Tony Butler Part 94

"No, Tony, do not believe that," said she, calmly; "not," added she, hastily, "that I can acquit myself of all wrong to you. No; I was in fault,--gravely in fault I ought to have seen what would have come of all our intimacy; I ought to have known that I could not develop all that was best in your nature without making you turn in grat.i.tude--well, in love--to myself; but shall I tell you the truth? I over-estimated my power over you. I not only thought I could make you love, but unlove me; and I never thought what pain that lesson might cost--each of us."

"It would have been fairer to have cast me adrift at first," said he, fiercely.

"And yet, Tony, you will be generous enough one of these days to think differently!"

"I certainly feel no touch of that generosity now."

"Because you are angry with me, Tony,--because you will not be just to me; but when you have learned to think of me as your sister, and can come and say, Dear Alice, counsel me as to this, advise me as to that,--then there will be no ill-will towards me for all I have done to teach you the great stores that were in your own nature."

"Such a day as that is distant," said he, gloomily.

"Who knows? The changes which work within us are not to be measured by time; a day of sorrow will do the work of years."

"There! that lantern at the peak is the signal for me to be off. The skipper promised to give me notice; but if you will say 'Stay!' be it so. No, no, Alice, do not lay your hand on my arm if you would not have me again deceive myself."

"You will write to me, Tony?"

He shook his head to imply the negative.

"Well, to Bella, at least?"

"I think not. I will not promise. Why should I? Is it to try and knot together the cords we have just torn, that you may break them again at your pleasure?"

"How ungenerous you are!"

"You reminded me awhile ago it was my devotion to you that civilized me; is it not natural that I should go back to savagery, as my allegiance was rejected?"

"You want to be Garibaldian in love as in war," said she, smiling.

The deep boom of a gun floated over the bay, and Tony started.

"That's the last signal,--good-bye." He held out his hand.

"Good-bye, dear Tony," said she. She held her cheek towards him. He hesitated, blushed till his face was in a dame, then stooped and kissed her. Skeff's voice was heard at the instant at the door; and Tony rushed past him and down the stairs, and then, with mad speed, dashed along to the jetty, leaped into the boat, and, covering his face with his hands, never raised his head till they were alongside.

"You were within an inch of being late, Tony," cried M'Gruder, as he came up the side. "What detained you?"

"I 'll tell you all another time,--let me go below now;" and he disappeared down the ladder. The heavy paddles flapped slowly, then faster; and the great ma.s.s moved on, and made for the open sea.

CHAPTER LX. A DECK WALK

The steamer was well ont to sea when Tony appeared on deck. It was a calm, starlight night,--fresh, but not cold. The few pa.s.sengers, however, had sought their berths below, and the only one who lingered on deck was M'Grader and one other, who, wrapped in a large boat-cloak, lay fast asleep beside the binnacle.

"I was thinking you had turned in," said M'Grader to Tony, "as you had not come up."

"Give me a light; I want a smoke badly. I felt that something was wrong with me, though I did n't know what it was. Is this Rory here?"

"Yes, sound asleep, poor fellow."

"I 'll wager a trifle he has a lighter heart than either of us, Sam."

"It might easily be lighter than mine," sighed M'Grader, heavily.

Tony sighed too, but said nothing, and they walked along side by side, with that short jerking stride men pace a deck with, feeling some sort of companionship, although no words were exchanged between them.

"You were nigh being late," said M'Grader, at last "What detained you on sh.o.r.e?"

"I saw her!" said Tony, in a low m.u.f.fled voice.

"You saw her! Why, you told me you were determined not to see her."

"So I was, and so I intended. It came about by mere accident That strange fellow, Skeffy, you've heard me speak of,--he pushed me plump into the room where she was, and there was nothing to be done but to speak to her."

"Well?"

"Well! I spoke," said he, half gruffly; and then, as if correcting the roughness of his tone, added, "It was just as I said it would be; just as I told you. She liked me well enough as a brother, but never thought of me as anything else. All the interest she had taken in me was out of friendship. She didn't say this haughtily, not a bit; she felt herself much older than me, she said; that she felt herself better was like enough, but she never hinted it, but she let me feel pretty plainly that we were not made for each other; and though the lesson wasn't much to my liking, I began to see it was true."

"Did you really?"

"I did," said he, with a deep sigh. "I saw that all the love I had borne her was only paid back in a sort of feeling half compa.s.sionately, half kindly; that her interest in me was out of some desire to make something out of me; I mean, to force me to exert myself and do something,--anything besides living a hanger-on at a great house. I have a notion, too,--Heaven knows if there 's anything in it,--but I 've a notion, Sam, if she had never known me till now,--if she had never seen me idling and lounging about in that ambiguous position I held,--something between gamekeeper and reduced gentleman,--that I might have had a better chance."

M'Gruder nodded a half-a.s.sent, and Tony continued: "I'll tell you why I think so. Whenever she asked me about the campaign and the way I was wounded, and what I had seen, there was quite a change in her voice, and she listened to what I said very differently from the way she heard me when I talked to her of my affection for her."

"There 's no knowing them! there's no knowing them!" said M'Gruder, drearily; "and how did it end?"

"It ended that way."

"What way?"

"Just as I told you. She said she'd always be the same as a sister to me, and that when I grew older and wiser I 'd see that there should never have been any closer tie between us. I can't repeat the words she used, but it was something to this purport,--that when a woman has been lecturing a man about his line of life, and trying to make something out of him, against the grain of his own indolence, she can't turn suddenly round and fall in love, even though _he_ was in love with _her_."

"She has a good head on her shoulders, she has," muttered M'Gruder.

"I'd rather she had a little more heart," said Tony, peevishly.

"That may be; but she's right, after all."

"And why is she right? why should n't she see me as I am now, and not persist in looking at me as I used to be?"

"Just because it's not her humor, I suppose; at least, I don't know any better reason."

Tony wheeled suddenly away from his companion, and took two or three turns alone. At last he said, "She never told me so, but I suppose the truth was, all this time she _did_ think me very presumptuous; and that what her mother did not scruple to say to me in words, Alice had often said to her own heart."

"You are rich enough now to make you her equal."

"And I 'd rather be as poor as I used to be and have the hopes that have left me."