CHAPTER XVII. AT THE COTTAGE
What a calm, still, mellow evening it was, as Tony sat with his mother in the doorway of the cottage, their hands clasped, and in silence, each very full of thought, indeed, but still fuller of that sweet luxury, the sense of being together after an absence, – the feeling that home was once more home, in all that can make it a centre of love and affection.
“I began to think you were n’t coming back at all, Tony,” said she, “when first you said Tuesday, and then it was Friday, and then it came to be the middle of another week. ‘Ah me!’ said I to the doctor, ‘he ‘ll not like the little cottage down amongst the tall ferns and the heather, after all that grand town and its fine people.’”
“If you knew how glad I am to be back here,” said he, with a something like choking about the throat; “if you knew what a different happiness I feel under this old porch, and with you beside me!”
“My dear, dear Tony, let us hope we are to have many such evenings as this together. Let me now hear all about your journey; for, as yet, you have only told me about that good-hearted country fellow whose bundle has been lost Begin at the beginning, and try and remember everything.”
“Here goes, then, for a regular report. See, mother, you ‘d not believe it of me, but I jotted all down in a memorandum-book, so that there’s no trusting to bad memory; all’s in black and white.”
“That was prudent, Tony. I ‘m really glad that you have such forethought. Let me see it.”
“No, no. It’s clean and clear beyond your reading. I shall be lucky enough if I can decipher it myself. Here we begin: ‘Albion, Liverpool. Capital breakfast, but dear. Wanted change for my crown-piece, but chaffed out of it by pretty barmaid, who said – ’ Oh, that’s all stuff and nonsense,” said he, reddening. “‘Mail-train to London; not allowed to smoke first-class; travelled third, and had my ‘baccy.’ I need n’t read all this balderdash, mother; I ‘ll go on to business matters. ‘Skeffy, a trump, told me where he buys “birdseye” for one and nine the pound; and, mixed with cavendish, it makes grand smoking. Skeffy says he ‘ll get me the first thing vacant’”
“Who is Skeffy? I never heard of him before.”
“Of course you ‘ve heard. He’s private secretary to Sir Harry, and gives away all the Office patronage. I don’t think he ‘s five feet five high, but he ‘s made like a Hercules. Tom Sayers says Skeffy’s deltoid – that’s the muscle up here – is finer than any in the ring, and he’s such an active devil. I must tell you of the day I held up the ‘Times’ for him to jump through; but I see you are impatient for the serious things: well, now for it.
“Sir Harry, cruel enough, in a grand sort of overbearing way, told me my father was called Watty. I don’t believe it; at least, the fellow who took the liberty must have earned the right by a long apprenticeship.”
“You are right there, Tony; there were not many would venture on it.”
“Did any one ever call him Wat Tartar, mother?”
“If they had, they ‘d have caught one, Tony, I promise you.”
“I thought so. Well, he went on to say that he had nothing he could give me. It was to the purport that I was fit for nothing, and I agreed with him.”
“That was not just prudent, Tony; the world is prone enough to disparage without helping them to the road to it.”
“Possibly; but he read me like a book, and said that I only came to him because I was hopeless. He asked me if I knew a score of things he was well aware that I must be ignorant of, and groaned every time I said ‘No!’ When he said, ‘Go home and brush up your French and Italian,’ I felt as if he said, ‘Look over your rent roll, and thin your young timber.’ He ‘s a humbug, mother.”
“Oh, Tony, you must not say that.”
“I will say it; he’s a humbug, and so is the other.”
“Who is the other you speak of?”
“Lord Ledgerton, a smartish old fellow, with a pair of gray eyes that look through you, and a mouth that you can’t guess whether he’s going to eat you up or to quiz you. It was he that said, ‘Make Butler a messenger.’ They did n’t like it. The Office fellows looked as sulky as night; but they had to bow and snigger, and say, ‘Certainly, my Lord;’ but I know what they intend, for all that. They mean to pluck me; that’s the way they ‘ll do it; for when I said I was nothing to boast of in English, and something worse in French, they grinned and exchanged smiles, as much as to say, ‘There’s a rasper he ‘ll never get over.’”
“And what is a messenger, Tony?”
“He’s a fellow that carries the despatches over the whole world, – at least, wherever there is civilization enough to have a Minister or an Envoy. He starts off from Downing Street with half-a-dozen great bags as tall as me, and he drops one at Paris, another at Munich, another at Turin, and perhaps the next at Timbuctoo. He goes full speed, – regular steeple-chase pace, – and punches the head of the first postmaster that delays him; and as he is well paid, and has nothing to think of but the road, the life is n’t such a bad one.”
“And does it lead to anything; is there any promotion from it?”
“Not that I know, except to a pension; but who wants anything better? Who asks for a jollier life than rattling over Europe in all directions at the Queen’s expense? Once on a time they were all snobs, or the same thing; now they are regular swells, who dine with the Minister, and walk into the attachés at billiards or blind hookey; for the dons saw it was a grand thing to keep the line for younger sons, and have a career where learning might be left out, and brains were only a burden!”
“I never heard of such a line of life,” said she, gravely.
“I had it from the fellows themselves. There were five of them in the waiting-room, tossing for sovereigns, and cursing the first clerk, whoever he is; and they told me they ‘d not change with the first secretaries of any legation in Europe. But who is this, mother, that I see coming down the hill? – he ‘s no acquaintance of ours, I think?”
“Oh, it’s Mr. Maitland, Tony,” said she, in some confusion; for she was not always sure in what temper Tony would receive a stranger.
“And who may Mr. Maitland be?”
“A very charming and a very kind person, too, whose acquaintance I made since you left this; he brought me books and flowers, and some geranium slips; and, better than all, his own genial company.”
“He’s not much of a sportsman, I see; that short gun he carries is more like a walking-stick than a fowling-piece.” And Tony turned his gaze seaward, as though the stranger was not worth a further scrutiny.
“They told me I should find you here, madam,” said Maitland, as he came forward, with his hat raised, and a pleasant smile on his face.
“My son, sir,” said the old lady, proudly, – “my son Tony, of whom I have talked to you.”
“I shall be charmed if Mr. Butler will allow me to take that place in his acquaintance which a sincere interest in him gives me some claim to,” said Maitland, approaching Tony, intending to shake his hand, but too cautious to risk a repulse, if it should be meditated.
Tony drew himself up haughtily, and said, “I am much honored, sir; but I don’t see any reason for such an interest in me.”
“Oh, Tony,” broke in the widow; but Maitland interrupted, and said: “It’s easy enough to explain. Your mother and myself have grown, in talking over a number of common friends, to fancy that we knew each other long ago. It was, I assure you, a very fascinating delusion for me. I learned to recall some of the most cherished of my early friends, and remember traits in them which had been the delight of my childhood. Pray forgive me, then, if in such a company your figure got mixed up, and I thought or fancied that I knew you.”
There was a rapid eagerness in the manner he said these words that seemed to vouch for their sincerity; but their only immediate effect was to make Tony very ill at ease and awkward.
“Mr. Maitland has not told you, as he might have told you, Tony, that he came here with the offer of a substantial service. He had heard that you were in search of some pursuit or occupation.”
“Pray, madam, I entreat of you to say nothing of this now; wait, at least, until Mr. Butler and I shall know more of each other.”
“A strange sort of a piece you have there,” said Tony, in his confusion; for his cheek was scarlet with shame, – “something between an old duelling-pistol and a carbine.”
“It ‘s a short Tyrol rifle, a peasant’s weapon. It ‘s not a very comely piece of ordnance, but it is very true and easy to carry. I bought it from an old chamois-hunter at Maltz; and I carried it with me this morning with the hope that you would accept it.”
“Oh, I couldn’t think of it; I beg you to excuse me. I ‘m much obliged; in fact, I never do – never did – take a present.”
“That’s true, sir. Tony and I bear our narrow means only because there’s a sort of ragged independence in our natures that saves us from craving for whatever we can do without.”
“A pretty wide catalogue, too, I assure you,” said Tony, laughing, and at once recovering his wonted good-humor. “We have made what the officials call the extraordinaires fill a very small column. There!” cried he, suddenly, “is the sea-gull on that point of rock yonder out of range for your rifle?”
“Nothing near it. Will you try?” asked Maitland, offering the gun.
“I ‘d rather see you.”
“I ‘m something out of practice latterly. I have been leading a town life,” said Maitland, as he drew a small eyeglass from his pocket and fixed it in his eye. “Is it that fellow there you mean? There’s a far better shot to the left, – that large diver that is sitting so calmly on the rolling sea. There he is again.”
“He ‘s gone now, – he has dived,” said Tony; “there’s nothing harder to hit than one of these birds, – what between the motion of the sea and their own wariness. Some people say that they scent gunpowder.”
“That fellow shall!” said Maitland, as he fired; for just as the bird emerged from the depth, he sighted him, and with one flutter the creature fell dead on the wave.
“A splendid shot; I never saw a finer!” cried Tony, in ecstasy, and with a look of honest admiration at the marksman. “I’d have bet ten – ay, twenty – to one you ‘d have missed. I ‘m not sure I ‘d not wager against your doing the same trick again.”
“You ‘d lose your money, then,” said Maitland; “at least, if I was rogue enough to take you up.”
“You must be one of the best shots in Europe, then!”
“No; they call me second in the Tyrol. Hans Godrel is the first We have had many matches together, and he has always beaten me.”
The presence of a royal prince would not have inspired Tony with the same amount of respect as these few words, uttered negligently and carelessly; and he measured the speaker from head to foot, recognizing for the first time his lithe and well-knit, well-proportioned figure.
“I ‘ll be bound you are a horseman, too?” cried Tony.
“If you hadn’t praised my shooting, I ‘d tell you that I ride better than I shoot.”
“How I ‘d like to have a brush across country with you!” exclaimed Tony, warmly.
“What easier? – what so easy? Our friend Sir Arthur has an excellent stable; at least, there is more than one mount for men of our weight I suspect Mark Lyle will not join us; but we ‘ll arrange a match, – a sort of home steeple-chase.”
“I ‘d like it well,” broke in Tony, “but I have no horses of my own, and I ‘ll not ride Sir Arthur’s.”
“This same independence of ours has a something about it that won’t let us seem very amiable, Mr. Maitland,” said the old lady, smiling.
“Pardon me, madam; it has an especial attraction for me. I have all my life long been a disciple of that school; but I must say that in the present case it is not applicable. I have been for the last couple of weeks a guest at Lyle Abbey; and if I were asked whose name came most often uppermost, and always in terms of praise, I should say – your son’s.”
“I have met with great kindness from Sir Arthur and his family,” said Tony, half sternly, half sorrowfully. “I am not likely ever to forget it.”
“You have not seen them since your return, I think?” said Maitland, carelessly.
“No, sir,” broke in the old lady; “my son has been so full of his travels, and all the great people he met, that we have not got through more than half of his adventures. Indeed, when you came up he was just telling me of an audience he had with a Cabinet Minister – ”
“Pooh, pooh, mother! Don’t bore Mr. Maitland with these personal details.”
“I know it is the privilege of friendship to listen to these,” said Maitland, “and I am sincerely sorry that I have not such a claim.”
“Well, sir, you ought to have that claim, were it only in consideration of your own kind offer to Tony.”
“Oh, pray, madam, do not speak of it,” said Maitland, with something nearer confusion than so self-possessed a gentleman was likely to exhibit “When I spoke of such a project, I was in utter ignorance that Mr. Butler was as much a man of the world as myself, and far and away beyond the reach of any guidance of mine.”
“What, then, were your intentions regarding me?” asked Tony, in some curiosity.
“I entreat of you, madam,” said Maitland, eagerly, “to forget all that we said on that subject.”
“I cannot be so ungrateful, sir. It is but fair and just that Tony should hear of your generous plan. Mr. Maitland thought he ‘d just take you abroad – to travel with him – to go about and see the world. He ‘d call you his secretary.”
“His what!” exclaimed Tony, with a burst of laughter. “His what, mother?”
“Let me try and explain away, if I can, the presumption of such a project. Not now, however,” said Maitland, look-ing at his watch, “for I have already overstayed my time; and I have an appointment for this evening, – without you will kindly give me your company for half a mile up the road, and we can talk the matter over together.”
Tony looked hesitatingly for a moment at bis mother; but she said, “To be sure, Tony. I ‘ll give Mr. Maitland a loan of you for half an hour. Go with him, by all means.”
With all that courtesy of which he was a master, Maitland thanked her for the sacrifice she was making, and took his leave.
“You have no objection to walk fast, I hope,” said Maitland; “for I find I am a little behind my time.”
Tony assented with a nod, and they stepped out briskly; the device of the speed being merely assumed to give Maitland an opportunity of seeing a little more of his companion before entering upon any serious converse. Tony, however, was as impenetrable in his simplicity as some others are in their depth; and after two or three attempts to draw him on to talk of commonplaces, Maitland said abruptly: “You must have thought it a great impertinence on my part to make such a proposal to your mother as she has just told you of; but the fact was, I had no other way of approaching a very difficult subject, and opening a question which to her, certainly, I could not explain myself fully upon. I heard a good deal about you up at the Abbey, and all that I heard confirmed me in the notion that you were just the man for an enterprise in which I am myself deeply interested. However, as I well knew, even if I succeeded in inducing you to become my comrade, it would be necessary to have a sort of narrative which would conceal the project from your mother, it occurred to me to get up this silly idea of a secretaryship, which I own freely may have offended you.”
“Not offended; it only amused me,” said Tony, good-humoredly. “I can’t imagine a man less fitted for such an office than myself.”
“I ‘m not so sure of that,” said Maitland, “though I’m quite certain it would be a very unprofitable use to make of you. You are, like myself, a man of action; one to execute and do, and not merely to note and record. The fellows who write history very seldom make it, – isn’t that true?”
“I don’t know. I can only say I don’t think I ‘m very likely to do one or the other.”
“We shall see that I don’t concur in the opinion, but we shall see. It would be rather a tedious process to explain myself fully as to my project, but I ‘ll give you two or three little volumes.”
“No, no; don’t give me anything to read; if you want me to understand you, tell it out plainly, whatever it is.”
“Here goes, then, and it is not my fault if you don’t fully comprehend me; but mind, what I am about to reveal to you is strictly on honor, and never to be divulged to any one. I have your word for this?” They pressed hands, and he continued: “There is a government on the Continent so undermined by secret treachery that it can no longer rely upon its own arms for defence, but is driven to enlist in its cause the brave and adventurous spirits of other countries, – men who, averse to ignoble callings or monotonous labor, would rather risk life than reduce it to the mere condition of daily drudgery. To this government, which in principle has all my sympathies, I have devoted all that I have of fortune, hope, or personal energy. I have, in a word, thrown my whole future into its cause. I have its confidence in return; and I am enabled not only to offer a high career and a noble sphere of action, but all that the world calls great rewards, to those whom I may select to join me in its defence.”
“Is it France?” asked Tony; and Maitland had to bite his lip to repress a smile at such a question.
“No, it is not France,” said he, calmly; “for France, under any rule, I ‘d not shed one drop of my blood.”
“Nor I, neither!” cried Tony. “I hate Frenchmen; my father hated them, and taught me to do the same.”
“So far from enlisting you to serve France, it is more than probable that in the cause I speak of you ‘ll find yourself arrayed against Frenchmen.”
“All right; I ‘d do that with a heart and a half; but what is the State? Is it Austria? – is it Russia?”
“Neither. If you only give me to believe that you listen favorably to my plan, you shall hear everything; and I ‘ll tell you, besides, what I shall offer to you, personally, – the command of a company in an Irish regiment, with the certainty of rapid advancement, and ample means to supply yourself with all that your position requires. Is that sufficient?”
“Quite so, if I like the cause I ‘m to fight for.”
“I ‘ll engage to satisfy you on that head. You need but read the names of those of our own countrymen who adopt it, to be convinced that it is a high and a holy cause. I don’t suppose you have studied very deeply that great issue which our century is about to try, – the cause of order versus anarchy, – the right to rule of the good, the virtuous, and the enlightened, against the tyranny of the unlettered, the degraded, and the base.”
“I know nothing about it.”
“Well, I ‘ll tax your patience some day to listen to it all from me; for the present what say you to my plan?”
“I rather like it. If it had only come last week, I don’t think I could have refused it.”
“And why last week?”
“Because I have got a promise of an appointment since that”
“Of what nature, – a commission in the army?”
“No,” said he, shaking his head.
“They ‘re not going to make a clerk of a fellow like you, I trust?”
“They ‘d be sorely disappointed if they did.”
“Well, what are they going to do with you?”
“Oh, it’s nothing very high and mighty. I am to be what they call a Queen’s Messenger.”
“Under the Foreign Office?”
“Yes.”
“Not bad things these appointments, – that is to say, gentlemen hold them, and contrive to live on them. How they do so it’s not very easy to say; but the fact is there, and not to be questioned.”
This speech, a random shot as it was, hit the mark; and Maitland saw that Tony winced under it, and he went on.
“The worst is, however, that these things lead to nothing. If a man takes to the law, he dreams of the Great Seal, or, at least, of the bench. If he be a soldier, he is sure to scribble his name with ‘lieutenant-general’ before it. One always has an eye to the upper branches, whatever be the tree; but this messenger affair is a mere bush, which does not admit of climbing. Last of all, it would never do for you.”
“And why not do for me?” asked Tony, half fiercely.
“Simply because you could not reduce yourself to the mere level of a piece of mechanism, – a thing wound up at Downing Street, to go ‘down’ as it reached Vienna. To you life should present, with its changes of fortune, its variety, its adventures, and its rewards. Men like you confront dangers, but are always conquered by mere drudgery. Am I right?”
“Perhaps there is something in that.”
“Don’t fancy that I am talking at hazard; I have myself felt the very thing I am telling you of; and I could no more have begun life as a Cabinet postboy, than I could have taken to stone-breaking.”
“You seem to forget that there is a class of people in this world whom a wise proverb declares are not to be choosers.”
“There never was a sillier adage. It assumes that because a man is poor he must remain poor. It presumes to affirm that no one can alter his condition. And who are the successful in life? The men who have energy to will it, – the fellows who choose their place, and insist upon taking it. Let me assure you, Butler, you are one of these, if you could only throw off your humility and believe it. Only resolve to join us, and I ‘ll give you any odds you like that I am a true prophet; at all events, turn it over in your mind; give it a fair consideration, – of course, I mean your own consideration, for it is one of those things a man cannot consult his mother upon; and when we meet again, which will not be for a few days, as I leave for a short absence to-morrow, you ‘ll give me your answer.”
“What day do you expect to be back here?”
“I hope, by Saturday; indeed, I can safely say by Saturday.”
“By that time I shall have made up my mind. Goodbye.”
“The mind is made up already,” mattered Maitland, as he moved away, – “I have him.”