Volume I Part 13 (1/2)

It was to no purpose that I questioned and cross-questioned. I soon saw that my eagerness was mistaken by him for evidence of wandering faculties; and I perceived, in his anxiety that I should return, a fear, that my malady had taken some new turn. So far, too, was he right. My head was, indeed, troubled--strange fancies and shadowy fears crossing my excited mind as I went; so that, ere I reached my inn, I really was unable to collect my faculties, and separate the dream-land from the actual territory of fact. And now it is with painful effort I write these lines, each moment doubting whether I should not erase this, or insert that. Were it not for this glove, that lies on my paper before me, I should believe all to be mere illusion. What a painful struggle this is, and how impossible to allay the fears of self-deception! At one moment I am half resolved to order a saddle-horse and return to Eberstein--for what?--with what hope of unravelling the mystery? At the next I am determined to repair to the Countess's villa near the town, and ask if she has returned; but how shall I venture on such a liberty?

If my ears had not deceived me, she is and must be Caroline Graham; and yet would I not rather believe that my weary brain had wandered, than that this were so?

But what are these sounds of voices in the antechamber? I hear Guckhardt's voice!

Yes: my servant had thought it prudent to fetch the doctor, and he has been here and felt my pulse, and ordered cold to my temples, and a calming draught. It is clear, then, that I have been ill, and I must write no more!

CHAPTER XI.

Gasthaus, Zum Bar, Dallas, Tyrol.

It is exactly seven weeks this day since I last opened my journal. I promised Guckhardt not to look into it for a month, and so I have well kept my word! It would seem, indeed, a small privation in most circ.u.mstances to abstain from chronicling the ebbing hours of a life; but Egotism is next of kin to Sickness, and I can vent mine more harmlessly here than if spent in exhausting the patience of my friends.

Some listener must be found to the dreamy querulousness of the invalid, and why not his own heart?

Even to those nearest and dearest to our affections, there is always a sense of shame attendant on the confessions of our weakness, more so than of our actual vices. But what a merciful judge is Self! how gentle to rebuke! how reluctant to punis.h.!.+ how sanguine to hope for reformation! Hence is it that I find a comfort in jotting down these ”mems” of the past; but from a friend, what shaking of the head, what regretful sorrowings, should I meet with! How should I hear of faculties and fortune--life itself--wasted without one object, even a wish, compa.s.sed! When I reflect upon the position in life attainable by one who starts with moderate abilities, a large fortune, reasonable habits of industry, and a fair share of well-wishers, and then think of what I now am, I might easily be discontented and dispirited; but if I had really reached the goal, can I say that I should be happy? can I say, that all the success within my reach could have stilled within me the tone of peaceful solitude I have ever cherished as the greatest of blessings? But why speculate on this? I never could have been highly successful. I have not the temper, had I the talent, that climbs high. I must always have done my best _at once_; put forth my whole strength on each occasion--husbanded nothing, and consequently gained nothing.

Here I am at Dallas, in the Tyrol, a wild and lonely glen, with a deep and rus.h.i.+ng river foaming through it. The mountain in front of me is speckled with wooden _chalets_, some of them perched on lofty cliffs, not distinct from realms of never-melting snow.

All is poverty on every side; even in the little church, where Piety would deck its shrine at any sacrifice, the altar is bare of ornament.

The Cure's house, too, is humble enough for him who is working yonder in his garden, an old and white-haired man, too feeble and frail for such labour; and already the sun has set, and now he ceases from his toil: for the ”Angelus” is ringing, and soon the village will be kneeling in prayer. Already the bell has ceased, and through the stilly air rises the murmur of many voices.

There was somewhat of compa.s.sionate pity in the look of the old man who has just pa.s.sed the window; he stopped a moment to gaze at me--at the only one whose unbended knee and closed lips had no brotherhood in the devotion. He seemed very poor, and old, and feeble, and yet he could look with a sense of pity upon me, as an outcast from the faith. So did I feel his steady stare at least; for, at that instant, the wish was nearest to my heart that I, too, could have knelt and prayed with the rest. And why could

I not? was it that my spirit was too stubborn, too proud, to mingle with the humble throng? did I feel myself better, or n.o.bler, or greater than the meanest there, when uttering the same words of thankfulness or hope? No, far from it; a very different, but not less powerful barrier interposed. Education, habits of thought, prejudices, convictions, even party spirit, had all combined to represent Romanism to my mind, in all the glaring colours of its superst.i.tions, its cruelties, and its deceptions. Then arose before me a kind of vision of its tyranny over mankind,--its inquisitions, its persecutions, its mock miracles, and its real bloodshed; and I could not turn from the horrible picture, even to the sight of those humble wors.h.i.+ppers who knelt in all the sincerity of belief.

I actually dreaded the sway of the devotional influence, lest, when my heart had yielded to it, some chance interruption of ceremonial, some of those fantastic forms of the Church, should turn my feelings of trust and wors.h.i.+p to one of infidelity and scorn.

There, all is over now, and the villagers are returning homewards--some, to the little hamlet--others, are wending their way upwards, to homes high amid the mountains--and here I sit alone, in my little whitewashed room, watching the shadows as they deepen over the glen, and gazing on that mountain peak that glows like a carbuncle in the setting sun.

It is like a dream to me how I have come to sojourn in this peaceful valley. The last entry I made was in Baden, the night of that party at the Waterfall. The next day I awoke ill--fevered from a restless night. Guckhardt came early, and thinking I was asleep, retired without speaking to me. He laid his hand on my temples, and seemed to feel that I required rest and quiet, for he cautioned my servant not to suffer the least disturbance near me.

I conclude I must have been sleeping, for the sudden noise of voices and the tramp of many feet aroused me. There was evidently something strange and unexpected going forward in the town. What could it mean? My servant seemed most unwilling to tell me, and only yielded to my positive commands to speak.. Even now I tremble to recall the tidings--a murder had been committed! One of the guests at our late _fete_, a young Englishman named Lockwood, had been discovered dead on the side of the road about two miles from the Waterfall; his watch, and purse with several gold pieces, were found on his person, so that no robbery had been the reason of the crime. I remember his having come on foot, and hearing that I should not require my _char-a-banc_ to return, he engaged it. The driver's story is, that the stranger always got out to walk at the hills, usually lingering slowly in his ascent of them; and that at last, at the top of the highest, he had waited for a considerable time without his appearing, and growing weary of expectancy he returned, and at the foot of the hill discovered something dark, lying motionless beside the pathway; he came closer, and saw it was the stranger quite dead. Three wounds, which from their depth and direction seemed to have been given by a dagger, were found in the chest; one, entered from the back between the shoulders; the fingers of the right hand were also cut nearly through, as though he had grasped a sharp weapon in his struggle.

Death must have been immediate, as the heart was twice wounded; probably he expired almost at once. The direction and the position of the wounds refuted every idea of a suicide--and yet how account for the crime of murder? The stranger was scarcely a week in Baden, not known to any one before his arrival here, and since had merely formed those chance acquaintances.h.i.+ps of watering-places. There was not, so far as one could see, the slightest ground to suspect any malice or hatred towards him..

The few particulars I have here set down were all that my servant could tell me. But what from the terrible nature of the tidings themselves, my own excitable state when hearing them, but, more than either, the remembrance of the dialogue I had overheard the night before--all combined and increased my fever to that degree that ere noon I became half wild with delirium. What I said, or how my wandering faculties turned, I cannot--nor would I willingly--remember. There was enough of illness in my ravings, and of method in them too, to bring Guckhardt again to my bedside, accompanied by a high agent of the police. The attempt to examine a man in such a state relative to the circ.u.mstances of a dreadful crime could only have entered the head of a _Prefet de Police_ or a _Juge d'Instruction_. What my revelations were I know not; but it is clear they a.s.sumed a character of independent fancy that balked the scrutiny of the official, for he left me to the unmixed cares of my doctor.

By his counsel I was speedily removed from Baden, under the impression that the scene would be prejudicial to my recovery. I was indifferent where, or in what way, they disposed of me; and when I was told I was to try the air of the Lake of Constance, I heard it with the apathy of one sunk in a trance. Nor do I yet know by what means the police, so indefatigable in tormenting the innocent, abandoned their persecution of me. They must have had their own sufficient reasons for it; so much is certain.

And now, once more, I ask myself, Is all that I have here set down the mere wanderings of a broken and disjointed brain? have these incidents no other foundation than a morbid fancy? I would most willingly accept even this sad alternative, and have it so; but here is evidence too strong to disbelieve. Here before me lies an English newspaper, with a paragraph alluding to the mysterious murder of an English gentleman at Baden. The dates, circ.u.mstances, all tally in the minutest particulars.

Shall I discredit these proofs?

The Countess is married to the Marquis de Courcelles; a distant relative of the Archd.u.c.h.ess, it is said. Let me dismiss the theme for ever--that is, if I can. And now for one whose interest to me is scarcely less sad, but of a very different shade of sadness.

This is my birthday, the 31st August. ”Why had the month more than thirty days?” is a question I have been tempted to hazard more than once. Nor is it from ingrat.i.tude that I say this. I have long enjoyed the easy path in life; I have tasted far more of the bright, and seen less of the shady side of this world's high-road than falls to the share of most men. With fortune more than sufficient to supply all that I could care for, I have had, without any pretension to high talent, that kind of readiness that is often mistaken for ability; and, what is probably even more successful with the world, I have had a keen appreciation of talent in other men--a thorough value for their superior attainments; and this--no great gift, to be sure--has always procured me acceptance in circles where my own pretensions would have proved feeble supporters. And then, this delicacy of health--what many would have called my heaviest calamity--has often carried me triumphantly through difficulties where I must have succ.u.mbed. Even in ”the House” have I heard the prognostications of what I might have been, ”if my health permitted;” so that my weak point ministered to me what strength had denied me.

Then, I have the most intense relish for the life of idleness I have been leading; the lounging ”do-nothingism” that would kill most men with _ennui_, is to me inexpressibly delightful. All those castle-buildings which, in the real world, are failures, succeed admirably in imagination. I overcome compet.i.tors, I convince opponents, I conciliate enemies at will, so long as they are all of my own making; and so far from falling back disappointed from the vision, to the fact, I revel in the conviction that I can go to work again at new fancies; and that, in such struggles, there is neither weariness nor defeat. A small world for ambition to range in! but I value it as Touchstone did his mistress,--”a poor thing, but it was mine own.”

It would be a strange record if a man were to chronicle his birthdays, keeping faithful note of his changed and changing nature as years stole on. For myself I have always regarded them somewhat like post-stations in a journey, ever expecting to find better horses and smoother roads next stage, and constantly promising myself to be more equable in temperament and more disposed to enjoy my tour. But the journey of life, like all other journeys, puts to flight the most matured philosophy, and the accidents of the way are always ready to divert the mind from its firmest resolves.