Tony Butler

“Ah! I forgot my change of fortune: but if I had ever remembered it, I ‘d never have thought so meanly of her.”

“That’s all rot and nonsense. There’s no meanness in a woman wanting to marry her daughter well, any more than in a man trying to get a colonelcy or a legation for his son. You were no match for Alice Trafford three months ago. Now both she and her mother will think differently of your pretensions.”

“Say what you like of the mother, but you shall not impute such motives to Alice.”

“Don’t you get red in the face and look like a tiger, young man, or I ‘ll take my leave and send that old damsel here with the ice-pail to you.”

“It was the very thing I liked in you,” muttered Tony, “that you never did impute mean motives to women.”

“My poor Tony! the fellow who has seen life as I have, who knows the thing in its most minute anatomy, comes out of the investigation infernally case-hardened; he can’t help it. I love Alice. Indeed, if I had not seen Bella, I think I should have married Alice. There, you are getting turkey-cock again. Let us talk of something else. What the deuce was it I wanted to ask you? – something about that great Irish monster in the next room, the fellow that sings all day: where did you pick him up?”

Tony made no reply, but lay with his hand over his eyes, while Skeff went on rambling over the odds and ends he had picked up in the course of Rory Quin’s story, and the devoted love he bore to Tony himself. “By the way, they say that it was for you Garibaldi intended the promotion to the rank of officer, but that you managed to pass it to this fellow, who could n’t sign his name when they asked him for it.”

“If he could n’t write, he has left his mark on some of the Neapolitans!” said Tony, fiercely; “and as for the advancement, he deserved it far more than I did.”

“It was a lucky thing for that aide-de-camp of Filangieri who accompanied me here, that your friend Rory had n’t got two legs, for he wanted to brain him with his crutch. Both of you had an antipathy to him, and indeed I own to concurring in the sentiment. My godfather you called him!” said he, laughing.

“I wish he had come a little closer to my bedside, that’s all,” muttered Tony; and Skeff saw by the expression of his features that he was once more unfortunate in his attempt to hit upon an unexciting theme.

“Alice knew of your journey here, I think you said?” whispered Tony, faintly.

“Yes. I sent them a few lines to say I was setting out to find you.”

“How soon could I get to Naples? Do you think they would let me move to-morrow?”

“I have asked that question already. The doctor says in a week; and I must hasten away to-night, – there’s no saying what confusion my absence will occasion. I mean to be back here by Thursday to fetch you.”

“Good fellow! Remember, though,” added he, after a moment, “we must take Rory. I can’t leave Rory here.”

Skeff looked gravely.

“He carried me when I was wounded out of the fire at Melazzo, and I am not going to desert him now.”

“Strange situation for her Majesty’s Chargé d’Affaires,” said Skeff, – “giving protection to the wounded of the rebel army.”

“Don’t talk to me of rebels. We are as legitimate as the fellows we were fighting against. It was a good stand-up fight, too, – man to man, some of it; and if it was n’t that my head reels so when I sit or stand up, I ‘d like to be at it again.”

“It is a fine bull-dog, – just a bull-dog,” said Skeff, patting him on the head, while in the compassionate pity of his voice he showed how humbly he ranked the qualities he ascribed to him. “Ah! now I remember what it was I wished to ask you (it escaped me till this moment): who is the creature that calls himself Sam M’Gruder?”

“As good a fellow as ever stepped, and a true friend of mine. What of him?”

“Don’t look as if you would tear me in pieces, and scatter the fragments to the four winds of heaven. Sir, I ‘ll not stand it, – none of your buccaneering savageries to me!”

Tony laughed, and laughed heartily at the air of offended dignity of the other; and Skeff was himself disposed at last to smile at his own anger. “That ‘s the crying sin of your nature, Tony,” said he. “It is the one defect that spoils a really fine fellow. I tell you frankly about it, because I ‘m your friend; and if you don’t curb it, you ‘ll never be anything, – never! never!”

“But what is this fault? you have forgotten to tell it.”

“Over and over again have I told it It is your stupid animal confidence in your great hulking form: your coarse reliance on your massive shoulders, – a degenerate notion that muscle means manhood. It is here, sir, – here;” and Skeff touched his forehead with the tip of his finger; “here lies the godlike attribute. And until you come to feel that, you never will have arrived at the real dignity of a great creature.”

“Well, if I be the friend of one, Skeffy, it will satisfy all my ambition,” said he, grasping his hand warmly; “and now what of M’Gruder? How did you come to know of him?”

“Officially, – officially, of course. Skeffington Darner and Sam M’Gruder might revolve in ether for centuries and their orbits never cross! but it happened this honest fellow had gone off in search of you into Sicily; and with that blessed propensity for blundering the British subject is gifted with, had managed to offend the authorities and get imprisoned. Of course he appealed to me. They all appeal to me! but at the moment unhappily for him, the King was appealing to me, and Cavour was appealing to me, and so was the Emperor; and, I may mention in confidence, so was Garibaldi! – not in person, but through a friend. I know these things must be. Whenever a fellow has a head on his shoulders in this world, the other fellows who have no heads find it out and work him. Ay, sir, work him! That ‘s why I have said over and over again the stupid dogs have the best of it. I declare to you, on my honor, Tony, there are days I ‘d rather be you than be Skeff Darner!”

Tony shook his head.

“I know it sounds absurd, but I pledge you my sacred word of honor I have felt it.”

“And M’Gruder?” asked Tony.

“M’Gruder, sir, I liberated! I said, Free him! and, like the fellow in Curran’s celebrated passage, his chains fell to the ground, and he stood forward, not a bit grateful, – far from it, – but a devilish crusty Scotchman, telling me what a complaint he ‘d lodge against me as soon as he arrived in England.”

“No, no; he ‘s not the fellow to do that.”

“If he did, sir, it would crush him! The Emperor of Russia could not prefer a complaint against Skeff Darner, and feel the better of it!”

“He ‘s a true-hearted, fine fellow,” said Tony.

“With all my heart I concede to him all the rough virtues you may desire to endow him with; but please to bear in mind, Master Tony, that a man of your station and your fortune cannot afford such intimacies as your friend Rory here and this M’Gruder creature.”

“Then I was a richer man when I had nothing, for I could afford it then,” said Tony, sturdily; “and I tell you more, Skeffy, – I mean to afford it still. There is no fellow living I love better – no, nor as well – as I love yourself; but even for your love I’ll not give up the fine-hearted fellows who were true to me in my days of hardship, shared with me what they had, and gave me – what was better to me – their loving-kindness and sympathy.”

“You’d bring down the house if you said that in the Adelphi, Tony.”

“It ‘s well for you that I can’t get out of bed,” said Tony, with a grim laugh.

“There it is again; another appeal to the brute man and the man brute! Well, I ‘ll go to dinner, and I ‘ll tell the fair Sister to prepare your barley-water, and administer it in a more diluted form than heretofore;” and, adjusting his hat so as to display a favorite lock to the best advantage, and drawing on his gloves in leisurely fashion, Skeff Darner walked proudly away, bestowing little benevolent gestures on the patients as he passed, and intimating by certain little signs that he had taken an interest in their several cases, and saying, by a sweet smile, “You ‘ll be the better of this visit of mine. You ‘ll see, you will.”

CHAPTER LVIII. THE SIXTH OF SEPTEMBER

On the evening of the 6th of September a corvette steamed rapidly out of the Bay of Naples, threading her way deviously through the other ships of war, unacknowledged by salute, – not even an ensign dipped as she passed.

“There goes the King and the monarchy,” said Skeff, as he stood on the balcony with the Lyles, and pointed to the fast-retreating vessel.

“I suppose the sooner we leave the better,” said Lady Lyle, whose interest in political affairs was very inferior to that she felt on personal matters.

“Skeff says that the ‘Talisman’ will take us on board,” said Sir Arthur.

“Yes,” said Skeff; “Captain Paynter will be here by and by to take your orders, and know when he is to send in his boats for you; and though I feel assured my general directions will be carried out here, and that no public disturbance will take place, you will all be safer under the Union Jack.”

“And what of Tony Butler? When is he to arrive?” asked Bella.

“Tony,” said Skeff, “is to arrive here to-night I have had a note from his friend M’Gruder, who has gone down to meet him, and is now at Salerno.”

“And who is his friend M’Gruder?” asked Lady Lyle, superciliously.

“A rag-merchant from Leghorn,” said Skeff; “but Tony calls him an out-and-out good fellow; and I must say he did n’t take five minutes to decide when I told him Tony was coming up from Cava, and would be glad to have his company on the road.”

“These are, of course, exceptional times, when all sorts of strange intimacies will be formed; but I do hope that Tony will see that his altered circumstances as to fortune require from him more care in the selection of his friends than he has hitherto been distinguished for.”