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CHAPTER XXVI. VATERCHEN AND TINTEFLECK

Had Fortune decreed that I should be rich, I believe I would have been the most popular of men. There is such a natural kindness of disposition in me, blended with the most refined sense of discrimination. I love humanity in the aggregate, and, at the same time, with a rare delicacy of sentiment, I can follow through all the tortuous windings of the heart, and actually sympathize in emotions that I never experienced. No rank is too exalted, no lot too humble, for the exercise of my benevolence. I have sat in my arm-chair with a beating, throbbing heart, as I imagined the troubles of a king, and I have drunk my Bordeaux with tears of gratitude as I fancied myself a peasant with only water to slake his thirst. To a man of highly organized temperament, the privations themselves are not necessary to eliminate the feeling they would suggest. Coarser natures would require starvation to produce the sense of hunger, nakedness to cause that of cold, and so on; the gifted can be in rags, while enclosed in a wadded dressing-gown; they can go supperless to bed after a meal of oysters and toasted cheese; they can, if they will, be fatally wounded as they sit over their wine, or cast away after shipwreck with their feet on the fender. Great privileges all these; happy is he who has them, happy are they amidst whom he tries to spread the blessings of his inheritance!

Amid the many admirable traits which I recognize in myself, – and of which I speak not boastfully, but gratefully, being accidents of my nature as far removed from my own agency as the color of my eyes or the shape of my nose, – of these, I say, I know of none more striking than such as fit me to be a patron. I am graceful as a lover, touching as a friend, but I am really great as a protector.

Revelling in such sentiments as these, I stood at my window, looking at the effect of moonlight on the Falls. It seemed to me as though in the grand spectacle before my eyes I beheld a sort of illustration of my own nature, wherein generous emotions could come gushing, foaming, and falling, and yet the source be never exhausted, the flood ever at full. I ought parenthetically to observe that the champagne was excellent, and that I had drunk the third glass of the second bottle to the health of the widow Cliquot herself. Thus standing and musing, I was startled by a noise behind me, and, turning round, I saw one of the smallest of men in a little red Greek jacket and short yellow breeches, carefully engaged in spreading a small piece of carpet on the floor, a strip like a very diminutive hearth-rug. This done, he gave a little wild exclamation of “Ho!” and cut a somersault in the air, alighting on the flat of his back, which he announced by a like cry of “Ha!” He was up again, however, in an instant, and repeated the performance three times. He was about, as I judged by the arrangement of certain chairs, to proceed to other exercises equally diverting, when I stopped him by asking who he was.

“Your Excellency,” said he, drawing himself up to his full height of, say, four feet, “I am Vaterchen!”

Every one knows what provoking things are certain chance resemblances, how disturbing to the right current of thought, how subverting to the free exercise of reason. Now, this creature before me, in his deeply indented temples, high narrow forehead, aquiline nose, and resolute chin, was marvellously like a certain great field-marshal with whose features, notwithstanding the portraits of him, we are all familiar. It was not of the least use to me that I knew he was not the illustrious general, but simply a mountebank. There were the stern traits, haughty and defiant; and do what I would, the thought of the great man would clash with the capers of the little one. Owing to this impression, it was impossible for me to address him without a certain sense of deference and respect.

“Will you not be seated?” said I, offering him a chair and taking one myself. He accepted with all the quiet ease of good breeding, and smiled courteously as I filled a glass and passed it towards him.

I pressed my hand across my eyes for a few moments while I reflected, and I muttered to myself, —

“Oh, Potts, if instead of a tumbler this had really been the hero, what an evening might this be! Lives there that man in Europe so capable of feeling in all its intensity the glorious privilege of such a meeting? Who, like you, would listen to the wisdom distilling from those lips? Who would treasure up every trait of voice, accent, and manner, remembering, not alone every anecdote, but every expression? Who, like you, could have gracefully led the conversation so as to range over the whole wide ocean of that great life, taking in battles and sieges and storm ings and congresses, and scenes of all that is most varied and exciting in existence? Would not the record of one such night, drawn by you, have been worth all the cold compilations and bleak biographies that ever were written? You would have presented him as he sat there in front of you.” I opened my eyes to paint from the model, and there was the little dog, with his legs straight up on each side of his head and forming a sort of gothic arch over his face. The wretch had done the feat to amuse me, and I almost fainted with horror as I saw it.

“Sit down, sir,” said I, in a voice of stern command. “You little know the misery you have caused me.”

I refilled his glass, and closed my eyes once more. In my old pharmaceutical experiences I had often made bread pills, and remembered well how, almost invariably, they had been deemed successful. What relief from pain to the agonized sufferer had they not given! What slumber to the sleepless! What appetite, what vigor, what excitement! Why should not the same treatment apply to morals as to medicine? Why, with faith to aid one, cannot he induce every wished-for mood of mind and thought? The lay figure to support the drapery suffices for the artist, the Venus herself is in his brain. Now, if that little fellow there would neither cut capers nor speak, I ask no more of him. Let him sit firmly as he does now, staring me boldly in the face that way.

“Yes,” said I, “lay your hand on the arm of your chair, so, and let the other be clenched thus.” And so I placed him. “Never utter a word, but nod to me at rare intervals.”

He has since acknowledged that he believed me to be deranged; but as I seemed a harmless case, and he could rely on his activity for escape, he made no objection to my directions, the less, too, that he enjoyed his wine immensely, and was at liberty to drink as he pleased.

“Now,” thought I, “one glance, only one, to see that he poses properly.”

All right; nothing could be better. His face was turned slightly to one side, giving what the painters call action to the head, and he was perfect I now resigned myself to the working of the spell, and already I felt its influence over me. Where and with what was I to begin? Numberless questions thronged to my mind. I wanted to know a thousand disputed things, and fully as many that were only disputed by myself. I felt that as such another opportunity would assuredly never present itself twice in my life, that the really great use of the occasion would be to make every inquiry subsidiary to my own case, – to make all my investigations what the Germans would call “Potts-wise.” My intensest anxiety was then to ascertain if, like myself, his Grace started in life with very grand aspirations.

“Did you feel, for instance, when playing practical jokes on the maids of honor in Dublin, some sixty-odd years ago, that you were only, in sportive vein, throwing off so much light ballast to make room for the weightier material that was to steady you in the storm-tossed sea before you? Have you experienced the almost necessity of these little expansions of eccentricity as I have? Was there always in your heart, as a young man, as there is now in mine, a profound contempt for the opinions of your contemporaries? Did you continually find yourself repeating, ‘Respice finem! Mark where I shall be yet’?” There was another investigation which touched me still more closely, but it was long before I could approach it I saw all the difficulty and delicacy of the inquiry; but, with that same recklessness of consequences which would make me catch at a queen by the back hair if I was drowning, I clutched at this discovery now, and, although trembling at my boldness, asked, “Was your Grace ever afraid? I know the impertinence of the question, but if you only guessed how it concerns me, you ‘d forgive it. Nature has made me many things, but not courageous. Nothing on earth could induce me to risk life; the more I reason about it, the greater grows my repugnance. Now, I would like to hear, is this what anatomists call congenital? Am I likely to grow out of it? Shall I ever be a dare-devil, intrepid, fire-eating sort of creature? How will the change come over me? Shall I feel it coming? Will it come from within, or through external agencies? And when it has arrived, what shall I become? Am I destined to drive the Zouaves into the sea by a bayonet charge of the North Cork Rifles, or shall I only be great in council, and take weekly trips in the ‘Fairy’ to Cowes? I ‘d like to know this, and begin a course of preparation for my position, as I once knew of a militia captain who hardened himself for a campaign by sleeping every night with his head on the window-stool.”

As I opened my eyes, I saw the stern features in front of me. I thought the words, “I was never afraid, sir!” rang through my brain till they filled every ventricle with their din.

“Not at Assaye?”

“No, sir.”

“Not at the Douro?”

“No, sir.”

“Not at Torres Vedras?”

“I tell you again, no, sir!”

Whether I uttered this last with any uncommon degree of vehemence or not, I so frightened Vaterchen that he cut a somersault clean over the chair, and stood grinning at me through the rails at the back of it I motioned to him to be reseated, while, passing my hand across my brow, I waved away the bright illusions that beset me, and, with a heavy sigh, re-entered the dull world of reality.

“You are a clown,” said I, meditatively. “What is a clown?”

He did not answer me in words, but, placing his hands on his knees, stared at me steadfastly, and then, having fixed my attention, his face performed a series of the most fearful contortions I ever beheld. With one horrible spasm he made his mouth appear to stretch from ear to ear; with another, his nose wagged from side to side; with a third, his eyebrows went up and down alternately, giving the different sides of his face two directly antagonistic expressions. I was shocked and horrified, and called to him to desist.

“And yet,” thought I, “there are natures who can delight in these, and see in them matter for mirth and laughter!”

“Old man,” said I, gravely, “has it ever occurred to you that in this horrible commixture of expression, wherein grief wars with Joy and sadness with levity, you are like one who, with a noble instrument before him, should, instead of sweet sounds of harmony, produce wild, unearthly discords, the jangling bursts of fiend-like voices?”

“The Tintefleck can play indifferently well, your Excellency,” said he, humbly. “I never had any skill that way myself.”

Oh, what a crassa natura was here! What a triple wall of dulness surrounds such dark intelligences!

“And where is the Tintefleck? Why is she not here?” asked I, anxious to remove the discussion to a ground of more equality.

“She is without, your Excellency. She did not dare to present herself till your Excellency had desired, and is waiting in the corridor.”

“Let her come in,” said I, grandly; and I drew my chair to a distant corner of the room so as to give them a wider area to appear in, while I could, at the same time, assume that attitude of splendid ease and graceful protection I have seen a prince accomplish on the stage at the moment the ballet is about to begin. The door opened, and Vaterchen entered, leading Tintefleck by the hand.

CHAPTER XXVII. I ATTEMPT TO OVERTHROW SOCIAL PREJUDICES

I was quite right, – Tintefleck’s entrée was quite dramatic. She tripped into the room with a short step, nor arrested her ran till she came close to me, when, with a deep courtesy, she bent down very low, and then, with a single spring backward, retreated almost to the door again. She was very pretty, – dark enough to be a Moor, but with a rich brilliancy of skin never seen amongst that race, for she was a Calabrian; and as she stood there with her arms crossed before her, and one leg firmly advanced, and with the foot – a very pretty foot – well planted, she was like – all the Italian peasants one has seen in the National Gallery for years back. There was the same look, half shy; the same elevation of sentiment in the brow, and the same coarseness of the mouth; plenty of energy, enough and to spare of daring; but no timidity, no gentleness.

“What is she saying?” asked I of the old man, as I overheard a whisper pass between them. “Tell me what she has just said to you.”

“It is nothing, your Excellency, – she is a fool.”

“That she may be, but I insist on hearing what it was she said.”

He seemed embarrassed and ashamed, and, instead of replying to me, turned to address some words of reproach to the girl.

“I am waiting for your answer,” said I, peremptorily.

“It is the saucy way she has gotten, your Excellency, all from over-flattery; and now that she sees that there is no audience here, none but your Excellency, she is impatient to be off again. She’ll never do anything for us on the night of a thin house.”

“Is this the truth, Tintefleck?” asked I.

With a wild volubility, of which I could not gather a word, but every accent of which indicated passion, if not anger, she poured out something to the other, and then turned as if to leave the room. He interposed quickly, and spoke to her, at first angrily, but at last in a soothing and entreating tone, which seemed gradually to calm her.

“There is more in this than you have told, Vaterchen,” said I. “Let me know at once why she is impatient to get away.”

“I would leave it to herself to tell your Excellency,” said he, with much confusion, “but that you could not understand her mountain dialect. The fact is,” added he, after a great struggle with himself, – “the fact is, she is offended at your calling her ‘Tintefleck.’ She is satisfied to be so named amongst ourselves, where we all have similar nicknames; but that you, a great personage, high and rich and titled, should do so, wounds her deeply. Had you said – ”

Here he whispered me in my ear, and, almost inadvertently, I repeated after him, “Catinka.”

“Si, si, Catinka,” said she, while her eyes sparkled with an expression of wildest delight, and at the same instant she bounded forward and kissed my hand twice over.

I was glad to have made my peace, and, placing a chair for her at the table, I filled out a glass of wine and presented it. She only shook her head in dissent, and pushed it away.

“She has odd ways in everything,” said the old man; “she never eats but bread and water. It is her notion that if she were to taste other food she 'd lose her gift of fortune-telling.”

“So, then, she reads destiny too?” said I, in astonishment.

Before I could inquire further, she swept her hands across the strings of her guitar, and broke out into a little peasant song. It was very monotonous, but pleasing. Of course, I knew nothing of the words nor the meaning, but it seemed as though one thought kept ever and anon recurring in the melody, and would continue to rise to the surface, like the air-bubbles in a well. Satisfied, apparently, by the evidences of my approval, she had no sooner finished than she began another. This was somewhat more pretentious, and, from what I could gather, represented a parting scene between a lover and his mistress. There was, at least, a certain action in the song which intimated this. The fervent earnestness of the lover, his entreaties, his prayers, and at last his threatenings, were all given with effect, and there was actually good acting in the stolid defiance she opposed to all; she rejected his vows, refused his pledges, scorned his menaces; but when he had gone and left her, when she saw herself alone and desolate, then came out a gush of the most passionate sorrow, all the pent-up misery of a heart that seemed to burst with its weight of agony.

If I was in a measure entranced while she was singing, such was the tension of my nerves as I listened, that I was heartily glad when it was over. As for her, she seemed so overcome by the emotion she had parodied, that she bent her head down, covered her face with her hands, and sobbed twice or thrice convulsively.

I turned towards Vaterchen to ask him some question, I forget what, but the little fellow had made such good use of the decanter beside him, while the music went on, that his cheeks were a bright crimson, and his little round eyes shone like coals of fire.

“This young creature should never have fallen amongst such as you!” said I, indignantly; “she has feeling and tenderness, – the powers of expression she wields all evidence a great and gifted nature. She has, so to say, noble qualities.’

“Noble, indeed!” croaked out the little wretch, with a voice hoarse from the strong Burgundy.

“She might, with proper culture, adorn a very different sphere,” said I, angrily. “Many have climbed the ladder of life with humbler pretensions.”

“Ay, and stand on one leg on top of it, playing the tambourine all the time,” hiccuped he, in reply.

I did not fancy the way he carried out my figure, but went on with my reflections, —

“Some, but they are few, achieve greatness at a bound – ”

“That’s what she does,” broke he in. “Twelve hoops and a drum behind them, at one spring; she comes through like a flying-fish.”

I don’t know what angry rejoinder was on my lips to this speech, when there came a tap at my door. I arose at once and opened it. It was Francois, with a polite message from Mrs. Keats, to say how happy it would make her “if I felt well enough to join her and Miss Herbert at tea.” For a second or two I knew not what to reply. That I was “well enough,” François was sure to report, and in my flushed condition I was, perhaps, the picture of an exaggerated state of convalescence; so, after a moment’s hesitation, I muttered out a blundering excuse, on the plea of having a couple of friends with me, “who had chanced to be just passing through the town on their way to Italy.”

I did not think Francois had time to report my answer, when I heard him again at the door. It was, with his mistress’s compliments, to say, she “would be charmed if I would induce my friends to accompany me.”

I had to hold my hand on my side with laughter as I heard this message, so absurd was the proposition, and so ridiculous seemed the notion of it. This, I say, was the first impression made upon my mind; and then, almost as suddenly, there came another and very different one. “What is the mission you have embraced, Potts?” asked I of myself. “If it have a but or an object, is it not to overthrow the mean and unjust prejudices, the miserable class distinctions, that separate the rich from the poor, the great from the humble, the gifted from the ignorant? Have you ever proposed to yourself a nobler conquest than over that vulgar tyranny by which prosperity lords it over humble fortune? Have you imagined a higher triumph than to make the man of purple and fine linen feel happy in the companionship of him in smock-frock and high-lows? Could you ask for a happier occasion to open the campaign than this? Mrs. Keats is an admirable representative of her class; she has all the rigid prejudices of her condition; her sympathies may rise, but they never fall; she can feel for the sorrows of the well-born, she has no concern for vulgar afflictions. How admirable the opportunity to show her that grace and genius and beauty are of all ranks! And Miss Herbert, too, what a test it will be of her! If she really have greatness of soul, if there be in her nature a spirit that rises above petty conventionalities and miserable ceremonials, she will take this young creature to her heart like a sister. I think I see them with arms entwined, – two lovely flowers on one stalk, – the dark crimson rose and the pale hyacinth! Oh, Potts! this would be a nobler victory to achieve than to rend battalions with grape, or ride down squadrons with the crash of cavalry.” – “I will come, Francois,” said I. “Tell Mrs. Keats that she may expect us immediately.” I took especial care in my dialogue to keep this prying fellow outside the room, and to interpose in every attempt that he made to obtain a peep within. In this I perfectly succeeded, and dismissed him, without his being able to report any one circumstance about my two travelling friends.

My next task was to inform them of my intentions on their behalf; nor was this so easy as might be imagined, for Vaterchen had indulged very freely with the wine, and all the mountains of Calabria lay between myself and Tinte-fleck. With a great exercise of ingenuity, and more of patience, I did at last succeed in making known to the old fellow that a lady of the highest station and her friend were curious to see them. He only caught my meaning after some time; but when he had surmounted the difficulty, as though to show mc how thoroughly he understood the request, and how nicely he appreciated its object, he began a series of face contortions of the most dreadful kind, being a sort of programme of what he intended to exhibit to the distinguished company. I repressed this firmly, severely. I explained that an artist in all the relations of private life should be ever the gentleman; that the habits of the stage were no more necessary to carry into the world than the costume. I dilated upon the fact that John Kemble had been deemed fitting company by the first gentleman of Europe; and that if his manner could have exposed him to a criticism, it was in, perhaps, a slight tendency to an over-reserve, a cold and almost stern dignity. I ‘m not sure Vaterchen followed me completely, nor understood the anecdotes I introduced about Edmund Bean and Lord Byron; but I now addressed myself pictorially to Tintefleck, – pictorially, I say, for words were hopeless. I signified that a très grande dame was about to receive her. I arose, with my skirts expanded in both hands, made a reverent courtesy, throwing my head well back, looking every inch a duchess. But, alas for my powers of representation! she burst into a hearty laugh, and had at last to lay her head on Vaterchen’s shoulder out of pure exhaustion.

“Explain to her what I have told you, sir, and do not sit grinning at me there, like a baboon,” said I, in a severe voice.

I cannot say how he acquitted himself, but I could gather that a very lively altercation ensued, and it seemed to me as though she resolutely refused to subject herself to any further ordeals of what academicians call a “private view.” No; she was ready for the ring and the sawdust, and the drolleries of the men with chalk on their faces, but she would not accept high life on any terms. By degrees, and by arguments of his own ingenious devising, however, he did succeed, and at last she arose with a bound, and cried out, “Eccomi!”

“Remember,” said I to Vaterchen, as we left the room, “I am doing that which few would have the courage to dare. It will depend upon the dignity of your conduct, the grace of your manners, the well-bred ease of your address, to make me feel proud of my intrepidity, or, sad and painful possibility, retire covered with ineffable shame and discomfiture. Do you comprehend me?”

“Perfectly,” said he, standing erect, and giving even in his attitude a sort of bail bond for future dignity. “Lead on!”

This was more familiar than he had been yet; but I ascribed it to the tension of nerves strung to a high purpose, and rendering him thus inaccessible to other thoughts than of the enterprise before him.

As I neared the door of Mrs. Keats’s apartment, I hesitated as to how I should enter. Ought I to precede my friends, and present them as they followed? Or would it seem more easy and more assured if I were to give my arm to Tintefleck, leaving Vaterchen to bring up the rear? After much deliberation, this appeared to be the better course, seeming to take for granted that, although some peculiarities of costume might ask for explanation later on, I was about to present a very eligible and charming addition to the company.

I am scarcely able to say whether I was or was not reassured by the mode in which she accepted the offer of my arm. At first, the proposition appeared unintelligible, and she looked at me with one of those wide-eyed stares, as though to say, “What new gymnastic is this? What tour de force, of which I never heard before?” and then, with a sort of jerk, she threw my arm up in the air and made a pirouette under it, of some half-dozen whirls.

Half reprovingly I shook my head, and offered her my hand. This she understood at once. She recognized such a mode of approach as legitimate and proper, and with an artistic shake of her drapery with the other hand, and a confident smile, she signified she was ready to go “on.”

I was once on a time thrown over a horse’s head into a slate quarry; a very considerable drop it was, and nearly fatal. On another occasion I was carried in a small boat over the fall of a salmon weir, and hurried along in the flood for almost three hundred yards. Each of these was a situation of excitement and peril, and with considerable confusion as the consequence; and yet I could deliberately recount you every passing phase of my terror, from my first fright down to my complete unconsciousness, with such small traits as would guarantee truthfulness; while, of the scene upon which I now adventured, I preserve nothing beyond the vaguest and most unconnected memory.

I remember my advance into the middle of the room. I have a recollection of a large tea-urn, and beyond it a lady in a turban; another in long ringlets there was. The urn made a noise like a small steamer, and there was a confusion of voices – about what, I cannot tell – that increased the uproar, and we were all standing up and all talking together; and there was what seemed an angry discussion, and then the large turban and the ringlets swept haughtily past me. The turban said, “This is too much, sir!” and ringlets added, “Far too much, sir!” and as they reached the door, there was Vaterchen on his head, with a branch of candles between his feet to light them out, and Tintefleck, screaming with laughter, threw herself into an arm-chair, and clapped a most riotous applause.

I stood a moment almost transfixed, then dashed out of the room, hurried upstairs to my chamber, bolted the door, drew a great clothes-press against it for further security, and then threw myself upon my bed in one of those paroxysms of mad confusion, in which a man cannot say whether he is on the verge of inevitable ruin, or has just been rescued from a dreadful fate. I would not, if even I could, recount all that I suffered that night There was not a scene of open shame and disgrace that I did not picture to myself as incurring. I was everywhere in the stocks or the pillory. I wore a wooden placard on my breast, inscribed, “Potts the Impostor.” I was running at top speed before hooting and yelling crowds. I was standing with a circle of protecting policemen amidst a mob eager to tear me to pieces. I was sitting on a hard stool while my hair was being cropped à la Pentonville, and a gray suit lay ready for me when it was done. But enough of such a dreary record. I believe I cried myself to sleep at last, and so soundly, too, that it was very late in the afternoon ere I awoke. It was the sight of the barricade I had erected at my door gave me a clew to the past, and again I buried my face in my hands, and wept bitterly.