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

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 object of all her letters; and so she continued to expatiate on the happy life she was leading, her contentment with the choice she had made of remaining there, throwing in little playful sallies of condolence at her uncle’s banishment, and jestingly assuring him how much happier he would be at home!

In whatever mood, however, she wrote, there was a striking absence of whatever could fret or grieve her uncle throughout all her letters. She selected every pleasant topic and the favorable side of every theme to tell of. She never forgot any little locality which he had been partial to, or any of the people who were his favorites; and, in fact, it might have seemed that the great object she had in view was to attach him more and more to the home he had left, and strengthen every tie that bound him to his own country. And all this was done lightly and playfully, and with a pleasant promise of the happiness he should feel on the day of his return.

These letters were about the pleasantest incidents in Martin’s present life; and the day which brought him one was sure to pass agreeably, while he made vigorous resolutions about writing a reply, and sometimes got even so far as to open a desk and ruminate over an answer. It so chanced that now a much longer interval had occurred since Mary’s last letter, and the appearance of the present note, so unlike the voluminous epistle she usually despatched, struck him with a certain dismay. “Poor Molly,” said he, as he broke the seal, “she is growing weary at last; this continued neglect is beginning to tell upon her. A little more, and she ‘ll believe – as well she may – that we have forgotten her altogether.”

The note was even briefer than he had suspected. It was written, too, in what might seem haste, or agitation, and the signature forgotten. Martin’s hand trembled, and his chest heaved heavily as he read the following lines: —

“Cro’ Martin, Wednesday Night

“Dearest Uncle, – You will not suffer these few lines to remain unanswered, since they are written in all the pressure of a great emergency. Our worst fears for the harvest are more than realized; a total failure in the potatoes – a great diminution in the oat crop; the incessant rains have flooded all the low meadows, and the cattle are almost without forage, while from the same cause no turf can be cut, and even that already cut and stacked cannot be drawn away from the bogs. But, worse than all these, typhus is amongst us, and cholera, they say, coming. I might stretch out this dreary catalogue, but here is enough, more than enough, to awaken your sympathies and arouse you to action. There is a blight on the land; the people are starving – dying. If every sense of duty was dead within us, if we could harden our hearts against every claim of those from whose labor we derive ease, from whose toil we draw wealth and leisure, we might still be recalled to better things by the glorious heroism of these poor people, so nobly courageous, so patient are they in their trials. It is not now that I can speak of the traits I have witnessed of their affection, their charity, their self-denial, and their daring – but now is the moment to show them that we, who have been dealt with more favorably by fortune, are not devoid of the qualities which adorn their nature.

“I feel all the cruelty of narrating these things to you, too far away from the scene of sorrow to aid by your counsel and encourage by your assistance; but it would be worse than cruelty to conceal from you that a terrible crisis is at hand, which will need all your energy to mitigate.

“Some measures are in your power, and must be adopted at once. There must be a remission of rent almost universally, for the calamity has involved all; and such as are a little richer than their neighbors should be aided, that they may be the more able to help them. Some stores of provisions must be provided to be sold at reduced rates, or even given gratuitously. Medical aid must be had, and an hospital of some sort established. The able-bodied must be employed on some permanent work; and for these, we want power from you and some present moneyed assistance. I will not harrow your feelings with tales of sufferings. You have seen misery here – enough, I say – you have witnessed nothing like this, and we are at but the beginning.

“Write to me at once yourself – this is no occasion to employ a deputy – and forgive me, dearest uncle, for I know not what faults of presumption I may have here committed. My head is confused; the crash of misfortunes has addled me, and each succeed so rapidly on each other, that remedies are scarcely employed than they have to be abandoned. When, however, I can tell the people that it is their own old friend and master that sends them help, and bids them to be of good cheer, – when I can show them that, although separated by distance, your heart never ceases to live amongst them, – I know well the magic working of such a spell upon them, and how, with a bravery that the boldest soldier never surpassed, they will rise up against the stern foes of sickness and famine, and do battle with hard fortune manfully.

“You have often smiled at what you deemed my exaggerated opinion of these poor people, – my over-confidence in their capacity for good. Oh – take my word for it – I never gave them credit for one half the excellence of their natures. They are on their trial now, and nobly do they sustain it!

“I have no heart to answer all your kind questions about myself, – enough that I am well; as little can I ask you about all your doings in Paris. I ‘m afraid I should but lose temper if I heard that they were pleasant ones; and yet, with my whole soul, I wish you to be happy; and with this,

“Believe me your affectionate

“Mr. Repton has written me the kindest of letters, full of good advice and good sense; he has also enclosed me a check for £100, with an offer of more if wanted. I was low and depressed when his note reached me, but it gave me fresh energy and hope. He proposed to come down here if I wished; but how could I ask such a sacrifice, – how entreat him to face the peril?”

“Tell Captain Martin I wish to speak to him,” said Martin, as he finished the perusal of this letter. And in a few minutes after, that gallant personage appeared, not a little surprised at the summons.

“I have got a letter from Mary here,” said Martin, vainly endeavoring to conceal his agitation as he spoke, “which I want to show you. Matters are in a sad plight in the West. She never exaggerates a gloomy story, and her account is very afflicting. Read it.”

The Captain lounged towards the window, and, leaning listlessly against the wall, opened the epistle.

“You have not written to her lately, then?” asked he, as he perused the opening sentence.

“I am ashamed to say I have not; every day I made a resolution; but somehow – ”

“Is all this anything strange or new?” broke in the Captain. “I ‘m certain I have forty letters from my mother with exactly the same story. In fact, before I ever broke the seal, I ‘d have wagered an equal fifty that the potatoes had failed, the bogs were flooded, the roads impassable, and the people dying in thousands; and yet, when spring came round, by some happy miracle they were all alive and merry again!”

“Read on,” said Martin, impatiently, and barely able to control himself at this heartless commentary.

“Egad! I ‘d have sworn I had read all this before, except these same suggestions about not exacting the rents, building hospitals, and so forth; that is new. And why does she say, ‘Don’t write by deputy’? Who was your deputy?”

“Kate Henderson has written for me latterly.”

“And I should say she ‘s quite equal to that sort of thing; she dashes off my mother’s notes at score, and talks away, too, all the time she ‘s writing.”

“That is not the question before us,” said Martin, sternly.

“When I sent for you to read that letter, it was that you might advise and counsel me what course to take.”

“If you can afford to give away a year’s income in the shape of rent, and about as much more in the shape of a donation, of course you ‘re quite free to do it. I only wish that your generosity would begin at home, though; for I own to you I ‘m very hard-up at this moment.” This the Captain spoke with an attempted jocularity which decreased with every word, till it subsided into downright seriousness ere he finished.

“So far from being in a position to do an act of munificence, I am sorely pressed for money,” said Martin.

The Captain started; the half-smile with which he had begun to receive this speech died away on his lips as he asked, “Is this really the case?”

“Most truly so,” said Martin, solemnly.

“But how, in the name of everything absurd – how is this possible? By what stratagem could you have spent five thousand a year at Cro’ Martin, and your estate was worth almost three times as much? Giving a very wide margin for waste and robbery, I ‘d say five thousand could not be made away with there in a twelvemonth.”

“Your question only shows me how carelessly you must have read my letters to you, in India,” said Martin; “otherwise you could not have failed to see the vast improvements we have been carrying out on the property, – the roads, the harbors, the new quarries opened, the extent of ground covered by plantation, – all the plans, in fact, which Mary had matured – ”

“Mary! Mary!” exclaimed the Captain. “And do you tell me that all these things were done at the instigation of a young girl of nineteen or twenty, without any knowledge, or even advice – ”

“And who said she was deficient in knowledge?” cried Martin. “Take up the map of the estate; see the lands she has reclaimed; look at the swamps you used to shoot snipe over bearing corn crops; see the thriving village, where once the boatmen were starving, for they dared not venture out to sea without a harbor against bad weather.”

“Tell me the cost of all this. What’s the figure?” said the Captain; “that’s the real test of all these matters, for if your income could only feed this outlay, I pronounce the whole scheme the maddest thing in Christendom. My mother’s taste for carved oak cabinets and historical pictures is the quintessence of wisdom in comparison.”

Martin was overwhelmed and silent, and the other went on, – “Half the fellows in ‘ours’ had the same story to tell, – of estates wasted, and fine fortunes squandered in what are called improvements. If the possession of a good property entails the necessity to spend it all in this fashion, one is very little better than a kind of land-steward to one’s own estate; and, for my part, I ‘d rather call two thousand a year my own, to do what I pleased with, than have a nominal twenty, of which I must disburse nineteen.”

“Am I again to remind you that this is not the question before us?” said Martin, with increased sternness.

“That is exactly the very question,” rejoined the Captain. “Mary here coolly asks you, in the spirit of this same improvement-scheme, to relinquish a year’s income, and make a present of I know not how much more, simply because things are going badly with them, just as if everybody has n’t their turn of ill-fortune. Egad, I can answer for it, mine has n’t been flourishing latterly, and yet I have heard of no benevolent plan on foot to aid or release me!”

To this heartless speech, uttered, however, in most perfect sincerity, Martin made no reply whatever, but sat with folded arms, deep in contemplation. At length, raising his head, he asked, “And have you, then, no counsel to give, – no suggestion to make me?”

“Well,” said he, suddenly, “if Mary has not greatly overcharged all this story – ”

“That she has not,” cried Martin, interrupting him. “There ‘s not a line, not a word of her letter, I ‘d not guarantee with all I ‘m worth in the world.”

“In that case,” resumed the Captain, in the same indolent tone, “they must be in a sorry plight, and I think ought to cut and run as fast as they can. I know that’s what we do in India; when the cholera comes, we break up the encampment, and move off somewhere else. Tell Mary, then, to advise them to keep out of ‘the jungle,’ and make for the hill country.’”

Martin stared at the speaker for some seconds, and it was evident how difficult he found it to believe that the words he had just listened to were uttered in deliberate seriousness.

“If you have read that letter, you certainly have not understood it,” said he at last, in a voice full of melancholy meaning.

“Egad, it’s only too easy of comprehension,” replied the Captain; “of all things in life, there’s no mistaking a demand for money.”

“Just take it with you to your own room, Harry,” said Martin, with a manner of more affection than he had yet employed. “It is my firm persuasion that when you have re-read and thought over it, your impression will be a different one. Con it over in solitude, and then come back and give me your advice.”

The Captain was not sorry to adopt a plan which relieved him so speedily from a very embarrassing situation, and, folding up the note, he turned and left the room.

There are a great number of excellent people in this world who believe that “Thought,” like “Écarté,” is a game which requires two people to play. The Captain was one of these; nor was it within his comprehension to imagine how any one individual could suffice to raise the doubts he was called on to canvass or decide. “Who should he now have recourse to?” was his first question; and he had scarcely proposed it to himself when a soft low voice said, “What is puzzling Captain Martin? – can I be of any service to him?” He turned and saw Kate Henderson.

“Only think how fortunate!” exclaimed he. “Just come in here to this drawing-room, and give me your advice.”

“Willingly,” said she, with a courtesy the more marked because his manner indicated a seriousness that betokened trouble.

“My father has just dismissed me to cogitate over this epistle; as if, after all, when one has read a letter, that any secret or mystical interpretation is to come by all the reconsideration and reflection in the world.”

“Am I to read it?” asked Kate, as he placed it in her hand.

“Of course you are,” said he.

“There is nothing confidential or private in it which I ought not to see?”

“Nothing; and if there were,” added he, warmly, “you are one of ourselves, I trust, – at least I think you so.”

Kate’s lips closed with almost stern % impressiveness, but her color never changed at this speech, and she opened the letter in silence. For some minutes she continued to read with the same impassive expression; but gradually her cheek became paler, and a haughty, almost scornful, expression settled on her lips. “So patient are they in their trials,” said she, reading aloud the expression of Mary’s note. “Is it not possible, Captain Martin, that patience may be pushed a little beyond a virtue, and become something very like cowardice, – abject cowardice? And then,” cried she impetuously, and not waiting for his reply, “to say that now is the time to show these poor people the saving care and protection that the rich owe them, as if the duty dated from the hour of their being struck down by famine, laid low by pestilence, or that the debt could ever be acquitted by the relief accorded to pauperism! Why not have taught these same famished creatures self-dependence, elevated them to the rank of civilized beings by the enjoyment of rights that give men self-esteem as well as liberty? What do you mean to do, sir? – or is that your difficulty?” cried she, hastily changing her tone to one of less energy.

“Exactly, – that is my difficulty. My father, I suspect, wishes me to concur in the pleasant project struck out by Mary, and that, by way of helping them, we should ruin ourselves.”

“And you are for – ” She stopped, as if to let him finish her question for her.

“Egad, I don’t know well what I’m for, except it be self-preservation. I mean,” said he, correcting himself, as a sudden glance of almost insolent scorn shot from Kate’s eyes towards him, – “I mean that I ‘m certain more than half of this account is sheer exaggeration. Mary is frightened, – as well she may be, – finding herself all alone, and hearing nothing but the high-colored stories the people brings her, and listening to calamities from morning to night.”

“But still it may be all true,” said Kate, solemnly. “It may be – as Miss Martin writes – that ‘there is a blight on the land.’”

“What’s to be done, then?” asked he, in deep embarrassment.

“The first step is to ascertain what is fact, – the real extent of the misfortune.”

“And how is that to be accomplished?” asked he.

“Can you not think of some means?” said she, with a scarcely perceptible approach to a smile.

“No, by Jove! that I cannot, except by going over there one’s self.”

“And why not that?” asked she, more boldly, while she fixed her large full eyes directly upon him.

“If you thought that I ought to go, – if you advised it and would actually say ‘Go’ – ”

“Well, if I should?”

“Then I’d set off to-night; though, to say truth, neither the journey nor the business are much to my fancy.”

“Were they ten times less so, sir, I’d say, ‘Go,’” said she, resolutely.

“Then go I will,” cried the Captain; “and I’ll start within two hours.”

CHAPTER VI. MR. MERL’S DEPARTURE

Worthy reader, you are neither weak of purpose nor undecided in action; as little are you easily moved by soft influences, when aided by long eyelashes. But had you been so, it would have been no difficult effort for you to comprehend the state of mind in which Captain Martin repaired to his room to make preparation for his journey. There was a kind of half chivalry in his present purpose that nerved and supported him. It was like a knight-errant of old setting out to confront a peril at the behest of his lady-love; but against this animating conviction there arose that besetting sin of small minds, – a sense of distrust, – a lurking suspicion that he might be, all this while, nothing but the dupe of a very artful woman.

“Who can tell,” said he to himself, “what plan she may have in all this, or what object she may propose to herself in getting me out of the way? I don’t think she really cares one farthing about the distress of these people, supposing it all to be true; and as to the typhus fever and cholera, egad! if they be there, one ought to think twice before rushing into the midst of them. And then, again, what do I know about the country or its habits? I have no means of judging if it be poorer or sicklier or; more wretched than usual. To my eyes, it always seemed at the lowest depth of want and misery; every one went half starved and more than half naked. I ‘m sure there is no necessity for my going some few hundred and odd miles to refresh my memory on this pleasant fact; and yet this is precisely what I ‘m about to do. Is it by way of trying her power over me? By Jove, I ‘ve hit it!” cried he, suddenly, as he stopped arranging a mass of letters which he was reducing to order before his departure. “That’s her game; there’s no doubt of it! She has said to herself, ‘This will prove him. If he do this at my bidding, he’ll do more.’ Ay, but will he, mademoiselle? that’s the question. A young hussar may turn out to be a very old soldier. What if I were just to tell her so. Girls of her stamp like a man all the better when he shows himself to be wide-awake. I ‘d lay a fifty on it she ‘ll care more for me when she sees I ‘m her own equal in shrewdness. And, after all, why should I go? I could send my valet, Fletcher, – just the kind of fellow for such a mission, – never knew the secret he could n’t worm out; there never was a bit of barrack scandal he did n’t get to the bottom of. He ‘d be back here within a fortnight, with the whole state of the case, and I’ll be bound there will be no humbugging him.”

This bright idea was not, however, without its share of detracting reflections, for what became of all that personal heroism on which he reposed such hope, if the danger were to be encountered by deputy? This was a puzzle, not the less that he had not yet made up his mind whether he ‘d really be in love with Kate Henderson, or only involve her in an unfortunate attachment for him. While he thus pondered and hesitated, strewing his room with the contents of drawers and cabinets, by way of aiding the labor of preparation, his door was suddenly opened, and Mr. Merl made his appearance. Although dressed with all his habitual regard to effect, and more than an ordinary display of chains and trinkets, that gentleman’s aspect betokened trouble and anxiety; at least, there was a certain restlessness in his eye that Martin well understood as an evidence of something wrong within.

“Are you getting ready for a journey, Captain?” asked he, as he entered.

“I was thinking of it; but I believe I shall not go. I ‘m undecided.”

“Up the Rhine?”

“No; not in that direction.”

“South, – towards Italy, perhaps?”

“Nor there, either. I was meditating a trip to England.”

“We should be on the road together,” said Merl. “I’m off by four o’clock.”

“How so? What’s the reason of this sudden start?”

“There’s going to be a crash here,” said Merl, speaking in a lower tone. “The Government have been doing the thing with too high a hand, and there’s mischief brewing.”

“Are you sure of this?” asked Martin.

“Only too sure, that’s all. I bought in, on Tuesday last, at sixty-four and an eighth, and the same stock is now fifty-one and a quarter, and will be forty to-morrow. The day after – ” Here Mr. Merl made a motion with his outstretched arm, to indicate utter extinction.

“You’re a heavy loser, then?” asked Martin, eagerly.

“I shall be, to the tune of some thirteen thousand pounds. It was just on that account I came in here. I shall need money within the week, and must turn those Irish securities of yours into cash, – some of them at least, – and I want a hint from you as to which I ought to dispose of and which hold over. You told me one day, I remember, that there was a portion of the property likely to rise greatly in value – ”

“You told me, sir,” said Captain Martin, breaking suddenly in, “when I gave you these same bonds, that they should remain in your own hands, and never leave them. That was the condition on which I gave them.”

“I suppose, Captain, you gave them for something; you did not make a present of them,” said the Jew, coloring slightly.