Tony Butler Part 97

"It's the first bit of pleasure our new wealth has given us, mother; may it be a good augury!"

"That's a heathenish word, Tony, and most unsuited to be used in thankfulness for G.o.d's blessings."

Tony took the rebuke in good part, and, to change the topic, laughingly asked if she thought Garibaldians never were hungry, for she had said nothing of supper since he came.

"Jeanie has been in three times to tell you it was ready, and the last time she said she 'd come no more; but come, and we'll see what there's for us."

CHAPTER LXII. SKEFF DAMER'S LAST "PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL"

After some four or five days pa.s.sed almost like a dream--for while he stood in the midst of old familiar objects, all Tony's thoughts as to the future were new and strange--there came a long letter from Skeff Darner, announcing his approaching marriage with Bella,--the "dear old woman of Tilney" having behaved "beautifully." "Short as the time has been since you left this, my brave Tony, great events have occurred. The King has lost his throne, and Skeff Darner has gained an estate. I would have saved him, for I really like the Queen; but that his obstinacy is such, the rescue would have only been a reprieve, not a pardon. Sicily I meant for us,--I mean for England,--myself to be the Viceroy. The silver mines at Stromboli have never been worked since the time of Tiberius; they contain untold wealth: and as to coral fishery, I have obtained statistics will make your teeth water. I can show you my calculations in hard figures, that in eight years and four months I should be the richest man in Europe,--able to purchase the soil of the island out-and-out, if the British Government were stupid enough not to see that they ought to establish me and my dynasty there. These are now but visions,--grand and glorious visions, it is true,--and dearest Bella sheds tears when I allude to them.

"I have had a row with 'the Office;' they blame me for the downfall of the monarchy, but they never told me to save it. To you I may make the confession, it was the two days I pa.s.sed at Cava cost this Bourbon his crown. Not that I regret, my dear Tony, this tribute to friendship.

During that interval, as Caraffa expresses it, they were paralyzed.

'Where is Damer?' 'Who has seen Skeff?' 'What has become of him?' 'With whom is he negotiating?' were the questions on every side; and in the very midst of the excitement, back comes the fellow M'Caskey, the little fiery-faced individual you insisted in your raving on calling my 'G.o.dfather,' and declares that I am in the camp of the Garibaldians, and making terms and stipulations with the General himself. The Queen-Mother went off in strong hysterics when she heard it; the King never uttered a word,--has never spoken since,--and the dear Queen merely said, 'Darner will never betray us.'

"These particulars I learned from Francardi. Meanwhile Garibaldi, seeing the immense importance of my presence at his head-quarters, pushes on for the capital, and enters Naples, as he gives out, with the concurrence and approval of England! You will, I have no doubt, hear another version of this event. You will be told bushels of lies about heroic daring and frantic popular enthusiasm. To your friendly breast I commit the truth, never to be revealed, however, except to a remote posterity.

"One other confession, and I have done,--done with politics forever.

You will hear of Garibaldi as a brave, straightforward, simple-minded, unsuspectful man, hating intrigues of all kinds. This is totally wrong.

With all his courage, it is as nothing to his craft He is the deepest politician, and the most subtle statesman in Europe, and, to my thinking,--mind, it is _my_ estimate I give you,--more of Machiavelli than any man of his day. Bear this in mind, and keep your eye on him in future. We had not been five minutes together till each of us had read the other. We were the two 'Augurs' of the Latin satirist, and if we did n't laugh, we exchanged a recognition just as significant. I ought to tell you that he is quite frantic at my giving up political life, and he says that my retirement will make Cavour's fortune, for there is no other man left fit to meet him. There was not a temptation, not a bribe, he did not throw out to induce me to withhold my resignation; and when he found that personal advantages had no weight with me, he said, 'Mind my words, Monsieur Darner; the day will come when you will regret this retirement. When you will see the great continent of Europe convulsed from one end to the other, and yourself no longer in the position to influence the course of events, and guide the popular will, you will bitterly regret this step.' But I know myself better. What could the Peerage, what could the Garter, what could a seat in the Cabinet do for me? I have been too long and too much behind the scenes to be dazzled by the blaze of the 'spectacle.' I want repose, a home, the charms of that domestic life which are denied to the mere man of ambition. Bella, indeed, has her misgivings, that to live without greatness--greatness in action, and greatness to come--will be a sore trial to me; but I tell her, as I tell you, my dear friend, that it is exactly the men who, like myself, have moved events, and given the spring to the greatest casualties, who are readiest to accept tranquillity and peace as the first of blessings. Under the shade of my old elms at Tilney--I may call them mine already, as Reeves and Tucker are drawing out the deeds--I will write my memoirs,--one of the most interesting contributions, when it appears, that history has received for the last century. I can afford to be fearless, and I will be; and if certain n.o.ble lords go down to posterity with tarnished honor and diminished fame, they can date the discovery to the day when they disparaged a Darner.

"Now for a minor key. We led a very jolly life on board the 'Talisman;'

only needing yourself to make it perfect. My Lady L. was 'out of herself' at your not coming; indeed, since your accession to fortune, she has discovered some very amiable and some especially attractive qualities in your nature, and that if you fall amongst the right people--I hope you appreciate the sort of accident intended--you will become a very superior article. Bella is, as always, a sincere friend; and though Alice says, nothing, she does not look ungrateful to him who speaks well of you. Bella has told me in confidence--mind, in confidence--that all is broken off between Alice and you, and says it is all the better for both; that you were a pair of intractable tempers, and that the only chance for either of you is to be allied to somebody or something that would consent to think you perfection, and yet manage you as if you were not what is called 'absolute wisdom.'

"Bella also said, 'Tony might have had some chance with Alice had he remained poor; the opposition of her family would have had its weight in influencing her in his favor; but now that he is a prize in the matrimonial lottery, she is quite ready to see any defects he may have, and set them against all that would be said in his behalf. Last of all, she likes her independence as a widow. I half suspected that Maitland had been before you in her favor; but Bella says not. By the way, it was the fortune that has fallen to you Maitland had always expected; Sir Omerod having married, or, as some say, not married, his mother, and adopted Maitland, who contrived to spend about eighty thousand of the old man's savings in ten or eleven years. He is a strange fellow, and mysterious to the last. Since the overthrow of the Government, we have been reduced to ask protection to the city from the secret society called the Camorra, a set of Neapolitan Thugs, who cut throats in reciprocity; and it was by a guard of these wretches that we were escorted to the ship's boats when we embarked. Bella swears that the chief of the gang was no other than Maitland, greatly disguised, of course; but she says that she recognized him by his teeth as he smiled accidentally. It would be, of course, at the risk of his life he was there, since anything that pertained to the Court would, if discovered, be torn to fragments by the people. My 'G.o.dfather' had a narrow escape on Tuesday last. He rode through the Toledo in full uniform, amidst all the people, who were satisfied with hissing him instead of treating him to a stiletto, and the rascal grinned an insolent defiance as he went, and said, as he gained the Piazza, 'You 're not such bad _canaille_, after all; I have seen worse in Mexico.' He went on board a despatch-boat in the bay, and ordered the commander to take him to Gaeta; and the oddest of all is, the officer complied, overpowered, as better men have been, by the scoundrels impertinence. Oh, Tony, to you,--to yourself, to your heart's most secret closet, fast to be locked, when you have my secret inside of it,--to _you_, I own, that the night I pa.s.sed in that wretch's company is the darkest page of my existence. He overwhelmed me with insult, and I had to bear it, just as I should have to bear the buffeting of the waves if I had been thrown into the sea. I 'd have strangled him then and there if I was able, but the brute would have torn me limb from limb if I attempted it. Time may diminish the acuteness of this suffering, but I confess to you, up to this, when I think of what I went through, my humiliation overpowers me.

I hope fervently you may meet him one of these days. You have a little score of your own, I suspect, to settle with him; at all events, if the day of reckoning comes, include my balance, and trust to my eternal grat.i.tude.

"Here have come Alice and Bella to make me read out what I have written to you; of course I have objected. This is a 'strictly private and confidential.' What we do for the blue-books, Master Tony, we do in a different fashion. Alice, perhaps, suspects the reasons of my reserve,--'appreciates my reticence,' as we say in the 'Line.'

"At all events, she tells me to make you write to her. 'When Tony,' said she, 'has found out that he was only in love with me because I made him better known to his own heart, and induced him to develop some of his own fine qualities, he 'll begin to see that we may and ought to be excellent friends; and some day or other, when there shall be a Mrs. Tony, if she be a sensible woman, she 'll not object to their friendship.' She said this so measuredly and calmly that I can almost trust myself to say I have reported her word for word. It reads to me like a very polite _conge_. What do you say to it?

"The Lyles are going back at the end of the month, but Alice says she 'll winter at Cairo. There is an insolent independence about these widows, Tony, that adds one more terror to death. I protest I 'd like to haunt the woman that could employ her freedom of action in this arbitrary manner.

"Dearest Bella insists on your coming to our wedding; it will come off at Tilney, strictly private. None but our nearest relatives, not even the Duke of Dullchester, nor any of the Howards. They will feel it; but it can't be helped, I suppose. Cincinnatus had to cut his connections, too, when he took to horticulture. You, however, must not desert me; and if you cannot travel without Rory, bring him with you.

"I am impatient to get away from this, and seek the safety of some obscure retreat; for I know the persecution I shall be exposed to to withdraw my resignation and remain. To this I will never consent. I give it to you under my hand, Tony, and I give it the more formally, as I desire it may be historic. I know well the whining tone they will a.s.sume,--just as well as if I saw it before me in a despatch. 'What are we to tell the Queen?' will be the cry. My dignified answer will be, 'Tell her that you made it impossible for one of the ablest of her servants to hold his office with dignity. Tell her, too, that Skeff Darner has done enough for honor; he now seeks to do something for happiness.' Back to office again I will not go. Five years and two months of unpaid services have I given to my country, and England is not ashamed to accept the unrewarded labors of her gifted sons! My very 'extraordinaries' have been cavilled at. I give you my word of honor, they have asked me for vouchers for the champagne and lobsters with which I have treated some of the most dangerous regicides of Europe,--men whose language would make your hair stand on end, and whose sentiments actually curdled the blood as one listened to them.

"The elegant hospitalities which I dispensed, in the hope--vain hope!--of inducing them to believe that the social amenities of life had extended to our insular position,--these the Office declares they have nothing to do with; and insolently asks me, 'Are there any other items of my pleasure whose cost I should wish to submit to Parliament?'

"Ask Talleyrand, ask Metternich, ask any of our own people,--B., or S., or H.--since when have cookery and the ballet ceased to be the lawful weapons of diplomacy?

"The day of reckoning for all this, my dear Tony, is coming. At first I thought of making some of my friends in the House move for the corrrespondence between F. O. and myself,--the Damer papers they would be called, in the language of the public journals,--and thus bring on a smashing debate. Reconsideration, however, showed me that my memoirs, 'Five Years of a Diplomatist on Service,' would be the more fitting place; and in the pages of those volumes you will find revelations more astounding, official knaveries more nefarious, and political intrigues more Machiavellian, than the wildest imagination for wickedness has ever conceived. What would they not have given rather than see such an exposure? I almost think I will call my book '"Extraordinaries" of a Diplomatist.' Sensational and taking both, that t.i.tle! You mustn't be provoked if, in one of the lighter chapters--there must be light chapters--I stick in that little adventure of your own with my G.o.dfather."

"Confound the fellow!" muttered Tony, and with such a hearty indignation that his mother heard him from the adjoining room, and hastened in to ask who or what had provoked him. Tony blundered out some sort of evasive reply, and then said, "Was it Dr. Stewart's voice I heard there a few minutes ago?"

"Yes, Tony; he called in as he was pa.s.sing to Coleraine on important business. The poor man is much agitated by an offer that has just been made him to go far away over the seas, and finish his days, one may call it, at the end of the world. Some of this country folk, it seems, who settled in New Zealand, at a place they call Wellington Gap, had invited him to go out there and minister among them; and though he 's not minded to make the change at his advanced time of life, nor disposed to lay his bones in a far-away land, yet for Dolly's sake--poor Dolly, who will be left friendless and homeless when he is taken away--he thinks, maybe, it's his duty to accept the offer; and so he's gone into the town to consult Dr. M'Candlish and the elder Mr. Mc Elwain, and a few other sensible men."

"Why won't Dolly marry the man she ought to marry,--a good true-hearted fellow, who will treat her well and be kind to her? Tell me that, mother."

"It mauna be,--it mauna be," said the old lady, who, when much moved, frequently employed the Scotch dialect unconsciously.

"Is there a reason for her conduct?"

"There is a reason," said she, firmly.

"And do you know it? Has she told you what it is?"

"I'm not at liberty to talk over this matter with you, Tony. Whatever I know, I know as a thing confided to me in honor."

"I only asked, Was the reason one that you yourself were satisfied with?"

"It was, and is," replied she, gravely.

"Do you think, from what you know, that Dolly would listen to any representations I might make her? for I know M'Grader thoroughly, and can speak of him as a friend likes to speak."

"No, no, Tony; don't do it! don't do it!" cried she, with a degree of emotion that perfectly amazed him, for the tears swam in her eyes, and her lips trembled as she spoke. He stared fixedly at her; but she turned away her head, and for some minutes neither spoke.

"Come, mother," said Tony, at last, and in his kindliest voice, "you have a good head of your own; think of some way to prevent the poor old doctor from going off into exile."

"How could we help him that he would not object to?"

"What if you were to hit upon some plan of adopting Dolly? You have long loved her as if she were your own daughter, and she has returned your affections."

"That she has," muttered the old lady, as she wiped her eyes.

"What use is this new wealth of ours if it benefit none but ourselves, mother? Just get the doctor to talk it all over with you, and say to him, 'Have no fears as to Dolly; she shall never be forced to marry against her inclinations,--merely for support; her home shall be here with us, and she shall be no dependant, neither.' I'll take care of that."

"How like your father you said these words, Tony!" cried she, looking at him with a gaze of love and pride together; "it was his very voice too."

"I meant to have spoken to her on poor M'Grader's behalf,--I promised him I would; but if you tell me it is of no use--"

"I tell you more, Tony,--I tell you it would be cruel; it would be worse than cruel," cried she, eagerly.

"Then I 'll not do it, and I 'll write to him to-day, and say so, though, Heaven knows, I 'll be sorely puzzled to explain myself; but as he is a true man, he 'll feel that I have done all for the best, and that if I have not served his cause it has not been for any lack of the will!"

"If you wish it, Tony, I could write to Mr. M'Gruder myself. A letter from an old body like me is sometimes a better means to break a misfortune than one from a younger hand. Age deals more naturally with sorrow, perhaps."

"You will be doing a kind thing, my dear mother," said he, as he drew her towards him, "and to a good fellow who deserves well of us."

"I want to thank him, besides, for his kindness and care of you, Tony; so just write his address for me there on that envelope, and I 'll do it at once."

"I'm off for a ramble, mother, till dinner-time," said Tony, taking his hat.

"Are you going up to the Abbey, Tony?"

"No," said he, blushing slightly.