A Day's Ride: A Life's Romance

Deal with the fact how you may, I was very sorry for myself, and seriously doubted if as sincere a mourner would bewail me when I was gone.

If a little time had been given me, I would have endeavored to get up my snug little chamber somewhat more like a prison cell; I would have substituted some straw for my comfortable bed, and gracefully draped a few chains upon the walls and some stray torture implements out of the Armory; but the envoy came like a “thief in the night,” and was already on the stairs when he was announced.

“Oh! this is his den, is it?” cried he from without, as he slowly ascended the stairs. “Egad! he hasn’t much to complain of in the matter of a lodging. I only wish our fellows were as well off at Vienna.” And with these words there entered into my room a tall young fellow, with a light brown moustache, dressed in a loose travelling suit, and with the lounging air of a man sauntering into a café. He did not remove his hat as he came in, or take the cigar from his mouth; the latter circumstance imparting a certain confusion to his speech that made him occasionally scarce intelligible. Only deigning to bestow a passing look on me, he moved towards the window, and looked out on the grand panorama of the Tyrol Alps, as they enclose the valley of Innspruck.

“Well,” said he to himself, “all this ain’t so bad for a dungeon.”

The tone startled me. I looked again at him, I rallied myself to an effort of memory, and at once recalled the young fellow I had met on the South-Western line and from whom I had accidentally carried away the despatch-bag. To my beard, and my long imprisonment, I trusted for not being recognized, and I sat patiently awaiting my examination.

“An Englishman, I suppose?” asked he, turning hastily round. “And of English parents?”

“Yes,” was my reply, for I determined on brevity wherever possible.

“What brought you into this scrape? – I mean, why did you come here at all?”

“I was travelling.”

“Travelling? Stuff and nonsense! Why should fellows like you travel? What’s your rank in life?”

“A gentleman.”

“Ah! but whose gentleman, my worthy friend? Ain’t you a flunkey? There, it’s out! I say, have you got a match to light my cigar? Thanks, – all right. Look here, now, – don’t let us be beating about the bush all the day, – I believe this government is just as sick of you as you are of them. You ‘ve been here two months, ain’t it so?”

“Ten months and upwards.”

“Well, ten months. And you want to get away?”

I made no answer; indeed, his free-and-easy manner so disconcerted me that I could not speak, and he went on, —

“I suspect they have n’t got much against you, or that they don’t care about it; and, besides, they are civil to us just now. At all events, it can be done, – you understand? – it can be done.”

“Indeed,” said I, half superciliously.

“Yes,” resumed he, “I think so; not but you’d have managed better in leaving the thing to us, That stupid notion you all have of writing letters to newspapers and getting some troublesome fellow to ask questions in the House, that’s what spoils everything! How can we negotiate when the whole story is in the ‘Times’ or the ‘Daily News’?”

“I opine, sir, that you are ascribing to me an activity and energy I have no claim to.”

“Well, if you did n’t write those letters, somebody else did. I don’t care a rush for the difference. You see, here’s how the matter stands. This Mr. Brigges, or Rigges, has gone off, and does n’t care to prosecute, and all his allegations against you fall to the ground. Well, these people fancy they could carry on the thing themselves, you understand; we think not. They say they have got a strong case; perhaps they have; but we ask, 'What’s the use of it? Sending the poor beggar to Spielberg won’t save you, will it?’ And so we put it to them this way: ‘Draw stakes, let him off, and both can cry quits.’ There, give me another light Isn’t that the common-sense view of it?”

“I scarcely dare to say that I understand you aright.”

“Oh, I can guess why. I have had dealings with fellows of your sort before. You don’t fancy my not alluding to compensation, eh? You want to hear about the money part of the matter?”

And he laughed aloud; but whether at my mercenary spirit or his own shrewdness in detecting it, I do not really know.

“Well, I’m afraid,” continued he, “you’ll be disappointed there. These Austrians are hard up; besides, they never do pay. It’s against their system, and so we never ask them.”

“Would it be too much, sir, to ask why I have been imprisoned?”

“Perhaps not; but a great deal too much for me to tell you. The confounded papers would fill a cart, and that’s the reason I say, cut your stick, my man, and get away.” Again he turned to the window, and, looking out, asked, “Any shooting about here? There ought to be cocks in that wood yonder?” and without caring for reply, went on, “After all, you know what bosh it is to talk about chains and dungeons, and bread-and-water, and the rest of it. You ‘ve been living in clover here. That old fellow below tells me that you dine with him every day; that you might have gone into Innspruck, to the theatre if you liked it – I ‘ll swear there are snipes in that low land next the river. – Think it over, Rigges, think it over.”

“I am not Rigges.”

“Oh, I forgot! you ‘re the other fellow. Well, think it over, Harpar.”

“My name is not Harpar, sir.”

“What do I care for a stray vowel or two? Maybe you call yourself Harpar, or Harper? It’s all the same to us.”

“It is not the question of a vowel or two, sir; and I desire you to remark it is the graver one of a mistaken identity!” I said this with a high-sounding importance that I thought must astound him; but his light and frivolous nature was impervious to rebuke.

“We have nothing to say to that,” replied he, carelessly. “You may be Noakes or Styles. I believe they are the names of any fellows who are supposed by courtesy to have no name at all, and it’s all alike to us. What I have to observe to you is this: nobody cares very much whether you are detained here or not; nobody wants to detain you. Just reflect, therefore, if it’s not the best thing you can do to slope off, and make no more fuss about it?”

“Once for all, sir,” said I, still more impressively, “I am not the person against whom this charge is made. The authorities have all along mistaken me for another.”

“Well, what if they have? Does it signify one kreutzer? We have had trouble enough about the matter already, and do not embroil us any further.”

“May I ask, sir, just for information, who are the ‘we’ you have so frequently alluded to?”

Had I asked him in what division of the globe he understood us then to be conversing, he would not have regarded me with a look of more blank astonishment.

“Who are we?” repeated he. “Did you ask who are we?”

“Yes, sir, that was what I made bold to ask.”

“Cool, certainly; what might be called uncommon cool. To what line of life were you brought up to, my worthy gent? I have rather a curiosity about your antecedents.”

“That same curiosity cost you a trifle once before,” said I, no longer able to control myself, and dying to repay his impertinence. “I remember, once upon a time, meeting you on a railroad, and you were so eager to exhibit the skill with which you could read a man’s calling, that you bet me a sovereign you would guess mine. You did so, and lost.”

“You can’t be – no, it’s impossible. Are you really the goggle-eyed fellow that walked off with the bag for Kalbbratonstadt?”

“I did, by mistake, carry away a bag on that occasion, and so punctiliously did I repay my error that I travelled the whole journey to convey those despatches to their destination.”

“I know all about it,” said he, in a frank, gay manner. “Doubleton told me the whole story. You dined with him and pretended you were I don’t remember whom, and then you took old Mamma Keats off to Como and made her believe you were Louis Philippe, and you made fierce love to your pretty companion, who was fool enough to like you. By Jove! what a rig you must have run! We have all laughed over it a score of times.”

“If I knew who ‘we’ were, I am certain I should feel flattered by any amusement I afforded them, notwithstanding how much more they are indebted to fiction than fact regarding me. I never assumed to be Louis Philippe, nor affected to be any person of distinction. A flighty old lady was foolish enough to imagine me a prince of the Orleans family – ”

“You, – a prince! Oh, this is too absurd!”

“I confess, sir, I cannot see the matter in this light. I presume the mistake to be one by no means difficult to have occurred. Mrs. Keats has seen a deal of life and the world – ”

“Not so much as you fancy,” broke he in. “She was a long time in that private asylum up at Brompton, and then down in Staffordshire; altogether, she must have passed five-and-twenty or thirty years in a rather restricted circle.”

“Mad! Was she mad?”

“Not what one would call mad, but queer. They were all queer. Hargrave, the second brother, was the fellow that made that shindy in the Mauritius, and our friend Shalley isn’t a conjuror. And we thought you were larking the old lady, I assure you we did.”

“‘We’ were once more mistaken, then,” said I, sneer-ingly.