“And, all this time, my good friend, you have been living, as it might be, alone in the world, without a relative of any sort?”
“As sure as you are there. Often and often, have I walked through the streets of New York, and said to myself, Among all these people, there is not one that I can call a relation. My blood is in no man's veins, but my own.”
This was said with a bitter sadness, that surprised me. Obdurate, and insensible to suffering as Marble had ever appeared to me, I was not prepared to find him giving such evidence of feeling. I was then young, but now am old; and one of the lessons learned in the years that have intervened, is not to judge of men by appearances. So much sensibility is hidden beneath assumed indifference, so much suffering really exists behind smiling countenances, and so little does the exterior tell the true story of all that is to be found within, that I am now slow to yield credence to the lying surfaces of things. Most of all had I learned to condemn that heartless injustice of the world, that renders it so prompt to decide, on rumour and conjectures, constituting itself a judge from which there shall be no appeal, in cases in which it has not taken the trouble to examine, and which it had not even the power to examine evidence.
“We are all of the same family, my friend,” I answered, with a good design at least, “though a little separated by time and accidents.”
“Family!—Yes, I belong to my own family. I'm a more important man in my family, than Bonaparte is in his; for I am all in all; ancestors, present time and posterity!”
“It is, at least, your own fault you are the last; why not marry and have children?”
“Because my parents did not set me the example,” answered Marble, almost fiercely. Then clapping his hand on my shoulder, in a friendly way, as if to soothe me after so sharp a rejoinder, he added in a gentler tone—“Come, Miles, the Major and his daughter will want their breakfasts, and we had better join them. Talking of matrimony, there's the girl for you, my boy, thrown into your arms almost nat'rally, as one might say.”
“I am far from being so sure of that. Marble.” I answered, as both began to walk slowly towards the tent “Major Merton might hot think it an honour, in the first place, to let his daughter marry a Yankee sailor.”
“Not such a one as myself, perhaps; but why not one like you? How many generations have there been of you, now, at the place you call Clawbonny?”
“Four, from father to son, and all of us Miles Wallingfords.”