Читать книгу A Day's Ride - Charles James Lever - Страница 13

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Father Dyke was one of those characters which Ireland alone produces—a sporting priest. In France, Spain, or Italy, the type is unknown. Time was, when the abbé, elegant, witty, and well-bred, was a great element of polished life; when his brilliant conversation and his insidious address threw all the charm of culture over a society which was only rescued from coarseness by the marvellous dexterity of such intellectual gladiators. They have passed away, like many other things brilliant and striking: the gilded coach, the red-heeled slipper, and the supper of the regency; the powdered marquise, for a smile of whose dimpled mouth the deadly rapier has flashed in the moonlight; the perfumed beauty, for one of whose glances a poet would have racked his brain to render worthily in verse; the gilded salon where, in a sort of incense, all the homage of genius was offered up before the altar of loveliness—gone are they all! Au fond, the world is pretty much the same, although we drive to a club dinner in a one-horse brougham; and if we meet the curé of St. Roch, we find him to be rather a morose middle-aged man with a taste for truffles, and a talent for silence. It is not as the successor of the witty abbé that I adduce the sporting priest, but simply as a variety of the ecclesiastical character which, doubtless, a very few more years will have consigned to the realm of history. He, too, will be a bygone! Father Tom, as he was popularly called, never needing any more definite designation, was tam Marte quam Mercurio, as much poacher as priest, and made his sporting acquirements subservient to the demands of an admirable table. The thickest salmon, the curdiest trout, the fattest partridge, and the most tender woodcock smoked on his board, and, rumor said, cooked with a delicacy that more pretentious houses could not rival. In the great world nothing is more common than to see some favored individual permitted to do things which, by common voice, are proclaimed impracticable or improper. With a sort of prescriptive right to outrage the ordinances of society, such people accept no law but their own inclination, and seem to declare that they are altogether exempt from the restraints that bind other men. In a small way, and an humble sphere, Father Tom enjoyed this privilege, and there was not in his whole county to be found one man churlish or ungenerous enough to dispute it; and thus was he suffered to throw his line, snap his gun, or unleash his dog in precincts where many with higher claims had been refused permission.

It was not alone that he enjoyed the invigorating pleasure of field sports in practice, but he delighted in everything which bore any relationship to them. There was not a column of “Bell's Life” in which he had not his sympathy—the pigeon match, the pedestrian, the Yankee trotter, the champion for the silver sculls at Chelsea, the dog “Billy,” were all subjects of interest to him. Never did the most inveterate blue-stocking more delight in the occasion of meeting a great celebrity of letters, than did he when chance threw him in the way of the jock who rode the winner at the Oaks, or the “Game Chicken” who punished the “Croydon Pet” in the prize ring. But now for the letter, which will as fully reveal the man as any mere description. It was a narrative of races he had attended, and rowing-matches he had witnessed, with little episodes of hawking, badger-drawing, and cock-fighting intermixed.

“I came down here—Brighton—to swim for a wager of five-and-twenty sovereigns against a Major Blayse, of the Third Light Dragoon Guards; we made the match after mess at Aldershot, when neither of us was anything to speak of too sober; but as we were backed strongly—he rather the favorite—there was no way of drawing the bet. I beat him after a hard struggle; we were two hours and forty minutes in the water, and netted about sixty pounds besides. We dined with the depot in the evening, and I won a ten-pound note on a question of whether there ought to be saffron in the American drink called 'greased lightning;' but this was not the only piece of luck that attended me, as you shall hear. As I was taking my morning canter on the Downs, I perceived that a stranger—a jockey-like fellow, not quite a gentleman but near it—seemed to keep me in view; now riding past, now behind me, and always bestowing his whole attention on my nag. Of course, I showed the beast off to the best, and handled him skilfully. I thought to myself, he likes the pony; he 'll be for making me an offer for him. I was right. I had just seated myself at breakfast, when the stranger sent his card, with a request to speak to me. He was a foreigner, but spoke very correct English, and his object was to learn if I would sell my horse. It is needless to say that I refused at once. The animal suited me, and I was one of those people who find it excessively difficult to be mounted to their satisfaction. I needed temper, training, action, gentleness, beauty, high courage, and perfect steadiness, and a number of such-like seeming incongruities. He looked a little impatient at all this; he seemed to say, 'I know all this kind of nonsense; I have heard shiploads of such gammon before. Be frank and say what's the figure; how much do you want for him?' He looked this, I say, but he never uttered a word, and at last I asked him—

“'Are you a dealer?'

“'Well,' said he, with an arch smile, 'something in that line.'

“'I thought so,' said I. 'The pony is a rare good one.'

“He nodded assent.

“'He can jump a bar of his own height?'

“Another nod.

“'And he's as fresh on his legs—'

“'As if he were not twenty-six years old,' he broke in.

“'Twenty-six fiddle-sticks! Look at his mouth; he has an eight-year-old mouth.'

“'I know it,' said he, dryly; 'and so he had fourteen years ago. Will you take fifty sovereigns for him?' he added, drawing out a handful of gold from his pocket.

“'No,' said I, firmly; 'nor sixty, nor seventy, nor eighty!'

“'I am sorry to have intruded upon you,' said he, rising, 'and I beg you to excuse me. The simple fact is, that I am one who gains his living by horses, and it is only possible for me to exist by the generosity of those who deal with me.'

“This appeal was a home thrust, and I said, 'What can you afford to give?'

“'All I have here,' said he, producing a handful of gold, and spreading it on the table.

“We set to counting, and there were sixty-seven sovereigns in the mass. I swept off the money into the palm of my hand, and said, 'The beast is yours.'

“He drew a long breath, as if to relieve his heart of a load of care, and said, 'Men of my stamp, and who lead such lives as I do, are rarely superstitious.'

“'Very true,' said I, with a nod of encouragement for him to go on.

“'Well,' said he, resuming, 'I never thought for a moment that any possibility could have made me so. If ever there was a man that laughed at lucky and unlucky days, despised omens, sneered at warnings, and scorned at predictions, I was he; and yet I have lived to be the most credulous and the most superstitious of men. It is now fourteen years and twenty-seven days—I remember the time to an hour—since I sold that pony to the Prince Ernest von Saxen-hausen, and since that day I never had luck. So long as I owned him all went well with me. I ought to tell you that I am the chief of a company of equestrians, and one corps, known as Klam's Kunst-Reiters, was the most celebrated on the Continent In three years I made three hundred thousand guilders, and if the devil had not induced me to sell “Schatzchen”—that was his name—I should be this day as rich as Heman Rothschild! From the hour he walked out of the circus our calamities began. I lost my wife by fever at Wiesbaden, the most perfect high-school horsewoman in Europe; my son, of twenty years of age, fell, and dislocated his neck; the year after, at Vienna, my daughter Gretchen was blinded riding through a fiery hoop at Homburg; and four years later, all the company died of yellow fever at the Havannah, leaving me utterly beggared and ruined. Now these, you would say, though great misfortunes, are all in the course of common events. But what will you say when, on the eve of each of them, Schatzchen appeared to me in a dream, performing some well-known feat or other, and bringing down, as he ever did, thunders of applause; and never did he so appear without a disaster coming after. I struggled hard before I suffered this notion to influence me. It was years before I even mentioned it to any one; and I used for a while to make a jest of it in the circus, saying, “Take care of yourselves tonight, for I saw Schatzchen.” Of course they were not the stuff to be deterred by such warnings, but they became so at last. That they did, and were so terrified, so thoroughly terrified, that the day after one of my visions not a single member of the troupe would venture on a hazardous feat of any kind; and if we performed at all, it was only some commonplace exercises, with few risks, and no daring exploits whatever. Worn out with evil fortune, crushed and almost broken-hearted, I struggled on for years, secretly determining, if ever I should chance upon him, to buy back Schatzchen with my last penny in the world. Indeed, there were moments in which such was the intense excitement of my mind, I could have committed a dreadful crime to regain possession of him. We were on the eve of embarking for Ostend the other night, when I saw you riding on the Downs, and I came ashore at once to track you out, for I knew him, though fully half a mile away. None of my comrades could guess what detained me, nor understand why I asked each of them in turn to lend me whatever money he could spare. It was in this way I made up the little purse you see. It was thus provided that I dared to present myself to-day before you.”

“As he gave me this narrative, his manner grew more eager and excited, and I could not help feeling that his mind, from the long-continued pressure of one thought, had received a serious shock. It was exactly one of those cases which physicians describe as leaving the intellect unimpaired, while some one faculty is under the thraldom of a dominant and all-pervading impression. I saw this more palpably, when, having declined to accept more than his original offer of fifty pounds, I replaced the remainder in his hand, he evinced scarcely any gratitude for my liberality, so totally was he engrossed by the idea that the horse was now his own, and that Fortune would no longer have any pretext for using him so severely as before.

“'I don't know—I cannot know,' said he, 'if fortune means to deal more kindly by me than heretofore, but I feel a sort of confidence in the future now; I have a kind of trustful courage as to what may come, that tells me no disaster will deter me, no mishap cast me down.'

“These were his words as he arose to take his leave. Of his meeting with the pony I am afraid to trust myself to speak. It was such an overflow of affection as one might witness from a long absent brother on being once again restored to his own. I cannot say that the beast knew him, nor would I go so far as to assert that he did not, for certainly some of his old instincts seemed gradually to revive within him on hearing certain words; and when ordered to take a respectful farewell of me, the pony planted a foreleg on each of his master's shoulders, and, taking off his hat with his teeth, bowed twice or thrice in the most deferential fashion. I wished them both every success in life, and we parted. As I took my evening's stroll on the pier, I saw them embark for Ostend, the pony sheeted most carefully, and every imaginable precaution taken to insure him against cold. The man himself was poorly clad, and indifferently provided against the accidents of the voyage. He appeared to feel that the disparity required a word of apology, for he said, in a whisper: 'It 'll soon furnish me with a warm cloak; it 'll not leave me long in difficulties!' I assure you, my dear Crofton, there was something contagious in the poor fellow's superstition, for, as he sailed away, the thought lay heavily on my heart, 'What if I, too, should have parted with my good luck in life? How if I have bartered my fortune for a few pieces of money?' The longer I dwelt on this theme, the more forcibly did it strike me. My original possession of the animal was accomplished in a way that aided the illusion. It was thus I won him on a hit of backgammon!”

As I read thus far, the paper dropped from my hands, my head reeled, and in a faint dreamy state, as if drugged by some strong narcotic, I sank, I know not how long, unconscious. The first thing which met my eyes on awakening, was the line, “I won him on a hit of backgammon!” The whole story was at once before me. It was of Blondel I was reading! Blondel was the beast whose influence had swayed one man's destiny. So long as he owned him, the world went well and happily with him; all prospered and succeeded. It was a charm like the old lamp of Aladdin. And this was the treasure I had lost. So far from imputing an ignorant superstition to the German, I concurred in every speculation, every theory of his invention. The man had evidently discovered one of those curious problems in what we rashly call the doctrine of chances. It was not the animal himself that secured good fortune, it was that, in his “circumstances,” what Strauff calls “die amringende Bege-benheiten” of his lot, this creature was sure to call forth efforts and develop resources in his possessor, of which, without his aid, he would have gone all through life unconscious.

The vulgar notion that our lives are the sport of accident—the minute too early or too late, the calm that detained us, the snow-storm that blocked the road, the chance meeting with this or that man, which we lay such stress on—what are they in reality but trivial incidents without force or effect, save that they impel to action? They call out certain qualities in our nature by which our whole characters become modified. Your horse balks at a fence, and throws you over his head; the fall is not a very grave one, and you are scarcely hurt; you have fallen into a turnip-field, and the honest fellow, who is hoeing away near, comes kindly to your aid, and, in good Samaritan fashion, bathes your temples and restores you. When you leave him at last, you go forth with a kindlier notion of human nature; you recognize the tie “that makes the whole world kin,” and you seem to think that hard toil hardens not the heart, nor a life of labor shuts out generous sympathies—the lesson is a life one. But suppose that in your fall you alight on a bed of choice tulips, you descend in the midst of a rich parterre of starry anemones, and that your first conscious struggles are met with words of anger and reproach; instead of sorrow for your suffering, you hear sarcasms on your horsemanship, and insults on your riding—no sympathy, no kindness, no generous anxiety for your safety, but all that irritate and offend—more thought, in fact, for the petals of a flower than for the ligaments of your knee—then, too, is the lesson a life one, and its fruits will be bitter memories for many a year. The events of our existence are in reality nothing, save in our treatment of them. By Blondel, I recognized one of those suggestive influences which mould fate by moulding temperament. The deep reflecting German saw this: it was clear he knew that in that animal was typified all that his life might become. Why should not I contest the prize with him? Blondel was charged with another destiny as well as his.

I turned once more to the letter, but I could not bear to read it; so many were the impertinent allusions to myself, my manner, my appearance, and my conversation. Still more insulting were the speculations as to what class or condition I belonged to. “He puzzled us completely,” wrote the priest, “for while unmistakably vulgar in many things, there were certain indications of reading and education about him that refuted the notion of his being what Keldrum thought—an escaped counter-jumper! The Guardsman insisted he was a valet; my own impression was, the fellow had kept a small circulating library, and gone mad with the three-volume novels. At all events, I have given him a lesson which, whether profitable or not to him, has turned out tolerably well for me, If ever you chance to hear of him—his name was Podder or Pedder, I think—pray let me know, for my curiosity is still unslaked about him.” He thence went off to a sort of descriptive catalogue of my signs and tokens, so positively insulting that I cannot recall it; the whole winding up: “Add to all these an immense pomposity of tone, with a lisp, and a Dublin accent, and you can scarcely mistake him.” Need I say, benevolent reader, that fouler calumnies were never uttered, nor more unfounded slanders ever pronounced?

It is not in this age of photography that a man need defend his appearance. By the aid of sun and collodion, I may, perhaps, one day convince you that I am not so devoid of personal graces as this foul-mouthed priest would persuade you. I am, possibly, in this pledge, exceeding the exact limits which this publication may enable me to sustain. I may be contracting an engagement which cannot be, consistent with its principles, fulfilled. If so, I must be your artist; but I swear to you, that I shall not flatter. Potto, painted by himself, shall be a true portrait. Meanwhile I have time to look out for my canvas, and you will be patient enough to wait till it be filled.

Again to this confounded letter:—

“There is another reason” (wrote Dyke ) “why I should like to-chance upon this fellow.” (“This fellow” meant me.) “I used to fancy myself unequalled in the imaginative department of conversation, by the vulgar called lying. Here, I own, with some shame, he was my match. A more fearless, determined, go-ahead liar, I never met. Now, as one who deems himself no small proficient in the art, I would really like to meet him once more. We could approach each other like the augurs of old, and agree to be candid and free-spoken together, exchanging our ideas on this great topic, and frankly communicating any secret knowledge each might deem that he possessed. I'd go a hundred miles to pass an evening with him alone, to hear from his own lips the sort of early training and discipline his mind went through—who were his first instructors, what his original inducements. Of one thing I feel certain: a man thus constituted has only to put the curb upon his faculty to be most successful in life, his perils will all lie in the exuberance of his resources; let him simply bend himself to believe in some of the impositions he would force upon others. Let him give his delusions the force acquired by convictions, and there is no limit to what he may become. Be on the lookout, therefore, for him, as a great psychological phenomenon, the man who outlied

“Your sincerely attached friend,

“Thomas Darcy Dyke.

“P.S. I have just remembered his name. It was Potts; the villain said from the Pozzo di Borgo family. I 'm sure with this hint you can't fail to run him to earth; and I entreat of you spare no pains to do it.”

There followed here some more impertinent personalities as clews to my discovery, which my indulgent reader will graciously excuse me if I do not stop to record; enough to say they were as unfounded as they were scurrilous.

Another and very different train of thought, however, soon banished these considerations. This letter had been given me by Crofton, who had already read it; he had perused all this insolent narrative about me before handing it to me, and doubtless, in so doing, had no other intention than to convey, in the briefest and most emphatic way to me, that I was found out. It was simply saying, in the shortest possible space, “Thou art the man!” Oh, the ineffable shame and misery of that thought! Oh, the bitterness of feeling! How my character should now be viewed and my future discussed! “Only think, Mary,” I fancied I heard him say—“only think who our friend should turn out to be—this same Potts: the fellow that vanquished Father Dyke in story-telling, and outlied the priest! And here we have been lavishing kindness and attentions upon one who, after all, is little better than a swindler, sailing under false colors and fictitious credentials; for who can now credit one syllable about his having written those verses he read for us, or composed that tale of which he told us the opening? What a lesson in future about extending confidence to utter strangers! What caution and reserve should it not teach us! How guarded should we be not to suffer ourselves to be fascinated by the captivations of manner and the insinuating charms of address! If Potts had been less prepossessing in appearance, less gifted and agreeable—if, instead of being a consummate man of the world, with the breeding of a courtier and the knowledge of a scholar, he had been a pedantic puppy with a lisp and a Dublin accent—” Oh, ignominy and disgrace! these were the very words of the priest in describing me, which came so aptly to my memory, and I grew actually sick with shame as I recalled them. I next became angry. Was this conduct of Crofton's delicate or considerate? Was it becoming in one who had treated me as his friend thus abruptly to conclude our intimacy by an insult? Handing me such a letter was saying, “There's a portrait; can you say any one it resembles?” How much more generous had he said, “Tell me all about this wager of yours with Father Dyke; I want to hear your account of it, for old Tom is not the most veracious of mortals, nor the most mealy-mouthed of commentators. Just give me your version of the incident, Potts, and I am satisfied it will be the true one.” That's what he might, that's what he ought to have said. I can swear it is what I, Potts, would have done by him, or by any other stranger whose graceful manners and pleasing qualities had won my esteem and conciliated my regard. I 'd have said, “Potts, I have seen enough of life to know how unjust it is to measure men by one and the same standard. The ardent, impassioned nature cannot be ranked with the cold and calculating spirit The imaginative man has the same necessity for the development of his creative faculty as the strongly muscular man of bodily exercise. He must blow off the steam of his invention, or the boiler will not contain it. You and Le Sage and Alexandre Dumas are a category. You are not the Clerks of a Census Commission, or Masters in Equity. You are the chartered libertines of fiction. Shake out your reefs, and go free—free as the winds that waft you!”

To all these reflections came the last one. “I must be up and doing, and that speedily! I will recover Blondel, if I devote my life to the task. I will regain him, let the cost be what it may. Mounted upon that creature, I will ride up to the Rosary; the time shall be evening; a sun just sunk behind the horizon shall have left in the upper atmosphere a golden and rosy light, which shall tip his mane with a softened lustre, and shed over my own features a rich Titian-like tint. 'I come,' will I say, 'to vindicate the fair fame of one who once owned your affection. It is Potts, the man of impulse, the child of enthusiasm, who now presents himself before you. Poor, if you like to call him so, in worldly craft or skill, poor in its possessions, but rich, boundlessly rich, in the stores of an ideal wealth. Blondel and I are the embodiment of this idea. These fancies you have stigmatized as lies are but the pilot balloons by which great minds calculate the currents in that upper air they are about to soar in.'”

And, last of all, there was a sophistry that possessed a great charm for my mind, in this wise: to enable a man, humble as myself, to reach that station in which a career of adventure should open before him, some ground must be won, some position gained. That I assume to be something that I am not, is simply to say that I trade upon credit. If my future transactions be all honorable and trustworthy—if by a fiction, only known to my own heart, I acquire that eminence from which I can distribute benefits to hundreds—who is to stigmatize me as a fraudulent trader?

Is it not a well-known fact, that many of those now acknowledged as the wealthiest of men, might, at some time or other of their lives, have been declared insolvent had the real state of their affairs been known? The world, however, had given them its confidence, and time did the rest. Let the same world be but as generous towards me! The day will come—I say it confidently and boldly—the day will come when I can “show my books,” and “point to my balance-sheet.” When Archimedes asked for a base on which to rest his lever, he merely uttered the great truth, that some one fixed point is essential to the success of a motive power.

It is by our use or abuse of opportunity we are either good or bad men. The physician is not less conversant with noxious drags than the poisoner; the difference lies in the fact that the one employs his skill to alleviate suffering, the other to work out evil and destruction. If I, therefore, but make some feigned station in life the groundwork from which I can become the benefactor of my fellowmen, I shall be good and blameless. My heart tells me how well and how fairly I mean by the world: I would succor the weak, console the afflicted, and lift up the oppressed; and if to carry out grand and glorious conceptions of this kind all that be needed is a certain self-delusion which may extend its influence to others, “Go in,” I say, “Potts; be all that your fancy suggests—

Dives, honoratus, pulcher, rex deniqne regain,

—Be rich, honored and fair, a prince or a begum—but, above all, never distrust your destiny, or doubt your star.”