I was now bound for the first port in the Mediterranean from which I
could take ship for Malta; and the better to carry out my purpose, I
resolved never to make acquaintance with any one, or be seduced by any
companionship, till I had seen Miss Herbert, and given her the message
I was charged with. This time, at least, I would be a faithful envoy;
at least, as faithful as a man might be who had gone to sleep over his
credentials for a twelvemonth. And so I reached Malta, and took my place
by diligence over the Stelvio down to Lecco, never trusting myself
with even the very briefest intercourse with my fellow-travellers, and
suffering them to indulge in the humblest estimate of me, morally and
intellectually,--all that I might be true to my object and firm to my
fixed purpose. For the first time in my life I tried to present myself
in an unfavorable aspect, and I was astonished to find the experiment by
no means unpleasing, the reason being, probably, that it was an eminent
success. I began to see how the surly people are such acute philosophers
in life, and what a deal of selfish gratification they must derive from
their uncurbed ill-humor. I reached Genoa in time to catch a steamer
for Malta. It was crowded, and with what, in another mood, I might have
called pleasant people; but I held myself estranged and aloof from all.
I could mark many an impertinent allusion to my cold and distant manner,
and could see that a young sub on his way to Join was even witty at the
expense of my retiring disposition. The creature, Groves he was called,
used to try to “trot me out,” as he phrased it; but I maintained both my
resolve and my temper, and gave him no triumph.
I was almost sorry on the morning we dropped anchor in the harbor. The
sense of doing something, anything, with a firm persistence, had given
me cheerfulness and courage. However, I had now a task of some nicety
before me, and addressed myself at once to its discharge. At the hotel I
learned that the cottage inhabited by Mrs. Keats was in a small nook
of one of the bays, and only an easy walk from the town; and so I
despatched a messenger at once with Miss Crofton's note to Miss Herbert,
enclosed in a short one from myself, to know if she would permit me to
wait upon her, with reference to the matter in the letter. I spoke of
myself in the third person and as the bearer of the letter.
While I was turning over the letters and papers in my writing-desk,
awaiting her reply, I came upon Buller's note to his brother, and,
without any precise idea why, I sent it by a servant to the Government
House, with my card. It was completely without a purpose that I did
so, and if my reader has not experienced moments of the like
“inconsequence,” I should totally break down in attempting to account
for their meaning.
Miss Herbert's reply came back promptly. She requested that the writer
of the note she had just read would favor her with a visit at his
earliest convenience.
I set forth immediately. What a strange and thrilling sensation it is
when we take up some long-dropped link in life, go back to some broken
thread of our existence, and try to attach it to the present! We feel
young again in the bygone, and yet far older even than our real age in
the thought of the changes time has wrought upon us in the meanwhile. A
week or so before I had looked with impatience for this meeting, and now
I grew very faint-hearted as the moment drew nigh. The only way I could
summon courage for the occasion was by thinking that in the mission
intrusted to me _I_ was actually nothing. There were incidents and
events not one of which touched me, and I should pass away off the scene
when our interview was over, and be no more remembered by her.
It was evident that the communication had engaged her attention to some
extent by the promptitude of her message to me; and with this thought I
crossed the little lawn, and rang the bell at the door.
“The gentleman expected by Miss Herbert, sir?” asked a smart English
maid. “Come this way, sir. She will see you in a few minutes.”
I had fully ten minutes to inspect the details of a pretty little
drawing-room, one of those little female temples where scattered
drawings and books and music, and, above all, the delicious odor of
fresh flowers, all harmonize together, and set you a-thinking how easily
life could glide by with such appliances were they only set in motion
by the touch of the enchantress herself. The door opened at last, but it
was the maid; she came to say that Mrs. Keats was very poorly that day,
and Miss Herbert could not leave her at that moment; and if it were not
perfectly convenient to the gentleman to wait, she begged to know when
it would suit him to call again?
“As for me,” said I, “I have come to Malta solely on this matter; pray
say that I will wait as long as she wishes. I am completely at her
orders.”
I strolled out after this through one of the windows that opened on
the lawn, and, gaining the seaside, I sat down upon a rock to bide her
coming. I might have sat about half an hour thus, when I heard a rapid
step approaching, and I had just time to arise when Miss Herbert stood
before me. She started back, and grew pale, very pale, as she recognized
me, and for fully a minute there we both stood, unable to speak a word.
“Am I to understand, sir,” said she, at last, “that you are the bearer
of this letter?” And she held it open towards me.
“Yes,” said I, with a great effort at collectedness. “I have much to ask
your forgiveness for. It is fully a year since I was charged to place
that in your hands, but one mischance after another has befallen me; not
to own that in my own purposeless mode of life I have had no enemy worse
than my fate.”
“I have heard something of your fondness for adventure,” said she, with
a strange smile that blended a sort of pity with a gentle irony. “After
we parted company at Schaffhausen, I believe you travelled for some time
on foot? We heard, at least, that you took a fancy to explore a mode
of life few persons have penetrated, or, at least, few of your rank and
condition.”
“May I ask, what do you believe that rank and condition to be, Miss
Herbert?” asked I, firmly.
She blushed deeply at this; perhaps I was too abrupt in the way I spoke,
and I hastened to add,--
“When I offered to be the bearer of the letter you have just read, I was
moved by another wish than merely to render you some service. I wanted
to tell you, once for all, that if I lived for a while in a fiction
land of my own invention, with day-dreams and fancies, and hopes and
ambitions all unreal, I have come to pay the due penalty of my deceit,
and confess that nothing can be more humble than I am in birth, station,
or fortune,--my father an apothecary, my name Potts, my means a very few
pounds in the world; and yet, with all that avowal, I feel prouder now
that I have made it, than ever I did in the false assumption of some
condition I had no claim to.”
She held out her hand to me with such a significant air of approval, and
smiled so good-naturedly, that I could not help pressing it to my lips,
and kissing it rapturously.
Taking a seat at my side, and with a voice meant to recall me to a quiet
and business-like demeanor, she asked me to read over Miss Crofton's
letter. I told her that I knew every line of it by heart, and, more
still, I knew the whole story to which it related. It was a topic that
required the nicest delicacy to touch on, but with a frankness that
charmed me, she said,--
“You have had the candor to tell me freely your story; let me imitate
you, and reveal mine.
“You know who we are, and whence we have sprung; that my father was
a simple laborer on a line of railroad, and by dint of zeal and
intelligence, and an energy that would not be balked or impeded, that
he raised himself to station and affluence. You have heard of his
connection with Sir Elkanah Crofton, and how unfortunately it was broken
off; but you cannot know the rest,--that is, you cannot know what we
alone know, and what is not so much as suspected by others; and of this
I can scarcely dare to speak, since it is essentially the secret of my
family.”
I guessed at once to what she alluded; her troubled manner, her swimming
eyes, and her quivering voice, all betraying that she referred to the
mystery of her father's fate; while I doubted within myself whether
it were right and fitting for me to acknowledge that I knew the
secret soucre of her anxiety, she relieved me from my embarrassment by
continuing thus,--
“Your kind and generous friends have not suffered themselves to be
discouraged by defeat. They have again and again renewed their proposals
to my mother, only varying the mode, in the hope that by some stratagem
they might overcome her reasons for refusal. Now, though this rejection,
so persistent as it is, may seem ungracious, it is not without a fitting
and substantial cause.”
Again she faltered, and grew confused, and now I saw how she struggled
between a natural reserve and an impulse to confide the soitow that
oppressed her to one who might befriend her.
“You may speak freely to me,” said I, at last. “I am not ignorant of
the mystery you hint at. Crofton has told me what many surmise and some
freely believe in.”
“But we know it,--know it for a certainty,” cried she, clasping my hand
in her eagerness. “It is no longer a surmise or a suspicion. It is
a certainty,--a fact! Two letters in his handwriting have reached my
mother,--one from St. Louis, in America, where he had gone first; the
second from an Alpine village, where he was laid up in sickness. He had
had a terrible encounter with a man who had done him some gross wrong,
and he was wounded in the shoulder; after which he had to cross the
Rhine, wading or swimming, and travel many miles ere he could find
shelter. When he wrote, however, he was rapidly recovering, and as
quickly regaining all his old courage and daring.”
“And from that time forward have you had no tidings of him?”
“Nothing but a check on a Russian banker in London to pay to my mother's
order a sum of money,--a considerable one, too; and although she hoped
to gain some clew to him through this, she could not succeed, nor have
we now any trace of him whatever. I ought to mention,” said she, as
if catching up a forgotten thread in her narrative, “that in his
last letter he enjoined my mother not to receive any payment from the
assurance company, nor enter into any compromise with them; and, above
all, to live in the hope that we should meet again and be happy.”
“And are you still ignorant of where he now is?”
“We only know that a cousin of mine, an officer of engineers at Aden,
heard of an Englishman being engaged by the Shah of Persia to report
on certain silver mines at Kashan, and from all he could learn, the
description would apply to him. My cousin had obtained leave of absence
expressly to trace him, and promised in his last letter to bring me
himself any tidings he might procure here to Malta. Indeed, when I
learned that a stranger had asked to see me, I was full sure it was my
cousin Harry.”
Was it that her eyes grew darker in color as this name escaped, her was
it that a certain tremor shook her voice, or was it the anxiety of my
own jealous humor that made me wretched as I heard of that cousin Harry,
now mentioned for the first time?
“What reparation can I make you for so blank a disappointment?” said I,
with a sad, half-bitter tone.
“Be the same kind friend that he would have proved himself if it had
been his fortune to have come first,” said she; and though she spoke
calmly, she blushed deeply! “Here,” said she, hurriedly, taking a small
printed paragraph from a letter, and eagerly, as it seemed, trying
to recover her former manner,--“here is a slip I have cut out of the
'Levant Herald.' I found it about two months since. It ran thus: 'The
person who had contracted for the works at Pera, and who now turns
out to be an Englishman, is reported to have had a violent altercation
yesterday with Musted Pasha, in consequence of which he has thrown up
his contract, and demanded his passport for Russia. It is rumored here
that the Russian ambassador is no stranger to this rupture.' Vague as
this is, I feel persuaded that he is the person alluded to, and that it
is from Constantinople we must trace him.”
“Well,” cried I, “I am ready. I will set out at once.”
“Oh! can I believe you will do us this great service?” cried she, with
swimming eyes and clasped hands.
“This time you will find me faithful,” said I, gravely. “He who has said
and done so many foolish things as I have, must, by one good action,
give bail for his future character.”
“You are a true friend, and you have all my confidence.”
“Mrs. Keats's compliments, miss,” said the maid at this moment, “and
hopes the gentleman will stay to dinner with you, though she cannot come
down herself.”
“She imagines you are my cousin, whom she is aware I have been
expecting,” said Miss Herbert, in a whisper, and evidently appearing
uncertain how to act.
“Oh!” said I, with an anguish I could not repress, “would that I could
change my lot with his!”
“Very well, Mary,” said Miss Herbert; “thank your mistress from me, and
say the gentleman accepts her invitation with pleasure. Is it too much
presumption on my part, sir, to say so?” said she, with a low whisper,
while a half-malicious twinkle lit up her eyes, and I could not speak
with happiness.
Determined, however, to give an earnest of my zeal in her cause, I
declared I would at once return to the town, and learn when the first
packet sailed for Constantinople. The dinner hour was seven, so that
I had fully five hours yet to make my inquiries ere we met at table. I
wondered at myself how business-like and practical I had become; but a
strong impulse now impelled me, and seemed to add a sort of strength to
my whole nature.
“As Cousin Harry is the mirror of punctuality, and you now represent
him, Mr. Potts,” said she, shaking my hand, “pray remember not to be
later than seven.”