Arthur O'Leary Part 21

'Now, then, as I shall not go to the opera, what shall we do to pa.s.s the time? You are tired--I know you are--of Polish melodies and German ballads. Well, well; then I am. I have told you that we Poles are as great gamblers as yourselves. What say you to a game at piquet?'

'By all means,' said I, delighted at the prospect of anything to while away the hours of her sorrowing.

'Then you must teach me,' rejoined she, laughing, 'for I don't know it.

I'm wretchedly stupid about all these things, and never could learn any game but _ecarte_.'

'Then ecarte be it,' said I; and in a few minutes more I had arranged the little table, and down we sat to our party.

'There,' said she, laughing, and throwing her purse on the table, 'I can only afford to lose so much; but you may win all that if you're fortunate.' A rouleau of louis escaped at the instant, and fell about the table.

'Agreed,' said I, indulging the quiz. 'I am an inveterate gambler, and always play high. What shall be our stakes?'

'Fifty, I suppose,' said she, still laughing: 'we can increase our bets afterwards.'

After some little badinage, we each placed a double louis-d'or on the board, and began. For a while the game employed our attention; but gradually we fell into conversation, the cards gradually dropped listlessly from our hands, the tricks remained unclaimed, and we could never decide whose turn it was to deal.

'This wearies you, I see,' said she; 'perhaps you'd like to stop?'

'By no means,' said I. 'I like the game, of all things.' This I said rather because I was a considerable winner at the time than from any other motive; and so we played on till eleven o'clock, at which hour I usually took my leave, and by which time my gains had increased to some seventy louis.

'Is it not fortunate,' said she, laughing, 'that eleven has struck? You 'd certainly have won all my gold; and now you must leave off in the midst of your good fortune--and so, _bonsoir, et a revanche_.'

Each evening now saw our little party at ecarte usurp the place of the drive and the opera; and though our successes ran occasionally high at either side, yet on the whole neither was a winner; and we jested about the impartiality with which fortune treated us both. At last, one evening, eleven struck when I was a greater winner than ever, and I thought I saw a little pique in her manner at the enormous run of luck I had experienced throughout.

'Come,' said she, laughing, 'you have really wounded a national feeling in a Polish heart--you have a.s.serted a superiority at a game of skill.

I must beat you;' and with that she placed five louis on the table.

She lost. Again the same stake followed, and again the same fortune, notwithstanding that I did all in my power to avoid winning--of course without exciting her suspicions.

'And so,' said she, as she dealt the cards, 'Ireland is really so picturesque as you say?'

'Beautifully so,' replied I, as, warmed up by a favourite topic, I launched forth into a description of the mountain scenery of the south and west. The rich emerald green of the valleys, the wild fantastic character of the mountains, the changeful skies, were all brought up to make a picture for her admiration; and she did indeed seem to enjoy it with the highest zest, only interrupting me in my harangue by the words, 'Je marque le Roi,' to which circ.u.mstance she directed my attention by a sweet smile, and a gesture of her taper finger. And thus hour followed hour; and already the grey dawn was breaking, while I was just beginning an eloquent description of the Killeries, and the countess suddenly looking at her watch, cried out--

'How very dreadful! only think of three o'clock!'

True enough, it was that hour; and I started up to say good-night, shocked at myself for so far transgressing, and yet secretly flattered that my conversational powers had made time slip by uncounted.

'And the Irish are really so clever, so gifted as you say?' said she, as she held out her hand to wish me good-night.

'The most astonishing quickness is theirs,' replied I, half reluctant to depart; 'nothing can equal their intelligence and shrewdness.'

'How charming! Bonsoir,' said she, and I closed the door.

What dreams were mine that night! What delightful visions of lake scenery and Polish countesses, of mountain gorges and blue eyes, of deep ravines and lovely forms! I thought we were sailing up Lough Corrib; the moon was up, spangling and flecking the rippling lake; the night was still and calm, not a sound save the cuckoo being heard to break the silence. As I listened I started, for I thought, instead of her wonted note, her cry was ever, 'Je marque le Roi.'

Morning came at last; but I could not awake, and endeavoured to sink back into the pleasant realm of dreams, from which daylight disturbed me. It was noon when at length I succeeded in awaking perfectly.

'A note for monsieur,' said a waiter, as he stood beside the bed.

I took it eagerly. It was from the countess; its contents were these:--

'My dear Sir,--A hasty summons from Count Czaroviski has compelled me to leave Brussels without wishing you good-bye, and thanking you for all your polite attentions. Pray accept these hurried acknowledgments, and my regret that circ.u.mstances do not enable me to visit Ireland, in which, from your description, I must ever feel the deepest interest.

'The count sends his most affectionate greetings.--Yours ever sincerely,

'Duischka Czaroviski nee Gutzaff.'

'And is she gone?' said I, starting up in a state of frenzy.

'Yes, sir; she started at ten o'clock.'

'By what road?' cried I, determined to follow her on the instant.

'Louvain was the first stage.'

In an instant I was up, and dressed; in ten minutes more I was rattling over the stones to my banker's.

'I want three hundred napoleons at once,' said I to the clerk.

'Examine Mr. O'Leary's account,' was the dry reply of the functionary.

'Overdrawn by fifteen hundred francs,' said the other.

'Overdrawn? Impossible!' cried I, thunderstruck. 'I had a credit for six hundred pounds.'

'Which you drew out by cheque this morning,' said the clerk. 'Is not that your handwriting?'

'It is,' said I faintly, as I recognised my own scrawl, dated the evening before.

I had lost above seven hundred, and had not a sou left to pay post-horses.

I sauntered back sadly to the 'France,' a sadder man than ever in my life before. A thousand tormenting thoughts were in my brain; and a feeling of contempt for myself, somehow, occupied a very prominent place. Well, well; it's all past and gone now, and I must not awaken buried griefs.

I never saw the count and countess again; and though I have since that been in St. Petersburg, the grand-duke seems to have forgotten my services, and a very pompous-looking porter in a bear-skin did not look exactly the kind of person to whom I should wish to communicate my impression about 'Count Potoski's house being my own.'

CHAPTER XI, A FRAGMENT OF FOREST LIFE

I am half sorry already that I have told that little story of myself.

Somehow the recollection is painful. And now I would rather hasten away from Brussels, and wander on to other scenes; and yet there are many things I fain would speak of, and some people, too, worth a mention in pa.s.sing. I should like to have taken you a moonlight walk through the Grande Place, and after tracing against the clear sky the delicate outline of the beautiful spire, whose gilded point seemed stretching away towards the bright star above it, to have shown you the interior of a Flemish club in the old Salle de Loyaute. Primitive, quaint fellows they are, these Flemings; consequential, sedate, self-satisfied, simple creatures; credulous to any extent of their own importance, but kindly withal; not hospitable themselves, but admirers of the virtue in others; easily pleased, when the amus.e.m.e.nt costs little; and, in a word, a people admirably adapted by nature to become a kind of territorial coinage alternately paid over by one great State to another, as the balance of Europe inclines to this side or that; with industry enough always to be worth robbing, and with a territory perfectly suitable to pitched battles--two admirable reasons for Belgium being a species of Houns-low Heath or Wormwood Scrubs, as the nations of the Continent feel disposed for theft or fighting. It was a cruel joke, however, to make them into a nation. One gets tired of laughing at them at last; and even Sancho's Island of Barataria had become a nuisance, were it long-lived.

Well, I must hasten away now. I can't go back to the 'France' yet awhile, so I'll even take to the road. But what road? that's the question. What a luxury it would be, to be sure, to have some person of exquisite taste, who could order dinner every day in the year, arranging the carte by a physiognomical study of your countenance, and plan out your route by some innate sense of your desires. Arthur O'Leary has none such, however, his whole philosophy in life being to throw the reins on the hack Fortune's neck, and let the jade take her own way. Not that he has had any reason to regret his mode of travel. No: his nag has carried him pleasantly on through life, now cantering softly over the even turf, now picking her way more cautiously among bad ground and broken pebbles; and if here and there an occasional side leap or a start has put him out of saddle, it has scarcely put him out of temper; for one great secret has he at least learned--and, after all, it's one worth remembering--very few of the happiest events and pleasantest circ.u.mstances in our lives have not their origin in some incident, which, had we been able, we had prevented happening. So then, while taking your mare Chance over a stiff country, be advised by me: give her plenty of head, sit close, and when you come to a 'rasper,' let her take her own way over it. So convinced am I of the truth of this axiom, that I should not die easy if I had not told it. And now, if anything should prevent these Fragments being printed, I leave a clause in my will to provide for three O'Leary treatises, to establish this fact being written, for which my executors are empowered to pay five pounds sterling for each. Why, were it not for this, I had been married, say at the least some fourteen times, in various quarters of the globe, and might have had a family of children, black and white, sufficient to make a set of chessmen among then. There's no saying what might have happened to me. It would seem like boasting, if I said that the Emperor of Austria had some notions of getting rid of Metternich to give me the 'Foreign Affairs,' and that I narrowly escaped once commanding the Russian fleet in the Baltic. But of these at another time. I only wish to keep the principle at present in view, that Fortune will always do better for us than we could do for ourselves; but to this end there must be no tampering or meddling on our part. The G.o.ddess is not a West-End physician, who, provided you are ever prepared with your fee, blandly permits you all the little excesses you are bent on. No: she is of the Abernethy school, somewhat rough occasionally, but always honest; never suffering any interference from the patient, but exacting implicit faith and perfect obedience. As for me, I follow the regimen prescribed for me, without a thought of opposition; and wherever I find myself in this world, be it China or the Caucasus, Ghuznee, Genoa, or Glasnevin, I feel for the time that's my fitting place, and endeavour to make the best of it.

The pedestrian alone, of all travellers, is thus taken by the hand by Fortune. Your extra post, with a courier on the box, interferes sadly with the current of all those little incidents of the road which are ever happening to him who takes to the 'byways' of the world. The odds are about one hundred to one against you that, when seated in your carriage, the postillion in his saddle and the fat courier outside, the words _en route_ being given, you arrive at your destination that evening, without any accident or adventure whatever of more consequence than a lost shoe from the near leader, a snapped spring, or a heartburn from the gla.s.s of bad brandy you took at the third stage. A blue post with white stripes on it tells you that you are in Prussia; or a yellow-and-brown pole, that the Grand-Duke of Na.s.sau is giving you the hospitality of his territory--save which you have no other evidence of change. The village inn, and its little circle of celebrities, opens not to _you_ those peeps at humble life so indicative of national character: _you_ stop not at the wayside chapel in the sultry heat of noon to charm away your peaceful hour of reflection, now turning from the lovely Madonna above the altar to the peasant girl who kneels in supplication beneath, now contrasting the stern features of some painted martyr with the wrinkled front and weather-beaten traits of some white-haired beggar, now musing over the quiet existence of the humble figure whose heavy sabots wake the echoes of the vaulted aisle, or watching, perhaps, that venerable priest who glides about before the altar in his white robes, and disappears by some unseen door, seeming like a phantom of the place. The little relics of village devotion, so touching in their poverty, awake no thought within _you_ of the pious souls in yonder hamlet. The old cure himself, as he jogs along on his ambling pony, suggests nothing save the figure of age and decrepitude. _You_ have not seen the sparkling eyes and flushed cheeks of his humble flock, who salute him as he pa.s.ses, nor gazed upon that broad high forehead, where benevolence and charity have fixed their dwelling. The foot-sore veteran or the young conscript have not been your fellow-travellers; mayhap you would despise them. Their joys and sorrows, their hopes, their fears, their wishes, all move in a humble sphere, and little suit the ears of those whose fortune is a higher one.

Not that the staff and the knapsack are the pa.s.sports to only such as these. My experience would tell very differently. With some of the most remarkable men I ever met, my acquaintance grew on the road; some of the very pleasantest moments of my life had their origin in the chances of the wayside; the little glimpses I have ever enjoyed of national character have been owing to these same accidents; and I have often hailed some casual interruption to my route, some pa.s.sing obstacle to my journey, as the source of an adventure which might afford me the greatest pleasure. I date this feeling to a good number of years back, and in a great measure to an incident that occurred to me when first wandering in this country. It is scarcely a story, but as ill.u.s.trating my position I will tell it.