The Martins Of Cro' Martin, Vol. II (of II)

The Captain lounged towards the window, and, leaning listlessly against the wall, opened the epistle.

“You have not written to her lately, then?” asked he, as he perused the opening sentence.

“I am ashamed to say I have not; every day I made a resolution; but somehow – ”

“Is all this anything strange or new?” broke in the Captain. “I ‘m certain I have forty letters from my mother with exactly the same story. In fact, before I ever broke the seal, I ‘d have wagered an equal fifty that the potatoes had failed, the bogs were flooded, the roads impassable, and the people dying in thousands; and yet, when spring came round, by some happy miracle they were all alive and merry again!”

“Read on,” said Martin, impatiently, and barely able to control himself at this heartless commentary.

“Egad! I ‘d have sworn I had read all this before, except these same suggestions about not exacting the rents, building hospitals, and so forth; that is new. And why does she say, ‘Don’t write by deputy’? Who was your deputy?”

“Kate Henderson has written for me latterly.”

“And I should say she ‘s quite equal to that sort of thing; she dashes off my mother’s notes at score, and talks away, too, all the time she ‘s writing.”

“That is not the question before us,” said Martin, sternly.

“When I sent for you to read that letter, it was that you might advise and counsel me what course to take.”

“If you can afford to give away a year’s income in the shape of rent, and about as much more in the shape of a donation, of course you ‘re quite free to do it. I only wish that your generosity would begin at home, though; for I own to you I ‘m very hard-up at this moment.” This the Captain spoke with an attempted jocularity which decreased with every word, till it subsided into downright seriousness ere he finished.

“So far from being in a position to do an act of munificence, I am sorely pressed for money,” said Martin.

The Captain started; the half-smile with which he had begun to receive this speech died away on his lips as he asked, “Is this really the case?”

“Most truly so,” said Martin, solemnly.

“But how, in the name of everything absurd – how is this possible? By what stratagem could you have spent five thousand a year at Cro’ Martin, and your estate was worth almost three times as much? Giving a very wide margin for waste and robbery, I ‘d say five thousand could not be made away with there in a twelvemonth.”

“Your question only shows me how carelessly you must have read my letters to you, in India,” said Martin; “otherwise you could not have failed to see the vast improvements we have been carrying out on the property, – the roads, the harbors, the new quarries opened, the extent of ground covered by plantation, – all the plans, in fact, which Mary had matured – ”

“Mary! Mary!” exclaimed the Captain. “And do you tell me that all these things were done at the instigation of a young girl of nineteen or twenty, without any knowledge, or even advice – ”

“And who said she was deficient in knowledge?” cried Martin. “Take up the map of the estate; see the lands she has reclaimed; look at the swamps you used to shoot snipe over bearing corn crops; see the thriving village, where once the boatmen were starving, for they dared not venture out to sea without a harbor against bad weather.”

“Tell me the cost of all this. What’s the figure?” said the Captain; “that’s the real test of all these matters, for if your income could only feed this outlay, I pronounce the whole scheme the maddest thing in Christendom. My mother’s taste for carved oak cabinets and historical pictures is the quintessence of wisdom in comparison.”

Martin was overwhelmed and silent, and the other went on, – “Half the fellows in ‘ours’ had the same story to tell, – of estates wasted, and fine fortunes squandered in what are called improvements. If the possession of a good property entails the necessity to spend it all in this fashion, one is very little better than a kind of land-steward to one’s own estate; and, for my part, I ‘d rather call two thousand a year my own, to do what I pleased with, than have a nominal twenty, of which I must disburse nineteen.”

“Am I again to remind you that this is not the question before us?” said Martin, with increased sternness.

“That is exactly the very question,” rejoined the Captain. “Mary here coolly asks you, in the spirit of this same improvement-scheme, to relinquish a year’s income, and make a present of I know not how much more, simply because things are going badly with them, just as if everybody has n’t their turn of ill-fortune. Egad, I can answer for it, mine has n’t been flourishing latterly, and yet I have heard of no benevolent plan on foot to aid or release me!”

To this heartless speech, uttered, however, in most perfect sincerity, Martin made no reply whatever, but sat with folded arms, deep in contemplation. At length, raising his head, he asked, “And have you, then, no counsel to give, – no suggestion to make me?”

“Well,” said he, suddenly, “if Mary has not greatly overcharged all this story – ”

“That she has not,” cried Martin, interrupting him. “There ‘s not a line, not a word of her letter, I ‘d not guarantee with all I ‘m worth in the world.”

“In that case,” resumed the Captain, in the same indolent tone, “they must be in a sorry plight, and I think ought to cut and run as fast as they can. I know that’s what we do in India; when the cholera comes, we break up the encampment, and move off somewhere else. Tell Mary, then, to advise them to keep out of ‘the jungle,’ and make for the hill country.’”

Martin stared at the speaker for some seconds, and it was evident how difficult he found it to believe that the words he had just listened to were uttered in deliberate seriousness.

“If you have read that letter, you certainly have not understood it,” said he at last, in a voice full of melancholy meaning.

“Egad, it’s only too easy of comprehension,” replied the Captain; “of all things in life, there’s no mistaking a demand for money.”

“Just take it with you to your own room, Harry,” said Martin, with a manner of more affection than he had yet employed. “It is my firm persuasion that when you have re-read and thought over it, your impression will be a different one. Con it over in solitude, and then come back and give me your advice.”

The Captain was not sorry to adopt a plan which relieved him so speedily from a very embarrassing situation, and, folding up the note, he turned and left the room.

There are a great number of excellent people in this world who believe that “Thought,” like “Écarté,” is a game which requires two people to play. The Captain was one of these; nor was it within his comprehension to imagine how any one individual could suffice to raise the doubts he was called on to canvass or decide. “Who should he now have recourse to?” was his first question; and he had scarcely proposed it to himself when a soft low voice said, “What is puzzling Captain Martin? – can I be of any service to him?” He turned and saw Kate Henderson.

“Only think how fortunate!” exclaimed he. “Just come in here to this drawing-room, and give me your advice.”

“Willingly,” said she, with a courtesy the more marked because his manner indicated a seriousness that betokened trouble.

“My father has just dismissed me to cogitate over this epistle; as if, after all, when one has read a letter, that any secret or mystical interpretation is to come by all the reconsideration and reflection in the world.”

“Am I to read it?” asked Kate, as he placed it in her hand.

“Of course you are,” said he.

“There is nothing confidential or private in it which I ought not to see?”

“Nothing; and if there were,” added he, warmly, “you are one of ourselves, I trust, – at least I think you so.”

Kate’s lips closed with almost stern % impressiveness, but her color never changed at this speech, and she opened the letter in silence. For some minutes she continued to read with the same impassive expression; but gradually her cheek became paler, and a haughty, almost scornful, expression settled on her lips. “So patient are they in their trials,” said she, reading aloud the expression of Mary’s note. “Is it not possible, Captain Martin, that patience may be pushed a little beyond a virtue, and become something very like cowardice, – abject cowardice? And then,” cried she impetuously, and not waiting for his reply, “to say that now is the time to show these poor people the saving care and protection that the rich owe them, as if the duty dated from the hour of their being struck down by famine, laid low by pestilence, or that the debt could ever be acquitted by the relief accorded to pauperism! Why not have taught these same famished creatures self-dependence, elevated them to the rank of civilized beings by the enjoyment of rights that give men self-esteem as well as liberty? What do you mean to do, sir? – or is that your difficulty?” cried she, hastily changing her tone to one of less energy.

“Exactly, – that is my difficulty. My father, I suspect, wishes me to concur in the pleasant project struck out by Mary, and that, by way of helping them, we should ruin ourselves.”

“And you are for – ” She stopped, as if to let him finish her question for her.

“Egad, I don’t know well what I’m for, except it be self-preservation. I mean,” said he, correcting himself, as a sudden glance of almost insolent scorn shot from Kate’s eyes towards him, – “I mean that I ‘m certain more than half of this account is sheer exaggeration. Mary is frightened, – as well she may be, – finding herself all alone, and hearing nothing but the high-colored stories the people brings her, and listening to calamities from morning to night.”

“But still it may be all true,” said Kate, solemnly. “It may be – as Miss Martin writes – that ‘there is a blight on the land.’”

“What’s to be done, then?” asked he, in deep embarrassment.

“The first step is to ascertain what is fact, – the real extent of the misfortune.”

“And how is that to be accomplished?” asked he.

“Can you not think of some means?” said she, with a scarcely perceptible approach to a smile.

“No, by Jove! that I cannot, except by going over there one’s self.”

“And why not that?” asked she, more boldly, while she fixed her large full eyes directly upon him.