The Martins Of Cro' Martin Volume II Part 33

"Sure, when he was down in the West, what was easier? Faix, if I had only had the wind of a word that matters were so bad, I 'd have had the papers out of him long ago. You shake your head as if you did n't believe me; but take my word for it, I 'm right, sir. I 'd put a quarrel on him."

"_He'd_ not fight you!" said Martin, turning away in disappointment.

"Maybe he wouldn't; but mightn't he be robbed? Couldn't he be waylaid, and carried off to the Islands? There was no need to kill him.

Intimidation would do it all! I'd lay my head upon a block this minute if I would n't send him back to London without the back of a letter in his company; and what's more, a pledge that he 'd never tell what's happened to him!"

"These c.o.c.kney gents are more 'wide awake' than you suspect, Master Maurice, and the chances are that he never carried a single paper or parchment along with him."

"Worse for him, then," said Scanlan. "He'd have to pa.s.s the rest of his days in the Arran Islands. But I'm not so sure he's as 'cute as you think him," added Maurice, after a pause. "He left a little note-book once behind him that told some strange stories, by all accounts."

"What was that you speak of?" cried Martin, eagerly.

"I did n't see it myself, but Simmy Crow told me of it; and that it was full of all the fellows he ruined,--how much he won from this man, what he carried off from that; and, moreover, there was your own name, and the date of the very evening that he finished you off! It was something in this wise: 'This night's work makes me an estated gentleman, _vice_ Harry Martin, Esquire, retired upon less than half-pay!'"

A terrible oath, uttered in all the vehemence of a malediction, burst from Martin, and seizing Scanlan's wrist, he shook his arm in an agony of pa.s.sion.

"I wish I had given you a hint about him, Master Scanlan," said he, savagely.

"It's too late to think of it now, Captain," said the other; "the fellow is in Baden."

"Here?" asked Martin.

"Ay. He came up the Rhine along with me; but he never recognized me,--on account of my moustaches perhaps,--he took me for a Frenchman or a German, I think. We parted at Mayence, and I saw no more of him."

"I would that I was to see no more of him!" said Martin, gloomily, as he walked into another room, banging the door heavily behind him.

CHAPTER XXII. HOW PRIDE MEETS PRIDE

Kate Henderson sat alone in her room reading a letter from her father, her thoughtful brow a shade more serious perhaps than its wont, and at times a faint, half-sickly smile moving her dimpled cheek. The interests of our story have no concern with that letter, save pa.s.singly, nor do we regret it. Enough, if we say it was in reply to one of her own, requesting permission to return home, until, as she phrased it, she could "obtain another service." That the request had met scant favor was easy to see, as, folding up the letter, she laid it down beside her with a sigh and a muttered "I thought as much!--'So long as her Ladyship is pleased to accept of your services,'" said she, repeating aloud an expression of the writer. "Well, I suppose he's right; such is the true reading of the compact, as it is of every compact where there is wealth on one side, dependence on the other! Nor should I complain," said she, still more resolutely, "if these same services could be rendered toilfully, but costing nothing of self-sacrifice in honorable feeling. I could be a drudge--a slave--to-morrow; I could stoop to any labor; but I cannot--no, I cannot--descend to companionship! They who hire us," cried she, rising, and pacing the room in slow and measured tread, "have a right to our capacity. We are here to do their bidding; but they can lay no claim to that over which we ourselves have no control--our sympathies, our affections--we cannot sell these; we cannot always give them, even as a gift." She paused, and opening the letter, read it for some seconds, and then flinging it down with a haughty gesture, said, "'Nothing menial--nothing to complain of in my station!' Can he not see that there is no such servitude as that which drags out existence, by subjecting, not head and hands, but heart and soul, to the dictates of another? The menial--the menial has the best of it. Some stipulate that they are not to wear a livery; but what livery exacts such degradation as this?" And she shook the rich folds of her heavy silk dress as she spoke. The tears rose up and dimmed her eyes, but they were tears of offended pride, and as they stole slowly along her cheeks, her features acquired an expression of intense haughtiness. "They who train their children to this career are but sorry calculators!--educating them but to feel the bitter smart of their station, to see more clearly the wide gulf that separates them from what they live amongst!" said she, in a voice of deep emotion.

"Her Ladyship, Miss Henderson," said a servant, throwing wide the door, and closing it after the entrance of Lady Dorothea, who swept into the room in her haughtiest of moods, and seated herself with all that preparation that betokened a visit of importance.

"Take a seat, Miss Henderson," said she. And Kate obeyed in silence.

"If in the course of what I shall have to say to you," resumed her Ladyship,--"if in what I shall feel it my _duty_ to say to you, I may be betrayed into any expression stronger than in a calmer moment would occur to me,--stronger in fact, than strict justice might warrant--"

"I beg your Ladyship's pardon if I interrupt, but I would beg to remark--"

"What?" said Lady Dorothea, proudly.

"That simply your Ladyship's present caution is the best security for future propriety. I ask no other."

"You presume too far, young lady. I cannot answer that _my_ temper may not reveal sentiments that my judgment or my breeding might prefer to keep in abeyance."

"If the sentiments be there, my Lady, I should certainly say, better to avow them," said Kate, with an air of most impa.s.sive coldness.

"I 'm not aware that I have asked your advice on that head, Miss Henderson," said she, almost insolently. "At the same time, your habits of late in this family may have suggested the delusion."

"Will your Ladyship pardon me if I confess I do not understand you?"

"You shall have little to complain of on that score, Miss Henderson; I shall not speak in riddles, depend upon it. Nor should that be an obstacle if your intelligence were only the equal of your ambition."

"Now, indeed, is your Ladyship completely beyond me."

"Had you felt that I was as much 'above' you, Miss Henderson, it were more to the purpose."

"I sincerely hope that I have never forgotten all the deference I owe your Ladyship," said Kate. Nor could humble words have taken a more humble accent; and yet they availed little to conciliate her to whom they were addressed; nay, this very humility seemed to irritate and provoke her to a greater show of temper, as with an insolent laugh she said,--"This mockery of respect never imposed on we, young lady. I have been bred and born in a rank where real deference is so invariable that the fict.i.tious article is soon detected, had there been any hardy enough to attempt it."

Kate made no other answer to this speech than a deep inclination of her head. It might mean a.s.sent, submission, anything.

"You may remember, Miss Henderson," said her Ladyship, with all the formality of a charge in her manner,--"you may remember that on the day I engaged your services you were obliging enough to furnish me with a brief summary of your acquirements." She paused, as if expecting some intimation of a.s.sent, and after an interval of a few seconds, Kate smiled, and said,--"It must have been a very meagre catalogue, my Lady."

"Quite the reverse. It was a perfect marvel to me how you ever found time to store your mind with such varied information; and yet, notwithstanding that imposing array of accomplishments, I now find that your modesty--perhaps out of deference to my ignorance--withheld fully as many more."

Kate's look of bewilderment at this speech was the only reply she made.

"Oh, of course you do not understand me," said Lady Dorothea, sneeringly; "but I mean to be most explicit. Have you any recollection of the circ.u.mstance I allude to?"

"I remember perfectly the day, madam, I waited on you for the first time."

"That's exactly what I mean. Now, pray, has any portion of our discourse dwelt upon your mind?"

"Yes, my Lady; a remark of your Ladyship's made a considerable impression upon me at the moment, and has continued frequently to rise to my recollection since that."

"May I ask what it was?"

"It was with reference to the treatment I had been so long accustomed to in the family of the d.u.c.h.esse de Luygnes, and which your Ladyship characterized by an epithet I have never forgotten. At the time I thought it severe; I have learned to see it just. You called it an 'irreparable mischief.' Your Ladyship said most truly."

"I was never more convinced of the fact than at this very moment," said Lady Dorothea, as a flush of anger covered her cheek. "The ill-judging condescension of your first protectors has left a very troublesome legacy for their successors. Your youth and inexperience--I do not desire to attribute it to anything more reprehensible--led you, probably, into an error regarding the privileges you thus enjoyed, and you fancied that you owed to your own claims what you were entirely indebted to from the favor of others."

"I have no doubt that the observation of your Ladyship is quite correct," said Kate, calmly.

"I sincerely wish that the conviction had impressed itself upon your conduct then," said Lady Dorothea, whose temper was never so outraged as by the other's self-possession. "Had such been the case, I might have spared myself the unpleasantness of my present task." Her pa.s.sion was now fully roused, and with redoubled energy she continued: "Your ambition has taken a high flight, young lady, and, from the condescension by which I accorded you a certain degree of influence in this family, you have aspired to become its head. Do not affect any misconception of my meaning. My son has told me everything--everything--from your invaluable aid to him in his pecuniary difficulties, to your sage counsels on his betting-book; from the admirable advice you gave him as to his studies, to the disinterested offer of your own tuition. Be a.s.sured if _he_ has not understood all the advantages so generously presented to him, I, at least, appreciate them fully. I must acknowledge you have played your game cleverly, and you have made the mock independence of your character the mask of your designs. With another than myself you might have succeeded, too,"

said her Ladyship, with a smile of bitter irony; "but _I_ have few self-delusions, Miss Henderson, nor is there amongst the number that of believing that any one serves me, in any capacity, from any devotion to my own person. I natter myself, at least, that I have so much of humility."

"If I understand your Ladyship aright, I am charged with some designs on Captain Martin?" said Kate, calmly.

"Yes; precisely so," said Lady Dorothea, haughtily.

"I can only protest that I am innocent of all such, my Lady," said she, with an expression of great deference. "It is a charge that does not admit of any other refutation, since, if I appeal to my conduct, your Ladyship's suspicions would not exculpate me."

"Certainly not."

"I thought so. What, then, can I adduce? I'm sure your Ladyship's own delicacy will see that this is not a case where testimony can be invoked. I cannot--you would not ask me to--require an acquittal from the lips of Captain Martin himself; humble as I stand here, my Lady, you never could mean to expose me to this humiliation." For the first time did her voice falter, and a sickly paleness came over her as she uttered the last words.

"The humiliation which you had intended for this family, Miss Henderson, is alone what demands consideration from _me_. If what you call your exculpation requires Captain Martin's presence, I confess I see no objection to it."

"It is only, then, because your Ladyship is angry with me that you could bring yourself to think so, especially since another and much easier solution of the difficulty offers itself."