The day brightened as the steamer bore out to sea, and the sun streamed along the fast-receding shore. Morton stood at the ship's stern, gazing back longingly towards his native rocks. Though far from inclining to echo those set terms of praise which the progeny of the Puritans are fond of lavishing on themselves, he felt himself bound with enduring cords to the woods and hills of New England, the scene of his boyish aspirations, of his pure ambition, and his devoted love; and while the crags of Gloucester faded from his sight, his eyes were dimmed as he turned them towards those rugged shores.
"Well, young man, seems to me you look a leetle kind o' streak-ed at the idee of quitting home," said a husky voice at his elbow.
Morton turned, and saw a small man, with a meagre, hatchet face, and a huge pair of black whiskers hedging round a countenance so dead and pallid that one could see at a glance that he was in a consumption. He had an eye hard as a flint, one that might have faced a Gorgon without risk. Morton regarded him with an expression which told him, as plainly as words, to go about his business; but he might as well have tried to look an image of brass out of countenance.
"NowI," pursued the small man, "have some reason to feel bad. It's an even bet if ever I see Boston lighthouse again—about six of one and half a dozen of the other. I consider myself a gone sucker. I've ben going, going, for about two years, and pretty soon I expect I shall be going, going, gone."
These words, uttered in a sort of bravado, were interrupted by a violent fit of coughing.
"Ever crossed the pond before?" asked the small man, as soon as he could gain breath.
"Yes."
"Business?"
"No."
"I thought not. You don't look like a business man. I know a business man, a mile off, by the cut of his jib. I'm a business man myself, and a hard used one at that."
Here a fresh fit of coughing began.
"Bad health; bad health, and damned hard luck, that's what has finished up this child. If it worn't for them, I should be worth my hundred thousand dollars this very minute."
Another fit of coughing.
"So you've ben across before. Well, so've I. That was three years ago, by the doctors' advice. It's great advice they give a man. It's good for their pockets, and there's deused little else it's good for. I spent that year over three thousand dollars; and if I'd staid to home, and stuck to my business,Ishould have ben jest about as well, and cleared,—well, yes, I should have cleared double the money, at the smallest figger."
More coughing.
"I expect you travel for pleasure."
Morton replied by an inarticulate sound, which the other might interpret as he pleased. He chose to interpret it in the affirmative.
"Well, that's all very well for a young man like you. You are young enough to like to look at the curiosities, and take an interest in what's going on; but I'm too old a bird for that. One night I was down to Palermo, there was an eruption of Mount Etna going on. We were on the piazzy at the back of Marston the consul's house, and there it was blazing away to kill, way off on the further side of the island. Well, the ladies was all O-ing and Ah-ing like fits. 'Nonsense!' says I; 'it ain't a circumstance to the fire that burnt down my splendid new freestone-front store on Broadway. Now that was something worth saying O at.'"
More coughing.
"There was a young man there from Boston, and we went round to look at the churches. He was all for staring at the pictures, and the marble images, and the Lord knows what all, while I went and paced off the length of the church from the door up to the altar, and then again crosswise. There wasn't a church in Palermo worth shaking a stick at that I didn't know the size of, and have it all set down on paper."
"And what good did that do you?"
"What good did that do me? Why, I had something to show for my pains, something that would keep. They wanted me to ride up on the back of a jackass to the top of a mountain to see a cavern where some she saint or other used to live,—St. Rosa Lee, or some such nigger-minstrel name."
"St. Rosalie, I suppose you mean."
"St. Rosaly or St. Rosa Lee, it comes to pretty much the same. She was fool enough to leave a comfortable home—inside of a palace, too, be gad—and go and live all alone by herself in that cavern. Well, they wanted me to ride up on the jackass and see it. 'No,' says I, 'you don't ketch me,' says I; 'if I did, I might as well change places with the jackass right away,' says I."
A fresh fit of coughing.
"Yes, sir, bad health and hard luck, that's ben the finishing of me, or else this minute I could show you my solid hundred thousand. The fire was what begun it all. A splendid freestone-front store, that hadn't its beat in all New York, chock full of goods, that worn't more than half covered by the insurance, burnt clean down to the sidewalk! Then come the great failure you've heard of—Bragg, Dash, and Bustup. I tell you, I was sucked in there to a handsome figger. Top of all that, my health caved in,—uh,—uh,—uh." Here the coughing grew violent. "Well, I'm a gone sucker, and it's no use crying over spilt milk. But if it worn't for bad health and damned hard luck, I should have been worth a hun—uh—uh—uh—a hundred thousand dol—uh—uh—dollars,—uh—uh—uh—uh—uh."
"This wind is too sharp for you," observed Morton.
"Fact," said the invalid; "I can't stand it no how."
He went down to the cabin, Morton's eye following him in pity and disgust.
The steamer, in due time, reached Liverpool; but Morton remained only a few days in England, crossing to Boulogne, and thence to Paris. Here he arrived late one afternoon; and taking his seat at thetable d'hôteof Meurice's Hotel, he presently discovered among the guests the familiar profile of Vinal, who was just returned from a flying tour through the provinces. Vinal seemed not to see him; but at the close of the dinner, Morton came behind his chair and spoke to him. At his side sat a young man, whose face Morton remembered to have seen before. Vinal introduced him as Mr. Richards. When a boy, he had been a schoolmate of them both, and now called himself a medical student, living on the other side of the Seine. Having been in Paris for two years or more, he had, as he prided himself, a thorough knowledge of it; that is to say, he knew its sights of all kinds, and places of amusement of high and low degree. The sagacious Vinal thought himself happy in so able and zealous a guide.
"Mr. Vinal and I are going on an excursion about town to-night," said Richards; "won't you go with us?"
"Thank you," replied Morton, "I have letters to write, and do not mean to go out this evening."
Vinal and Richards accordingly set forth without him, the latter acquitting himself wholly to his companion's satisfaction and his own. Vinal, who inclined very little to youthful amusements, contemplated all he saw with the eye of a philosopher rather than of a sybarite, looking upon it as a curious study of human nature, in the knowledge of which he was always eager to perfect himself. In the course of their excursion, they entered a large and handsome building on the Boulevard des Italiens. Here they passed through a succession of rooms filled with men engaged in various games of hazard, more or less deep, and came at length to two small apartments, which seemed to form the penetralia of the temple.
In the farther of these was a table, about which sat some eight or ten well-dressed men, and at the head, a sedate, collected, vigilant-looking person, with a little wooden rake in his hand.
"Messieurs, tout est fait. Rien ne va plus," he said, drawing towards him a plentiful heap of gold coin, almost at the instant that Vinal and Richards came in. The game was that moment finished.
As he spoke, a strong, thick-set man rose abruptly from the table, muttering a savage oath through his black moustache, and brushing fiercely past the two visitors, went out at the door. Richards pressed Vinal's arm, as a hint that he should observe him. As the game was not immediately resumed, they soon left the room; and after staking and losing a few small pieces at another table, returned to the street.
"Did you observe that man who passed us?" asked Richards.
"Yes. He seemed out of humor with his luck."
"He was clean emptied out; I would swear to it. I was afraid he would see me as he went by, but he didn't."
"Why, do you know him?"
"O, yes; and you ought to know him too, if you want to understand how things are managed hereabouts. He's a patriot,—agitator,—democrat,—red republican,—conspirator,—you can call him whichever you like, according to taste. He's mixed up with all the secret clubs, secret committees, and what not, from one end of the continent to the other. He's a sort of political sapper and miner,—not exactly like our patriots of '76, but all's fair that aims a kick at the House of Hapsburg."
"Has he any special spite in that quarter?"
"He has been intriguing so long in Austria and Lombardy, that now he could not show his face there a moment without being arrested. So he is living here, where he keeps very quiet at present, for fear of consequences."
"What is his name?"
"Speyer,—Henry Speyer."
"A German?"
"No; he's of no nation at all. He belongs to a sort of mongrel breed, from the Rock of Gibraltar,—a cross of half the nations in Europe. They go by the name of Rock Scorpions. Speyer is a compound of German, Spanish, English, French, Genoese, and Moorish, and the result is the greatest rascal that ever went unhung. Still you ought to know him; he is a curiosity,—one of the men of the times. If you want to know the secret springs of the revolution that all the newspapers will be full of not many years from this, why, Speyer is one of them."
"But is there not some risk in being in communication with such a man?"
"Yes, if one isn't cautious. But, as I'll manage it, it will be perfectly safe."
Vinal, though morbidly timorous as respected peril to life or limb, was not wholly deficient in the courage of the intriguer—a quality quite distinct from the courage of the soldier. Any thing which promised to show him human nature under a new aspect, or disclose to him a hidden spring of human action, had a resistless attraction in his eyes. He therefore assented to Richards's proposal, and promised that, at some more auspicious time, he would go with him to the patriot's lodging.
On the next morning, Vinal, Morton, and two other young Americans were seated together in the coffee room at Meurice's. They were discussing plans of travel.
"Then you don't intend to stay long in Paris," said one of the strangers to Morton.
"Not at present. I shall set out in a few days for Vienna, and then go down the Danube."
"That's an original idea. What will you find there worth seeing?"
"It's a fancy of mine. There is no place in Europe where one can see such a conglomerate of nations and races as in the provinces along the Danube. I like to see the human animal in all his varieties,—that's my specialty."
"But what facilities will you find there for travelling?"
"O, I shall be content with any that offer; the vehicles of the country, whatever they are. I don't believe in travellingen grand seigneur. By mixing with the people, and doing at Rome as the Romans do, one learns in a month more than he could learn in ten years by the other way."
"You'll take your servant with you, I suppose."
"No. I shall discharge him when I leave Paris."
After conversing for some time longer, Morton and the two young men left the room, while Vinal still remained faithful to the attractions of his omelet. He was interrupted by the advent of the small man who had accosted Morton in the steamer, and had since favored him with his company from Liverpool to Paris.
"Well, here's a pretty business, damned if there isn't," said the new arrival, seating himself indignantly.
"What's the matter?" asked Vinal.
"What's the matter! Why, there's a good deal the matter. There was a young man in Philadelphy named Wilkins,—John Wilkins,—I've known him ever sence he was knee high to a toad, and a likelier young feller there isn't in the States. He was goin' on to make a right smart, active, business man, too. Well, he was clerk in one of the biggest drug concerns south of New York city,—Gooch and Scammony,—I tell you, they do a tall business out west, and no mistake. No,sir, Gooch and Scammony ain't hardly got their beat in the drug business nowhere."
"But what about the clerk?"
"What about him? Why, that's just what I was going on to tell you. Well, John, he had a little money laid up; so he thought he'd just come out and see a bit of the world. Well, there was a German there at Philadelphy who had to cut stick from the old country on account of some political muss or other. John and he worn't on good terms;—it was about a gal, John says. However, jest about the time John talked of coming out to Europe, the German comes and makes it up, and pretends to be friends again. 'John,' says he, 'I've got relations out to Vienny, where I come from; first-rate, genteel folks; now,' says he, 'perhaps you might like me to make you acquainted with 'em. They'd do the handsome thing by you, and no mistake.' 'Well,' says John, 'I don't mind if you do.' So the German gives him some letters; and, sure enough, they treated him very civil; but the very next morning, before he was out of bed, up comes the police, and carries him off to jail; and that, I guess, would have been about the last we'd ever have seen of John Wilkins, if, by the slimmest ghost of a chance, he hadn't got word to our minister, and the minister blowed out so hard about it, that they just let John go, and said they was very sorry, and it was all a mistake, but he'd better make tracks out of Austria in double quick time, because if he didn't, they didn't know as there was any body there would undertake to be responsible for what might happen."
Here the orator's breath quite failed, and he coughed till his hatchet face turned blue. Vinal reflected in silence.
"Wasn't he an Amerikin?" pursued the small man, "and didn't he have an Amerikin passport in his pocket? I expect to go where I please, and keep what company I please,—uh,—uh,—uh. I'm an Amerikin,—uh,—and that's enough; and a considerable wide margin to spare,—uh,—uh,—uh."
"But what evidence is there that the German had any thing to do with the affair?"
"That's the deused part of the business. There ain't no evidence to fix it on him."
"Were the letters he gave your friend sealed?"
"Not a bit of it. They was open, and read jest as fair as need be."
"Probably he was imprudent, and said something which compromised him. Stone walls, you know, have ears in Austria."
"Well, I don't know."
"It is very easy for an American to get into trouble with the Austrian government. There is a natural antipathy between them."
"Damn such a government."
"Exactly; you're quite right there."
"Why, if you or me was to go down to Austria, and happen to rip out what we thought of 'em, where's the guarantee that they wouldn't stick us down in some of their prisons, and nobody be any wiser for it?"
"There is no guarantee at all."
"I've heerd said that such things has happened."
"No doubt of it. About this German,—I should advise your friend to be cautious how he accuses him of any intention of having him arrested. If the letters had been sealed, there might have been some ground for suspicion; but as the case stands, I do not see how there can be any. And it is a little hard upon a man, when he meant to do a kindness, to charge him with playing such a trick as that."
"Well, it may be as you think. It looks like enough, any way."
The small man addressed himself to his breakfast. Vinal sat playing with his spoon, his brain filled with busy and feverish thoughts.
In a few minutes, a messenger from an American banking house came in, looking about the room as if in search of some person. Observing Vinal, whom he had seen before, he asked if he knew where Mr. Morton was.
"Letters there for me?" demanded Vinal, taking several which the messenger held in his hand, and glancing over the directions.
"No, sir, they are all Mr. Morton's."
At that instant Vinal discovered the well-remembered handwriting of Edith Leslie. His pale face grew a shade paler.
"O, Mr. Morton's! I don't know where you will find him," and he gave back the letters to the messenger, who presently left the room.
Vinal sat for a few minutes more, brooding in silence; then slowly rose, and walked away. In going towards the room of the hotel which he occupied, he passed along a corridor, opposite the end of which opened a parlor occupied by Morton. The door was open, and Vinal, as he advanced, could plainly see his rival within. Morton had been on the point of going out. His hat and gloves lay on the table at his side; near them were three or four sealed letters; another—Vinal well knew from whom—was open in his hands; and as he stood bending over it, there was a sunlight in the eye of the successful lover which shot deadly envy into the breast of Vinal. Hate and jealousy gnawed and rankled at his heart.
That day Vinal drove to the Quartier Latin, called upon his friend Richards, and asked him to dine at the Trois Frères Provençaux. Mr. Richards was never known to decline such an invitation.
To the Trois Frères accordingly they repaired. Richards, whose social position at home was much inferior to that of his entertainer, thought the latter a capital fellow; especially when Vinal flattered him by deferring to his better taste and experience in the ordering of the dinner. But when, after nightfall, they issued forth again upon the open area of the Palais Royal, the delicate Vinal shivered with the cold. A chill wind and a dreary rain had set in, and Vinal, always cautious in such matters, said that before proceeding on their evening's amusements, he would go to Meurice's and get an overcoat.
The overcoat being found, Vinal, buttoned to the chin, came down the stairway, and rejoined Richards.
Morton had just before sent a servant for a carriage, to drive to the opera, and was waiting wrapped in his cloak, on the steps outside the door.
"What shall our first move be?" asked Richards of Vinal, as they passed out.
"Whatever you like."
"You had better give the word."
"Then suppose we go and see your friend, the professor."
"Who the deuse is Richards's friend, the professor?" thought Morton, as the others passed without observing him.
"The professor" was a cant term for Mr. Henry Speyer.
Speyer lived in an obscure part of the Latin quarter; and Richards, who was vain of his intimacy with this scoundrel, as indicating how deeply he was versed in Paris life, approached his lodging with much circumspection, by dim and devious routes.
"My name is Wilton, and I hail from New Orleans," said Vinal, as they reached the patriot's threshold.
As Mr. Wilton, of New Orleans, then, Vinal became known to Mr. Henry Speyer. The latter's quarters were any thing but commodious or attractive; and Richards invited him to apetit souperat his own lodgings, which were not very remote. Leaving Speyer to make his own way thither, he proceeded to summon two additional guests, in the persons of two friends of his own, his favorite partners at the Chaumière. With the aid of wine and cigars, the party became, in time, very animated. Vinal, who had a quick and pungent wit, drew upon himself much applause, and Speyer regarded him with especial commendation. But while he played his part thus successfully, he was studying his companions, as a scholar studies a book; studiously keeping himself cool; sipping a few drops of his wine, and slyly spilling the rest under the table, while he did his best to stimulate the others, and especially Speyer, to drink. Speyer drank, indeed, but the wine seemed to produce no more effect on him than water. He remained as cool as Vinal himself. The latter, young as he was, was a close and penetrating judge of men; and when, at two o'clock in the morning, he returned to his hotel, he carried with him the conviction that, in his present beggared condition, a few hundred francs would bribe the patriot to commit any moderately safe villany.
The evening, however, had had one result which Vinal regretted. Mr. Richards, being obfuscated with champagne, had repeatedly called him by his true name; so that Speyer was fully aware that his new acquaintance was not Mr. Wilton, of New Orleans, but Mr. Horace Vinal, of Boston.
And, far the blackest there, the traitor friend.—Dryden.
And, far the blackest there, the traitor friend.—Dryden.
Several days had passed, during which Vinal contrived to have more than one private interview with his new acquaintance, Speyer. He had sounded him with much astuteness; found that he could serve him; and was confirmed in his assurance that he would.
Morton, he knew, was to leave Paris on the next morning. The time to act was now, or never.
At about three in the afternoon, he discovered his rival sauntering along an avenue in the garden of the Tuileries; and walking up behind, he joined him.
"There are some of us," said Vinal, after a few moments' conversation, "going to Versailles to-morrow. Will you go?"
"I mean to leave Paris to-morrow."
"To-morrow! That's very sudden."
"I shall come back again in a few months."
"Your first move is to Italy, I think you said."
"No, to Austria and the Danube."
"O, I remember; it is West who is going to Italy. I think he has chosen the better route of the two."
"Yes, as far as history and works of art are concerned. But the Austrian provinces are the best field for me. I am mounted on a hobby, you know, and my time is so short that I must make the most of what I have."
"You wish to see the people—the different races—is that it?"
"Yes."
"You ought to be well booked up before you go, or you'll lose time. By the way, I made an acquaintance a little while ago in the diligence from Strasburg—a very agreeable man, a professor at Berlin——"
"O, the professor whom you and Richards were going to see, the other night."
A thrill shot through Vinal's nerves; but the unsuspecting Morton almost instantly relieved his terror.
"I was standing on the steps as you went out, and heard you say that you were going to visit him. From the way in which you spoke, I imagined him to be some professor of the noble art of self-defence."
"Ha, ha!" laughed Vinal, not quite recovered from his surprise; "no, not precisely that; Speyer is a philologist—that's his department."
"And Richards knows him, too?"
"Yes, through my introduction."
"From your calling him 'his friend, the professor,' I imagined that the acquaintance began the other way."
"Yes, his friend, with a vengeance. Confound the fellow, as I was walking with him the other day, we met Speyer, and I, thinking no harm, introduced them; but it wasn't twenty-four hours before Richards was at him to borrow money, which Speyer let him have. I dare say Richards has bled you as well."
"No."
"No? Then you are luckier than I am. I advise you to keep out of his way, or he'll pin you before you know it."
"I should judge as much."
"I spoke of Professor Speyer because he was born in some outlandish corner of the Austrian empire,—Croatia, I think he told me,—and had his head full of political soap bubbles founded on the distribution of races in that part of the world. He put me to sleep half a dozen times with talking about Pansclavism and the manifest destinies of the Sclavic peoples. He is the very man for you; and I am sorry I didn't think of it before."
"Well," said Morton, "I must blunder through as I can."
"Are you at leisure? I'll go with you this afternoon, if you like, and call on him."
"I dare say my visit would bore him."
"Get him upon the races in the Austrian empire, and he will be more apt to bore you. Are you free at four o'clock?" pursued Vinal, looking at his watch.
"Yes, quite so."
"Very well. I'm going now to my tailor's. Every genuine American, you know, must have a new fit-out in Paris. I'll meet you at Meurice's at four, and we'll go from there to Speyer's."
Vinal had three quarters of an hour to spare. He spent a part of them in forging the next link of his chain. At four he rejoined Morton, and they walked out together.
"I think you'll like Professor Speyer," said Vinal. "I have become quite intimate with him, on the strength of a fortnight's acquaintance. He urges me to go to Hungary and Transylvania, and offered me introductions to his friends there. It would not be a bad plan for you to ask him for letters. They would not make you acquainted with the Austrianhaut ton, but they would bring you into contact with men of his own stamp,—people of knowledge and intelligence, who could be of great service to you, and with whom you needn't be on terms of much ceremony.—Here's the place;—he lives here."
It was a lodging house on the Rue Rivoli. Vinal rang the bell. The porter appeared.
"Is Professor Speyer at home?"
"Non, monsieur; il est sorti."
Vinal had just bribed the man to give this answer.
"That's unlucky," he said. "Well, if you like, we can come again this evening."
"I am engaged to dine this evening at Madame ——'s."
Vinal had known of this engagement.
"I don't see, then, but that you will lose your chance with Speyer. Well,fortune de guerre. I should like to have had you see him, though."
And they walked towards the Boulevards, conversing on indifferent matters.
Early the next morning, Morton was writing in his room, when Vinal came in.
"Are you still bent on going off to-day?"
"Yes, within an hour."
"I was passing last evening by Professor Speyer's lodgings, and, seeing a light at his window, went in. I told him that I had come to find him in the afternoon with an old acquaintance of mine, who was going to the Austrian provinces, and that I had advised you to ask introductions from him to his friends there. He was a good deal interested, as I knew he would be, in what I told him about the objects of your journey. 'I'm very sorry,' he said, 'that I did not see your friend, for I could have given him letters which I don't doubt would have been of great use to him. But wait a few minutes,' said he, 'and I'll write a few lines now.' Here they are," continued Vinal, giving to Morton four or five notes of introduction. "You can put them in your pocket, and use them or not, as you may find convenient."
"I'm very much obliged to you," said Morton. "Tell Professor Speyer that I am greatly indebted to his kindness, and shall be happy to avail myself of it. You are looking very pale; are you ill?"
"No, not at all," stammered Vinal, "but, what is nearly as bad, I have been kept awake all night with a raging toothache."
He had been awake all night, but not with toothache.
"There is one consolation for that trouble; cold steel will cure it."
"Yes, but the remedy is none of the pleasantest. I won't interrupt you any longer. Good by. I wish you a pleasant journey."
He shook hands with Morton, and, pressing his haggard cheek, as if to stifle the pain, left the room.
With a new letter from Edith Leslie before him, Morton saw the world in rose tint. Happiness blinded him, and he was in no mood to doubt of human nature. He blamed himself for his harsh opinions of Vinal.
"It's very generous of him to interest himself at this time, in my affairs. ''Tis my nature's plague to spy into abuses.' I have misjudged him. He is a better fellow than I ever took him for."
The notes were written in a peculiarly neat, small hand, and bore the signature of Henry Speyer. They all spoke of Morton as interested in a common object with the person addressed; but, with this exception, there was nothing in them which drew his attention, especially as they were in German, a language with which he was not very familiar. As for the circumstance of their having been given at all to a person whom the writer had never seen, Morton accounted for it on the score of the good natured professor's desire to oblige his valued friend Vinal.
Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill.—Macbeth.
Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill.—Macbeth.
The requisites of a successful villain are manifold. The toughened conscience, the ready wit, the sage experience, the mind tutored, like Iago, in all qualities of human dealing,—all these, in some reasonable measure, Vinal had; but he miserably lacked the vulgar, but no less needful requisite of a sound bodily fibre to support the workings of his brain. His mind was a good lever with a feeble fulcrum; a gun mounted on a tottering rampart. When every breath of emotion that touches the fine-strung organism quivers along the electric chord to the brain, kindling there strange perturbations, then philosophy must lower her tone, and stoicism itself must soon confess that its only resource is to avoid the enemy with whom it cannot cope. Vinal was but ill fitted to act the part he had undertaken. The excitements of villany were too much for him. Peace of mind was as needful to him as food and drink. He had been battling all his life against what he imagined to be a defect of his mental forces, but which had, in the main, no deeper root than in the sensitiveness of his bodily constitution. In prudence and common sense, he was bound to seek asylum in that blissful serenity, that benignant calm, said to be the unfailing attendant on piety and good works. Never did Nature give a sharper hint than she gave to Vinal to eschew evil courses, and leaving rascality to tougher nerves, to tread the placid paths of virtue and discretion. Vinal saw fit to disregard the hint, and the consequences became somewhat grievous.
While his intrigue was in progress, his nerves had given him no great trouble. Hate and jealousy absorbed him. He was steadfast in his purpose to get rid of his rival. But now that the mine was laid, and the match lighted, a change began to come upon him. It was his maiden felony; his firstdébutin the distinct character of a scoundrel; and, though his conscience was none of the liveliest, it sufficed to visit him with some qualms. Anxieties, doubts, fears, began to prey upon him; sleep failed him; his nerves were set more and more on edge; in short, body and mind, mutually acting on each other, were fast bringing him to a state quite adverse to the maxims of his philosophy.
When a sophomore in college, his favorite reading had been Foster's Essay on Decision of Character, and he had aspired to realize in his own person the type of character therein set forth; the man of steel, who, in his firm march towards his ends, knows neither doubts, nor waverings, nor relentings. Of this ideal he was now falling lamentably short; and as, at two o'clock in the morning, he rose from his restless bed, and paced his chamber to and fro, vainly upbraiding his weakness, and struggling to reason down the rebellious vibration of his nerves, he was any thing but the inexorable hero of his boyish fancy.
"The thing is done,"—so he communed with himself,—"it was deliberately done, and well done. That hound is chained and muzzled, or will be so soon. For a time, at least, he is out of my path. But is he? What if he should escape the trap? What if those men to whom I have sent him are less an abomination in the eyes of the government than there is reason to think them? No doubt he will be compromised; no doubt he will get into difficulty; but if he should get out again! if, within a year from this he should come home to charge me with trapanning him! Pshaw! he could prove nothing. He would be thought malicious if he accused me. But he may suspect!" and this idea sufficed to fill his excited mind with fresh agitation. For three nights he had been without sleep; and now his irritable system was wrought almost to the point of fever.
"Half measures are nothing! The nail must be driven home and clinched! I must make sure of him." And early in the morning he went to find Speyer.
Speyer was not to be found. In his eagerness, he went again and again to seek him, though he knew that there was risk in doing so. At length he succeeded; and in spite of his resolute and long-practised self-control, his confederate saw at a glance, in his shining eye, flushed cheek, and the nervous compression of his lips, that he was under a great, though a painfully repressed excitement.
"Well, monsieur, do you hear any thing from your friend?"
"No, it is not time to hear."
"You will have to wait a long while before the time comes."
"Your letters were very well so far as they go; but the thing should be done thoroughly. What I wish you to do is this. Write to him a letter, implicating him in your revolutionary plot. He will be under suspicion. Every letter sent to him will be stopped and opened by the police."
"If that is done, I will warrant you quit of him; at least for some years to come."
"They will imprison him," said Vinal, nervously, "but that will be the whole,—his life will be in no danger."
"His life!" returned Speyer, glancing sidelong at his visitor; "don't be troubled on that score. They won't kill him."
"Then write the letter," said Vinal, laying a rouleau of gold on the table, "and write it in such a way that it shall spring the trap on him, and keep him caged till doomsday."
The letter was written. Vinal read it, re-read it, sealed it, and with a quivering hand thrust it into the post office.
Morton had left Vienna, and was journeying in the diligence on the confines of Styria. The cumbrous machine had been lumbering on all night. Awaking at daybreak from his comfortless sleep, and looking through the breath-bedimmed panes before him, he saw the postilion's shoulders wearily jolting up and down with the motion of the lazy horses. He had one fellow-traveller in the compartment which he occupied, a man of thirty-five or thereabouts, who had taken the diligence late the evening before, and who now, his shoulders supported by the leather straps which hung for the purpose from the roof, and his head tumbling forward on his chest, was dozing with a ludicrously grim expression of countenance. At length a sudden jolt awakened him; he started, shook himself, looked about him, inclined his head by way of salutation to his fellow-traveller, and opened a conversation with a remark on the chillness of the morning. After conversing for a time in French, the stranger said in excellent English, "I see there is no need of our speaking French, for by your accent I judge that you are English. I myself have a little of the English about me; that is to say, I was four years at Oxford, though I am German by birth."
"I am not English, though my ancestors were."
"You are American, then?" said the stranger, looking at him with some curiosity; and from this beginning, their acquaintance ripened fast. The German, regarding his companion as a young man of more intelligence than experience, conversed with an ease and frankness which fast gained upon Morton's confidence. He proved, indeed, a storehouse of information, discoursing of the people, the country, and even the government, with little reserve, and an admirable copiousness and minuteness of knowledge. At length he asked Morton if he had any acquaintance in Austria.
"None, excepting one or two persons at Vienna, to whom I had letters."
"Then you have probably made agreeable acquaintances. The society of Vienna is a very pleasant one."
"My letters were, or purported to be, tosavansand literary men."
"There, too, you should have found persons well worth the meeting."
"I have no doubt of it."
"You do not speak," said the investigating stranger, with a smile, "like one who has been much pleased with his experience."
"I have had no opportunity to judge fairly of the Viennesesavans."
"Your letters gave you no opportunity?"
"They were given me at Paris, in a rather singular way; and, to say the truth, the persons to whom they introduced me were so little to my taste, that after delivering one or two of them, I determined not to use the rest."
"You appear to have been very unfortunate. Will you allow me to ask to whom your letters were addressed?"
"They were written by a person whom I never saw, and were given to me by a friend,—an acquaintance,—of mine, as a means of gaining information about the country; such information as that for which I am indebted to you. I have been a good deal perplexed as to the character of the persons to whom they were written."
"Very probably I could aid you."
Morton mentioned the names of the men he had seen.
The German at first looked puzzled, then amazed, then distrustful.
"Your letters were got for you by a friend of yours?"
"Yes."
"And were written by——"
"A professor from Berlin, named Speyer,—Henry Speyer."
"Henry Speyer!" repeated the German, in astonishment.
"You were saying that you had lived for some years at Berlin. Perhaps you can tell me who and what he is."
"I know of no Professor Henry Speyer at Berlin."
"This man, I am told, is well known as a philologist."
"There is a Henry Speyer who is a philologist, so far as speaking every language in Europe can make him one; but he was never a professor in Berlin or any where else."
Morton looked perplexed. The German studied his face for a moment, and then said,—
"You say that a friend of yours gave you letters from Henry Speyer to the men you just named?"
"Yes."
"I beg your pardon! Have you ever quarrelled with your friend? Are you on terms with your friend's mistress? or do you stand between your friend and a fortune?"
A cold thrill passed through Morton's frame. There was an approach to truth in both the two last suppositions.
"Either you are very much deeper than I know how to comprehend you, or else you are the victim of a plot."
"What kind of plot?" demanded the startled Morton; "who is Speyer, and who are the other men?"
"I will tell you. Speyer is an intriguer, a revolutionist, a man in every way infamous. As for his being a professor, he is no more a professor than he is a prime minister, and you may ascribe what motives you please to your friend for giving him the name. He dares not set foot in Austria. If he did, it would go very hard with him. The other men are of the same kidney—his aiders, abetters, fellow conspirators; known or suspected to be plotting for the overthrow of the government."
"Then why are they at liberty?"
"Do you call it liberty to be day and night under the eye of the police—to be dogged and watched every hour of their lives? They serve as a sort of decoy. All who hold communication with them are noted down as dangerous; and my only wonder is, that you have not before this heard from the police."
"And what would you advise me to do?"
"Get out of Austria as soon and as quietly as you can. When you have passed the frontier you will be safe, and not before."