A Day's Ride Part 2

"Mr. Burgoyne," I chimed in.

"Exactly,--Jack Burgoyne; but you're not a bit like him."

"Strange, then; but I'm constantly mistaken for him; and when in London, I 'm actually persecuted by people calling out, 'When did you come up, Jack?' 'Where do you hang out?' 'How long do you stay?' 'Dine with me to-day--to-morrow--Sat.u.r.day?' and so on; and although, as I have remarked, these are only so many embarra.s.sments for me, they all show how popular must be my prototype." I had purposely made this speech of mine a little long, for I saw by the disconcerted looks of the party that they did not see how to wind up "the situation," and, like all awkward men, I grew garrulous where I ought to have been silent. While I rambled on, Lord Keldrum exchanged a word or two with one of his friends; and as I finished, he turned towards me, and, with an air of much courtesy, said,--

"We owe you every apology for this intrusion, and hope you will pardon it; there is, however, but one way in which we can certainly feel a.s.sured that we have your forgiveness,--that is, by your joining us. I see that your dinner is in preparation, so pray let me countermand it, and say that you are our guest."

"Lord Keldrum," said one of the party, presenting the speaker; "my name is Hammond, and this is Captain Oxley, Coldstream Guards."

I saw that this move required an exchange of ratifications, and so I bowed, and said, "Algernon Sydney Potts."

"There are Staffordshire Pottses?"

"No relation," I said stiffly. It was Hammond who made the remark, and with a sneering manner that I could not abide.

"Well, Mr. Potts, it is agreed," said Lord Keldrum, with his peculiar urbanity, "we shall see you at eight No dressing. You'll find us in this fishing-costume you see now."

I trust my reader, who has dined out any day he pleased and in any society he has liked these years past, will forgive me if I do not enter into any detailed account of my reasons for accepting this invitation.

Enough if I freely own that to me, A. S. Potts, such an unexpected honor was about the same surprise as if I had been announced governor of a colony, or bishop in a new settlement.

"At eight sharp, Mr. Potts."

"The next door down the pa.s.sage."

"Just as you are, remember!" were the three parting admonitions with which they left me.

CHAPTER III. TRUTH NOT ALWAYS IN WINE

Who has not experienced the charm of the first time in his life, when totally removed from all the accidents of his station, the circ.u.mstance of his fortune, and his other belongings, he has taken his place amongst perfect strangers, and been estimated by the claims of his own individuality? Is it not this which gives the almost ecstasy of our first tour,--our first journey? There are none to say, "Who is this Potts that gives himself these airs?" "What pretension has he to say this, or order that?" "What would old Peter say if he saw his son to-day?" with all the other "What has the world come tos?" and "What are we to see nexts?" I say it is with a glorious sense of independence that one sees himself emanc.i.p.ated from all these restraints, and recognizes his freedom to be that which nature has made him.

As I sat on Lord Keldrum's left,--Father d.y.k.e was on his right,--was I in any real quality other than I ever am? Was my nature different, my voice, my manner, my social tone, as I received all the bland attentions of my courteous host? And yet, in my heart of hearts, I felt that if it were known to that polite company I was the son of Peter Potts, 'pothecary, all my conversational courage would have failed me. I would not have dared to a.s.sert fifty things I now declared, nor vouched for a hundred that I as a.s.suredly guaranteed. If I had had to carry about me traditions of the shop in Mary's Abbey, the laboratory, and the rest of it, how could I have had the nerve to discuss any of the topics on which I now p.r.o.nounced so authoritatively? And yet, these were all accidents of my existence,--no more me than was the color of _his_ whiskers mine who vaccinated me for cow-pock. The man Potts was himself through all; he was neither compounded of senna and salts, nor amalgamated with sarsaparilla and the acids; but by the cruel laws of a harsh conventionality it was decreed otherwise, and the trade of the father descends to the son in every estimate of all he does and says and thinks. The converse of the proposition I was now to feel in the success I obtained in this company. I was as the Germans would say, "Der Herr Potts selbst, nicht nach seinen Begebenheiten"--the man Potts, not the creature of his belongings.

The man thus freed from his "antecedents," and owning no "relatives,"

feels like one to whom a great, a most unlimited, credit has been opened, in matter of opinion. Not reduced to fashion his sentiments by some supposed standard becoming his station, he roams at will over the broad prairie of life, enough if he can show cause why he says this or thinks that, without having to defend himself for his parentage, and the place he was born in. Little wonder if, with such a sum to my credit, I drew largely on it; little wonder if I were dogmatical and demonstrative; little wonder if, when my reason grew wearied with facts, I reposed on my imagination in fiction.

Be it remembered, however, that I only became what I have set down here after an excellent dinner, a considerable quant.i.ty of champagne, and no small share of claret, strong-bodied enough to please the priest. From the moment we sat down to table, I conceived for him a sort of distrust.

He was painfully polite and civil; he had a soft, slippery, Clare accent; but there was a malicious twinkle in his eye that showed he was by nature satirical. Perhaps because we were more reading men than the others that it was we soon found ourselves pitted against each other in argument, and this not upon one, but upon every possible topic that turned up. Hammond, I found, also stood by the priest; Oxley was _my_ backer; and his Lordship played umpire. d.y.k.e was a shrewd, sarcastic dog in his way, but he had no chance with me. How mercilessly I treated his church!--he pushed me to it,--what an _expose_ did I make of the Pope and his government, with all their extortions and cruelties! how ruthlessly I showed them up as the sworn enemies of all freedom and enlightenment! The priest never got angry. He was too cunning for that, and he even laughed at some of my anecdotes, of which I related a great many.

"Don't be so hard on him, Potts," whispered my Lord, as the day wore on; "he 's not one of us, you know!"

This speech put me into a flutter of delight. It was not alone that he called me Potts, but there was also an acceptance of me as one of hier own set. We were, in fact, henceforth _nous autres_. Enchanting recognition, never to be forgotten!

"But what would you do with us?" said d.y.k.e, mildly remonstrating against some severe measures we of the landed interest might be yet driven to resort to.

"I don't know,--that is to say,--I have not made up my mind whether it were better to make a clearance of you altogether, or to bribe you."

"Bribe us by all means, then!" said he, with a most serious earnestness.

"Ah! but could we rely upon you?" I asked.

"That would greatly depend upon the price."

"I 'll not haggle about terms, nor I 'm sure would Keldrum," said I, nodding over to his Lordship.

"You are only just to me, in that," said he, smiling.

"That's all fine talking for you fellows who had the luck to be first on the list, but what are poor devils like Oxley and myself to do?" said Hammond. "Taxation comes down to second sons."

"And the 'Times' says that's all right," added Oxley.

"And I say it's all wrong; and I say more," I broke in: "I say that of all the tyrannies of Europe, I know of none like that newspaper. Why, sir, whose station, I would ask, nowadays, can exempt him from its impertinent criticisms? Can Keldrum say--can I say--that to-morrow or next day we shall not be arraigned for this, that, or t'other? I choose, for instance, to manage my estate,--the property that has been in my family for centuries,--the acres that have descended to us by grants as old as Magna Charta. I desire, for reasons that seem sufficient to myself, to convert arable into gra.s.s land. I say to one of my tenant farmers--it's Hedgeworth--no matter, I shall not mention names, but I say to him--"

"I know the man," broke in the priest; "you mean Hedgeworth Davis, of Mount Davis."

"No, sir, I do not," said I, angrily, for I resented this attempt to run me to earth.

"Hedgeworth! Hedgeworth! It ain't that fellow that was in the Rifles; the 2d battalion, is it?" said Ozley.

"I repeat," said I, "that I will mention no names."

"My mother had some relatives Hedgeworths, they were from Herefordshire.

How odd, Potts, if we should turn out to be connections! You said that these people were related to you."

"I hope," I said angrily, "that I am not bound to give the birth, parentage, and education of every man whose name I may mention in conversation. At least, I would protest that I have not prepared myself for such a demand upon my memory."

"Of course not, Potts. It would be a test no man could submit to," said his Lordship.

"That Hedgeworth, who was in the Rifles, exceeded all the fellows I ever met in drawing the long bow. There was no country he had not been in, no army he had not served with; he was related to every celebrated man in Europe; and, after all, it turned out that his father was an attorney at Market Harborough, and sub-agent to one of our fellows who had some property there." This was said by Hammond, who directed the speech entirely to me.

"Confound the Hedgeworths, all together," Ozley broke in. "They have carried us miles away from what we were talking of."

This was a sentiment that met my heartiest concurrence, and I nodded in friendly recognition to the speaker, and drank off my gla.s.s to his health.

"Who can give us a song? I 'll back his reverence here to be a vocalist," cried Hammond. And sure enough, d.y.k.e sang one of the national melodies with great feeling and taste. Ozley followed with something in less perfect taste, and we all grew very jolly. Then there came a broiled bone and some devilled kidneys, and a warm brew which Hammond himself concocted,--a most insidious liquor, which had a strong odor of lemons, and was compounded, at the same time, of little else than rum and sugar.

There is an adage that says "in vino Veritas," which I shrewdly suspect to be a great fallacy; at least, as regards my own case, I know it to be totally inapplicable. I am in my sober hours--and I am proud to say that the exceptions from such are of the rarest--one of the most veracious of mortals; indeed, in my frank sincerity, I have often given offence to those who like a courteous hypocrisy better than an ungraceful truth.

Whenever by any chance it has been my ill-fortune to transgress these limits, there is no bound to my imagination. There is nothing too extravagant or too vainglorious for me to say of myself. All the strange incidents of romance that I have read, all the travellers' stories, newspaper accidents, adventures by sea and land, wonderful coincidences, unexpected turns of fortune, I adapt to myself, and coolly relate them as personal experiences. Listeners have afterwards told me that I possess an amount of consistence, a verisimilitude in these narratives perfectly marvellous, and only to be accounted for by supposing that I myself must, for the time being, be the dupe of my own imagination.

Indeed, I am sure such must be the true explanation of this curious fact. How, in any other mode, explain the rash wagers, absurd and impossible engagements I have contracted in such moments, backing myself to leap twenty-three feet on the level sward; to dive in six fathoms water, and fetch up Heaven knows what of sh.e.l.ls and marine curiosities from the bottom; to ride the most unmanageable of horses; and, single-handed and unarmed, to fight the fiercest bulldog in England?

Then, as to intellectual feats, what have I not engaged to perform? Sums of mental arithmetic; whole newspapers committed to memory after one reading; verse compositions, on any theme, in ten languages; and once a written contract to compose a whole opera, with all the scores, within twenty-four hours. To a nature thus strangely const.i.tuted, wine was a perfect magic wand, transforming a poor, weak, distrustful modest man into a hero; and yet, even with such temptations, my excesses were extremely rare and unfrequent. Are there many, I would ask, that could resist the pa.s.sport to such a dreamland, with only the penalty of a headache the next morning? Some one would, perhaps, suggest that these were enjoyments to pay forfeit on. Well, so they were; but I must not antic.i.p.ate. And now to my tale.

To Hammond's brew there succeeded one by Oxley, made after an American receipt, and certainly both fragrant and insinuating; and then came a concoction made by the priest, which he called "Father Hosey's pride."

It was made in a bowl, and drunk out of lemon-rinds, ingeniously fitted into the wine-gla.s.ses. I remember no other particulars about it, though I can call to mind much of the conversation that preceded it. How I gave a long historical account of my family, that we came originally from Corsica, the name Potts being a corruption of Pozzo, and that we were of the same stock as the celebrated diplomatist Pozzo di Borgo. Our unclaimed estates in the island were of fabulous value, but in a.s.serting my right to them I should accept thirteen mortal duels, the arrears of a hundred and odd years un-scored off, in antic.i.p.ation of which I had at one time taken lessons from Angelo, in fencing, which led to the celebrated challenge they might have read in "Galignani," where I offered to meet any swordsman in Europe for ten thousand Napoleons, giving choice of the weapon to my adversary. With a tear to the memory of the poor French colonel that I killed at Sedan, I turned the conversation. Being in France, I incidentally mentioned some anecdotes of military life, and bow I had invented the rifle called after Minie's name, and, in a moment of good nature, given that excellent fellow my secret.

"I will say," said I, "that Minie has shown more grat.i.tude than some others nearer home, but we 'll talk of rifled cannon another time."