Tony Butler Part 39

"To the Burnside,--to the widow Butler's,--where else! You heard it all arranged at dinner, didn't you?"

"I heard something suggested laughingly and lightly, but nothing serious, far less settled positively."

"Will you please to tell me, sir, how much of your life is serious, and how much is to be accepted as levity? for I suppose the inquiry I have to make of you amounts just to that, and no more."

"Commodore Graham, it would distress me much if I were to misunderstand you once again to-night, and you will oblige me deeply if you will put any question you expect me to answer in its very simplest form."

"That I will, sir; that I will! Now then, what are your intentions?"

"What are my intentions?"

"Yes, sir,--exactly so; what are your intentions?"

"I declare I have so many, on such varied subjects, and of such different hues, that it would be a sore infliction on your patience were I only to open the budget; and as to either of us exhausting it, it is totally out of the question. Take your chance of a subject, then, and I 'll do my best to enlighten you."

"This is fencing, sir; and it doesn't suit me?"

"If you knew how very little the whole conversation suits me, you 'd not undervalue my patience."

"I ask you once again, what are your intentions as regards my youngest daughter, Miss Rebecca Graham! That's plain speaking, I believe."

"Nothing plainer; and my reply shall be equally so. I have none,--none whatever."

"Do you mean to say you never paid her any particular attentions?"

"Never."

"That you never took long walks with her when at Lyle Abbey, quite alone and unaccompanied?"

"We walked together repeatedly. I am not so ungrateful as to forget her charming companionship."

"Confound your grat.i.tude, sir! it's not that I'm talking of. You made advances. You--you told her--you said--in fact, you made her believe--ay, and you made me believe--that you meant to ask her to marry you."

"Impossible!" said Maitland; "impossible!"

"And why impossible? Is it that our respective conditions are such as to make the matter impossible?"

"I never thought of such an impertinence, Commodore. When I said impossible, it was entirely with respect to the construction that could be placed on all my intercourse with Miss Graham."

"And did n't I go up to your room on the morning I left, and ask you to come over to Port-Graham and talk the matter over with me?"

"You invited me to your house, but I had not the faintest notion that it was to this end. Don't shake your head as if you doubted me; I pledge you my word on it."

"How often have you done this sort of thing? for no fellow is as cool as you are that's not an old hand at it."

"I can forgive a good deal--"

"Forgive! I should think you could forgive the people you've injured.

The question is, can I forgive? Yes, sir, can I forgive?"

"I declare it never occurred to me to inquire."

"That's enough,--quite enough; you shall hear from me. It may take me twenty-four hours to find a friend; but before this time to-morrow evening, sir, I 'll have him."

Maitland shrugged his shoulders carelessly, and said, "As you please, sir."

"It shall be as I please, sir; I 'll take care of that. Are you able to say at present to whom my friend can address himself?"

"If your friend will first do the favor to call upon me, I 'll be able by that time to inform him."

"All right. If it's to be Mark Lyle--"

"Certainly not; it could never occur to me to make choice of your friend and neighbor's son for such an office."

"Well, I thought not,--I hoped not; and I suspected, besides, that the little fellow with the red whiskers--that major who dined one day at the Abbey--"

Maitland's pale cheek grew scarlet, his eyes flashed with pa.s.sion, and all the consummate calm of his manner gave way as he said, "With the choice of my friend, sir, you have nothing to do, and I decline to confer further with you."

"Eh, eh! that sh.e.l.l broke in the magazine, did it? I thought it would. I 'll be shot but I thought it would!" And with a hearty laugh, but bitter withal, the old Commodore seized his hat and departed.

Maitland was much tempted to hasten after the Commodore, and demand--imperiously demand--from him an explanation of his last words, whose taunt was even more in the manner than the matter. Was it a mere chance hit, or did the old sailor really know something about the relations between himself and M'Caskey? A second or two of thought rea.s.sured him, and he laughed at his own fears, and turned once more to the table to finish his letter to his friend.

"You have often, my dear Carlo, heard me boast that amidst all the shifting chances and accidents of my life, I had ever escaped one signal misfortune,--in my mind, about the greatest that ever befalls a man. I have never been ridiculous. This can be my triumph no longer. The charm is broken! I suppose, if I had never come to this blessed country, I might have preserved my immunity to the last; but you might as well try to keep your gravity at one of the Polichinello combats at Naples as preserve your dignity in a land where life is a perpetual joke, and where the few serious people are so illogical in their gravity, they are the best fun of all. Into this strange society I plunged as fearlessly as a man does who has seen a large share of life, and believes that the human crystal has no side he has not noticed; and the upshot is, I am supposed to have made warm love to a young woman that I scarcely flirted with, and am going to be shot at to-morrow by her father for not being serious in my intentions! You may laugh--you may scream, shout, and kick with laughter, and I almost think I can hear you; but it's a very embarra.s.sing position, and the absurdity of it is more than I can face.

"Why did I ever come here? What induced me ever to put foot in a land where the very natives do not know their own customs, and where all is permitted and nothing is tolerated? It is too late to ask you to come and see me through this troublesome affair; and indeed my present vacillation is whether to marry the young lady or run away bodily; for I own to you I am afraid--heartily afraid--to fight a man that might be my grandfather; and I can't bear to give the mettlesome old fellow the fun of shooting at me for nothing. And worse--a thousand times worse than all this,--Alice will have such a laugh at me! Ay, Carlo, here is the sum of my affliction.

"I must close this, as I shall have to look out for some one long of stride and quick of eye, to handle me on the ground. Meanwhile, order dinner for two on Sat.u.r.day week, for I mean to be with you; and, therefore, say nothing of those affairs which interest us, _ultra montant_. I write by this post to M'C. to meet me as I pa.s.s through Dublin; and, of course, the fellow will want money. I shall therefore draw on Cipriani for whatever is necessary, and you must be prepared to tell him the outlay was indispensable. I have done nothing, absolutely nothing, here,--neither seduced man nor woman, and am bringing back to the cause nothing greater or more telling than

"Norman Maitland."

CHAPTER XXIV. A STARLIT NIGHT IN A GARDEN

It was late at night, verging indeed on morning, when Maitland finished his letter. All was silent around, and in the great house the lights were extinguished, and apparently all retired to rest. Lighting his cigar, he strolled out into the garden. The air was perfectly still; and although there was no moon, the sky was spangled over with stars, whose size seemed greater seen through the thin frosty atmosphere. It was pre-eminently the bright clear elastic night of a northern lat.i.tude, and the man of pleasure in a thousand shapes, the voluptuary, the _viveur_, was still able to taste the exquisite enjoyment of such an hour, as though his appet.i.te for pleasure bad not been palled by all the artifices of a life of luxury. He strolled about at random from alley to alley, now stopping to inhale the rich odor of some half-sleeping plant, now loitering at some old fountain, and bathing his temples with the ice-cold water. He was one of those men--it is not so small a category as it might seem--who fancy that the same gifts which win success socially, would be just as sure to triumph if employed in the wider sphere of the great ambitions of life. He could count the men he had pa.s.sed, and easily pa.s.sed, in the race of social intercourse,--men who at a dinner-table or in a drawing-room had not a t.i.the of his quickness, his versatility, his wit, or his geniality, and yet, plodding onwards and upwards, had attained station, eminence, and fortune; while he--he, well read, accomplished, formed by travel and polished by cultivation--there he was! just as he had begun the world, the only difference being those signs of time that tell as fatally on temperament as on vigor; for the same law that makes the hair gray and the cheek wrinkled, renders wit sarcastic and humor malevolent Maitland believed--honestly believed--he was a better man than this one here who held a high command in India, and that other who wrote himself Secretary of State. He knew how little effort it had cost him, long ago, to leave "scores of such fellows" behind at school and at the university; but he, unhappily, forgot that in the greater battle of life he had made no such efforts, and laid no tax on either his industry or his ability.

He tried--he did his very best--to undervalue, to his own mind, their successes, and even asked himself aloud, "Which of them all do I envy?"

but conscience is stronger than casuistry, however crafty it be, and the answer came not so readily as he wished.

While he thus mused, he heard his name uttered, so close to him, too, that he started, and, on looking up, saw that Mrs. Trafford's rooms were lighted, and one of the windows which "gave" upon a terrace was open.

Voices came from the room within, and soon two figures pa.s.sed out on the terrace, which he speedily recognized to be Alice and Mark Lyle.

"You mistake altogether, Mark," said she, eagerly. "It is no question whatever, whether your friend Mr. Maitland goes away disgusted with Ireland, and sick of us all. It is a much graver matter here. What if he were to shoot this old man? I suppose a fine gentleman as he is would deem it a very suitable punishment to any one who even pa.s.singly angered him."

"But why should there be anything of the kind? It is to me Maitland would come at once if there were such a matter in hand."

"I'm not so sure of that; and I am sure that Raikes overheard provocation pa.s.s between them, and that the Commodore left this half an hour ago, merely telling Sally that he had forgotten some lease or law paper that he ought to have sent off by post."

"If that be the case, there's nothing to be done."