“As a rule,” I admitted. “But every rule has its exceptions.”
“Exceptions be d — d!” he said, shaken out of his usual propriety.
“Wait. Listen,” I said, sobered by the reasonableness of his complaint, however unreasonably stated. “Let me tell you why I did it, for I did not do it without thought. I did it to learn something of the feeling of the country, of which they are as ignorant at home as of what is passing in the moon. It was to ascertain whether there did exist any of that discontent with the Government which Stein at Troppau asserted and Gentz denied. Well, I did learn a good deal. I proved the existence of that discontent — I should have thought to your satisfaction. Granted that Burschen are privileged people; yet it is clear that even they would not dare to behave as they did, if they did not know that popular sentiment was with them. They could not drink Schill’s health in public if Schill’s conduct were disapproved, nor sing of German unity if Nap’s rule were popular. No one opposed them, no one interfered. Very good. Then frankly I think I did you a service — and no small service. You have only to set down your impressions in official language and hand it in for Castlereagh’s consideration and I’ll warrant he’ll send for you within twenty-four hours — and want to know more.”
I had wrought myself up to a high pitch of indignation, for I thought Ellis unjust as well as stupid. But he brought me down with a jolt. “Well, I don’t agree with you,” he said, in his most official tone. “On the contrary, I think that your conduct was indiscreet in a high degree. Our business is not to mix ourselves up with this or that party. It is simply to get these despatches home in safety, and sallies like that of to-night are not only compromising but dangerous! Dangerous!”
“And you see no excuse?” I exclaimed.
“No! My good man, none! You talk about Klatz, but it is not Klatz who puts us in peril. It is your hotheadedness, Cartwright. It is your lack of the very elements of discretion! But for that I should not have left that place alone.”
“Then that was my fault, too, I suppose?”
“Certainly. If you forgot yourself I could not be expected to stay and countenance it. And involve myself.” I really could not put up with that. It was most unfair. “Then I suppose you think,” I retorted, “ that you would be safer with Klatz than with me? That’s it, is it?”
“Unless you show greater prudence, I do think so. If you are going to act as you acted this evening I haven’t a doubt about it. You have told me that we are followed and watched and are in danger here and in danger there, that the utmost circumspection is necessary! Very well. If that is so, if we are watched, and followed, you are condemned out of your own mouth. Could anything be more imprudent or more improper than your conduct this evening?”
I own that he had me there. It was difficult to meet that, and I lost my temper. “If that is so,” I retorted, “if that is your opinion I had better make my way to Hamburg by one road, and you by another.”
Probably he did not think me in earnest, for “That is for you to decide,” he said in his coldest tone. “ Certainly I do not need your services en voyage. There is no quill work.” Which was an additional stab, for quill work is the depreciatory term applied to the tyro’s employment. “And if we are likely to have any repetition of to-day’s folly—”
“You think you would be safer without me?”
“I neither say it nor deny it.” He shrugged his shoulders. He had grown cool in proportion as I had become heated.
Too heated for prudence, or, alas, for common sense, either of which would have told me that I was on the point of making a fool of myself. “ Very good,” I answered. “Then I shall take you at your word.” And, acharné to the last degree, I left the room, and slammed the door behind me.
It was a pretty quarrel, if it had ended there! And there it might have ended, for by morning I should have come to a cooler mind, if ill luck had not thrown Kaspar in my way at the very moment when a word could do most mischief. He was sitting in the passage, waiting to learn if Ellis wanted anything before he retired; and carried away by my feelings, I spoke to him — and burned my boats.
“His Excellency thinks it better that we should separate,” I said, controlling with difficulty my voice, “ and go by different routes. There is a boat starting down the Elbe at five and I shall go by it. You can take on my baggage. Call me at four.”
He looked his amazement, but like a well trained servant he only asked if he could pack for me.
“No, I shall take little and I can manage that,” I said. “Good night.” And I shut myself up in my room.
Mea culpa! Mea maxima culpa l I own it humbly. But at the time I did not see this, or regret what I had done. The thing had no doubt been long coming to a head. A score of grievances, of pin-pricks and provocations, of patronage on one side, of resentment on the other, had made bad blood between us. And ten days of forced companionship within the narrow bounds of a travelling carriage with all the desagrements which this entailed had so inflamed the trouble that it hardly needed the irritation which our difference about Klatz had set up to ferment the sore and bring it to the surface.
Of course I see now how petty it all was and how childish I was — and blameable, heaven forgive me! But I did not see it then. I dubbed Ellis a pompous stiffnecked ass, and he no doubt thought me a hot-head, ill-trained and unbroken. I had done him, as I fancied, a valuable service — and been rewarded with rebuke! He saw in the same service only an unprofessional prank, compromising and dangerous.
So, as I have said, I did not at once repent. I was hot and excited. I thought myself in the right. I deemed myself hardly used. But before sleep, ill to woo, came to me, the thing began to appear in truer colours, and I to perceive that I had behaved like a fool.
For the quarrel might have serious consequences for me, even though we came together at Hamburg. I could hardly hope to have after this the good word of one who was now my chief and must report upon me, and though nothing that I knew of Perceval led me to believe that he would be unfair, so nothing that I knew of him led me to think that he would ignore our differences.
In all likelihood I should return branded with the worst affiche a man in our profession can earn, that of being indiscreet. With Europe closed to the service, three-fourths of our men were at this time idle, and I who had gone out to Vienna, the envy of men ten years older than myself, would return to spend my days in fruitless attendance at the Office, my only relaxation, as I haunted the waiting room, a daily perusal of the Journal de Leyden, So I tossed and tumbled in a bed that, like all German beds, was too steep and too short for me; and I would gladly have undone what I had done. But I had spoken to Kaspar, and I had not the courage or the good sense to eat my words.
But let me say this. If I had known then what was destined to be the outcome, if I had foreseen ever so dimly the tragical issue which that night’s work was preparing, if I had had an inkling of the life-long regret that I was laying up for myself, I know that I should have let no consideration of pride or dignity weigh with me. I should have abased myself without a murmur. But the future was hidden from me — and the price that was to be paid.
Still it was with a weight upon my spirits that I rose next morning and began to make my few preparations. The freshness of the morning, the July sun poured in through my casement, but had no immediate power to cheer me. I swallowed the cup of tea Kaspar had made for me, and presently, grumpily and sleepily, I descended the stairs.
I noted with some surprise that the door of the girl who had looked out last night stood open, and that the room was empty. But it was not until I emerged from the inn and stood in the rain-washed street where the Stubenmadchen were whitening the steps, and here and there a gilded vane glittered in the sunshine, that I felt the breath of adventure move me. Whatever the cost in the future, I was free in the present. Free for some days from the stuffy carriage and Ellis’s company, free to make my way to Hamburg by any road I chose. The world was before me.
; CHAPTER V
A GRAND DUCAL COURT
I HAD one or two things to do before I left the town, and I was turning from the door of the Golden Stag when my eyes encountered a shabby calash, which was loading up a few paces from the entrance. The postboy, as dingy as the carriage, was already in the saddle and the two travellers were in their seats, and waiting only until one of them, the girl of the gallery, whose empty room was now explained, had said her last word to her escort of the day before.
It was clear that she had fallen on someone to share the expense of a landschute, and I glanced with curiosity at the person beside her, to see what manner of companion she had found. To my surprise I recognized the handsome over-dressed woman whom I had seen driving out of Grossenhayn behind the army postilion.
I had not liked her looks then. I did not like them now; and it crossed my mind to feel sorry for the girl. But the next moment the postboy cracked his ragged whip, the old lady stood back, crying “Auf Wiedersehn!” and the carriage jolted away in the direction of the Berlin Gate.
I started on my errands. I had put on my oldest clothes, but as I proposed to travel to Hamburg by water, and wished to attract as little notice as possible, I still doubted their fitness, and I made search for a clothier’s shop. There I exchanged my coat and hat for a student’s peaked cap and one of those ill-cut waistless coats beloved of Burschen.
I had omitted to shave, and by thrusting my stock into my pocket and throwing open my collar, I made myself into a passable imitation of a student. I bought an iron-shod stick on which to swing my satchel, and five minutes later I was on the quay, below the long wooden bridge. Here I had no difficulty in finding the craft of which the students had spoken to me.
I was late, but river life is leisurely, and the boat had not yet cast off. She was one of those heavy flat-bottomed craft, as much rafts as boats, that come down from the Bohemian highlands, and are broken up at Hamburg and sold to the shipyards for timber. As a rule their voyages are made in the spring, but that summer, as Napoleon found to his cost when the flood carried away his bridges at Donau, had been wet, and the Elbe was still high.
Making its voyage at this season the unwieldy vessel was crowded with passengers, and for a time I saw nothing of my five acquaintances. I was not sorry for this, for at the moment I had no taste for their company, though I thought that it might be useful when the time came to pass Magdeburg, now in French hands. For, though had brought my passport, in the name of Wagenmacher, I had no mind to produce it, if it could be avoided.
The sun shone, a southerly wind raised a glittering ripple on the broad stream, and as I watched the towers and grey walls of Wittenberg — more beautiful without than within — receding behind us, I experienced an elation and a freedom to which I had been long a stranger. I was able to forget the equivocal position in which I had placed myself and its possible outcome; and lounging against the ropes that served for bulwarks, I fed my eyes on the sparkling water and the low green banks, or viewed with pleasure the queer costumes and snow-white caps of the peasants who surrounded me.
Somewhere, forward, three voices were singing a glee to the tinkling notes of a zither, and already the beer-boy was making his round. On all sides onion-scented meals were being produced from coloured handkerchiefs, everywhere smiles and contentment met the eye.
And this was Germany — Germany under the heel of Napoleon, the Germany which the Burschen had represented to be heaving with unhappiness and discontent! Inevitably I thought of Pope’s lines on the small effect that governments or laws, conquerors or kings have on the happiness of nations.
Below Wittenberg the Elbe is no longer a picturesque river. Like the life of the tillers of the soil on its banks, it flows on slow and placid. Not only has it left behind it the rocks and rapids of the Saxon Switzerland, but even the valley in which it runs has here widened to a plain. Now and again islands part the stream, or low wooded hills rise gently from the level; or pink and white hamlets peeping from the trees, with the gardens and towers of some lordly Schloss, break the foreshore.
At times we hardly seemed to move, so slow was our progress, at times the current caught us and urged us on. But I was in no hurry. I viewed with pleasure, I looked forward with contentment to days of inaction. If I thought at moments and with misgiving of Ellis’s position and of Klatz — Klatz, whom I still stubbornly suspected — it was to comfort myself with the reflection that the rogue would be puzzled.
He might well think that our separation was a ruse, and conjecture that while my Chief pursued his journey with pomp, the despatches on which he had set his heart were in my care and fast receding in the distance.
The notion was cheering, and I found in it some warrant for the step I had taken. My departure might lessen Ellis’s risk. On the other hand, though Perceval spoke German fluently, he had not that intimate knowledge of the country and the dialect which had recommended me, young as I was, for the Mission.
He could not pass as safely as I could for a native. But then, on his arrival in Berlin, he would doubtless report himself to the Danish Minister, and also to St. Marsan, the French resident; and obtaining from the latter, or from the Prussian Foreign Office new credentials, he would regularize his position.
I felt no doubt that he would take that course. Nevertheless as the day wore on I drew less satisfaction from the thought. The heat increased as the sun rose overhead, and our progress, at two miles an hour, grew tedious. I found less to distract me, the novelty wore off, I yawned. At noon we tied up for an hour, which proved to be two, and I fell in with the students who — to cure a morning headache — had taken more beer than was good for them.
Three o’clock saw the deck cumbered with sleepers, the glee had become a brawling chorus, and it was but very, very slowly that we now progressed. All hope of reaching Magdeburg that night was laid aside, and we had not even reached Dessau, when late in the evening the clumsy craft put into the left bank. We were ordered to go ashore and rejoin the boat at Dessau at five in the morning.
I had no mind to spend the night with the Burschen, and having waited in a quiet corner until I had seen them stream away with the crowd along the road to the town, I turned into the garden of a beer-house in the little village at which we had tied up. It was over-full, but I found a seat and ordered a simple meal. No one heeded the solitary student, and having eaten and paid, I took up my satchel and strolled away towards the town, which lies a few furlongs inland.
It was dusk but not dark, for the sky was clear and the plain open. I fancied the distance to be about a mile, and I had covered some third of this and was dwelling on the charms of a good bed, when I came to a place where the road forked, a narrow fir wood dividing the branches. I paused, but quickly made up my mind, and was taking the left hand track which seemed to lead more directly towards the lights of the town, when I heard voices in front — the raised voices of persons quarrelling.
As I went on, the voices grew louder, and presently two figures took shape in the darkness which the trees cast on the road. Apparently the quarrel had passed from words to blows, for the nearer figure was retreating before the other, and at the same time there came from it cries of remonstrance and alarm. I took the retiring party to be a woman — it was much the shorter — but it was so dark that I could not be sure even of that.
What passed next, passed in a few moments. The bleating cries rose to a shriek, a blow fell, and the woman — if it was a woman — either tripped backwards or was struck to the ground. The aggressor raised his weapon again, I caught a half-choked cry for mercy, and I sprang forward to intervene.
I hurled my satchel at the man, and followed it up, brandishing my iron-shod stick.
“Stand back!” I challenged. “ Have a care, man! What is it?”
My sudden appearance or my cudgel took the rascal by surprise. He retreated three or four paces, leaving his victim lying in the road. “ What is it to you?” he replied with an oath, but still backing before me as I advanced. “G
o your way!”
“Not till I know more—”
I never finished the sentence, and I do not know what followed. For with that the thing for me came to an end. I remember, or I fancy I remember, a stunning shock, and I presume — I have no doubt rightly — that I was struck on the head from behind by the person I had essayed to protect. But even that is an inference drawn after the event.
At any rate there came for me a blank — darkness — silence.
And afterwards? Well, a slow struggling back to life through fevered wastes and dreadful parched places. But the pain-racked visions, the shadowy figures, the void always yawning for my reeling senses, that haunted my mind, and were I suppose so many stages in the return to consciousness, form no part of this story.
A day came when, though my memory of the past was hazy, I could think and speak, raise my head from the pillow and once more, as the nurses say, take notice. By that time the room in which I lay had become, owing to brief flashes of consciousness, fairly familiar to me.
The tall, curtained windows through which the sun peeped when the veilleuse was not glimmering in its basin, the old woman in the mob cap who flitted to and fro with a cup and a spoon, or at other times slumbered in a vast chaise-longue; the doctor in his powdered wig who stared at me, owl-like, his chin on the gold knob of his cane; even the dainty lady with golden hair, viewed at first as an angel, who at rare intervals smiled at me from the doorway — all these I had come to know, and to take for granted.
But on this particular morning I knew myself. I knew that the thin hands lying on the coverlet were mine, and the bearded chin, knew that I was Francis Cartwright of the F.O., and not only wondered how I came to be lying there, but had the desire to learn and the strength to ask.
Six weeks! Had I really lain there six weeks? Shaved? Yes, I would like to be shaved. In His Highness’s country-house, was I? Really. But what Highness? Oh, the Grand Duke of Zerbst. Very, very kind of him to take me in! I murmured. I was still weak as water, and as I tried to express my gratitude the tears rose to my eyes.
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 683