The Martins Of Cro' Martin, Vol. II (of II)

“By Jove! I think we’ve had enough of ‘business,’ as they call it, for one morning,” cried he. “Here have we been since a little after eleven, and it is now four, and I am as sick of accounts and figures as though I were a Treasury clerk.”

“We have done next to nothing, after all!” said she, peevishly.

“And I told you as much when you began,” said he, lighting a fresh cigar. “There’s no seeing one’s way through these kind of things after the lapse of a year or two. Fordyce gets hold of the bills you gave Mossop, and Rawkins buys up some of the things you had given renewals for, and then all that trash you took in part payment of your acceptances turns up, some day or other, to be paid for; and what between the bills that never were to be negotiated – but somehow do get abroad – and the sums sent to meet others applied in quite a different direction, I’ll lay eighty to fifty in tens or ponies there’s no gentleman living ever mastered one of these embarrassments. One must be bred to it, my Lady, take my word for it. It’s like being a crack rider or a poet, – it’s born with a man. ‘The Henderson,’” added he, after a pause, “she can do it, and I should like to see what she couldn’t!”

“I am curious to learn how you became acquainted with these financial abilities of Miss Henderson?” said Lady Dorothea, haughtily.

“Simply enough. I was poring over these confounded accounts one day at Manheim, and I chanced to ask her a question, – something about compound interest, I think it was, – and so she came and looked over what I was doing, or rather endeavoring to do. It was that affair with Throgmorton, where I was to meet one third of the bills, and Merl and he were to look to the remainder; but there was a reservation that if Comus won the Oaks, I was to stand free – no, that’s not it – if Comus won the double event – ”

“Never mind your stupid contract. What of Miss Henderson?” broke in Lady Dorothea.

“Well, she came over, as I told you, and took up a pencil and began working away with all sorts of signs and crosses, – regular algebra, by Jove! – and in about five minutes out came the whole thing, all square, showing that I stood to win on either event, and came off splendidly if the double should turn up. ‘I wish,’ said I to her, ‘you ‘d just run your eye over my book and see how I stand.’ She took it over to the fire, and before I could well believe she had glanced at it, she said: ‘This is all full of blunders. You have left yourself open to three casualties, any one of which will sweep away all your winnings. Take the odds on Roehampton, and lay on Slingsby a couple of hundred more, – three, if you can get it, – and you ‘ll be safe enough. And when you ‘ve done that,’ said she, ‘I have another piece of counsel to give; but first say will you take it?’ ‘I give you my word upon it,’ said I. ‘Then it is this,’ said she: ‘make no more wagers on the turf. You haven’t skill to make what is called a “good book,” and you ‘ll always be a sufferer.’”

“Did n’t she vouchsafe to offer you her admirable assistance?” asked her Ladyship, with a sneer.

“No, by Jove!” said he, not noticing the tone of sarcasm; “and when I asked her, ‘Would not she afford me a little aid?’ she quickly said, ‘Not on any account. You are now in a difficulty, and I willingly come forward to extricate you. Far different were the case should I conspire with you to place others in a similar predicament. Besides, I have your pledge that you have now done with these transactions, and forever.’”

“What an admirable monitor! One only wonders how so much morality coexists with such very intimate knowledge of ignoble pursuits.”

“By Jove! she knows everything,” broke in the Captain. “Such a canter as she gave me t’ other morning about idleness and the rest of it, saying how I ought to study Hindostanee, and get a staff appointment, and so on, – that every one ought to place himself above the accidents of fortune; and when I said something about having no opportunity at hand, she replied, ‘Never complain of that; begin with me. I know quite enough to initiate you; and as to Sanscrit, I ‘m rather “up” in it.’”

“I trust you accepted the offer?” said her Ladyship, with an ambiguous smile.

“Well, I can’t say I did. I hate work, – at least that kind of work. Besides, one doesn’t like to come out ‘stupid’ in these kind of things, and so I merely said, ‘I ‘d think of it – very kind of her,’ and so on.”

“Did it never occur to you all this while,” began her Ladyship; and then suddenly correcting herself, she stopped short, and said, “By the way, Mr. Scanlan is waiting for his answer. Ring the bell, and let him come in.”

Perhaps it was the imperfect recollection of that eminent individual, – perhaps the altered circumstances in which she now saw him, and possibly some actual changes in the man himself, – but really Lady Dorothea almost started with surprise as he entered the room, dressed in a dark pelisse, richly braided and frogged, an embroidered travelling-cap in his hand, and an incipient moustache on his upper lip, – all evidencing how rapidly he had turned his foreign experiences to advantage. There was, too, in his address a certain confident assurance that told how quickly the habits of the “Table d’hôte” had impressed him, and how instantaneously his nature had imbibed the vulgar ease of the “Continent.”

“You have just arrived, Mr. Scanlan?” said her Ladyship, haughtily, and not a little provoked at the shake-hand salutation her son had accorded him.

“Yes, my Lady, this instant, and such a journey as we ‘ve had! No water on the Rhine for the steamers; and then, when we took to the land, a perfect deluge of rain, that nearly swept us away. At Eisleben, or some such name, we had an upset.”

“What day did you leave Ireland?” asked she, in utter indifference as to the casualty.

“Tuesday fortnight last, my Lady. I was detained two days in Dublin making searches – ”

“Have you brought us any letters, sir?”

“One from Miss Mary, my Lady, and another from Mr. Repton – very pressing he said it was. I hope Mr. Martin is better? Your Ladyship’s last – ”

“Not much improvement,” said she, stiffly, while her thin lips were compressed with an expression that might mean pride or sorrow, or both.

“And the country, sir? How did you leave it looking?”

“Pretty well, my Lady. More frightened than hurt, as a body might say. They ‘ve had a severe winter, and a great deal of sickness; the rains, too, have done a deal of mischief; but on the whole matters are looking up again.”

“Will the rents be paid, sir?” asked she, sharply.

“Indeed, I hope so, my Lady. Some, of course, will be backward, and beg for time, and a few more will take advantage of Magennis’s success, and strive to fight us off.”

“There must have been some gross mismanagement in that business, sir,” broke in her Ladyship. “Had I been at home, I promise you the matter would have ended differently.”

“Mr. Repton directed all the proceedings himself, my Lady. He conferred with Miss Mary.”

“What could a young lady know about such matters?” said she, angrily. “Any prospect of a tenant for the house, sir?”

“If your Ladyship really decides on not going back – ”

“Not the slightest intention of doing so, sir. If it depended upon me, I’d rather pull it down and sell the materials than return to live there. You know yourself, sir, the utter barbarism we were obliged to submit to. No intercourse with the world – no society – very frequently no communication by post. Surrounded by a set of ragged creatures, all importunity and idleness, at one moment all defiance and insolence, at the next crawling and abject. But it is really a theme I cannot dwell upon. Give me your letters, sir, and let me see you this evening.” And taking the papers from his hand, she swept out of the room in a haughty state.

The Captain and Mr. Scanlan exchanged looks, and were silent, but their glances were far more intelligible than aught either of them would have ventured to say aloud; and when the attorney’s eyes, having followed her Ladyship to the door, turned and rested on the Captain, the other gave a brief short nod of assent, as though to say, “Yes, you are right; she’s just the same as ever.”

“And you, Captain,” said Scanlan, in his tone of natural familiarity, – “how is the world treating you?”

“Devilish badly, Master Scanlan.”

“Why, what is it doing, then?”

“I’ll tell you what it’s doing! It’s charging me fifty – ay, sixty per cent; it’s protesting my bills, stimulating my blessed creditors to proceed against me, worrying my very life out of me with letters. Letters to the governor, letters to the Horse Guards, and, last of all, it has just lamed Bonesetter, the horse ‘I stood to win’ on for the Chester Cup, I would n’t have taken four thousand for my book yesterday morning!”

“Bad news all this.”

“I believe you,” said he, lighting a cigar, and throwing another across the table to Scanlan. “It’s just bad news, and I have nothing else for many a long day past. A fellow of your sort, Master Maurice, punting away at county races and small sweepstakes, has a precious deal better time of it than a captain of the King’s Hussars with his head and shoulders in the Fleet.”

“Come, come, who knows but luck will turn, Captain? Make a book on the Oaks.”

“I’ve done it; and I’m in for it, too,” said the other, savagely.

“Raise a few thousands, you can always sell a reversion.”

“I have done that also,” said he, still more angrily.

“With your position and advantages you could always marry well. If you’d just beat up the manufacturing districts, you’d get your eighty thousand as sure as I’m here! And then matrimony admits of a man’s changing all his habits. He can sell off hunters, get rid of a racing stable, and twenty other little embarrassments, and only gain character by the economy.”

“I don’t care a brass farthing for that part of the matter, Scanlan. No man shall dictate to me how I ‘m to spend my money. Do you just find me the tin, and I ‘ll find the talent to scatter it.”

“If it can’t be done by a post-obit – ”

“I tell you, sir,” cried Martin, peevishly, “as I have told you before, that has been done. There is such a thing as pumping a well dry, is n’t there?”

Scanlan made a sudden exclamation of horror; and after a pause, said, “Already!”

“Ay, sir, already!”

“I had my suspicions about it,” muttered Scanlan, gloomily.

“You had? And how so, may I beg to ask?” said Martin, angrily.

“I saw him down there, myself.”

“Saw whom? Whom are you talking of?”

“Of that Jew, of course. Mr. Merl, he calls himself.”

A faint groan was all Martin’s reply, as he turned away to hide his face.

Scanlan watched him for a minute or so, and then resumed: “I guessed at once what he was at; he never deceived me, talking about snipe and woodcocks, and pretending to care about hare-hunting. I saw my man at a glance. ‘It’s not sporting ever brought you down to these parts,’ said I. ‘Your game is young fellows, hard up for cash, willing to give up their birthright for a few thousands down, and never giving a second thought whether they paid twenty per cent, or a hundred and twenty.’ Well, well, Captain, you ought to have told me all about it. There wasn’t a man in Ireland could have putted you through like myself.”

“How do you mean?” cried Martin, hurriedly.

“Sure, when he was down in the West, what was easier? Faix, if I had only had the wind of a word that matters were so bad, I ‘d have had the papers out of him long ago. You shake your head as if you did n’t believe me; but take my word for it, I ‘m right, sir. I ‘d put a quarrel on him.”

“He’d not fight you!” said Martin, turning away in disappointment.

“Maybe he wouldn’t; but mightn’t he be robbed? Couldn’t he be waylaid, and carried off to the Islands? There was no need to kill him. Intimidation would do it all! I’d lay my head upon a block this minute if I would n’t send him back to London without the back of a letter in his company; and what’s more, a pledge that he ‘d never tell what’s happened to him!”

“These cockney gents are more ‘wide awake’ than you suspect, Master Maurice, and the chances are that he never carried a single paper or parchment along with him.”

“Worse for him, then,” said Scanlan. “He’d have to pass the rest of his days in the Arran Islands. But I’m not so sure he’s as ‘cute as you think him,” added Maurice, after a pause. “He left a little note-book once behind him that told some strange stories, by all accounts.”

“What was that you speak of?” cried Martin, eagerly.

“I did n’t see it myself, but Simmy Crow told me of it; and that it was full of all the fellows he ruined, – how much he won from this man, what he carried off from that; and, moreover, there was your own name, and the date of the very evening that he finished you off! It was something in this wise: ‘This night’s work makes me an estated gentleman, vice Harry Martin, Esquire, retired upon less than half-pay!’”

A terrible oath, uttered in all the vehemence of a malediction, burst from Martin, and seizing Scanlan’s wrist, he shook his arm in an agony of passion.

“I wish I had given you a hint about him, Master Scanlan,” said he, savagely.

“It’s too late to think of it now, Captain,” said the other; “the fellow is in Baden.”

“Here?” asked Martin.

“Ay. He came up the Rhine along with me; but he never recognized me, – on account of my moustaches perhaps, – he took me for a Frenchman or a German, I think. We parted at Mayence, and I saw no more of him.”

“I would that I was to see no more of him!” said Martin, gloomily, as he walked into another room, banging the door heavily behind him.

CHAPTER XXII. HOW PRIDE MEETS PRIDE

Kate Henderson sat alone in her room reading a letter from her father, her thoughtful brow a shade more serious perhaps than its wont, and at times a faint, half-sickly smile moving her dimpled cheek. The interests of our story have no concern with that letter, save passingly, nor do we regret it. Enough, if we say it was in reply to one of her own, requesting permission to return home, until, as she phrased it, she could “obtain another service.” That the request had met scant favor was easy to see, as, folding up the letter, she laid it down beside her with a sigh and a muttered “I thought as much! – ‘So long as her Ladyship is pleased to accept of your services,’” said she, repeating aloud an expression of the writer. “Well, I suppose he’s right; such is the true reading of the compact, as it is of every compact where there is wealth on one side, dependence on the other! Nor should I complain,” said she, still more resolutely, “if these same services could be rendered toilfully, but costing nothing of self-sacrifice in honorable feeling. I could be a drudge – a slave – to-morrow; I could stoop to any labor; but I cannot – no, I cannot – descend to companionship! They who hire us,” cried she, rising, and pacing the room in slow and measured tread, “have a right to our capacity. We are here to do their bidding; but they can lay no claim to that over which we ourselves have no control – our sympathies, our affections – we cannot sell these; we cannot always give them, even as a gift.” She paused, and opening the letter, read it for some seconds, and then flinging it down with a haughty gesture, said, “‘Nothing menial – nothing to complain of in my station!’ Can he not see that there is no such servitude as that which drags out existence, by subjecting, not head and hands, but heart and soul, to the dictates of another? The menial – the menial has the best of it. Some stipulate that they are not to wear a livery; but what livery exacts such degradation as this?” And she shook the rich folds of her heavy silk dress as she spoke. The tears rose up and dimmed her eyes, but they were tears of offended pride, and as they stole slowly along her cheeks, her features acquired an expression of intense haughtiness. “They who train their children to this career are but sorry calculators! – educating them but to feel the bitter smart of their station, to see more clearly the wide gulf that separates them from what they live amongst!” said she, in a voice of deep emotion.

“Her Ladyship, Miss Henderson,” said a servant, throwing wide the door, and closing it after the entrance of Lady Dorothea, who swept into the room in her haughtiest of moods, and seated herself with all that preparation that betokened a visit of importance.

“Take a seat, Miss Henderson,” said she. And Kate obeyed in silence. “If in the course of what I shall have to say to you,” resumed her Ladyship, – “if in what I shall feel it my duty to say to you, I may be betrayed into any expression stronger than in a calmer moment would occur to me, – stronger in fact, than strict justice might warrant – ”

“I beg your Ladyship’s pardon if I interrupt, but I would beg to remark – ”

“What?” said Lady Dorothea, proudly.

“That simply your Ladyship’s present caution is the best security for future propriety. I ask no other.”

“You presume too far, young lady. I cannot answer that my temper may not reveal sentiments that my judgment or my breeding might prefer to keep in abeyance.”

“If the sentiments be there, my Lady, I should certainly say, better to avow them,” said Kate, with an air of most impassive coldness.

“I ‘m not aware that I have asked your advice on that head, Miss Henderson,” said she, almost insolently. “At the same time, your habits of late in this family may have suggested the delusion.”

“Will your Ladyship pardon me if I confess I do not understand you?”

“You shall have little to complain of on that score, Miss Henderson; I shall not speak in riddles, depend upon it. Nor should that be an obstacle if your intelligence were only the equal of your ambition.”

“Now, indeed, is your Ladyship completely beyond me.”

“Had you felt that I was as much ‘above’ you, Miss Henderson, it were more to the purpose.”

“I sincerely hope that I have never forgotten all the deference I owe your Ladyship,” said Kate. Nor could humble words have taken a more humble accent; and yet they availed little to conciliate her to whom they were addressed; nay, this very humility seemed to irritate and provoke her to a greater show of temper, as with an insolent laugh she said, – “This mockery of respect never imposed on we, young lady. I have been bred and born in a rank where real deference is so invariable that the fictitious article is soon detected, had there been any hardy enough to attempt it.”

Kate made no other answer to this speech than a deep inclination of her head. It might mean assent, submission, anything.

“You may remember, Miss Henderson,” said her Ladyship, with all the formality of a charge in her manner, – “you may remember that on the day I engaged your services you were obliging enough to furnish me with a brief summary of your acquirements.” She paused, as if expecting some intimation of assent, and after an interval of a few seconds, Kate smiled, and said, – “It must have been a very meagre catalogue, my Lady.”

“Quite the reverse. It was a perfect marvel to me how you ever found time to store your mind with such varied information; and yet, notwithstanding that imposing array of accomplishments, I now find that your modesty – perhaps out of deference to my ignorance – withheld fully as many more.”

Kate’s look of bewilderment at this speech was the only reply she made.

“Oh, of course you do not understand me,” said Lady Dorothea, sneeringly; “but I mean to be most explicit. Have you any recollection of the circumstance I allude to?”

“I remember perfectly the day, madam, I waited on you for the first time.”

“That’s exactly what I mean. Now, pray, has any portion of our discourse dwelt upon your mind?”

“Yes, my Lady; a remark of your Ladyship’s made a considerable impression upon me at the moment, and has continued frequently to rise to my recollection since that.”

“May I ask what it was?”

“It was with reference to the treatment I had been so long accustomed to in the family of the Duchesse de Luygnes, and which your Ladyship characterized by an epithet I have never forgotten. At the time I thought it severe; I have learned to see it just. You called it an ‘irreparable mischief.’ Your Ladyship said most truly.”

“I was never more convinced of the fact than at this very moment,” said Lady Dorothea, as a flush of anger covered her cheek. “The ill-judging condescension of your first protectors has left a very troublesome legacy for their successors. Your youth and inexperience – I do not desire to attribute it to anything more reprehensible – led you, probably, into an error regarding the privileges you thus enjoyed, and you fancied that you owed to your own claims what you were entirely indebted to from the favor of others.”

“I have no doubt that the observation of your Ladyship is quite correct,” said Kate, calmly.

“I sincerely wish that the conviction had impressed itself upon your conduct then,” said Lady Dorothea, whose temper was never so outraged as by the other’s self-possession. “Had such been the case, I might have spared myself the unpleasantness of my present task.” Her passion was now fully roused, and with redoubled energy she continued: “Your ambition has taken a high flight, young lady, and, from the condescension by which I accorded you a certain degree of influence in this family, you have aspired to become its head. Do not affect any misconception of my meaning. My son has told me everything – everything – from your invaluable aid to him in his pecuniary difficulties, to your sage counsels on his betting-book; from the admirable advice you gave him as to his studies, to the disinterested offer of your own tuition. Be assured if he has not understood all the advantages so generously presented to him, I, at least, appreciate them fully. I must acknowledge you have played your game cleverly, and you have made the mock independence of your character the mask of your designs. With another than myself you might have succeeded, too,” said her Ladyship, with a smile of bitter irony; “but I have few self-delusions, Miss Henderson, nor is there amongst the number that of believing that any one serves me, in any capacity, from any devotion to my own person. I natter myself, at least, that I have so much of humility.”

“If I understand your Ladyship aright, I am charged with some designs on Captain Martin?” said Kate, calmly.

“Yes; precisely so,” said Lady Dorothea, haughtily.

“I can only protest that I am innocent of all such, my Lady,” said she, with an expression of great deference. “It is a charge that does not admit of any other refutation, since, if I appeal to my conduct, your Ladyship’s suspicions would not exculpate me.”

“Certainly not.”

“I thought so. What, then, can I adduce? I’m sure your Ladyship’s own delicacy will see that this is not a case where testimony can be invoked. I cannot – you would not ask me to – require an acquittal from the lips of Captain Martin himself; humble as I stand here, my Lady, you never could mean to expose me to this humiliation.” For the first time did her voice falter, and a sickly paleness came over her as she uttered the last words.

“The humiliation which you had intended for this family, Miss Henderson, is alone what demands consideration from me. If what you call your exculpation requires Captain Martin’s presence, I confess I see no objection to it.”

“It is only, then, because your Ladyship is angry with me that you could bring yourself to think so, especially since another and much easier solution of the difficulty offers itself.”

“How so? What do you mean?”

“To send me home, madam.”

“I understand you, young lady. I am to send you back to your father’s house as one whose presence here was too dangerous, whose attractions could only be resisted by means of absence and distance. A very interesting martyrdom might have been made of it, I ‘ve no doubt, and even some speculation as to the conduct of a young gentleman so suddenly bereaved of the object of his affections. But all this is much too dignified for me. My son shall be taught to respect himself without the intervention of any contrivance.”

As she uttered the last words, she arose and approached the bell.

“Your Ladyship surely is not going – ”