ
Pottsi_, I always grew tender in my moods of self-compassion, and I felt
my eyes swimming now in pity for my fate; and let me add in this place
my protest against the vulgar error which stigmatizes as selfishness
the mere fact of a man's susceptibility. How, I would simply ask, can
he feel for others who has no sense of sympathy with his own suffering
nature? If the well of human kindness be dried up within him, how can he
give to the parched throats the refreshing waters of compassion?
Deal with the fact how you may, I was very sorry for myself, and
seriously doubted if as sincere a mourner would bewail me when I was
gone.
If a little time had been given me, I would have endeavored to get up
my snug little chamber somewhat more like a prison cell; I would have
substituted some straw for my comfortable bed, and gracefully draped a
few chains upon the walls and some stray torture implements out of the
Armory; but the envoy came like a “thief in the night,” and was already
on the stairs when he was announced.
“Oh! this is his den, is it?” cried he from without, as he slowly
ascended the stairs. “Egad! he hasn't much to complain of in the matter
of a lodging. I only wish our fellows were as well off at Vienna.” And
with these words there entered into my room a tall young fellow, with a
light brown moustache, dressed in a loose travelling suit, and with the
lounging air of a man sauntering into a _café_. He did not remove
his hat as he came in, or take the cigar from his mouth; the latter
circumstance imparting a certain confusion to his speech that made him
occasionally scarce intelligible. Only deigning to bestow a passing look
on me, he moved towards the window, and looked out on the grand panorama
of the Tyrol Alps, as they enclose the valley of Innspruck.
“Well,” said he to himself, “all this ain't so bad for a dungeon.”
The tone startled me. I looked again at him, I rallied myself to an
effort of memory, and at once recalled the young fellow I had met on
the South-Western line and from whom I had accidentally carried away the
despatch-bag. To my beard, and my long imprisonment, I trusted for not
being recognized, and I sat patiently awaiting my examination.
“An Englishman, I suppose?” asked he, turning hastily round. “And of
English parents?”
“Yes,” was my reply, for I determined on brevity wherever possible.
“What brought you into this scrape?--I mean, why did you come here at
all?”
“I was travelling.”
“Travelling? Stuff and nonsense! Why should fellows like you travel?
What's your rank in life?”
“A gentleman.”
“Ah! but whose gentleman, my worthy friend? Ain't you a flunkey? There,
it's out! I say, have you got a match to light my cigar? Thanks,--all
right. Look here, now,--don't let us be beating about the bush all the
day,--I believe this government is just as sick of you as you are of
them. You 've been here two months, ain't it so?”
“Ten months and upwards.”
“Well, ten months. And you want to get away?”
I made no answer; indeed, his free-and-easy manner so disconcerted me
that I could not speak, and he went on,--
“I suspect they have n't got much against you, or that they don't care
about it; and, besides, they are civil to us just now. At all events, it
can be done,--you understand?--it can be done.”
“Indeed,” said I, half superciliously.
“Yes,” resumed he, “I think so; not but you'd have managed better in
leaving the thing to _us_, That stupid notion you all have of writing
letters to newspapers and getting some troublesome fellow to ask
questions in the House, that's what spoils everything! How can _we_
negotiate when the whole story is in the 'Times' or the 'Daily News'?”
“I opine, sir, that you are ascribing to me an activity and energy I
have no claim to.”
“Well, if you did n't write those letters, somebody else did. I don't
care a rush for the difference. You see, here's how the matter stands.
This Mr. Brigges, or Rigges, has gone off, and does n't care to
prosecute, and all his allegations against you fall to the ground.
Well, these people fancy they could carry on the thing themselves, you
understand; we think not. They say they have got a strong case; perhaps
they have; but we ask, 'What's the use of it? Sending the poor beggar to
Spielberg won't save you, will it?' And so we put it to them this way:
'Draw stakes, let him off, and both can cry quits.' There, give me
another light Isn't that the common-sense view of it?”
“I scarcely dare to say that I understand you aright.”
“Oh, I can guess why. I have had dealings with fellows of your sort
before. You don't fancy my not alluding to compensation, eh? You want to
hear about the money part of the matter?”
And he laughed aloud; but whether at _my_ mercenary spirit or _his own_
shrewdness in detecting it, I do not really know.
“Well, I'm afraid,” continued he, “you'll be disappointed there. These
Austrians are hard up; besides, they never do pay. It's against their
system, and so we never ask them.”
“Would it be too much, sir, to ask why I have been imprisoned?”
“Perhaps not; but a great deal too much for me to tell you. The
confounded papers would fill a cart, and that's the reason I say, cut
your stick, my man, and get away.” Again he turned to the window, and,
looking out, asked, “Any shooting about here? There ought to be cocks
in that wood yonder?” and without caring for reply, went on, “After
all, you know what bosh it is to talk about chains and dungeons, and
bread-and-water, and the rest of it. You 've been living in clover here.
That old fellow below tells me that you dine with him every day; that
you might have gone into Innspruck, to the theatre if you liked it--I
'll swear there are snipes in that low land next the river.--Think it
over, Rigges, think it over.”
“I am not Rigges.”
“Oh, I forgot! you 're the other fellow. Well, think it over, Harpar.”
“My name is not Harpar, sir.”
“What do I care for a stray vowel or two? Maybe you call yourself
Harpar, or Harper? It's all the same to _us_.”
“It is not the question of a vowel or two, sir; and I desire you to
remark it is the graver one of a mistaken identity!” I said this with a
high-sounding importance that I thought must astound him; but his light
and frivolous nature was impervious to rebuke.
“_We_ have nothing to say to that,” replied he, carelessly. “You may be
Noakes or Styles. I believe they are the names of any fellows who are
supposed by courtesy to have no name at all, and it's all alike to _us_.
What I have to observe to you is this: nobody cares very much whether
you are detained here or not; nobody wants to detain you. Just reflect,
therefore, if it's not the best thing you can do to slope off, and make
no more fuss about it?”
“Once for all, sir,” said I, still more impressively, “I am not the
person against whom this charge is made. The authorities have all along
mistaken me for another.”
“Well, what if they have? Does it signify one kreutzer? We have had
trouble enough about the matter already, and do not embroil us any
further.”
“May I ask, sir, just for information, who are the '_we_' you have so
frequently alluded to?”
Had I asked him in what division of the globe he understood us then to
be conversing, he would not have regarded me with a look of more blank
astonishment.
“Who are we?” repeated he. “Did you ask who are we?”
“Yes, sir, that was what I made bold to ask.”
“Cool, certainly; what might be called uncommon cool. To what line of
life were you brought up to, my worthy gent? I have rather a curiosity
about your antecedents.”
“That same curiosity cost you a trifle once before,” said I, no
longer able to control myself, and dying to repay his impertinence. “I
remember, once upon a time, meeting you on a railroad, and you were so
eager to exhibit the skill with which you could read a man's calling,
that you bet me a sovereign you would guess mine. You did so, and lost.”
“You can't be--no, it's impossible. Are you really the goggle-eyed
fellow that walked off with the bag for Kalbbratonstadt?”
“I did, by mistake, carry away a bag on that occasion, and so
punctiliously did I repay my error that I travelled the whole journey to
convey those despatches to their destination.”
“I know all about it,” said he, in a frank, gay manner. “Doubleton told
me the whole story. You dined with him and pretended you were I don't
remember whom, and then you took old Mamma Keats off to Como and made
her believe you were Louis Philippe, and you made fierce love to your
pretty companion, who was fool enough to like you. By Jove! what a rig
you must have run! We have all laughed over it a score of times.”
“If I knew who 'we' were, I am certain I should feel flattered by
any amusement I afforded them, notwithstanding how much more they are
indebted to fiction than fact regarding me. I never assumed to be Louis
Philippe, nor affected to be any person of distinction. A flighty old
lady was foolish enough to imagine me a prince of the Orleans family--”
“You,--a prince! Oh, this is too absurd!”
“I confess, sir, I cannot see the matter in this light. I presume the
mistake to be one by no means difficult to have occurred. Mrs. Keats has
seen a deal of life and the world--”
“Not so much as you fancy,” broke he in. “She was a long time in
that private asylum up at Brompton, and then down in Staffordshire;
altogether, she must have passed five-and-twenty or thirty years in a
rather restricted circle.”
“Mad! Was she mad?”
“Not what one would call mad, but queer. They were all queer. Hargrave,
the second brother, was the fellow that made that shindy in the
Mauritius, and our friend Shalley isn't a conjuror. And _we_ thought you
were larking the old lady, I assure you we did.”
“'We' were once more mistaken, then,” said I, sneer-ingly.
“We all said, too, at the time, that Doubleton had been 'let in.' He
gave you a good round sum for expenses on the road, did n't he, and you
sent it all back to him.”
“Every shilling of it”
“So he told us, and that was what puzzled us more than all the rest. Why
did you give up the money?”
“Simply, sir, because it was not mine.”
“Yes, yes, to be sure, I know that; but I mean, what suggested the
restitution?”
“Really, sir, your question leads me to suppose that the 'we' so often
referred to are not eminently remarkable for integrity.”
“Like their neighbors, I take it,--neither better nor worse. But won't
you tell why you gave up the tin?”
“I should be hopeless of any attempt to explain my motives, sir; so pray
excuse me.”
“You were right, at all events,” said he, not heeding the sarcasm of
my manner. “There 's no chance for the knaves, now, with the telegraph
system. As it was, there were orders flying through Europe to arrest
Pottinger,--I--can't forget the name. We used to have it every day in
the Chancellerie: Pottinger, five feet nine, weak-looking and vulgar,
low forehead, light hair and eyes, slight lisp, talks German fluently,
but ill. I have copied that portrait of you twenty, ay, thirty times.”
“And yet, sir, neither the name nor the description apply. I am no more
Pottinger than I am ignoble-looking and vulgar.”
“What's the name, then?--not Harpar, nor Pottinger? But who cares a rush
for the name of fellows like you? You change them just as you do the
color of your coat.”
“May I take the liberty of asking, sir, just for information, as you
said awhile ago, how you would take it were I to make as free with you
as you have been pleased to do with _me?_ To give a mock inventory of
your external characteristics, and a false name to yourself?”
“Laugh, probably, if I were amused; throw you out of the window if you
offended me.”
“The very thing I 'd do with you this moment, if I was strong enough,”
said I, resolutely. And he flung himself into a chair, and laughed as I
did not believe he could laugh.
“Well,” cried he, at last, “as this room is about fifty feet or so from
the ground, it's as well as it is. But now let us wind up this affair.
You want to get away from this, I suppose; and as nobody wants to
detain you, the thing is easy enough. You need n't make a fuss about
compensation, for they 'll not give a kreutzer, and you 'd better not
write a book about it, because 'we' don't stand fellows who write books;
so just take a friend's advice, and go off without military honors of
any kind.”
“I neither acknowledge the friendship nor accept the advice, sir. The
motives which induced me to suffer imprisonment for another are quite
sufficient to raise me above any desire to make a profit of it.”
“I think I understand you,” said he, with a cunning expression in his
half-closed eyes. “You go in for being a 'character.' Haven't I hit it?
You want to be thought a strange, eccentric sort of fellow. Now there
was a time the world had a taste for that kind of thing. Romeo Coates,
and Brummel, and that Irish fellow that walked to Jerusalem, and
half-a-dozen others, used to amuse the town in those days, but it's all
as much bygone now as starched neckcloths and Hessian boots. Ours is an
age of paletots and easy manners, and you are trying to revive what our
grandfathers discarded and got rid of. It won't do, Pottinger; it will
not.”
“I am not Pottinger; my name is Algernon Sydney Potts.”
“Ah! there's the mischief all out at last. What could come of such a
collocation of names but a life of incongruity and absurdity! You owe
all your griefs to your godfathers, Potts. If they 'd have called you
Peter, you 'd have been a well-conducted poor creature. Well, I'm to
give you a passport. Where do you wish to go?”
“I wish, first of all, to go to Como.”
“I think I know why. But you're on a wrong cast there. They have left
that long since.”
“Indeed, and for what place?”
“They 've gone to pass the winter at Malta. Mamma Keats required a dry,
warm climate, and you 'll find them at a little country-house about a
mile from Valetta; the Jasmines, I think it's called. I have a brother
quartered in the island, and he tells me he has seen them, but they
won't receive visits, nor go out anywhere. But, of course, a Royal
Highness is always sure of a welcome. Prince Potts is an 'Open, sesame!'
wherever he goes.”
“What atrocious tobacco this is of yours, Buller!” said I, taking a
cigar from his case as it lay on the table. “I suppose that you small
fry of diplomacy cannot get things in duty free, eh?”
“Try this cheroot; you 'll find it better,” said he, opening a secret
pocket in the case.
“Nothing to boast of,” said I, puffing away, while he continued to fill
up the blanks in my passport.
“Would you like an introduction to my brother? He's on the Government
staff there, and knows every one. He's a jolly sort of fellow, besides,
and you 'll get on well together.”
“I don't care if I do,” said I, carelessly; “though, as a rule, your
red-coat is very bad style,--flippant without smartness, and familiar
without ease.”
“Severe, Potts, but not altogether unjust; but you 'll find George above
the average of his class, and I think you 'll like him.”
“Don't let him ask me to his mess,” said I, with an insolent drawl.
“That's an amount of boredom I could not submit to. Caution him to make
no blunder of that kind.”
He looked up at me with a strange twinkle in his eyes, which I could not
interpret He was either in intense enjoyment of my smartness, or Heaven
knows what other sentiment then moved him. At all events, I was in
ecstasy at the success of my newly discovered vein, and walked the room,
humming a tune, as he wrote the letter that was to present me to his
brother.
“Why had I never hit upon this plan before?” thought I. “How was it that
it had not occurred that the maxim of homoeopathy is equally true in
morals as in medicine, and that _similia similibus curantur!_ So long
as I was meek, humble, and submissive, Buller's impertinent presumption
only increased at every moment With every fresh concession of mine he
continued to encroach, and now that I had adopted his own strategy,
and attacked, he fell back at once.” I was proud, very proud of my
discovery. It is a new contribution to that knowledge of life which,
notwithstanding all my disasters, I believed to be essentially my gift.
At last he finished his note, folded, sealed, and directed it,--“The
Hon. George Buller, A.D.C., Government House, Malta, favored by Algernon
Sydney Potts, Esq.”
“Is n't that all right?” asked he, pointing to my name. “I was within
an ace of writing Hampden-Russell too.” And he laughed at his own very
meagre jest.
“I hope you have merely made this an introduction?” said I.
“Nothing more; but why so?”
“Because it's just as likely that I never present it! I am the slave of
the humor I find myself in, and I rarely do anything that costs me
the slightest effort.” I said this with a close and, indeed, a servile
imitation of Charles Matthews in “Used Up;” but it was a grand success,
and Buller was palpably vanquished.
“Well, for George's sake, I hope your mood may be the favorable one. Is
there anything more I can do for you? Can you think of nothing wherein I
may be serviceable?”
“Nothing. Stay, I rather think our people at home might with propriety
show my old friend Hirsch here some mark of attention for his conduct
towards me. I don't know whether they give a C.B. for that sort of
thing, but a sum,--a handsome sum,--something to mark the service,
and the man to whom it was rendered. Don't you think 'we' could manage
that?”
“I 'll see what can be done. I don't despair of success.”
“As for your share in the affair, Buller, I 'll take care that it shall
be mentioned in the proper quarter. If I _have_ a characteristic,--my
friends say I have many,--but if I have one, it is that I never forget
the most trifling service of the humblest of those who have aided me.
You are young, and have your way to make in life. Go back, therefore,
and carry with you the reflection that Potts is your friend.”
I saw he was affected at this, for he covered his face with his
handkerchief and turned away, and for some seconds his shoulders moved
convulsively.
“Yes,” said I, with a struggle to become humble, “there are richer men,
there are men more influential by family ties and connections, there are
men who occupy a more conspicuous position before the public eye, there
are men who exercise a wider sway in the world of politics and party;
but this I will say, that there is not one--no, not one--individual
in the British dominions who, when you come to consider either the
difficulties he has overcome, the strength of the prejudices he has
conquered, the totally unassisted and unaided struggle he has had to
maintain against not alone the errors, for errors are human, but still
worse, the ungenerous misconceptions, the--I will go further, and call
them the wilful misrepresentations of those who, from education and rank
and condition, might be naturally supposed--indeed, confidently affirmed
to be--to be--”
“I am certain of it!” cried he, grasping my hand, and rescuing me from
a situation very like smothering,--“I am certain of it!” And with a
hurried salutation, for his feelings were evidently overcoming him, he
burst away, and descended the stairs five steps at a time; and although
I was sorry he had not waited till I finished my peroration, I was
really glad that the act had ended and the curtain fallen.
“What a deal of bad money passes current in this world,” said I, as I
was alone; “and what a damper it is upon honest industry to think how
easy it is to eke out life with a forgery!”
“What do you say to a dinner with me at the 'Swan' in Innspruck, Potts?”
cried out Boiler, from the courtyard.
“Excuse me, I mean to eat my last cutlet here, with my old Jailer. It
will be an event for the poor fellow as long as he lives. Good-bye, and
a safe journey to you.”