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CHAPTER XIII. A NEXT MORNING

I could not awake on the day after the fête, I was conscious that Nixon was making a considerable noise, – that he shut and opened doors and windows, splashed the water into my bath, and threw down my boots with an unwonted energy; but through all this consciousness of disturbance I slept on, and was determined to sleep, let him make what uproar he pleased.

“It ‘s nigh two o’clock, sir!” whispered he in my ear, and I replied by a snort.

“I ‘m very sorry to be troublesome, sir; but the master is very impatient: he was getting angry when I went in last time.”

These words served to dispel my drowsiness at once, and the mere thought of my father’s displeasure acted on me like a strong stimulant.

“Does papa want me?” cried I, sitting up in bed; “did you say papa wanted me?”

“Yes, sir,” said a deep voice; and my father entered the room, dressed for the street, and with his hat on.

“You may leave us,” said he to Nixon; and as the man withdrew, my father took a chair and sat down close to my bedside.

“I have sent three messages to you this morning,” said he, gravely, “and am forced at last to come myself.”

I was beginning my apologies, when he stopped me, and said, “That will do; I have no wish to be told why you overslept yourself; indeed, I have already heard more on that score than I care for.”

He paused, and though perhaps he expected me to say something, I was too much terrified to speak.

“I perceive.” said he, “you understand me; you apprehend that I know of your doings of last night, and that any attempt at excuse is hopeless. I have not come here to reproach you for your misconduct; I reproach myself for a mistaken estimate of you; I ought to have known – and if you had been a horse I would have known – that your crossbreeding would tell on you. The bad drop was sure to betray itself. I will not dwell on this, nor have I time. Your conduct last night makes my continued residence here impossible. I cannot continue in a city where my tradespeople have become my guests, and where the honors of my house have been extended to my tailor and my butcher. I shall leave this, therefore, as soon as I can conclude my arrangements to sell this place: you must quit it at once. Eccles will be ready to start with you this evening for the Rhine, and then for the interior of Germany, – I suspect Weimar will do. He will be paymaster, and you will conform to his wishes strictly as regards expense. Whether you study or not, whether you employ your time profitably and creditably, or whether you pass it in indolence, is a matter that completely regards yourself. As for me, my conscience is acquitted when I provide you with the means of acquirement, and I no more engage you to benefit by these advantages than I do to see you eat the food that is placed before you. The compact that unites us enjoins distinct duties from each. You need not write to me till I desire you to do so; and when I think it proper we should meet, I will tell you.”

If, while he spoke these harsh words to me, the slightest touch of feeling – had one trace of even sorrow crossed his face, my whole heart would have melted at once, and I would have thrown myself at his feet for forgiveness. There was, however, a something so pitiless in his tone, and a look so full of scorn in his steadfast eye, that every sentiment of pride within me – that same pride I inherited from himself – stimulated me to answer him, and I said boldly: “If the people I saw here last night were not as well born as your habitual guests, sir, I ‘ll venture to say there was nothing in their manner or deportment to be ashamed of.”

“I am told that Mademoiselle Pauline Delorme was charming,” said he; and the sarcasm of his glance covered me with shame and confusion. He had no need to say more: I could not utter a word.

“This is a topic I will not discuss with you, sir,” said he, after a pause. “I intended you to be a gentleman, and to live with gentlemen. Your tastes incline differently, and I make no opposition to them. As I have told you already, I was willing to launch you into life; I ‘ll not engage to be your pilot. Any interest I take or could take in you must be the result of your own qualities. These have not impressed me strongly up to this; and were I to judge by what I have seen, I should send you back to those you came from.”

“Do so, then, if it will only give me back the nature I brought away with me!” cried I, passionately; and my throat swelled till I felt almost choked with emotion.

“That nature,” said he, with a sneer on the word, “was costumed, if I remember right, in a linen blouse and a pair of patched shoes; and I believe they have been preserved along with some other family relics.”

I bethought me at once of the tower and its humble furniture, and a sense of terror overcame me, that I was in presence of one who could cherish hate with such persistence.

“The fumes of your last night’s debauch are some excuse for your bad manners, sir,” said he, rising. “I leave you to sleep them off; only remember that the train starts at eight this evening, and it is my desire you do not miss it.”

With this he left me. I arose at once and began to dress. It was a slow proceeding, for I would often stop, and sit down to think what course would best befit me to take at this moment. At one instant it seemed to me I ought to follow him, and declare that the splendid slavery in which I lived had no charm for me, – that the faintest glimmering of self-respect and independence was more my ambition than all the luxuries that surrounded me; and when I had resolved I would do this, a sudden dread of his presence, – his eye that I could never face without shrinking, – the tones of his voice that smote me like a lash, – so abashed me that I gave up the effort with despair.

Might he not consent to give me some pittance – enough to save her from the burden of my support – and send me back to my mother? Oh, if I could summon courage to ask this! This assistance need be continued only for a few years, for I hoped and believed I should not always have to live as a dependant What if I were to write him a few lines to this purport? I could do this even better than speak it.

I sat down at once and began: —

“Dear papa,” – he would never permit me to use a more endearing word. “Dear papa, I hope you will forgive me troubling you about myself and my future. I would like to fit myself for some career or calling by which I might become independent. I could work very hard and study very closely if I were back with my mother.”

As I reached this far, the door opened, and Eccles appeared.

“All right!” cried he; “I was afraid I should catch you in bed still, and I ‘m glad you ‘re up and preparing for the road. Are you nearly ready?”

“Not quite; I wanted to write a letter before I go. I was just at it.”

“Write from Verviers or Bonn; you’ll have lots of time on the road.”

“Ay, but my letter might save me from the journey if I sent it off now.”

He looked amazed at this, and I at once told him my plan and showed him what I had written.

“You don’t mean to say you ‘d have courage to send this to your father?”

“And why not?”

“Well, all I have to say is, don’t do it till I ‘m off the premises; for I ‘d not be here when he reads it for a trifle. My dear Digby,” said he, with a changed tone, “you don’t know Sir Roger; you don’t know the violence of his temper if he imagines himself what he calls outraged, which sometimes means questioned. Take your hat and stick, and go seek your fortune, in Heaven’s name, if you must; but don’t set out on your life’s journey with a curse or a kick, or possibly both. If I preach patience, my dear boy, I have had to practise it too. Put up your traps in your portmanteau; come down and take some dinner: we ‘ll start with the night-train; and take my word for it, we ‘ll have a jolly ramble and enjoy ourselves heartily. If I know anything of life, it is that there’s no such mistake in the world as hunting up annoyances. Let them find us if they can, but let us never run after them.”

“My heart is too heavy for such enjoyment as you talk of.”

“It won’t be so to-morrow, or, at all events, the day after. Come, stir yourself now with your packing; a thought has just struck me that you ‘ll be very grateful to me for, when I tell it you.”

“What is it?” asked I, half carelessly.

“You must ask with another guess-look in your eye if you expect me to tell you.”

“You could tell me nothing that would gladden me.”

“Nor propose anything that you’d like?” asked he.

“Nor that, either,” said I, despondingly.

“Oh, if that be the case, I give up my project; not that it was much of a project, after all. What I was going to suggest was that instead of dining here we should put our traps into a cab, and drive down to Delorme’s and have a pleasant little dinner there, in the garden; it’s quite close to the railroad, so that we could start at the last whistle.”

“That does sound pleasantly,” said I; “there’s nothing more irksome in its way than hanging about a station waiting for departure.”

“So, then, you agree?” cried he, with a malicious twinkle in his eye that I affected not to understand.

“Yes,” said I, indolently; “I see little against it; and if nothing else, it saves me a leave-taking with Captain Hotham and Cleremont.”

“By the way, you are not to ask to see Madame; your father reminded me to tell you this. The doctors say she is not to be disturbed on any account. What a chance that I did not forget this!”

Whether it was that I was too much concerned for my own misfortunes to have a thought that was not selfish, or that another leave-taking that loomed in the distance was uppermost in my thoughts, certain it is, I felt this privation far less acutely than I might.

“She’s a nice little woman, and deserves a better lot than she has met with.”

“What sort of dinner will Delorme give us?” said I, affecting the air of a man about town, but in reality throwing out the bait to lead the talk in that direction.

“First-rate, if we let him; that is, if we only say, ‘Order dinner for us, Monsieur Pierre.’ There’s no man understands such a mandate more thoroughly.”

“Then that’s what I shall say,” cried I, “as I cross his threshold.”

“He’ll serve you Madeira with your soup, and Stein-berger with your fish, thirty francs a bottle, each of them.”

“Be it so. We shall drink to our pleasant journey,” said I; and I actually thought my voice had caught the tone and cadence of my father’s as I spoke.

CHAPTER XIV. A GOOD-BYE

While I strolled into the garden to select a table for our dinner, Eccles went in search of Mr. Delorme; and though he had affected to say that the important duty of devising the feast should be confided to the host, I could plainly see that my respected tutor accepted his share in that high responsibility.

I will only say of the feast in question, that, though I was daily accustomed to the admirable dinners of my father’s table, I had no conception of what exquisite devices in cookery could be produced by the skill of an accomplished restaurateur, left free to his own fancy, and without limitation as to the bill.

One thing alone detracted from the perfect enjoyment of the banquet It was the appearance of Mr. Delorme himself, white-cravated and gloved, carrying in the soup. It was an attention that he usually reserved for great personages, royalties, or high dignitaries of the court; and I was shocked that he should have selected me for the honor, not the less as it was only a few hours before he and I had been drinking champagne with much clinking of glasses together, and interchanging the most affectionate vows of eternal friendship.

I arose from my chair to salute him; but, as he deposited the tureen upon the table, he stepped back and bowed low, and retreated in this fashion, with the same humble reverence at every step, till he was lost in the distance.

“Sit down,” said Eccles, with a peculiar look, as though to warn me that I was forgetting my dignity; and then, to divert my attention, he added, “That green seal is an attention Delorme offers you, – a very rare favor, too, – a bottle of his own peculiar Johannisberg. Let us drink his health. Now, Digby, I call this something very nigh perfection.”

It was a theme my tutor understood thoroughly, and there was not a dish nor a wine that he did not criticise.

“I was always begging your father to take this cook, Digby,” said he, with half sigh. “Even with a first-rate artist you need change, otherwise your dinners become manneristic, as ours have become of late.”

He then went on to show me that the domestic cook, always appealing to the small public of the family, gets narrowed in his views and bounded in his resources. He compared them, I remember, to the writers in certain religious newspapers, who must always go on spicing higher and higher as the palates of their clients grow more jaded. How he worked out his theme afterwards I cannot tell, for I was watching the windows of the house, and stealing glances down the alleys in the garden, longing for one look, ever so fleeting, of my lovely partner of the night before.

“I see, young gentleman,” said he, evidently nettled at my inattention, “your thoughts are not with me.”

“How long have we to stay, sir?” said I, reverting to the respect I tendered him at my lessons.

“You have thirty-eight minutes,” said he, examining his watch: “which I purpose to apportion in this wise, – eight for the douceur, five for the cheese, fifteen for the dessert, five for coffee and a glass of curaçoa. The bill and our parting compliments will take the rest, giving us three minutes to walk across to the station.”

These sort of pedantries were a passion with him, and I did not interpose a word as he spoke.

“What a pineapple!” cried a young fellow from an adjoining table, as a waiter deposited a magnificent pine in the midst of the bouquet that adorned our table.

“Monsieur Delorme begs to say, sir, this has just arrived from Laeken.”

“Don’t you know who that is?” said a companion, in a low voice; but my hearing, ever acute, caught the words, “He’s that boy of Norcott’s.” I started as if I had received a blow. It was time to resent these insolences, and make an end of them forever.

“You heard what that man yonder has called me?” said I to Eccles.

“No; I was not minding him.”

“The old impertinence, – ‘That boy of Norcott’s.’”

I arose, and took the cane I had laid against a chair. What I was about to do I knew not. I felt I should launch some insolent provocation. As for what should follow, the event might decide that.

“I’d not mind him, Digby,” said Eccles, carelessly, as he lit his cigarette, and stretched his legs on a vacant chair. I took no notice of his words, but walked on. Before, however, I had made three steps my eyes caught the flutter of a dress at the end of the alley. It was merely the last folds of some floating muslin, but it was enough to rout all other thoughts from my head, and I flew down the walk with lightning speed. I was right; it was Pauline. In an instant I was beside her.

“Dearest, darling Pauline,” I cried, seizing her round the waist and kissing her cheek, before she well knew, “how happy it makes me to see you even for a few seconds.”

“Ah, milord, I did not expect to see you here,” said she, half distantly.

“I am not milord; I am your own Digby – Digby Nor-cott, who loves you, and will make you his wife.”

“Ma foi! children don’t marry, – at least demoiselles don’t marry them,” said she, with a saucy laugh.

“I am no more an ‘enfant,’” said I, with a passionate stress on the word, “than I was last night, when you never left my arm except to sit at my side at supper.”

“But you are going away,” said she, pouting; “else why that travelling-dress, and that sack strapped at your side?”

“Only for a few weeks. A short tour up the Rhine, Pauline, to see the world, and complete my education; and then I will come back and marry you, and you shall be mistress of a beautiful house, and have everything you can think of.”

“Vrai?” asked she, with a little laugh.

“I swear it by this kiss.”

“Pardie, Monsieur? you are very adventurous,” said she, repulsing me; “you will make me not regret that you are going so soon.”

“Oh, Pauline! when you know that I adore you, that I only value wealth to share it with you; that all I ask of life is to devote it to you.”

“And that you have n’t got full thirty seconds left for that admirable object,” broke in Eccles. “We must run for it like fury, boy, or we shall be late.”

“I’ll not go.”

“Then I ‘ll be shot if I stay here and meet your father,” said he, turning away.

“Oh, Pauline, dearest, dearest of my heart!” I sobbed out, as I fell upon her neck; and the vile bell of the railway rang out with its infernal discord as I clasped her to my heart.

“Come along, and confound you,” cried Eccles; and with a porter on one side and Eccles on the other, I was hurried along down the garden, across a road, and along a platform, where the station-master, wild with passion, stamped and swore in a very different mood from that in which he smiled at me across the supper-table the night before.

“We’re waiting for that boy of Norcott’s, I vow,” said an old fellow with a gray moustache; and I marked him out for future recognition.

Unlike my first journey, where all seemed confusion, trouble, and annoyance, I now saw only pleasant faces, and people bent on enjoyment. We were on the great tourist road of Europe, and it seemed as though every one was bound on some errand of amusement. Eccles, too, was a pleasant contrast to the courier who took charge of me on my first journey. Nothing could be more genial than his manner. He treated me with a perfect equality, and by that greatest of all flatteries to one of my age, induced me to believe that I was actually companionable to himself.

I will not pretend that he was an instructive companion.

He had neither knowledge of history nor feeling for art, and rather amused himself with sneering at both, and quizzing such of our fellow-travellers as the practice was safe with. But he was always gay, always in excellent spirits, ready to make light of the passing annoyances of the road, and, as he said himself, he always carried a quart-bottle of condensed sunshine with him against a rainy day; and, of my own knowledge, I can say his supply seemed inexhaustible.

His cheery manner, his bright good looks, and his invariable good-humor won upon every one, and the sourest and least genial people thawed into some show of warmth under his contagious pleasantry.

He did not care in what direction we went, and would have left it entirely to me to decide, had I been able to determine. All he stipulated for was: “No barbarism, no Oberland or glacier humbug. No Saxon Switzerland abominations. So long as we travel in a crowd, and meet good cookery every day, you ‘ll find me charming.”

Into this philosophy he inducted me. “Make life pleasant, Digby; never go in search of annoyances. Duns and disagreeables will come of themselves, and it’s no bad fun dodging them. It’s only a fool ever keeps their company.”

A more shameless immorality might have revolted me, but this peddling sort of wickedness, this half-jesting with right and wrong, – giving to morals the aspect of a game in which a certain kind of address was practicable, – was very seductive to one of my age and temper. I fancied, too, that I was becoming a consummate man of the world, and his praises of my proficiency were unsparingly bestowed.

Attaching ourselves to this or that party of travellers, we would go off here or there, in any direction, for four or five days; and though I usually found myself growing fond of those I became more intimate with, and sorry to part from them, Eccles invariably wearied of the pleasant-est people after a day or two. Incessant change seemed essential to him, and his nature and his spirits flagged when denied it.

What I least liked about him, however, was a habit he had of “trotting” me out – his own name for it – before strangers. My knowledge of languages, my skill at games, my little musical talents, he would parade in a way that I found positively offensive. Nor was this all, for I found he represented me as the son of a man of immense wealth and of a rank commensurate with his fortune.

One must have gone through the ordeal of such a representation to understand its vexations, to know all the impertinences it can evoke from some, all the slavish attentions from others. I feel a hot flush of shame on my cheek now, after long years, as I think of the mortifications I went through, as Eccles would suggest that I should buy some princely chateau that we saw in passing, or some lordly park alongside of which our road was lying.

As to remonstrating with him on this score, or, indeed, on any other, it was utterly hopeless; not to say that it was just as likely he would amuse the first group of travellers we met by a ludicrous version of my attempt to coerce him into good behavior.

One day he pushed my patience beyond all limit, and I grew downright angry with him. I had been indulging in that harmless sort of half-flirtation with a young lady, a fellow-traveller; which, not transgressing the bounds of small attentions, does not even excite remark or rebuke.

“Don’t listen to that young gentleman’s blandishments,” said he, laughing; “for, young as he looks, he is already engaged. Come, come, don’t look as though you’d strike me, Digby, but deny it if you can.”

We were, fortunately for me, coming into a station as he spoke. I sprang out, and travelled third-class the rest of the day to avoid him, and when we met at night, I declared that with one such liberty more I ‘d part company with him forever.

The hearty good-humor with which he assured me I should not be offended again almost made me ashamed of my complaint. We shook hands over our reconciliation, and vowed we were better friends than ever.

What it cost him to abandon this habit of exalting me before strangers, how nearly it touched one of the chief pleasures of his life, I was, as I thought, soon to see in the altered tone of his manner. In fact, it totally destroyed the easy flippancy he used to wield, and a facility with strangers that once seemed like a special gift with him. I tried in vain to rally him out of this half depression; but it was clear he was not a man of many resources, and that I had already sapped a principal one.

While we thus journeyed, he said to me one day, “I find, Digby, our money is running short; we must make for Zurich: it is the nearest of the places on our letter of credit.”

I assented, of course, and we bade adieu to a pleasant family with whom we had been travelling, and who were bound for Dresden, assuring them we should meet them on the Elbe.

Eccles had grown of late more and more serious: not alone had his gayety deserted him, but he grew absent and forgetful to an absurd extent; and it was evident some great preoccupation had hold of him. During the entire of the last day before we reached Zurich he scarcely spoke a word, and as I saw that he had received some letters at Schaffhausen, I attributed his gloom to their tidings. As he had not spoken to me of bad news, I felt ashamed to obtrude myself on his confidence and kept silent, and not a word passed between us as we went. He had telegraphed to the banker, a certain Mr. Heinfetter, to order rooms for us at the hotel; and as we alighted at the door, the gentleman himself was there to meet us.

“Herr Eccles?” said he, eagerly, lifting his hat as we descended; and Eccles moved towards him, and, taking his arm, walked away to some distance, leaving me alone and unnoticed. For several minutes they appeared in closest confab, their heads bent close together, and at last I saw Eccles shake himself free from the other’s arm, and throw up both his hands in the air with a gesture of wild despair. I began to suspect some disaster had befallen our remittances, that they were lost or suppressed, and that Eccles was overwhelmed by the misfortune. I own I could not participate in the full measure of the misery it seemed to cause him, and I lighted a cigar and sat down on a stone bench to wait patiently his return.

“I believe you are right; it is the best way, after all,” said Ecoles, hurriedly. “You say you’ll look after the boy, and I ‘ll start by the ten o’clock train.”

“Yes, I’ll take the boy,” said the other; “but you’ll have to look sharp and lose no time. They will be sequestering the moment they hear of it, and I half suspect old Engler will be before you.”

“But my personal effects? I have things of value.”

“Hush, hush! he ‘ll overhear you. Come, young gentleman,” said he to me, – “come home and sup with me. The hotel is so full, they ‘ve no quarters for you. I ‘ll try if I can’t put you up.”

Eccles stood with his head bent down as we moved away, then lifted his eyes, waved his hand a couple of times, and said, “By-bye.”

“Isn’t he coming with us?” asked I.

“Not just yet: he has some business to detain him,” said the banker; and we moved on.