Tony Butler Part 81

"Oh if I could trust the whisper at my heart!" cried he. "If I could--if I could--I 'd be happier than I ever dared to hope for."

CHAPTER L. THE SOLDIER OF MISFORTUNE

The little flicker of hope--faint enough it was--that cheered up Tony's heart, served also to indispose him to meet with Lady Lyle; for he remembered, fresh as though it had been the day before, the sharp lesson that lady had read him on the "absurd pretensions of certain young gentlemen with respect to those immeasurably above them in station."

"I am not in a humor to listen to the second part of the homily, which certainly would not be the less pointed, seeing that I am a wayfarer on foot, and with my knapsack strapped behind me." It gave him no sense of shame that Alice should have seen him thus poor and humble. He never blushed for his pack or his hobnailed shoes. If _she_ could not think of him apart from the accidents of his condition, it mattered very little what he wore or how he journeyed. And as he cheered himself with these thoughts he gained a high peak, from which he could see the pine-clad promontory of Sestri, some thousand feet down below him. He knew the spot from description, and remembered that it was to be one of his resting-places for a night. It was no new thing for Tony to strike out his own line across country--his was a practised eye--to mark the course by which a certain point was to be reached, and to know, by something like instinct, where a ravine--where a river must lie--where the mountain-side would descend too precipitously for human footsteps--where the shelving decline would admit of a path--all these were his; and in their exercise he had that sort of pride a man feels in what he deems a gift.

This same pride and his hope together lightened the way, and he went forward almost happy; so that once or twice he half asked himself if fortune was not about to turn on him with a kindlier look than she had yet bestowed? When about a mile from the high-road, a dull rumbling sound, like far-away thunder, caught his ear: he looked up, and saw the great ma.s.sive carriage of the wealthy Sir Arthur rolling ponderously along, with its six horses, and followed by a dense "wake" of dust for half a mile behind. "I am glad that we have not met," muttered he: "I could have wished to see Bella, and speak to her. She was ever my fast friend; but that haughty old woman, in the midst of all the pride of her wealth, would have jarred on me so far that I might have forgotten myself. Why should my poverty provoke _her_ to slight me? My poverty is mine, just as much as any malady that might befall me, and whose sufferings I must bear as I may, and cannot ask another to endure for me. It may try _me_ to stand up against, but surely it is no burden to her; and why make it seem as a gulf between us?" Ah, Master Tony!

subtler heads than yours have failed to untie this knot. It was dusk when he reached Sestri, and found himself in the little vine-clad porch of the "Angelo d' Oro," a modest little inn for foot-travellers on the verge of the sea. He ordered his supper to be served in the open air, under the fresh foliage, and with the pleasant night-wind gently stirring the leaves.

As the landlord arranged the table, he informed Tony that another traveller had come a short time before, but so ignorant of the language was he that he was only served by means of signs; and he seemed so poor, too, that they had scruples about giving him a bed, and were disposed to let him pa.s.s the night under the porch.

Tony learned that the traveller had only tasted a gla.s.s of wine and a piece of bread, and then, as if overcome by fatigue and exhaustion, dropped off asleep. "I will see him," said he, rising, without partaking of the soup that was just placed before him; "the poor fellow may perhaps be ill." The landlord led the way to the end of the house, where, on a heap of chestnut leaves, the usual bedding of the cattle in these regions, a large strongly built man, poorly clad and travel-stained, lay sound asleep. Tony took the lantern and held it to his face. How was it he knew the features? He knew them, and yet not the man. He was sure that the great ma.s.sive brow and that large strong cheek were not seen by him for the first time, and though he was sorry to disturb the poor fellow's slumber, he could not control his impatience to resolve the doubt; and, stooping down, he shook him gently by the shoulder.

"What is it?" cried the man, starting up to a sitting posture; "what is it now?"

"You are a countryman of mine," said Tony, "and I'm trying to think if we have not met before."

The man rose to his feet, and, taking the lantern from Tony's hand, held it up to his face. "Don't you know me, sir," cried he; "don't you remember me?"

"I do, and I do not," muttered Tony, still puzzled.

"Don't you mind the day, sir, that you was near been run over in London, and a man pulled you out just as the horses was on top o' you?"

"And are you the man? Are you the poor fellow whose bundle I carried off?"--but he stopped, and, grasping the man's hand, shook it cordially and affectionately. "By what chance do I find you here?"

The man looked about, as if to see that he was not overheard; and Tony, marking the caution of the gesture, said, "None can understand us here.

Don't be afraid to say what you like; but first of all, come and share my supper with me."

It was not without a modest reluctance that the poor fellow took his seat at the table; and, indeed, for some time so overcome was he by the honor accorded him, that he scarcely ate at all. If Tony Butler was no finished conversationalist, able to lead the talk of a dinner-table, yet in the tact that pertains to making intercourse with an inferior easy and familiar he had not many his equal; and before the meal was finished, he slapped him familiarly on the shoulder, and said, "Rory Quin, here's your health, and a long life to you!"

"How did you know my name, sir?" asked the poor fellow, whose face glowed with delight at the flattery of such a recognition.

"At first I did not trust my memory, Rory, for I wrote it down in a note-book I have; and after a while I learned to think of you so often, and to wish I might meet you, that I had no need of the writing. You don't seem to remember that I am in your debt, my good fellow. I carried off your bundle, and, what was worse, it fell overboard and was lost."

"It could n't have any but bad luck," said Rory, thoughtfully; "and maybe it was just the best thing could happen it."

There was a touch of sorrow in what he said that Tony easily saw; a hidden grief had been removed, and after a little inducement he led him on to tell his story; and which, though, narrated in Rory's own words, it occupied hours, may, happily for my readers, be condensed into a very few sentences.

Rory had been induced, partly by the glorious cause itself, partly through the glittering promises of personal advancement, to enlist for foreign service. A certain Major M'Caskey--a man that, as Rory said, would wile the birds off the trees--came down to the little village he lived in at the foot of the Galtee Mountains; and there was not one, young or old, was not ready to follow him. To hear him talk, as Rory described, was better than a play. There wasn't a part of the world he hadn't seen, there was n't a great man in it he did n't know; and "what beat all," as Rory said, "was the way he had the women on his side." Not that he was a fine-looking man, or tall, or handsome,--far from it; he was a little "crith of a cray-ture," not above five feet four or five, and with red whiskers and a beard, and a pair of eyes that seemed on fire; and he had a way of looking about him as he went, as much as to say, "Where's the man that wants to quarrel with me? for I'm ready and willin'."

"I won't say," added Rory, with a touch of humility, "that one like your honor would have thought so much of him as we did. I won't say that all the fine people he knew, and all the wonderful things he did, would have made your honor admire him, as I, and others like me, did. Maybe, indeed, you 'd have found out it was lies from beginning to end."

"I'm not so sure of that," muttered Tony; "there are plausible fellows of that sort that take in men of the world every day!" And Tony sat back in his chair and puffed his cigar in silence, doubtless recalling one such adept in his own experience.

"Faix, I'm proud to hear your honor say that!" cried Rory. "I 'm as glad as a pound-note to know that even a gentleman might have been 'taken in'

by the Major."

"I 'll not go that far, perhaps," remarked Tony, "as regards your Major; but I repeat that there are certain fellows of his kind who actually _have_ imposed on gentlemen,--yes, on gentlemen who were no fools, either. But how was it he tricked you?"

Now were the floodgates of Rory's eloquence thrown open, and for above an hour did he revel, as only an Irishman or an Italian can, in a narrative of cruel wrongs and unmerited hards.h.i.+ps; sufferings on land and sufferings at sea; short rations, bad language, and no pay. Rory was to have been an officer,--a captain, at least; and when they landed at Ancona, he was marched away hundreds of miles, with a heavy musket, and a heavier pack, as a common soldier, and given nothing but beans and oil for his food, and told he 'd be shot if he grumbled. But what he felt most of all was, that he never knew whose service he was in, and what he was going to fight for. Now it was the Holy Father,--Rory was ready to die for him and the Blessed Virgin; now it was the King of Naples and Saint Somebody, whose name he couldn't remember, and that Rory felt no enthusiasm for. At one moment he was told the Pope was going to bless the whole battalion, and sprinkle them with his own hand; and then it was the Queen--and purty she was, no doubt--was to lead them on, G.o.d knows where! "And that's the way we were living in the mountains for six weeks, and every time they paraded us--about once a week--there would be thirty or forty less of us; some gone off to be sailors, some taking to the highway as robbers, and a few selling whatever they had and making for home. At last the Major himself came down to inspect us,--he was Colonel then, and covered with gold, and all over stars and crosses. We were drawn up in a square of a little town they call Loretto, that has houses on three sides of it, and a low sea-wall with a drop of about twenty feet to the sea. I 'll not forget the place to my dying day.

"There was four hundred and twenty-seven of us out of two thousand and sixty,--the rest ran away; and when the Major heard the roll called, I thought he 'd go out of his mind; and he walked up and down in front of us, gnas.h.i.+ng his teeth and blaspheming as never I heard before. 'Ye scoundrels,' he said at last, 'you 've disgraced me eternally, and I 'll go back to the Holy Father and tell him it's curses and not blessings he 'd have to give you.'

"This was too much to bear, and I cried out, 'You'd better not!'

"'Who says that?' cries he. 'Where 's the cowardly rascal that has n't the courage to step forward and repeat these words?' and with that I advanced two paces, and, putting my gun to my shoulder, took a steady aim at him. I had him covered. If I pulled the trigger, he was a dead man; but I could n't do it,--no, if I got the whole world for it, I could n't; and do you know why?--here it is, then: It was the way he stood up, bould and straight, with one hand on his breast, and the other on the hilt of his sword, and he cried out, 'Fire! you scoundrel, fire!'

Bad luck to me if I could; but I walked on, covering him all the while, till I got within ten paces of the wall, and then I threw down my musket, and with a run I cleared it, and jumped into the sea. He fired both his pistols at me, and one ball grazed my head; but I dived and swam and dived till he lost sight of me; and it was half an hour before they got out a boat, and before that I was snug hiding between the rocks, and so close to him that I could hear him swearing away like mad.

When it was dark I crept out, and made my way along the sh.o.r.e to Pesaro, and all the way here. Indeed, I had only to say anywhere I was a deserter, and every one was kind to me. And do you know, sir, now that it's all over, I'm glad I didn't shoot him in cold blood?"

"Of course you are," said Tony, half sternly.

"But if I am," rejoined the other,--"if I am glad of it, it's a'most breaking my heart to think I 'm going back to Ireland without a chance of facing him in a fair fight."

"You could do that, too, if you were so very anxious for it," said Tony, gravely.

"Do you tell me so? And how, sir?"

"Easy enough, Rory. I 'm on my way now to join a set of brave fellows that are going to fight the very soldiers your Major will be serving with. The cause that he fights for, I need not tell you, can't be a very good one."

"Indeed, it oughtn't," said Rory, cautiously.

"Come along with me, then; if it's only fighting you ask for, there 's a fellow to lead us on that never balked any one's fancy that way. In four days from this we can be in the thick of it I don't want to persuade you in a hurry, Rory. Take a day--take two--three days, if you like, to think of it."

"I won't take three minutes. I'll follow your honor to the world's end!

and if it gives me a chance to come up with the Major, I 'll bless the hour I met you."

Tony now told him--somewhat more ambiguously, I 'm afraid, than consisted with perfect candor--of the cause they were going to fight for. He made the most of those magical words so powerful to the Celtic heart,--oppression, cruelty, injustice; he imparted a touch of repeal to the struggle before them; and when once pressed hard by Rory with the home question, "Which side is the Holy Father?" he roughly answered, "I don't think he has much to say to it one way or other."

"Faix, I 'm ashamed of myself," said Rory, flus.h.i.+ng up; "and I ought to know that what's good enough for your honor to fight for is too good for me."

They drained the last gla.s.ses of their flask in pledge of their compact, and, resolving to keep their resting-time for the sultry heat of the day, started by the clear starlight for Genoa.

CHAPTER LI. A PIECE OF GOOD TIDINGS

It was about a week after this event when Sam M'Grader received a few lines from Tony Butler, saying that he was to sail that morning with a detachment for Garibaldi. They were bound for Marsala, and only hoped that they might not be caught by the Neapolitan cruisers which were said to swarm along the coast. "I suppose," he writes, "there's plenty of 'fight' amongst us; but we are more picturesque than decent-looking; and an honest countryman of mine, who has attached himself to my fortunes, tells me in confidence that 'they 're all heathens, every man of them.'

They are certainly a wild, dare-devil set, whom it will be difficult to reduce to any discipline, and, I should fear, impossible to restrain from outrage if occasion offers. We are so crowded that we have only standing-room on deck, and those below are from time to time relieved in squads, to come up and breathe a little fresh air. The suffering from heat and thirst was bad yesterday, but will, perhaps, be less at sea, with a fresh breeze to cool us. At all events, no one complains. We are the jolliest blackguards in the world, and going to be killed in a better humor with life than half the fine gentlemen feel as they wake in the morning to a day of pleasure.

"I shall be glad when we put foot on land again; for I own I 'd rather fight the Neapolitans than live on in such close companions.h.i.+p with my gallant comrades. If not 'bowled' over, I 'll write to you within a week or two. Don't forget me.--Yours ever,

"Tony Butler."

M'Gruder was carefully plodding his way through this not very legible doc.u.ment, exploring it with a zeal that vouched for his regard for the writer, when he was informed that an English gentleman was in the office inquiring for Mr. Butler.

The stranger soon presented himself as a Mr. Culter, of the house of Box & Culter, solicitors, London, and related that he had been in search of Mr. Anthony Butler from one end of Europe to the other. "I was first of all, sir," said he, "in the wilds of Calabria, and thence I was sent off to the equally barbarous north of Ireland, where I learned that I must retrace my steps over the Alps to your house; and now I am told that Mr.

Butler has left this a week ago."