第124章

He had never seen Martin, but Martin had seen him, and recognised him, now that they stood face to face, as the gentleman who had stuck his hands in his pockets towards the end of the voyage, and walked the deck with his nostrils dilated.

Everybody looked at Martin. There was no help for it. The truth must out.

`I came over in the same ship as the general,' said Martin, `but not in the same cabin. It being necessary for me to observe strict economy, I took my passage in the steerage.'

If the general had been carried up bodily to a loaded cannon, and required to let it off that moment, he could not have been in a state of greater consternation than when he heard these words. He, Fladdock, Fladdock in full militia uniform, Fladdock the General, Fladdock, the caressed of foreign noblemen, expected to know a fellow who had come over in the steerage of line-of-packet ship, at the cost of four pound ten! And meeting that fellow in the very sanctuary of New York fashion, and nestling in the bosom of the New York aristocracy! He almost laid his hand upon his sword.

A death-like stillness fell upon the Norisses. If this story should get wind, their country relation had, by his imprudence, for ever disgraced them. They were the bright particular stars of an exalted New York sphere.

There were other fashionable spheres above them, and other fashionable spheres below, and none of the stars in any one of these spheres had anything to say to the stars in any other of these spheres. But, through all the spheres it would go forth that the Norrises, deceived by gentlemanly manners and appearances, had, falling from their high estate, `received' a dollarless and unknown man. O guardian eagle of the pure Republic, had they lived for this!

`You will allow me,' said Martin, after a terrible silence, `to take my leave. I feel that I am the cause of at least as much embarrassment here, as I have brought upon myself. But I am bound, before I go, to exonerate this gentleman, who, in introducing me to such society, was quite ignorant of my unworthiness, I assure you.'

With that he made his bow to the Norrises, and walked out like a man of snow: very cool externally, but pretty hot within.

`Come, come,' said Mr. Norris the father, looking with a pale face on the assembled circle as Martin closed the door, `the young man has this night beheld a refinement of social manner, and an easy magnificence of social decoration, to which he is a stranger in his own country. Let us hope it may awake a moral sense within him.'

If that peculiarly transatlantic article, a moral sense, -- for if native statesmen, orators, and pamphleteers, are to be believed, America quite monopolises the commodity, -- if that peculiarly transatlantic article be supposed to include a benevolent love of all mankind, certainly Martin's would have borne, just then, a deal of waking. As he strode along the street, with Mark at his heels, his immoral sense was in active operation; prompting him to the utterance of some rather sanguinary remarks, which it was well for his own credit that nobody overheard. He had so far cooled down however, that he had begun to laugh at the recollection of these incidents, when he heard another step behind him, and turning round encountered his friend Bevan, quite out of breath.

He drew his arm through Martin's, and entreating him to walk slowly, was silent for some minutes. At length he said:

`I hope you exonerate me in another sense?'

`How do you mean?' asked Martin.

`I hope you acquit me of intending or foreseeing the termination of our visit. But I scarcely need ask you that.'

`Scarcely indeed,' said Martin. `I am the more beholden to you for your kindness, when I find what kind of stuff the good citizens here are made of.'

`I reckon,' his friend returned, `that they are made of pretty much the same stuff as other folks, if they would but own it, and not set up on false pretences.'

`In good faith, that's true,' said Martin.

`I dare say,' resumed his friend, `you might have such a scene as that in an English comedy, and not detect any gross improbability or anomaly in the matter of it?'

`Yes, indeed!'

`Doubtless it is more ridiculous here than anywhere else,' said his companion; `but our professions are to blame for that. So far as I myself am concerned, I may add that I was perfectly aware from the first that you came over in the steerage, for I had seen the list of passengers, and knew it did not comprise your name.'

`I feel more obliged to you than before,' said Martin.

`Norris is a very good fellow in his way,' observed Mr. Bevan.

`Is he?' said Martin drily.

`Oh yes! there are a hundred good points about him. If you or anybody else addressed him as another order of being, and sued to him in forma pauperis, he would be all kindness and consideration.'

`I needn't have travelled three thousand miles from home to find such a character as that,' said Martin. Neither he nor his friend said anything more on the way back; each appearing to find sufficient occupation in his own thoughts.

The tea, or the supper, or whatever else they called the evening meal, was over when they reached the Major's; but the cloth, ornamented with a few additional smears and stains, was still upon the table. At one end of the board Mrs. Jefferson Brick and two other ladies were drinking tea; out of the ordinary course, evidently, for they were bonneted and shawled, and seemed to have just come home. By the light of three flaring candles of different lengths, in as many candlesticks of different patterns, the room showed to almost as little advantage as in broad day.

These ladies were all three talking together in a very loud tone when Martin and his friend entered; but seeing those gentlemen, they stopped directly, and became excessively genteel, not to say frosty. As they went on to exchange some few remarks in whispers, the very water in the tea-pot might have fallen twenty degrees in temperature beneath their chilling coldness.