Tales from "Blackwood," Volume 6

by Various

The first days of October found me still at Coblenz, lingering amongst the valleys and vineyards, and loth to exchange them for the autumnal fogs and emptiness of London. Thither, however, I was compelled to return; and I endeavoured to console myself for the necessity by discovering that the green Rhine grew brown, the trees scant of leaves, the evenings long and chilly. I had heard nothing of Van Haubitz, and had ceased to think of him, when, walking out at dusk on the eve of the day fixed for my departure, I suddenly encountered him. He had just arrived by a steamboat coming up stream; his wife and mother-in-law were with him, and they were about to enter a fifth-rate inn, which, two months previously, he would have felt insulted if solicited to patronise. I was shocked by the change that had taken place in all three of them. In five weeks they had grown five years older. Emilie had lost her freshness, her eye its sparkle; and the melancholy smile with which she welcomed me made my heart ache. Madame Sendel's rotund cheeks had collapsed, she looked cross and jaundiced, and more snuffy than ever. Van Haubitz was thin and haggard, his hair and mustaches, formerly glossy and well-trimmed, were ragged and neglected, his dress, once so smart and carefully arranged, was soiled and slovenly. My imagination supplied a rapid and vivid sketch of the anxieties, and disappointments, and heart-burnings, which, more than any actual bodily privations, had worked so great a change in so short a time. Van Haubitz started on seeing me, and faltered in his pace, as if unwilling to enter the shabby hotel in my presence. The hesitation was momentary. "Worse quarters than we used to meet in," said he, with a bitter smile. "I will not ask you into this dog-hole. Wait an instant, and I will walk with you."

Badly as I thought of Van Haubitz, and indisposed as I was to keep up any acquaintance with him, I had not the heart, seeing him so miserable and down in the world, to turn my back upon him at once. So I entered the hotel, and waited in the public room. In a few minutes he reappeared with the two ladies, and we all four strolled out in the direction of the Rhine. I did not ask the Dutchman the result of his journey. It was unnecessary. His disheartened air and general appearance told the tale of disappointment, of humiliating petitions sternly rejected, of hopes fled and a cheerless future. He kept silence the while we walked a hundred yards, and then, having left his wife and mother-in-law out of ear-shot, abruptly began the tale of his mishaps. As I conjectured, he had totally failed in his attempt to mollify his father, who was furious at his temerity in appearing before him, and whose rage redoubled when he heard of his ill-omened marriage. Unfortunately for Van Haubitz, the jeweller and some other tradesmen at Frankfort, so soon as they learned his departure, had forwarded their accounts to the care of the Amsterdam firm; and, although his father had not the remotest intention of paying them, he was incensed in the extreme at the slur thus cast upon his house and name. In short, the unlucky artilleryman at once saw he had no chance of a single kreuzer, or of the slightest countenance from his father. His applications to his brothers, and to one or two more distant relatives, were equally unsuccessful. All were disgusted at his irregularities, angry at his marriage, incredulous of his promises of reform; and, after passing a miserable month in Amsterdam, he set out to accompany his wife to Vienna, whither she was compelled to repair under pain of fine and forfeiture of her engagement. Although living with rigid economy—on bread and water, as Van Haubitz expressed it—their finances had been utterly consumed by their stay in the Dutch capital, and it was only by disposing of every trinket and superfluity (and of necessaries too, I feared, when I remembered the slender baggage that came up with them from the boat) that they had procured the means of travelling, in the cheapest and most humble manner, and with the disheartening certainty of arriving penniless at Vienna. Van Haubitz told me all this, and many other details, with an air of gloomy despondency. He was hopeless, heart-broken, desperate; and certain circumstances of his position, which by some would have been held an alleviation, aggravated it in his eyes. He said little of his wife; but, from what escaped him, I easily gathered that she had shown strength of mind, good feeling and affection for him, and was willing to struggle by his side for a scanty and hard-earned subsistence. His cares and irritable mood prevented his appreciating her attachment, and he looked upon her as an encumbrance, without which he might again rise in the world. He had always entertained a confident expectation of enriching himself by marriage; and this hope, which had buoyed him up under many difficulties, was now gone.

"I have one resource left," said Van Haubitz. "I have pondered over it for the last two days, and have almost determined on its adoption."

"What is it?" I asked.

"If I decide upon it," he replied, "you shall shortly know. 'Tis a desperate one enough."

We had insensibly slackened our pace, and at this moment the ladies came up. Van Haubitz made a gesture, as of impatience at the interruption.

"Wait for me here," he said, and walked away. Without speculating upon the motive of his absence, I stood still, and entered into conversation with the ladies. We were on the quay. The night was mild and calm, but overcast and exceedingly dark. A few feet below us rolled the dark mass of the Rhine, slightly swollen by recent rains. A light from an adjacent window illuminated the spot, and cast a flickering gleam across the water. Unwilling to refer to their misfortunes, I spoke to Emilie on some general topic. But Madame Sendel was too full of her troubles to tolerate any conversation that did not immediately relate to them, and she broke in with a long history of grievances, of the hard-heartedness of the Amsterdam relations, the cruelty of Emilie's position, her son-in-law's helplessness, and various other matters, in a querulous tone, and with frightful volubility. The poor daughter, I plainly saw, winced under this infliction. I was waiting the smallest opening to interrupt the indiscreet old lady, and revert to common-place, when a distant splash in the water reached my ears. The women also heard it, and at the same instant a presentiment of evil came over us all. Madame Sendel suddenly held her tongue and her breath; Emilie turned deadly pale, and without saying a word, flew along the quay in the direction of the sound. She had gone but a few yards when her strength failed her, and she would have fallen, but for my support. There was a shout, and a noise of men running. Leaving Madame Van Haubitz to the care of her mother, I ran swiftly along the river side, and soon reached a place where the deep water moaned and surged against the perpendicular quay. Here several men were assembled, talking hurriedly and pointing to the river. Others each moment arrived, and two boats were hastily shoved off from an adjacent landing-place.

"A man in the river," was the reply to my hasty inquiry.

It was so dark that I could not distinguish countenances close to me, and at a very few yards even the outline of objects was scarcely to be discerned. There were no houses close at hand, and some minutes elapsed before lights were procured. At last several boats put off, with men standing in the bows, holding torches and lanterns high in the air. Meanwhile I had questioned the bystanders, but could get little information; none as to the person to whom the accident had happened. The man who had given the alarm was returning from mooring his boat to a neighbouring jetty, when he perceived a figure moving along the quay a short distance in his front. The figure disappeared, a heavy splash followed, and the boatman ran forward. He could see no one either on shore or in the stream, but heard a sound as of one striking out and struggling in the water. Having learned this much, I jumped into a boat just then putting off, and bid the rowers pull down stream, keeping a short distance from the quay. The current ran strong, and I doubted not that the drowning man had been carried along by it. Two vigorous oars-men pulled till the blades bent, and the boat, aided by the stream, flew through the water. A third man held a torch. I strained my eyes through the darkness. Presently a small object floated within a few feet of the boat, which was rapidly passing it. It shone in the torchlight. I struck at it with a boat-hook, and brought it on board. It was a man's cap, covered with oilskin, and I remembered that Van Haubitz wore such a one. Stripping off the cover, I beheld an officer's foraging cap, with a grenade embroidered on its front. My doubts, slight before, were entirely dissipated.

When the search, rendered almost hopeless by the extreme darkness and power of the current, was at last abandoned, I hastened to the hotel, and inquired for Madame Sendel. She came to me in a state of great agitation. Van Haubitz had not returned, but she thought less of that than of the state of her daughter, who, since recovering from a long swoon, had been almost crazed with anxiety. She knew some one had been drowned, and her mind misgave her it was her husband. The foraging-cap, which Madame Sendel immediately recognised, removed all uncertainty. The only hope remaining was, that Van Haubitz, although carried rapidly away by the power of the current, had been able to maintain himself on the surface, and had got ashore at some considerable distance down the river, or had been picked up by a passing boat. But this was a very feeble hope, and for my own part, and for more than one reason, I placed no reliance on it. I left Madame Sendel to break the painful intelligence to her daughter, and went home, promising to call again in the morning.