Tony Butler Part 100

The leave-taking between Mrs. Butler and Dolly was more than usually affectionate; and even after they had separated, the old lady called her back and kissed her again.

"I don't know how mother will bear up after you leave her," muttered Tony, as he walked along at Dolly's side; "she is fonder of you than ever."

Dolly murmured something, but inaudibly.

"For my own part," continued Tony, "I can't believe this step necessary at all. It would be an ineffable disgrace to the whole neighborhood to let one we love and revere as we do him, go away in his old age, one may say, to seek his fortune. He belongs to us, and we to him. We have been linked together for years, and I can't bear the thought of our separating."

This was a very long speech for Tony, and he felt almost fatigued when it was finished; but Dolly was silent, and there was no means by which he could guess the effect it had produced upon her.

"As to my mother," continued he, "she'd not care to live here any longer,--I know it. I don't speak of myself, because it's the habit to think I don't care for any one or anything,--that's the estimate people form of me, and I must bear it as I can."

"It's less than just, Tony," said Dolly, gravely.

"Oh, if I am to ask for justice, Dolly, I shall get the worst of it,"

said he, laughing, but not merrily.

For a while they walked on without a word on either side.

"What a calm night!" said Dolly, "and how large the stars look! They tell me that in southern lat.i.tudes they seem immense."

"You are not sorry to leave this, Dolly?" murmured he, gloomily; "are you?"

A very faint sigh was all her answer.

"I 'm sure no one could blame you," he continued. "There is not much to attach any one to the place, except, perhaps, a half-savage like myself, who finds its ruggedness congenial."

"But you will scarcely remain here, now, Tony; you'll be more likely to settle at Butler Hall, won't you?"

"Wherever I settle it sha'n't be here, after you have left it," said he, with energy.

"Sir Arthur Lyle and his family are all coming back in a few days, I hear."

"So they may; it matters little to me, Dolly. Shall I tell you a secret?

Take my arm, Dolly,--the path is rough here,--you may as well lean on me. We are not likely to have many more walks together. Oh dear! if you were as sorry as I am, what a sad stroll this would be!"

"What's your secret, Tony?" asked she, in a faint voice

"Ah! my secret, my secret," said he, ponderingly: "I don't know why I called it a secret,--but here is what I meant. You remember, Dolly, how I used to live up there at the Abbey formerly. It was just like my home. I ordered all the people about just as if they had been my own servants,--and, indeed, they minded my orders more than their master's.

The habit grew so strong upon me, of being obeyed and followed, that I suppose I must have forgot my own real condition. I take it I must have lost sight of who and what I actually was, till one of the sons--a young fellow in the service in India--came back and contrived to let me make the discovery, that, though I never knew it, I was really living the life of a dependant. I 'll not tell you how this stung me, but it did sting me--all the more that I believed, I fancied, myself--don't laugh at me--but I really imagined I was in love with one of the girls--Alice.

She was Alice Trafford then."

"I had heard of that," said Dolly, in a faint voice.

"Well, she too undeceived me--not exactly as unfeelingly nor as offensively as her brother, but just as explicitly--you know what I mean?"

"No; tell me more clearly," said she, eagerly.

"I don't know how to tell you. It's a long story,--that is to say, I was a long while under a delusion, and she was a long while indulging it.

Fine ladies, I 'm told, do this sort of thing when they take a caprice into their heads to civilize young barbarians of my stamp."

"That's not the generous way to look at it, Tony."

"I don't want to be generous,--the adage says one ought to begin by being just. Skeffy--you know whom I mean, Skeff Darner--saw it clearly enough--he warned me about it. And what a clever fellow he is! Would you believe it, Dolly? he actually knew all the time that I was not really in love when I thought I was. He knew that it was a something made up of romance and ambition and boyish vanity, and that my heart, my real heart, was never in it."

Dolly shook her head, but whether in dissent or in sorrow it was not easy to say.

"Shall I tell you more?" cried Tony, as he drew her arm closer to him, and took her hand in his; "shall I tell you more, Dolly? Skeff read me as I could not read myself. He said to me, 'Tony, this is no case of love, it is the flattered vanity of a very young fellow to be distinguished not alone by the prettiest, but the most petted woman of society. _You_,' said he, 'are receiving all the homage paid to her at second-hand.' But more than all this, Dolly; he not merely saw that I was not in love with Alice Trafford, but he saw with whom my heart was bound up, for many and many a year."

"Her sister, her sister Bella," whispered Dolly.

"No, but with yourself, my own own Dolly," cried he; and turning, and before she could prevent it, he clasped her in his arms, and kissed her pa.s.sionately.

"Oh, Tony!" said she, sobbing, "you that I trusted, you that I confided in, to treat me thus."

"It is that my heart is bursting, Dolly, with this long pent-up love, for I now know I have loved you all my life long. Don't be angry with me, my darling Dolly; I'd rather die at your feet than hear an angry word from you. Tell me if you can care for me; oh, tell me, if I strive to be all you could like and love, that you will not refuse to be my own."

She tried to disengage herself from his arm; she trembled, heaved a deep sigh, and fell with her head on his shoulder.

"And you are my own," said he, again kissing her; "and now the wide world has not so happy a heart as mine."

Of those characters of my story who met happiness, it is as well to say no more. A more cunning craftsman than myself has told us that the less we track human life the more cheerily we shall speak of it. Let us presume, and it is no unfair presumption, that, as Tony's life was surrounded with a liberal share of those gifts which make existence pleasurable, he was neither ungrateful nor unmindful of them. Of Dolly I hope there need be no doubt. "The guid dochter is the best warrant for the guid wife:" so said her father, and he said truly.

In the diary of a Spanish guerilla chief, there is mention of a "n.o.bile Inglese," who met him at Malta, to confer over the possibility of a landing in Calabria, and the chances of a successful rising there. The Spaniard speaks of this man as a person of rank, education, and talents, high in the confidence of the Court, and evidently warmly interested in the cause. He was taken prisoner by the Piedmontese troops on the third day after they landed, and, though repeatedly offered life under conditions it would have been no dishonor to accept, was tried by court-martial, and shot.

There is reason to believe that the "n.o.bile Inglese" was Maitland.

From the window where I write, I can see the promenade on the Pincian Hill; and if my eyes do not deceive me, I can perceive that at times the groups are broken, and the loungers fall back, to permit some one to pa.s.s. I have called the waiter to explain the curious circ.u.mstance, and asked if it be royalty that is so deferentially acknowledged. He smiles, and says: "No. It is the major domo of the palace exacts the respect you see. He can do what he likes at Rome. Antonelli himself is not greater than the Count M'Caskey."

As some unlettered guide leads the traveller to the verge of a cliff, from which the glorious landscape beneath is visible, and winding river and embowered homestead, and swelling plain and far-off mountain, are all spread out beneath for the eye to revel over, so do I place you, my valued reader, on that spot from which the future can be seen, and modestly retire that you may gaze in peace, weaving your own fancies at will, and investing the scene before you with such images and such interests as best befit it.

_My_ part is done: if I have suggested something for _yours_, it will not be all in vain that I have written "Tony Butler."