"Pay me, Sir, pay me, and let me go!" he exclaimed.
Disgusted by his irritable perversity, I drew out my cheque-book.
"Certainly, if you prefer it. But first let me see what I owe you."
I took a slip of paper and made my calculations; then went to an iron safe, drew out a cash-box and gave him the money.
"There," said I, "is the discharge of your proper claims. But I owe you something for the interest you have taken in me and the hearty industry you have employed on my behalf. This will perhaps make my gratitude more significant than were I to express it in words only."
And I handed a bank note for twenty pounds.
He took, folded, and put it in his pocket.
"I am obliged to you, Sir," he said, with a low bow, "but in taking it, it is 'my poverty, but not my will, consents.'"
"Shall my servant carry your portmanteau?"
"Thank you, no; it is not heavy. I can carry it myself."
"The phaeton is at your service, if you wish to drive to Cornpool."
I held out my hand, but pretending not to notice the action he gave me another low bow and left the room. In less than twenty minutes I saw him walk, portmanteau in hand, down the front garden.
Thus ended my connection with this singular little man.
Had I had nothing else to do but to read and muse I should have greatly missed Martelli. As it was, I felt his absence on the evening that followed his departure. I missed his dark face, his glowing eye, his rapid speech, his tart questions. His arm-chair looked very empty without him. My supper too was somewhat tasteless, wanting the sharp condiment of his tongue and gestures. But how should I feel his absence very sensibly with Mrs. Fraser to comfort me? I only wonder I felt it at all. Our parting had not been calculated to sharpen regret. I had no notion he was such a passionate man. There was no doubt he had been insulting. But what in the world could have provoked such an outbreak? He would have had me believe it was my resolution to marry Mrs. Fraser that angered him. But what was Mrs. Fraser to him? Was he a monomaniac--mad on the subject of women? We know that there are people born with antipathies which nothing can shake. Lady Heneage would faint at the sight of a rose; the Marquis de la Rochejacquelin would turn white with fear before a squirrel; and I have read in some author of a man whose antipathy to old women was such, that once when his friends, by way of joke, introduced an elderly female into his presence, he fell in a fit and died. I do not say that I quite believed this to be Martelli's disease: but I was strongly disposed to think that he had some eccentric aversion to living in a house where there was a mistress.