Tony Butler Part 23

There now remained but a few shillings above five pounds, and he sat down and wrote this note:--

"My dear Skeffington,--Some one of your friends, last night, was kind enough to pay my share of the reckoning for me. Will you do me the favor to thank and repay him? I am off to Ireland hurriedly, or I 'd call and see you. I have not even time to wait for those examination papers, which were to be delivered to me either to-day or to-morrow. Would you send them by post, addressed T. Butler, Burnside, Coleraine? My head is not very clear to-day, but it should be more stupid if I could forget all your kindness since we met.

"Believe me, very sincerely, &c.,

"Tony Butler."

The next was to his mother:--

"Dearest Mother,--Don't expect me on Sat.u.r.day; it may be two or three days later ere I reach home. I am all right, in rare health and capital spirits, and never in my life felt more completely your own

"Tony Butler."

One more note remained, but it was not easy to write it, nor even to decide whether to address it to Dora or to Mr. M'Gruder. At length he decided for the latter, and wrote thus:--

"Sir,--I beg to offer you the very humblest apology for the disturbance created last night before your house. We had all drunk too much wine, lost our heads, and forgotten good manners. If I had been in a fitting condition to express myself properly, I 'd have made my excuses on the spot. As it is, I make the first use of my recovered brains to tell you how heartily ashamed I am of my conduct, and how desirous I feel to know that you will cherish no ungenerous feelings towards your faithful servant,

"T. Butler."

"I hope he 'll think it all right. I hope this will satisfy him. I trust it is not too humble, though I mean to be humble. If he's a gentleman, he 'll think no more of it; but he may not be a gentleman, and will probably fancy that, because I stoop, he ought to kick me. That would be a mistake; and perhaps it would be as well to add, by way of P.S., 'If the above is not fully satisfactory, and that you prefer another issue to this affair, my address is T. Butler, Burnside, Coleraine, Ireland.'

"Perhaps that would spoil it all," thought Tony. "I want him to forgive an offence; and it's not the best way to that end to say, 'If you like fighting better, don't balk your fancy.' No, no; I 'll send it in its first shape. I don't feel very comfortable on my knees, it is true, but it is all my own fault if I am there.

"And now to reach home again. I wish I knew how that was to be done!

Seven or eight shillings are not a very big sum, but I 'd set off with them on foot if there was no sea to be traversed." To these thoughts there was no relief by the possession of any article of value that he could sell or pledge. He had neither watch nor ring, nor any of those fanciful trinkets which modern fashion affects.

He knew not one person from whom he could ask the loan of a few pounds; nor, worse again, could he be certain of being able to repay them within a reasonable time. To approach Skeffington on such a theme was impossible; anything rather than this. If he were once at Liverpool, there were sure to be many captains of Northern steamers that would know him, and give him a pa.s.sage home. But how to get to Liverpool?

The cheapest railroad fare was above a pound. If he must needs walk, it would take him a week; and he could not afford himself more than one meal a day, taking his chance to sleep under a corn-stack or a hedgerow.

Very dear, indeed, was the price that grand banquet cost him, and yet not dearer than half the extravagances men are daily and hourly committing; the only difference being that the debt is not usually exacted so promptly. He wrote his name on a card, and gave it to the waiter, saying, "When I send to you under this name, you will give my portmanteau to the bearer of the message, for I shall probably not come back,--at least, for some time."

The waiter was struck by the words, but more still by the dejected look of one whom, but twenty-four hours back, he had been praising for his frank and gay bearing.

"Nothing wrong, I hope, sir?" asked the man, respectfully.

"Not a great deal," said Tony, with a faint smile.

"I was afraid, sir, from seeing you look pale this morning, I fancied, indeed, that there was something amiss. I hope you 're not displeased at the liberty I took, sir?"

"Not a bit; indeed, I feel grateful to you for noticing that I was not in good spirits. I have so very few friends in this big city of yours, your sympathy was pleasant to me. Will you remember what I said about my luggage?"

"Of course, sir, I 'll attend to it; and if not called for within a reasonable time, is there any address you 'd like me to send it to?"

Tony stared at the man, who seemed to flinch under the gaze; and it shot like a bolt through his mind, "He thinks I have some gloomy purpose in my head." "I believe I apprehend you," said he, laying his hand on the man's shoulder; "but you are all wrong. There is nothing more serious the matter with me than to have run myself out of money, and I cannot conveniently wait here till I write and get an answer from home; there 's the whole of it."

"Oh, sir, if you 'll not be offended at a humble man like me,--if you 'd forgive the liberty I take, and let me as far as a ten-pound note;" he stammered, and reddened, and seemed positively wretched in his attempt to explain himself without any breach of propriety. Nor was Tony, indeed, less moved as he said,--

"I thank you heartily; you have given me something to remember of this place with grat.i.tude so long as I live. But I am not so hard pressed as you suspect. It is a merely momentary inconvenience, and a few days will set it all right Good-bye; I hope we'll meet again."

And he shook the man's hand cordially in his own strong fingers, and pa.s.sed out with a full heart and a very choking throat.

When he turned into the street, he walked along without choosing his way. His mind was too much occupied to let him notice either the way or the pa.s.sers-by; and he sauntered along, now musing over his own lot, now falling back upon that trustful heart of the poor waiter, whose position could scarcely have inspired such confidence.

"I am certain that what are called moralists are unfair censors of their fellow-men. I 'll be sworn there is more of kindness and generosity and honest truth in the world than there is of knavery and falsehood; but as we have no rewards for the one, and keep up jails and hulks for the other, we have nothing to guide our memories. That's the whole of it; all the statistics are on one side."

While he was thus ruminating, he had wandered along, and was already deep in the very heart of the City. Nor did the noise, the bustle, the overwhelming tide of humanity arouse him, as it swept along in its ceaseless flow. So intently was his mind turned inward, that he narrowly escaped being run over by an omnibus, the pole of which struck him, and under whose wheels he had unquestionably fallen, if it were not that a strong hand grasped him by the shoulder, and swung him powerfully back upon the flag-way.

"Is it blind you are, that you didn't hear the 'bus?" cried a somewhat gruff voice, with an accent that told of a land he liked well; and Tony turned and saw a stout, strongly built young fellow, dressed in a sort of bluish frieze, and with a bundle on a stick over his shoulder. He was good-looking, but of a more serious cast of features than is common with the lower-cla.s.s Irish.

"I see," said Tony, "that I owe this good turn to a countryman. You're from Ireland?"

"Indeed, and I am, your honor, and no lie in it," said he, reddening, as if--although there was nothing to be ashamed of by the avowal--popular prejudice lay rather in the other direction.

"I don't know what I was thinking of," said Tony, again; and even yet his head bad not regained its proper calm. "I forgot all about where I was, and never heard the horses till they were on me."

"'Tis what I remarked, sir," said the other, as with his sleeve he brushed the dirt off Tony's coat. "_I_ saw you was like one in a dhream."

"I wish I had anything worth offering you," said Tony, reddening, while he placed the last few shillings he had in the other's palm.

"What's this for?" said the man, half angrily; "sure you don't think it's for money I did it;" and he pushed the coin back almost rudely from him.

While Tony a.s.suaged, as well as he might, the anger of his wounded pride, they walked on together for some time, till at last the other said, "I'll have to hurry away now, your honor; I 'm to be at Blackwall, to catch the packet for Derry, by twelve o'clock."

"What packet do you speak of?"

"The 'Foyle,' sir. She's to sail this evening, and I have my pa.s.sage paid for me, and I mustn't lose it."

"If I had my luggage, I 'd go in her too. I want to cross over to Ireland."

"And where is it, sir,--the luggage, I mean?"

"Oh, it's only a portmanteau, and it's at the Tavistock Hotel, Covent Garden."

"If your honor wouldn't mind taking charge of this," said he, pointing to his bundle, "I 'd be off in a jiffy, and get the trunk, and be back by the time you reached the steamer."

"Would you really do me this service? Well, here 's my card; when you show this to the waiter, he 'll hand you the portmanteau; and there is nothing to pay."

"All right, sir; the 'Foyle,' a big paddle-steamer,--you 'll know her red chimney the moment you see it;" and without another word he gave Tony his bundle and hurried away.

"Is not this trustfulness?" thought Tony, as he walked onward; "I suppose this little bundle contains all this poor fellow's worldly store, and he commits it to a stranger without one moment of doubt or hesitation." It was for the second time on that same morning that his heart was touched by a trait of kindness; and he began to feel that if such proofs of brotherhood were rife in the world, narrow fortune was not half so bad a thing as he had ever believed it.

It was a long walk he had before him, and not much time to do it in, so that he was obliged to step briskly out. As for the bundle, it is but fair to own that at first he carried it with a certain shame and awkwardness, affecting in various ways to a.s.sure the pa.s.sers-by that such an occupation was new to him; but as time wore on, and he saw, as he did see, that very few noticed him, and none troubled themselves as to what was the nature of his burden, he grew more indifferent, well consoled by thinking that nothing was more unlikely than that he should be met by any one he knew.

When he got down to the river-side, boats were leaving in every direction, and one for the "Foyle," with two pa.s.sengers, offered itself at the moment. He jumped in, and soon found himself aboard a large mercantile boat, her deck covered with fragments of machinery and metal for some new factory in Belfast. "Where's the captain?" asked Tony of a gruff-looking man in a tweed coat and a wideawake.

"I'm the captain; and what then?" said the other.

In a few words Tony explained that he had found himself short of cash, and not wishing to be detained till he could write and have an answer from home, he begged he might have a deck pa.s.sage. "If it should cost more than I have money for, I will leave my trunk with your steward till I remit my debt."