CHAPTER XXV. I MAINTAIN A DIGNIFIED RESERVE.
I was so hurt by the last words of Miss Herbert to me, that I maintained throughout the entire day what I meant to be a “dignified reserve,” but what I half suspect bore stronger resemblance to a deep sulk. My station had its privileges, and I resolved to take the benefit of them. I dined alone. Yes, on that day I did fall back upon the eminence of my condition, and proudly intimated that I desired solitude. I was delighted to see the dismay this declaration caused. Old Mrs. Keats was speechless with terror. I was looking at her through a chink in the door when Miss Herbert gave my message, and I thought she would have fainted.
“What were his precise words? Give them to me exactly as he uttered them,” said she, tremulously, “for there are persons whose intimations are half commands.”
“I can scarcely repeat them, madam,” said the other, “but their purport was, that we were not to expect him at dinner, that he had ordered it to be served in his own room and at his own hour.”
“And this is very probably all your doing,” said the old lady, with indignation. “Unaccustomed to any levity of behavior, brought up in a rank where familiarities are never practised, he has been shocked by your conduct with that stranger. Yes, Miss Herbert, I say shocked, because, however harmless in intention, such freedoms are utterly unknown in—in certain circles.”
“I am sure, madam,” replied she, with a certain amount of spirit, “that you are laboring under a very grave misapprehension. There was no familiarity, no freedom. We talked as I imagine people usually talk when they sit at the same table. Mr.—I scarcely know his name—”
“Nor is it necessary,” said the old woman, tartly; “though, if you had, probably this unfortunate incident might not have occurred. Sit down there, however, and write a few lines in my name, hoping that his indisposition may be very slight, and begging to know if he desire to remain here to-morrow and take some repose.”
I waited till I saw Miss Herbert open her writing-desk, and then I hastened off to my room to reflect over my answer to her note. Now that the suggestion was made to me, I was pleased with the notion of passing an entire day where we were. The place was Schaffhausen,—the famous fall of the Rhine,—not very much as a cataract, but picturesque withal; pleasant chestnut woods to ramble about, and a nice old inn in a wild old wilderness of a garden that sloped down to the very river.
Strange perversity is it not; but how naturally one likes everything to have some feature or other out of keeping with its intrinsic purport! An inn like an old chateau, a chief-justice that could ride a steeple-chase, a bishop that sings Moore's melodies, have an immense attraction for me. They seem all, as it were, to say, “Don't fancy life is a mere four-roomed house with a door in the middle. Don't imagine that all is humdrum and routine and regular. Notwithstanding his wig and stern black eyebrows, there is a touch of romance in that old Chancellor's heart that you could n't beat out of it with his great mace; and his Grace the Primate there has not forgotten what made the poetry of his life in days before he ever dreamed of charges or triennial visitations.”
By these reflections I mean to convey that I am very fond of an inn that does not look like an inn, but resembles a faded old country-house, or a deserted convent, or a disabled mill. This Schaffhausen Gasthaus looked like all three. It was the sort of place one might come to in a long vacation, to live simply and to go early to bed, take monotony as a tonic, and fancying unbroken quiet to be better than quinine.
“Ah!” thought I, “if it had not been for that confounded German, what a paradise might not this have been to me! Down there in that garden, with the din of the waterfall around us, walking under the old cherry-trees, brushing our way through tangled sweetbriers, and arbutus, and laburnum, what delicious nonsense might I not have poured into her ear! Ay! and not unwillingly had she heard it. That something within that never deceives, that little crimson heart within the rose of conscience, tells me that she liked me, that she was attracted by what, if it were not for shame, I would call the irresistible attractions of my nature; and now this creature of braten and beetroot has spoiled all, jarred the instrument and unstrung the chords that might have yielded me such sweet music.”
In thinking over the inadequacy of all human institutions, I have often been struck by the fact that while the law gives the weak man a certain measure of protection against the superior physical strength of the powerful ruffian in the street, it affords none against the assaults of the intellectual bully at a dinner-party. He may maltreat you at his pleasure, batter you with his arguments, kick you with inferences, and knock you down with conclusions, and no help for it all!
“Ah, here comes François with the note.” I wrote one line in pencil for answer: “am sensibly touched by your consideration, and will pass to-morrow here.” I signed this with a P., which might mean Prince, Potts, or Pottinger. My reply despatched, I began to think how I could improve the opportunity. “I will bring her to book,” thought I; “I will have an explanation.” I always loved that sort of thing,—there is an almost certainty of emotion; now emotion begets tears; tears, tenderness; tenderness, consolation; and when you reach consolation, you are, so to say, a tenant in possession; your title may be disputable, your lease invalid, still you are there, on the property, and it will take time at least to turn you out. “After all,” thought I, “that rude German has but troubled the water for a moment, the pure well of her affections will by this time have regained its calm still surface, and I shall see my image there as before.”
My meditations were interrupted, perhaps not unpleasantly. It was the waiter with my dinner. I am not unsocial—I am eminently the reverse—I may say, like most men who feel themselves conversationally gifted, I like company, I see that my gifts have in such gatherings their natural ascendancy,—and yet, with all this, I have always felt that to dine splendidly, all alone, was a very grand thing. Mind, I don't say it is pleasant or jolly or social, but simply that it is grand to see all that table equipage of crystal and silver spread out for you alone; to know that the business of that gorgeous candelabrum is to light you; that the two decorous men in black—archdeacons they might be, from the quiet dignity of their manners—are there to wait upon you; that the whole sacrifice, from the caviare to the cheese, was a hecatomb to your greatness. I repeat, these are all grand and imposing considerations, and there have been times when I have enjoyed these Lucullus cum Lucullo festivals more than convivial assemblages. This day was one of these: I lingered over my dinner in delightful dalliance. I partook of nearly every dish, but, with a supreme refinement, ate little of any, as though to imply, “I am accustomed to a very different cuisine from this; it is not thus that I fare habitually.” And yet I was blandly forgiving, accepting even such humble efforts to please as if they had been successes. The Cliquot was good, and I drank no other wine, though various flasks with tempting titles stood around me.
Dinner over and coffee served, I asked the waiter what resources the place possessed in the way of amusement. He looked blank and even distressed at my question: he had all his life imagined that the Falls sufficed for everything; he had seen the tide of travel halt there to view them for years. Since he was a boy, he had never ceased to witness the yearly recurring round of tourists who came to see, and sketch, and scribble about them, and so he faintly muttered out a remonstrance,—
“Monsieur has not yet visited the Falls.”
“The Falls! why, I see them from this, and if I open the window I am stunned with their uproar.”
I was really sorry at the pain my hasty speech gave him, for he looked suddenly faint and ill, and after a moment gasped out,—
“But monsieur is surely not going away without a visit to the cataract? The guide-books give two hours as the very shortest time to see it effectually.”
“I only gave ten minutes to Niagara, my good friend,” said I, “and would not have spared even that, but that I wanted to hold a sprained ankle under the fall.”
He staggered, and had to hold a chair to support himself.
“There is, besides, the Laufen Schloss—”
“As to castles,” broke I in, “I have no need to leave my own to see all that mediaeval architecture can boast. No, no,” sighed I out, “if I am to have new sensations, they must come through some other channel than sight. Have you no theatre?”
“No, sir. None.”
“No concert-rooms, no music-garden?”
“None, sir.”
“Not even a circus?” said I, peevishly.
“There was, sir, but it was not attended. The strangers all come to see the Falls.”
“Confound the Falls! And what became of the circus?”
“Well, they made a bad business of it; got into debt on all sides, for oil, and forage, and printing placards, and so on, and then they beat a sudden retreat one night, and slipped off, all but two, and, indeed, they were about the best of the company; but somehow they lost their way in the forest, and instead of coming up with their companions, found themselves at daybreak at the outside of the town.”
“And these two unlucky ones, what were they?”
“One was the chief clown, sir, a German, and the other was a little girl, a Moor they call her; but the cleverest creature to ride or throw somersaults through hoops of the whole of them.”
“And how do they live now?”
“Very hardly, I believe, sir; and but for Tintefleck,—that's what they call her,—they might starve; but she goes about with her guitar through the cafés of an evening, and as she has a sweet voice, she picks up a few batzen. But the maire, I hear, won't permit this any longer, and says that as they have no passport or papers of any kind, they must be sent over the frontier as vagabonds.”
“Let that maire be brought before me,” said I, with a haughty indignation. “Let me tell him in a few brief words what I think of his heartless cruelty—But no, I was forgetting,—I am here incog. Be careful, my good man, that you do not mention what I have so inadvertently dropped; remember that I am nobody here; I am Number Five and nothing more. Send the unfortunate creatures, however, here, and let me interrogate them. They can be easily found, I suppose?”
“In a moment, sir. They were in the Platz just when I served the pheasant.”
“What name does the man bear?”
“I never heard a name for him. Amongst the company he was called Vaterchen, as he was the oldest of them all; and, indeed, they seemed all very fond of him.”
“Let Vaterchen and Tintefleck, then, come hither. And bring fresh glasses, waiter.”
And I spoke as might an Eastern despot giving his orders for a “nautch;” and then, waving my hand, motioned the messenger away.