A Day's Ride Part 55

I attempted to account for this piece of devotion as best I might, but not very successfully, since I was only endeavoring to explain what I really did not well understand myself. Nor could a vague desire to do something generous, merely because it _was_ generous, satisfy the practical intelligence of him who heard me.

"Well," said he, at last, "all that machinery you have described is so new and strange to me, I can tell nothing as to how it ought to work; but I'm as grateful to you as a man can be for a service which he could not have rendered _himself_, nor has the slightest notion of what could have prompted _you_ to do. Now, let me hear by what chance you came here?"

"You must listen to a long story to learn that," said I; and as he declared that he had nothing more pressing to do with his time, I began, almost as I have begun with my reader. On my first mention of Crofton, he asked me to repeat the name; and when I spoke of meeting Miss Herbert at the Milford station, he slightly moved his chair, as if to avoid the strong light from the window; but from that moment till I finished, he never interrupted me by a word, nor interposed a question.

"And it was she gave you that old seal-ring I see on your finger?" said he, at last.

"Yes," said I. "How came you to guess that?"

"Because _I_ gave it to her the day she was sixteen! I am her father."

I drew a long breath, and could only clutch his arm with astonishment, without being able to speak.

"It's all well-known in England, now. Everybody has been paid in full, my creditors have met in a body, and signed a request to me to come back and recommence business. They have done more; they have bought up the lease of the Foundry, and sent it out to me. Ay, and old Elkanah's mortgage, too, is redeemed, and I don't owe a shilling."

"You must have worked hard to accomplish all this?"

"Pretty hard, no doubt. You remember those little boats with the holes in 'em at Lindau. _They_ did the business for me. I was fool enough at that time to imagine that you had got a clew to my discovery, and were after me to pick up all the details. I ought to have known better! It was easy enough to see that _you_ could have no head for anything with a 'tough bone' in it. Light, thoughtless creatures of _your_ kind are never dangerous anywhere!"

I was not quite sure whether I was expected to return thanks for this speech in my favor, and therefore only made some very unintelligible mutterings.

"There's only one liner now to be raised, and all the guns are already out of her, but I can return to-morrow. I am free; my contract is completed; and the 'Ignatief' sloop-of-war is at my orders at Balaklava to convey me to any port I please in Europe."

He said this so boastfully and so vaingloriously that I really felt Potts in his humility was not the smaller man of the two. Nor, perhaps, was my irritation the less, at seeing how little surprise our singular meeting had caused him, and how much he regarded all I had done in his behalf as being ordinary and commonplace services. But, perhaps, the _coup de grace_ of my misery came as he said,--

"Though I forwarded that ten-pound note you lent me to Rome, perhaps you 'll like to have it now. If you need any more, say so."

My heart was in my mouth, and I felt that I 'd have died of starvation rather than accept the humblest benefit at his hands.

"Very well," said he to my refusal; "all the better that you 've no need of cash, for, to tell the truth, Potts, you 're not much of a doctor, nor are you very remarkable as a man of genius; and it is a kind thing of Providence when such fellows as you are born with even a 'pewter spoon' in their mouths."

I nearly choked, but I said nothing.

"If you 'd like me to land you anywhere in the Levant, or down towards the Spanish coast, only tell me."

"No, nothing of the kind. I 'm going north; I 'm going to Moscow, to Tobolsk; I 'm going to Persia and Astrakhan," said I, in wildest confusion.

"Well, I can give you a capital travelling-cloak--it's one of those buntas they make in the Banat, and you 'll need it, for they have fearfully severe cold in those countries."

With this, and not waiting my resolute refusal, he rose, hobbled out of the room, and I--ay, there's no concealing it--burst out a-crying!

Weak and sick as I was, I procured an "araba" that night, and, without one word of adieu, set out for Krim.

It was about two years after this--my father had died in the interval, leaving me a small but sufficient fortune to live on, and I had just arrived in Paris, after a long desultory ramble through the east of Europe--I was standing, one morning early in one of the small alleys of the Champs elysees, watching with half-listless curiosity the various grooms as they pa.s.sed to exercise their horses in the Bois de Boulogne.

Group after group pa.s.sed me of those magnificent animals in which Paris is now more than the rival of London, and at length I was struck by the appearance of a very smartly dressed groom, who led along beside him a small-sized horse, completely sheeted and shrouded from view. Believing that this must prove some creature of rare beauty, an Arab of purest descent, I followed them as they went, and at last overtook them.

The groom was English, and by my offer of a cigar, somewhat better than the one he was smoking, he was very willing to satisfy my curiosity.

"I suppose he has Arab blood in him," said he, half contemptuously; "but he's forty years old now if he's a day. What they keep him for I don't know, but they make as much work about him as if he was a Christian; and as for myself, I have nothing else to do than walk him twice a day to his exercise, and take care that his oats are well bruised and mixed with linseed, for he hasn't a tooth left."

"I suppose his master is some very rich man, who can afford himself a caprice like this."

"For the matter of money, he has enough of it. He is the Prince Ernest Maximilian of Wurtemberg, and, except the Emperor, has the best stable in all Paris. But I don't think that _he_ cares much for the old horse; it's the _Princess_ likes him, and she constantly drives out to the wood here, and when we come to a quiet spot, where there are no strangers, she makes me take off all the body-clothes and the hood, and she 'll get out of the carriage and pat him. And he knows her, that he does! and lifts up that old leg of his when she comes towards him, and tries to whinny too. But here she comes now, and it won't do if I 'm seen talking to you; so just drop behind, sir, and never notice me."

I crossed the road, and had but reached the opposite pathway, when a carriage stopped, and the old horse drew up beside it. After a word or two, the groom took off the hood, and there was Blondel! But my amazement was lost in the greater shock that the Princess, whose jewelled hand held out the sugar to him, was no other than Catinka!

I cannot say with what motive I was impelled,--perhaps the action was too quick for either,--but I drew nigh to the carriage, and, raising my hat respectfully, asked if her highness would deign to remember an old acquaintance.

"I am unfortunate enough, sir, not to be able to recall you," said she, in the most perfect Parisian French.

"My name you may have forgotten, madam, but scarcely so either our first meeting at Schaffhausen, or our last at Bregenz."

"These are all riddles to me, sir; and I am sure you are too well bred to persist in an error after you have recognized it to be such." With a cold smile and a haughty bow, she motioned the coachman to drive on, and I saw her no more.

Stung to the very quick, but yet not without a misgiving that I might be possibly mistaken, I hurried to the police department, where the list of strangers was preserved. By sending in my card I was admitted to see one of the chiefs of the department, who politely informed me that the princess was totally unknown as to family, and not included in the Gotha Almanack.

"May I ask," said he, as I prepared to retire, "if this letter here--it has been with us for more than a year--is for your address? It came with an enclosure covering any possible expense in reaching your address, and has lain here ever since."

"Yes," said I, "my name is Algernon Sydney Potts."

Strange are the changes and vicissitudes of life! Just as I stood there, shocked and overwhelmed with one trait of cold ingrat.i.tude, I found a letter from Kate (she who was once Kate Herbert), telling me how they had sent messengers after me through Europe, and begging, if these lines should ever reach me, to come to them in Wales. "My father loves you, my mother longs to know you, and none can be more eager to thank you than your friend Kate Whalley."

I set off for England that night--I left for Wales the next morning--and I have never quitted it since that day.

THE END.