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 punish! 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 rushing 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 worshippers 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 worship 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 acquaintanceships 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.

Tuesday Morning, When I had written so far last night, the arrival of a travelling carriage and four, with a Courier preceding, caused such a commotion in the little inn that, notwithstanding all my a.s.sumed indifference, I could not entirely escape the contagion, and, at last, was fain to open my window and stare at the new arrival with all the hardihood that becomes him already in possession of an apartment. "I took little by my motion." All I saw was a portly travelling carriage, heavily laden with its appurtenances and imperials, well-corded springs, rope-lashed pole, and double drag-chains,--evidences of caution and signs of long-projected travel.

I might have readily forgotten the new comer--indeed, I had almost done so ere I closed the window--had not his memory been preserved for me by a process peculiar to small and unfrequented inns,--a species of absorption by which the traveller of higher pretensions invariably draws in all the stray articles of comfort scattered through the establishment. First my table took flight, and in its place a small and ricketty thing of white deal had arrived; next followed a dressing-gla.s.s; then waddled forth a fat, unwieldy, old arm-chair, that seemed by its difficulty of removal to have strong objections to locomotion; and lastly, a chest of drawers set out on its travels, but so stoutly did it resist, that it was not captured without the loss of two legs, while every drawer was thrown out upon the floor, to the manifest detriment of the waiter's shins and ankles. These "distraints"

I bore well and equably, and it was only a summary demand to surrender a little sofa on which I lay that at length roused me from my apathy, and I positively demurred, asking, I suppose, querulously enough, who it was that required the whole accommodation of the inn, and could spare nothing for another traveller? An "English Prince" was the answer; at which I could not help laughing, well knowing that the t.i.tle is tolerably indiscriminate in its application. Indeed, I once heard Colonel Sibthorp called such.

It is all very well to affect indifference and apathy, to pretend that you care nothing who or what your neighbour in an inn may be. This is very practicable where his ident.i.ty takes no more corporeal shape than No. 42 or 53 in some great overgrown hotel. But imagine yourself in some small secluded spot, some little nook, of which you had half fancied you were the first discoverer--conceiving yourself a kind of new Perouse; fancy, then, when in the very ecstasy of your adventure, the arrival of a travelling carriage and four, with a belted Courier and a bearded Valet; not only are your visions routed, but your own ident.i.ty begins to dissolve away with them. You are neither a hero to yourself nor to "mine host." His best smiles, his deepest reverence, are now for the last comer, for whose accommodation a general tribute is levied. Do what you will, say what you will, there is no remaining deaf to the incessant turmoil that bespeaks the great man's wants. There is a perpetual hurry-scurry to seek this and fetch that; soda-water--tea--champagne--a fire--hot water--are continually echoing along the corridor, and "the Prince" seems like some vast "Maelstrom" that all the larder and the cellar contain can never satiate. Such, certainly, the least exacting of men appear when under the auspices of a Courier and the host of a small inn.

The poverty of the establishment makes the commonest requirements seem the demand of a Sybarite indulgence, and every-day wants are luxuries where cleanliness is the highest of virtues.

I was--I own it--worried and vexed by the clamour and movement, that not even coming night calmed down. The repose and quiet I had been so fully enjoying were gone, and, in their place, the vulgar noises and tumult of a little inn. All these interruptions, intimately a.s.sociated in my mind with the traveller, invested him, to me, with a character perfectly detestable, so that there was somewhat of open defiance in my refusal to yield up my sofa.

A pause followed. What was to come next? I listened and waited in half anxiety, wondering what new aggression might ensue; but all was still: nay, there was a clattering of knives and forks, and then went the pop of a cork--"the Prince" was eating. "Well," thought I, "there is some vengeance here, for the _cuisine_ is detestable." "His Highness" thought so too, for more than one _plat_ was dismissed, accompanied by a running commentary of abuse on the part of the Courier.

At last came a really tranquil moment. The cheese had been sent away as uneatable, and the Courier had followed it, cursing manfully, if I might p.r.o.nounce from the odour wafted to my own chamber, not unreasonably. "Mi Lor le Prince" was probably composing himself to a siesta; there was a stealthy quietude in the step of his servant along the corridor that said so much. I had scarcely made the reflection when a tap came to my door. "The Prince" wished for an English newspaper, and the host had seen two on my table. The "Post" and the "Chronicle" were both before me, and I sent them, half wondering which best might suit his Highness's politics.

Another tap at the door! Really this is intolerable. Has he not had my table, my arm-chair, my newspapers--what will he ask for next? "Come in," said I, now trying English, after in vain shouting "Entrez" and "Herein" three times over.

An English servant entered, and in that peculiarly low, demure tone, so distinctive of his caste, said,--

"Sir Robert Chawuth presents his compliments, and begs to know if he may pay his respects to Mr. Templeton?"

"Is Sir Robert here? is that his carriage?" said I, hastily.

"Yes, sir; he came about an hour ago."

"Oh, very well. Say, I shall feel great pleasure in seeing him. Is he disengaged at present?"

"Yes, sir, he is quite alone."

"Shew me his apartment, then."

"So," thought I, as I arose to seek the chamber, "this time they were nearer right than usual; for, if not an 'English Prince,' he has wielded more substantial power, and exerted a much wider sway over the destinies of the world, than ever a 'foreign Prince' from the Baltic to the Bosphorus."

Strange enough, our last meeting was at Downing Street; he was then Minister. I waited upon him by appointment, as I was leaving England for the Prussian mission, and _he_ desired to give me his own instructions before I sailed; and now, I visit him in a little Tyrol "Gasthaus," he, dest.i.tute of power, and myself----

It would be presumptuous in one so humbly placed to hazard an opinion on the subject; but if I were to dare it, I should say that the statesmen of England possess a range of knowledge and a wider intimacy with the actual condition of the world as it is than any other cla.s.s, in any country. I was greatly struck with this last evening. The topics wandered far a-field, varying from the Poor Laws to Hong Kong, from the Health of Towns to the state of the Peninsula: Austria, Ireland, Switzerland, the Navigation Laws, the policy of Louis Philippe, and the rot in the potatoes; and on each of these themes he not only spoke well, but he spoke with a degree of knowledge that smacked of a special study. "How comes it," I asked myself, "that this man, with the weighty cares of a mighty empire on his brain, has time to hear and memory to retain little traits of various people in remote quarters of the world?

How, for instance, did he hear, or why remember, these anecdotes of the present Landamman of Switzerland, Ochsenbein?" And yet there were good reasons perhaps, to remember them. The man who has personally shewn the white feather will scarcely be courageous as the head of a government, though there is great reason to suspect that he may exhibit all the rashness of cowardice--its worst, because its most dangerous, quality.

I had often suspected, but I never knew before, how completely this Minister had usurped every department of the Cabinet, and concentrated in himself the Home, the Foreign, and the Colonial Governments. The very patronage, too, he had a.s.sumed; so that, in fact, his colleagues were comparatively without influence or occupation. I confess that, on hearing him talk so unconcernedly of mighty events and portentous changes, of great interests and powerful states, that my heart beat strongly with an ambitious ardour, and a feverish throbbing of my temples suggested to me that the longing for rank, and station, and power, had not yet died away within me. Was it with serious intention that he spoke to me of again entering Parliament and taking office in some future arrangement, or was it merely from a sense of compa.s.sion that he ministered this meed of encouragement to the hopes of a sick man? Whatever the motive, the result has been an increased buoyancy, more of vitality about me, than I have known for some time--a secret wishing for life and strength to "do something" ere I die.

He rather appeared pleased with a suggestion I threw out for augmenting the elective franchise in Ireland, by making the qualification "an intellectual one," and extending the right of voting to all who should take a certain degree or diploma in either the University of Dublin or any of the provincial colleges, all admitted as members of learned bodies, and all licentiates of law and physic. This would particularly suit the condition of Ireland, where property is a most inadequate and limited test, and at the same time, by an infusion of educated and thinking men into the ma.s.s, serve to counterbalance and even guide the opinions of those less capable of forming judgments. We are becoming more democratic every day. Let our trust be in well-informed, clearsighted democracy, and let the transition be from the aristocracy to the cultivated middle cla.s.ses, and not to the rule of Feargus O'Connor and his Chartists.

And now, to wander down this lonely glen, and forget, if I may, these jarring questions, where men's pa.s.sions and ambitions have more at stake than human happiness. Do what I will, think of what I will, the image of--Caroline Graham--yes, I must call her so, rises before me at every step. It is a sad condition of the nervous system when slight impressions cut deep. Like the diseased state of the mucous membrane, when tastes and odours cling and adhere to it for days long, I suppose that the prevalence of such images in the brain would at last lead to insanity, or, at least, that form of it called Monomania. Let no man suppose that this is so very rare a malady. Let us rather ask, Who is quite free from some feature of the affection? The mild cases are the pa.s.sionate ardour we see exhibited by men in the various and peculiar pursuits in life; the bad ones, only greater in degree, are shut up in asylums.

The most singular instance that ever occurred within my own knowledge was one I met several years back in Germany; and as "thereby hangs a tale," I will set it down in the words of the relator. This is his own recital--in his own handwriting too!

There are moments in the life of almost every man which seem like years.

The mind, suddenly calling up the memory of bygone days, lives over the early hours of childhood--the bright visions of youth, when all was promise and antic.i.p.ation--and traverses with a bound the ripe years of manhood, with all their struggles, and cares, and disappointments; and even throws a glance into the dark vista of the future, computing the "to come" from the past; and, at such times as these, one feels that he is already old, and that years have gone over him.