When Tony Butler found himself inside of the swinging glass-door at Downing Street, and in presence of the august Mr. Willis, the porter, it seemed as if all the interval since he had last stood in the same place had been a dream. The head-porter looked up from his “Times,” and with a severity that showed he had neither forgotten nor forgiven, said, “Messengers' room—first pair—corridor—third door on the left.” There was an unmistakable dignity in the manner of the speaker which served to show Tony not merely that his former offence remained unpardoned, but that his entrance into public life had not awed or impressed in any way the stern official.
Tony passed on, mounted the stairs, and sauntered along a very ill-kept corridor, not fully certain whether it was the third, fourth, or fifth door he was in search of, or on what hand. After about half an hour passed in the hope of seeing one to direct him, he made bold to knock gently at a door. To his repeated summons no answer was returned, and he tried another, when a shrill voice cried, “Come in.” He entered, and saw a slight, sickly-looking youth, very elaborately dressed, seated at a table, writing. The room was a large one, very dirty, ill-furnished, and disorderly.
“Well, what is it?” asked the young gentleman, without lifting his head or his eyes from the desk.
“Could you tell me,” said Tony, courteously, “where I ought to go? I 'm Butler, an extra messenger, and I have been summoned to attend and report here this morning.”
“All right; we want you,” said the other, still writing; “wait an instant.” So saying, he wrote on for several minutes at a rapid pace, muttering the words as his pen traced them; at last he finished, and, descending from his high seat, passed across the room, opened a door, which led into another room, and called out,—
“The messenger come, sir!”
“Who is he?” shouted a very harsh voice.
“First for Madrid, sir,” said the youth, examining a slip of paper he had just taken from his pocket.
“His name?” shouted out the other again.
“Poynder, sir.”
“I beg your pardon,” suggested Tony, mildly. “I'm Butler, not Poynder.”
“Who's talking out there,—what's that uproar?” screamed the voice, very angrily.
“He says he 's not for Madrid, sir. It's a mistake,” cried the youth.
“No; you misunderstand me,” whispered Tony. “I only said I was not Poynder.”
“He says he 's in Poynder's place.”
“I'll stop this system of substitutes!” cried the voice. “Send him in here.”
“Go in there,” said the youth, with a gesture of his thumb, and his face at the same time wore an expression which said as plain as any words could have spoken, “And you 'll see how you like it.”
As Tony entered, he found himself standing face to face to the awful official, Mr. Brand, the same who had reported to the Minister his intended assault upon Willis, the porter. “Aw! what's all this about?” said Mr. Brand, pompously. “You are Mr.—Mr.—”
“Mr. Butler,” said Tony, quietly, but with an air of determination.
“And instead of reporting yourself, you come here to say that you have exchanged with Poynder.”
“I never heard of Poynder till three minutes ago.”
“You want, however, to take his journey, sir. You call yourself first for Madrid?”
“I do nothing of the kind. I have come here because I got a telegram two days ago. I know nothing of Poynder, and just as little about Madrid.”
“Oh—aw! you're Butler! I remember all about you now; there is such a swarm of extras appointed, that it's impossible to remember names or faces. You 're the young gentleman who—who—yes, yes, I remember it all; but have you passed the civil-service examiners?”
“No; I was preparing for the examination when I received that message, and came off 'at once.”
“Well, you 'll present yourself at Burlington House. Mr. Blount will make out the order for you; you can go up the latter end of this week, and we shall want you immediately.”
“But I am not ready. I was reading for this examination when your telegram came, and I set off at the instant.”
“Blount, Mr. Blount!” screamed out the other, angrily; and as the affrighted youth presented himself, all pale and trembling, he went on: “What's the meaning of this, sir? You first attempt to pass this person off for Poynder: and when that scheme fails, you endeavor to slip him into the service without warrant or qualification. He tells me himself he knows nothing.”
“Very little, certainly, but I don't remember telling you so,” said Tony.
“And do you imagine, sir, that a bravado about your ignorance is the sure road to advancement? I can tell you, young gentleman, that the days of mighty patronage are gone by; the public require to be served with competent officials. We are not in the era of Castlereaghs and Vansittarts. If you can satisfy the Commissioners, you may come back here; if you cannot, you may go back to—to whatever life you were leading before, and were probably most fit for. As for you, Mr. Blount, I told you before that on the first occasion of your attempting to exercise here that talent for intrigue on which you pride yourself, and of which Mr. Vance told me you were a proficient, I should report you. I now say, sir,—and bear in mind I say so openly, and to yourself, and in presence of your friend here,—I shall do so this day.”
“May I explain, sir?”
“You may not, sir,—withdraw!” The wave of the hand that accompanied this order evidently included Tony; but he held his ground undismayed, while the other fell back, overwhelmed with shame and confusion.
Not deigning to be aware of Tony's continued presence in the room, Mr. Brand again addressed himself to his writing materials, when a green-cloth door at the back of the room opened, and Mr. Vance entered, and, advancing to where the other sat, leaned over his chair and whispered some words in his ear. “You 'll find I 'm right,” muttered he, as he finished.
“And where's the Office to go to?” burst out the other, in a tone of ill-repressed passion; “will you just tell me that? Where's the Office to go—if this continues?”
“That's neither your affair nor mine,” whispered Vance. “These sort of things were done before we were born, and they will be done after we 're in our graves!”
“And is he to walk in here, and say, 'I 'm first for service; I don't care whether you like it or not'?”
“He 's listening to you all this while,—are you aware of that?” whispered Vance; on which the other grew very red in the face, took off his spectacles, wiped and replaced them, and then, addressing Tony, said, “Go away, sir,—leave the Office.”
“Mr. Brand means that you need not wait,” said Vance, approaching Tony. “All you have to do is to leave your town address here, in the outer office, and come up once or twice a day.”
“And as to this examination,” said Tony, stoutly, “it's better I should say once for all—”
“It's better you should just say nothing at all,” said the other, good-humoredly, as he slipped his arm inside of Tony's and led him away. “You see,” whispered he, “my friend Mr. Brand is hasty.”
“I should think he is hasty!” growled out Tony.
“But he is a warm-hearted—a truly warm-hearted man—”
“Warm enough he seems.”
“When you know him better—”
“I don't want to know him better!” burst in Tony. “I got into a scrape already with just such another: he was collector for the port of Derry, and I threw him out of the window, and all the blame was laid upon me!”
“Well, that certainly was hard,” said Vance, with a droll twinkle of his eye,—“I call that very hard.”
“So do I, after the language he used to me, saying all the while, 'I'm no duellist,—I'm not for a saw-pit, with coffee and pistols for two,'—and all that vulgar slang about murder and such-like.”
“And was he much hurt?”
“No; not much. It was only his collar-bone and one rib, I think,—I forget now,—for I had to go over to Skye, and stay there a good part of the summer.”
“Mr. Blount, take down this gentleman's address, and show him where he is to wait; and don't—” Here he lowered his voice, so that the remainder of his speech was inaudible to Tony.
“Not if I can help it, sir,” replied Blount; “but if you knew how hard it is!”
There was something almost piteous in the youth's face as he spoke; and, indeed, Vance seemed moved to a certain degree of compassion as he said, “Well, well, do your best,—do your best, none can do more.”
“It's two o'clock. I 'll go out and have a cigar with you, if you don't mind,” said Blount to Tony. “We 're quite close to the Park here; and a little fresh air will do me good.”
“Come along,” said Tony, who, out of compassion, had already a sort of half-liking for the much-suffering young fellow.
“I wish Skeffy was here,” said Tony, as they went downstairs.
“Do you know Skeff Darner, then?”
“Know him! I believe he 's about the fellow I like best in the world.”
“So do I,” cried the other, warmly; “he hasn't his equal living; he 's the best-hearted and he's the cleverest fellow I ever met.”
And now they both set to, as really only young friends ever do, to extol a loved one with that heartiness that neither knows limit nor measure. What a good fellow he was,—how much of this, without the least of that,—how unspoiled, too, in the midst of the flattery he met with! “If you just saw him as I did a few days back,” said Tony, calling up in memory Skeffy's hearty enjoyment of their humble cottage-life.
“If you but knew how they think of him in the Office,” said Blount, whose voice actually trembled as he touched on the holy of holies.
“Confound the Office!” cried Tony. “Yes; don't look shocked. I hate that dreary old house, and I detest the grim old fellows inside of it.”
“They 're severe, certainly,” muttered the other, in a deprecatory tone.
“Severe isn't the name for it. They insult—they outrage—that's what they do. I take it that you and the other young fellows here are gentlemen, and I ask, Why do you bear it,—why do you put up with it? Perhaps you like it, however.”
“No; we don't like it,” said he, with an honest simplicity.
“Then, I ask again, why do you stand it?”
“I believe we stand it just because we can't help it.”
“Can't help it!”
“What could we do? What would you do?” asked Blount
“I 'd go straight at the first man that insulted me, and say, Retract that, or I 'll pitch you over the banisters.”
“That's all very fine with you fellows who have great connections and powerful relatives ready to stand by you and pull you out of any scrape, and then, if the worst comes, have means enough to live without work. That will do very well for you and Skeffy. Skeffy will have six thousand a year one of these days. No one can keep him out of Digby Darner's estate; and you, for aught I know, may have more.”
“I have n't sixpence, nor the expectation of sixpence in the world. If I am plucked at this examination I may go and enlist, or turn navvy, or go and sweep away the dead leaves like that fellow yonder.”
“Then take my advice, and don't go up.”
“Go up where?”
“Don't go up to be examined; just wait here in town; don't show too often at the office, but come up of a morning about twelve,—I 'm generally down here by that time. There will be a great press for messengers soon, for they have made a regulation about one going only so far, and another taking up his bag and handing it on to a third; and the consequence is, there are three now stuck fast at Marseilles, and two at Belgrade, and all the Constantinople despatches have gone round by the Cape. Of course, as I say, they 'll have to alter this, and then we shall suddenly want every fellow we can lay hands on; so all you have to do is just to be ready, and I 'll take care to start you at the first chance.”
“You 're a good fellow,” cried Tony, grasping his hand; “if you only knew what a bad swimmer it was you picked out of the water.”
“Oh, I can do that much, at least,” said he, modestly, “though I'm not a clever fellow like Skeffy; but I must go back, or I shall 'catch it.' Look in the day after to-morrow.”
“And let us dine together; that is, you will dine with me,” said Tony. The other acceded freely, and they parted.
That magnetism by which young fellows are drawn instantaneously towards each other, and feel something that, if not friendship, is closely akin to it, never repeats itself in after life. We grow more cautious about our contracts as we grow older. I wonder do we make better bargains?
If Tony was then somewhat discouraged by his reception at the Office, he had the pleasure of thinking he was compensated in that new-found friend who was so fond of Skeffy, and who could talk away as enthusiastically about him as himself. “Now for M'Gruder and Cannon Row, wherever that may be,” said he, as he sauntered along; “I 'll certainly go and see him, if only to shake hands with a fellow that showed such 'good blood.'” There was no one quality which Tony could prize higher than this. The man who could take a thrashing in good part, and forgive him who gave it, must be a fine fellow, he thought; and I 'm not disposed to say he was wrong.
The address was 27 Cannon Street, City; and it was a long way off, and the day somewhat spent when he reached it.
“Mr. M'Gruder?” asked Tony of a blear-eyed man, at a small faded desk in a narrow office.
“Inside!” said he, with a jerk of his thumb; and Tony pushed his way into a small room, so crammed with reams of paper that there was barely space to squeeze a passage to a little writing-table next the window.
“Well, sir, your pleasure?” said M'Gruder, as Tony came forward.
“You forget me, I see; my name is Butler.”
“Eh! what! I ought not to forget you,” said he, rising, and grasping the other's hand warmly; “how are you? when did you come up to town? You see the eye is all right; it was a bit swollen for more than a fortnight, though. Hech, sirs! but you have hard knuckles of your own.”
It was not easy to apologize for the rough treatment he had inflicted, and Tony blundered and stammered in his attempts to do so; but M'Gruder laughed it all off with perfect good-humor, and said, “My wife will forgive you, too, one of these days, but not just yet; and so we'll go and have a bit o' dinner our two selves down the river. Are you free to-day?”
Tony was quite free and ready to go anywhere; and so away they went, at first by river steamer, and then by a cab, and then across some low-lying fields to a small solitary house close to the Thames,—“Shads, chops, and fried-fish house,” over the door, and a pleasant odor of each around the premises.
“Ain't we snug here? no tracking a man this far,” said M'Grader, as he squeezed into a bench behind a fixed table in a very small room. “I never heard of the woman that ran her husband to earth down here.”
That this same sense of security had a certain value in M'Grader's estimation was evident, for he more than once recurred to the sentiment as they sat at dinner.
The tavern was a rare place for “hollands,” as M'Grader said; and they sat over a peculiar brew for which the house was famed, but of which Tony's next day's experiences do not encourage me to give the receipt to my readers. The cigars, too, albeit innocent of duty, might have been better; but all these, like some other pleasures we know of, only were associated with sorrow in the future. Indeed, in the cordial freedom that bound them they thought very little of either. They had grown to be very confidential; and M'Gruder, after inquiring what Tony proposed to himself by way of a livelihood, gave him a brief sketch of his own rise from very humble beginnings to a condition of reasonably fair comfort and sufficiency.
“I 'm in rags, ye see, Mr. Butler,” said he, “my father was in rags before me.”
“In rags!” cried Tony, looking at the stout sleek broadcloth beside him.
“I mean,” said the other, “I 'm in the rag trade, and we supply the paper-mills; and that's why my brother Sam lives away in Italy. Italy is a rare place for rags,—I take it they must have no other wear, for the supply is inexhaustible,—and so Sam lives in a seaport they call Leghorn; and the reason I speak of it to you is that if this messenger trade breaks down under you, or that ye 'd not like it, there's Sam there would be ready and willing to lend you a hand; he 'd like a fellow o' your stamp, that would go down amongst the wild places on the coast, and care little about the wild people that live in them. Mayhap this would be beneath you, though?” said he, after a moment's pause.
“I 'm above nothing at this moment except being dependent; I don't want to burden my mother.”
“Dolly told us about your fine relations, and the high and mighty folk ye belong to.”
“Ay, but they don't belong to me,—there 's the difference,” said Tony, laughing; then added, in a more thoughtful tone, “I never suspected that Dolly spoke of me.”
“That she did, and very often too. Indeed, I may say that she talked of very little else. It was Tony this and Tony that; and Tony went here and Tony went there; till one day Sam could bear it no longer—for you see Sam was mad in love with her, and said over and over again that he never met her equal. Sam says to me, 'Bob,' says he, 'I can't bear it any more.' 'What is it,' says I, 'that you can't bear?'—for I thought it was something about the drawback duty on mixed rags he was meaning. But no, sirs; it was that he was wild wi' jealousy, and couldn't bear her to be a-talkin' about you. 'I think,' says he, 'if I could meet that same Tony, I 'd crack his neck for him.'”
“That was civil, certainly!” said Tony, dryly.
“'And as I can't do that, I 'll just go and ask her what she means by it all, and if Tony's her sweetheart?'”
“He did not do that!” Tony cried, half angrily.
“Yes, but he did, though; and what for no? You would n't have a man lose his time pricing a bale of goods when another had bought them? If she was in treaty with you, Mr. Butler, where was the use of Sam spending the day trying to catch a word wi' her? So, to settle the matter at once, he overtook her one morning going to early meeting with the children, and he had it out.”
“Well, well?” asked Tony, eagerly.
“Well, she told him there never was anything like love between herself and you; that you were aye like brother and sister; that you knew each other from the time you could speak; that of all the wide world she did not know any one so well as you; and then she began to cry, and cried so bitterly that she had to turn back home again, and go to her room as if she was taken ill; and that's the way Mrs. M'Gruder came to know what Sam was intending. She never suspected it before; but, hech sirs! if she did n't open a broadside on every one of us! And the upshot was, Dolly was packed off home to her father; Sam went back to Leghorn; and there's Sally and Maggie going back in everything ever they learned; for it ain't every day you pick up a lass like that for eighteen pounds a year, and her washing.”
“But did he ask her to marry him?” cried Tony.
“He did. He wrote a letter—a very good and sensible letter too—to her father. He told him that he was only a junior, with a small share, but that he had saved enough to furnish a house, and that he hoped, with industry and care and thrifty ways, he would be able to maintain a wife decently and well; and he referred to Dr. Forbes of Auchterlonie for a character of him; and I backed it myself, saying, in the name of the house, it was true and correct.”
“What answer came to this?”
“A letter from the minister, saying that the lassie was poorly, and in so delicate a state of health it would be better not to agitate her by any mention of this kind for the present; meanwhile he would take up his information from Dr. Forbes, whom he knew well; and if the reply satisfied him, he 'd write again to us in the course of a week or two; and Sam's just waiting patiently for his answer, and doing his best, in the mean while, to prepare, in case it's a favorable one.”
Tony fell into a revery. That story of a man in love with one it might never be his destiny to win had its own deep significance for him. Was there any grief, was there any misery, to compare with it? And although Sam M'Gruder, the junior partner in the rag trade, was not a very romantic sort of character, yet did he feel an intense sympathy for him. They were both sufferers from the same malady,—albeit Sam's attack was from a very mild form of the complaint.
“You must give me a letter to your brother,” said he at length. “Some day or other I 'm sure to be in Italy, and I'd like to know him.”
“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.
“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.”
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.