Tony Butler Part 44

"That's because, like the rest of the world, you don't estimate me at my true value. I have a great vein of reflection or reflectiveness--which is it, Dolly? but it 's the deepest of the two--in me, if people only knew it."

"You have a great vein of kind-heartedness, and you are a good son to a good mother," said she, as a pink blush tinged her cheek, "and I like that better."

It was plain that the praise had touched him, and deeply too, for he drew his hand across his eyes, and his lip trembled as he said, "It was just about that dear mother I wanted to speak to you, Dolly. You know I'm going away?"

"My father told me," said she, with a nod of her head.

"And though, of course, I may manage a short leave now and then to come over and see her, she 'll be greatly alone. Now, Dolly, you know how she loves you,--how happy she always is when you come over to us. Will you promise me that you'll often do so? You used to think nothing of the walk long ago, and when you get strong and hearty again, you 'll not think more of it. It would be such a comfort to me, when I am far away, to feel that you were sitting beside her,--reading to her, perhaps, or settling those flowers she's so fond of. Ah, Dolly, I'll have that window that looks out on the white rocks in my mind, and you sitting at it, many and many a day, when I 'll be hundreds of miles off."

"I love your mother dearly, Tony; she has been like a mother to myself for many a year, and it would be a great happiness to me to be with her; but don't forget, Tony,"--and she tried to smile as she spoke,--"don't forget that I'll have to go seek my fortune also."

"And are n't you come to live at home now for good?"

She shook her head with a sorrowful meaning, and said:

"I'm afraid not, Tony. My dear, dear father does not grow richer as he grows older, and he needs many a little comfort that cannot come of his own providing, and you know he has none but me."

The intense sadness of the last few words were deepened by the swimming eyes and faltering lips of her that uttered them.

"And are you going back to these M'Gruders?"

She shook her head in negative.

"I 'm glad of that I 'm sure they were not kind."

"Nay, Tony, they were good folk, but after their own fashion; and they always strove to be just."

"Another word for being cruel. I 'd like to know what's to become of any of us in this world if we meet nothing better than Justice. But why did you leave them?--I mean leave them for good and all."

She changed color hastily, and turned her head away, while in a low confused manner she said: "There were several reasons. I need n't tell you I was n't strong, Tony, and strength is the first element of governess life."

"I know how it came about," broke in Tony. "Don't deny it,--don't, Dolly. It was all my fault."

"Don't speak so loud," whispered she, cautiously.

"It all came of that night I dined at Richmond. But if he hadn't struck at me--"

"Who struck at you, Tony, my man?" said the old minister, waking up. "He wasna over-gifted with prudence whoever did it, that I maun say; and how is Mrs. Butler and how are you yourself?"

"Bravely, sir, both of us. I 've had a long chat with Dolly over the fire, and I fear I must be going now. I 've brought you a brace of woodc.o.c.ks, and a message from my mother about not forgetting to dine with us on Monday."

"I don't know about that, Tony. The la.s.sie yonder is very weak just yet."

"But after a little rest, eh, Dolly? Don't you think you'd be strong enough to stroll over by Monday? Then Tuesday be it."

"We 'll bide and see, Tony,--we 'll bide and see. I'll be able, perhaps, to tell you after meeting to-morrow; not that you 're very reg'lar in attendance, Maister Tony; I mean to have a word or two with you about that one of these days."

"All right, sir," said Tony. "If you and Dolly come over to us on Monday, you may put me on the cutty-stool if you like afterwards;" and with that he was gone.

"And all this has been my doing," thought Tony, as he wended his way homewards. "I have lost to this poor girl the means by which she was earning her own livelihood, and aiding to make her father's life more comfortable! I must make her tell me how it all came about, and why they made her pay the penalty of my fault. Not very fair that for people so just as they are." "And to think," added he, aloud, after a pause,--"to think it was but the other day I was saying to myself, 'What can people mean when they talk of this weary world,--this life of care and toil and anxiety?'--and already I feel as if I stood on the threshold, and peeped in, and saw it all; but, to be sure, at that time I was cantering along the strand with Alice, and now--and now I am plodding along a dark road, with a hot brain and a heavy heart, to tell me that sorrow is sown broadcast, and none can escape it."

All was still at the cottage when he reached it, and he crept gently to his room, and was soon asleep, forgetting cares and griefs, and only awaking as the strong sunlight fell upon his face and proclaimed the morning.

CHAPTER XXVII. AN UNWELCOME LETTER

The doctor had guessed aright. Tony did not present himself at meeting on Sunday. Mrs. Butler, indeed, was there, though the distance was more than a mile, and the day a raw and gusty one, with threatenings of snow in the air.

"Are you coming with me, Tony, to hear the minister? It will be an interesting lecture to-day on the character of Ahab," said she, opening his door a few inches.

"I'm afraid not, mother; I'm in for a hard day's work this morning.

Better lose Ahab than lose my examination."

Mrs. Butler did not approve of the remark, but she closed the door and went her way, while Tony covered his table with a ma.s.s of books, arranged paper and pens, and then, filling the bowl of a large Turkish pipe, sat himself down, as he fancied, to work, but in reality to weave thoughts about as profitable and as connected as the thin blue wreaths of smoke that issued from his lips, and in watching whose wayward curls and waftings he continued to pa.s.s hours.

I have often suspected--indeed, my experience of life leads me much to the conviction--that for the perfect enjoyment of what is called one's own company, the man of many resources must yield the palm to him of none; and that the mere man of action, whose existence is stir, movement, and adventure, can and does find his occasional hours of solitude more pleasurable than he who brings to his reveries the tormenting doubts and distrusts, the casuistical indecisions, and the dreary discontents, that so often come of much reading. Certainly in the former there is no strain,--no wear and tear. He is not called on to breast the waves and stem the tide, but to float indolently down the stream without even remarking the scenery that clothes the banks.

Tony, I fancy, was a master of this art; he knew how to follow up any subject in thought till it began to become painful, and then to turn his attention to the sea and some far-off white sail, or to the flickering leaflet of falling snow, tossed and drifted here and there like some castaway,--a never-failing resource. He could follow with his eyes the azure circles of smoke, and wonder which would outstrip the other.

To fit him for the life of a "messenger," he had taken down "Cook's Voyages;" but after reading a few pages, he laid down the book to think how far the voyager's experiences could apply to the daily exigencies of a Foreign Office official, and to ask himself if he were not in reality laying down too wide and too extensive a foundation for future acquirement. "No," thought he, "I 'll not try to be any better or smarter than the rest. I 'll just stick to the practical part, and here goes for Ollendorf." Three or four sentences read,--he leaned back, and wondered whether he would not rather undertake an excursion on foot to Jerusalem than set out on an expedition into the French language. As if a whole life could master that bulky dictionary, and transfer its contents to his poor brain! To be sure, Alice knew it; but Alice could learn what she pleased. She learned to skate in three lessons,--and how she did it too! Who ever glided over the ice with such a grace,--so easy, so quiet, but with such a perfection of movement! Talk of dancing,--it was nothing to it. And could n't she ride? See her three fields off, and you'd know the ground just by the stride of her horse.

Such a hand she had! But who was like Alice?

Ah! there was the boundless prairie, to his thoughts, on which he might ramble forever; and on that wide swelling savannah, roaming and straying, we shall now leave him, and turn our glance elsewhere.

The morning service of the meeting-house over, Dr. Stewart proposed to walk home with Mrs. Butler. The exposition about Ahab had neither been as full or as able as he had intended, but it was not his fault,--at least, only in part his fault; the sum of which consisted in the fact that he had broken through a good rule, which up to that hour had never met with infraction,--he had opened a post-letter on the Sabbath-morn.

"This comes," said he, plaintively, "of letting the sinfu' things of this warld mingle wi' the holier and higher ones of the warld to come.

Corruption is aye stronger than life; and now I maun tell you the whole of it." If we do not strictly follow the good minister, and tell what he had to say in his own words, it is to spare our reader some time on a matter which may not possess the amount of interest to him it had for the person who narrated it. The matter was this: there came that morning a letter from Mrs. M'Gruder to Dr. Stewart,--a letter that almost overwhelmed him. The compensation to humility of station is generally this, that the interests of the humble man are so lowly, so unpretending, and so little obtrusive that they seldom or never provoke the attention of his more fortunate neighbors. As with the rivulet that can neither float a barque nor turn a mill-wheel none meddles, so with the course of these lowly lives few concern themselves, and they ripple along unheeded. Many and many a time had the old minister hugged this thought to his heart,--many and many a time had he felt that there were cares and troubles in this life so proud and so haughty that they disdained the thatched cabin and the humble roof-tree, but loved to push their way through crowds of courtiers up marble stairs and along gilded corridors. It was then with a perfect shock that he came to learn that even they, in all their lowliness, could claim no exemption from common calamity. The letter began by stating that the writer, before putting pen to paper, had waited till Miss Stewart should have reached her home, so that no anxieties as to her health should be added to the pain the communication might cause. After this louring commencement the epistle went on to state that the satisfaction which Dolly had at first given by her general good temper and strict attention to her duties, "compensating in a great measure for the defects in her own education and want of apt.i.tude as a teacher," soon ceased to be experienced, as it was found that she was subject to constant intervals of great depression, and even whole days, when she seemed scarcely equal to her duties. The cause was not very long a secret.

It was an attachment she had formed to a brother of Mr. M'Gruder's, who, some years younger than himself, had been established in Italy as a partner, and had now come over to England on business.

It was not necessary to say that the writer had never encouraged this sentiment; on the contrary, she had more than remonstrated with her brother-in-law on the score of his attentions, and flatly declared that, if he persisted, she would do her utmost to have the partnership with his brother dissolved, and all future intercourse at an end between them. This led to scenes of a very violent nature, in which she was obliged to own her husband had the cruelty to take his brother's side against her, and avow that Samuel was earning his own bread, and if he liked to share it with an "untochcred la.s.sie," it should be far from him, Robert M'Grader, that any reproach should come,--a sarcasm that Mrs. M'Grader seemed keenly to appreciate.

The agitation caused by these cares, acting on a system already excited, had brought on a fever to Dolly; and it was only on her convalescence, and while still very weak, that a young man arrived in London and called to see her, who suddenly seemed to influence all her thoughts and plans for the future. Sam, it appeared, had gone back to Italy, relying on Dolly's promise to consult her father and give him a final reply to his offer of marriage. From the day, however, that this stranger had called, Dolly seemed to become more and more indifferent to this project, declaring that her failing health and broken spirits would render her rather a burden than a benefit, and constantly speaking of home, and wishing to be back there. "Though I wished," continued the writer, "that this resolve had come earlier, and that Miss Stewart had returned to her father before she had thrown discord into a united family, I was not going to oppose it, even late as it occurred. It was therefore arranged that she was to go home, ostensibly to recruit and restore herself in her native air; but I, I need hardly tell you, as firmly determined she should never pa.s.s this threshold again. Matters were in this state, and Miss Stewart only waiting for a favorable day to begin her journey--an event I looked for with the more impatience as Mr. M'G. and myself could never, I knew, resume our terms of affection so long as she remained in our house,--when one night, between one and two o'clock, we were awoke by the sound of feet in the garden under our window. I heard them first, and, creeping to the cas.e.m.e.nt, I saw a figure clamber over the railing and make straight for the end of the house where Miss Stewart slept, and immediately begin a sort of low moaning kind of song, evidently a signal. Miss Stewart's window soon opened, and on this I called Mr.

M'Grader. He had barely time to reach the window, when a man's voice from below cried out, 'Come down; are you coming?' On this, Mr. M'Gruder rushed downstairs and into the garden. Two or three loud and angry words succeeded, and then a violent struggle, in which my husband was twice knocked down and severely injured. The man, however, made his escape, but not unrecognized; for your daughter's voice cried out, 'Oh, Tony, I never thought you 'd do this,' or, 'Why did you do this?' or some words to that effect.

"The terms on which, through Miss Stewart's behavior, I have latterly lived with Mr. M'Gruder, gave me no opportunity to learn anything from _him_. Indeed, he never so much as spoke of an incident which confined him two days to his room and five days to the house; but, as if bent on exasperation, redoubled his kind inquiries about your daughter, who was now, as she said, too ill to leave her room.

"No other course was then open to me than to write the present letter to you and another to my brother-in-law. He, at least, I am determined, shall know something of the young lady with whom he wishes to share his fortune, though I trust that a minister of the Gospel will have no need of any promptings of mine to prevent such a casualty. My last words, on parting with your daughter, were to ask if the man I saw that night was the same who had called to see her, and her reply was, 'Yes, the same.'

I will not disguise that she had the grace to cry as she said it.

"That she is never to return here, I need not say. Ay, more than that; no reference to me will be responded to in terms that can serve her.

But this is not all. I require that you will send, and send open for my inspection, such a letter to Mr. S. M'Gruder as may finally put an end to any engagement, and declare that, from the circ.u.mstances now known to you, you could neither expect, or even desire, that he would make her his wife. Lastly, I demand--and I am in a position to enforce a demand--that you do not communicate with my husband at all in this affair; sufficient unpleasantness and distrust having been already caused by our unhappy relations with your family."

A few moral reflections closed the epistle. They were neither very novel nor very acute, but they embodied the sense of disappointment experienced by one who little thought, in taking a teacher from the manse of a minister, she was incurring a peril as great as if she had sent over to France for the latest refinement in Parisian depravity.

"Keep her at home with yourself, Dr. Stewart," wrote she, "unless the time comes when the creature she called Tony may turn up as a respectable man, and be willing to take her." And with a gracefully expressed hope that Dolly's ill health might prove seasonable for self-examination and correction, she signed herself, "Your compa.s.sionate friend, Martha M'Gruder."

"What do you say to that, Mrs. Butler? Did ever you read as much cruelty in pen and ink, I ask you? Did you ever believe that the mother of children could write to a father of his own daughter in such terms as these?"

"I don't know what it means, doctor; it 's all confusion to me. Who is Tony? It's not our Tony, surely?"