Tony Butler

CHAPTER V. IN LONDON

Seeking one’s fortune is a very gambling sort of affair. It is leaving so much to chance, trusting so implicitly to what is called “luck,” that it makes all individual exertion a merely secondary process, – a kind of “auxiliary screw” to aid the gale of Fortune. It was pretty much in this spirit that Tony Butler arrived in London; nor did the aspect of that mighty sea of humanity serve to increase his sense of self-reliance. It was not merely his loneliness that he felt in that great crowd, but it was his utter inutility – his actual worthlessness – to all others. If the gamester’s sentiment, to try his luck, was in his heart, it was the spirit of a very poor gambler, who had but one “throw” to risk on fortune; and, thus thinking, he set out for Downing Street.

If he was somewhat disappointed in the tumble-down, ruinous old mass of building which held the state secrets of the empire, he was not the less awestruck as he found himself at the threshold where the great men who guide empires were accustomed to pass in. With a bold effort he swung back the glass door of the inner hall, and found himself in presence of a very well-whiskered, imposing-looking man, who, seated indolently in a deep armchair, was busily engaged in reading the “Times.” A glance over the top of the paper was sufficient to assure this great official that it was not necessary to interrupt his perusal of the news on the stranger’s account, and so he read on undisturbed.

“I have a letter here for Sir Harry Elphinstone,” began Tony; “can I deliver it to him?”

“You can leave it in that rack yonder,” said the other, pointing to a glass-case attached to the wall.

“But I wish to give it myself, – with my own hand.”

“Sir Harry comes down to the office at five, and, if your name is down for an audience, will see you after six.”

“And if it is not down?”

“He won’t see you; that ‘s all.” There was an impatience about the last words that implied he had lost his place in the newspaper, and wished to be rid of his interrogator.

“And if I leave my letter here, when shall I call for the answer?” asked Tony, diffidently.

“Any time from this to this day six weeks,” said the other, with a wave of the hand to imply the audience was ended.

“What if I were to try his private residence?” said Tony.

“Eighty-one, Park Lane,” said the other, aloud, while he mumbled over to himself the last line he had read, to recall his thoughts to the passage.

“You advise me then to go there?”

“Always cutting down, always slicing off something!” muttered the other, with his eyes on the paper. “‘For the port-collector of Hallihololulo, three hundred and twenty pounds. Mr. Scrudge moved as amendment that the vote be reduced by the sum of seventy-four pounds eighteen and sevenpence, being the amount of the collector’s salary for the period of his absence from his post during the prevalence of the yellow fever on the coast. The honorable member knew a gentleman, whose name he was unwilling to mention publicly, but would have much pleasure in communicating confidentially to any honorable gentleman on either side of the House, who had passed several days at Haccamana, and never was attacked by any form of yellow fever.’ That was a home-thrust, eh?” cried the reader, addressing Tony. “Not such an easy thing to answer old Scrudge there?”

“I’m a poor opinion on such matters,” said Tony, with humility; “but pray tell me, if I were to call at Park Lane – ”

The remainder of his question was interrupted by the sudden start to his legs of the austere porter, as an effeminate-looking young man with his hat set on one side, and a glass to his eye, swung wide the door, and walked up to the letter-rack.

“Only these, Willis?” said he, taking some half-dozen letters of various sizes.

“And this, sir,” said the porter, handing him Tony’s letter; “but the young man thinks he ‘d like to have it back;” while he added, in a low but very significant tone, “he’s going to Park Lane with it himself.”

The young gentleman turned round at this, and took a Tery leisurely survey of the man who contemplated a step of such rare audacity.

“He ‘s from Ireland, Mr. Darner,” whispered the porter, with a half-kindly impulse to make an apology for such ignorance.

Mr. Darner smiled faintly, and gave a little nod, as though to say that the explanation was sufficient; and again turned towards Tony.

“I take it that you know Sir Harry Elphinstone?” asked he.

“I never saw him; but he knew my father very well, and he ‘ll remember my name.”

“Knew your father? And in what capacity, may I ask?”

“In what capacity?” repeated Tony, almost fiercely.

“Yes; I mean, as what – on what relations did they stand to each other?”

“As schoolfellows at Westminster, where he fagged to my father; in the Grenadier Guards afterwards, where they served together; and, last of all, as correspondents, which they were for many years.”

“Ah, yes,” sighed the other, as though he had read the whole story, and a very painful story too, of change of fortune and ruined condition. “But still,” continued he, “I ‘d scarcely advise your going to Park Lane. He don’t like it. None of them like it!”

“Don’t they?” said Tony, not even vaguely guessing at whose prejudices he was hinting, but feeling bound to say something.

“No, they don’t,” rejoined Mr. Darner, in a half-confidential way. “There is such a deal of it, – fellows who were in the same ‘eleven’ at Oxford, or widows of tutors, or parties who wrote books, – I think they are the worst, but all are bores, immense bores! You want to get something, don’t you?”

Tony smiled, as much at the oddity of the question as in acquiescence.

“I ask,” said the other, “because you’ll have to come to me: I ‘m private secretary, and I give away nearly all the office patronage. Come upstairs;” and with this he led the way up a very dirty staircase to a still dirtier corridor, off which a variety of offices opened, the open doors of which displayed the officials in all forms and attitudes of idleness, – some asleep, some reading newspapers, some at luncheon, and two were sparring with boxing-gloves.

“Sir Harry writes the whole night through,” said Mr. Damer; “that’s the reason these fellows have their own time of it now;” and with this bit of apology he ushered Tony into a small but comfortably furnished room, with a great coal-fire in the grate, though the day was a sultry one in autumn.

Mr. Skeffington Darner’s first care was to present himself before a looking-glass, and arrange his hair, his whiskers, and his cravat; having done which, he told Tony to be seated, and threw himself into a most comfortably padded arm-chair, with a writing-desk appended to one side of it.

“I may as well open your letter. It’s not marked private, eh?”

“Not marked private,” said Tony, “but its contents are strictly confidential.”

“But it will be in the waste-paper basket to-morrow morning for all that,” said Darner, with a pitying compassion for the other’s innocence. “What is it you are looking for, – what sort of thing?”

“I scarcely know, because I ‘m fit for so little; they tell me the colonies, Australia or New Zealand, are the places for fellows like me.”

“Don’t believe a word of it,” cried Darner, energetically. “A man with any ‘go’ in him can do fifty thousand times better at home. You go some thousand miles away – for what? to crush quartz, or hammer limestone, or pump water, or carry mud in baskets, at a dollar, two dollars, five dollars, if you like, a day, in a country where Dillon, one of our fellows that’s under-secretary there, writes me word he paid thirty shillings for a pot of Yarmouth bloaters. It’s a rank humbug all that about the colonies, – take my word for it!”

“But what is there to be done at home, at least by one like me?”

“Scores of things. Go on to the Exchange, – go in for a rise, go in for a fall. Take Peruvian Twelves – they ‘re splendid – or Montezuman mining script. I did a little in Guatemalas last week, and I expect a capital return by next settling-day. If you think all this too gambling, get named director of a company. There’s the patent phosphorus blacking, will give fifty pounds for a respectable chairman; or write a novel, – that’s the easiest thing in life, and pays wonderfully, – Herd and Dashen give a thousand down, and double the money for each edition; and it’s a fellow’s own fault if it ain’t a success. Then there’s patent medicine and scene-painting, – any one can paint a scene, all done with a great brush – this fashion; and you get up to fifteen, ay, twenty pounds a week. By the way, are you active?”

“Tolerably so. Why do you ask?” said Tony, smiling at the impetuous incoherence of the other’s talk.

“Just hold up this newspaper – so – not so high – there. Don’t move; a very little to the right.” So saying, Mr. Darner took three sofa-cushions, and placed them in a line on the floor; and then, taking off his coat and waistcoat, retired to a distant corner of the room. “Be steady, now; don’t move,” cried he; and then, with a brisk run, he dashed forward, and leaped head-foremost through the extended newspaper, but with so vigorous a spring as to alight on the floor a considerable distance in advance of the cushions, so that he arose with a bump on his forehead, and his nose bleeding.

“Admirably done! splendidly done!” cried Tony, anxious to cover the disaster by a well-timed applause.

“I never got so much as a scratch before,” said Darner, as be proceeded to sponge his face. “I ‘ve done the clock and the coach-window at the Adelphi, and they all thought it was Salter. I could have five pounds a night and a free benefit. Is it growing black around the eye? I hope it’s not growing black around the eye?”

“Let me bathe it for you. By the way, have you any one here could manage to get you a little newly baked dough? That’s the boxer’s remedy for a bruise. If I knew where to go, I ‘d fetch it myself.”

Darner looked up from his bathing proceedings, and stared at the good-natured readiness of one so willing to oblige as not to think of the ridicule that might attach to his kindness. “My servant will go for it,” said he; “just pull that bell, will you, and I ‘ll send him. Is not it strange how I could have done this?” continued he, still bent on explaining away his failure; “what a nose I shall have to-morrow! Eh! what’s that? It’s Sir Harry’s bell ringing away furiously! Was there ever the like of this! The only day he should have come for the last eight months!” The bell now continued to ring violently, and Damer had nothing for it but to huddle on his coat and rush away to answer the summons.

Though not more than ten minutes absent, Tony thought the time very long; in reality be felt anxious about the poor fellow, and eager to know that his disaster had not led to disgrace.

“Never so much as noticed it,” said Darner, – “was so full of other matters. I suspect,” added he, in a lower tone, – “I suspect we are going out.”

“Out where?” asked Tony, with simplicity.

“Out of office, out of power,” replied the other, half testily; then added in a more conciliatory voice, “I ‘ll tell you why I think so. He began filling up all the things that are vacant. I have just named two colonial secretaries, a chief justice, an auditor-general, and an inspector of convicts. I thought of that for you, and handed him your letter; but before he broke the seal he had filled up the place.”

“So then he has read the letter?”

“Yes, he read it twice; and when I told him you were here in waiting, he said, ‘Tell him not to go; I ‘ll see him.’”

The thought of presenting himself bodily before the great man made Tony feel nervous and uncomfortable; and after a few moments of fidgety uneasiness, he said, “What sort of person is he, – what is he like?”

“Well,” said Damer, who now stood over a basin, sponging his eye with cold water, “he’s shy – very shy – but you ‘d never guess it; for he has a bold, abrupt sort of way with him; and he constantly answers his own questions, and if the replies displease him, he grows irritable. You ‘ve seen men like that?”

“I cannot say that I have.”

“Then it’s downright impossible to say when he’s in good humor with one, for he ‘ll stop short in a laugh and give you such a pull up!”

“That is dreadful!” exclaimed Tony.

“I can manage him! They say in the office I ‘m the only fellow that ever could manage him. There goes his bell, – that’s for you; wait here, however, till I come back.”

Darner hurried away, but was back in a moment, and beckoned to Tony to follow him, which he did in a state of flurry and anxiety that a real peril would never have caused him.

Tony found himself standing in the Minister’s presence, where he remained for full a couple of minutes before the great man lifted his head and ceased writing. “Sit down,” was the first salutation; and as he took a chair, he had time to remark the stern but handsome features of a large man, somewhat past the prime of life, and showing in the lines of his face traces of dissipation as well as of labor.

“Are you the son of Watty Butler?” asked he, as he wheeled his chair from the table and confronted Tony.

“My father’s name was Walter, sir,” replied Tony, not altogether without resenting this tone of alluding to him.

“Walter! nothing of the kind; nobody ever called him anything but Watty, or Wat Tartar, in the regiment. Poor Watty! you are very like him, – not so large, – not so tall.” “The same height to a hair, sir.”

“Don’t tell me; Watty was an inch and a half over you, and much broader in the chest. I think I ought to know; he has thrown me scores of times wrestling, and I suspect it would puzzle you to do it.” Tony’s face flushed; he made no answer, but in his heart of hearts he ‘d like to have had a trial.

Perhaps the great man expected some confirmation of his opinion, or perhaps he had his own doubts about its soundness; but, whatever the reason, his voice was more peevish as he said: “I have read your mother’s note, but for the life of me I cannot see what it points to. What has become of your father’s fortune? He had something, surely.”

“Yes, sir, he had a younger son’s portion, but he risked it in a speculation – some mines in Canada – and lost it.”

“Ay, and dipped it too by extravagance! There’s no need to tell me how he lived; there wasn’t so wasteful a fellow in the regiment; he ‘d have exactly what he pleased, and spend how he liked. And what has it come to? ay, that’s what I ask, – what has it come to? His wife comes here with this petition – for it is a petition – asking – I ‘ll be shot if I know what she asks.”

“Then I ‘ll tell you,” burst in Tony; “she asks the old brother-officer of her husband – the man who in his letters called himself his brother – to befriend his son, and there’s nothing like a petition in the whole of it.”

“What! what! what! This is something I ‘m not accustomed to! You want to make friends, young man, and you must not begin by outraging the very few who might chance to be well disposed towards you.”

Tony stood abashed and overwhelmed, his cheeks on fire with shame, but he never uttered a word.

“I have very little patronage,” said Sir Harry, drawing himself up and speaking in a cold, measured tone; “the colonies appoint their own officials, with a very few exceptions. I could make you a bishop or an attorney-general, but I could n’t make you a tide-waiter! What can you do? Do you write a good hand?”

“No, sir; it is legible, – that’s all.”

“And of course you know nothing of French or German?”

“A little French; not a word of German, sir.”

“I’d be surprised if you did. It is always when a fellow has utterly neglected his education that he comes to a Government for a place. The belief apparently is that the State supports a large institution of incapables, eh?”

“Perhaps there is that impression abroad,” said Tony, defiantly.

“Well, sir, the impression, as you phrase it, is unfounded, I can affirm. I have already declared it in the House, that there is not a government in Europe more ably, more honestly, or more zealously served than our own. We may not have the spirit of discipline of the French, or the bureaucracy of the Prussian; but we have a class of officials proud of the departments they administer; and, let me tell you, – it’s no small matter, – very keen after retiring pensions.”

Either Sir Harry thought he had said a smart thing, or that the theme suggested something that tickled his fancy, for he smiled pleasantly now on Tony, and looked far better tempered than before. Indeed, Tony laughed at the abrupt peroration, and that laugh did him no disservice.

“Well, now, Butler, what are we to do with you?” resumed the Minister, good-humoredly. “It’s not easy to find the right thing, but I ‘ll talk it over with Darner. Give him your address, and drop in upon him occasionally, – not too often, but now and then, so that he should n’t forget you. Meanwhile brush up your French and Italian. I ‘m glad you know Italian.”

“But I do not, sir; not a syllable of the language.”

“Oh, it was German, then? Don’t interrupt me. Indeed, let me take the occasion to impress upon you that you have this great fault of manners, – a fault I have remarked prevalent among Irishmen, and which renders them excessively troublesome in the House, and brings them frequently under the reproof of the Speaker. If you read the newspapers, you will have seen this yourself.”