Tony Butler Part 77

"If I were Prince Caraffa, I should do so, a.s.suredly."

"You would not, Maitland," said the other, calmly. "You would not, and for this simple reason, that you would see that, even if accepted, the counsel would be fruitless. If it were to the Queen, indeed--"

"Yes, _per Bacco!_" broke in Caffarelli, "there is not a gentleman in the kingdom would not spring into the saddle at such a call."

"Then why not unfold this standard?" asked Maitland. "Why not make one effort to make the monarchy popular?"

"Don't you know enough of Naples," said Caraffa, "to know that the cause of the n.o.ble can never be the cause of the people; and that to throw the throne for defence on the men of birth is to lose the 'men of the street'?"

He paused, and with an expression of intense hate on his face, and a hissing pa.s.sionate tone in his voice, continued, "It required all the consummate skill of that great man, Count Cavour, to weld the two cla.s.ses together, and even he could not elevate the populace; so that nothing was left to him but to degrade the n.o.ble."

"I think, meanwhile, we are losing precious time," said Maitland, as he took up his hat "Bosco should be reinforced. The squadron, too, should be strengthened to meet the Sardinian fleet; for we have sure intelligence that they mean to cover Garibaldi's landing; Persano avows it."

"All the better if they do," said Caraffa. "The same act which would proclaim their own treachery would deliver into our hands this hare-brained adventurer."

"Your Excellency may have him longer in your hands than you care for," said Maitland, with a saucy smile. The Prince bowed a cold acknowledgment of the speech, and suffered them to retire without a word.

"It is fated, I believe," said Caffarelli, as they gained the street, "that the Prince and you are never to separate without anger; and you are wrong, Maitland. There is no man stands so high in the King's favor."

"What care I for that, Carlo mio? the whole thing has ceased to interest me. I joined the cause without any love for it; the more nearly I saw its working, the more I despised myself for acting with such a.s.sociates; and if I hold to it now, it is because it is so certain to fail. Ay, my friend, it is another Bourbon bowled over. The age had got sick of vested interests, and wanted to show what abuses they were; but you and I are bound to stand fast; we cannot rescue the victim, but we must follow the hea.r.s.e."

"How low and depressed you are to-night! What has come over you?"

"I have had a heavy blow, mio Carlo. One of those papers whose envelopes you broke and handed to me was a private letter. It was from Alice Trafford to her brother; and the sight of my own name in it tempted me to see what she said of me. My curiosity has paid its price." He paused for some minutes, and then continued: "She wrote to refuse the villa I had offered her,--to refuse it peremptorily. She added: 'The story of your friend's duel is more public than you seem to know. It appeared in the "Patrie" three weeks ago, and was partly extracted by "Galignani."

The provocation given was an open declaration that Mr. Maitland was no Maitland at all, but the illegitimate son of a well-known actress, called Brancaleone, the father unknown. This outrage led to a meeting, and the consequences you know of. The whole story has this much of authenticity, that it was given to the world with the name of the other princ.i.p.al, who signs himself Milo M'Caskey, Lieut.-Col. in the service of Naples, Count, and Commander of various orders.' She adds," continued Maitland, in a shaken voice, and an effort, but yet a poor one, to smile,--"she adds: 'I own I am sorry for him. All his great qualities and cultivation seemed to suit and dignify station; but now that I know his condition to have been a mere a.s.sumption, the man himself and his talents are only a mockery,--only a mockery!' Hard words these, Carlo, very hard words!

"And then she says: 'If I had only known him as a pa.s.sing acquaintance, and thought of him with the same indifference one bestows on such,-perhaps I would not now insist so peremptorily as I do on our ceasing to know him; but I will own to you, Mark, that he did interest me greatly. He had, or seemed to have,'--this, that, and t' other," said he, with an ill-tempered haste, and went on. "'But now, as he stands before me, with a borrowed name and a mock rank--' There is half a page more of the same trash; for this gentle lady is a mistress of fierce words, and not over-merciful, and she ends thus: 'I think, if you are adroit, you can show him, in declining his proffered civility, that we had strong reasons for our refusal, and that it would be unpleasant to renew our former acquaintance.' In fact, Carlo, she means to cut me.

This woman, whose hand I had held in mine while I declared my love, and who, while she listened to me, showed no touch of displeasure, affects now to resent the accident of my birth, and treat me as an impostor!

I am half sorry that letter has not reached its destination; ay, and, strange as you will think it, I am more than half tempted to write and tell her that I have read it The story of the stolen despatch will soon be a newspaper scandal, and it would impart marvellous interest to her reading it when she heard that her own 'private and confidential' was captured in the same net."

"You could not own to such an act, Maitland."

"No. If it should not lead to something further; but I do yearn to repay her. She is a haughty adversary, and well worth a vengeance."

"What becomes of your fine maxim, 'Never quarrel with a woman,'

Maitland?"

"When I uttered it, I had never loved one," muttered he; and they walked on now in silence.

Almost within earshot--so close, indeed, that had they not been conversing in Italian, some of their words must have been overheard by those behind--walked two other friends, Darner and Tony, in close confab.

"I most telegraph F. O," said Skeffy, "that bag is missing, and that Messenger Butler has gone home to make his report Do you hear me?"

A grunt was the reply.

"I 'll give you a letter to Howard Pendleton, and he 'll tell what is the best thing to be done."

"I suspect I know it already," muttered Tony.

"If you could only persuade my Lord to listen to you, and tell him the story as you told it to me, he 'd be more than a Secretary of State if he could stand it."

"I have no great desire to be laughed at, Skeffy."

"Not if it got you out of a serious sc.r.a.pe,--a sc.r.a.pe that may cost you your appointment?"

"Not even at that price."

"I can't understand that; it is quite beyond me. They might put _me_ into 'Joe Miller' to-morrow, if they 'd only gazette me Secretary of Emba.s.sy the day after. But here's the hotel; a good sleep will set you all right; and let me see you at breakfast as jolly as you used to be."

CHAPTER XLVII. ADRIFT

The dawn was scarcely breaking as Tony Butler awoke and set off to visit the ships in the port whose flags proclaimed them English. There were full thirty, of various sizes and rigs; but though many were deficient in hands, no skipper seemed disposed to accept a young fellow who, if he was stalwart and well grown, so palpably pertained to a cla.s.s to which hard work and coa.r.s.e usage were strangers.

"You ain't anything of a cook, are you?" asked one of the very few who did not reject his demand at once.

"No," said he, smiling.

"Them hands of yours might do something in the caboose, but they ain't much like reefing and clewing topsails. Won't suit _me_." And, thus discouraged, he went on from one craft to the other, surprised and mortified to discover that one of the resources he had often pictured to his mind in the hours of despondency was just as remote, just as much above him, as any of the various callings his friends had set before him.

"Not able to be even a sailor! Not fit to serve before the mast! Well, perhaps I can carry a musket; but for _that_ I must return to England."

He fell to thinking of this new scheme, but without any of that hope that had so often colored his projects. He owed the service a grudge.

His father had not been fairly treated in it So, at least, from his very childhood, had his mother taught him to believe, and, in consequence, vehemently opposed all his plans to obtain a commission. Hard necessity, however, left no room for mere scruples; something he must do, and that something was narrowed to the one single career of a soldier.

He was practical enough in a certain sense, and he soon resolved on his line of action; he would reserve just so much as would carry him back to England, and remit the remainder of what he had to his mother.

This would amount to nigh eighty pounds,--a very considerable sum to one whose life was as inexpensive as hers. The real difficulty was how to reconcile her to the thought of his fallen condition, and the hardships she would inevitably a.s.sociate in her mind with his future life. "Ain't I lucky," cried he in his bitterness, and trying to make it seem like a consolation,--"ain't I lucky, that, except my poor dear mother, I have not one other in the whole world to care what comes to me,--none other to console, none other before whom I need plead or excuse myself! My failure or my disgrace are not to spread a widecast sorrow. They will only darken one fireside, and one figure in the corner of it."

His heart was full of Alice all the while, but he was too proud to utter her name even to himself. To have made a resolve, however, seemed to rally his courage again; and when the boatman asked him where he should go next, he was so far away in his thoughts that he had some difficulty to remember what he had been actually engaged in.

"Whereto?"

"Well, I can't well tell you," said he, laughing. "Isn't that schooner English,--that one getting underway yonder? Shove me aboard of her."

"She's outward bound, sir."

"No matter, if they 'll agree to take me," muttered he to himself.

The craft was "hauling short" on the anchor as Tony came alongside and learned that she was about to sail for Leghorn, having failed in obtaining a freight at Naples; and as by an accident one of the crew had been left on sh.o.r.e, the skipper was too willing to take Tony so far, though looking, as he remarked, far more like a swell landsman than an ordinary seaman.

Once outside the bay, and bowling along with a smart breeze and a calm sea, the rushing water making pleasant music at the bow, while the helm left a long white track some feet down beneath the surface, Tony felt, what so many others have felt, the glorious elation of being at sea. How many a care "blue water" can a.s.suage, how many a sorrow is made bearable by the fresh breeze that strains the cordage, and the laughing waves we cleave through so fast!

A few very eventful days, in which Tony's life pa.s.sed less like reality than a mere dream, brought them to Leghorn; and the skipper, who had taken a sort of rough liking to the "Swell," as he still called him, offered to take him on to Liverpool, if he were willing to enter himself regularly on the ship's books as one of the crew.

"I am quite ready," said Tony, who thought by the time the brief voyage was completed he should have picked up enough of the practice and the look of a sailor to obtain another employment easily.

Accompanied by the skipper, he soon found himself in the consul's office, crowded with sailors and other maritime folk, busily engaged in preferring complaints or making excuses, or as eagerly asking for relief against this or that exaction on the part of the foreign government.