Tales from Blackwood Volume Vi Part 1

Tales from "Blackwood"

Volume 6.

by Various.

MY FRIEND THE DUTCHMAN.

BY FREDERICK HARDMAN.

[_MAGA._ OCTOBER 1847.]

"And you will positively marry her, if she will have you?"

"Not a doubt of either. Before this day fortnight she shall be Madame Van Haubitz."

"You will make her your wife without acquainting her with your true position?"

"Indeed will I. My very position requires it. There's no room for a scruple. She expects to live on my fortune; thinks to make a great catch of the rich Dutchman. Instead of that I shall spend her salary. The old story; going out for wool and returning shorn."

The conversation of which this is the concluding fragment, occurred in the public room of the Hotel de Hesse, in the village of Homburg on the Hill--then an insignificant handful of houses, officiating as capital of the important landgravate of Hesse-Homburg. The table-d'hote had been over some time; the guests had departed to repose in their apartments until the hour of evening promenade should summon them to the excellent band of music, provided by the calculating liberality of the gaming-house keepers, and to loiter round the _brunnen_ of more or less nauseous flavour, the pretext of resort to this rendezvous of idlers and gamblers. The waiters had disappeared to batten on the broken meats from the public table, and to doze away the time till the approach of supper renewed their activity. My interlocutor, with whom I was alone in the deserted apartment, was a man of about thirty years of age, whose dark hair and mustaches, marked features, spare person, and complexion bronzed by a tropical sun, ent.i.tled him to pa.s.s for a native of southern Europe, or even of some more ardent clime. Nevertheless he answered to the very Dutch patronymic of Van Haubitz, and was a native of Holland, in whose princ.i.p.al city his father was a banker of considerable wealth and financial influence.

It was towards the close of a glorious August, and for two months I had been wandering in Rhine-land. Not after the fashion of deluded c.o.c.kneys, who fancy they have seen the Rhine when they have careered from Cologne to Mannheim astride of a steam-engine, gaping at objects pa.s.sed as soon as perceived; drinking and paying for indifferent vinegar as Steinberger-Cabinet, eating vile dinners on the decks of steamers, and excellent ones in the capital hotels which British cash and patronage have raised upon the banks of the most renowned of German streams. On the contrary, I had early dispensed with the aid of steam, to wander on foot, with the occasional a.s.sistance of a lazy country diligence or rickety _einspanner_, through the many beautiful districts that lie upon either bank of the river; pedestrianising in Rhenish Bavaria, losing myself in the Odenwald, and pausing, when occasion offered, to pick a trout out of the numerous streamlets that dash and meander through dell and ravine, on their way to swell the waters of old Father Rhine. At last, weary of solitude--scarcely broken by an occasional gossip with a heavy German boor, village priest, or strolling student--I thirsted after the haunts of civilisation, and found myself, within a day of the appearance of the symptom, installed in a luxurious hotel in the free city of Frankfort on the Maine. But Frankfort at that season is deserted, save by pa.s.sing tourists, who escape as fast as possible from its lifeless streets and sun-baked pavements; so, after glancing over an English newspaper at the Casino, taking one stroll in the beautiful garden surrounding the city, and another through the Jew-quarter--always interesting and curious, although anything but savoury at that warm season--I gathered together my baggage and was off to Homburg. There I could not complain of solitude, of deserted streets and shuttered windows. It seemed impossible that the mult.i.tude of gaily dressed belles and cavaliers, English, French, German, and Russ, who, from six in the morning until sunset, lounged and flirted on the walks, watered themselves at the fountains, and perilled their complexions in the golden sunbeams, could ever bestow themselves in the two or three middling hotels and few score shabby lodging-houses composing the town of Homburg. Manage it they did, however; crept into their narrow cells at night, to emerge next morning, like b.u.t.terflies from the chrysalis, gay, bright, and brilliant, and to recommence the never-varying but pleasant round of eating, sauntering, love-making, and gambling. Homburg was not then what it has since become. That great house of cards, the new Cursaal, had not yet arisen; and its table-d'hote, reading-room, and profane mysteries of roulette and rouge-et-noir, found temporary domicile in a narrow, disreputable-looking den in the main street, where accommodation of all kinds, but especially for dinner, was scanty in the extreme. The public tables at the hotels were consequently thronged, and there acquaintances were soon made. The day of my arrival at Homburg I was seated next to Van Haubitz; his manner was off-hand and frank; we entered into conversation, took our after-dinner cigar and evening stroll together, and by bed-time had knocked up that sort of intimacy easily contracted at a watering-place, which lasts one's time of residence, and is extinguished and forgotten on departure. Van Haubitz, like many Continentals and very few Englishmen, was one of those free-and-easy communicative persons who are as familiar after twelve hours' acquaintance as if they had known you twelve years, and who do not hesitate to confide to a three days' acquaintance the history of their lives, their pursuits, position, and prospects. I was soon made acquainted, to a very considerable extent, at least, with those of my friend Van Haubitz, late lieutenant of artillery in the service of his majesty the King of Holland. He was the youngest of four sons, and having shown, at a very early age, a wild and intractable disposition and precocious addiction to dissipation, his father p.r.o.nounced him unsuited to business, and decided on placing him in the army. To this the _Junker_ (he claimed n.o.bility, and displayed above his arms a species of coronet, bearing considerable resemblance to a fragment of chevaux-de-frise, which he might have been puzzled to prop with a parchment) had no particular objection, and might have made a good enough officer, but for his reckless, spendthrift manner of life, which entailed negligence of duty and frequent reprimands. Extravagant beyond measure, unable to deny himself any gratification, squandering money as though millions were at his command, he was constantly overwhelmed with debts and a martyr to duns. At last his father, after thrice clearing him with his creditors, consented to do so a fourth time only on condition of his getting transferred to a regiment stationed in the Dutch East Indies, and remaining there until his return had the paternal sanction. To avoid a prison, and perhaps not altogether sorry to leave a country where his cash and credit were alike exhausted, he embarked for Batavia. But any pleasant day-dreams he may have cherished of tropical luxuries, of the indulgence of a _farniente_ life in a gra.s.s hammock, gently balanced by Javan houris beneath banana shades, of spice-laden breezes and cool sherbets, and other attributes of a Mohammedan paradise, were speedily dissipated by the odious realities of filth and vermin, marsh-fever and mosquitoes. He wrote to his father, describing the horrors of the place, and begging to be released from his pledge and allowed to return to Holland. His obdurate progenitor replied by a letter of reproach, and swore that if he left Batavia he might live on his pay, and never expect a stiver from the paternal strong-box, either as gift or bequest. To live upon his pay would have been no easy matter, even for a more prudent person than Van Haubitz. He grumbled immoderately, swore like a pagan, but remained where he was. A year pa.s.sed and he could hold out no longer. Disregarding the paternal displeasure, and reckless of consequences, he applied to the chief military authority of the colony for leave of absence. He was asked his plea, and alleged ill health. The general thought he looked pretty well, and requested the sight of a medical certificate of his invalid state.

Van Haubitz a.s.sumed a doleful countenance and betook him to the surgeons. They agreed with the general that his aspect was healthy: asked for symptoms; could discover none more alarming than regularity of pulse, sleep, appet.i.te, and digestion, laughed in his face and refused the certificate. The sickly gunner, who had the const.i.tution of a rhinoceros, and had never had a day's illness since he got over the measles at the age of four years, waited a little, and tried the second "dodge," usually resorted to in such cases. "Urgent private affairs"

were now the pretext. The general expressed his regret that urgent public affairs rendered it impossible for him to dispense with the valuable services of Lieutenant Van Haubitz. Whereupon Lieutenant Van Haubitz pa.s.sed half an hour in heaping maledictions on the head of his disobliging commander, and then sat down and wrote an application for an exchange to the authorities in Holland. The reply was equally unsatisfactory, the fact being that Haubitz senior, like an implacable old savage as he was, had made interest at the war-office for the refusal of all such requests on the part of his scapegrace offspring.

Haubitz junior took patience for another year, and then, in a moment of extreme disgust and ennui, threw up his commission and returned to Europe, trusting, he told me, that after five years' absence, the governor's bowels would yearn towards his youngest-born. In this he was entirely mistaken; he greatly underrated the toughness of paternal viscera. Far from killing the fatted calf on the prodigal's return, the incensed old Hollander refused him the smallest cutlet, and, shutting the door in his face, consigned him, with more energy than affection, to the custody of the evil one. Van Haubitz found himself in an awkward fix. Credit was dead, none of his relatives would notice or a.s.sist him; his whole fortune consisted of a dozen gold Wilhelms. At this critical moment an eccentric maiden aunt, to whom, a year or two previously, he had sent a propitiatory offering of a ring-tailed monkey and a leash of pea-green parrots, and who had never condescended to acknowledge the present, departed this life, bequeathing him ten thousand florins as a return for the addition to her menagerie. A man of common prudence, and who had seen himself so near dest.i.tution, would have endeavoured to employ this sum, moderate as it was, in some trade or business, or, at any rate, would have lived sparingly till he found other resources. But Haubitz had not yet sown all his wild-oats; he had a soul above barter, a glorious disregard of the future, the present being provided for. He left Holland, shaking the dust from his boots, dashed across Belgium, and was soon plunged in the gaieties of a Paris carnival. Breakfasts at the Rocher, dinners at the Cafe, b.a.l.l.s at the opera, and the concomitant _pet.i.ts soupers_ and ecarte parties with the fair denizens of the Quartier Lorette, soon operated a prodigious chasm in the monkey-money, as Van Haubitz irreverently styled his venerable aunt's bequest. Spring having arrived, he beat a retreat from Paris, and established himself at Homburg, where he was quietly completing the consumption of the ten thousand florins, at rather a slower pace than he would have done at that headquarters of pleasant iniquity, the capital of France. From hints he let fall, I suspected a short time would suffice to see the last of the legacy. On this head, however, he had been less confidential than on most other matters, and certainly his manner of living would have led no one to suppose he was low in the locker. Nothing was too good for him; he drank the best of wines, got up parties and pic-nics for the ladies, and had a special addiction to the purchase of costly trinkets, which he generally gave away before they had been a day in his possession. He did not gamble; he had done so, he told me, once since he was at Homburg, and had won, but he had no faith in his luck, or taste for that kind of excitement, and should play no more. He was playing another game just now, which apparently interested him greatly.

A few days before myself, a young actress, who, within a very short time, had acquired considerable celebrity, had arrived at Homburg, escorted by her mother. Fraulein Emilie Sendel was a lively lady of four-and-twenty or thereabouts, possessing a smart figure and pretty face, the latter somewhat wanting in refinement. Her blue eyes, although rather too prominent, had a merry sparkle; her cheeks had not yet been entirely despoiled by envious rouge of their natural healthful tinge; her hair, of that peculiar tint of red auburn which the French call a _blonde hasarde_, was more remarkable for abundance and flexibility than for fineness of texture. As regarded her qualities and accomplishments, she was good-humoured and tolerably unaffected, but wilful and capricious as a spoiled child; she spoke her own language pretty well, with an occasional slight vulgarism or bit of greenroom slang; had a smattering of French, and played the piano sufficiently to accompany the ballads and vaudeville airs which she sang with spirit and considerable freedom of style. I had met German actresses who were far more lady-like off the stage, but there was nothing glaringly or repulsively vulgar about Emilie, and as a neighbour at a public dinner-table, she was amusing and quite above par. As if to vindicate her nationality, she would occasionally look sentimental; but the mood sat ill upon her, and never lasted long: comedy was evidently her natural line. Against her reputation, rumour, always an inquisitive censor, often a mean libeller, of ladies of her profession, had as yet, so far as I could learn, found nothing to allege. Her mother, a dingy old dowager, with bad teeth, dowdy gowns, a profusion of artificial flowers, and a strong addiction to tea and knitting, perfectly understood the duties of duennaship, and did propriety by her daughter's side at dinner-table and promenade. To the heart of the daughter, Van Haubitz, almost from the first hour he had seen her, had laid persevering and determined siege.

During our after-dinner tete-a-tete on the day now referred to, my friend the gunner had shown himself exceedingly unreserved, and, without any attempt on my part to draw him out, he had elucidated, with a frankness that must have satisfied the most inquisitive, whatever small points of his recent history and present position he had previously left in obscurity. The conversation began, so soon as the cloth was removed and the guests had departed, by a jesting allusion on my part to his flirtation with the actress, and to her gracious reception of his attentions.

"It is no mere flirtation," said Van, gravely. "My intentions are serious. You may depend Mademoiselle Sendel understands them as such."

"Serious! you don't mean that you want to marry her?"

"Unquestionably I do. It is my only chance."

"Your only chance!" I repeated, considerably puzzled. "Are you about to turn actor, and do you trust to her for instruction in histrionics?"

"Not exactly. I will explain. La Sendel, you must know, has just terminated her last engagement, which was at a salary of ten thousand florins. She has already received and accepted an offer of a new one, at fifteen thousand, from the Vienna theatre. Vienna is a very pleasant place. Fifteen thousand florins are thirty-two thousand francs, or twelve hundred of your English pounds sterling. Upon that sum two persons can live excellently well--in Germany at least."

Unable to contradict any of these a.s.sertions, I held my tongue. The Dutchman resumed.

"You know the history of my past life; I will tell you my present position. It is critical enough, but I shall improve it, for here," and he touched his forehead, "is what never fails me. This letter," (he produced an epistle of mercantile aspect, bearing the Amsterdam post-mark), "I received last week from my eldest brother. The shabby _schelm_ declares he will reply to no more of mine, that his efforts to arrange matters with my father have been fruitless, and that the old gentleman has strictly forbidden him and his brothers to hold any communication with me, a command they seem willing enough to obey. So much for that. And now for the finances."

He took out his pocket-book, opened and shook it--a flimsy crumpled bit of paper fell out. It was a note of the bank of France, for one thousand francs.

"My last," said he. "That gone, I am a beggar. But it won't come to that, either, thanks to Fraulein Emilie."

"Surely," said I, "you are too reckless of money, too extravagant and unreflecting. Six months ago, you told me you had twenty such notes."

"Ay, twenty-two exactly, at the end of January, when I left Amsterdam.

But whither was I bound? To Paris; and who can economise there? I've had my money's worth, and could have had no more, had I dribbled the dirty ten thousand florins over three years, instead of three months. I take great credit for making it last so long. Such suppers, and b.a.l.l.s, and orgies, with the pleasantest fellows and prettiest actresses in Paris.

But the louis-d'or roll rapidly in that sort of society. One must be a Russian prince, or a French _feuilletoniste_, to keep it up. I never flinched at anything so long as the money lasted. Then, when I found myself reduced to the last note, I got into the Frankfort mail, and came to rusticate at this rural roulette-table. My next change will be to conjugation and Vienna."

"But if you had only a thousand francs on leaving Paris, and have got them still, how have you lived since?"

"You don't suppose these are the same? There are not many ways of getting through money here unless one gambles, which I do not; but coin has somehow or other a peculiar apt.i.tude to slip through my fingers, and the thousand francs soon evaporated. Meanwhile, I had written dozens of letters to my brothers, who seldom answered, and to my father, who never did. I promised reform and a respectable life, if they would either get me a snug place with little to do and good pay, or make me a reasonable yearly allowance, something better than the paltry three thousand florins they doled out to me when I was in the artillery, and on which, as I could not live, I was obliged to get in debt. They paid no attention to my request, reasonable as it was. The best offer they made me was five francs a-day, paid weekly, to live in a Silesian village.

This was adding insult to injury, and I left off writing to them. A few days afterwards, taking out my purse to pay for cigars, a dollar dropped out. It was my last. I paid it away, walked home, lay down upon my bed, smoked and reflected. My position was gloomy enough, and the more I looked at it, the blacker it seemed. From my undutiful relatives there was no hope; the abominable Silesian project was evidently their ultimatum. I had no friend to turn to, no resource left. I might certainly have obtained the mere necessaries of life at this hotel, where my credit was excellent, and have vegetated for a month or two, as a man must vegetate, without ready money. But I had no fancy for such an expedient, a mere protraction of the agony. I lay ruminating for two hours, two such hours as I should be sorry to pa.s.s again, and then my mind was made up. I had a brace of small travelling-pistols amongst my baggage; these I loaded and put in my pocket; and then, leaving the hotel and the town, I struck across the country for some distance and plunged into a wood. There I sat down upon a gra.s.s bank, my back against an old beech. It was evening, and the solitary little glade before me was striped with the last sunbeams darting between the tree-trunks. I have difficulty in defining my sensations at that moment. I was quite resolved, did not waver an instant in my purpose, but my head was dizzy, and I had a sickly sensation about the heart. Determined that the physical shrinking from death should not have time to weaken my moral determination, I hastily opened my waistcoat, felt for the pulsations of my heart, placed the muzzle of a pistol where they were strongest, steadying it on that spot with my left hand. Then I looked straight before me and pulled the trigger. There was the click of the lock, but no report; the cap was bad, and had been crushed without exploding. That was a horrible moment. I s.n.a.t.c.hed up another pistol, which lay c.o.c.ked to my hand, and thrust the muzzle into my mouth. As before, the sharp noise of the hammer upon the nipple was the sole result. The caps had been some time in my possession, and had become worthless through age or damp."

I looked at Van Haubitz, doubtful whether he was not hoaxing me. But hitherto I had observed in him no addiction to the Munchausen vein, and now his countenance and voice were serious: there was a slight flush on his cheek, and he was evidently excited at the recollection of his abortive attempt at suicide,--perhaps a little ashamed of it. I was convinced he told the truth.

"I do not know," he continued, "whether, had I had surer weapons with me, I should have had courage to make a third attempt upon my life.

Honestly, I think not; the self-preservative instinct was rapidly gaining strength. I walked slowly back to the town, my brain still confused from the agitating moments I had pa.s.sed. I was unable quite to collect my thoughts, and felt as if I had just awakened from a long heavy sleep. It was now dark; lights streamed from the open windows of the gambling-rooms; the voices of the croupiers, the stir and hum of the players and jingling of money were distinctly heard in the street without. I have already told you I am no gambler, not from scruple, but choice. Nevertheless, I used often to stroll up to the Cursaal for an hour of an evening, when the play was at the highest, to look on and chat with chance acquaintances. Mechanically, I now ascended the stairs.

On the landing-place, I found myself face to face with a man with whom I was slightly intimate, and who, a few evenings before, had borrowed forty francs of me. I had not seen him since, and he now returned me the piece of gold. 'Try your luck with it,' said he; 'there is a run against the bank to-night, everybody wins, and M. Blanc looks blue.' And he pointed to one of the proprietors of the tables, who, however, wore a tolerably tranquil air, knowing well that what was carried away one night, would come back with compound interest the next. The play was heavy at the rouge-et-noir table; a Russian and two Frenchmen--the latter of whom, judging from their appearance, and from the complicated array of calculations on the table before them, were professional gamblers--extracted, at nearly every _coup_, notes or rouleaus of gold from the grated boxes in front of the bankers. I drank a gla.s.s of water, for my lips were dry and hot, and, placing myself as near the table as the crowd of players and spectators permitted, watched the game. My hand was in my pocket, the forty-franc piece still between its fingers.

But in spite of the advice of him who had paid it me, I felt no disposition to risk the coin; not that I feared to lose it, for as my only one it was useless, but because, as I tell you, I never had the slightest love of gambling or expectation to win.

"A pause occurred in the game. The cards had run out, and the bankers were subjecting them to those complicated and ostentatious shufflings intended to convince the players of the fairness of their dealings.

During this operation the previous silence was exchanged for eager gossip. The game, it appeared, had come out that night in a peculiar manner, very favourable to those who had had the address and nerve to avail themselves of it. There had been alternate long runs upon red and black.

"'_Mille noms de Dieu!_' exclaimed a hoa.r.s.e cracked voice just below me.

'What a series of black! Twenty-two, and only three red! And to be unable to take advantage of it!'

"I looked down, and recognised the grey mustache, wrinkled features, and snuffy black coat with a ribbon of the Legion of Honour, of an old French colonel whom you may have seen limping in and out of the Cursaal, and who ranks amongst the antiquities of Homburg. He served under Napoleon, was shelved at the peace, and has lived since then on a moderate annuity, of which one-fifth procures him the barest necessaries of existence, whilst the other four parts are annually absorbed in the vortex of rouge-et-noir. When gambling-houses were legal at Paris, _le colonel rape_, the threadbare colonel, as he was called, was one of the most punctual attendants at Frascati's and the Palais Royal. When they were abolished, he commenced a wandering existence amongst the German baths, and finally settled down at Homburg, giving it the preference, as the only place where he could follow his darling pursuit alike in winter and in summer. From the opening to the close of the play he is seen seated at the table, a number of cards, ruled in red and black columns, on the green cloth before him, in which he p.r.i.c.ks with pins the progress of the game. That evening he had been unfortunate, and had emptied his pocket, but nevertheless continued puncturing cards with laudable perseverance, of course discovering, like every penniless gambler, that, had he money to stake, he should infallibly make a fortune; predicting what colour would come out, and indulging, when he proved a true prophet, in a little subdued blasphemy because he was unable to profit by his acuteness.

"'Extraordinary run! to be sure,' repeated the veteran dicer.

'Twenty-two black, and only three red! There'll be a series of red now; I feel there will, and when I don't play myself, I'm always right. I bet this deal begins with seven red. Who bets a hundred francs to fifty it does not?'

"n.o.body accepted this sporting offer, or placed upon the colour which the colonel's prophetic soul foresaw was to come out. The cards were now shuffled and cut for dealing. The h.e.l.l relapsed into silence.

"'_Faites le jeu, Messieurs!_' was repeated in the harsh business-like tones of the presiding demon.

"'Red wins,' croaked the colonel. 'Seven times at the least.'

"Nearly all the players backed the black. By an idle impulse I threw down my forty francs, my entire fortune, upon the red. The old soldier looked round to see the judicious individual who followed his advice, smiled grimly, and nodded approvingly. The next moment red won. I let the money lie, and walked into the next room. Eighty francs were of no more use to me than forty, and I felt very sure that another turn of the card would carry off both stake and winnings. I took up a newspaper, but soon threw it down again, for my head was not clear enough to read, and I felt exhausted with the emotions of the day. I was about to leave the house when I heard a loud buzz in the card-room, and the next instant somebody clutched my arm. It was the French colonel, in a state of furious excitement; grinning, panting, perspiring, and stuttering with eagerness.

"'Seven reds!' was all he could say. 'Seven reds, Monsieur. Take up your money.'

"I hastened to the table. By a strange caprice of fortune, the colonel's prophecy had come true. Red had won seven times, and my forty francs had become five thousand. I took up my winnings, the colonel looking on with a triumphant smile. This was suddenly exchanged for a portentous frown and fierce twist of the grey mustache.

"'_Mille millions de tonnerres!_ Not a dollar left to follow up that splendid run!' And with a furious gesture, he upset his chair, and dashed his cards upon the ground.

"I took the hint, whether intended or not. I could not do less in return for the five thousand francs the old gentleman had put in my pocket.

"'If Monsieur,' I said, 'will allow me the pleasure of lending him--'

"'_Impossible, Monsieur!_' interrupted the colonel, looking as stern as if about to charge single-handed a whole pulk of Cossacks. But I knew my man. He was the type of a cla.s.s of which I have seen many.

"'_Cependant, Monsieur, entre militaires_, between brother-soldiers--'