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

Charles James Lever

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

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.