Tony Butler

“All these scrawls that you see there,” said she, pointing to the table, “have been attempts to write to him, Tony. I was trying to ask him to give you some sort of place somewhere.”

“The very thing I want, mother,” said he, with a half-bitter laugh, – “some sort of place somewhere.”

“And,” continued she, “I was pondering whether it might not be as well to see if Sir Arthur Lyle would n’t write to some of his friends in power – ”

“Why should we ask him? What has he to do with it?” broke he in, hastily. “I ‘m not the son of an old steward or family coachman, that I want to go about with a black pocket-book stuffed with recommendatory letters. Write simply and fearlessly to this great man, – I don’t know his rank, – and say whose son I am. Leave me to tell him the rest.”

“My dear Tony, you little know how such people are overwhelmed with such-like applications, and what slight chance there is that you will be distinguished from the rest.”

“At all events, I shall not have the humiliation of a patron. If he will do anything for me, it will be for the sake of my father’s memory, and I need not be ashamed of that.”

“What shall I write, then?” And she took up her pen.

“Sir – I suppose he is ‘Sir;’ or is he ‘My Lord’?”

“No. His name is Sir Harry Elphinstone.”

“Sir, – The young man who bears this note is the only son of the late Colonel Walter Butler, C.B. He has no fortune, no profession, no friends, and very little ability. Can you place him in any position where he may acquire some of the three first and can dispense with the last?

“Your humble servant,

“Eleanor Butler.”

“Oh, Tony! you don’t think we could send such a letter as this?” said she, with a half-sad smile.

“I am certain I could deliver it, mother,” said he, gravely, “and I ‘m sure that it would answer its purpose just as well as a more finished composition.”

“Let me at least make a good copy of it,” said she, as he folded it up and placed it in an envelope.

“No, no,” said he; “just write his name, and all the fine things that he is sure to be, before and after it, and, as I said before, leave the issue to me.”

“And when would you think of going, Tony?”

“To-morrow morning, by the steamer that will pass this on the way to Liverpool. I know the Captain, and he will give me a passage; he’s always teasing me to take a trip with him.”

“To-morrow! but how could you get ready by to-morrow? I ‘ll have to look over all your clothes, Tony.”

“My dear little mother,” said he, passing his arm round her, and kissing her affectionately, “how easy it is to hold a review where there ‘s only a corporal’s guard for inspection! All my efficient movables will fit into a very small portmanteau, and I ‘ll pack it in less than ten minutes.”

“I see no necessity for all this haste, particularly where we have so much to consider and talk over. We ought to consult the doctor, too; he’s a warm friend, Tony, and bears you a sincere affection.”

“He’s a good fellow; I like him anywhere but in the pulpit,” muttered he, below his breath. “And he ‘d like to write to his daughter; she’s a governess in some family near Putney, I think. I ‘ll go and see her; Dolly and I are old playfellows. I don’t know,” added he, with a laugh, “whether hockey and football are part of a polite female education; but if they be, the pupils that have got Dolly Stewart for their governess are in rare luck.”

“But why must there be all this hurry?”

“Because it’s a whim of mine, dear little mother. Because – but don’t ask me for reasons, after having spoiled me for twenty years, and given me my own way in everything. I ‘ve got it into my wise head – and you know what a wise head it is – that I ‘m going to do something very brilliant. You ‘ll puzzle me awfully if you ask me where or how; so just be generous and don’t push me to the wall.”

“At all events, you ‘ll not go without seeing the doctor?”

“That I will. I have some experience of him as a questioner in the Scripture-school of a Saturday, and I ‘ll not stand a cross-examination in profane matters from so skilled a hand. Tell him from me that I had one of my flighty fits on me, and that I knew I ‘d make such a sorry defence if we were to meet, that, in the words of his own song, ‘I ran awa’ in the morning.’”

She shook her head in silence, and seemed far from satisfied.

“Tell him, however, that I ‘ll go and see Dolly the first day I’m free, and bring him back a full account of her, how she looks, and what she says of herself.”

The thought of his return flashed across the poor mother’s heart like sunshine over a landscape, spreading light and gladness everywhere. “And when will that be, Tony?” cried she, looking up into his eyes.

“Let me see. To-morrow will be Wednesday.”

“No, Tony, – Thursday.”

“To be sure, Thursday, – Thursday, the ninth; Friday, Liverpool; Saturday, London! Sunday will do for a visit to Dolly; I suppose there will be no impropriety in calling on her of a Sunday?”

“The M’Graders are a Scotch family, I don’t know if they ‘d like it.”

“That shall be thought of. Let me see; Monday for the great man, Tuesday and Wednesday to see a little bit of London, and back here by the end of the week.”

“Oh! if I thought that, Tony – ”

“Well, do think it; believe it, rely upon it. If you like, I’ll give up the Tuesday and Wednesday, though I have some very gorgeous speculations about Westminster Abbey and the Tower, and the monkeys in the Zoological Gardens, with the pantomime for a finish in the evening. But you ‘ve only to say the word, and I ‘ll start half an hour after I see the Don in Downing Street.”

“No, of course not, darling. I ‘m not so selfish as that; and if you find that London amuses you and is not too expensive, – for you know, Tony, what a slender purse we have, – stay a week, – two weeks, Tony, if you like it.”

“What a good little woman it is!” said he, pressing her towards him; and the big tears trembled in his eyes and rolled heavily along his cheeks. “Now for the ugly part, – the money, I mean.”

“I have eleven pounds in the house, Tony, if that will do to take with you.”

“Do, mother! Of course it will. I don’t mean to spend near so much; but how can you spare such a sum? that’s the question.”

“I just had it by, Tony, for a rainy day, as they call it; or I meant to have made you a smart present on the fourth of next month, for your birthday. – I forget, indeed, what I intended it for,” said she, wiping her eyes, “for this sudden notion of yours has driven everything clean out of my head; and all I can think of is if there be buttons on your shirts, and how many pairs of socks you have.”

“I’m sure everything is right; it always is. And now go to bed like a dear little woman, and I ‘ll come in and say good-bye before I start in the morning.”

“No, no, Tony; I ‘ll be up and make you a cup of tea.”

“That you shall not. What a fuss to make of a trip to London; as if I was going to Auckland or the Fijee Islands? By the way, mother, would n’t you come out to me if the great man gave me something very fine and lucrative? – for I can’t persuade myself that he won’t make me a governor somewhere.”

She could not trust herself to speak, and merely clutched his hand in both her own and held it fast.

“There’s another thing,” said he, after a short struggle with himself; “there may possibly be notes or messages of one sort or another from Lyle Abbey; and just hint that I ‘ve been obliged to leave home for a day or two. You need n’t say for where nor how long; but that I was called away suddenly, – too hurriedly to go up and pay my respects, and the rest of it I ‘m not quite sure you ‘ll be troubled in this way; but if you should, say what I have told you.”

“The doctor will be sorry not to have said good-bye, Tony.”

“I may be back again before he need hear of my having gone. And now, good-night, dear mother; I ‘ll come and see you before I start.”

When Tony Butler found himself alone in his room, he opened his writing-desk and prepared to write, – a task, for him, of no common magnitude and of the very rarest occurrence. What it exacted in the way of strain and effort may be imagined from the swelling of the veins in his forehead, and the crimson patches that formed on his cheeks. “What would I give now,” muttered he, “for just ten minutes of ready tact, to express myself suitably, – to keep down my own temper, and at the same time make his boil over! If I have ten years of life before me, I ‘d give five of them to be able to do this; but I cannot, – I cannot! To say all that I want, and not be a braggart or something worse, requires mind and judgment and tact, and twenty other gifts that I have not got; and I have only to picture him going about with my letter in his hand, showing it to every one, with a sheer at my mode of expression, – possibly of my spelling! Here goes; my very writing shames me: —

“Sir, – The manner I left your father’s house last night would require an apology [I wonder if there are two p’s in ‘apology’] from me, if I had not a graver one to ask from you. [He read this over fully a dozen times, varying the emphasis, and trying if the meaning it bore, or that he meant it to bear, could be changed by the reading. ‘All right,’ said he, ‘no mistake there.‘] There is, however, so much of excuse for your conduct that you did not know how I was treated by your family, – regarded as a friend, and not the Cad you wanted to make me! [‘Cad’ reads wrong – vulgar; I suppose it is vulgar, but it means what I intend, and so let it go.] I cannot make a quarrel with your father’s son. [I ‘ll dash make, to show that I could accept one of another’s making.] But to avoid the risk, I must avoid the society where I shall meet you [no; that’s not right; ‘father’s son’ ought to have him after it] – avoid the society where I shall meet him. From this day, therefore, I will not return to the Abbey without I receive that reparation from you which is the right of