THE MARTINS OF CRO' MARTIN
By Charles James Lever
With Illustrations By Phiz.
In Two Volumes
Vol. II.
Boston: Little, Brown, And Company.
1906
CONTENTS
[ THE MARTINS OF CRO' MARTIN. ]
[ CHAPTER I. ] MR. HERMAN MERL
[ CHAPTER II. ] MR. MERL
[ CHAPTER III. ] A YOUNG DUCHESS AND AN OLD FRIEND
[ CHAPTER IV. ] A VERY GREAT FAVOR
[ CHAPTER V. ] A LETTER FROM HOME
[ CHAPTER VI. ] MR. MERL'S DEPARTURE
[ CHAPTER VII. ] THE CLUB
[ CHAPTER VIII. ] AN EVENING OF ONE OP THE “THREE DAYS”
[ CHAPTER IX. ] SOME CONFESSIONS OF JACK MASSINGBRED
[ CHAPTER X. ] HOW ROGUES AGREE!
[ CHAPTER XI. ] MR. MERL “AT FENCE”
[ CHAPTER XII. ] MR. MERL'S MEDITATIONS
[ CHAPTER XIII. ] A NIGHT OF STORM
[ CHAPTER XIV. ] THE END OF A BAR MESS
[ CHAPTER XV. ] A FIRST BRIEF
[ CHAPTER XVI. ] MR. REPTON LOOKS IN
[ CHAPTER XVII. ] LADY DOROTHEA'S LETTER
[ CHAPTER XVIII. ] MR. MERL'S EXPERIENCES IN THE WEST
[ CHAPTER XIX. ] MR. MERL'S “LAST” IRISH IMPRESSION
[ CHAPTER XX. ] SOMETHING NOT EXACTLY FLIRTATION
[ CHAPTER XXI. ] LADY DOROTHEA
[ CHAPTER XXII. ] HOW PRIDE MEETS PRIDE
[ CHAPTER XXIII. ] MAURICE SCANLAN ADVISES WITH “HIS COUNSEL”
[ CHAPTER XXIV. ] A CONSULTATION
[ CHAPTER XXV. ] A COMPROMISE
[ CHAPTER XXVI. ] A LETTER THAT NEVER REACHES ITS ADDRESS
[ CHAPTER XXVII. ] A VERY BRIEF INTERVIEW
[ CHAPTER XXVIII. ] THE DARK SIDE OF A CHARACTER
[ CHAPTER XXIX. ] THE COTTAGE
[ CHAPTER XXX. ] "A TEA-PARTY” AT MRS. CRONAN'S
[ CHAPTER XXXI. ] THE BRANNOCK ISLANDS
[ CHAPTER XXXII. ] LETTER FROM MASSINGBRED
[ CHAPTER XXXIII. ] A DINNER AT “THE LODGE”
[ CHAPTER XXXIV. ] AN HONORED GUEST
[ CHAPTER XXXV. ] HOW DIPLOMACY FAILED
[ CHAPTER XXXVI. ] A GREAT DISCOVERY
[ CHAPTER XXXVII. ] A DARK DAY
[ CHAPTER XXXVIII. ] REPTON'S LAST CAUSE
[ CHAPTER XXXIX. ] TOWARDS THE END
THE MARTINS OF CRO' MARTIN.
CHAPTER I. MR. HERMAN MERL
This much-abused world of ours, railed at by divines, sneered down by cynics, slighted by philosophers, has still some marvellously pleasant things about it, amongst which, first and foremost, facile princeps, is Paris! In every other city of Europe there is a life to be learned and acquired just like a new language. You have to gain the acquaintance of certain people, obtain admission to certain houses, submit yourself to ways, habits, hours, all peculiar to the locality, and conform to usages in which—at first, at least—you rarely find anything beyond penalties on your time and your patience. But Paris demands no such sacrifices. To enjoy it, no apprenticeship is required. You become free of the guild at the Porte St. Denis. By the time you reach the Boulevards you have ceased to be a stranger. You enter the “Frères” at dinner hour like an old habitué. The atmosphere of light, elastic gayety around you, the tone of charming politeness that meets your commonest inquiry, the courtesy bestowed upon your character as a foreigner, are all as exhilarating in their own way as your sparkling glass of Moët, sipped in the window, from which you look down on plashing fountains, laughing children, and dark-eyed grisettes! The whole thing, in its bustle and movement, its splendor, sunlight, gilded furniture, mirrors, and smart toilettes, is a piece of natural magic, with this difference,—that its effect is ever new, ever surprising!
Sad and sorrowful faces are, of course, to be met with, since grief has its portion everywhere; but that air of languid indifference, that look of wearied endurance, which we characterize by the classic term of “boredom,” is, indeed, a rare spectacle in this capital; and yet now at the window of a splendid apartment in the Place Vendôme, listlessly looking down into the square beneath, stood a young man, every line of whose features conveyed this same expression. He had, although not really above twenty-four or twenty-five, the appearance of one ten years older. On a face of singular regularity, and decidedly handsome, dissipation had left its indelible traces. The eyes were deep sunk, the cheeks colorless, and around the angles of the mouth were those tell-tale circles which betray the action of an oft-tried temper, and the spirit that has gone through many a hard conflict. In figure he was very tall, and seemed more so in the folds of a long dressing-gown of antique brocade, which reached to his feet; a small, dark green skull-cap, with a heavy silver tassel, covered one side of his head, and in his hand he held a handsome meerschaum, which, half mechanically, he placed from time to time to his lips, although its bowl was empty.
At a breakfast-table covered with all that could provoke appetite, sat a figure as much unlike him as could be. He was under the middle size, and slightly inclined to flesh, with a face which, but for some strange resemblance to what one has seen in pictures by the older artists, would have been unequivocally vulgar. The eyes were small, keen, and furtive; the nose, slightly concave in its outline, expanded beneath into nostrils wide and full; but the mouth, thick-lipped, sensual, and coarse, was more distinctive than all, and showed that Mr. Herman Merl was a gentleman of the Jewish persuasion,—a fact well corroborated by the splendor of a very flashy silk waistcoat, and various studs, gold chain, rings, and trinkets profusely scattered over his costume. And yet there was little of what we commonly recognize as the Jew in the character of his face. The eyes were not dark, the nose not aquiline; the hair, indeed, had the wavy massiveness of the Hebrew race; but Mr. Merl was a “Red Jew,” and the Red Jew, like the red partridge, is a species per se.
There was an ostentatious pretension in the “get up” of this gentleman. His moustache, his beard, his wrist-buttons, his shirt-studs, the camellia in his coat,—all, even to the heels of his boots, had been made studies, either to correct a natural defect, or show off what he fancied a natural advantage. He seemed to have studied color like a painter, for his dark brown frock was in true keeping with the tint of his skin; and yet, despite these painstaking efforts, the man was indelibly, hopelessly vulgar. Everything about him was imitation, but it was imitation that only displayed its own shortcomings.
“I wonder how you can resist these oysters, Captain,” said he, as he daintily adjusted one of these delicacies on his fork; “and the Chablis, I assure you, is excellent.”
“I never eat breakfast,” said the other, turning away from the window, and pacing the room with slow and measured tread.
“Why, you are forgetting all the speculations that used to amuse us on the voyage,—the delicious little dinners we were to enjoy at the 'Rocher,' the tempting dejeuners at 'Véfour's.' By Jove! how hungry you used to make me, with your descriptions of the appetizing fare before us; and here we have it now: Ardennes ham, fried in champagne; Ostend oysters, salmi of quails with truffles—and such truffles! Won't that tempt you?”
But his friend paid no attention to the appeal, and walking again to the window, looked out.
“Those little drummers yonder have a busy day of it,” said he, lazily; “that's the fourth time they have had to beat the salute to Generals this morning.”
“Is there anything going on, then?”
But he never deigned an answer, and resumed his walk.
“I wish you'd send away that hissing teakettle, it reminds me of a steamboat,” said the Captain, peevishly; “that is, if you have done with it.”
“So it does,” said the other, rising to ring the bell; “there's the same discordant noise, and the—the—the—” But the rest of the similitude would n't come, and Mr. Merl covered his retreat with the process of lighting a cigar,—an invaluable expedient that had served to aid many a more ready debater in like difficulty.
It would be a somewhat tedious, perhaps not a very profitable task, to inquire how two men, so palpably dissimilar, had thus become what the world calls friends. Enough if we say that Captain Martin,—the heir of Cro' Martin,—when returning from India on leave, passed some time at the Cape, where, in the not very select society of the place, he met Mr. Merl. Now Mr. Merl had been at Ceylon, where he had something to do with a coffee plantation; and he had been at Benares, where opium interested him; and now again, at the Cape, a question of wine had probably some relation to his sojourn. In fact, he was a man travelling about the world with abundance of leisure, a well-stocked purse, and what our friends over the Strait would term an “industrial spirit.” Messes had occasionally invited him to their tables. Men in society got the habit of seeing him “about,” and he was in the enjoyment of that kind of tolerance which made every man feel, “He's not my friend,—I didn't introduce him; but he seems a good sort of fellow enough!” And so he was,—very good-tempered, very obliging, most liberal of his cigars, his lodgings always open to loungers, with pale ale, and even iced champagne, to be had |for asking. There was play, too; and although Merl was a considerable winner, he managed never to incur the jealous enmity that winning so often imposes. He was the most courteous of gamblers; he never did a sharp thing; never enforced a strict rule upon a novice of the game; tolerated every imaginable blunder of his partner with bland equanimity; and, in a word, if this great globe of ours had been a green-baize cloth, and all the men and women whist-players, Mr. Herman Merl had been the first gentleman in it, and carried off “all the honors” in his own hand.
If he was highly skilled in every game, it was remarked of him that he never proposed play himself, nor was he ever known to make a wager: he always waited to be asked to make up a party, or to take or give the odds, as the case might be. To a very shrewd observer, this might have savored a little too much of a system; but shrewd observers are, after all, not the current coin in the society of young men, and Merl's conduct was eminently successful.
Merl suited Martin admirably. Martin was that species of man which, of all others, is most assailable by flattery. A man of small accomplishments, he sang a little, rode a little, played, drew, fenced, fished, shot—all, a little—that is, somewhat better than others in general, and giving him that dangerous kind of pre-eminence from which, though the tumble never kills, it occurs often enough to bruise and humiliate. But, worse than this, it shrouds its possessor in a triple mail of vanity, that makes him the easy prey of all who minister to it.
We seldom consider how much locality influences our intimacies, and how impossible it had been for us even to know in some places the people we have made friends of in another. Harry Martin would as soon have thought of proposing his valet at “Brookes's,” as walk down Bond Street with Mr. Merl. Had he met him in London, every characteristic of the man would there have stood out in all the strong glare of contrast, but at the Cape it was different. Criticism would have been misplaced where all was irregular, and the hundred little traits—any one of which would have shocked him in England—were only smiled at as the eccentricities of a “good-natured poor fellow, who had no harm in him.”
Martin and Merl came to England in the same ship. It was a sudden thought of Merl's, only conceived the evening before she sailed; but Martin had lost a considerable sum at piquet to him on that night, and when signing the acceptances for payment, since he had not the ready money, somewhat peevishly remarked that it was hard he should not have his revenge. Whereupon Merl, tossing off a bumper of champagne, and appearing to speak under the influence of its stimulation, cried out, “Hang me, Captain, if you shall say that! I 'll go and take my passage in the 'Elphinstone.'” And he did so, and he gave the Captain his revenge! But of all the passions, there is not one less profitable to indulge in. They played morning, noon, and night, through long days of sickening calm, through dreary nights of storm and hurricane, and they scarcely lifted their heads at the tidings that the Needles were in sight, nor even questioned the pilot for news of England, when he boarded them in the Downs. Martin had grown much older during that same voyage; his temper, too, usually imbued with the easy indolence of his father's nature, had grown impatient and fretful. A galling sense of inferiority to Merl poisoned every minute of his life. He would not admit it; he rejected it, but back it came; and if it did not enter into his heart, it stood there knocking,—knocking for admission. Each time they sat down to play was a perfect duel to Martin.
As for Merl, his well-schooled faculties never were ruffled nor excited. The game had no power to fascinate him, its vicissitudes had nothing new or surprising to him; intervals of ill-luck, days even of dubious fortune might occur, but he knew he would win in the end, just as he knew that though there might intervene periods of bad weather and adverse winds, the good ship “Elphinstone” would arrive at last, and, a day sooner or a day later, discharge passengers and freight on the banks of the Thames.
You may forgive the man who has rivalled you in love, the banker whose “smash” has engulfed all your fortune, the violent political antagonist who has assailed you personally, and in the House, perhaps, answered the best speech you ever made by a withering reply. You may extend feelings of Christian charity to the reviewer who has “slashed” your new novel, the lawyer whose vindictive eloquence has exposed, the artist in “Punch” who has immortalized, you; but there is one man you never forgive, of whom you will never believe one good thing, and to whom you would wish a thousand evil ones,—he is your natural enemy, brought into the world to be your bane, born that he may be your tormentor; and this is the man who always beats you at play! Happily, good reader, you may have no feelings of the gambler,—you may be of those to whom this fatal vice has never appealed, or appealed in vain; but if you have “played,” or even mixed with those who have, you could n't have failed to be struck with the fact that there is that one certain man from whom you never win! Wherever he is, there, too, is present your evil destiny! Now, there is no pardoning this,—the double injury of insult to your skill and damage to your pocket. Such a man as this becomes at last your master. You may sneer at his manners, scoff at his abilities, ridicule his dress, laugh at his vulgarity,—poor reprisals these! In his presence, the sense of that one superiority he possesses over you makes you quail! In the stern conflict, where your destiny and your capacity seem alike at issue, he conquers you,—not to-day or to-morrow, but ever and always! There he sits, arbiter of your fate,—only doubtful how long he may defer the day of your sentence!
It is something in the vague indistinctness of this power—something that seems to typify the agency of the Evil One himself—that at once tortures and subdues you; and you ever hurry into fresh conflict with the ever-present consciousness of fresh defeat! We might have spared our reader this discursive essay, but that it pertains to our story. Such was the precise feeling entertained by Martin towards Merl. He hated him with all the concentration of his great hatred, and yet he could not disembarrass himself of his presence. He was ashamed of the man amongst his friends; he avoided him in all public places; he shrunk from his very contact as though infected; but he could not throw off his acquaintance, and he nourished in his heart a small ember of hope that one day or other the scale of fortune would turn, and he might win back again all he had ever lost, and stand free and unembarrassed as in the first hour he had met him! Fifty times had he consulted Fortune, as it were, to ask if this moment had yet arrived; but hitherto ever unsuccessfully,—Merl won on as before. Martin, however, invariably ceased playing when he discovered that his ill-luck continued. It was an experiment,—a mere pilot balloon to Destiny; and when he saw the direction adverse, he did not adventure on the grand ascent. It was impossible that a man of Merl's temperament and training should not have detected this game. There was not a phase of the gambler's mind with which he was not thoroughly familiar.
Close intimacies, popularly called friendships, have always their secret motive, if we be but skilful enough to detect it. We see people associate together of widely different habits, and dispositions the most opposite, with nothing in common of station, rank, object, or pursuit. In such cases the riddle has always its key, could we only find it.
Mr. Martin had been some weeks in Paris with his family, when a brief note informed him that Merl had arrived there. He despatched an answer still briefer, asking him to breakfast on the following morning; and it was in the acceptance of this same invitation we have now seen him.
“Who's here just now?” said Merl, throwing down his napkin, and pushing his chair a little back from the table, while he disposed his short, fat legs into what he fancied was a most graceful attitude.
“Here? Do you mean in Paris?” rejoined Martin, pettishly,—for he never suffered so painfully under this man's intimacy as when his manners assumed the pretension of fashion.
“Yes,—of course,—I mean, who's in Paris?”
“There are, I believe, about forty-odd thousand of our countrymen and countrywomen,” said the other, half contemptuously.
“Oh, I've no doubt; but my question took narrower bounds. I meant, who of our set,—who of us?”
Martin turned round, and fixing his eyes on him, scanned him from head to foot with a gaze of such intense insolence as no words could have equalled. For a while the Jew bore it admirably; but these efforts, after all, are only like the brief intervals a man can live under water, and where the initiated beats the inexperienced only by a matter of seconds. As Martin continued his stare, Merl's cheek tingled, grew red, and finally his whole face and forehead became scarlet.
With an instinct like that of a surgeon who feels he has gone deep enough with his knife, Martin resumed his walk along the room without uttering a word.
Merl opened the newspaper, and affected to read; his hand, however, trembled, and his eyes wandered listlessly over the columns, and then furtively were turned towards Martin as he paced the chamber in silence.
“Do you think you can manage that little matter for me, Captain?” said he at last, and in a voice attuned to its very humblest key.
“What little matter? Those two bills do you mean?” said Martin, suddenly.
“Not at all. I 'm not the least pressed for cash. I alluded to the Club; you promised you 'd put me up, and get one of your popular friends to second me.”
“I remember,” said Martin, evidently relieved from a momentary terror. “Lord Claude Willoughby or Sir Spencer Cavendish would be the men if we could find them.”
“Lord Claude, I perceive, is here; the paper mentions his name in the dinner company at the Embassy yesterday.”
“Do you know him?” asked Martin, with an air of innocence that Merl well comprehended as insult.
“No. We 've met,—I think we 've played together; I remember once at Baden—”
“Lord Claude Willoughby, sir,” said a servant, entering with a card, “desires to know if you 're at home?”
“And won't be denied if you are not,” said his Lordship, entering at the same instant, and saluting Martin with great cordiality.
CHAPTER II. MR. MERL
The French have invented a slang word for a quality that deserves a more recognized epithet, and by the expression chic have designated a certain property by which objects assert their undoubted superiority over all their counterfeits. Thus, your coat from Nugee's, your carriage from Leader's, your bracelet from Storr's, and your bonnet from Madame Palmyre, have all their own peculiar chic, or, in other words, possess a certain invisible, indescribable essence that stamps them as the best of their kind, with an excellence unattainable by imitation, and a charm all their own!
Of all the products in which this magical property insinuates itself, there is not one to which it contributes so much as the man of fashion. He is the very type of chic. To describe him you are driven to a catalogue of negatives, and you only arrive at anything like a resemblance by an enumeration of the different things he is not.
The gentleman who presented himself to Martin at the close of our last chapter was in many respects a good specimen of his order. He had entered the room, believing Martin to be there alone; but no sooner had he perceived another, and that other one not known to him, than all the buoyant gayety of his manner was suddenly toned down into a quiet seriousness; while, taking his friend's arm, he said in a low voice,—“If you 're busy, my dear Martin, don't hesitate for a moment about sending me off; I had not the slightest suspicion there was any one with you.”
“Nor is there,” said Martin, with a supercilious glance at Merl, who was endeavoring in a dozen unsuccessful ways to seem unaware of the new arrival's presence.
“I want to introduce him to you,” said Martin.
“No, no, my dear friend, on no account.”
“I must; there's no help for it,” said Martin, impatiently, while he whispered something eagerly in the other's ear.
“Well, then, some other day; another time—”
“Here and now, Claude,” said Martin, peremptorily; while, without waiting for reply, he said aloud, “Merl, I wish to present you to Lord Claude Willoughby,—Lord Claude, Mr. Herman Merl.”
Merl bowed and smirked and writhed as his Lordship, with a bland smile and a very slight bow, acknowledged the presentation.
“Had the pleasure of meeting your Lordship at Baden two summers ago,” said the Jew, with an air meant to be the ideal of fashionable ease.
“I was at Baden at the time you mention,” said he, coldly.
“I used to watch your Lordship's game with great attention; you won heavily, I think?”
“I don't remember, just now,” said he, carelessly; not, indeed, that such was the fact, or that he desired it should be thought so; he only wished to mark his sense of what he deemed an impertinence.
“The man who can win at rouge-et-noir can do anything, in my opinion,” said Merl.
“What odds are you taking on Rufus?” said Martin to Willoughby, and without paying the slightest attention to Merl's remark.
“Eleven to one; but I'll not take it again. Hecuba is rising hourly, and some say she 'll be the favorite yet.”
“Is Rufus your Lordship's horse?” said the Jew, insinuatingly.
Willoughby bowed, and continued to write in his note-book.
“And you said the betting was eleven to one on the field, my Lord?”
“It ought to be fourteen to one, at least.”
“I 'll give you fourteen to one, my Lord, just for the sake of a little interest in the race.”
Willoughby ceased writing, and looked at him steadfastly for a second or two. “I have not said that the odds were fourteen to one.”
“I understand you perfectly, my Lord; you merely thought that they would be, or, at least, ought to be.”
“Merl wants a bet with you, in fact,” said Martin, as he applied alight to his meerschaum; “and if you won't have him, I will.”
“What shall it be, sir,” said Lord Claude, pencil in hand; “in ponies—fifties?”
“Oh, ponies, my Lord. I only meant it, just as I said, to give me something to care for in the race.”
“Will you put him up at the 'Cercle' after that?” whispered Martin, with a look of sly malice.
“I'll tell you when the match is over,” said Willoughby, laughing; “but if I won't, here 's one that will. That's a neat phaeton of Cavendish's.” And at the same instant Martin opened the window, and made a signal with his handkerchief.
“That's the thing for you, Merl,” said Martin, pointing down to a splendid pair of dark chestnuts harnessed to a handsome phaeton. “It's worth five hundred pounds to any fellow starting an equipage to chance upon one of Cavendish's. He has not only such consummate taste in carriage and harness, but he makes his nags perfection.”
“He drives very neatly,” said Willoughby.
“What was it he gave for that near-side horse?—a thousand pounds, I think.”
“Twelve hundred and fifty, and refused a hundred for my bargain,” said a very diminutive, shrewd-looking man of about five-and-thirty, who entered the room with great affectation of juvenility. “I bought him for a cab, never expecting to 'see his like again,' as Shakspeare says.”
“And you offered the whole concern yesterday to Damre-mont for fifty thousand francs?”
“No, Harry, that's a mistake. I said I 'd play him a match at piquet, whether he gave seventy thousand for the equipage or nothing. It was he that proposed fifty thousand. Mine was a handsome offer, I think.”
“I call it a most munificent one,” said Martin. “By the way, you don't know my friend here, Mr. Merl, Sir Spencer Cavendish.” And the baronet stuck his glass in his eye, and scanned the stranger as unscrupulously as though he were a hack at Tattersairs.
“Where did he dig him up, Claude?” whispered he, after a second.
“In India, I fancy; or at the Cape.”
“That fellow has something to do with the hell in St. James's Street; I 'll swear I know his face.”
“I 've been telling Merl that he 's in rare luck to find such a turn-out as that in the market; that is, if you still are disposed to sell.”
“Oh, yes, I'll sell it; give him the tiger, boots, cockade, and all,—everything except that Skye terrier. You shall have the whole, sir, for two thousand pounds; or, if you prefer it—”
A certain warning look from Lord Claude suddenly arrested his words, and he added, after a moment,—“But I 'd rather sell it off, and think no more of it.”
“Try the nags; Sir Spencer, I'm sure, will have no objection,” said Martin. But the baronet's face looked anything but concurrence with the proposal.
“Take them a turn round the Bois de Boulogne, Merl,” said Martin, laughing at his friend's distress.
“And he may have the turn-out at his own price after the trial,” muttered Lord Claude, with a quiet smile.
“Egad! I should think so,” whispered Cavendish; “for, assuredly, I should never think of being seen in it again.”
“If Sir Spencer Cavendish has no objection,—if he would permit his groom to drive me just down the Boulevards and the Rue Rivoli—”
The cool stare of the baronet did not permit him to finish. It was really a look far more intelligible than common observers might have imagined, for it conveyed something like recognition,—a faint approach to an intimation that said, “I 'm persuaded that we have met before.”
“Yes, that is the best plan. Let the groom have the ribbons,” said Martin, laughing with an almost schoolboy enjoyment of a trick. “And don't lose time, Merl, for Sir Spencer would n't miss his drive in the Champs Elysees for any consideration.”
“Gentlemen, I am your very humble and much obliged servant!” said Cavendish, as soon as Merl had quitted the room. “If that distinguished friend of yours should not buy my carriage—”
“But he will,” broke in Martin; “he must buy it.”
“He ought, I think,” said Lord Claude. “If I were in his place, there's only one condition I 'd stipulate for.”
“And that is—”
“That you should drive with him one day—one would be enough—from the Barrière de l'Étoile to the Louvre.”
“This is all very amusing, gentlemen, most entertaining,” said Cavendish, tartly; “but who is he?—I don''t mean that,—but what is he?”
“Martin's banker, I fancy,” said Lord Claude.
“Does he lend any sum from five hundred to twenty thousand on equitable terms on approved personal security?” said Cavendish, imitating the terms of the advertisements.
“He 'll allow all he wins from you to remain in your hands at sixty per cent interest, if he doesn't want cash!” said Martin, angrily.
“Oh, then, I 'm right. It is my little Moses of St. James's Street. He was n't always as flourishing as we see him now. Oh dear, if any man, three years back, had told me that this fellow would have proposed seating himself in my phaeton for a drive round Paris, I don't believe—nay, I 'm sure—my head couldn't have stood it.”
“You know him, then?” said Willoughby.
“I should think every man about town a dozen years ago must know him. There was a kind of brood of these fellows; we used to call them Joseph and his brethren. One sold cigars, another vended maraschino; this discounted your bills, that took your plate or your horses—ay, or your wardrobe—on a bill of sale, and handed you over two hundred pounds to lose at his brother's hell in the evening. Most useful scoundrels they were,—equally expert on 'Change and in the Coulisses of the Opera!”
“I will say this for him,” said Martin, “he 's not a hard fellow to deal with; he does not drive a bargain ungenerously.”
“Your hangman is the tenderest fellow in the world,” said Cavendish, “till the final moment. It's only in adjusting the last turn under the ear that he shows himself 'ungenerous.'”
“Are you deep with him, Harry?” said Willoughby, who saw a sudden paleness come over Martin's face.
“Too deep!” said he, with a bitter effort at a laugh,—“a great deal too deep.”
“We 're all too deep with those fellows,” said Cavendish, as, stretching out his legs, he contemplated the shape and lustre of his admirably fitting boots. “One begins by some trumpery loan or so; thence you go on to a play transaction or a betting-book with them, and you end—egad, you end by having the fellow at dinner!”
“Martin wants his friend to be put up for the Club,” said Willoughby.
“Eh, what? At the 'Cercle,' do you mean?”
“Why not? Is it so very select?”
“No, not exactly that; there are the due proportions of odd reputations, half reputations, and no reputations; but remember, Martin, that however black they be now, they all began white. When they started, at least, they were gentlemen.”
“I suspect that does not make the case much better.”
“No; but it makes ours better, in associating with them. Come, come, you know as well as any one that this is impossible, and that if you should do it to-day, I should follow the lead to-morrow, and our Club become only an asylum for unpayable tailors and unappeasable bootmakers!”
“You go too fast, sir,” exclaimed Martin, in a tone of anger. “I never intended to pay my debts by a white ball in the ballot-box, nor do I think that Mr. Merl would relinquish his claim on some thousand pounds, even for the honor of being the club colleague of Sir Spencer Cavendish.”
“Then I know him better,” said the other, tapping his-boot with his cane; “he would, and he 'd think it a right good bargain besides. From seeing these fellows at racecourses and betting-rooms, always cold, calm, and impassive, never depressed by ill-luck, as little elated by good, we fall into the mistake of esteeming them as a kind of philosophers in life, without any of those detracting influences that make you and Willoughby, and even myself, sometimes rash and headstrong. It is a mistake, though; they have a weakness,—and a terrible weakness,—which is, their passion to be thought in fashionable society. Yes, they can't resist that! All their shrewd calculations, all their artful schemes, dissolve into thin air, at the bare prospect of being recognized 'in society.' I have studied this flaw in them for many a year back. I 'll not say I haven't derived advantage from it.”
“And yet you 'd refuse him admission into a club,” cried Martin.
“Certainly. A club is a Democracy, where each man, once elected, is the equal of his neighbor. Society is, on the other hand, an absolute monarchy, where your rank flows from the fountain of honor,—the host. Take him along with you to her Grace's 'tea,' or my Lady's reception this evening, and see if the manner of the mistress of the house does not assign him his place, as certainly as if he were marshalled to it by a lackey. All his mock tranquillity and assumed ease of manner will not be proof against the icy dignity of a grande dame; but in the Club he's as good as the best, or he'll think so, which comes to the same thing.”
“Cavendish is right,—that is, as much so as he can be in anything,” said Willoughby, laughing. “Don't put him up, Martin.”
“Then what am I to do? I have given a sort of a pledge. He is not easily put off; he does not lightly relinquish an object.”
“Take him off the scent. Introduce him at the Embassy. Take him to the Courcelles.”
“This is intolerable,” broke in Martin, angrily. “I ask for advice, and you reply by a sneer and a mockery.”
“Not at all. I never was more serious. But here he comes! Look only how the fellow lolls back in the phaeton. Just see how contemptuously he looks down on the foot-travellers. I'd lay on another hundred for that stare; for, assuredly, he has already made the purchase in his own mind.”
“Well, Merl, what do you say to Sir Spencer's taste in horseflesh?” said Martin, as he entered.
“They 're nice hacks; very smart.”
“Nice hacks!” broke in Cavendish, “why, sir, they're both thoroughbred; the near horse is by Tiger out of a Crescent mare, and the off one won the Acton steeple-chase. When you said hacks, therefore, you made a cruel blunder.”
“Well, it's what a friend of mine called them just now,” said Merl; “and remarked, moreover, that the large horse had been slightly fired on the—the—I forget the name he gave it.”
“You probably remember your friend's name better,” said Cavendish, sneeringly. “Who was he, pray?”
“Massingbred,—we call him Jack Massingbred; he's the Member for somewhere in Ireland.”
“Poor Jack!” muttered Cavendish, “how hard up he must be!”
“But you like the equipage, Merl?” said Martin, who had a secret suspicion that it was now Cavendish's turn for a little humiliation.
“Well, it's neat. The buggy—”
“The buggy! By Jove, sir, you have a precious choice of epithets! Please to let me inform you that full-blooded horses are not called hacks, nor one of Leader's park-phaetons is not styled a buggy.”
Martin threw himself into a chair, and after a moment's struggle, burst out into a fit of laughter.
“I think we may make a deal after all, Sir Spencer,” said Merl, who accepted the baronet's correction with admirable self-control.
“No, sir; perfectly impossible; take my word for it, any transaction would be difficult between us. Good-bye, Martin; adieu, Claude.” And with this brief leave-taking the peppery Sir Spencer left the room, more flushed and fussy than he had entered it.
“If you knew Sir Spencer Cavendish as long as we have known him, Mr. Merl,” said Lord Claude, in his blandest of voices, “you'd not be surprised at this little display of warmth. It is the only weakness in a very excellent fellow.”
“I 'm hot, too, my Lord,” said Merl, with the very slightest accentuation of the “initial H,” “and he was right in saying that dealings would be difficult between us.”
“You mentioned Massingbred awhile ago, Merl. Why not ask him to second you at the Club?” said Martin, rousing himself suddenly from a train of thought.
“Well, somehow, I thought that he and you did n't exactly pull together; that there was an election contest,—a kind of a squabble.”
“I 'm sure that he never gave you any reason to suspect a coldness between us; I know that I never did,” said Martin, calmly. “We are but slightly acquainted, it is true, but I should be surprised to learn that there was any ill-feeling between us.”
“One's opponent at the hustings is pretty much the same thing as one's adversary at a game,—he is against you to-day, and may be your partner to-morrow; so that, putting even better motives aside, it were bad policy to treat him as an implacable enemy,” said Lord Claude, with his accustomed suavity. “Besides, Mr. Merl, you know the crafty maxim of the French moralist, 'Always treat your enemies as though one day they were to become your friends.'” And with this commonplace, uttered in a tone and with a manner that gave it all the semblance of a piece of special advice, his Lordship took his hat, and, squeezing Martin's hand, moved towards the door.
“Come in here for a moment,” said Martin, pushing open the door into an adjoining dressing-room, and closing it carefully after them. “So much for wanting to do a good-natured thing,” cried he, peevishly. “I thought to help Cavendish to get rid of those 'screws,' and the return he makes me is to outrage this man.”
“What are your dealings with him?” asked Willoughby» anxiously.
“Play matters, play debts, loans, securities, post-obits, and every other blessed contrivance you can think of to swamp a man's present fortune and future prospects. I don't think he is a bad fellow; I mean, I don't suspect he 'd press heavily upon me, with any fair treatment on my part. My impression, in short, is that he'd forgive my not meeting his bill, but he 'd never get over my not inviting him to a dinner!”
“Well,” said Willoughby, encouragingly, “we live in admirable times for such practices. There used to be a vulgar prejudice in favor of men that one knew, and names that the world was familiar with. It is gone by entirely; and if you only present your friend—don't wince at the title—your friend, I say—as the rich Mr. Merl, the man who owns shares in mines, canals, and collieries, whose speculations count by tens of thousands, and whose credit rises to millions, you'll never be called on to apologize for his parts of speech, or make excuse for his solecisms in good breeding.”
“Will you put up his name, then, at the Club?” asked Martin, eagerly. “It would not do for me to do so.”
“To be sure I will, and Massingbred shall be his seconder.” And with this cheering pledge Lord Claude bade him good-bye, and left him free to return to Mr. Merl in the drawing-room. That gentleman had, however, already departed, to the no small astonishment of Martin, who now threw himself lazily down on a sofa, to ponder over his difficulties and weave all manner of impracticable schemes to meet them.
They were, indeed, very considerable embarrassments. He had raised heavy sums at most exorbitant rates, and obtained money—for the play-table—by pledging valuable reversions of various kinds, for Merl somehow was the easiest of all people to deal with; one might have fancied that he lent his money only to afford himself an occasion of sympathy with the borrower, just as he professed that he merely betted “to have a little interest in the race.” Whatever Martin, then, suggested in the way of security never came amiss; whether it were a farm, a mill, a quarry, or a lead mine, he accepted it at once, and, as Martin deemed, without the slightest knowledge or investigation, little suspecting that there was not a detail of his estate, nor a resource of his property, with which the wily Jew was not more familiar than himself. In fact, Mr. Merl was an astonishing instance of knowledge on every subject by which money was to be made, and he no more advanced loans upon an encumbered estate than he backed the wrong horse or bid for a copied picture. There is a species of practical information excessively difficult to describe, which is not connoisseurship, but which supplies the place of that quality, enabling him who possesses it to estimate the value of an object, without any admixture of those weakening prejudices which beset your mere man of taste. Now, Mr. Merl had no caprices about the color of the horse he backed, no more than for the winning seat at cards; he could not be warped from his true interests by any passing whim, and whether he cheapened a Correggio or discounted a bill, he was the same calm, dispassionate calculator of the profit to come of the transaction.
Latterly, however, he had thrown out a hint to Martin that he was curious to see some of that property on which he had made such large advances; and this wish—which, according to the frame of mind he happened to be in at the moment, struck Martin as a mere caprice or a direct menace—was now the object of his gloomy reveries. We have not tracked his steps through the tortuous windings of his moneyed difficulties; it is a chapter in life wherein there is wonderfully little new to record; the Jew-lender and his associates, the renewed bill and the sixty per cent, the non-restored acceptances flitting about the world, sold and resold as damaged articles, but always in the end falling into the hands of a “most respectable party,” and proceeded on as a true debt; then, the compromises for time, for silence, for secrecy,—since these transactions are rarely, if ever, devoid of some unhappy incident that would not bear publicity; and there are invariably little notes beginning “Dear Moses,” which would argue most ill-chosen intimacies. These are all old stories, and the “Times” and the “Chronicle” are full of them. There is a terrible sameness about them, too. The dupe and the villain are stock characters that never change, and the incidents are precisely alike in every case. Humble folk, who are too low for fashionable follies, wonder how the self-same artifices have always the same success, and cannot conceal their astonishment at the innocence of our young men about town; and yet the mystery is easily solved. The dupe is, in these cases, just as unprincipled as his betrayer, and their negotiation is simply a game of skill, in which Israel is not always the winner.
If we have not followed Martin's steps through these dreary labyrinths, it is because the path is a worn one; for the same reason, too, we decline to keep him company in his ponderings over them. All that his troubles had taught him was an humble imitation of the tricky natures of those he dealt with; so that he plotted and schemed and contrived, till his very head grew weary with the labor. And so we leave him.
CHAPTER III. A YOUNG DUCHESS AND AN OLD FRIEND
Like a vast number of people who have passed years in retirement, Lady Dorothea was marvellously disappointed with “the world” when she went back to it. It was not at all the kind of thing she remembered, or at least fancied it to be. There were not the old gradations of class strictly defined; there was not the old veneration for rank and station; “society” was invaded by hosts of unknown people, “names one had never heard of.” The great stars of fashion of her own day had long since set, and the new celebrities had never as much as heard of her. The great houses of the Faubourg were there, it is true; but with reduced households and dimly lighted salons, they were but sorry representatives of the splendor her memory had invested them with.
Now the Martins were installed in one of the finest apartments of the finest quarter in Paris. They were people of unquestionable station, they had ample means, lacked for none of the advantages which the world demands from those who seek its favors; and yet there they were, just as unknown, unvisited, and unsought after, as if they were the Joneses or the Smiths, “out” for a month's pleasuring on the Continent.
A solitary invitation to the Embassy to dinner was not followed by any other attention; and so they drove along the Boulevards and through the Bois de Boulogne, and saw some thousands of gay, bright-costumed people, all eager for pleasure, all hurrying on to some scheme of amusement or enjoyment, while they returned moodily to their handsome quarter, as much excluded from all participation in what went on around them as though they were natives of Hayti.
Martin sauntered down to the reading-room, hoping vainly to fall in with some one he knew. He lounged listlessly along the bright streets, till their very glare addled him; he stared at the thousand new inventions of luxury and ease the world had discovered since he had last seen it, and then he plodded gloomily homeward, to dine and listen to her Ladyship's discontented criticism upon the tiresome place and the odious people who filled it. Paris was, indeed, a deception and a snare to them! So far from finding it cheap, the expense of living—as they lived—was considerably greater than at London. It was a city abounding in luxuries, but all costly. The details which are in England reserved for days of parade and display, were here daily habits, and these were now to be indulged in with all the gloom of solitude and isolation.
What wonder, then, if her Ladyship's temper was ruffled, and her equanimity unbalanced by such disappointments? In vain she perused the list of arrivals to find out some distinguished acquaintance; in vain she interrogated her son as to what was going on, and who were there. The Captain only frequented the club, and could best chronicle the names that were great at whist or illustrious at billiards.
“It surely cannot be the season here,” cried she, one morning, peevishly, “for really there isn't a single person one has ever heard of at Paris.”
“And yet this is a strong catalogue,” cried the Captain, with a malicious twinkle in his eye. “Here are two columns of somebodies, who were present at Madame de Luygnes' last night.”
“You can always fill salons, if that be all,” said she, angrily.
“Yes, but not with Tour du Pins, Tavannes, Rochefoucaulds, Howards of Maiden, and Greys of Allington, besides such folk as Pahlen, Lichtenstein, Colonna, and so forth.”
“How is it then, that one never sees them?” cried she, more eagerly.
“Say, rather, how is it one doesn't know them,” cried Martin, “for here we are seven weeks, and, except to that gorgeous fellow in the cocked hat at the porter's lodge, I have never exchanged a salute with a human being.”
“There are just three houses, they say, in all Paris, to one or other of which one must be presented,” said the Captain—“Madame de Luygnes, the Duchesse de Cour-celles, and Madame de Mirecourt.”
“That Madame de Luygnes was your old mistress, was she not, Miss Henderson?” asked Lady Dorothea, haughtily.
“Yes, my Lady,” was the calm reply.
“And who are these other people?”
“The Duc de Mirecourt was married to 'Mademoiselle,' the daughter of the Duchesse de Luygnes.”
“Have you heard or seen anything of them since you came here?” asked her Ladyship.
“No, my Lady, except a hurried salute yesterday from a carriage as we drove in. I just caught sight of the Duchesse as she waved her hand to me.”
“Oh, I saw it. I returned the salutation, never suspecting it was meant for you. And she was your companion—your dear friend—long ago?”
“Yes, my Lady,” said Kate, bending down over her work, but showing in the crimson flush that spread over her neck how the speech had touched her.
“And you used to correspond, I think?” continued her Ladyship.
“We did so, my Lady.”
“And she dropped it, of course, when she married,—she had other things to think of?”
“I 'm afraid, my Lady, the lapse was on my side,” said Kate, scarcely repressing a smile at her own hardihood.
“Your side! Do you mean to say that you so far forgot what was due to the station of the Duchesse de Mirecourt, that you left her letter unreplied to?”
“Not exactly, my Lady.”
“Then, pray, what do you mean?”
Kate paused for a second or two, and then, in a very calm and collected voice, replied,—“I told the Duchesse, in my last letter, that I should write no more,—that my life was thrown in a wild, unfrequented region, where no incident broke the monotony, and that were I to continue our correspondence, my letters must degenerate into a mere selfish record of my own sentiments, as unprofitable to read as ungraceful to write; and so I said good-bye—or au revoir, at least—till other scenes might suggest other thoughts.”
“A most complimentary character of our Land of the West, certainly! I really was not aware before that Cro' Martin was regarded as an 'oubliette.'”
Kate made no answer,—a silence which seemed rather to irritate than appease her Ladyship.
“I hope you included the family in your dreary picture. I trust it was not a mere piece of what artists call still life, Miss Henderson?”
“No, my Lady,” said she, with a deep sigh; but the tone and manner of the rejoinder were anything but apologetic.
“Now I call that as well done as anything one sees in Hyde Park,” cried the Captain, directing attention as he spoke to a very handsome chariot which had just driven up to the door. “They're inquiring for somebody here,” continued he, as he watched the Chasseur as he came and went from the carriage to the house.
“There's a Grandee of Spain, or something of that kind, lives on the fourth floor, I think,” said Martin, dryly.
“The Duchesse de Mirecourt, my Lady,” said a servant, entering, “begs to know if your Ladyship will receive her?”
Kate started at the words, and her color rose till her cheeks were crimsoned.
“A visit, I suspect, rather for you than me, Miss Henderson,” said Lady Dorothea, in a half-whisper; and then turning to her servant, nodded her acquiescence.
“I 'm off,” said Martin, rising suddenly to make his escape.
“And I too,” said the Captain, as he made his exit by an opposite door.
The folding-doors of the apartment were at the same moment thrown wide, and the Duchess entered. Very young,—almost girlish, indeed,—she combined in her appearance the charming freshness of youth with that perfection of gracefulness which attaches to the higher classes of French society, and although handsome, more striking from the fascination of manner than for any traits of beauty. Courtesying slightly, but deferentially, to Lady Dorothea, she apologized for her intrusion by the circumstance of having, the day before, caught sight of her “dear governess and dear friend—” And as she reached thus far, the deep-drawn breathing of another attracted her. She turned and saw Kate, who, pale as a statue, stood leaning on a chair. In an instant she was in her arms, exclaiming, in a rapture of delight, “My dear, dear Kate,—my more than sister! You would forgive me, madam,” said she, addressing Lady Dorothea, “if you but knew what we were to each other. Is it not so, Kate?”
A faint tremulous motion of the lips—all colorless as they were—was the only reply to the speech; but the young Frenchwoman needed none, but turning to her Ladyship, poured forth with native volubility a story of their friendship, the graceful language in which she uttered it lending those choice phrases which never seem exaggerations of sentiment till they be translated into other tongues. Mingling her praises with half reproaches, she drew a picture of Kate so flattering that Lady Dorothea could not help a sense of shrinking terror that one should speak in such terms of the governess.
“And now, dearest,” added she, turning to Kate, “are we to see a great deal of each other? When can you come to me? Pardon me, madam, this question should be addressed to you.”
“Miss Henderson is my secretary, Madame la Duchesse; she is also my companion,” said Lady Dorothea, haughtily; “but I can acknowledge claims which take date before my own. She shall be always at liberty when you wish for her.”
“How kind, how good of you!” cried the Duchess. “I could have been certain of that. I knew that my dear Kate must be loved by all around her. We have a little fête on Wednesday at St. Germain. May I bespeak her for that day?”
“Her Ladyship suffers her generosity to trench upon her too far,” said Kate, in a low voice. “I am in a manner necessary to her,—that is, my absence would be inconvenient.”
“But her Ladyship will doubtless be in the world herself that evening. There is a ball at the Duchesse de Sargance, and the Austrian Minister has something,” rattled on the lively Duchess. “Paris is so gay just now, so full of pleasant people, and all so eager for enjoyment. Don't you find it so, my Lady?”
“I go but little into society!” said Lady Dorothea, stiffly.
“How strange! and I—I cannot live without it. Even when we go to our Château at Roche-Mire I carry away with me all my friends who will consent to come. We try to imitate that delightful life of your country houses, and make up that great family party which is the beau idéal of social enjoyment.”
“And you like a country life, then?” asked her Ladyship.
“To be sure. I love the excursions on horseback, the forest drives, the evening walks in the trellised vines, the parties one makes to see a thousand things one never looks at afterwards; the little dinners on the grass, with all their disasters, and the moonlight drive homewards, half joyous, half romantic,—not to speak of that charming frankness by which every one makes confession of his besetting weakness, and each has some little secret episode of his own life to tell the others. All but Kate here,” cried she, laughingly, “who never revealed anything.”
“Madame la Duchesse will, I 'm sure, excuse my absence; she has doubtless many things she would like to say to her friend alone,” said Lady Dorothea, rising and courtesying formally; and the young Duchess returned the salutation with equal courtesy and respect.
“My dear, dear Kate,” cried she, throwing her arms around her as the door closed after her Ladyship, “how I have longed for this moment, to tell you ten thousand things about myself and hear from you as many more! And first, dearest, are you happy? for you look more serious, more thoughtful than you used,—and paler, too.”
“Am I so?” asked Kate, faintly.
“Yes. When you're not speaking, your brows grow stern and your lips compressed. Your features have not that dear repose, as Giorgevo used to call it. Poor fellow! how much in love he was, and you 've never asked for him!”
“I never thought of him!” said she, with a smile.
“Nor of Florian, Kate!”
“Nor even of him.”
“And yet that poor fellow was really in love,—nay, don't laugh, Kate, I know it. He gave up his career, everything he had in life,—he was a Secretary of Legation, with good prospects,—all to win your favor, becoming a 'Carbonaro,' or a 'Montagnard,' or something or other that swears to annihilate all kings and extirpate monarchy.”
“And after that?” asked Kate, with more of interest.
“After that, ma chère, they sent him to the galleys; I forget exactly where, but I think it was in Sicily. And then there was that Hungarian Count Nemescz, that wanted to kill somebody who picked up your bouquet out of the Grand Canal at Venice.”
“And whom, strangely enough, I met and made acquaintance with in Ireland. His name is Massingbred.”
“Not the celebrity, surely,—the young politician who made such a sensation by a first speech in Parliament t'other day? He's all the rage here. Could it be him?”
“Possibly enough,” said she, carelessly. “He had very good abilities, and knew it.”
“He comes to us occasionally, but I scarcely have any acquaintance with him. But this is not telling me of yourself, child. Who and what are these people you are living with? Do they value my dear Kate as they ought? Are they worthy of having her amongst them?”
“I 'm afraid not,” said Kate, with a smile. “They do not seem at all impressed with the blessing they enjoy, and only treat me as one of themselves.”
“But, seriously, child, are they as kind as they should be? That old lady is, to my thinking, as austere as an Archduchess.”
“I like her,” said Kate; “that is, I like her cold, reserved manner, unbending as it is, which only demands the quiet duties of servitude, and neither asks nor wishes for affection. She admits me to no friendship, but she exacts no attachment.”
“And you like this?”
“I did not say I should like it from you! said Kate, pressing the hand she held fervently to her lips, while her pale cheek grew faintly red.
“And you go into the world with her,—at least her world?”
“She has none here. Too haughty for second-rate society, and unknown to those who form the first class at Paris, she never goes out.”
“But she would—she would like to do so?”
“I 'm sure she would.”
“Then mamma shall visit her. You know she is everything here; her house is the rendezvous of all the distinguished people, and, once seen in her salons, my Lady—how do you call her?”
“Lady Dorothea Martin.”
“I can't repeat it—but no matter—her Ladyship shall not want for attentions. Perhaps she would condescend to come to me on Wednesday? Dare I venture to ask her?”
Kate hesitated, and the Duchess quickly rejoined,—“No, dearest, you are quite right; it would be hazardous, too abrupt, too unceremonious. You will, however, be with us; and I long to present you to all my friends, and show them one to whom I owe so much, and ought to be indebted to for far more. I 'll send for you early, that we may have a long morning together.” And so saying, she arose to take leave.
“I feel as though I 'll scarcely believe I had seen you when you have gone,” said Kate, earnestly. “I'll fancy it all a dream—or rather, that my life since we met has been one, and that we had never parted.”
“Were we not very happy then, Kate?” said the Duchess, with a half-sigh; “happier, perhaps, than we may ever be again.”
“You must not say so, at all events,” said Kate, once more embracing her. And they parted.
Kate arose and watched the splendid equipage as it drove away, and then slowly returned to her place at the work-table. She did not, however, resume her embroidery, but sat deep in reflection, with her hands clasped before her.
“Poor fellow!” said she, at length, “a galley-slave, and Massingbred a celebrity! So much for honesty and truth in this good world of ours! Can it always go on thus? That is the question I'm curious to hear solved. A little time may, perhaps, reveal it!” So saying to herself, she leaned her head upon her hand, deep lost in thought.
CHAPTER IV. A VERY GREAT FAVOR
Amongst the embarrassments of story-telling there is one which, to be appreciated, must have been experienced; it is, however, sufficiently intelligible to claim sympathy even by indicating,—we mean the difficulty a narrator has in the choice of those incidents by which his tale is to be marked out, and the characters who fill it adequately depicted.
It is quite clear that a great number of events must occur in the story of every life of which no record can be made; some seem too trivial, some too irrelevant for mention, and yet, when we come to reflect upon real life itself, how many times do we discover that what appeared to be but the veriest trifles were the mainsprings of an entire existence, and the incidents which we deemed irrelevant were the hidden links that connected a whole chain of events? How easy, then, to err in the selection! This difficulty presents itself strongly to us at present; a vast number of circumstances rise before us from which we must refrain, lest they should appear to indicate a road we are not about to travel; and, at the same time, we feel the want of those very events to reconcile what may well seem contradictions in our history.
It not unfrequently happens that an apology is just as tiresome as the offence it should excuse; and so, without further explanation, we proceed. Lady Dorothea soon found herself as much sought after as she had previously been neglected. The Duchesse de Luygnes was the great leader of fashion at Paris; and the marked attentions by which she distinguished her Ladyship at once established her position. Of course her unquestionable claim to station, and her own high connections rendered the task less difficult; while it imparted to Lady Dorothea's own manner and bearing that degree of dignity and calm which never accompany an insecure elevation.
With such refinement of delicacy, such exquisite tact, was every step managed that her Ladyship was left to suppose every attention she received sprung out of her own undeniable right to them, and to the grace and charm of a manner which really had had its share of success some five-and-thirty years before. The gloomy isolation she had passed through gave a stronger contrast to the enjoyment of her present life; and for the first time for years she regained some of that courtly elegance of address which in her youth had pre-eminently distinguished her. The change had worked favorably in her temper also; and Martin perceived, with astonishment, that she neither made injurious comparisons between the present and the past, nor deemed the age they lived in one of insufferable vulgarity. It would scarcely have been possible for Lady Dorothea not to connect her altered position with the friendship between Kate Henderson and her former pupil; she knew it, and she felt it. All her self-esteem could not get over this consciousness; but it was a humiliation reserved for her own heart, since nothing in Kate's manner indicated even a suspicion of the fact. On the contrary, never had she shown herself more submissive and dependent. The duties of her office, multiplied as they were tenfold by her Ladyship's engagements, were all punctually acquitted, and with a degree of tact and cleverness that obtained from Lady Dorothea the credit of a charming note-writer. Nor was she indifferent to the effect Kate produced in society, where her beauty and fascination had already made a deep impression.
Reserving a peculiar deference and respect for all her intercourse with Lady Dorothea, Kate Henderson assumed to the world at large the ease and dignity of one whose station was the equal of any. There was nothing in her air or bearing that denoted the dependant; there was rather a dash of haughty superiority, which did not scruple to avow itself and bid defiance to any bold enough to question its claims. Even this was a secret flattery to Lady Dorothea's heart; and she saw with satisfaction the success of that imperious tone which to herself was subdued to actual humility.
Lady Dorothea Martin and her beautiful companion were now celebrities at Paris; and, assuredly, no city of the world knows how to shower more fascinations on those it favors. Life became to them a round of brilliant festivities. They received invitations from every quarter, and everywhere were met with that graceful welcome so sure to greet those whose airs and whose dress are the ornaments of a salon. They “received” at home, too; and her Ladyship's Saturdays were about the most exclusive of all Parisian receptions. Tacitly, at least, the whole management and direction of these “Evenings” was committed to Kate. Martin strictly abstained from a society in every way distasteful to him. The Captain had come to care for nothing but play, so that the Club was his only haunt; and it was the rarest of all events to see him pass even a few minutes in the drawing-room. He had, besides, that degree of shrinking dislike to Kate Henderson which a weak man very often experiences towards a clever and accomplished girl. When he first joined his family at Paris, he was struck by her great beauty and the elegance of a manner that might have dignified any station, and he fell partly in love,—that is to say, as much in love as a captain of hussars could permit himself to feel for a governess. He condescended to make small advances, show her petty attentions, and even distinguish her by that flattering stare, with his glass to his eye, which he had known to be what the poet calls “blush-compelling” in many a fair cheek in provincial circles.
To his marvellous discomfiture, however, these measures were not followed by any success. She never as much as seemed aware of them, and treated him with the same polite indifference, as though he had been neither a hussar nor a lady-killer. Of course he interpreted this as a piece of consummate cunning; he had no other measure for her capacity than would have been suited to his own. She was a deep one, evidently bent on drawing him on, and entangling him in some stupid declaration, and so he grew cautious. But, somehow, his reserve provoked as little as his boldness. She did not change in the least; she treated him with a quiet, easy sort of no-notice,—the most offensive thing possible to one bent upon being impressive, and firmly persuaded that he need only wish, to be the conqueror.
Self-worship was too strong in him to suffer a single doubt as to his own capacity for success, and therefore the only solution to the mystery of her manner was its being an artful scheme, which time and a little watching would surely explain. Time went on, and yet he grew none the wiser; Kate continued the same impassive creature as at first. She never sought,—never avoided him. She met him without constraint,—without pleasure, too. They never became intimate, while there was no distance in their intercourse; till at last, wounded in his self-esteem, he began to feel that discomfort in her presence which only waits for the slightest provocation to become actual dislike.
With that peevishness that belongs to small minds, he would have been glad to have discovered some good ground for hating her; and a dozen times a day did he fancy that he had “hit the blot,” but somehow he always detected his mistake erelong; and thus did he live on in that tantalizing state of uncertainty and indecision which combines about as much suffering as men of his stamp are capable of feeling.
If Lady Dorothea never suspected the degree of influence Kate silently exercised over her, the Captain saw it palpably, and tried to nourish the knowledge into a ground for dislike. But somehow she would no more suffer herself to be hated than to be loved, and invariably baffled all his attempts to “get up” an indignation against her. By numberless devices—too slight, too evanescent to be called regular coquetry—she understood how to conciliate him, even in his roughest moods, while she had only to make the very least possible display of her attractions to fascinate him in his happier moments. The gallant hussar was not much given to self-examination. It was one of the last positions he would have selected; and yet he had confessed to his own heart that, though he 'd not like to marry her himself, he 'd be sorely tempted to shoot any man who made her his wife.
Lady Dorothea and Kate Henderson were seated one morning engaged in the very important task of revising the invitation-book,—weeding out the names of departed acquaintance, and canvassing the claims of those who should succeed them. The rigid criticism as to eligibility showed how great an honor was the card for her Ladyship's “Tea.” While they were thus occupied, Captain Martin entered the room with an open letter in his hand, his air and manner indicating flurry, if not actual agitation.
“Sorry to interrupt a privy council,” said he, “but I've come to ask a favor,—don't look frightened; it's not for a woman, my Lady,—but I want a card for your next Saturday, for a male friend of mine.”
“Kate has just been telling me that 'our men' are too numerous.”
“Impossible. Miss Henderson knows better than any one that the success of these things depends on having a host of men,—all ages, all classes, all sorts of people,” said he, indolently.
“I think we have complied with your theory,” said she, pointing to the book before her. “If our ladies are chosen for their real qualities, the men have been accepted with a most generous forbearance.”
“One more, then, will not damage the mixture.”
“Of course, Captain Martin, it is quite sufficient that he is a friend of yours—that you wish it—”
“But it is no such thing, Miss Henderson,” broke in Lady Dorothea. “We have already given deep umbrage in many quarters—very high quarters, too—by refusals; and a single mistake would be fatal to us.”
“But why need this be a mistake?” cried Captain Martin, peevishly. “The man is an acquaintance of mine,—a friend, if you like to call him so.”
“And who is he?” asked my Lady, with all the solemnity of a judge.
“A person I met at the Cape. We travelled home together—saw a great deal of each other—in fact—I know him as intimately as I do—any officer in my regiment,” said the Captain, blundering and faltering at every second word.
“Oh! then he is one of your own corps?” said her Ladyship.
“I never said so,” broke he in. “If he had been, I don't fancy I should need to employ much solicitation in his behalf; the—they are not usually treated in that fashion!”
“I trust we should know how to recognize their merits,” said Kate, with a look which sorely puzzled him whether it meant conciliation or raillery.
“And his name?” asked my Lady. “His name ought to be decisive, without anything more!”
“He's quite a stranger here, knows nobody, so that you incur no risk as to any impertinent inquiries, and when he leaves this, to-morrow or next day, you 'll never see him again.” This the Captain said with all the confusion of an inexpert man in a weak cause.
“Shall I address his card, or will you take it yourself, Captain Martin?” said Kate, in a low voice.
“Write Merl,—Mr. Herman Merl,” said he, dropping his own voice to the same tone.
“Merl!” exclaimed Lady Dorothea, whose quick hearing detected the words. “Why, where on earth could you have made acquaintance with a man called Merl?”
“I have told you already where and how we met; and if it be any satisfaction to you to know that I am under considerable obligations—heavy obligations—to this same gentleman, perhaps it might incline you to show him some mark of attention.”
“You could have him to dinner at your Club,—you might even bring him here, when we're alone, Harry; but really, to receive him at one of our Evenings! You know how curious people are, what questions they will ask:—'Who is that queer-looking man?'—I 'm certain he is so.—'Is he English?'—'Who does he belong to?'—'Does he know any one?'”
“Let them ask me, then,” said Martin, “and I may, perhaps, be able to satisfy them.” At the same moment he took up from the table the card which Kate had just written, giving her a look of grateful recognition as he did so.
“You 've done this at your own peril, Miss Henderson,” said Lady Dorothea, half upbraidingly.
“At mine, be it rather,” said the Captain, sternly.
“I accept my share of it willingly,” said Kate, with a glance which brought a deep flush over the hussar's cheek, and sent through him a strange thrill of pleasure.
“Then I am to suppose we shall be honored with your own presence on this occasion,—rare favor that it is,” said her Ladyship.
“Yes, I 'll look in. I promised Merl to present him.”