“Perfectly true,—most lamentable fact, Master Scanlan! How precise the scoundrel is in recording this loan as 'after supper at Dubos'!' Ay, and here again is my unlucky wager about Martingale for the 'Chester,' and the handicap with Armytage. Scanlan, I recant my rash impression. This is a real work of its great author! Aut Merl—aut Diabolus.”
“I could have sworn it,” said Scanlan.
“To be sure you could, man, and have done, ere this time o' day, fifty other things on fainter evidence. But let me tell you it requires strong testimony to make one believe that there should live such a consummate fool in the world as would sell his whole reversionary right to a splendid state of some twelve thousand—”
“Fifteen at the lowest,” broke in Scanlan.
“Worse again. Fifteen thousand a year for twenty-two thousand seven hundred and sixty-four pounds sterling.”
“And he has done it.”
“No, no; the thing is utterly incredible, man. Any one must see that if he did want to make away with his inheritance, that he could have obtained ten, twenty times that sum amongst the tribe of Merl.”
“No doubt, if he were free to negotiate the transaction. But you 'll see, on looking over these pages, in what a network of debt he was involved,—how, as early as four years ago, at the Cape, he owed Merl large sums, lost at play, and borrowed at heavy interest. So that, at length, this same twenty-two thousand, assumed as paid for the reversion, was in reality but the balance of an immense demand for money lost, bills renewed, sums lent, debts discharged, and so on. But to avoid the legal difficulty of an 'immoral obligation,' the bale of the reversion is limited to this simple payment of twenty-two thousand—”
“Seven hundred and sixty-four pounds, sir. Don't let us diminish the price by a fraction,” said Massingbred. “Wonderful people ye are, to be sure; and whether in your talent for savings, or dislike for sausages, alike admirable and praiseworthy! What a strange circle do events observe, and how irrevocable is the law of the material, the stern rule of the moral world, decay, decomposition, and regeneration following on each other; and as great men's ashes beget grubs, so do illustrious houses generate in their rottenness the race of Herman Merls.”
Scanlan tried to smile at the rhapsodical conceit, but for some private reason of his own he did not relish nor enjoy it.