“Those little drummers yonder have a busy day of it,” said he, lazily; “that's the fourth time they have had to beat the salute to Generals this morning.”
“Is there anything going on, then?”
But he never deigned an answer, and resumed his walk.
“I wish you'd send away that hissing teakettle, it reminds me of a steamboat,” said the Captain, peevishly; “that is, if you have done with it.”
“So it does,” said the other, rising to ring the bell; “there's the same discordant noise, and the—the—the—” But the rest of the similitude would n't come, and Mr. Merl covered his retreat with the process of lighting a cigar,—an invaluable expedient that had served to aid many a more ready debater in like difficulty.
It would be a somewhat tedious, perhaps not a very profitable task, to inquire how two men, so palpably dissimilar, had thus become what the world calls friends. Enough if we say that Captain Martin,—the heir of Cro' Martin,—when returning from India on leave, passed some time at the Cape, where, in the not very select society of the place, he met Mr. Merl. Now Mr. Merl had been at Ceylon, where he had something to do with a coffee plantation; and he had been at Benares, where opium interested him; and now again, at the Cape, a question of wine had probably some relation to his sojourn. In fact, he was a man travelling about the world with abundance of leisure, a well-stocked purse, and what our friends over the Strait would term an “industrial spirit.” Messes had occasionally invited him to their tables. Men in society got the habit of seeing him “about,” and he was in the enjoyment of that kind of tolerance which made every man feel, “He's not my friend,—I didn't introduce him; but he seems a good sort of fellow enough!” And so he was,—very good-tempered, very obliging, most liberal of his cigars, his lodgings always open to loungers, with pale ale, and even iced champagne, to be had |for asking. There was play, too; and although Merl was a considerable winner, he managed never to incur the jealous enmity that winning so often imposes. He was the most courteous of gamblers; he never did a sharp thing; never enforced a strict rule upon a novice of the game; tolerated every imaginable blunder of his partner with bland equanimity; and, in a word, if this great globe of ours had been a green-baize cloth, and all the men and women whist-players, Mr. Herman Merl had been the first gentleman in it, and carried off “all the honors” in his own hand.
If he was highly skilled in every game, it was remarked of him that he never proposed play himself, nor was he ever known to make a wager: he always waited to be asked to make up a party, or to take or give the odds, as the case might be. To a very shrewd observer, this might have savored a little too much of a system; but shrewd observers are, after all, not the current coin in the society of young men, and Merl's conduct was eminently successful.
Merl suited Martin admirably. Martin was that species of man which, of all others, is most assailable by flattery. A man of small accomplishments, he sang a little, rode a little, played, drew, fenced, fished, shot—all, a little—that is, somewhat better than others in general, and giving him that dangerous kind of pre-eminence from which, though the tumble never kills, it occurs often enough to bruise and humiliate. But, worse than this, it shrouds its possessor in a triple mail of vanity, that makes him the easy prey of all who minister to it.
We seldom consider how much locality influences our intimacies, and how impossible it had been for us even to know in some places the people we have made friends of in another. Harry Martin would as soon have thought of proposing his valet at “Brookes's,” as walk down Bond Street with Mr. Merl. Had he met him in London, every characteristic of the man would there have stood out in all the strong glare of contrast, but at the Cape it was different. Criticism would have been misplaced where all was irregular, and the hundred little traits—any one of which would have shocked him in England—were only smiled at as the eccentricities of a “good-natured poor fellow, who had no harm in him.”
Martin and Merl came to England in the same ship. It was a sudden thought of Merl's, only conceived the evening before she sailed; but Martin had lost a considerable sum at piquet to him on that night, and when signing the acceptances for payment, since he had not the ready money, somewhat peevishly remarked that it was hard he should not have his revenge. Whereupon Merl, tossing off a bumper of champagne, and appearing to speak under the influence of its stimulation, cried out, “Hang me, Captain, if you shall say that! I 'll go and take my passage in the 'Elphinstone.'” And he did so, and he gave the Captain his revenge! But of all the passions, there is not one less profitable to indulge in. They played morning, noon, and night, through long days of sickening calm, through dreary nights of storm and hurricane, and they scarcely lifted their heads at the tidings that the Needles were in sight, nor even questioned the pilot for news of England, when he boarded them in the Downs. Martin had grown much older during that same voyage; his temper, too, usually imbued with the easy indolence of his father's nature, had grown impatient and fretful. A galling sense of inferiority to Merl poisoned every minute of his life. He would not admit it; he rejected it, but back it came; and if it did not enter into his heart, it stood there knocking,—knocking for admission. Each time they sat down to play was a perfect duel to Martin.