Our last chapter left Mr. Herman Merl in bad company,--he was alone.
Now, very few men's thoughts are companionable in the dreary solitude
of a sorry inn. None of us, it is to be feared, are totally exempt from
“this world's crosses;” and though the sorrows of life do fall very
unequally, the light afflictions are accepted as very heavy burdens by
those to whose lot they fall!
Just as it happens, then, on some gloomy day of winter, when we have
“finished our book,” and the newspapers are tiresome, we take the
opportunity to look through our letters and papers,--to arrange
our desk, and put a little order in our scattered and littered
memoranda,--somewhat in the same spirit will Conscience grasp a similar
moment to go over the past, glance at bygone events, and make, as it
were, a clearance of whatever weighs upon our memory. I 'm not quite
certain that the best of us come out of this Bankruptcy Court with a
first-class certificate. Even the most merciful to his own errors will
acknowledge that in many things he should do differently were they to
be done over again; and he must, indeed, have fallen upon a happy lot
in life who has not some self-reproach on the score of kindness
unrequited,--slight injuries either unforgiven or unequally
avenged,--friendships jeopardized, mayhap lost, by some mere indulgence
of temper,--and enmities unreconciled, just for lack of the veriest
sacrifice of self-love.
Were there any such court in morals as in law, what a sad spectacle
would our schedule show, and how poor even the most solvent amongst us,
if called on for a list of his liabilities!
Lest our moralizing should grow uncomfortable, dear reader, let us
return to Mr. Merl, now occupied, as he was, in this same process of
self-examination. He sat with a little note-book before him, recalling
various incidents of the past. And if the lowering expression of his
face might be trusted, his reveries were not rose-colored; and yet, as
he turned over the pages, it might be seen that moments of gratulation
alternated with the intervals of self-reproach.
“Wednesday, the 10th,” muttered he to himself, “dined at
Philippe's--supped with Arkright and Bailey--whist at double Nap.
points--won four hundred and ten--might have made it a thousand, but
B. flung the cards out of the window in a passion, and had to cease
playing.
“Thursday--toothache--stayed at home, and played piquet with
myself--discovered two new combinations, in taking in cards--Irving came
to see me--won from him twenty pounds his mother had just sent him.
“Friday--a good day's work--walked into Martin for two thousand seven
hundred, and took his bill at three months, with promise to renew--dined
with Sitwell, and sold him my Perugino for six hundred--cost myself not
as many francs--am to have the refusal of all Vanderbrett's cabinets for
letting him off his match with Columbine, which, by the way, he was sure
to win, as Mope is dead lame.
“Martin again--Saturday--came to have his revenge, but seemed
quarrelsome; so I affected an engagement, and declined play.
“Sunday--gave him his revenge, to the tune of twelve hundred in my
own favor--'Lansquenet' in the evening at his rooms--several swells
present--thought it prudent to drop some tin, and so, lost one hundred
and forty Naps.--Sir Giles Bruce the chief winner--rich, and within two
months of being of age.
“Monday--the Perugino returned as a bad copy by Fava--took it at once,
and said I was taken in myself--Sitwell so pleased that he sat down to
écarté, and lost two hundred to me. I dine with him to-morrow.
“Tuesday--blank--dinner at Sitwell's--met Colonel Cardie, whom I saw at
Hombourg, and so refused to play. It was, I suspect, a plan of Sitwell's
to pit us against each other.
“Wednesday--sold out my African at seventy-one and an eighth--realized
well, and bought in Poyais, which will rise for at least ten days to
come--took Canchard's château at Ghent for his old debt at écarté--don't
like it, as it may be talked about.
“Gave a dinner to Wilson, Morris, Leader, Whyte, and Martin--Lescour
could n't come--played little whist afterwards--changed for hazard after
supper--won a few Naps., and home to bed.
“Took Rigby's curricle and horses for the two hundred he owes me--glad
to have done with him--he evidently wanted a row--and so play with him
no more.
“Sent ten Naps, to the fund for the poor injured by the late
inundations, as the police called to ask about my passport, &c.
“Saturday--the Curé of St. Rochette, to ask for alms--gave three hundred
francs, and secured his services against the police--the curé mentions
some curious drawings in the sacristy--promised to go and see them.
“Bought Walrond's library for a franc a volume--the Elzevirs alone
worth double the amount paid--Bailey bolted, and so lose his last
bills--Martin quarrelsome--said he never yet won at any sitting with
me--lost seventy to him, and sent him home satisfied.
“Gave five hundred francs for the drawings at St. R------, abominable
daubs; but the police grow more troublesome every day--besides,
Crowthorpe is collecting early studies of Rembrandt--these sketches are
marked R.
“A great evening--cleared Martin out--suspect that this night's work
makes me an Irish estated gentleman--must obtain legal opinion as to
these same Irish securities and post-obits, involving, as they do, a
heavy sum.”
Mr. Merl paused at this _entrée_ in his diary, and began to reflect in
no very gratulatory mood on the little progress he had as yet made in
this same object of inquiry; in fact, he was just discovering what a
vast number of more shrewd observers than himself have long since found
out, that exploring in Ireland is rather tough work. Everything looks so
easy and simple and plain upon the surface, and yet is so puzteling and
complicated beneath; all seems so intelligible, where there is nothing
in reality that is not a contradiction. It is true he was not harassing
himself with problems of labor and wages, the condition of the people,
the effects of emigration, and so forth. He wanted to ascertain some
few facts as to the value of a certain estate, and what incumbrances it
might be charged with; and to the questions he put on this head, every
reply was an insinuated interrogatory to himself. “Why are _you_ here,
Mr. Merl?” “How does it concern _you?_” “What may be _your_ interest in
the same investigation?” This peculiar dialectic met him as he landed;
it followed him to the West. Scanlan, the landlord, even that poor
simpleton the painter--as he called Crow--had submitted him to its harsh
rule, till Mr. Merl felt that, instead of pursuing an examination, he
was himself everlastingly in the witness-box.
Wearied of these speculations, dissatisfied with himself and his
fruitless journey, he summoned the landlord to ask if that “old gent”
above stairs had not a book of some kind, or a newspaper, he could lend
him. A ragged urchin speedily returned with a key in his hand, saying,
“That's the key of No. 4. Joe says you may go up and search for
yourself.”
One more scrupulous might not exactly have fancied the office
thus suggested to him. He, however, was rather pleased with the
investigation, and having satisfied himself that the mission was safe,
set forth to fulfil it. No. 4, as the stranger's room was called, was a
large and lofty chamber, lighted by a single bay-window, the deep recess
of which was occupied by a writing-table. Books, maps, letters, and
drawings littered every part of the room. Costly weapons, too, such as
richly chased daggers and inlaid pistols, lay carelessly about, with
curiously shaped pipes and gold-embroidered tobacco-bags; a richly lined
fur pelisse covered the sofa, and a skull-cap of the very finest sable
lay beside it. All these were signs of affluence and comfort, and Mr.
Merl pondered over them as he went from place to place, tossing over one
thing after another, and losing himself in wild conjectures about the
owner.
The writing-table, we have said, was thickly strewn with letters, and to
these he now addressed himself in all form, taking his seat comfortably
for the investigation. Many of the letters were in foreign languages,
and from remote and far-away lands. Some he was enabled to spell out,
but they referred to places and events he had never heard of, and were
filled with allusions he could not fathom. At length, however, he came
to documents which interested him more closely. They were notes, most
probably in the stranger's own hand, of his late tour along the coast.
Mournful records were they all,--sad stories of destitution and want, a
whole people struck down by famine and sickness, and a land perishing in
utter misery. No personal narrative broke the dreary monotony of these
gloomy records, and Merl searched in vain for what might give a clew
to the writer's station or his object. Carefully drawn-up statistics,
tables of the varying results of emigration, notes upon the tenure of
land and the price of labor were all there, interspersed with replies
from different quarters to researches of the writer's making. Numerous
appeals to charity, entreaties for small loans of money, were mingled
with grateful acknowledgments for benefits already received. There was
much, had he been so minded, that Mr. Merl might have learned in this
same unauthorized inquiry. There were abundant traits of the people
displayed, strange insight into customs and ways peculiar to them,
accurate knowledge, too, of the evils of their social condition;
and, above all, there were the evidences of that curious compound of
credulity and distrust, hope and fatalism, energy and inertness, which
make up the Irish nature.
He threw these aside, however, as themes that had no interest for him.
What had he to do with the people? His care was with the soil, and less
even with it than with its burdens and incumbrances. One conviction
certainly did impress itself strongly upon him,--that he 'd part with
his claims on the estate for almost anything, in preference to himself
assuming the cares and duties of an Irish landlord,--a position which he
summed up by muttering to himself, “is simply to have so many acres of
bad land, with the charge of feeding so many thousands of bad people.”
Here were suggestions, it is true, how to make them better, coupled
with details that showed the writer to be one well acquainted with the
difficulties of his task; here, also, were dark catalogues of crime,
showing how destitution and vice went hand in hand, and that the seasons
of suffering were those of lawlessness and violence. Various hands were
detectable in these documents. Some evinced the easy style and graceful
penmanship of education; others were written in the gnarled hand of the
daily, laborer. Many of these were interlined in what Merl soon detected
to be the stranger's own handwriting; and brief as such remarks were,
they sufficed to show how carefully their contents had been studied by
him.
“What could be the object of all this research? Was he some emissary of
the Government, sent expressly to obtain this knowledge? Was he employed
by some section of party politicians, or was he one of those literary
philanthropists who trade upon the cheap luxury of pitying the poor and
detailing their sorrows? At all events,” thought Mr. Merl, “this same
information seems to have cost him considerable research, and not
a little money; and as I am under a pledge to give the Captain some
account of his dear country, here is a capital opportunity to do so,
not only with ease, but actually with honor.” And having formed this
resolve, he instantly proceeded to its execution. That wonderful little
note-book, with its strong silver clasps, so full of strange and curious
information, was now produced; but he soon saw that the various facts to
be recorded demanded a wider space, and so he set himself to write down
on a loose sheet of paper notices of the land in tillage or in pasture,
the numerical condition of the people as compared with former years,
their state, their prospects; but when he came to tell of the ravages
made and still making by pestilence amongst them, he actually stopped to
reread the records, so terrible and astounding were the facts narrated.
A dreadful malady walked the land, and its victims lay in every house!
The villages were depopulated, the little clusters of houses at cross
roads were stricken, the lone shealing on the mountain side, the
miserable cottage of the dreary moor, were each the scenes of desolation
and death. It was as though the land were about to be devastated, and
the race of man swept from its surface! As he read on, he came upon
some strictures in the stranger's own hand upon these sad events, and
perceived how terribly had the deserted, neglected state of the people
aided the fatal course of the epidemic. No hospitals had been provided,
no stores of any remedial kind, not a doctor for miles around, save an
old physician who had been retained at Miss Martin's special charge, and
who was himself nigh exhausted by the fatigue of his office.
Mr. Merl laid down his pen to think,--not, indeed, in any compassionate
spirit of that suffering people; his sorrows were not for those who lay
on beds of want and sickness; his whole anxiety was for a certain person
very dear to his own heart, who had rashly accepted securities on a
property which, to all seeming, was verging upon ruin; this conviction
being strongly impressed by the lawless state of the country, and the
hopelessness of expecting payment from a tenantry so circumstanced.
“Sympathy, indeed!” cried he; “I should like to hear of a little
sympathy for the unlucky fellow who has accepted a mortgage on this
confounded estate! These wretched creatures have little to lose,--and
even death itself ought to be no unwelcome relief to a life like
theirs,--but to a man such as I am, with abundance of projects for his
spare cash, this is a pretty investment! It is not impossible that this
philanthropic stranger, whoever he be, might buy up my bonds. He should
have them a bargain,--ay, by Jove! I'd take off a jolly percentage to
touch the 'ready;' and who knows, what with all his benevolence, his
charity, and his Christian kindliness, if he 'd not come down handsomely
to rescue this unhappy people from the hands of a Jew!”
And Mr. Merl laughed pleasantly, for the conceit amused him, and it
sounded gratefully to his imagination that even his faith could be put
out to interest, and the tabernacle be turned to good account. The noise
of a chaise approaching at a sharp trot along the shingly beach startled
him from his musings, and he had barely time to snatch up the paper
on which he had scrawled his notes, and hasten downstairs, when the
obsequious landlord, rushing to the door, ushered in Mr. Barry, and
welcomed him back again.
Merl suffered his door to stand ajar, that he might take a look at
the stranger as he passed. He was a very large, powerfully built man,
somewhat stooped by age, but showing even in advanced years signs of a
vigorous frame and stout constitution; his head was massive, and covered
with snow-white hair, which descended on the back of his neck. His
countenance must in youth have been handsome, and even yet bore the
expression of a frank, generous, but somewhat impetuous nature,--so
at least it struck him who now observed it; a character not improbably
aided by his temper as he entered, for he had returned from scenes of
misery and suffering, and was in a mood of indignation at the neglect he
had just witnessed.
“You said truly,” said he to the landlord. “You told me I shouldn't
see a gentleman for twenty miles round; that all had fled and left the
people to their fate, and I see now it is a fact.”
“Faix, and no wonder,” answered the host. “Wet potatoes and the shaking
ague, not to speak of cholera morbus, is n't great inducements to stay
and keep company with. I 'd be off, too, if I had the means.”
“But I spoke of gentlemen, sir,” said the stranger, with a strong
emphasis on the word,--“men who should be the first to prove their birth
and blood when a season of peril was near.”
“Thrue for you, sir,” chimed in Joe, who suddenly detected the blunder
he had committed. “The Martins ought not to have run away in the middle
of our distress.”
“They left the ship in a storm; they 'll find a sorry wreck when they
return to it,” muttered the stranger, as he ascended the stairs.
“By Jacob! just what I suspected,” said Merl to himself, while he closed
the door; “this property won't be worth sixpence, and I am regularly
'done.'”