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

“And what does Schubart think?”

“I’ll tell you what he says,” replied she, with a marked emphasis on the last word. “He says the case is hopeless; he has seen such linger for weeks, but even a day – a day – ” She tried to go on; but her voice faltered, her lip trembled, and she was silent.

“I had begun to believe it so,” muttered Martin, gloomily. “He scarcely recognized me yesterday.”

“He is perfectly collected and sensible now,” said Lady Dorothea, in her former calm tone. “He spoke of business matters clearly and well, and wished to see Scanlan.”

“Which I trust you did not permit?” asked Martin, hurriedly.

“I told him he should see him this evening, but there is no necessity for it. Scanlan may have left this before evening.”

“You suspect that Scanlan would say something, – would mention to him something of this affair?”

“Discretion is not the quality of the low-born and the vulgar,” said she, haughtily; “self-importance alone would render him unsafe. Besides,” – and this she said rapidly, – “there is nothing to detain the man here, when he knows that we accept his conditions.”

“And are we to accept them?” said Martin, anxiously.

“Dare we refuse them? What is the alternative? I suppose what you have done with your Jew friend has been executed legally – formally?”

“Trust him for that; he has left no flaw there!” said Martin, bitterly.

“I was certain of it,” said she, with a scarcely perceptible sneer. “Everything, therefore, has been effected according to law?”

“Yes, I believe so,” replied he, doggedly.

“Then really there is nothing left to us but Scanlan. He objects to Repton; so do I. I always deemed him obtrusive and familiar. In the management of an Irish estate such qualities may be reckoned essential. I know what we should think of them in England, and I know where we should place their possessor.”

“I believe the main question that presses now is, are we to have an estate at all?” said the Captain, bitterly.

“Yes, sir, you have really brought it to that,” rejoined she, with equal asperity.

“Do you consent to his having the agency?” asked Martin, with an immense effort to suppress passion.

“Yes.”

“And you agree, also, to his proposal for Mary?”

“It is matter of complete indifference to me who Miss Martin marries, if she only continue to reside where she does at present. I ‘m certain she ‘d not consult me on the subject; I’m sure I’d never control her. It is a mésalliance, to be sure; but it would be equally so, if she, with her rustic habits and uneducated mind, were to marry what would be called her equal. In the present case, she ‘ll be a little better than her station; in the other, she ‘d be vastly beneath it!”

“Poor Molly!” said he, half aloud; and, for the first time, there was a touch of his father’s tone and manner in the words.

Lady Dorothea looked at him, and with a slight shrug of the shoulders seemed to sneer at his low-priced compassion.

“Scoff away!” said he, sternly; “but if I thought that any consent we gave to this scheme could take the shape of a coercion, I ‘d send the estate to the – ”

“You have, sir; you have done all that already,” broke in Lady Dorothea. “When the troubled breathing that we hear from yonder room ceases, there is no longer a Martin of Cro’ Martin!”

“Then what are we losing time for?” cried he, eagerly. “Are moments so precious to be spent in attack and recrimination? There’s Scanlan sitting on a bench before the door. Call him up – tell him you accept his terms – let him start for London, post haste. With every speed he can master he ‘ll not be a minute too soon. Shall I call him? Shall I beckon to him?”

“Send a servant for him,” said Lady Dorothea, calmly, while she folded up the letter, and laid it on the table at her side.

Martin rang the bell and gave the order, and then, assuming an air of composure he was very far from feeling, sat silently awaiting Scanlan’s entrance. That gentleman did not long detain them. He had been sitting, watch in hand, for above an hour, looking occasionally up at the windows, and wondering why he had not been summoned. It was, then, with an almost abrupt haste that he at last presented himself.

“Read over that letter, sir,” said Lady Dorothea, “and please to inform me if it rightly conveys your propositions.”

Scanlan perused Massingbred’s letter carefully, and folding it up, returned it. “Yes, my Lady,” said he, “I think it embraces the chief points. Of course there is nothing specified as to the mode of carrying them out, – I mean, as to the security I should naturally look for. I believe your Ladyship does not comprehend me?”

“Not in the least, sir.”

“Well, if I must speak plainer, I want to be sure that your concurrence is no mere barren concession, my Lady; that, in admitting my pretensions, your Ladyship favors them. This is, of course,” said he, in a tone of deference, “if your Ladyship condescends to accept the terms at all; for, as yet, you have not said so.”

“If I had not been so minded, sir, this interview would not have taken place.”

“Well, indeed, I thought as much myself,” said he; “and so I at once entered upon what one might call the working details of the measure.”

“How long will it take you to reach London, sir?” asked she, coldly.

“Four days, my Lady, travelling night and day.”

“How soon after your arrival there can you make such arrangements as will put this affair out of all danger, using every endeavor in your power?”

“I hope I could answer for that within a week, – maybe, less.”

“You’ll have to effect it in half that time, sir,” said she, solemnly.

“Well, I don’t despair of that same, if I have only your Ladyship’s promise to all that is set down there. I ‘ll neither eat nor sleep till the matter is in good train.”

“I repeat, sir, that if this settlement be not accomplished in less than a week from the present moment, it may prove utterly valueless.”

“I can only say I’ll do my best, my Lady. I’d be on the road this minute, if your Ladyship would dismiss me.”

“Very well, sir, – you are free. I pledge myself to the full conditions of this letter. Captain Martin binds himself equally to observe them.”

“I ‘d like it in writing under your Ladyship’s hand,” said Scanlan, in a half whisper, as though afraid to speak such doubts aloud. “It is not that I have the least suspicion or misgiving in life about your Ladyship’s word, – I’d take it for a million of money, – but when I come to make my proposals in person to Miss Mary – ”

“There, sir, that will do!” said she, with a disdainful look, as if to repress an explanation so disagreeable. “You need not enter further upon the question. If you address me by letter, I will reply to it.”

“There it is, my Lady,” said he, producing a sealed epistle, and placing it on the table before her. “I had it ready, just not to be losing time. My London address is inside; and if you’ll write to me by to-morrow’s post, – or the day after,” added he, remarking a movement of impatience in her face – “You shall have your bond, sir, – you shall have your bond,” broke she in, haughtily.

“That ought to be enough, I think,” said the Captain, with a degree of irritation that bespoke a long internal conflict.

“I want nothing beyond what I shall earn, Captain Martin,” said Scanlan, as a flash of angry meaning covered his features.

“And we have agreed to the terms, Mr. Scanlan,” said her Ladyship, with a great effort to conciliate. “It only remains for us to say, a good journey, and every success attend you.”

“Thank you, my Lady; I’m your most obedient. Captain, I wish you good-bye, and hope soon to send you happy tidings. I trust, if Mr. Martin asks after me, that you ‘ll give him my respectful duty; and if – ”

“We’ll forget nothing, sir,” said Lady Dorothea, rising; and Scanlan, after a moment’s hesitation as to whether he should venture to offer his hand, – a measure for which, happily, he could not muster the courage, – bowed himself out of the room, and closed the door.

“Not a very cordial leave-taking for one that’s to be her nephew,” muttered he, with a bitter laugh, as he descended the stairs. “And, indeed, my first cousin, the Captain, is n’t the model of family affection. Never mind, Maurice, your day is coming!” And with this assuring reflection he issued forth to give orders for his journey.

A weary sigh – the outpouring of an oppressed and jaded spirit – broke from Lady Dorothea as the door closed after him. “Insufferable creature!” muttered she to herself? and then, turning to the Captain, said aloud, “Is that man capable of playing us false? – or, rather, has he the power of doing so?”

“It is just what I have been turning over in my own mind,” replied he. “I don’t quite trust him; and, in fact, I’d follow him over to London, if I were free at this moment.”

“Perhaps you ought to do so; it might be the wisest course,” said she, hesitatingly.

“Do you think I could leave this with safety?” asked he. But she did not seem to have heard the question. He repeated it, and she was still silent. “If the doctors could be relied on, they should be able to tell us.”

“To tell us what?” asked she, abruptly, almost sternly.

“I meant that they’d know – that they’d perhaps be in a position to judge – that they at least could warn us – ” Here he stopped, confused and embarrassed, and quite unable to continue. That sense of embarrassment, however, came less of his own reflections than of the cold, steady, and searching look which his mother never ceased to bend on him. It was a gaze that seemed to imply, “Say on, and let me hear how destitute of all feeling you will avow yourself.” It was, indeed, the meaning of her stare, and so he felt it, as the color came and went in his cheek, and a sense of faintish sickness crept over him.

“The post has arrived, my Lady, and I have left your Ladyship’s letters on the dressing-table,” said a servant. And Lady Dorothea, who had been impatiently awaiting the mall, hastened at once to her room.

CHAPTER XXVI. A LETTER THAT NEVER REACHES ITS ADDRESS

It was not without a very painful emotion that Lady Dorothea turned over a mass of letters addressed to her husband. They came from various quarters, written in all the moods of many minds. Some were the mere gossip of clubs and dinnerparties, – some were kindly and affectionate inquiries, gentle reproachings on his silence, and banterings about his pretended low spirits. A somewhat favorite tone is that same raillery towards those whose lot in life seems elevated above the casualties of fortune, forgetting the while that the sunniest path has its shadows, and they whom we deem exempt from the sore trials of the world have their share of its sorrows. These read strangely now, as he to whom they were addressed lay breathing the heavy and labored breath, and muttering the low broken murmurs that prelude the one still deeper sleep!

With a tremulous hand, and a gesture of fretful impatience, she threw them from her one after the other. The topics and the tone alike jarred upon her nerves. They seemed so unfeeling, too, and so heartless at such a moment. Oh, if we wanted to moralize over the uncertainty of life, what a theme might we have in the simple fact that, quicker than the lines we are writing fall from our pen, are oftentimes changing the whole fate and fortune of him for whom we destine them! We are telling of hope where despair has already entered, – we are speaking joy to a house of mourning! But one letter alone remained unopened. It was in Repton’s hand, and she broke the seal, wondering how he, who of all men hated writing, should have turned a correspondent.

The “strictly confidential” of the cover was repeated within; but the hour had come when she could violate the caution, and she read on. The first few lines were a half-jesting allusion to Martin’s croakings about his health; but even these had a forced, constrained air, and none of the jocular ease of the old man’s manner. “And yet,” continued he, “it is exactly about your health I am most anxious. I want you to be strong and stout, body and mind, ready for action, and resolute. I know the tone and style that an absentee loves and even requires to be addressed in. He wants to be told that, however he may be personally regretted, matters go on wonderfully well in his absence, that rent is paid, farms improved, good markets abound, and the county a pattern of quietness. I could tell you all this, Martin, and not a syllable of it be true. The rents are not paid, partly from a season of great pressure, but, more still, from an expectancy on the side of the people that something – they know not what – is coming. The Relief Bill only relieved those who wanted to job in politics and make market of their opinions; the masses it has scarcely touched. They are told they are emancipated, but I am at a loss to know in what way they realize to their minds the new privilege. Their leaders have seen this. Shrewd fellows as they are, they have guessed what disappointment must inevitably ensue when the long-promised boon can show nothing as its results but certain noisy mob-orators made Parliament men; and so they have slyly hinted, – as yet it is only a hint, – ‘this is but the first step – an instalment they call it – of a large debt, every fraction of which must yet be paid!’

“Now there is not in all Europe a more cunning or a deeper fellow than Paddy. He has an Italian’s subtlety and a Celt’s suspicion; but enlist his self-love, his vanity, and his acquisitiveness in any scheme, and all his shrewdness deserts him. The old hackney coach-horses never followed the hay on the end of the pole more hopefully than will he travel after some promised future of ‘fine times,’ with plenty to eat and drink, and nothing to do for it! They have booked themselves now for this journey, and the delusion must run its course. Meanwhile rents will not be paid, farms not improved, bad prices and poverty will abound, and the usual crop of discontent and its consequent crime. I ‘m not going to inflict you with my own opinions on this theme. You know well enough already that I never regarded these ‘Agrarian disturbances,’ as they are called, in the light of passing infractions of the peace, but traced in them the continuous working of a long preconcerted plan, – the scheme of very different heads from those who worked it, – by which the law should ever be assailed and the right of property everlastingly put in dispute. In plain words, the system was a standing protest against the sway of the Saxons in Ireland! ‘The agitators’ understood thoroughly how to profit by this, and they worked these alternate moods of outrage and peace pretty much as the priests of old guided their auguries. They brought the game to that perfection that a murder could shake a ministry, or a blank calendar become the triumph of an Administration!

“Such is, at the moment I am writing, the actual condition of Ireland! Come home, then, at once, – but come alone. Come back resolved to see and act for yourself. There is a lingering spark of the old feudalism yet left in the people. Try and kindle it up once more into the old healthful glow of love to the landlord. Some would say it is too late for all this; but I will not think so. Magennis has given us an open defiance; we are to be put on our title. Now, you are well aware there is a complication here, and I shall want to consult you personally; besides, we must have a search through those registries that are locked up in the strong-room. Mary tells me you carried away the key of it. I tell you frankly, I wish we could hit upon some means of stopping Magennis. The suit is a small war, that demands grand preparation, – always a considerable evil! The fellow, I am told, is also concocting another attack, – an action against your niece and others for the forcible abduction of his wife. It would read fabulously enough, such a charge, but as old Casey said, ‘There never yet was anything you could n’t impute at law, if you only employed the word “conspiracy;”’ and I believe it! The woman certainly has deserted him, and her whereabouts cannot be ascertained. The scandal of such a cause would of course be very great; but if you were here we might chance upon some mode of averting it, – at all events, your niece shouldn’t be deserted at such a moment. What a noble girl it is, Martin, and how gloriously she comprehends her station! Give me a dozen like her, and I ‘ll bid defiance to all the machinations of all the agitators; and they know it!

“If your estate has resisted longer than those of your neighbors the demoralizing influences that are now at work here, you owe it to Mary. If crime has not left its track of blood along your avenue or on your door-sill, it is she who has saved you. If the midnight hour has not been scared by the flame of your burning house or haggard, thank her for it, – ay, Martin, her courage, her devotion, her watchful charity, her unceasing benevolence, the glorious guarantee her daily life gives, that she, at least, is with the people in all their sufferings and their trials! You or I had abandoned with impatience the cause that she had succored against every disappointment. Her woman’s nature has endowed her with a higher and a nobler energy than ever a man possessed. She will not be defeated.

“Henderson may bewail, and Maurice Scanlan deride, the shortcomings of the people. But through evil and good report she is there to hear from their own lips, to see with her own eyes, the story of their sorrows. Is this nothing? Is there no lesson in the fact that she, nurtured in every luxury, braves the wildest day of winter in her mission of charity? – that the most squalid misery, the most pestilent disease never deterred her? I saw her a few days back coming home at daybreak; she had passed the night in a hovel where neither you nor I would have taken shelter in a storm. The hectic flush of fatigue and anxiety was on her cheek; her eyes, deep sunk, showed weariness; and her very voice, as she spoke to me, was tremulous and weak; and of what, think you, was her mind full? Of the noble calm, the glorious, patient endurance of those she had just quitted. ‘What lessons might we not learn,’ said she, ‘beneath the wet thatch of poverty! There are three struck down with fever in that cabin; she who remains to nurse them is a little girl of scarcely thirteen. There is all that can render sickness wretched around them. They are in pain and in want; cold winds and rain sweep across their beds, if we could call them such. If they cherish the love of life, it must be through some instinct above all reason; and there they lie, uncomplaining. The little remnant of their strength exhausts itself in a look of thankfulness, – a faint effort to say their gratitude. Oh, if querulous hypochondriacism could but see them, what teaching it might learn! Sufferings that call forth from us not alone peevishness and impatience, but actually traits of rude and ungenerous meaning, develop in them an almost refined courtesy, and a trustfulness that supplies all that is most choice in words of gratitude.’

“And this is the girl whose life every day, every hour is imperilling, – who encounters all the hazards of our treacherous climate, and all the more fatal dangers of a season of pestilence, without friends, without a home! Now, Martin, apart from all higher and better considerations on the subject, this was not your compact, – such was not the text of your bargain with poor Barry. The pledge you gave him at your last parting was that she should be your daughter. That you made her feel all the affection of one, none can tell more surely than myself. That your own heart responds to her love I am as fully convinced of. But this is not enough, my dear Martin. She has rights – actual rights – that no special pleading on the score of intentions or good wishes can satisfy. I should but unworthily discharge my office, as your oldest friend in the world, if I did not place this before you broadly and plainly. The country is dull and wearisome, devoid of society, and without resources, and you leave it; but you leave behind you, to endure all its monotony, all its weariness, one who possesses every charm and every attention that are valued in the great world! There is fever and plague abroad, insurrection threatens, and midnight disturbances are rife, and she who is to confront these perils is a girl of twenty. The spirit of an invading party threatens to break down all the prestige of old family name and property, – a cunningly devised scheme menaces the existence of an influence that has endured for centuries; and to oppose its working, or fall victim to its onslaught, you leave a young lady, whose very impulses of generous meaning may be made snares to entrap her. In a word, you neglect duty, desert danger, shun the path of honorable exertion, and retreat before the menace of an encounter, to place, where you should stand yourself, the frail figure and gentle nature of one who was a child, as it were, but yesterday. Neither your health nor your happiness can be purchased at such a price, – your conscience is too sound for that, – nor can your ease! No, Martin, your thoughts will stray over here, and linger amongst these lonely glens that she is treading. Your fancy will follow her through the dark nights of winter, as alone she goes forth on her mission of mercy. You will think of her, stooping to teach the young – bending over the sick-bed of age. And then, tracing her footsteps homeward, you will see her sit down by a solitary hearth, – none of her own around her, – not one to advise, to counsel, to encourage her! I will say no more on this theme; your own true heart has already anticipated all that I could speak, – all that you should do.

“Now for one more question, and I shall have finished the most painful letter I ever wrote in my life. There are rumors – I cannot trace them, nor fully understand them, but they imply that Captain Martin has been raising very considerable sums by reversionary bonds and post-obits. Without being able to give even a guess, as to the truth of this, I draw your attention to the bare possibility, as of a case full of very serious complications. Speak to your son at once on the subject, and learn the truth, – the whole truth. My own fears upon the matter have been considerably strengthened by hearing of a person who has been for several weeks back making inquiries on the estate. He has resided usually at Kilkieran, and spends his time traversing the property in all directions, investigating questions of rent, wages, and tenure of land. They tell marvellous stories of his charity and so forth, – blinds, doubtless, to cover his own immediate objects. Mary, however, I ought to say, takes a very different view of his character, and is so anxious to know him personally that I promised her to visit him, and bring him to visit her at the cottage. And, by the way, Martin, why should she be at the cottage, – why not at Cro’ Martin? What miserable economy has dictated a change that must reflect upon her influence, not to speak of what is justly due to her own station? I could swear that you never gave a willing consent to this arrangement. No, no, Martin, the plan was never yours.

“I ‘m not going to bore you with borough politics. To tell truth, I can’t comprehend them. They want to get rid of Massingbred, but they don’t see who is to succeed him. Young Nelligan ought to be the man, but he will not. He despises his party, – or at least what would call itself his party, – and is resolved never to concern himself with public affairs. Meanwhile he is carrying all before him at the Bar, and is as sure of the Bench as though he were on it.

“When he heard of Magennis’s intention of bringing this action against Mary, he came up to town to ask me to engage him on our side, ‘since,’ said he, ‘if they send me a brief I cannot refuse it, and if I accept it, I promise you it shall be my last cause, for I have resolved to abandon the Bar the day after.’ This, of course, was in strictest secrecy, and so you must regard it. He is a cold, calm fellow, and yet on this occasion he seemed full of impulsive action.

“I had something to tell you about Henderson, but I actually forget what it was. I can only remember it was disagreeable; and as this epistle has its due share of bitters, my want of memory is perhaps a benefit; and so to release you at once, I ‘ll write myself, as I have never ceased to be for forty years,