Merrick

“ I think there was just one shadow in Merrick's life. As I have already said, he had a lively imagination; he was romantic; he cherished an emotional regard for women and his favourite pursuit was the reading of love stories. He fell in love—in a humble and devotional way—with, I think, every attractive lady he saw. He, no doubt, pictured himself the hero of many a passionate incident. His bodily deformity had left unmarred the instincts and feelings of his years. ”

“ I gave you the name I assumed when I left England. No such person as Mercy Merrick is known to the matron. No such person is known to Mr. Holmcroft. He saw me at the French cottage while you were senseless on the bed. I had my gray cloak on; neither he nor any of them saw me in my nurse’s dress. Inquiries have been made about me on the Continent—and (I happen to know from the person who made them) with no result. I am safe in your place; I am known by your name. I am Grace Roseberry; and you are Mercy Merrick. ”

“ I found Merrick, as I have said, remarkably intelligent. He had learnt to read and had become a most voracious reader. I think he had been taught when he was in hospital with his diseased hip. His range of books was limited. The Bible and Prayer Book he knew intimately, but he had subsisted for the most part upon newspapers, or rather upon such fragments of old journals as he had chanced to pick up. He had read a few stories and some elementary lesson books, but the delight of his life was a romance, especially a love romance. ”

“ He’s so clever and advanced, and everything that’s dreadful—just like yourself, Herminia. But then he’s also very well connected. That’s always something, especially when one’s an oddity. You wouldn’t go down one bit yourself, dear, if you weren’t a dean’s daughter. The shadow of a cathedral steeple covers a multitude of sins. Mr Merrick’s the son of the famous London gout doctor—you must know his name—all the royal dukes flock to him. He’s a barrister himself, and in excellent practice. You might do worse, do you know, than to go in for Alan Merrick. ”

“ Merrick’s love-letters, written in 1839, alluding to a remark of mine on the absurdity of a “young thing like me” being companionable for a man of thirty years, he says: “Is it not ‘ridiculously absurd’ for a young lady who talks seriously of moving an island in the lake of Windermere to suppose she is not old enough to marry anybody? I have been reared in the cold North where mind and person come to maturity slowly; you in the sunny South where the flower bursts at once into full luxuriance and beauty.” ”

“ The association of a silver-fitted dressing-bag with the poor wretch wrapped up in a dirty blanket in an empty shop was hard to comprehend. I fathomed the mystery in time, for Merrick made little secret of the fancies that haunted his boyish brain. Just as a small girl with a tinsel coronet and a window curtain for a train will realize the conception of a countess on her way to court, so27 Merrick loved to imagine himself a dandy and a young man about town. ”

“ But, at least, I can claim for these short stories of Mr. Leonard Merrick, that each, by its perfection of form and the sincerity of its making, takes rank as a work of art. In none is there a word too little or a word too much. ”

“ Merrick, selecting, after a hesitation in the choice, a cake from the plate she handed him. “Once you have seen an ugly fact you turn your back upon it.”
“What better thing can one do with an ugly fact? What claim has truth or logic upon anybody in a world of atoms and their concussions? The only thing to do is to make oneself comfortable—with tea or mysticism as the case may be.”
Mr. Merrick received this flippancy with calm, convinced of an essential chime under superficial janglings. “You are, I am glad to say, Felicia, a woman who can think.” ”

“ Inevitably during those days the foreman found himself studying the project upon which Merrick had staked his reputation. As an engineer he took off his hat to the efficiency with which his chief got results. Merrick was a driver, but he was more than that. He had the fighting spirit that lifts from defeat to victory. Good engineers had said it was not feasible to water the Flat Tops by means of ditches carrying water from the [100] drainage area above. Justin Merrick had not accepted their verdict. ”

“ A dowser.
Merrick:
Where's he gone?
Warp:
A dowser! say a tramping conjurer.
You'll believe aught, if you believe a dowser.
Sollers:
I had it in me to be doubting him.
Merrick:
The noise you made was like that! But I knew
You'ld laugh at me, so sure you were the world
Would shiver like a bursting grindlestone:
Else I'ld have said out loud, 'twas a fool's whimsy.
Vine:
Where are you now? What am I now to think?
Your minds run round in puzzles, like chased hares.
I cannot sight them.
Merrick:
Think of going to bed. ”

“ Don’t you ever sympathize with any one that’s in hard luck?” she cried out, her cheeks glowing with a suffusion of underlying crimson.
“Not when he lies down under it.”
She flashed at him a look resentful of his complacency. It held, too, for the first time a critical doubt. There was plenty to like about Justin Merrick, and perhaps there was more to admire. He got things done because he was so virile, so dominant. To look at the lines and movements of his sturdy body, at the close-lipped mouth and resolute eyes, was to know him a leader of men. ”

“ Yet it was with my father’s full consent, even by his advice, that at fifteen years of age I married Edwin Thomas Merrick, for he thought I could not enter too soon upon woman’s exclusive path, and be marching along towards woman’s kingdom with a companion in the prime of a noble manhood. ”

“ Merrick received none.
What was he to do when he reached London? He had not a friend in the world. He knew no more of London than he knew of Pekin. How could he find a lodging, or what lodging-house keeper would dream of taking him in? All he11 wanted was to hide. What most he dreaded were the open street and the gaze of his fellow-men. If even he crept into a cellar the horrid eyes and the still more dreaded whispers would follow him to its depths. Was there ever such a homecoming!
At Liverpool Street he was rescued from the crowd by the police and taken into the third-class waiting-room. ”

“ Then he rode off to Starby and rejoined her in London."
"But why should she conceal his movements?"
"Because he knows too much about the crime," said Merrick decisively. "Either she did it herself and is afraid of his speaking, or he did it and she wishes to screen him."
"Why should she wish to screen a man who killed her lover?"
"I can't answer all questions," said Merrick irritably, finding himself at a loss; "all this is pure theory, but I think it is so. I am certain there is an understanding between Rose and Strent. ”

“ Isham, calmly.
"Why John Merrick! John Merrick, of Portland, Oregon."
"And who is John Merrick?" asked the lady.
"One of the richest men in the world, and the best client our house has. Isn't he a queer looking fellow? And dresses like a tramp. But he's worth from eighty to ninety millions, at least, and controls most of the canning and tin-plate industries of America. I wonder what brought him into this neighborhood?"
Louise drew back from the window, pale and trembling. Then she caught up a shawl and rushed from the room. Uncle John must be overtaken and brought back, at all hazards. ”

“ Merrick to meet Captain Carg, who would prefer, I am sure, to discuss so delicate a matter as my arrest with a man. Not that he is ungallant, but with a man such as Mr. Merrick he would be more at his ease. Carg is a sailor, rather blunt and rugged, both in speech and demeanor, but wholly devoted to me because I am at present the Jones of Sangoa. ”

“ Leonard Merrick has the inimitable gift of inducing his readers to experience the emotions he portrays. The zest of adventure grips you, as it grips the hero of Conrad in Quest of his Youth, perhaps the greatest of his triumphs. We share with that perfect lover his mellow regrets and his anticipatory ardours; we wait in tremulous expectancy outside the little restaurant in Soho for his delightful Lady Parlington, falling, with him-from light-hearted confidence to sickening uncertainty as time wears on and still she does not come. The same emotional buoyancy stirs in all his work ”

“ Mrs. Merrick was also puzzled as to what could possibly detain them any longer in London. At last the Canadian post arrived, and with it large documents and letters which had been sent from England to Canada and were now returned, informing Mrs. Merrick that a certain W. Merrick Stephens had died, leaving a large fortune, and that half of this estate was bequeathed to Mrs. Merrick in Canada, whose maiden name had been Emma Caldwell, or, in case of her death, to her heirs. Young Mr. Merrick being at this time a well-known young lawyer in Montreal it was not hard to find him. ”

“ Merrick, tolerantly indifferent to his defiant infidelity; he would have cheerfully waived the relationship of parson for that of mere neighbour; and he did not ask Mr. Merrick to listen to his sermons; he knew that they were poor; he counted for more as man than as parson; but the personality of this recalcitrant, wandering sheep, his vanity and patronizing superiority of manner made even a neighbourly tolerance difficult. It was with an impersonal courtesy that he bowed to Mr. Merrick’s daughter as he rode by.
Soon after Felicia went in to give her father his tea. ”

“ Once the master compelled me to write a composition, and when he read it he laughed and said, "The ideas are good, Merrick, but it needs a Philadelphia lawyer to connect them."
I would as soon fight as eat and was ready to hammer any boy of my size who had broken up a bird's nest, and was ready to protect the girls to the limit of my strength and ability. ”

“ Ingraham, Merrick's mother, while a prisoner in Concord Jail. A few years later Merrick was himself captured twice on his way to and from Holland and France, whither he went as secretary or attaché to our commissioner, John Adams. The first time he was taken to London; the second time to Halifax, [Pg 68] where, as it happened, Sir Archibald was then in command as Governor of Nova Scotia. Young Merrick went presently to the governor's quarters, but was refused admission by the sentinel,—while parleying with whom, Sir Archibald heard the conversation, and came forward. ”

“ Possession of money had never altered John Merrick's native simplicity. He had no extravagant tastes, dressed quietly and lived the life of the people. On this eventful morning the man of millions took a cross-town car to the elevated station and climbed the stairs to his train. ”

“ Jimmy Merrick hugged tightly the manuscripts of two great, unacted tragedies.
“Our sorrow is the same,” he said. “But for that very degeneracy of taste, a brass bed and not an iron bench would receive me to-night. The efforts of schoolboys are flaunted in electric letters, while men of parts stand in the bread line. ”

“ Merrick, whose enormous income permitted him to indulge in many benevolences. None gave ostentatiously, for they were simple, kindly folk who gave for the pure joy of giving and begrudged all knowledge of their acts to anyone outside their own little circle. ”

“ Young Merrick regarded him with wide eyes.
“The parallel in our cases,” he cried, “is strikingly similar. They want me again on the newspaper, but I must come back to a life of jests minus my tragedies—as an evidence of faith. It is argued that they interfere with good stories—as Mark and Miranda, Monsieur, might interfere with good rolls. The city-editor is a man devoid of soul. ”

“ Forty-one of his kinsmen, amply avenged his death by taking an active part in the war in the New England and other States. From such ancestry one could but suppose Mrs. Merrick to have inherited good physical and mental strength and great power of endurance. ”

“ Better a thousand times die at the post of duty than marry Mercy Merrick.
“As I have written the creature’s name, I may add—so as to have all the sooner done with the subject—that I shall look with anxiety for your next letter. Do not suppose that I feel the smallest curiosity about this degraded and designing woman. My interest in her is purely religious. To persons of my devout turn of mind she is an awful warning. When I feel Satan near me—it will be such a means of grace to think of Mercy Merrick!
“Poor Lady Janet! ”

“ Our taste of pleasure then is o'er,
The feathered songsters are no more;
And when they drop and we decay,
Adieu the birks of Invermay!
JAMES MERRICK. Merrick was a clergyman, as well as a writer of verse. He was born in 1720, and became a Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, where Lord North was one of his pupils. He took orders, but owing to incessant pains in the head, could not perform duty. He died in 1769. His works are a translation of Tryphiodorus, done at twenty, a version of the Psalms, a collection of Hymns, and a few miscellaneous pieces, one good specimen of which we subjoin. ”

“ Here, on the following Saturday afternoon I found him awaiting me in a pleasant setting of books and prints and faded parental furniture.
We dined late, and smoked and talked afterward in his book-walled study till the terrier on the hearth-rug stood up and yawned for bed. When we took the hint and moved toward the staircase I felt, not that I had found the old Merrick again, but that I was on his track, had come across traces of his passage here and there in the thick jungle that had grown up between us. But I had a feeling that when I finally came on the man himself he might be dead.... ”