Her manners, her moods, her beauty had fascinated me. My love for
her was become a passion. I determined before long to declare it.
But before doing so, I resolved to see more of her. I wanted to be
sure that she loved me before I proposed. I felt my happiness would
be staked on the issue of the offer, and dreaded the result of hasty
action.
You may believe I thought very hard over the problem of her nature; but
I could arrive at no solution that satisfied me. She had affirmed that
she liked my company; but the assurance had been too much qualified by
the _naïveté_ of the declaration to be pleasing. A better illustration,
at least a more satisfactory indication, lay in her not avoiding me.
But what an odd character was hers! How inadequate is language to
represent her! I can only give you the bare uncoloured outline. It is
beyond my power to fill it up with the details which must be accurately
painted, before you can have before you, as I knew her, my beautiful,
wayward, fantastical, child-like neighbour.
I suppose my love blinded me, or I should have attached more importance
to the various little perplexing points of character which stole out
during our conversations. Her candour was made too piquant by her eyes,
her downright utterances too musical by her voice, her rapid divergence
from one topic to another too pretty by the infantine air that
accompanied it, to suffer me to note any other meaning than that which
met the eye and ear.
I laid aside my books and my ambitions in my pursuit of her. Compared
with winning her, all other pleasures and hopes were poor and small
indeed. My love engrossed my thoughts, held me absent; and made me
altogether more foolish than my sense of self-respect will suffer me to
recall.
She was right when she told me I should find a time to meet her. I
met her the next day. I met her the day after; and upon succeeding
days again. Once I prevailed upon her to accompany me in a walk to
the cliffs, by an unfrequented road leading to a spot where we stood
in little danger of being intruded on. It was on this occasion that I
witnessed in her more constrained air, in her speech more suave than
usual, in her eyes which were sometimes shyly averted, the presence of
an emotion I had waited for and sought to excite. The breakers creamed
at our feet; a west wind cooled the air; the white gulls swept by on
curved and steady wings; the sun reared an unbroken silver pillar in
the sea. The scene, the sounds, the solitude were propitious to love;
but I would not speak my feelings yet. I felt that the memory of this
calm and tender hour we were passing together would do more for me than
I could do for myself.
During the week Martelli and I had been little together. My mind had
been too much employed with hopes and fears of its own to suffer me to
remark him attentively; but I had noticed that he had been to the full
as abstracted as I. But his abstraction was of a gloomy order. His dark
eyes, his contracted brow, his set lips, proclaimed the sullenness of
his thoughts.
I attributed his manner to my neglect of him, and to his resentment at
being invited to a position which had been despoiled of its duties. I
must confess my love may have impaired my politeness. I was no longer
the attentive host, solicitous of his comfort, and on the _qui vive_ to
remove any unpleasant thoughts which his position would inspire, and
which his language, indeed, would sometimes hint. But I could easily
excuse my neglect, if neglect it were. It was not to be supposed that I
could regard him altogether in the light of a guest. Or granting that
I chose to do so, his long stay in my house would have justified a
mitigation of the severe politeness which it would have been proper to
extend to a man whose sojourn was brief. "Surely," I remember thinking,
"under the circumstances, he should have sense enough at this time
of day not to expect from me the anxious attention which I readily
practised at the beginning of our acquaintance. I have fulfilled
conditions which he could not have anticipated. I have suffered him to
share my home as though he were a joint proprietor; and I have tacitly
conceded every privilege which I could with justice to myself yield to
him. I cannot consider him ill-used because I choose to absent myself
in the company of Mrs. Fraser, in preference to spending my time with
him. He no doubt frets and fumes at my love as indiscreet--as menacing
his situation, and as illustrative of weakness in a nature that had
at the onset promised a vigorous adherence to its original schemes.
But surely," I thought, "it will be time enough for him to manifest
anger when he shall have been told that I have abandoned my ambitious
resolutions and no longer require his counsels."
On reaching home after that walk I have told you of with Mrs. Fraser,
I found Martelli seated on the lawn. I joined him. He rose at my
approach. His politeness was punctilious in proportion to his temper.
"Pray keep your seat," said I. "How have you been passing the
afternoon?"
"In reading," he answered with a shrug.
"You say that reproachfully. You think I should be reading too?"
"Are you not master of your own actions, Sir?"
"Undoubtedly. I shall resume my reading by-and-by."
"I hope so, for your own sake. You are abandoning a fine future."
"Why do you say that? My future is still mine. I have not abandoned it.
I have still my schemes and my hopes. I shall try to realise them."
"You will never realise them, Sir, if you allow your mind to be
diverted by the first small attraction that happens to rise.
"Small attraction! But I can forgive you. You are a scholar, a student,
a recluse--what should you know of love?"
His eyes shone.
"Nothing! nothing! I am ignorant of the passion," he exclaimed,
flourishing his hand.
"Yet I should have taken you to be too wise a man to have neglected
cultivating your sympathies in the direction where the most provocation
lies. Love is so human a passion, its consequences are so manifold, its
influences so remarkable, that were you anything of a philosopher you
would have made it a study. How can you hope to understand men, when
you are ignorant of the great master-passion of humanity?"
"How do you know I am so ignorant as you think me?"
"I judge so by the sneers you are disposed to level at love, and by the
light contemptuous manner with which you treat it."
"May not that prove that I know too much?"
"I don't see how. Cynicism is of superficial growth. Deep knowledge
makes one grave and compassionate. The painter knew life who gave a
smirk to the fool and sadness to the sage."
"But it is to be expected of a man who has sounded this passion to its
bottom that he should ridicule the belief in its depth, when he knows
it to be shallow."
"Give me leave to push your metaphor. If you speak of yourself, you
probably got among the shoals, and inferred from your soundings that
the deep was everywhere shallow."
He gave one of his shrugs and sat silent. I took out my cigar-case and
held it open to him. He declined with a wave of his hand. I glanced at
his face; it was hard and angry.
"Martelli," said I, "you are too sensitive. What has vexed you?"
"How am I sensitive, Sir?" he asked, growing a shade pale.
"I cannot tell you _how_ you are sensitive," I replied, stirred a
little by the suppressed irritation of his voice; "but I think I can
guess the cause of your vexation."
"Pray tell me, Sir."
"You think I am neglecting you for Mrs. Fraser?"
He gave a fierce nod.
"And you are disposed to resent my placing you in so anomalous a
position as that which you now occupy?"
"Sir, never mind that. I admit you have disappointed me."
"I am sorry I cannot see how."
"How should you see? You are blinded by love."
"Signor Martelli, I must beg you to calm yourself. I cannot suffer such
language as this."
"But, Sir, you provoke me!" he exclaimed, gesticulating and growing yet
paler. "You raise expectations to disappoint them. When I came here, I
secretly pledged myself to carry you through any schemes you had a mind
to indulge. All my diligence, my time, my knowledge, my patience, I
meant to give to you. I liked you, Sir. Your manners pleased me. It was
charming to attend one so acute and so humble--so quick to perceive and
so eager to be taught. And I too had my ambitions! They are gone."
"They are not gone, Martelli," I said, softened.
"They are, Sir!" he cried, clenching both fists. "It is a blow. I am a
poor man. Had you let me do for you what I could have done, you would
have requited me. Of that I am sure. Yes, Sir; I am not so ignorant
of human nature as not to tell generosity when I see it; and yours is
a generous mind. It made me this promise: it said, 'Martelli, serve
me well, advance my schemes, impart the knowledge and the power your
experience and learning can inspire, and when I have achieved the ends
I covet I will reward you.' That is what you told me, Sir."
"But what did you expect?"
"As much as it was in your power to confer. You would not have
forgotten the man who gave you help when you needed it. You might have
made me your secretary--your agent--your amanuensis. You would have
invented some post for me to fill--you would, at least, have rescued
me from a life of drudgery. But now, I am forced back again upon my
pitiful calling--teaching at schools, soliciting pupils, and starving
as a teacher!"
"I see no necessity. Have I dismissed you?"
"I dismiss myself!" he cried, standing up and striking his chest with
his fist.
I was impressed by his vehemence; at once pained and made curious by
his manner.
"At all events," I said, "if you go, you go of your own accord."
"Of course," he replied sarcastically.
"But at the same time you will allow me to say that I think you foolish
for exhibiting so much impatience."
"Impatience!" he exclaimed, with a sharp laugh. "Oh, no! I am not
impatient. But, Sir, it is not pleasant to be given to drink of a wine
that is dashed from your lips after you have tasted enough to like its
sweetness."
"But, my dear fellow, nobody _has_ dashed the wine away, that I can
see."
"You have! you have!" he cried, with a grin of anger.
"I? You are dreaming."
"_Sacramento!_ don't tell me I dream!"
"I shall have to tell you something worse," said I, getting up; "if you
don't moderate your temper, I shall have to tell you that you are mad."
"That it should come to this!" he muttered, looking up, as though he
apostrophised the air.
"You speak English fluently," said I; "let me entreat you to express
yourself intelligibly that I may understand your grievance."
He left me; walked to the edge of the lawn, returned, approached close
to me, and said,
"It is your intention, Sir, to marry, is it not?"
"What of that?"
"When, Sir, do you marry?"
"I shall probably make the lady an offer to-morrow," I answered,
compressing my lips to disguise a smile.
"Ah!" He nodded fiercely, walked once more to the edge of the lawn, and
returned. "You are serious, Sir? You really mean to marry?"
I could not help laughing out, as I answered, "Yes."
"Then, Sir, pay me what you owe me, and let me go."
"Do you wish to leave at once?"
"At once!" he cried.
"Very well; come with me to the library. I will reckon what I am in
your debt and pay you."
He followed me into the house. I seated myself at the writing-table.
But hardly believing it possible he could be in earnest, or wishing at
least to make one more effort to conciliate him, I said,
"Will you not defer this matter until to-morrow? Take to-night to think
over your resolution. This kind of separation is very ungracious and
unpleasant. I really do not wish you to go. I have told you before I
like your company, and have found you most valuable. I repeat it now."
"But you are going to marry?"
"What of that? After my marriage we will continue our reading."
"But you are going to marry?" he repeated.
"Good heaven! Do you think Mrs. Fraser an ogress? Do you think she
will eat you? When you know her you will like her." He shook his head
furiously, and violently waved his hand before his face.
"Pay me, Sir, pay me, and let me go!" he exclaimed.
Disgusted by his irritable perversity, I drew out my cheque-book.
"Can you not pay me in gold?" he asked.
"Certainly, if you prefer it. But first let me see what I owe you."
I took a slip of paper and made my calculations; then went to an iron
safe, drew out a cash-box and gave him the money.
"There," said I, "is the discharge of your proper claims. But I owe you
something for the interest you have taken in me and the hearty industry
you have employed on my behalf. This will perhaps make my gratitude
more significant than were I to express it in words only."
And I handed a bank note for twenty pounds.
He took, folded, and put it in his pocket.
"I am obliged to you, Sir," he said, with a low bow, "but in taking it,
it is 'my poverty, but not my will, consents.'"
"Shall my servant carry your portmanteau?"
"Thank you, no; it is not heavy. I can carry it myself."
"The phaeton is at your service, if you wish to drive to Cornpool."
"I will walk, Sir."
I held out my hand, but pretending not to notice the action he gave me
another low bow and left the room. In less than twenty minutes I saw
him walk, portmanteau in hand, down the front garden.
Thus ended my connection with this singular little man.