Czytaj książkę: «A Day's Ride: A Life's Romance», strona 20

CHAPTER XXXII. I RELIEVE MYSELF OF MY PURSE

Next morning, just as day was breaking, we set out on foot on our road to Constance. There was a pinkish-gray streak of light on the horizon, sure sign of a fine day, and the bright stars twinkled still in the clear half-sombre sky, and all was calm and noiseless, – nothing to be heard but the tramp of our own feet on the hard causeway.

With the cowardly caution of one who feels the water with his foot before he springs in to swim, I was glad that I made my first experiences of companionship with these humble friends while it was yet dark and none could see us. The old leaven of snobbery was unsubdued in my heart, and, as I turned to look at poor Vaterchen and then at the tinsel finery of Catinka, I bethought me of the little consideration the world extends to such as these and their belongings. “Vagabonds all!” would say some rich banker, as he rolled by in his massive travelling-carriage, creaking with imperials and jingling with bells. “Vagabonds all!” would mutter the Jew pedler, as he looked down from the banquette of the diligence. How slight is the sympathy of the realist for the poor creature whose life-labor is to please! How prone to regard him as useless, or, even worse, forgetting the while how a wiser than he has made many things in this beautiful world of ours that they should merely minister to enjoyment, gladden the eye and ear, and make our pilgrimage less weary! Where would be the crimson jay, where the scarlet bustard, where the gorgeous peacock with the nosegay on his tail, where the rose and the honeysuckle and the purple foxglove mingling with the wild thorn in our hedgerows, if the universe were of their creation, and this great globe but one big workshop? You never insist that the daisy and the daffodil should be pot-herbs; and why are there not to be wild flowers in humanity as well as in the fields? Is it not a great pride to you who live under a bell-glass, nurtured and cared for, and with your name attached to a cleft-stick at your side, – is it not a great pride to know that you are not like one of us poor dog-roses? Be satisfied, then, with that glory; we only ask to live! Shame on me for that “only”! As if there could be anything more delightful than life. Life, with all its capacities for love and friendship and heroism and self-devotion, for generous actions and noble aspirations! Life to feel life, to know that we are in a sphere specially constructed for the exercise of our senses and the play of our faculties, free to choose the road we would take, and with a glorious reward if our choice be the right one!

“‘Vagabonds!’ Yes,” thought I, “there was once on a time such a vagabond, and he strolled along from village to village, making of his flute a livelihood, – a poor performer, too, he tells us he was, but he could touch the hearts of these simple villagers with his tones as he could move the hearts of thousands more learned than they with his marvellous pathos; and this vagabond was called Oliver Goldsmith.” I have no words to say the ecstasy this thought gave me. Many a proud traveller doubtless swept past the poor wayfarer as he went, dusty and footsore, and who was, nevertheless, journeying onward to a great immortality; to be a name remembered with blessings by generations when the haughty man that scorned him was forgotten forever. “And so now,” thought I, “some splendid Russian or some Saxon Croesus will crash by and not be conscious that the thin and weary-looking youth, with the girl’s bundle on his stick and the red umbrella under his arm, that this is Potts! Ay, sir, you fancy that to be threadbare and footsore is to be vulgar-minded and ignoble, and you never so much as suspect that the heart inside that poor plaid waistcoat is throbbing with ambitions high as a Kaiser’s, and that the brain within that battered Jim Crow is the realm of thoughts profound as Bacon’s, and high-soaring as Milton’s.”

If I make my reader a sharer in these musings of mine, it is because they occupied me for some miles of the way. Vaterchen was not talkative, and loved to smoke on uninterruptedly. I fancy that, in his way, he was as great a dreamer as myself. Catinka would have talked incessantly if any one had listened, or could understand her. As it was, she recited legends and sang songs for herself, as happy as ever a blackbird was to listen to his own melody; and though I paid no especial attention to her music, still the sounds floated through all my thoughts, bathing them with a soothing flood; just as the air we breathe is often loaded with a sweet and perfumed breath ere we know it. On the whole, we journeyed along very pleasantly; and what between the fresh morning air, the brisk exercise, and the novelty of the situation, I felt in a train of spirits that made me delighted with everything. “This, after all,” thought I, “is more like the original plan I sketched out for myself. This is the true mode to see life and the world. The student of nature never begins his studies with the more complicated organizations; he sets out with what is simplest in structure, and least intricate in function; he begins with the extreme link of the chain; so, too, I start with the investigation of those whose lives of petty cares and small ambitions must render them easy of appreciation. This poor Mollusca Vaterchen, for instance, – to see is to know him; and the girl, how absurd to connect such a guileless child of nature as that with those stereotyped notions of feminine craft and subtlety!” I then went on to imagine some future biographer of mine engaged on this portion of my life, puzzled for materials, puzzled still more to catch the clew to my meaning in it “At this time,” will he say, “Potts, by one of those strange caprices which often were the mainspring of his actions, resolved to lead a gypsy life. His ardent love of nature, his heartfelt enjoyment of scenery, and, more than even these, a certain breadth and generosity of character, disposed him to sympathize with those who have few to pity and fewer to succor them. With these wild children of the roadside he lived for months, joyfully sharing the burdens they carried, and taking his part in their privations. It was here he first met Catinka.” I stopped at this sentence, and I slowly repeated to myself, “It was here he first met Catinka!” “What will he have next to record?” thought I. “Is Potts now to claim sympathy as the victim of a passion that regarded not station, nor class, nor fortune; that despised the cold conventionalities of a selfish world, and asked only a heart for a heart? Is he to be remembered as the faithful believer in his own theory, – Love, above all? Are we to hear of him clasping rapturously to his bosom the poor forlorn girl?” So intensely were my feelings engaged in my speculations, that, at this critical pass, I threw my arms around Catinka’s neck, and kissed her. A rebuke, not very cruel, not in the least angry or peevish, brought me quickly to myself; and as Vaterchen was fortunately in front and saw nothing of what passed, I speedily made my peace. I do not know how it happened, but in that same peace-making I had passed my arm round her waist, and there it remained, – an army of occupation after the treaty was signed, – and we went along, side by side, very amicably, very happily.

We are often told that a small competence – the just enough to live on – is the bane of all enterprise; that men thus placed are removed from the stimulus of necessity, and yet not lifted into the higher atmosphere of ambitions. Exactly in the same way do I believe that equality is the grave of love. The passion thrives on difficulty, and requires sacrifice. You must bid defiance to mankind in your choice, or you are a mere fortune-hunter. Show the world the blushing peasant-girl you have made your wife, and say, “Yes, I have had courage to do this.” Or else strive for a princess, – a Russian princess. Better, far better, however, the humble-hearted child of nature and the fields, the simple, trusting, confiding girl, who, regarding her lover as a sort of demi-god, would, while she clung to him —

“You press me so hard!” murmured Catinka, half rebukingly, but with a sort of pouting expression that became her marvellously.

“I was thinking of something that interested me, dearest,” said I; but I 'm not sure that I made my meaning very clear to her, and yet there was a roguish look in her black eye that puzzled me greatly. I began to like her, or, if you prefer the phrase, to fall in love with her. I knew it – I felt it just the way that a man who has once had the ague never mistakes when he is going to have a return of the fever. In the same way exactly, did I recognize all the premonitory symptoms, – the giddiness, the shivering, increased action of the heart – Halt, Potts! and reflect a bit; are you describing love, or a tertian?

How will the biographer conduct himself here? Whether will he have to say, “Potts resisted manfully this fatal attachment; had he yielded to the seductions of this early passion, it is more than probable we would never have seen him this, that, and t’ other, nor would the world have been enriched with – Heaven knows what;” or shall he record, “Potts loved her, loved her as only such a nature as his ever loves! He felt keenly that, in a mere worldly point of view, he must sacrifice; but it was exactly in that love and that sacrifice was born the poet, the wondrous child of song, who has given us the most glorious lyrics of our language. He had the manliness to share his fortune with this poor girl. * It was,’ he tells us of himself, in one of those little touching passages in his diary, which place him immeasurably above the mock sentimentality of Jean Jacques, – ‘it was on the road to Constance, of a bright and breezy summer morning, that I told her of my love. We were walking along, our arms around each other, as might two happy, guileless children. I was very young in what is called the world, but I had a boundless confidence in myself; my theory was, “If I be strengthened by the deep devotion of one loving heart, I have no fears of failure.”’ Beautiful words, and worthy of all memory! And then he goes on: ‘I drew her gently over to a grassy bench on the roadside, and, taking my purse from my pocket, poured out before her its humble contents, in all something less than twenty sovereigns, but to her eyes a very Pactolus of wealth.’”

“What if I were to try this experiment?” thought I; “what if I were, so to say, to anticipate my own biography?” The notion pleased me much. There was something novel in it, too. It was making the experiment in the carpore vili of accident, to see what might come of it.

“Come here, Catinka,” said I, pointing to a moss-covered rock at the roadside, with a little well at its base, – “come here, and let me have a drink of this nice clear water.”

She assented with a smile and a nod, detaching at the same time a little cup from the flask she wore at her side, in vivandière fashion. “And we ‘ll fill my flask too,” said she, showing that it was empty. With a sort of childish glee she now knelt beside the stream, and washed the cup. What is it, I wonder, that gives the charm to running water, and imparts a sort of glad feeling to its contemplation? Is it that its ceaseless flow suggests that “forever” which contrasts so powerfully with all short-lived pleasures? I cannot tell, but I was still musing over the difficulty, when, having twice offered me the cup without my noticing it, she at last raised it to my lips. And I drank, – oh, what a draught it was! so clear, so cold, so pure; and all the time my eyes were resting on hers, looking, as it were, into another well, the deepest and most unfathomable of all.

“Sit down here beside me on this stone, Catinka, and help me to count these pieces of money; they have got so mingled together that I scarcely know what is left me.” She seemed delighted with the project, and sat down at once; and I, throwing myself at her feet, poured the contents of my purse into her lap.

“Madonna mia!” was all she could utter as she beheld the gold. Aladdin in the cave never felt a more overwhelming rapture than did she at sight of these immense riches. “But where did it come from?” cried she, wildly. “Have you got mines of gold and silver? Have you got gems, too, – rubies and pearls? Oh, say if there be pearls; I love them so? And are you really a great prince, the son of a king; and are you wandering the world this way to seek adventures, or in search, mayhap, of that lovely princess you are in love with?” With wildest impetuosity she asked these and a hundred other questions, for it was only now and then that I could trace her meaning, which expressive pantomime did much to explain.

I tried to convince her that what she deemed a treasure was a mere pittance, which a week or two would exhaust; that I was no prince, nor had I a kingly father; “and last of all,” said I, “I am not in pursuit of a princess. But I ‘ll tell you what I am in search of, Catinka, – one trusting, faithful, loving heart; one that will so unite itself to mine as to have no joys or sorrows or cares but mine; one content to go wherever I go, live however I live, and no matter what my faults may be, or how meanly others think of me, will ever regard me with eyes of love and devotion.”

I had held her hand while I uttered this, gazing up into her eyes with ecstasy, for I saw how their liquid depth appeared to move as though about to overflow, when at last she spoke, and said, —

“And there are no pearls!”

“Poor child!” thought I, “she cannot understand one word I have been saying. Listen to me, Catinka,” said I, with a slow utterance. “Would you give me your heart for all this treasure?”

“Si, si!” cried she, eagerly.

“And love me always, – forever?”

“Si,” said she, again; but I fancied with less of energy than before.

“And when it was spent and gone, and nothing remaining of it, what would you do?”

“Send you to gather more, mio caro,” said she, pressing my hand to her lips, as though in earnest of the blandishments she would bestow upon me.

Now, I cannot affect to say that all this was very reassuring. This poor simple child of the mountains showed a spirit as sordid and as calculating as though she were baptized in May Fair. It was a terrible shock to me to see this; a dire overthrow to a very fine edifice that I was just putting the roof on! “Would Kate Herbert have made me such a speech?” thought I. “Would she have declared herself so venal and so worldly? – and why not? May it not be, perhaps, simply that a mere question of good-breeding, the usages of a polite world, might have made all the difference, and that she would have felt what poor Catinka felt and owned to? If this were true, the advantages were all on the side of sincerity. With honesty as the basis, what may not one build up of character? Where there is candor there are at least no disappointments. This poor simple child, untutored in the wiles of a scheming world, where all is false, unreal, and deceptive, has the courage to say that her heart can be bought. She is ready in her innocence, too, to sell it, just as the Indians sell a great territory for a few glass beads or bright buttons. And why should not I make the acquisition in the very spirit of a new settler? It was I discovered this lone island of the sea; it was I first landed on this unknown shore; why not claim a sovereignty so cheaply established?” I put the question arithmetically before me: Given, a young girl, totally new to life and its seductions, deeply impressed with the value of wealth, to find the measure of venality in a well-brought-up young lady, educated at Clapham, and finished at Boulogne-sur-Mer. I expressed it thus: D-y=T+a?, or an unknown quantity.

“What strange marks are you drawing there?” cried she, as I made these figures on the slate.

“A caprice,” said I, in some confusion.

“No,” said she; “I know better. It was a charm. Tell truth, – it was a charm.”

“A charm, dearest; but for what?”

“I know,” said she, shaking her head and laughing, with a sort of wicked drollery.

“You know! Impossible, child.”

“Yes,” she said with great gravity, while she swept her hand, across the slate and erased all the figures. “Yes I know, and I ‘ll not permit it.”

“But what, in Heaven’s name, is trotting through your head, Catinka? You have not the vaguest idea of what those signs meant.”

“Yes,” she said, even more solemnly than before. “I know it all. You mean to steal away my heart in spite of me, and you are going to do it with a charm.”

“And what success shall I have, Catinka?”

“Oh, do not ask me,” said she, in a tone of touching misery. “I feel it very sore here.” And she pressed her hand to her side. “Ah me,” sighed she, “if there were only pearls!”

The ecstasy her first few words gave me was terribly routed by this vile conclusion, and I started abruptly, and in an angry voice, said, “Let us go on; Vaterchen will fear we are lost.”

“And all this gold; what shall I do with it?” cried she.

“What you will. Throw it into the well if you like,” said I, angrily; for in good sooth I was out of temper with her and myself and all mankind.

“Nay,” said she, mildly, “it is yours; but I will carry it for you if it weary you.”

I might have felt rebuked by the submissive gentleness of her words; indeed, I know not how it was that they did not so move me, and I walked on in front of her, heedless of her entreaties that I should wait till she came up beside me.

When she did join me, she wanted to talk immensely. She had all manner of questions to ask about where my treasure came from; how often I went back there to replenish it; was I quite sure that it could never, never be exhausted, and such-like? But I was in no gracious mood for such inquiries, and, telling her that I wished to follow my own thoughts without interruption, I walked along in silence.

I cannot tell the weight I felt at my heart I am not speaking figuratively. No; it was exactly as though a great mass of heavy metal filled my chest, forced out my ribs, and pressed down my diaphragm; and though I held my hands to my sides with all my force, the pressure still remained.

“What a bitter mockery it is,” thought I, “if the only false thing in all the world should be the human heart! There are diamonds that will resist fire, gold that will stand the crucible; but the moment you come to man and his affections, all is hollow and illusory!”

Why do we give the name worldliness to traits of selfish advancement and sordid gain, when a young creature like this, estranged from all the commerce of mankind, who knows nothing of that bargain-and-barter system which we call civilization, reared and nurtured like a young fawn in her native woods, should, as though by a very instinct of corruption, have a heart as venal as any hackneyed beauty of three London seasons?

Let no man tell me now, that it is our vicious system of female training, our false social organization, our spurious morality, laxity of family ties, and the rest of it. I am firmly persuaded that a young squaw of the Choctaws has as many anxieties about her parti as any belle of Belgravia, even though the settlements be only paid in sharks’ teeth and human toupees.

And what an absurdity is our whole code on this subject! A man is actually expected to court, solicit, and even worship the object that he is after all called upon to pay for. You do not smirk at the salmon in your fishmonger’s window, or ogle the lamb at your butcher’s; you go in boldly and say, “How much the pound?” If you sighed outside for a week, you ‘d get it never the cheaper. Why not then make an honest market of what is so salable? What a saving of time to know that the splendid creature yonder, with the queenly air, can only be had at ten thousand a year, but that the spicy article with the black ringlets will go for two! Instead of all the heart-burnings and blank disappointments we see now, we should have a practical, contented generation; and in the same spirit that a man of moderate fortune turns away from the seductions of turtle and whitebait, while he orders home his mutton chop, he would avert his gaze from beauty, and fix his affections on the dumpy woman that can be “got a bargain.”

Why did not the poet say, Venality, thy name is Woman? It would suit the prosody about as well, and the purpose better. The Turks are our masters in all this; they are centuries – whole centuries in advance of us. How I wish some Babbage would make a calculation of the hours, weeks, years, centuries of time, are lost in what is called love-making! Time, we are told, is money; and here, at once, is the fund to pay off our national debt. Take the “time that’s lost in wooing” by a nation, say of twenty-eight or thirty millions, and at the cheapest rate of labor – take the prison rate if you like – and see if I be not right. Let the population who now heave sighs pound oyster-shells, let those who pick quarrels pick oakum, and we need no income-tax!

“I’ll not sing any more,” broke in Catinka. “I don’t think you have been listening to me.”

“Listening to you!” said I, contemptuously; “certainly not. When I want a siren, I take a pit ticket and go to the opera; seven-and-sixpence is the price of Circe, and dear at the money.” With this rude rebuff I waved her off, and walked along once more alone.

At a sudden bend in the road we found Vaterchen seated under a tree waiting for us, and evidently not a little uneasy at our long absence.

“What is this?” said he, angrily, to Catinka. “Why have you remained so long behind?”

“We sat down to rest at a well,” said she, “and then he took out a great bag of money to count, and there was so much in it, so many pieces of bright gold, that one could not help turning them over and over, and gazing at them.”

“And worshipping them too, girl!” cried he, indignantly, while he turned on me a look of sorrow and reproach. I returned his stare haughtily, and he arose and drew me to one side.

“Am I, then, once more mistaken in my judgment of men? Have you, too, duped me?” said he, in a voice that shook with agitation. “Was it for this you offered us the solace of your companionship? Was it for this you condescended to journey with us, and deigned to be our host and entertainer?”

The appeal came at an evil moment: a vile, contemptible scepticism was at work within me. The rasp and file of doubt were eating away at my heart, and I deemed “all men liars.”

“And is it to me – Potts – you address such words as these, you consummate old humbug? What is there about me that denotes dupe or fool?”

The old man shook his head, and made a gesture to imply he had not understood me; and now I remembered that I had uttered this rude speech in English, and not in German. With the memory of this fact came also the consciousness of its cruel meaning. What if I should have wronged him? What if the poor old fellow be honest and upright? What if he be really striving to keep this girl in the path of virtue? I came close to him, and fixed my eyes steadfastly on his face. He looked at me fearlessly, as an honest man might look. He never tried to turn away, nor did he make the slightest effort to evade me. He seemed to understand all the import of my scrutiny, for he said, at last, —

“Well, are you satisfied?”

“I am, Vaterchen,” said I, “fully satisfied. Let us be friends.” And I took his hand and shook it heartily.

“You think me honest?” asked he.

“I do think so.”

“And I am not more honest than she is. No,” said he, resolutely, “Tintefleck is true-hearted.”

“What of me?” cried she, coming up and leaning her arm on the old man’s shoulder, – “what of me?”

“I have said that you are honest, and would not deceive!”

“Not you, Vaterchen, – not you,” said she, kissing him. And then, as she turned away, she gave me a look so full of meaning, and so strange, withal, that if I were to speak for an hour I could not explain it. It seemed to mean sorrow and reproach and wounded pride, with a dash of pity, and above all and everything, defiance; ay, that was its chief character, and I believe I winced under it.

“Let us step out briskly,” said Vaterchen. “Constance is a good eleven miles off yet.”

“He looks tired already,” said she, with a glance at me.

“I? I’m as fresh as when I started,” said I. And I made an effort to appear brisk and lively, which only ended in making them laugh heartily.