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

“Yes, – of course, – I mean, who’s in Paris?”

“There are, I believe, about forty-odd thousand of our countrymen and countrywomen,” said the other, half contemptuously.

“Oh, I’ve no doubt; but my question took narrower bounds. I meant, who of our set, – who of us?”

Martin turned round, and fixing his eyes on him, scanned him from head to foot with a gaze of such intense insolence as no words could have equalled. For a while the Jew bore it admirably; but these efforts, after all, are only like the brief intervals a man can live under water, and where the initiated beats the inexperienced only by a matter of seconds. As Martin continued his stare, Merl’s cheek tingled, grew red, and finally his whole face and forehead became scarlet.

With an instinct like that of a surgeon who feels he has gone deep enough with his knife, Martin resumed his walk along the room without uttering a word.

Merl opened the newspaper, and affected to read; his hand, however, trembled, and his eyes wandered listlessly over the columns, and then furtively were turned towards Martin as he paced the chamber in silence.

“Do you think you can manage that little matter for me, Captain?” said he at last, and in a voice attuned to its very humblest key.

“What little matter? Those two bills do you mean?” said Martin, suddenly.

“Not at all. I ‘m not the least pressed for cash. I alluded to the Club; you promised you ‘d put me up, and get one of your popular friends to second me.”

“I remember,” said Martin, evidently relieved from a momentary terror. “Lord Claude Willoughby or Sir Spencer Cavendish would be the men if we could find them.”

“Lord Claude, I perceive, is here; the paper mentions his name in the dinner company at the Embassy yesterday.”

“Do you know him?” asked Martin, with an air of innocence that Merl well comprehended as insult.

“No. We ‘ve met, – I think we ‘ve played together; I remember once at Baden – ”

“Lord Claude Willoughby, sir,” said a servant, entering with a card, “desires to know if you ‘re at home?”

“And won’t be denied if you are not,” said his Lordship, entering at the same instant, and saluting Martin with great cordiality.

The French have invented a slang word for a quality that deserves a more recognized epithet, and by the expression chic have designated a certain property by which objects assert their undoubted superiority over all their counterfeits. Thus, your coat from Nugee’s, your carriage from Leader’s, your bracelet from Storr’s, and your bonnet from Madame Palmyre, have all their own peculiar chic , or, in other words, possess a certain invisible, indescribable essence that stamps them as the best of their kind, with an excellence unattainable by imitation, and a charm all their own!

Of all the products in which this magical property insinuates itself, there is not one to which it contributes so much as the man of fashion. He is the very type of chic . To describe him you are driven to a catalogue of negatives, and you only arrive at anything like a resemblance by an enumeration of the different things he is not.

The gentleman who presented himself to Martin at the close of our last chapter was in many respects a good specimen of his order. He had entered the room, believing Martin to be there alone; but no sooner had he perceived another, and that other one not known to him, than all the buoyant gayety of his manner was suddenly toned down into a quiet seriousness; while, taking his friend’s arm, he said in a low voice, – “If you ‘re busy, my dear Martin, don’t hesitate for a moment about sending me off; I had not the slightest suspicion there was any one with you.”

“Nor is there,” said Martin, with a supercilious glance at Merl, who was endeavoring in a dozen unsuccessful ways to seem unaware of the new arrival’s presence.

“I want to introduce him to you,” said Martin.

“No, no, my dear friend, on no account.”

“I must; there’s no help for it,” said Martin, impatiently, while he whispered something eagerly in the other’s ear.

“Well, then, some other day; another time – ”

“Here and now, Claude,” said Martin, peremptorily; while, without waiting for reply, he said aloud, “Merl, I wish to present you to Lord Claude Willoughby, – Lord Claude, Mr. Herman Merl.”

Merl bowed and smirked and writhed as his Lordship, with a bland smile and a very slight bow, acknowledged the presentation.

“Had the pleasure of meeting your Lordship at Baden two summers ago,” said the Jew, with an air meant to be the ideal of fashionable ease.

“I was at Baden at the time you mention,” said he, coldly.

“I used to watch your Lordship’s game with great attention; you won heavily, I think?”

“I don’t remember, just now,” said he, carelessly; not, indeed, that such was the fact, or that he desired it should be thought so; he only wished to mark his sense of what he deemed an impertinence.

“The man who can win at rouge-et-noir can do anything, in my opinion,” said Merl.

“What odds are you taking on Rufus?” said Martin to Willoughby, and without paying the slightest attention to Merl’s remark.

“Eleven to one; but I’ll not take it again. Hecuba is rising hourly, and some say she ‘ll be the favorite yet.”

“Is Rufus your Lordship’s horse?” said the Jew, insinuatingly.

Willoughby bowed, and continued to write in his note-book.

“And you said the betting was eleven to one on the field, my Lord?”

“It ought to be fourteen to one, at least.”

“I ‘ll give you fourteen to one, my Lord, just for the sake of a little interest in the race.”

Willoughby ceased writing, and looked at him steadfastly for a second or two. “I have not said that the odds were fourteen to one.”

“I understand you perfectly, my Lord; you merely thought that they would be, or, at least, ought to be.”

“Merl wants a bet with you, in fact,” said Martin, as he applied alight to his meerschaum; “and if you won’t have him, I will.”

“What shall it be, sir,” said Lord Claude, pencil in hand; “in ponies – fifties?”

“Oh, ponies, my Lord. I only meant it, just as I said, to give me something to care for in the race.”

“Will you put him up at the ‘Cercle’ after that?” whispered Martin, with a look of sly malice.

“I’ll tell you when the match is over,” said Willoughby, laughing; “but if I won’t, here ‘s one that will. That’s a neat phaeton of Cavendish’s.” And at the same instant Martin opened the window, and made a signal with his handkerchief.

“That’s the thing for you , Merl,” said Martin, pointing down to a splendid pair of dark chestnuts harnessed to a handsome phaeton. “It’s worth five hundred pounds to any fellow starting an equipage to chance upon one of Cavendish’s. He has not only such consummate taste in carriage and harness, but he makes his nags perfection.”

“He drives very neatly,” said Willoughby.

“What was it he gave for that near-side horse? – a thousand pounds, I think.”

“Twelve hundred and fifty, and refused a hundred for my bargain,” said a very diminutive, shrewd-looking man of about five-and-thirty, who entered the room with great affectation of juvenility. “I bought him for a cab, never expecting to ‘see his like again,’ as Shakspeare says.”

“And you offered the whole concern yesterday to Damre-mont for fifty thousand francs?”

“No, Harry, that’s a mistake. I said I ‘d play him a match at piquet, whether he gave seventy thousand for the equipage or nothing. It was he that proposed fifty thousand. Mine was a handsome offer, I think.”