“Cavendish is right, – that is, as much so as he can be in anything,” said Willoughby, laughing. “Don’t put him up, Martin.”
“Then what am I to do? I have given a sort of a pledge. He is not easily put off; he does not lightly relinquish an object.”
“Take him off the scent. Introduce him at the Embassy. Take him to the Courcelles.”
“This is intolerable,” broke in Martin, angrily. “I ask for advice, and you reply by a sneer and a mockery.”
“Not at all. I never was more serious. But here he comes! Look only how the fellow lolls back in the phaeton. Just see how contemptuously he looks down on the foot-travellers. I’d lay on another hundred for that stare; for, assuredly, he has already made the purchase in his own mind.”
“Well, Merl, what do you say to Sir Spencer’s taste in horseflesh?” said Martin, as he entered.
“They ‘re nice hacks; very smart.”
“Nice hacks!” broke in Cavendish, “why, sir, they’re both thoroughbred; the near horse is by Tiger out of a Crescent mare, and the off one won the Acton steeple-chase. When you said hacks, therefore, you made a cruel blunder.”
“Well, it’s what a friend of mine called them just now,” said Merl; “and remarked, moreover, that the large horse had been slightly fired on the – the – I forget the name he gave it.”
“You probably remember your friend’s name better,” said Cavendish, sneeringly. “Who was he, pray?”
“Massingbred, – we call him Jack Massingbred; he’s the Member for somewhere in Ireland.”
“Poor Jack!” muttered Cavendish, “how hard up he must be!”
“But you like the equipage, Merl?” said Martin, who had a secret suspicion that it was now Cavendish’s turn for a little humiliation.
“Well, it’s neat. The buggy – ”
“The buggy! By Jove, sir, you have a precious choice of epithets! Please to let me inform you that full-blooded horses are not called hacks, nor one of Leader’s park-phaetons is not styled a buggy.”
Martin threw himself into a chair, and after a moment’s struggle, burst out into a fit of laughter.
“I think we may make a deal after all, Sir Spencer,” said Merl, who accepted the baronet’s correction with admirable self-control.
“No, sir; perfectly impossible; take my word for it, any transaction would be difficult between us. Good-bye, Martin; adieu, Claude.” And with this brief leave-taking the peppery Sir Spencer left the room, more flushed and fussy than he had entered it.
“If you knew Sir Spencer Cavendish as long as we have known him, Mr. Merl,” said Lord Claude, in his blandest of voices, “you’d not be surprised at this little display of warmth. It is the only weakness in a very excellent fellow.”
“I ‘m hot, too, my Lord,” said Merl, with the very slightest accentuation of the “initial H,” “and he was right in saying that dealings would be difficult between us.”
“You mentioned Massingbred awhile ago, Merl. Why not ask him to second you at the Club?” said Martin, rousing himself suddenly from a train of thought.
“Well, somehow, I thought that he and you did n’t exactly pull together; that there was an election contest, – a kind of a squabble.”
“I ‘m sure that he never gave you any reason to suspect a coldness between us; I know that I never did,” said Martin, calmly. “We are but slightly acquainted, it is true, but I should be surprised to learn that there was any ill-feeling between us.”
“One’s opponent at the hustings is pretty much the same thing as one’s adversary at a game, – he is against you to-day, and may be your partner to-morrow; so that, putting even better motives aside, it were bad policy to treat him as an implacable enemy,” said Lord Claude, with his accustomed suavity. “Besides, Mr. Merl, you know the crafty maxim of the French moralist, ‘Always treat your enemies as though one day they were to become your friends.’” And with this commonplace, uttered in a tone and with a manner that gave it all the semblance of a piece of special advice, his Lordship took his hat, and, squeezing Martin’s hand, moved towards the door.
“Come in here for a moment,” said Martin, pushing open the door into an adjoining dressing-room, and closing it carefully after them. “So much for wanting to do a good-natured thing,” cried he, peevishly. “I thought to help Cavendish to get rid of those ‘screws,’ and the return he makes me is to outrage this man.”
“What are your dealings with him?” asked Willoughby» anxiously.
“Play matters, play debts, loans, securities, post-obits, and every other blessed contrivance you can think of to swamp a man’s present fortune and future prospects. I don’t think he is a bad fellow; I mean, I don’t suspect he ‘d press heavily upon me, with any fair treatment on my part. My impression, in short, is that he’d forgive my not meeting his bill, but he ‘d never get over my not inviting him to a dinner!”
“Well,” said Willoughby, encouragingly, “we live in admirable times for such practices. There used to be a vulgar prejudice in favor of men that one knew, and names that the world was familiar with. It is gone by entirely; and if you only present your friend – don’t wince at the title – your friend, I say – as the rich Mr. Merl, the man who owns shares in mines, canals, and collieries, whose speculations count by tens of thousands, and whose credit rises to millions, you’ll never be called on to apologize for his parts of speech, or make excuse for his solecisms in good breeding.”
“Will you put up his name, then, at the Club?” asked Martin, eagerly. “It would not do for me to do so.”
“To be sure I will, and Massingbred shall be his seconder.” And with this cheering pledge Lord Claude bade him good-bye, and left him free to return to Mr. Merl in the drawing-room. That gentleman had, however, already departed, to the no small astonishment of Martin, who now threw himself lazily down on a sofa, to ponder over his difficulties and weave all manner of impracticable schemes to meet them.
They were, indeed, very considerable embarrassments. He had raised heavy sums at most exorbitant rates, and obtained money – for the play-table – by pledging valuable reversions of various kinds, for Merl somehow was the easiest of all people to deal with; one might have fancied that he lent his money only to afford himself an occasion of sympathy with the borrower, just as he professed that he merely betted “to have a little interest in the race.” Whatever Martin, then, suggested in the way of security never came amiss; whether it were a farm, a mill, a quarry, or a lead mine, he accepted it at once, and, as Martin deemed, without the slightest knowledge or investigation, little suspecting that there was not a detail of his estate, nor a resource of his property, with which the wily Jew was not more familiar than himself. In fact, Mr. Merl was an astonishing instance of knowledge on every subject by which money was to be made, and he no more advanced loans upon an encumbered estate than he backed the wrong horse or bid for a copied picture. There is a species of practical information excessively difficult to describe, which is not connoisseurship, but which supplies the place of that quality, enabling him who possesses it to estimate the value of an object, without any admixture of those weakening prejudices which beset your mere man of taste. Now, Mr. Merl had no caprices about the color of the horse he backed, no more than for the winning seat at cards; he could not be warped from his true interests by any passing whim, and whether he cheapened a Correggio or discounted a bill, he was the same calm, dispassionate calculator of the profit to come of the transaction.
Latterly, however, he had thrown out a hint to Martin that he was curious to see some of that property on which he had made such large advances; and this wish – which, according to the frame of mind he happened to be in at the moment, struck Martin as a mere caprice or a direct menace – was now the object of his gloomy reveries. We have not tracked his steps through the tortuous windings of his moneyed difficulties; it is a chapter in life wherein there is wonderfully little new to record; the Jew-lender and his associates, the renewed bill and the sixty per cent, the non-restored acceptances flitting about the world, sold and resold as damaged articles, but always in the end falling into the hands of a “most respectable party,” and proceeded on as a true debt; then, the compromises for time, for silence, for secrecy, – since these transactions are rarely, if ever, devoid of some unhappy incident that would not bear publicity; and there are invariably little notes beginning “Dear Moses,” which would argue most ill-chosen intimacies. These are all old stories, and the “Times” and the “Chronicle” are full of them. There is a terrible sameness about them, too. The dupe and the villain are stock characters that never change, and the incidents are precisely alike in every case. Humble folk, who are too low for fashionable follies, wonder how the self-same artifices have always the same success, and cannot conceal their astonishment at the innocence of our young men about town; and yet the mystery is easily solved. The dupe is, in these cases, just as unprincipled as his betrayer, and their negotiation is simply a game of skill, in which Israel is not always the winner.
If we have not followed Martin’s steps through these dreary labyrinths, it is because the path is a worn one; for the same reason, too, we decline to keep him company in his ponderings over them. All that his troubles had taught him was an humble imitation of the tricky natures of those he dealt with; so that he plotted and schemed and contrived, till his very head grew weary with the labor. And so we leave him.
CHAPTER III. A YOUNG DUCHESS AND AN OLD FRIEND
Like a vast number of people who have passed years in retirement, Lady Dorothea was marvellously disappointed with “the world” when she went back to it. It was not at all the kind of thing she remembered, or at least fancied it to be. There were not the old gradations of class strictly defined; there was not the old veneration for rank and station; “society” was invaded by hosts of unknown people, “names one had never heard of.” The great stars of fashion of her own day had long since set, and the new celebrities had never as much as heard of her. The great houses of the Faubourg were there, it is true; but with reduced households and dimly lighted salons, they were but sorry representatives of the splendor her memory had invested them with.
Now the Martins were installed in one of the finest apartments of the finest quarter in Paris. They were people of unquestionable station, they had ample means, lacked for none of the advantages which the world demands from those who seek its favors; and yet there they were, just as unknown, unvisited, and unsought after, as if they were the Joneses or the Smiths, “out” for a month’s pleasuring on the Continent.
A solitary invitation to the Embassy to dinner was not followed by any other attention; and so they drove along the Boulevards and through the Bois de Boulogne, and saw some thousands of gay, bright-costumed people, all eager for pleasure, all hurrying on to some scheme of amusement or enjoyment, while they returned moodily to their handsome quarter, as much excluded from all participation in what went on around them as though they were natives of Hayti.
Martin sauntered down to the reading-room, hoping vainly to fall in with some one he knew. He lounged listlessly along the bright streets, till their very glare addled him; he stared at the thousand new inventions of luxury and ease the world had discovered since he had last seen it, and then he plodded gloomily homeward, to dine and listen to her Ladyship’s discontented criticism upon the tiresome place and the odious people who filled it. Paris was, indeed, a deception and a snare to them! So far from finding it cheap, the expense of living – as they lived – was considerably greater than at London. It was a city abounding in luxuries, but all costly. The details which are in England reserved for days of parade and display, were here daily habits, and these were now to be indulged in with all the gloom of solitude and isolation.
What wonder, then, if her Ladyship’s temper was ruffled, and her equanimity unbalanced by such disappointments? In vain she perused the list of arrivals to find out some distinguished acquaintance; in vain she interrogated her son as to what was going on, and who were there. The Captain only frequented the club, and could best chronicle the names that were great at whist or illustrious at billiards.
“It surely cannot be the season here,” cried she, one morning, peevishly, “for really there isn’t a single person one has ever heard of at Paris.”
“And yet this is a strong catalogue,” cried the Captain, with a malicious twinkle in his eye. “Here are two columns of somebodies, who were present at Madame de Luygnes’ last night.”
“You can always fill salons, if that be all,” said she, angrily.
“Yes, but not with Tour du Pins, Tavannes, Rochefoucaulds, Howards of Maiden, and Greys of Allington, besides such folk as Pahlen, Lichtenstein, Colonna, and so forth.”
“How is it then, that one never sees them?” cried she, more eagerly.
“Say, rather, how is it one doesn’t know them,” cried Martin, “for here we are seven weeks, and, except to that gorgeous fellow in the cocked hat at the porter’s lodge, I have never exchanged a salute with a human being.”
“There are just three houses, they say, in all Paris, to one or other of which one must be presented,” said the Captain – “Madame de Luygnes, the Duchesse de Cour-celles, and Madame de Mirecourt.”
“That Madame de Luygnes was your old mistress, was she not, Miss Henderson?” asked Lady Dorothea, haughtily.
“Yes, my Lady,” was the calm reply.
“And who are these other people?”
“The Duc de Mirecourt was married to ‘Mademoiselle,’ the daughter of the Duchesse de Luygnes.”
“Have you heard or seen anything of them since you came here?” asked her Ladyship.
“No, my Lady, except a hurried salute yesterday from a carriage as we drove in. I just caught sight of the Duchesse as she waved her hand to me.”
“Oh, I saw it. I returned the salutation, never suspecting it was meant for you. And she was your companion – your dear friend – long ago?”
“Yes, my Lady,” said Kate, bending down over her work, but showing in the crimson flush that spread over her neck how the speech had touched her.
“And you used to correspond, I think?” continued her Ladyship.
“We did so, my Lady.”
“And she dropped it, of course, when she married, – she had other things to think of?”
“I ‘m afraid, my Lady, the lapse was on my side,” said Kate, scarcely repressing a smile at her own hardihood.
“Your side! Do you mean to say that you so far forgot what was due to the station of the Duchesse de Mirecourt, that you left her letter unreplied to?”
“Not exactly, my Lady.”
“Then, pray, what do you mean?”
Kate paused for a second or two, and then, in a very calm and collected voice, replied, – “I told the Duchesse, in my last letter, that I should write no more, – that my life was thrown in a wild, unfrequented region, where no incident broke the monotony, and that were I to continue our correspondence, my letters must degenerate into a mere selfish record of my own sentiments, as unprofitable to read as ungraceful to write; and so I said good-bye – or au revoir, at least – till other scenes might suggest other thoughts.”
“A most complimentary character of our Land of the West, certainly! I really was not aware before that Cro’ Martin was regarded as an ‘oubliette.’”
Kate made no answer, – a silence which seemed rather to irritate than appease her Ladyship.
“I hope you included the family in your dreary picture. I trust it was not a mere piece of what artists call still life, Miss Henderson?”
“No, my Lady,” said she, with a deep sigh; but the tone and manner of the rejoinder were anything but apologetic.
“Now I call that as well done as anything one sees in Hyde Park,” cried the Captain, directing attention as he spoke to a very handsome chariot which had just driven up to the door. “They’re inquiring for somebody here,” continued he, as he watched the Chasseur as he came and went from the carriage to the house.
“There’s a Grandee of Spain, or something of that kind, lives on the fourth floor, I think,” said Martin, dryly.
“The Duchesse de Mirecourt, my Lady,” said a servant, entering, “begs to know if your Ladyship will receive her?”
Kate started at the words, and her color rose till her cheeks were crimsoned.
“A visit, I suspect, rather for you than me, Miss Henderson,” said Lady Dorothea, in a half-whisper; and then turning to her servant, nodded her acquiescence.
“I ‘m off,” said Martin, rising suddenly to make his escape.
“And I too,” said the Captain, as he made his exit by an opposite door.
The folding-doors of the apartment were at the same moment thrown wide, and the Duchess entered. Very young, – almost girlish, indeed, – she combined in her appearance the charming freshness of youth with that perfection of gracefulness which attaches to the higher classes of French society, and although handsome, more striking from the fascination of manner than for any traits of beauty. Courtesying slightly, but deferentially, to Lady Dorothea, she apologized for her intrusion by the circumstance of having, the day before, caught sight of her “dear governess and dear friend – ” And as she reached thus far, the deep-drawn breathing of another attracted her. She turned and saw Kate, who, pale as a statue, stood leaning on a chair. In an instant she was in her arms, exclaiming, in a rapture of delight, “My dear, dear Kate, – my more than sister! You would forgive me, madam,” said she, addressing Lady Dorothea, “if you but knew what we were to each other. Is it not so, Kate?”
A faint tremulous motion of the lips – all colorless as they were – was the only reply to the speech; but the young Frenchwoman needed none, but turning to her Ladyship, poured forth with native volubility a story of their friendship, the graceful language in which she uttered it lending those choice phrases which never seem exaggerations of sentiment till they be translated into other tongues. Mingling her praises with half reproaches, she drew a picture of Kate so flattering that Lady Dorothea could not help a sense of shrinking terror that one should speak in such terms of the governess.
“And now, dearest,” added she, turning to Kate, “are we to see a great deal of each other? When can you come to me? Pardon me, madam, this question should be addressed to you.”
“Miss Henderson is my secretary, Madame la Duchesse; she is also my companion,” said Lady Dorothea, haughtily; “but I can acknowledge claims which take date before my own. She shall be always at liberty when you wish for her.”
“How kind, how good of you!” cried the Duchess. “I could have been certain of that. I knew that my dear Kate must be loved by all around her. We have a little fête on Wednesday at St. Germain. May I bespeak her for that day?”
“Her Ladyship suffers her generosity to trench upon her too far,” said Kate, in a low voice. “I am in a manner necessary to her, – that is, my absence would be inconvenient.”
“But her Ladyship will doubtless be in the world herself that evening. There is a ball at the Duchesse de Sargance, and the Austrian Minister has something,” rattled on the lively Duchess. “Paris is so gay just now, so full of pleasant people, and all so eager for enjoyment. Don’t you find it so, my Lady?”
“I go but little into society!” said Lady Dorothea, stiffly.
“How strange! and I – I cannot live without it. Even when we go to our Château at Roche-Mire I carry away with me all my friends who will consent to come. We try to imitate that delightful life of your country houses, and make up that great family party which is the beau idéal of social enjoyment.”
“And you like a country life, then?” asked her Ladyship.
“To be sure. I love the excursions on horseback, the forest drives, the evening walks in the trellised vines, the parties one makes to see a thousand things one never looks at afterwards; the little dinners on the grass, with all their disasters, and the moonlight drive homewards, half joyous, half romantic, – not to speak of that charming frankness by which every one makes confession of his besetting weakness, and each has some little secret episode of his own life to tell the others. All but Kate here,” cried she, laughingly, “who never revealed anything.”
“Madame la Duchesse will, I ‘m sure, excuse my absence; she has doubtless many things she would like to say to her friend alone,” said Lady Dorothea, rising and courtesying formally; and the young Duchess returned the salutation with equal courtesy and respect.
“My dear, dear Kate,” cried she, throwing her arms around her as the door closed after her Ladyship, “how I have longed for this moment, to tell you ten thousand things about myself and hear from you as many more! And first, dearest, are you happy? for you look more serious, more thoughtful than you used, – and paler, too.”
“Am I so?” asked Kate, faintly.
“Yes. When you’re not speaking, your brows grow stern and your lips compressed. Your features have not that dear repose, as Giorgevo used to call it. Poor fellow! how much in love he was, and you ‘ve never asked for him!”
“I never thought of him!” said she, with a smile.
“Nor of Florian, Kate!”
“Nor even of him.”
“And yet that poor fellow was really in love, – nay, don’t laugh, Kate, I know it. He gave up his career, everything he had in life, – he was a Secretary of Legation, with good prospects, – all to win your favor, becoming a ‘Carbonaro,’ or a ‘Montagnard,’ or something or other that swears to annihilate all kings and extirpate monarchy.”
“And after that?” asked Kate, with more of interest.
“After that, ma chère, they sent him to the galleys; I forget exactly where, but I think it was in Sicily. And then there was that Hungarian Count Nemescz, that wanted to kill somebody who picked up your bouquet out of the Grand Canal at Venice.”
“And whom, strangely enough, I met and made acquaintance with in Ireland. His name is Massingbred.”
“Not the celebrity, surely, – the young politician who made such a sensation by a first speech in Parliament t’other day? He’s all the rage here. Could it be him?”
“Possibly enough,” said she, carelessly. “He had very good abilities, and knew it.”
“He comes to us occasionally, but I scarcely have any acquaintance with him. But this is not telling me of yourself, child. Who and what are these people you are living with? Do they value my dear Kate as they ought? Are they worthy of having her amongst them?”
“I ‘m afraid not,” said Kate, with a smile. “They do not seem at all impressed with the blessing they enjoy, and only treat me as one of themselves.”
“But, seriously, child, are they as kind as they should be? That old lady is, to my thinking, as austere as an Archduchess.”
“I like her,” said Kate; “that is, I like her cold, reserved manner, unbending as it is, which only demands the quiet duties of servitude, and neither asks nor wishes for affection. She admits me to no friendship, but she exacts no attachment.”
“And you like this?”
“I did not say I should like it from you! said Kate, pressing the hand she held fervently to her lips, while her pale cheek grew faintly red.
“And you go into the world with her, – at least her world?”
“She has none here. Too haughty for second-rate society, and unknown to those who form the first class at Paris, she never goes out.”
“But she would – she would like to do so?”
“I ‘m sure she would.”
“Then mamma shall visit her. You know she is everything here; her house is the rendezvous of all the distinguished people, and, once seen in her salons, my Lady – how do you call her?”
“Lady Dorothea Martin.”
“I can’t repeat it – but no matter – her Ladyship shall not want for attentions. Perhaps she would condescend to come to me on Wednesday? Dare I venture to ask her?”
Kate hesitated, and the Duchess quickly rejoined, – “No, dearest, you are quite right; it would be hazardous, too abrupt, too unceremonious. You will, however, be with us; and I long to present you to all my friends, and show them one to whom I owe so much, and ought to be indebted to for far more. I ‘ll send for you early, that we may have a long morning together.” And so saying, she arose to take leave.
“I feel as though I ‘ll scarcely believe I had seen you when you have gone,” said Kate, earnestly. “I’ll fancy it all a dream – or rather, that my life since we met has been one, and that we had never parted.”
“Were we not very happy then, Kate?” said the Duchess, with a half-sigh; “happier, perhaps, than we may ever be again.”
“You must not say so, at all events,” said Kate, once more embracing her. And they parted.
Kate arose and watched the splendid equipage as it drove away, and then slowly returned to her place at the work-table. She did not, however, resume her embroidery, but sat deep in reflection, with her hands clasped before her.
“Poor fellow!” said she, at length, “a galley-slave, and Massingbred a celebrity! So much for honesty and truth in this good world of ours! Can it always go on thus? That is the question I’m curious to hear solved. A little time may, perhaps, reveal it!” So saying to herself, she leaned her head upon her hand, deep lost in thought.