The Martins Of Cro' Martin, Vol. II (of II). Lever Charles James
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.”
“Oh, you need n’t!” said she, peevishly. “Half the men merely make their bow when they meet me, and neither expect me to remember who they are or to notice them. I may leave your distinguished friend in the same category.”
A quick glance from Kate – fleeting, but full of meaning – stopped Martin as he was about to make a hasty reply. And, crumpling up the card with suppressed passion, he turned and left the room.
“Don’t put that odious name on our list, Miss Henderson,” said Lady Dorothea; “we shall never have him again.”
“I ‘m rather curious to see him,” said Kate. “All this discussion has imparted a kind of interest to him, not to say that there would seem something like a mystery in Captain Martin’s connection with him.”
“I confess to no such curiosity,” said my Lady, haughtily. “The taste to be amused by vulgarity is like the passion some people have to see an hospital; you may be interested by the sight, but you may catch a malady for your pains.” And with this observation of mingled truth and fallacy her Ladyship sailed proudly out of the room in all the conscious importance of her own cleverness.
CHAPTER V. A LETTER FROM HOME
While this discussion was going on, Martin was seated in his own room, examining the contents of his letter-bag, which the post had just delivered to him. A very casual glance at his features would have discovered that the tidings which met his eye were very rarely of a pleasant character. For the most part the letters were importunate appeals for money, subscriptions, loans, small sums to be repaid when the borrower had risen above his present difficulties, aids to effect some little enterprise on whose very face was failure. Then there were the more formal demands for sums actually due, written in the perfection of coercive courtesy, subjecting the reader to all the tortures of a moral surgical operation, a suffering actually increased by the very dexterity of the manipulator. Then came, in rugged hand and gnarled shape, urgent entreaties for abatements and allowances, pathetic pictures of failing crops, sickness and sorrow! Somewhat in contrast to these in matter – most strikingly unlike them in manner – was a short note from Mr. Maurice Scanlan. Like a rebutting witness in a cause, he spoke of everything as going on favorably; prices were fair, the oat crop a reasonable one. There was distress, to be sure, but who ever saw the West without it? The potatoes had partially failed; but as there was a great deal of typhus and a threat of cholera, there would be fewer to eat them. The late storms had done a good deal of mischief, but as the timber thrown down might be sold without any regard to the entail, some thousand pounds would thus be realized; and as the gale had carried away the new pier at Kilkieran, there would be no need to give a bounty to the fishermen who could not venture out to sea. The damage done to the house and the conservatories at Cro’ Martin offered an opportunity to congratulate the owner on the happiness of living in a milder climate; while the local squabbles of the borough suggested a pleasant contrast with all the enjoyments of a life abroad.
On the whole, Mr. Scanlan’s letter was rather agreeable than the reverse, since he contrived to accompany all the inevitable ills of fortune by some side-wind consolations, and when pushed hard for these, skilfully insinuated in what way “things might have been worse.” If the letter did not reflect very favorably on either the heart or brain that conceived it, it well suited him to whom it was addressed. To screen himself from whatever might irritate him, to escape an unpleasant thought or unhappy reflection, to avoid, above all things, the slightest approach of self-censure, was Martin’s great philosophy; and he esteemed the man who gave him any aid in this road. Now newspapers might croak their dark predictions about the coming winter, prophesy famine, fever, and pestilence; Scanlan’s letter, “written from the spot,” by “one who enjoyed every opportunity for forming a correct opinion,” was there, and he said matters were pretty much as usual. The West of Ireland had never been a land of milk and honey, and nobody expected it ever would be, – the people could live in it, however, and pay rents too; and as Martin felt that he had no undue severity to reproach himself with, he folded up the epistle, saying that “when a man left his house and property for a while, it was a real blessing to have such a fellow as Scanlan to manage for him;” and truly, if one could have his conscience kept for a few hundreds a year, the compact might be a pleasant one. But even to the most self-indulgent this plan is impracticable; and so might it now be seen in Martin’s heightened color and fidgety manner, and that even he was not as much at ease within as he wished to persuade himself he was.
Amid the mass of correspondence, pamphlets and newspapers, one note, very small and neatly folded, had escaped Martin’s notice till the very last; and it was only as he heaped up a whole bundle to throw into the fire that he discovered this, in Mary’s well-known hand. He held it for some time ere he broke the seal, and his features assumed a sadder, graver cast than before. His desertion of her – and he had not blinked the word to himself – had never ceased to grieve him; and however disposed he often felt to throw upon others the blame which attached to himself here, he attempted no casuistry, but stood quietly, without one plea in his favor, before his own heart.
The very consciousness of his culpability had prevented him writing to her as he ought; his letters were few, short, and constrained. Not all the generous frankness of hers could restore to him the candid ease of his former intercourse with her; and every chance expression he used was conned over and canvassed by him, lest it might convey some sentiment, or indicate some feeling foreign to his intention. At length so painful had the task become that he had ceased writing altogether, contenting himself with a message through Kate Henderson, – some excuse about his health, fatigue, – and so forth, ever coupled with a promise that he would soon be himself again, and as active a correspondent as she could desire.
To these apologies Mary always replied in a kindly spirit. Whatever sorrow they might have cost her she kept for herself; they never awakened one expression of impatience, not a word of reproach. She understood him thoroughly, – his easy indolence of disposition, his dislike to a task, his avoidance of whatever was possible to defer; more even than all these, his own unforgiveness of himself for his part towards her. To alleviate, so far as she might, the poignancy of the last, was for a while the great