Tony Butler Part 37

"Nothing of the kind, Commodore," broke in Mrs. Trafford. "You have been quite misinformed. Mrs. Butler is, without affluence, perfectly independent; and more so even in spirit than in fortune."

A very significant smile from Maitland seemed to say that he recognized and enjoyed her generous advocacy of her friend.

"Perhaps you could do something, General, for his son?" cried Mrs.

Maxwell.

"What sort of a lad is he?"

"Don't ask me, for I don't like him; and don't ask my sisters, for they like him too well," said Mark.

"Have you met him, Mr. Maitland?" asked the General.

"Yes, but pa.s.singly. I was struck, however, by his good looks and manly bearing. The country rings with stories of his courage and intrepidity."

"And they are all true," said Isabella Lyle. "He is the best and bravest creature breathing."

"There's praise,--that's what I call real praise," said the General.

"I'll certainly go over and see him after that."

"I 'll do better, General," said Mrs. Maxwell; "I 'll send over and ask him here to-morrow. Why do you shake your head, Bella? He 'll not come?"

"No," said she, calmly.

"Not if you and Alice were to back my request?"

"I fear not," said Alice. "He has estranged himself of late from every one; he has not been even once to see us since he came back from England."

"Then Mark will go and fetch him for us," said Mrs. Maxwell, the most un.o.bservant of all old ladies.

"Not I, madam; nor would that be the way to secure him."

"Well, have him we must," said Mrs. Maxwell; while she added in a whisper to Mrs. Trafford, "It would never do to lose the poor boy such a chance."

"Beck says, if some one will drive her over to the Causeway," cried the Commodore, "she'll vouch for success, and bring young Tony back with her."

"Mr. Maitland offers himself," said Alice, whose eyes sparkled with fun, while her lips showed no trace of a smile.

"Take the phaeton, then," said Mrs. Maxwell; "only there will be no place for young Butler; but take a britscha, and order post-horses at Greme's Mill." And now a sharp discussion ensued which road was the shorter, and whether the long hill or the "new cut" was the more severe on the cattle.

"This was most unfair of you," said Maitland to Mrs. Trafford, as they rose from the table; "but it shall not succeed."

"How will you prevent it?" said she, laughing. "What can you do?"

"Rather than go I 'd say anything."

"As how, for instance?"

He leaned forward and whispered a few words in her ear, and suddenly her face became scarlet, her eyes flashed pa.s.sionately, as she said, "This pa.s.ses the limit of jest, Mr. Maitland."

"Not more than the other would pa.s.s the limit of patience," said he; and now, instead of entering the drawing-room, he turned short round and sought his own room.

CHAPTER XXIII. THE FIRST NIGHT AT TILNEY

Mattland was not in the best of tempers when he retired to his room.

Whatever the words he had whispered in Alice's ear,--and this history will not record them,--they were a failure. They were even worse than a failure, for they produced an effect directly the opposite to that intended.

"Have I gone too fast?" muttered he; "have I deceived myself? She certainly understood me well in what I said yesterday. She, if anything, gave me a sort of encouragement to speak. She drew away her hand, it is true, but without any show of resentment or anger; a sort of protest, rather, that implied, 'We have not yet come to this.' These home-bred women are hard riddles to read. Had she been French, Spanish, or Italian,--ay, or even one of our own, long conversant with the world of Europe,--I never should have blundered." Such thoughts as these be now threw on paper, in a letter to his friend Caffarelli.

"What a fiasco I have made, _Carlo mio_," said he, "and all from not understanding the nature of these creatures, who have never seen a sunset south of the Alps. I know how little sympathy any fellow meets with from you, if he be only unlucky. I have your face before me,--your eyebrows on the top of your forehead, and your nether lip quivering with malicious drollery, as you cry out, '_Ma perche? perche? perche?_'

And I'll tell you why: because I believed that she had hauled down her colors, and there was no need to continue firing.

"Of course you'll say, '_Meno male_,' resume the action. But it won't do, Signor Conte, it won't do. She is not like one of your hardened coquettes on the banks of the Arno or the slopes of Castellamare, who think no more of a declaration of love than an invitation to dinner; nor have the slightest difficulty in making the same excuse to either,--a pre-engagement. She is English, or worse again, far worse,--Irish.

"I 'd give--I don't know what I would n't give--that I could recall that stupid speech. I declare I think it is this fearful language has done it all. One can no more employ the Anglo-Saxon tongue for a matter of delicate treatment, than one could paint a miniature with a hearth-brush. What a pleasant coinage for cajolery are the liquid lies of the sweet South, where you can lisp duplicity, and seem never to hurt the Decalogue."

As he had written so far, a noisy summons at his door aroused him; while the old Commodore's voice called out, "Maitland! Maitland! I want a word with you." Maitland opened the door, and without speaking, returned to the fire, standing with his back to it, and his hands carelessly stuck in his pockets.

"I thought I 'd come over and have a cigar with you here, and a gla.s.s of brandy-and-water," said Graham. "They 're hard at it yonder, with harp and piano, and, except holystoning a deck, I don't know its equal."

"I 'm the more sorry for your misfortune, Commodore, that I am unable to alleviate it I 'm deep in correspondence just now, as you see there, and have a quant.i.ty more to do before bedtime."

"Put it aside, put it aside; never write by candlelight. It ruins the eyes; and yours are not so young as they were ten years ago."

"The observation is undeniable," said Maitland, stiffly.

"You're six-and-thirty? well, five-and-thirty, I take it."

"I 'm ashamed to say I cannot satisfy your curiosity on so natural a subject of inquiry."

"Sally says forty," said he, in a whisper, as though the remark required caution. "Her notion is that you dye your whiskers; but Beck's idea is that you look older than you are."

"I scarcely know to which of the young ladies I owe my deeper acknowledgments," said Maitland, bowing.

"You're a favorite with both; and if it hadn't been for the very decided preference you showed, I tell you frankly they 'd have been tearing caps about you ere this."

"This flattery overwhelms me; and all the more that it is quite unexpected."

"None of your mock modesty with me, you dog!" cried the Commodore, with a chuckling laugh. "No fellow had ever any success of that kind that he did n't know it; and, upon my life, I believe the very conceit it breeds goes halfway with women."

"It is no small prize to learn the experiences of a man like yourself on such a theme."

"Well, I 'll not deny it," said he, with a short sigh. "I had my share--some would say a little more than my share--of that sort of thing. You'll not believe it, perhaps, but I was a devilish good-looking fellow when I was--let me see--about six or eight years younger than you are now."

"I am prepared to credit it," said Maitland, dryly.

"There was no make-up about _me_,--no lacquering, no paint, no padding; all honest scantling from keel to taffrail. I was n't tall, it's true. I never, with my best heels on, pa.s.sed five feet seven and a half."