CHAPTER XII. MR. MERL'S MEDITATIONS.
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.'”