Tony Butler

He listened, and listened very attentively. If it might have seemed to him that the company devoted a most extravagant portion of the time to the discussion, there was such a realism in the presence of the good things themselves, that the conversation never descended to frivolity; while there was an earnestness in the talkers that rejected such an imputation.

To hear them, one would have thought – at least, Tony thought – that all their lives had been passed in dining, Could any memory retain the mass of small minute circumstances that they recorded, or did they keep prandial records as others keep game-books? Not one of them ever forgot where and when and how he had ever eaten anything remarkable for its excellence; and there was an elevation of language, an ecstasy imported into the reminiscences, that only ceased to be ludicrous when he grew used to it. Perhaps, as a mere listener, he partook more freely than he otherwise might of the good things before him. In the excellence and endless variety of the wines, there was, besides, temptation for cooler heads than his; not to add that on one or two occasions he found himself in a jury empanelled to pronounce upon some nice question of flavor, – points upon which, as the evening wore on, he entered with a far greater reliance on his judgment than he would have felt half an hour before dinner.

He had not what is called, in the language of the table, a “made head,” – that is to say, at Lyle Abbey, his bottle of Sneyd’s Claret after dinner was more than he liked well to drink; but now, when Sauterne succeeded Sherry, and Marcobrunner came after Champagne, and in succession followed Bordeaux, and Burgundy, and Madeira, and then Bordeaux again of a rarer and choicer vintage, Tony’s head grew addled and confused. Though he spoke very little, there passed through his mind all the varied changes that his nature was susceptible of. He was gay and depressed, daring and cautious, quarrelsome and forgiving, stern and affectionate, by turns. There were moments when he would have laid down his life for the company, and fleeting instants when his eye glanced around to see upon whom he could fix a deadly quarrel; now he felt rather vainglorious at being one of such a distinguished company, and now a sharp distrust shot through him that he was there to be the butt of these town-bred wits, whose merriment was nothing but a covert impertinence.

All these changeful moods only served to make him drink more deeply. He filled bumpers and drank them daringly. Skeffington told the story of the threat to kick Willis, – not much in itself, but full of interest to the young officials who knew Willis as an institution, and could no more have imagined his personal chastisement than an insult to the royal arms. When Skeff, however, finished by saying that the Secretary of State himself rather approved of the measure, they began to feel that Tony Butler was that greatest of all created things, “a rising man.” For as the power of the unknown number is incommensurable, so the height to which a man’s success may carry him can never be estimated.

“It’s deuced hard to get one of these messenger-ships,” said one of the guardsmen; “they say it’s far easier to be named Secretary of Legation.”

“Of course it is. Fifty fellows are able to ride in a coach for one that can read and write,” said May fair.

“What do you mean by that?” cried Tony, his eyes flashing fire.

“Just what I said,” replied the other, mildly, – “that as there is no born mammal so helpless as a real gentleman, it’s the rarest thing to find an empty shell to suit him.”

“And they’re, well paid, too,” broke in the soldier. “Why, there’s no fellow so well off. They have five pounds a day.”

“No, they have not.”

“They have.”

“They have not.”

“On duty – when they’re on duty.”

“No, nor off duty.”

“Harris told me.”

“Harris is a fool.”

“He’s my cousin,” said a sickly young fellow, who looked deadly pale, “and I’ll not hear him called a liar.”

“Nobody said liar. I said he was a fool.”

“And so he is,” broke in Mayfair, “for he went and got married the other day to a girl without sixpence.”

“Beaumont’s daughter?”

“Exactly. The ‘Lively Kitty,’ as we used to call her; a name she’ll scarce go by in a year or two.”

“I don’t think,” said Tony, with a slow, deliberate utterance, – “I don’t think that he has made me a suit – suit – suitable apology for what he said, – eh, Skeff?”

“Be quiet, will you?” muttered the other.

“Kitty had ten thousand pounds of her own.”

“Not sixpence.”

“I tell you she had.”

“Grant it. What is ten thousand pounds?” lisped out a little pink-cheeked fellow, who had a hundred and eighty per annum at the Board of Trade. “If you are economical, you may get two years out of it.”

“If I thought,” growled out Tony into Skeff’s ear, “that he meant it for insolence, I’d punch his head, curls and all.”

“Will you just be quiet?” said Skeff, again.

“I ‘d have married Kitty myself,” said pink cheeks, “if I thought she had ten thousand.”

“And I ‘d have gone on a visit to you,” said Mayfair, “and we ‘d have played billiards, the French game, every evening.”

“I never thought Harris was so weak as to go and marry,” said the youngest of the party, not fully one-and-twenty.

“Every one hasn’t your experience, Upton,” said May-fair.

“Why do the fellows bear all this?” whispered Tony, again.

“I say, be quiet, – do be quiet,” mumbled Skeff.

“Who was it used to call Kitty Beaumont the Lass of Richmond Hill?” said Mayfair; and now another uproar ensued as to the authority in question, in which many contradictions were exchanged, and some wagers booked.

“Sing us that song Bailey made on her, – ‘Fair Lady on the River’s Bank;’ you can sing it, Clinton?”

“Yes, let us have the song,” cried several together.

“I ‘ll wager five pounds I ‘ll name a prettier girl on the same spot,” said Tony to Skeff.

“Butler challenges the field,” cried Skeff. “He knows, and will name, the prettiest girl in Richmond.”

“I take him. What ‘s the figure?” said Mayfair.

“And I – and I!” shouted three or four in a breath.

“I think he offered a pony,” lisped out the youngest.

“I said, I ‘d bet five pounds,” said Tony, fiercely; “don’t misrepresent me, sir.”

“I ‘ll take your money, then,” cried Mayfair.

“No, no; I was first: I said ‘done’ before you,” interposed a guardsman.

“But how can it be decided? We can’t summon the rival beauties to our presence, and perform Paris and the apple,” said Skeff.

“Come along with me and you shall see her,” broke in Tony; “she lives within less than five minutes’ walk of where we are. I am satisfied that the matter should be left to your decision, Skefflngton.”

“No, no,” cried several, together; “take Mayfair with you. He is the fittest man amongst us for such a criticism; he has studied these matters profoundly.”

“Here ‘s a health to all good lasses!” cried out another; and goblets were filled with champagne, and drained in a moment, while some attempted the song; and others, imagining that they had caught the air, started off with “Here’s to the Maiden of Blooming Fifteen,” making up an amount of confusion that was perfectly deafening, in which the waiter entered to observe, in a very meek tone, that the Archdeacon of Halford was entertaining a select party in the next room, and entreated that they might be permitted to hear each other occasionally.

Such a burst of horror and indignation as followed this request! Some were for an armed intervention at once; some for a general smash of all things practicable; and two or three, haughtier in their drunkenness, declared that the Star and Garter should have no more of their patronage, and proudly ordered the waiter to fetch the bill.

“Thirty-seven – nine – six,” said Mayfair, as he held the document near a candle; “make it an even forty for the waiters, and it leaves five pounds a head, eh? – not too much, after all.”

“Well, I don’t know; the asparagus was miserably small.”

“And I got no strawberries.”

“I have my doubts about that Moselle.”

“It ain’t dear; at least, it’s not dearer than anywhere else.”

While these criticisms were going forward, Tony perceived that each one in turn was throwing down his sovereigns on the table, as his contribution to the fund; and he approached Skeffington, to whisper that he had forgotten his purse, – his sole excuse to explain, what he would n’t confess, that he believed he was an invited guest Skeff was, however, by this time so completely overcome by the last toast that he sat staring fatuously before him, and could only mutter, in a melancholy strain, “To be, or not to be; that’s a question.”

“Can you lend me some money?” whispered Tony. “I if want your purse.”

“He – takes my purse – trash – trash – ” mumbled out the other.

“I ‘ll book up for Skeffy,” said one of the guardsmen; “and now it’s all right.”

“No,” said Tony, aloud; “I haven’t paid. I left my purse behind, and I can’t make Skeffington understand that I want a loan from him;” and he stooped down again and whispered in his ear.

While a buzz of voices assured Tony that “it did n’t matter; all had money, any one could pay,” and so on, Skeffington gravely handed out his cigar-case, and said, “Take as much as you like, old fellow; it was quarter-day last week.”

In a wild, uproarious burst of laughter they now broke up; some helping Skeffington along, some performing mock-ballet steps, and two or three attempting to walk with an air of rigid propriety, which occasionally diverged into strange tangents.

Tony was completely bewildered. Never was a poor brain more addled than his. At one moment he thought them all the best fellows in the world; he ‘d have risked his neck for any of them; and at the next he regarded them as a set of insolent snobs, daring to show off airs of superiority to a stranger, because he was not one of them; and so he oscillated between the desire to show his affection for them, or have a quarrel with any of them.

Meanwhile Mayfair, with a reasonable good voice and some taste, broke out into a wild sort of air, whose measure changed at every moment One verse ran thus: —

“By the light of the moon, by the light of the moon,We all went home by the light of the moon.With a ringing songWe trampled along,Recalling what we ‘ll forget so soon,How the wine was good,And the talk was free,And pleasant and gay the company.“For the wine suppliedWhat our wits denied,And we pledge the girls whose eyes we knew, whose eyes we knew.You ask her name, but what’s that to you, what’s that to you?”

“Well, there ‘s where she lives, anyhow,” muttered Tony, as he came to a dead stop on the road, and stared full at a small two-storeyed house in front of him.

“Ah, that’s where she lives!” repeated Mayfair, as he drew his arm within Tony’s, and talked in a low and confidential tone.

“And a sweet, pretty cottage it is. What a romantic little spot! What if we were to serenade her!”

Tony gave no reply. He stood looking up at the closed shutters of the quiet house, which, to his eyes, represented a sort of penitentiary for that poor imprisoned hardworking girl. His head was not very clear, but he had just sense enough to remember the respect he owed her condition, and how jealously he should guard her from the interference of others. Meanwhile Mayfair had leaped over the low paling of the little front garden, and stood now close to the house. With an admirable imitation of the prelude of a guitar, he began to sing, —

“Come dearest Lilla,Thy anxious loverCounts, counts the weary moments over – ”

As he reached thus far, a shutter gently opened, and in the strong glare of the moonlight some trace of a head could be detected behind the curtain. Encouraged by this, the singer went on in a rich and flowery voice, —

“Anxious he waits,Thy voice to hearBreak, break on his enraptured ear.”

At this moment the window was thrown open, and a female voice, in an accent strongly Scotch, called out, “Awa wi’ ye, – pack o’ ne’er-do-weels as ye are, – awa wi’ ye a’! I ‘ll call the police.” But Mayfair went on, —

The night invites to love,So tarry not above,But Lilla – Lilla – Lilla, come down to me!

“I’ll come down to you, and right soon,” shouted a hoarse masculine voice. Two or three who had clambered over the paling beside Mayfair now scampered off; and Mayfair himself, making a spring, cleared the fence, and ran down the road at the top of his speed, followed by all but Tony, who, half in indignation at their ignominious flight, and half with some vague purpose of apology, stood his ground before the gate.

The next moment the hall door opened, and a short thickset man, armed with a powerful bludgeon, rushed out and made straight towards him. Seeing, however, that Tony stood firm, neither offering resistance nor attempting escape, he stopped short, and cried out, “What for drunken blackguards are ye, that canna go home without disturbing a quiet neighborhood?”

“If you can keep a civil tongue in your head,” said Tony, “I ‘ll ask your pardon for this disturbance.”

“What’s your apology to me, you young scamp!” cried the other, wrenching open the gate and passing out into the road. “I’d rather give you a lesson than listen to your excuses.” He lifted his stick as he spoke; but Tony sprang upon him with the speed of a tiger, and, wrenching the heavy bludgeon out of his hand, flung it far into a neighboring field, and then, grasping him by the collar with both hands, he gave him such a shake as very soon convinced his antagonist how unequal the struggle would be between them. “By Heaven!” muttered Tony, “if you so much as lay a hand on me, I ‘ll send you after your stick. Can’t you see that this was only a drunken frolic, that these young fellows did not want to insult you, and if I stayed here behind them, it was to appease, not to offend you?”

“Dinna speak to me, sir. Let me go, – let go my coat I ‘m not to be handled in this manner,” cried the other, in passion.

“Go back to your bed, then!” said Tony, pushing him from him. “It’s clear enough you have no gentleman’s blood in your body, or you ‘d accept an amends or resent an affront.”

Stung by this retort, the other turned and aimed a blow at Butler’s face; but he stopped it cleverly, and then, seizing him by the shoulder, he swung him violently round, and threw him within the gate of the garden.

“You are more angered than hurt,” muttered Tony, as he looked at him for an instant.

“Oh, Tony, that this could be you!” cried a faint voice from a little window of an attic, and a violent sob closed the words.

Tony turned and went his way towards London, those accents ringing in his ears, and at every step he went repeating, “That this could be you!”

CHAPTER XV. A STRANGE MEETING AND PARTING

What a dreary waking was that of Tony’s on the morning after the orgies! Not a whit the less overwhelming from the great difficulty he had in recalling the events, and investigating his own share in them. There was nothing that he could look back upon with pleasure. Of the dinner and the guests, all that he could remember was the costliness and the tumult; and of the scene at Mrs. M’Grader’s, his impression was of insults given and received, a violent altercation, in which his own share could not be defended.

How different had been his waking thoughts, had he gone as he proposed, to bid Dora a good-bye, and tell her of his great good fortune! How full would his memory now have been of her kind words and wishes; how much would he have to recall of her sisterly affection, for they had been like brother and sister from their childhood! It was to Dora that Tony confided all his boyhood’s sorrows, and to the same ear he had told his first talc of love, when the beautiful Alice Lyle had sent through his heart those emotions which, whether of ecstasy or torture, make a new existence and a new being to him who feels them for the first time. He had loved Alice as a girl, and was all but heart-broken when she married. His sorrows – and were they not sorrows? – had all been intrusted to Dora; and from her he had heard such wise and kind counsels, such encouraging and hopeful words; and when the beautiful Alice came back, within a year, a widow, far more lovely than ever, he remembered how all bis love was rekindled. Nor was it the less entrancing that it was mingled with a degree of deference for her station, and an amount of distance which her new position exacted.

He had intended to have passed his last evening with Dora in talking over these things; and how had he spent it? In a wild and disgraceful debauch, and in a company of which he felt himself well ashamed.

It was, however, no part of Tony’s nature to spend time in vain regrets; he lived ever more in the present than the past. There were a number of things to be done, and done at once. The first was to acquit his debt for that unlucky dinner; and, in a tremor of doubt, he opened his little store to see what remained to him. Of the eleven pounds ten shillings his mother gave him he had spent less than two pounds; he had travelled third-class to London, and while in town denied himself every extravagance. He rang for his hotel bill, and was shocked to see that it came to three pounds seven-and-sixpence. He fancied he had half-starved himself, and he saw a catalogue of steaks and luncheons to his share that smacked of very gluttony. He paid it without a word, gave an apology to the waiter that he had run himself short of money, and could only offer him a crown. The dignified official accepted the excuse and the coin with a smile of bland sorrow. It was a pity that cut both ways, – for himself and for Tony too.

There now remained but a few shillings above five pounds, and he sat down and wrote this note: —

“My dear Skeffington, – Some one of your friends, last night, was kind enough to pay my share of the reckoning for me. Will you do me the favor to thank and repay him? I am off to Ireland hurriedly, or I ‘d call and see you. I have not even time to wait for those examination papers, which were to be delivered to me either to-day or to-morrow. Would you send them by post, addressed T. Butler, Burnside, Coleraine? My head is not very clear to-day, but it should be more stupid if I could forget all your kindness since we met.

“Believe me, very sincerely, &c.,

“Tony Butler.”

The next was to his mother: —

“Dearest Mother, – Don’t expect me on Saturday; it may be two or three days later ere I reach home. I am all right, in rare health and capital spirits, and never in my life felt more completely your own

“Tony Butler.”

One more note remained, but it was not easy to write it, nor even to decide whether to address it to Dora or to Mr. M’Gruder. At length he decided for the latter, and wrote thus: —

“Sir, – I beg to offer you the very humblest apology for the disturbance created last night before your house. We had all drunk too much wine, lost our heads, and forgotten good manners. If I had been in a fitting condition to express myself properly, I ‘d have made my excuses on the spot. As it is, I make the first use of my recovered brains to tell you how heartily ashamed I am of my conduct, and how desirous I feel to know that you will cherish no ungenerous feelings towards your faithful servant,

“T. Butler.”

“I hope he ‘ll think it all right. I hope this will satisfy him. I trust it is not too humble, though I mean to be humble. If he’s a gentleman, he ‘ll think no more of it; but he may not be a gentleman, and will probably fancy that, because I stoop, he ought to kick me. That would be a mistake; and perhaps it would be as well to add, by way of P.S., ‘If the above is not fully satisfactory, and that you prefer another issue to this affair, my address is T. Butler, Burnside, Coleraine, Ireland.’

“Perhaps that would spoil it all,” thought Tony. “I want him to forgive an offence; and it’s not the best way to that end to say, ‘If you like fighting better, don’t balk your fancy.’ No, no; I ‘ll send it in its first shape. I don’t feel very comfortable on my knees, it is true, but it is all my own fault if I am there.

“And now to reach home again. I wish I knew how that was to be done! Seven or eight shillings are not a very big sum, but I ‘d set off with them on foot if there was no sea to be traversed.” To these thoughts there was no relief by the possession of any article of value that he could sell or pledge. He had neither watch nor ring, nor any of those fanciful trinkets which modern fashion affects.

He knew not one person from whom he could ask the loan of a few pounds; nor, worse again, could he be certain of being able to repay them within a reasonable time. To approach Skeffington on such a theme was impossible; anything rather than this. If he were once at Liverpool, there were sure to be many captains of Northern steamers that would know him, and give him a passage home. But how to get to Liverpool? The cheapest railroad fare was above a pound. If he must needs walk, it would take him a week; and he could not afford himself more than one meal a day, taking his chance to sleep under a corn-stack or a hedgerow. Very dear, indeed, was the price that grand banquet cost him, and yet not dearer than half the extravagances men are daily and hourly committing; the only difference being that the debt is not usually exacted so promptly. He wrote his name on a card, and gave it to the waiter, saying, “When I send to you under this name, you will give my portmanteau to the bearer of the message, for I shall probably not come back, – at least, for some time.”

The waiter was struck by the words, but more still by the dejected look of one whom, but twenty-four hours back, he had been praising for his frank and gay bearing.

“Nothing wrong, I hope, sir?” asked the man, respectfully.

“Not a great deal,” said Tony, with a faint smile.

“I was afraid, sir, from seeing you look pale this morning, I fancied, indeed, that there was something amiss. I hope you ‘re not displeased at the liberty I took, sir?”

“Not a bit; indeed, I feel grateful to you for noticing that I was not in good spirits. I have so very few friends in this big city of yours, your sympathy was pleasant to me. Will you remember what I said about my luggage?”

“Of course, sir, I ‘ll attend to it; and if not called for within a reasonable time, is there any address you ‘d like me to send it to?”

Tony stared at the man, who seemed to flinch under the gaze; and it shot like a bolt through his mind, “He thinks I have some gloomy purpose in my head.” “I believe I apprehend you,” said he, laying his hand on the man’s shoulder; “but you are all wrong. There is nothing more serious the matter with me than to have run myself out of money, and I cannot conveniently wait here till I write and get an answer from home; there ‘s the whole of it.”

“Oh, sir, if you ‘ll not be offended at a humble man like me, – if you ‘d forgive the liberty I take, and let me as far as a ten-pound note;” he stammered, and reddened, and seemed positively wretched in his attempt to explain himself without any breach of propriety. Nor was Tony, indeed, less moved as he said, —

“I thank you heartily; you have given me something to remember of this place with gratitude so long as I live. But I am not so hard pressed as you suspect. It is a merely momentary inconvenience, and a few days will set it all right Good-bye; I hope we’ll meet again.”

And he shook the man’s hand cordially in his own strong fingers, and passed out with a full heart and a very choking throat.

When he turned into the street, he walked along without choosing his way. His mind was too much occupied to let him notice either the way or the passers-by; and he sauntered along, now musing over his own lot, now falling back upon that trustful heart of the poor waiter, whose position could scarcely have inspired such confidence.

“I am certain that what are called moralists are unfair censors of their fellow-men. I ‘ll be sworn there is more of kindness and generosity and honest truth in the world than there is of knavery and falsehood; but as we have no rewards for the one, and keep up jails and hulks for the other, we have nothing to guide our memories. That’s the whole of it; all the statistics are on one side.”

While he was thus ruminating, he had wandered along, and was already deep in the very heart of the City. Nor did the noise, the bustle, the overwhelming tide of humanity arouse him, as it swept along in its ceaseless flow. So intently was his mind turned inward, that he narrowly escaped being run over by an omnibus, the pole of which struck him, and under whose wheels he had unquestionably fallen, if it were not that a strong hand grasped him by the shoulder, and swung him powerfully back upon the flag-way.