“Colonel,” said Otto, “we have a jovial entertainer. I drink to Colonel Gordon.”
Thereupon all three took their wine very pleasantly; and even as they did so, the carriage with a lurch turned into the high road and began to make better speed.
All was bright within; the wine had coloured Gotthold’s cheek; dim forms of forest trees, dwindling and spiring, scarves of the starry sky, now wide and now narrow, raced past the windows; through one that was left open the air of the woods came in with a nocturnal raciness; and the roll of wheels and the tune of the trotting horses sounded merrily on the ear. Toast followed toast; glass after glass was bowed across and emptied by the trio; and presently there began to fall upon them a luxurious spell, under the influence of which little but the sound of quiet and confidential laughter interrupted the long intervals of meditative silence.
“Otto,” said Gotthold, after one of these seasons of quiet, “I do not ask you to forgive me. Were the parts reversed, I could not forgive you.”
“Well,” said Otto, “it is a phrase we use. I do forgive you, but your words and your suspicions rankle; and not yours alone. It is idle, Colonel Gordon, in view of the order you are carrying out, to conceal from you the dissensions of my family; they have gone so far that they are now public property. Well, gentlemen, can I forgive my wife? I can, of course, and do; but in what sense? I would certainly not stoop to any revenge; as certainly I could not think of her but as one changed beyond my recognition.”
“Allow me,” returned the Colonel. “You will permit me to hope that I am addressing Christians? We are all conscious, I trust, that we are miserable sinners.”
“I disown the consciousness,” said Gotthold. “Warmed with this good fluid, I deny your thesis.”
“How, sir? You never did anything wrong? and I heard you asking pardon but this moment, not of your God, sir, but of a common fellow-worm!” the Colonel cried.
“I own you have me; you are expert in argument, Herr Oberst,” said the Doctor.
“Begad, sir, I am proud to hear you say so,” said the Colonel. “I was well grounded indeed at Aberdeen. And as for this matter of forgiveness, it comes, sir, of loose views and (what is if anything more dangerous) a regular life. A sound creed and a bad morality, that’s the root of wisdom. You two gentlemen are too good to be forgiving.”
“The paradox is somewhat forced,” said Gotthold.
“Pardon me, Colonel,” said the Prince; “I readily acquit you of any design of offence, but your words bite like satire. Is this a time, do you think, when I can wish to hear myself called good, now that I am paying the penalty (and am willing like yourself to think it just) of my prolonged misconduct?”
“Oh, pardon me!” cried the Colonel. “You have never been expelled from the divinity hall; you have never been broke. I was: broke for a neglect of military duty. To tell you the open truth, your Highness, I was the worse of drink; it’s a thing I never do now,” he added, taking out his glass. “But a man, you see, who has really tasted the defects of his own character, as I have, and has come to regard himself as a kind of blind teetotum knocking about life, begins to learn a very different view about forgiveness. I will talk of not forgiving others, sir, when I have made out to forgive myself, and not before; and the date is like to be a long one. My father, the Reverend Alexander Gordon, was a good man, and damned hard upon others. I am what they call a bad one, and that is just the difference. The man who cannot forgive any mortal thing is a green hand in life.”
“And yet I have heard of you, Colonel, as a duellist,” said Gotthold.
“A different thing, sir,” replied the soldier. “Professional etiquette. And I trust without unchristian feeling.”
Presently after the Colonel fell into a deep sleep and his companions looked upon each other, smiling.
“An odd fish,” said Gotthold.
“And a strange guardian,” said the Prince. “Yet what he said was true.”
“Rightly looked upon,” mused Gotthold, “it is ourselves that we cannot forgive, when we refuse forgiveness to our friend. Some strand of our own misdoing is involved in every quarrel.”
“Are there not offences that disgrace the pardoner?” asked Otto. “Are there not bounds of self-respect?”
“Otto,” said Gotthold, “does any man respect himself? To this poor waif of a soldier of fortune we may seem respectable gentlemen; but to ourselves, what are we unless a pasteboard portico and a deliquium of deadly weaknesses within?”
“I? yes,” said Otto; “but you, Gotthold—you, with your interminable industry, your keen mind, your books—serving mankind, scorning pleasures and temptations! You do not know how I envy you.”
“Otto,” said the Doctor, “in one word, and a bitter one to say: I am a secret tippler. Yes, I drink too much. The habit has robbed these very books, to which you praise my devotion, of the merits that they should have had. It has spoiled my temper. When I spoke to you the other day, how much of my warmth was in the cause of virtue? how much was the fever of last night’s wine? Ay, as my poor fellow-sot there said, and as I vaingloriously denied, we are all miserable sinners,
