CHAPTER XXIII. JEALOUSY UNSUPPORTED BY COURAGE
We arrived at a small inn on the bordera of the Titi-see at nightfall; and though the rain continued to come down unceasingly, and huge masses of cloud hung half-way down the mountain, I could see that the spot was highly picturesque and romantic. Before I could descend from my lofty eminence, so strapped and buttoned and buckled up was I, the ladies had time to get out and reach their rooms. When I asked to be shown mine, the landlord, in a very free-and-easy tone, told me that there was nothing for me but a double-bedded room, which I must share with another traveller. I scouted this proposition at once with a degree of force, and, indeed, of violence, that I fancied must prove irresistible; but the stupid German, armed with native impassiveness, simply said, “Take it or leave it, it's nothing to me,” and left me to look after his business. I stormed and fumed. I asked the chambermaid if she knew who I was, and sent for the Hausknecht to tell him that all Europe should ring with this indignity. I more than hinted that the landlord had sealed his own doom, and that his miserable cabaret had seen its last days of prosperity.
I asked next, where was the Jew pedler? I felt certain he was a fellow with pencil-cases and pipe-beads, who owned the other half of the territory. Could he not be bought up? He would surely sleep in the cow-house, if it were too wet to go up a tree!
François came to inform me that he was out fishing; that he fished all day, and only came home after dark; his man had told him so much.
“His man? Why, has he a servant?” asked I.
“He's not exactly like a servant, sir; but a sort of peasant with a green jacket and a tall hat and leather gaiters, like a Tyrolese.”
“Strolling actors, I 'll be sworn,” mattered I; “fellows taking a week's holiday on their way to a new engagement How long have they been here?”
“Came on Monday last in the diligence, and are to remain till the twentieth; two florins a day they give for everything.”
“What nation are they?”
“Germans, sir, regular Germans; never a pipe ont of their mouths, master and man. I learned all this from his servant, for they have put up a bed for me in his room.”
A sudden thought now struck me: “Why should not François give up his bed to this stranger, and occupy the one in my room?” This arrangement would suit me better, and it ought to be all the same to Hamlet or Groetz, or whatever he was. “Just lounge about the door, François,” said I, “till he comes back; and when you see him, open the thing to him, civilly, of course; and if a crown piece, or even two, will help the negotiation, slip it slyly into his hand. You understand?”
François winked like a man who had corrupted customhouse officers in his time, and even bribed bigger functionaries at a pinch.
“If he's in trade, you know, François, just hint that if he sends in his pack in the course of the evening, the ladies might possibly take a fancy to something.”
Another wink.
“And throw out—vaguely, of course, very vaguely—that we are swells, but in strict incog.”
A great scoundrel was François; he was a Swiss, and could cheat any one, and, like a regular rogue, never happier than when you gave him a mission of deceit or duplicity. In a word, when I gave him his instructions, I regarded the negotiation as though it were completed, and now addressed myself to the task of looking after our supper, which, with national obstinacy, the landlord declared could not be ready before nine o'clock. As usual, Mrs. Keats had gone to bed immediately on arriving; but when sending me a “good-night” by her maid, she added, “that whenever supper was served, Miss Herbert would come down.”
We had no sitting-room save the common room of the inn, a long, low-ceilinged, dreary chamber, with a huge green-tile stove in one corner, and down the centre a great oak table, which might have served about forty guests. At one end of this three covers were laid for us, the napkins enclosed in bone circlets, and the salt in great leaden receptacles, like big ink-bottles; a very ancient brass lamp giving its dim radiance over all. It was wearisome to sit down on the straight-backed wooden chairs, and not less irksome to walk on the gritty, sanded floor, and so I lounged in one of the windows, and watched the rain. As I looked, I saw the figure of a man with a fishing-basket and rod on his shoulder approaching the house. I guessed at once it was our stranger, and, opening the window a few inches, I listened to hear the dialogue between him and François. The window was enclosed in the same porch as the door, so that I could hear a good deal of what passed. François accosted him familiarly, questioned him as to his sport, and the size of the fish he had taken. I could not hear the reply, but I remarked that the stranger emptied his basket, and was despatching the contents in different directions: some were for the curé, and some for the postmaster, some for the brigadier of the gendarmerie, and one large trout for the miller's daughter.
“A good-looking wench, I'll be sworn,” said François, as he heard the message delivered.
Again the stranger said something, and I thought, from the tone, angrily, and François responded; and then I saw them walk apart for a few seconds, during which François seemed to have all the talk to himself,—a good omen, as it appeared to me, of success, and a sure warranty that the treaty was signed. Francois, however, did not come to report progress, and so I closed the window and sat down.
“So you have got company to-night, Master Ludwig,” said the stranger, as he entered, followed by the host, who speedily seemed to whisper that one of the arrivals was then before him. The stranger bowed stiffly but courteously to me, which I returned not less haughtily; and I now saw that he was a man about thirty-five, but much freckled, with a light-brown beard and moustache. On the whole, a good-looking fellow, with a very upright carriage, and something of a cavalry soldier in the swing of his gait.
“Would you like it at once, Herr Graf?” said the host, obsequiously.
“Oh, he 's a count, is he?” said I, with a sneer to myself. “These countships go a short way with me.”
“You had better consult your other guests; I am ready when they are,” said the stranger.
Now, though the speech was polite and even considerate, I lost sight of the courtesy in thinking that it implied we were about to sup in common, and that the third cover was meant for him.
“I say, landlord,” said I, “you don't intend to tell me that you have no private sitting-room, but that ladies of condition must needs come down and sup here with”—I was going to say, “Heaven knows who;” but I halted, and said—“with the general company.”
“That, or nothing!” was the sturdy response. “The guests in this house eat here, or don't eat at all; eh, Herr Graf?”
“Well, so far as my experience goes, I can corroborate you,” said the stranger, laughing; “though, you may remember, I have often counselled you to make some change.”
“That you have; but I don't want to be better than my father and my grandfather; and the Archduke Charles stopped here in their time, and never quarrelled with his treatment.”
I told the landlord to apprise the young lady whenever supper was ready, and I walked to a distant part of the room and sat down.
In about two minutes after, Miss Herbert appeared, and the supper was served at once. I had not met her since the incident of the bracelet, and I was shocked to see how cold she was in her manner, and how resolute in repelling the most harmless familiarity towards her.
I wanted to explain to her that it was through no fault of mine we were to have the company of that odious stranger, that it was one of the disagreeables of these wayside hostels, and to be borne with patience, and that though he was a stage-player, or a sergeant of dragoons, he was reasonably well-bred and quiet I did contrive to mumble out some of this explanation; but, instead of attending to it, I saw her eyes following the stranger, who had just draped a large riding-cloak over a clothes-horse behind her chair, to serve as a screen. Thanks are all very well, but I 'm by no means certain that gratitude requires such a sweet glance as that, not to mention that I saw the expression in her eyes for the first time.
I thought the soup would choke me. I almost hoped it might. Othello was a mild case of jealousy compared to me, and I felt that strangling would not half glut my vengeance. And how they talked!—he complimenting her on her accent, and she telling him how her first governess was a Hanoverian from Celle, where they are all such purists. There was nothing they did not discuss in those detestable gutturals, and as glibly as if it bad been a language meet for human lips. I could not eat a mouthful, but I drank and watched them. The fellow was not long in betraying himself: he was soon deep in the drama. He knew every play of Schiller by heart, and quoted the Wallenstein, the Bobbers, Don Carlos, and Maria Stuart at will; so, too, was he familiar with Goethe and Leasing. He had all the swinging intonation of the boards, and declaimed so very professionally that, as he concluded a passage, I cried out, without knowing it,—
“Take that for your benefit,—it's the best you have given yet.”
Oh, Lord, how they laughed! She covered up her face and smothered it; but he lay back, and, holding the table with both hands, he positively shouted and screamed aloud. I would have given ten years of life for the courage to have thrown my glass of wine in his face; but it was no use. Nature had been a niggard to me in that quarter, and I had to sit and hear it,—exactly so, sit and hear it,—while they made twenty attempts to recover their gravity and behave like ladies and gentlemen, and when, no sooner would they look towards me, than off they were again as bad as before.
I revolved a dozen cutting sarcasms, all beginning with, “Whenever I feel assured that you have sufficiently regained the customary calm of good society;” but the dessert was served ere I could complete the sentence, and now they were deep in the lyric poets, Uhland, and Körner, and Freiligrath, and the rest of them. As I listened to their enthusiasm, I wondered why people never went into raptures over a cold in the head. But it was not to end here: there was an old harpsichord in the room, and this he opened and set to work on in that fearful two-handed fashion your German alone understands. The poor old crippled instrument shook on its three legs, while the fourth fell clean off, and the loose wires jangled and jarred like knives in a tray; but he only sang the louder, and her ecstasies grew all the greater too.
Heaven reward you, dear old Mrs. Keats, when you sent word down that you could n't sleep a wink, and begging them to “send that noisy band something and let them go away;” and then Miss Herbert wished him a sweet goodnight, and he accompanied her to the door, and then there was more good-night, and I believe I had a short fit; but when I came to myself, he was sitting smoking his cigar opposite me.
“You are no relative, no connection of the young lady who has just left the room?” said he to me with a grave manner, so significant of something under it that I replied hastily, “None,—none whatever.”
“Was that servant who spoke to me in the porch, as I came in this evening, yours?”
“Yes.” This I said more boldly, as I suspected he was coming to the question François had opened.
“He mentioned to me,” said he, slowly, and puffing his cigar at easy intervals, “that you desire your servant should sleep in the same room with you. I am always happy to meet the wishes of courteous fellow-travellers, and so I have ordered my servant to give you his bed; he will sleep upstairs in what was intended for you. Good-night.” And with an insolent nod he lounged out of the room and left me.