Tony Butler

“Were you not always as a dear brother to me?”

“I wanted to be more than brother, and when I found that this could not be, I grew very careless, almost reckless, of my life; not but that it took a long time to teach me the full lesson. I had to think over, not only all that separated us in station, but all that estranged us in tone of mind; and I saw that your superiority to me chafed me, and that if you should ever come to feel for me, it would be through some sense of pity.”

“Oh, Tony!”

“Yes, Alice, you know it better than I can say it; and so I set my pride to fight against my love, with no great success at first. But as I lay wounded in the orchard at Melazzo, and thought of my poor mother, and her sorrow if she were to hear of my death, and compared her grief with what yours would be, I saw what was real in love, and what was mere interest; and I remember I took out my two relics, – the dearest objects I had in the world, – a lock of my mother’s hair and a certain glove, – a white glove you may have seen once on a time; and it was over the little braid of brown hair I let fall the last tears I thought ever to shed in life; and here is the glove – I give it back to you. Will you have it?”

She took it with a trembling hand; and in a voice of weak but steady utterance said, “I told you that this time would come.”

“You did so,” said he, gloomily.

Alice rose and walked out upon the balcony; and after a moment Tony followed her. They leaned on the balustrade side by side, but neither spoke.

“But we shall always be dear friends, Tony, sha’n’t we?” said she, while she laid her hand gently over his.

“Oh, Alice,” said he, plaintively, “do not – do not, I beseech you – lead me back again into that land of delusion I have just tried to escape from. If you knew how I loved you – if you knew what it costs me to tear that love out of my heart – you’d never wish to make the agony greater to me.”

“Dear Tony, it was a mere boyish passion. Remember for a moment how it began. I was older than you – much older as regards life and the world – and even older by more than a year. You were so proud to attach yourself to a grown woman, – you a mere lad; and then your love – for I will grant it was love – dignified you to yourself. It made you more daring where there was danger, and it taught you to be gentler and kinder, and more considerate to every one. All your good and great qualities grew the faster that they had those little vicissitudes of joy and sorrow, the sun and rain of our daily lives; but all that is not love.”

“You mean there is no love where there is no return of love?”

She was silent

“If so, I deny it. The faintest flicker of a hope was enough for me; the merest shadow, a smile, a passing word, your mere ‘Thank you, Tony,’ as I held your stirrup, the little word of recognition you would give when I had done something that pleased you, – these – any of them – would send me home happy, – happier, perhaps, than I ever shall be again.”

“No, Tony, do not believe that,” said she, calmly; “not,” added she, hastily, “that I can acquit myself of all wrong to you. No; I was in fault, – gravely in fault I ought to have seen what would have come of all our intimacy; I ought to have known that I could not develop all that was best in your nature without making you turn in gratitude – well, in love – to myself; but shall I tell you the truth? I over-estimated my power over you. I not only thought I could make you love, but unlove me; and I never thought what pain that lesson might cost – each of us.”

“It would have been fairer to have cast me adrift at first,” said he, fiercely.

“And yet, Tony, you will be generous enough one of these days to think differently!”

“I certainly feel no touch of that generosity now.”

“Because you are angry with me, Tony, – because you will not be just to me; but when you have learned to think of me as your sister, and can come and say, Dear Alice, counsel me as to this, advise me as to that, – then there will be no ill-will towards me for all I have done to teach you the great stores that were in your own nature.”

“Such a day as that is distant,” said he, gloomily.

“Who knows? The changes which work within us are not to be measured by time; a day of sorrow will do the work of years.”

“There! that lantern at the peak is the signal for me to be off. The skipper promised to give me notice; but if you will say ‘Stay!’ be it so. No, no, Alice, do not lay your hand on my arm if you would not have me again deceive myself.”

“You will write to me, Tony?”

He shook his head to imply the negative.

“Well, to Bella, at least?”

“I think not. I will not promise. Why should I? Is it to try and knot together the cords we have just torn, that you may break them again at your pleasure?”

“How ungenerous you are!”

“You reminded me awhile ago it was my devotion to you that civilized me; is it not natural that I should go back to savagery, as my allegiance was rejected?”

“You want to be Garibaldian in love as in war,” said she, smiling.

The deep boom of a gun floated over the bay, and Tony started.

“That’s the last signal, – good-bye.” He held out his hand.

“Good-bye, dear Tony,” said she. She held her cheek towards him. He hesitated, blushed till his face was in a dame, then stooped and kissed her. Skeff’s voice was heard at the instant at the door; and Tony rushed past him and down the stairs, and then, with mad speed, dashed along to the jetty, leaped into the boat, and, covering his face with his hands, never raised his head till they were alongside.

“You were within an inch of being late, Tony,” cried M’Gruder, as he came up the side. “What detained you?”

“I ‘ll tell you all another time, – let me go below now;” and he disappeared down the ladder. The heavy paddles flapped slowly, then faster; and the great mass moved on, and made for the open sea.

CHAPTER LX. A DECK WALK

The steamer was well ont to sea when Tony appeared on deck. It was a calm, starlight night, – fresh, but not cold. The few passengers, however, had sought their berths below, and the only one who lingered on deck was M’Grader and one other, who, wrapped in a large boat-cloak, lay fast asleep beside the binnacle.

“I was thinking you had turned in,” said M’Grader to Tony, “as you had not come up.”

“Give me a light; I want a smoke badly. I felt that something was wrong with me, though I did n’t know what it was. Is this Rory here?”

“Yes, sound asleep, poor fellow.”

“I ‘ll wager a trifle he has a lighter heart than either of us, Sam.”

“It might easily be lighter than mine,” sighed M’Grader, heavily.

Tony sighed too, but said nothing, and they walked along side by side, with that short jerking stride men pace a deck with, feeling some sort of companionship, although no words were exchanged between them.

“You were nigh being late,” said M’Grader, at last “What detained you on shore?”

“I saw her!” said Tony, in a low muffled voice.

“You saw her! Why, you told me you were determined not to see her.”

“So I was, and so I intended. It came about by mere accident That strange fellow, Skeffy, you’ve heard me speak of, – he pushed me plump into the room where she was, and there was nothing to be done but to speak to her.”

“Well?”

“Well! I spoke,” said he, half gruffly; and then, as if correcting the roughness of his tone, added, “It was just as I said it would be; just as I told you. She liked me well enough as a brother, but never thought of me as anything else. All the interest she had taken in me was out of friendship. She didn’t say this haughtily, not a bit; she felt herself much older than me, she said; that she felt herself better was like enough, but she never hinted it, but she let me feel pretty plainly that we were not made for each other; and though the lesson wasn’t much to my liking, I began to see it was true.”

“Did you really?”

“I did,” said he, with a deep sigh. “I saw that all the love I had borne her was only paid back in a sort of feeling half compassionately, half kindly; that her interest in me was out of some desire to make something out of me; I mean, to force me to exert myself and do something, – anything besides living a hanger-on at a great house. I have a notion, too, – Heaven knows if there ‘s anything in it, – but I ‘ve a notion, Sam, if she had never known me till now, – if she had never seen me idling and lounging about in that ambiguous position I held, – something between gamekeeper and reduced gentleman, – that I might have had a better chance.”

M’Gruder nodded a half-assent, and Tony continued: “I’ll tell you why I think so. Whenever she asked me about the campaign and the way I was wounded, and what I had seen, there was quite a change in her voice, and she listened to what I said very differently from the way she heard me when I talked to her of my affection for her.”