Tony Butler Part 79

"So that 's the secret, is it?" muttered he. "Dolly wishes to be alone with her husband,--natural enough; and I'm not the man to oppose it.

I hope she'll be happy, poor girl; and I hope Garibaldi will beat the Neapolitans. I 'm sure Sam is worthy of a good wife; but I don't know whether these Sicilian fellows deserve a better government. At all events, my course is clear,--here I mustn't stay. Sam does not know that I am the obstacle to his marriage; but _I_ know it, and that is enough.

I wonder would Garibaldi take me as a volunteer? There cannot be much choice at such a time. I suppose he enrolls whoever offers; and they must be mostly fellows of my own sort,--useless dogs, that are only fit to give and take hard knocks."

He hesitated long whether he should tell Sam M'Gruder of his project; he well knew all the opposition he should meet, and how stoutly his friend would set himself against a plan so fatal to all habits of patient industry. "And yet," muttered Tony to himself, "I don't like to tell him that I hate 'rags,' and detest the whole business. It would be so ungrateful of me. I could say my mother wanted to see me in Ireland; but I never told him a lie, and I can't bear that our parting should be sealed with a falsehood."

As he pondered, he took out his pistols and examined them carefully; and, poising one neatly in his hand, he raised it, as marksmen sometimes will do, to take an imaginary aim. As he did so, M'Gruder entered, and cried out, laughing, "Is he covered,--is he dead?"

Tony laid down the weapon, with a flush of shame, and said, "After all, M'Gruder, the pistol is more natural to me than the pen; and it was just what I was going to confess to you."

"You 're not going to take to the highways, though?"

"Something not very unlike it; I mean to go and have a turn with Garibaldi."

"Why, what do you know about Garibaldi or his cause?"

"Perhaps not a great deal; but I've been spelling out these newspapers every night, and one thing is clear, whether he has right or wrong on his side, the heavy odds are all against him. He's going in to fight regular troops, with a few hundred trampers. Now I call that very plucky."

"So do I; but courage may go on to rashness, and become folly."

"Well, I feel as if a little rashness will do me a deal of good. I am too well off here,--too easy,--too much cared for. Life asks no effort, and I make none; and if I go on a little longer, I 'll be capable of none."

"I see," said the other, laughing, "Rags do not rouse your ambition, Tony."

"I don't know what would,--that is, I don't think I _have_ any ambition now;" and there was a touch of sorrow in the last word that gave all the force to what he said.

"At all events, you are tired of this sort of thing," said the other, good-humoredly, "and it's not to be much wondered at. You began life at what my father used to call 'the wrong end.' You started on the sunny side of the road, Tony, and it is precious hard to cross over into the shade afterwards."

"You 're right there, M'Gruder. I led the jolliest life that ever man did till I was upwards of twenty; but I don't believe I ever knew how glorious it was till it was over; but I must n't think of that now. See!

this is what I mean to do. You 'll find some way to send that safely to my mother. There's forty-odd pounds in it, and I 'd rather it was not lost I have kept enough to buy a good rifle--a heavy Swiss one, if I can find it--and a sword-bayonet, and with these I am fully equipped."

"Come, come, Tony, I'll not hear of this; that you are well weary of the life you lead here is not hard to see, nor any blame to you either, old fellow. One must be brought up to Rags, like everything else, and _you_ were not. But my brother writes me about starting an American agency,--what do you say to going over to New York?"

"What a good fellow you are!" cried Tony, staring at him till his eyes began to grow clouded with tears; "what a good fellow! you 'd risk your ship just to give me a turn at the tiller! But it must n't be,--it cannot be; I 'm bent on this scheme of mine,--I have determined on it."

"Since when? since last night?"

"Well, it's not very long, certainly, since I made up my mind."

The other smiled. Tony saw it, and went on: "I know what you mean. You are of old Stewart's opinion. When he heard me once say I had made up my mind, he said, 'It does n't take long to make up a small parcel;' but every fellow, more or less, knows what he can and what he cannot do. Now I cannot be orderly, exact, and punctual,--even the little brains I have I can't be sure of keeping them on the matter before me; but I defy a horse to throw me; I 'll bring you up a crown-piece out of six fathoms water, if it 's clear; I'll kill four swallows out of six with a ball; and though these are not gifts to earn one's bread by, the man that has them need n't starve."

"If I thought that you had really reflected well over this plan,--given it all the thought and consideration it required--"

"I have given it just as much consideration as if I took five weeks to it. A man may take an evening over a pint of ale, but it's only a pint, after all,--don't you see that?"

M'Gruder was puzzled; perhaps there was some force in the ill.u.s.tration.

Tony looked certainly as if he thought he had said a clever thing.

"Well, Tony," said the other, after a moment of grave thought, "you 'll have to go to Genoa to embark, I suppose?"

"Yes; the committee sits at Genoa, and every one who enrolls must appear before them."

"You could walk there in four days."

"Yes; but I can steam it in one."

"Ay, true enough; what I mean to ask of you is this, that you will go the whole way on foot; a good walker as you are won't think much of that; and in these four days, as you travel along,--all alone,--you 'll have plenty of time to think over your project. If by the time you reach Genoa you like it as well as ever, I 've no more to say; but if--and mark me, Tony, you must be honest with your own heart--if you really have your doubts and your misgivings; if you feel that for your poor mother's sake--"

"There, there! I've thought of all that," cried Tony, hurriedly. "I 'll make the journey on foot, as you say you wish it, but don't open the thing to any more discussion. If I relent, I 'll come back. There's my hand on it!"

"Tony, it gives me a sad heart to part with you;" and he turned away, and stole out of the room.

"Now, I believe it's all done," said Tony, after he had packed his knapsack, and stored by in his trunk what he intended to leave behind him. There were a few things there, too, that had their own memories!

There was the green silk cap, with its gold ta.s.sel, Alice had given him on his last steeple-chase. Ah, how it brought back the leap--a bold leap it was--into the winning field, and Alice, as she stood up and waved her handkerchief as he pa.s.sed! There was a glove of hers; she had thrown it down sportively on the sands, and dared him to take it up in full career of his horse; he remembered they had a quarrel because he claimed the glove as a prize, and refused to restore it to her. There was an evening after that in which she would not speak to him. He had carried a heavy heart home with him that night! What a fund of love the heart must be capable of feeling for a living, sentient thing, when we see how it can cling to some object inanimate and irresponsive. "I'll take that glove with me," muttered Tony to himself; "it owes me some good luck; who knows but it may pay me yet?"

CHAPTER XLIX. MET AND PARTED

Tony went on his way early next morning, stealing off ere it was yet light, for he hated leave-takings, and felt that they weighed upon him for many a mile of a journey. There was enough on the road he travelled to have interested and amused him, but his heart was too full of its own cares, and his mind too deep in its own plans, to dispose him to such pleasures, and so he pa.s.sed through little villages on craggy eminences and quaint old towers on mountain-tops, scarcely observing them. Even Pisa, with its world-known Tower, and the gem-like Baptistery beside it, scarce attracted notice from him, though he muttered as he pa.s.sed, "Perhaps on some happier day I 'll be able to come back here and admire it" And so onward he plodded through the grand old ruined Ma.s.sa and the silent Sarzana, whose palaces display the quarterings of old crusading knights, with many an emblem of the Holy War; and by the beauteous Bay of Spezia he went, not stopping to see poor Sh.e.l.ley's home, and the terrace where his midnight steps had almost worn a track. The road now led through the declining ridges of the Apennines, gorgeous in color,--such color as art would have scarce dared to counterfeit, so emerald the dark green of the waving pines, so silver-like the olive, so gloriously purple the great cliffs of porphyry; and then through many a riven cleft, through feathery foliage and broad-leaved fig-trees, down many a fathom low the sea!--the blue Mediterranean, so blue as to seem another sky of deeper meaning than the one above it.

He noticed little of all these; he felt none of them! It was now the third day of his journey, and though he had scarcely uttered a word, and been deeply intent on his own fate, all that his thinking had done was to lead, as it were, into some boundless prairie, and there desert him.

"I suppose," muttered he to himself, "I am one of those creatures that must never presume to plan anything, but take each day's life as I find it. And I could do this. Ay, I could do it manfully, too, if I were not carrying along with me memories of long ago. It is Alice, the thought of Alice, that dashes the present with a contrast to the past, and makes all I now attempt so poor and valueless."

As the road descends from Borghetto, there is a sudden bend, from which, through a deep cleft, the little beach and village of Levanto are seen hundreds of feet beneath, but yet in that clear still atmosphere so near that not only the white foam of the breaking wave could be seen, but its rhythm-like plash heard as it broke upon the beach. For the first time since he set out had the charm of scenery attracted him, and, descending a few feet from the road, he reached a large square rock, from which he could command the whole view for miles on every side.

He took out his bread and cheese and a melon he had bought that morning, and disposed himself to eat his dinner. He had often partaken of a more sumptuous meal, but never had he eaten with so glorious a prospect at his feet.

A little lateen-sailed boat stole out from beneath the olives and gained the sea; and as Tony watched her, he thought if he would only have been a fisherman there, and Alice his wife, how little he could have envied all that the world has of wealth and honors and ambitions. His friend Skeffy could not do this, but _he_ could. _He_ was strong of limb and stout of heart; he could bear hardships and cold; and it would be so fine to think that, born gentleman as he was, he never flinched from the hardest toil, or repined at the roughest fare, he and Alice treasuring up their secret, and h.o.a.rding it as a miser h.o.a.rds his gold.

Ay, down there, in that little gorge, with the pine-wood behind and the sea before, he could have pa.s.sed his life, with never a longing thought for the great world and its prizes. As he ran on thus in fancy, he never heard the sound of footsteps on the road above, nor noticed the voices of persons talking.

At last he heard, not the words, but the tone of the speakers, and recognized them to be English. There is that peculiar sound in English utterance that at once distinguishes it from all other speech; and Tony, quite forgetting that his high-peaked Calabrian hat and ma.s.sive beard made him far more like an Italian brigand than a British gentleman, not wishing to be observed, never turned his head to look at them. At last one said, "The little fishing-village below there must be Levante. John Murray tells us that this is the land of the fan palm and the cactus, so that at length we are in Italy."

"Do you know--shall I confess it," said the other, "that I am not thinking of the view, beautiful as it is? I am envying that peasant with his delicious melon on the rock there. I am half tempted to ask him to share it with me."

"Ask him, by all means," said the first speaker, laughing.

"You are jesting," replied the other, "but I am in sober earnest. I can resist no longer. Do you, however, wait here, or the carriage may pa.s.s on and leave us behind."

Tony heard nothing of these words; but he heard the light footsteps, and he heard the rustle of a woman's dress as she forced her way, through bramble and underwood, till at last, with that consciousness so mysterious, he felt there was some one standing close behind him. Half vexed to think that his isolation should be invaded, he drew his hat deeper over his eyes, and sat steadfastly gazing on the sea below him.

"Is that Levante I see beneath that cliff?" asked she, in Italian,--less to satisfy her curiosity than to attract fris attention.

Tony started. How intensely had his brain been charged with thoughts of long ago, that every word that met his ears should seem impregnated with these memories! A half-sulky "Si" was, however, his only rejoinder.

"What a fine melon you have there, my friend!" said she; and now her voice thrilled through him so strangely that he sprang to his feet and turned to face her. "Is my brain tricking me?--are my senses wandering?"

muttered he to himself. "Alice, Alice!"