A Day's Ride: A Life's Romance

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

CHAPTER VIII. IMAGINATION STIMULATED BY BRANDY AND WATER

So absorbed was I in the reflections of which my last chapter is the record, that I utterly forgot how time was speeding, and perceived at last, to my great surprise, that I had strayed miles away from the Rosary, and that evening was already near. The spires and roofs of a town were distant about a mile at a bend of the river, and for this I now made, determined on no account to turn back, for how could I ever again face those who had read the terrible narrative of the priest’s letter, and before whom I could only present myself as a cheat and impostor?

“No,” thought I, “my destiny points onward, – and to Blondel; nothing shall turn me from my path.” Less than an hour’s walking brought me to the town, of which I had but time to learn the name, – New Ross. I left it in a small steamer for Waterford, a little vessel in correspondence with the mail packet for Milford, and which I learned would sail that evening at nine.

The same night saw me seated on the deck, bound for England. On the deck, I say, for I had need to husband my resources, and travel with every imaginable economy, not only because my resources were small in themselves, but that, having left all that I possessed of clothes and baggage at the Rosary, I should be obliged to acquire a complete outfit on reaching England.

It was a calm night, with a starry sky and a tranquil sea; and, when the cabin passengers had gone down to their berths, the captain did not oppose my stealing “aft” to the quarter-deck, where I could separate myself from the somewhat riotous company of the harvest laborers that thronged the forepart of the vessel. He saw, with that instinct a sailor is eminently gifted with, that I was not of that class by which I was surrounded, and with a ready courtesy he admitted me to the privilege of isolation.

“You are going to enlist, I ‘ll be bound,” said he, as he passed me in his short deck walk. “Ain’t I right?”

“No,” said I; “I’m going to seek my fortune.”

“Seek your fortune!” he repeated, with a slighting sort of laugh. “One used to read about fellows doing that in story books when a child, but it’s rather strange to hear of it nowadays.”

“And may I presume to ask why should it be more strange now than formerly? Is not the world pretty much what it used to be? Is not the drama of life the same stock piece our forefathers played ages ago? Are not the actors and the actresses made up of the precise materials their ancestors were? Can you tell me of a new sentiment, a new emotion, or even a new crime? Why, therefore, should there be a seeming incongruity in reviving any feature of the past?”

“Just because it won’t do, my good friend,” said he, bluntly. “If the law catches a fellow lounging about the world in these times, it takes him up for a vagabond.”

“And what can be finer, grander, or freer than a vagabond?” I cried, with enthusiasm. “Who, I would ask you, sees life with such philosophy? Who views the wiles, the snares, the petty conflicts of the world with such a reflective calm as his? Caring little for personal indulgence, not solicitous for self-gratification, he has both the spirit and the leisure for observation. Diogenes was the type of the vagabond, and see how successive ages have acknowledged his wisdom.”

“If I had lived in his day, I’d have set him picking oakum, for all that!” he replied.

“And probably, too, would have sent the ‘blind old bard to the crank,’” said I.

“I’m not quite sure of whom you are talking,” said he; “but if he was a good ballad-singer, I’d not be hard on him.”

“O! Menin aeide Thea Peleiadeo Achilleos!” spouted I out, in rapture.

“That ain’t high Dutch,” asked he, “is it?”

“No,” said I, proudly. “It is ancient Greek, – the godlike tongue of an immortal race.”

“Immortal rascals!” he broke in. “I was in the fruit trade up in the Levant there, and such scoundrels as these Greek fellows I never met in my life.”

“By what and whom made so?” I exclaimed eagerly. “Can you point to a people in the world who have so long resisted the barbarizing influence of a base oppression? Was there ever a nation so imbued with high civilization as to be enabled for centuries of slavery to preserve the traditions of its greatness? Have we the record of any race but this, who could rise from the slough of degradation to the dignity of a people?”

“You ‘ve been a play-actor, I take it?” asked he, dryly.

“No, sir, never!” replied I, with some indignation.

“Well, then, in the Methody line? You’ve done a stroke of preaching, I ‘ll be sworn.”

“You would be perjured in that case, sir,” I rejoined, as haughtily.

“At all events, an auctioneer,” said he, fairly puzzled in his speculations.

“Equally mistaken there,” said I, calmly; “bred in the midst of abundance, nurtured in affluence, and educated with all the solicitous care that a fond parent could bestow – ”

“Gammon!” said he, bluntly. “You are one of the swell mob in distress!”

“Is this like distress?” said I, drawing forth my purse in which were seventy-five sovereigns, and handing it to him. “Count over that, and say how just and how generous are your suspicions.”

He gravely took the purse from me, and, stooping down to the binnacle light, counted over the money, scrutinizing carefully the pieces as he went.

“And who is to say this isn’t ‘swag’?” said he, as he closed the purse.

“The easiest answer to that,” said I, “is, would it be likely for a thief to show his booty, not merely to a stranger, but to a stranger who suspected him?”

“Well, that is something, I confess,” said he, slowly.

“It ought to be more, – it ought to be everything. If distrust were not a debasing sentiment, obstructing the impulses of generosity, and even invading the precincts of justice, you would see far more reason to confide in than to disbelieve me.”

“I ‘ve been done pretty often afore now,” he muttered, half to himself.

“What a fallacy that is!” cried I, contemptuously. “Was not the pittance that some crafty impostor wrung from your compassion well repaid to you in the noble self-consciousness of your generosity? Did not your venison on that day taste better when you thought of his pork chop? Had not your Burgundy gained flavor by the memory of the glass of beer that was warming the half-chilled heart in his breast? Oh, the narrow mockery of fancying that we are not better by being deceived!”

“How long is it since you had your head shaved?” he asked dryly.

“I have never been the inmate of an asylum for lunatics,” said I, divining and answering the impertinent insinuation.

“Well, I own you are a rum un,” said he, half musingly.

“I accept even this humble tribute to my originality,” said I, with a sort of proud defiance. “I am well aware how he must be regarded who dares to assert his own individuality.”

“I’d be very curious to know,” said he, after a pause of several minutes, “how a fellow of your stamp sets to work about gaining his livelihood? What’s his first step? how does he go about it?”

I gave no other answer than a smile of scornful meaning.

“I meant nothing offensive,” resumed he, “but I really have a strong desire to be enlightened on this point.”

“You are doubtless impressed with the notion,” said I, boldly, “that men possessed of some distinct craft or especial profession are alone needed by the world of their fellows. That one must be doctor or lawyer or baker or shoemaker, to gain his living, as if life had no other wants than to be clothed and fed and physicked and litigated. As if humanity had not its thousand emotional moods, its wayward impulses, its trials and temptations, all of them more needing guidance, support, direction, and counsel, than the sickest patient needs a physician. It is on this world that I throw myself; I devote myself to guide infancy, to console age, to succor the orphan, and support the widow, – morally, I mean.”

“I begin to suspect you are a most artful vagabond,” said he half angrily.

“I have long since reconciled myself to the thought of an unjust appreciation,” said I. “It is the consolation dull men accept when confronted with those of original genius. You can’t help confessing that all your distrust of me has grown out of the superiority of my powers, and the humble figure you have presented in comparison with me.”

“Do you rank modesty amongst these same powers?” he asked slyly.

“Modesty I reject,” said I, “as being a conventional form of hypocrisy.”

“Come down below,” said he, “and take a glass of brandy and water. It ‘s growing chilly here, and we shall be the better of something to cheer us.”

Seated in his comfortable little cabin, and with a goodly array of liquors before me to choose from, I really felt a self-confidence in the fact that, if I were not something out of the common, I could not then be there. “There must be in my nature,” thought I, “that element which begets success, or I could not always find myself in situations so palpably beyond the accidents of my condition.”

My host was courtesy itself; no sooner was I his guest than he adopted towards me a manner of perfect politeness. No more allusions to my precarious mode of life, never once a reference to my adventurous future. Indeed, with an almost artful exercise of good breeding, he turned the conversation towards himself, and gave me a sketch of his own life.