“Ay, and he like to know you, now that he ain’t jealous of you. The last thing he said to me at parting was, ‘If ever I meet that Tony Butler, I ‘ll give him the best bottle of wine in my cellar.’”
“When you write to him next, say that I ‘m just as eager to take him by the hand, mind that. The man that’s like to be a good husband to Dolly Stewart is sure to be a brother to me.”
And they went back to town, talking little by the way, for each was thoughtful, – M’Grader thinking much over all they had been saying; Tony full of the future, yet not able to exclude the past.
CHAPTER XXXVII. MR. BUTLER FOR DUTY ON —
“I suppose M’Gruder’s right,” mattered Tony, as he sauntered away drearily from the door at Downing Street, one day in the second week after his arrival in London. “A man gets to feel very like a ‘flunkey,’ coming up in this fashion each morning ‘for orders.’ I am more than half disposed to close with his offer and go ‘into rags’ at once.”
If he hesitated, be assured himself, very confidently too, that it was not from the name or nature of the commercial operation. He had no objection to trade in rags any more than in hides or tallow or oakum, and some gum which did not “breathe of Araby the blest.” He was sure that it could not possibly affect his choice, and that rags were just as legitimate and just as elevating a speculation as sherry from Cadiz or silk from China. He was ingenious enough in his self-discussions; but somehow, though he thought he could tell his mother frankly and honestly the new trade he was about to embark in, for the life of him he could not summon courage to make the communication to Alice. He fancied her, as she read the avowal, repeating the word “rags,” and, while her lips trembled with the coming laughter, saying, “What in the name of all absurdity led him to such a choice?” And what a number of vapid and tasteless jokes would it provoke! “Such snobbery as it all is,” cried he, as he walked the room angrily; “as if there was any poetry in cotton bales, or anything romantic in molasses, and yet I might engage in these without reproach, without ridicule. I think I ought to be above such considerations. I do think my good blood might serve to assure me that in whatever I do honorably, honestly, and avowedly there is no derogation.”
But the snobbery was stronger than he wotted of; for, do what he would, he could not frame the sentence in which he should write the tidings to Alice, and yet he felt that there would be a degree of meanness in the non-avowal infinitely more intolerable.
While he thus chafed and fretted, he heard a quick step mounting the stair, and at the same instant his door was flung open, and Skeffy Darner rushed towards him and grasped both his hands.
“Well, old Tony, you scarcely expected to see me here, nor did I either thirty hours ago, but they telegraphed for me to come at once. I ‘m off for Naples.”
“And why to Naples?”
“I ‘ll tell you, Tony,” said he, confidentially; “but remember this is for yourself alone. These things mustn’t get abroad; they are Cabinet secrets, and not known out of the Privy Council.”
“You may trust me,” said Tony; and Skeffy went on.
“I ‘m to be attached there,” said be, solemnly.
“What do you mean by attached?”
“I’m going there officially. They want me at our Legation. Sir George Home is on leave, and Mecklam is Chargé d’Affaires; of course every one knows what that means.”
“But I don’t,” said Tony, bluntly.
“It means being bullied, being jockeyed, being outmanoeuvred, laughed at by Brennier, and derided by Caraffa. Mecklam’s an ass, Tony, that ‘s the fact, and they know it at the Office, and I’m sent out to steer the ship.”
“But what do you know about Naples?”
“I know it just as I know the Ecuador question, – just as I know the Month of the Danube question, – as I know the slave treaty with Portugal, and the Sound dues with Denmark, and the right of search, and the Mosquito frontier, and everything else that is pending throughout the whole globe. Let me tell you, old fellow, the others – the French, the Italians, and the Austrians – know me as well as they know Palmerston. What do you think Walewski told Lady Pancroft the day Cavour went down to Vichy to see the Emperor? They held a long conversation at a table where there were writing-materials, and Cavour has an Italian habit of scribbling all the time he talks, and he kept on scratching with a pen on a sheet of blotting-paper, and what do you think he wrote? – the one word, over and over again, Skeff, Skeff, – nothing else. ‘Which led us,’ says Walewski, ‘to add, Who or what was Skeff? when they told us he was a young fellow’ – these are his own words – ‘of splendid abilities in the Foreign Office;’ and if there is anything remarkable in Cavour, it is the way he knows and finds out the coming man.”
“But how could he have heard of you?”
“These fellows have their spies everywhere, Tony. Gortchakoff has a photograph of me, with two words in Russian underneath, that I got translated, and that mean ‘infernally dangerous’ —tanski serateztrskoff, infernally dangerous! – over his stove in his study. You ‘re behind the scenes now, Tony, and it will be rare fun for you to watch the newspapers, and see how differently things will go on at Naples after I arrive there.”
“Tell me something about home, Skeffy; I want to hear about Tilney. Whom did you leave there when you came away?”
“I left the Lyles, Alice and Bella, – none else. I was to have gone back with them to Lyle Abbey if I had stayed till Monday, and I left them, of course, very disconsolate, and greatly put out.”
“I suppose you made up to Alice. I thought you would,” said Tony, half sulkily.
“No, old fellow, you do me wrong; that’s a thing I never do. As I said to Ernest Palfi about Pauline Esterhazy, I ‘ll take no unfair advantage, – I ‘ll take no steps in your absence; and Alice saw this herself.”
“How do you mean? Alice saw it?” said Tony, reddening.
“She saw it, for she said to me one day, ‘Mr. Damer, it seems to me you have very punctilious notions on the score of friendship.’
“‘I have,’ said I; ‘you ‘re right there.’
“‘I thought so,’ said she.”
“After all,” said Tony, in a half-dogged tone, “I don’t see that the speech had any reference to me, or to any peculiar delicacy of yours with respect to me.”
“Ah, my poor Tony, you have a deal to learn about women and their ways! By good luck fortune has given you a friend – the one man – I declare I believe what I say – the one man in Europe that knows the whole thing; as poor Balzac used to say, ‘Cher Skeffy, what a fellow you would be if you had my pen!’ He was a vain creature, Balzac; but what he meant was, if I could add his descriptive power to my own knowledge of life; for you see, Tony, this was the difference between Balzac and me. He knew Paris and the salons of Paris, and the women who frequent these salons. I knew the human, heart. It was woman, as a creature, not a mere conventionality, that she appeared to me.”
“Well, I take it,” grumbled out Tony, “you and your friend had some points of resemblance too.”
“Ah! you would say that we were both vain. So we were, Tony, – so is every man that is the depository of a certain power. Without this same conscious thought, which you common folk call vanity, how should we come to exercise the gift! The little world taunts us with the very quality that is the essence of our superiority.”
“Had Bella perfectly recovered? was she able to be up and about?”
“Yes, she was able to take carriage airings, and to be driven about in a small phaeton by the neatest whip in Europe.”
“Mr. Skeff Damer, eh?”
“The same. Ah, these drives, these drives! What delicious memories of woodland and romance! I fell desperately in love with that girl, Tony – I pledge you my honor I did. I ‘ve thought a great deal over it all since I started for Ireland, and I have a plan, a plan for us both.”
“What is it?”
“Let us marry these girls. Let us be brothers in law as well as in love. You prefer Alice, – I consent. Take her, take her, Tony, and may you be happy with her!” And as he spoke, he laid his hand on the other’s head with a reverend solemnity.
“This is nonsense, and worse than nonsense,” said Tony, angrily; but the other’s temper was imperturbable, and he went on: “You fancy this is all dreamland that I ‘m promising you: but that is because you, my dear Tony, with many good qualities, are totally wanting in one, – you have no imagination, and, like all fellows denied this gift, you never can conceive anything happening to you except what has already happened. You like to live in a circle, and you do live in a circle, – you are the turnspits of humanity.”
“I am a troublesome dog, though, if you anger me,” said Tony, half fiercely.
“Very possibly, but there are certain men dogs never attack.” And as Skeffy said this, he threw forward his chest, held his head back, and looked with an air of such proud defiance that Tony lay back in a chair and laughed heartily.
“I never saw a great hulking fellow yet that was not impressed with the greatness of his stature,” said Skeffy. “Every inch after five feet six takes a foot off a man’s intellectual standard. It is Skeff Darner says it, Tony, and you may believe it.”
“I wish you ‘d tell me about Tilney,” said Tony, half irritably.
“I appreciate you, as the French say. You want to hear that I am not your rival, – you want to know that I have not taken any ungenerous advantage of your absence. Tonino mio, be of good comfort, – I preferred the sister; shall I tell you why?”
“I don’t want to hear anything about it.”
“What a jealous dog it is, even after I have declared, on the word of a Darner, that he has nothing to apprehend from me! It was a lucky day led me down there, Tony. Don’t you remember the old woman’s note to me, mentioning a hundred pounds, or something like it, she had forgotten to enclose? She found the bank-note afterwards on her table, and after much puzzling with herself, ascertained it was the sum she had meant to remit me. Trifling as the incident was she thought it delicate, or high-minded, or something or other, on my part. She said ‘it was so nice of me;’ and she wrote to my uncle to ask if he ever heard such a pretty trait, and my uncle said he knew scores of spendthrifts would have done much the same; whereupon the old lady of Tilney, regarding me as ill-used by my relatives, declared she would do something for me; but as her good intentions were double-barrelled, and she wanted to do something also for Bella, she suggested that we might, as the Oberland peasants say, ‘put our eggs in the same basket.’ A day was named, too, in which we were all to have gone over to Lyle Abbey, and open negotiations with Sir Arthur, when came this confounded despatch ordering me off to Naples! At first I determined not to go, – to resign, – to give up public life forever. ‘What’s Hecuba to him?’ said I; that is, ‘What signifies it to me how Europe fares? Shall I not think of Skeff Darner and his fortunes?’ Bowling down dynasties and setting up ninepin princes may amuse a man, but, after all, is it not to the tranquil enjoyments of home he looks for happiness? I consulted Bella, but she would not agree with me. Women, my dear Tony, are more ambitious than men, – I had almost said, more worldly. She would not, she said, have me leave a career wherein I had given such great promise. ‘You might be an ambassador one day,’ said she. ‘Must be!’ interposed I, – ‘must be!’ My unfortunate admission decided the question, and I started that night.”
“I don’t think I clearly understand you,” said Tony, passing his hand over his brow. “Am I to believe that you and Bella are engaged?”
“I know what’s passing in your mind, old fellow; I read you like large print. You won’t, you can’t, credit the fact that I would marry out of the peerage. Say it frankly; out with it.”
“Nothing of the kind; but I cannot believe that Bella – ”
“Ay, but she did,” said Skeffy, filling up his pause, while he smoothed and caressed his very young moustaches. “Trust a woman to find out the coming man! Trust a woman to detect the qualities that insure supremacy! I was n’t there quite three weeks in all, and see if she did not discover me. What’s this? Here comes an order for you, Tony,” said he, as he looked into the street and recognized one of the porters of the Foreign Office. “This is the place, Trumins,” cried he, opening the window and calling to the man. “You ‘re looking for Mr. Butler, are n’t you?”
“Mr. Butler on duty, Friday, 21,” was all that the slip of paper contained. “There,” cried Skeffy, “who knows if we shall not cross the Channel together to-night? Put on your hat and we ‘ll walk down to the Office.”
CHAPTER XXXVII. TONY WAITING FOR ORDERS
Tony Butler was ordered to Brussels to place himself at the disposal of the Minister as an ex-messenger. He crossed over to Calais with Skeffy in the mail-boat; and after a long night’s talking, for neither attempted to sleep, they parted with the most fervent assurances of friendship.
“I ‘d go across Europe to thrash the fellow would say a hard word of him,” muttered Tony; while Skeffy, with an emotion that made his lip tremble, said, “If the world goes hard with you, I ‘ll turn my back on it, and we ‘ll start for New Zealand or Madagascar, Tony, remember that, – I give it to you as a pledge.”
When Tony presented himself at the Legation, he found that nobody knew anything about him. They had some seven or eight months previous requested to have an additional messenger appointed, as there were cases occurring which required frequent reference to home; but the emergency had passed over, and Brussels was once again as undisturbed by diplomatic relations as any of the Channel Islands.
“Take a lodging and make yourself comfortable, marry, and subscribe to a club if you like it,” said a gray-headed attaché, with a cynical face, “for in all likelihood they’ll never remember you’re here.” The speaker had some experiences of this sort of official forgetfulness, with the added misfortune that, when he once had summoned courage to remonstrate against it, they did remember him, but it was to change him from a first to a second-class mission – in Irish phrase, promoting him backwards – for his temerity.
Tony installed himself in a snug little quarter outside the town, and set himself vigorously to study French. In Knickerbocker’s “History of New York,” we read that the sittings of the Council were always measured and recorded by the number of pipes smoked by the Cabinet. In the same way might it be said that Tony Butler’s progress in Ollendorf was only to be computed by the quantity of tobacco consumed over it. The pronouns had cost two boxes of cigars; the genders a large packet of assorted cavendish and bird’s-eye; and he stood fast on the frontier of the irregular verbs, waiting for a large bag of Turkish that Skeffy wrote to say he had forwarded to him through the Office.
Why have we no statistics of the influence of tobacco on education? Why will no one direct his attention to the inquiry as to how far the Tony Butlers – a large class in the British Islands – are more moved to exertion, or hopelessly muddled in intellect, by the soothing influences of smoke?
Tony smoked on and on. He wrote home occasionally, and made three attempts to write to Alice, who, despite his silence, had sent him a very pleasant letter about home matters. It was not a neighborhood to afford much news; and indeed, as she said, “they have been unusually dull of late; scarcely any visitors, and few of the neighbors. We miss your friend Skeff greatly; for, with all his oddities and eccentricities, he had won upon us immensely by real traits of generosity and high-mindedness. There is another friend of yours here I would gladly know well, but she – Miss Stewart – retreats from all my advances, and has so positively declined all our invitations to the Abbey that it would seem to imply, if such a thing were possible, a special determination to avoid us. I know you well enough, Master Tony, to be aware that you will ascribe all my ardor in this pursuit to the fact of there being an obstacle. As you once told me about a certain short cut from Portrush, the only real advantage it had was a stiff four-foot wall which must be jumped; but you are wrong, and you are unjust, – two things not at all new to you. My intentions here were really good. I had heard from your dear mother that Miss Stewart was in bad health, – that fears were felt lest her chest was affected. Now, as the doctors concurred in declaring that Bella must pass one winter, at least, in a warm climate, so I imagined how easy it would be to extend the benefit of genial air and sunshine to this really interesting girl, by offering, to take her as a companion. Bella was charmed with my project, and we walked over to the Burn-side on Tuesday to propose it in all form.
“To the shame of our diplomacy we failed completely. The old minister, indeed, was not averse to the plan, and professed to think it a most thoughtful attention on our part; but Dolly, – I call her Dolly, for it is by that name, so often recurring in the discussion, I associate her best with the incident, – Dolly was peremptory in her refusal. I wanted, – perhaps a little unfairly, – I wanted to hear her reasons. I asked if there might not possibly be something in her objections to which we could reply. I pressed her to reconsider the matter, – to take a week, two if she liked, to think over it; but no, she would not listen to my compromise; she was steady and resolute, and yet at the same time much moved. She said ‘No!’ but she said it as if there was a reason she should say so, while it was in direct violence to all her wishes. Mind, this is mere surmise on my part. I am speaking of one of whose nature and temperament I know nothing. I may just as easily be wrong as right. She is, indeed, a puzzle to me; and one little trait of her has completely routed all my conceit in my own power of reading character. In my eagerness to overcome her objections, I was picturing the life of enjoyment and interest Italy would open to her, – the charm of a land that realizes in daily life what poets and painters can only shadow forth; and in my ardor I so far forgot myself as to call her Dolly, – ‘dear Dolly,’ I said. The words overcame her at once. She grew pale, so sickly pale that I thought she would have fainted; and as two heavy tears stood in her eyes, she said in a cold quiet voice: ‘I beg you will not press me any more. I am very grateful to you; but I cannot accept your offer.’
“Bella insisted on our going over to your mother, and enlisting her advocacy in the cause. I did not like the notion, but I gave way. Your dear mother, all kind as she ever is, went the same evening to the Burnside; but a short note from her the next morning showed she had no better success than ourselves.
“Naturally, – you at least will say so, – I am ten times more eager about my plan now that it is pronounced impracticable. I have written to Dr. Stewart. I have sent papa to him; mamma has called at the cottage. I have made Dr. Reede give a written declaration that Miss Stewart’s case, – I quote him, – ‘as indicated by a distinct “Bronchoffany” in the superior portion of the right lung, imperatively demands the benefit of a warm and genial climate;’ and with all these pièces de conviction I am beaten, turned out of court, and denied a verdict.
“Have you any explanation to offer about this, Master Tony? Dolly was an old playfellow of yours, your mother tells me. What key can you give us as to her nature? Is she like what she was in those old days; and when did you cease to have these games together? I fancied – was it mere fancy? – that she grew a little red when we spoke of you. Mind, sir, I want no confessions. I want nothing from you but what may serve to throw light upon her. If you can suggest to me any means of overcoming the objection she seems to entertain to our plan, do so; and if you cannot, please to hold your peace on this matter ever after. I wrote yesterday to Mark, who is now at Milan, to make some inquiries about Italian villa life. I was really afraid to speak to your friend Skeff, lest, as mamma said, he should immediately offer us one of the royal palaces as a residence. No matter, he is a dear good fellow, and I have an unbounded reliance on his generosity.
“Not, a word about yourself. Why are you at Brussels? Why are you a fixed star, after telling us you were engaged as a planet? Are there any mysterious reasons for your residence there? If so, I don’t ask to hear them; but your mother naturally would like to know something about you a little more explanatory than your last bulletin, that said, ‘I am here still, and likely to be so.’
“I had a most amusing letter from Mr. Maitland a few days ago. I had put it into this envelope to let you read it, but I took it out again, as I remembered your great and very unjust prejudices against him. He seems to know every one and everything, and is just as familiar with the great events of politics as with the great people who mould them. I read for your mother his description of the life at Fontainebleau, and the eccentricities of a beautiful Italian Countess Castagnolo, the reigning belle there; and she was much amused, though she owned that four changes of raiment daily was too much even for Delilah herself.
“Do put a little coercion on yourself, and write me even a note. I assure you I would write you most pleasant little letters if you showed you merited them. I have a budget of small gossip about the neighbors, no particle of which shall you ever see till you deserve better of your old friend,
“Alice Trafford.”
It may be imagined that it was in a very varying tone of mind he read through this letter. If Dolly’s refusal was not based on her unwillingness to leave her father, – and if it were, she could have said so, – it was quite inexplicable. Of all the girls he had ever known, he never saw one more likely to be captivated by such an offer. She had that sort of nature that likes to invest each event of life with a certain romance; and where could anything have opened such a vista for castle-building as this scheme of foreign travel? Of course he could not explain it; how should he? Dolly was only partly like what she used to be long ago. In those days she had no secrets, – at least, none from him; now she had long dreary intervals of silence and reflection, as though brooding over something she did not wish to tell of. This was not the Dolly Stewart he used to know so well. As he re-read the letter, and came to that passage in which she tells him that if he cannot explain what Dolly’s refusal is owing to without making a confession, he need not do so, he grew almost irritable, and said, “What can she mean by this?” Surely it is not possible that Alice could have listened to any story that coupled his name with Dolly’s, and should thus by insinuation charge him with the allegation? Lady Lyle had said to himself, “I heard the story from one of the girls.” Was it this, then, that Alice referred to? Surely she knew him better; surely she knew how he loved her, no matter how hopelessly it might be. Perhaps women liked to give this sort of pain to those whose heart they owned. Perhaps it was a species of torture they were given to. Skeffy could tell if he were here. Skeffy could resolve this point at once, but it was too much for him.
As to the passage about Maitland, he almost tore the paper as he read it. By what right did he correspond with her at all? Why should he write to her even such small matter as the gossip of a court? And what could Alice mean by telling him of it, unless – and oh, the bitterness of this thought! – it was to intimate by a mere passing word the relations that subsisted between herself and Maitland, and thus convey to him the utter hopelessness of his own pretensions?
As Tony walked up and down his room, he devised a very strong, it was almost a fierce, reply to this letter. He would tell her that as to Dolly he could not say, but she might have some of his own scruples about that same position called companion. When he knew her long ago, she was independent enough in spirit, and it was by no means impossible she might prefer a less brilliant condition if unclogged with observances that might savor of homage. At all events, he was no fine and subtle intelligence to whom a case of difficulty could be submitted.
As for Maitland, he hated him! he was not going to conceal it in any way. His air of insolent superiority he had not forgotten, nor would he forget till he had found an opportunity to retort it. Alice might think him as amusing as she pleased. To himself the man was simply odious, and if the result of all his varied gifts and accomplishments was only to make up such a being as he was, then would he welcome the most unlettered and uninformed clown that ever walked, rather than this mass of conceit and self-sufficiency.
He sat down to commit these thoughts to paper, and though he scrawled over seven sheets in the attempt, nothing but failure came of it. Maitland came in, if not by name, by insinuation, everywhere; and, in spite of himself, he found he had got into a tone not merely querulous, but actually aggressive, and was using towards Alice an air of reproof that he almost trembled at as he re-read it.
“This will never do,” cried he, as he tore up the scribbled sheets. “I ‘ll wait till to-morrow, and perhaps I shall do better.” When the morrow came, he was despatched on duty, and Alice remained unanswered.