Tony Butler Part 85

"Mr. Maitland is too accomplished a man of the world to need being told that, when a person has declared an indisposition to receive, it is usually deemed enough to secure privacy."

"Usually,--yes; but there are occasions which are not in this category."

"And do you mean to say this is one of them, sir?" said she, haughtily.

"Most certainly, madam, this is one of them!" As Mait-land said this, he saw the color mount to her face; and he saw, too, how, now that her proud spirit was, as it were, challenged, she would not think of retreat, but brave him, whatever might come of it.

"Indeed!" said she, with a scornful laugh,--"indeed!" and the last syllable was drawn out in an accent of most insolent irony.

"Yes, madam," he continued, in a tone perfectly calm and un impa.s.sioned; "our last relations together fully warrant me to say so much; and however presumptuous it might have been in me to aspire as I did, the gracious favor with which I was listened to seemed to plead for me."

"What favor do you speak of, sir?" said she, with evident agitation.

"I must not risk the faint hope that remains to me, by recalling what you may not wish to remember; but I may at least ask you to bring to mind a certain evening--a certain night--when we walked together in the garden at Tilney."

"I do not think I am likely to forget it, sir; some anonymous slanderer has made it the pretext of a most insolent calumny. I do not, I need not say, connect you in any way with this base scandal; but it is enough to make the incident the reverse of a pleasant memory."

"And yet it was the happiest of my whole life."

"It is unfortunate, sir, that we should look back to an event with feelings so diametrically opposite."

Maitland gave no heed to the irony of her tone, but went on: "If I was conscious of my own unworthiness, I had certain things in my favor which served to give me courage,--not the least of these was your brother's friends.h.i.+p."

"Mark was always proud of being Mr. Maitland's friend," said she, rather touched by this haughty man's humility.

"That friends.h.i.+p became very precious to me when I knew his sister.

Indeed, from that hour I loved him as a brother."

"Forgive me, sir, if I interrupt you. At the time to which you allude we would seem to have been living in a perfect realm of misconceptions.

Surely it is not necessary to revive them; surely, now that we have awoke, we need not take up the clew of a dream to a.s.sist our reflections."

"What may be the misconceptions you refer to?" said he, with a voice much shaken and agitated.

"One was, it would appear, that Mr. Maitland made me certain professions. Another, that he was--that he had--that is, that he held--I cannot say it, sir; and I beg you to spare me what a rash temper might possibly provoke me to utter."

"Say all that you will; I loved you, Alice."

"You will force me to leave you, sir, if you thus forget yourself."

"I loved you, and I love you still. Do not go, I beg, I implore you.

As the proof of how I love you, I declare that I know all that you have heard of me, all that you have said of me,--every harsh and cruel word.

Ay, Alice, I have read them as your hand traced them, and through all, I love you."

"I will not stoop to ask how, sir; but I will say that the avowal has not raised you in my estimation."

"If I have not your love, I will never ask for your esteem; I wanted your affection as a man wants that which would make his life a reality.

I could have worked for you; I could have braved scores of things I have ever shrunk from; and I had a right to it."

"A right!--what right?"

"The right of him who loved as I did, and was as ready to prove his love. The man who has done what I have is no adventurer, though that fair hand wrote him one. Remember that, madam; and remember that you are in a land where men accept no such slights as this you would pa.s.s upon me." His eyes glared with pa.s.sion as he spoke, and his dark cheeks grew purple. "You are not without those who must answer for your levity."

"Now, sir, I leave you," said she, rising.

"Not yet. You shall hear me out. I know why you have treated me thus falsely. I am aware who is my rival."

"Let me pa.s.s, sir."

He placed his back to the door, and folded his arms on his breast; but though he made an immense effort to seem calm, his lip shook as he spoke. "You shall hear me out. I tell you, I know my rival, and I am ready and prepared to stake my pretensions against his."

"Go on, sir, go on; very little more in this strain will efface any memory I preserved of what you first appeared to me."

"Oh, Alice!" cried he, in a voice of deep anguish. "It is despair has brought me to this. When I came, I thought I could have spoken with calm and self-restraint; but when I saw you--saw what I once believed might have been mine--I forgot all--all but my misery."

"Suffer me to pa.s.s out, sir," said she, coldly. He moved back, and opened the door wide, and held it thus as she swept past him, without a word or a look.

Maitland pressed his hat deep over his brow, and descended the stairs slowly, one by one. A carriage drove to the door as he reached it, and his friend Caffarelli sprang out and grasped his hand.

"Come quickly, Maitland!" cried he. "The King has left the palace. The army is moving out of Naples to take up a position at Capua. All goes badly. The fleet is wavering, and Garibaldi pa.s.sed last night at Salerno."

"And what do I care for all this? Let me pa.s.s."

"Care for it! It is life or death, _caro mio!_ In two hours more the populace will tear in pieces such men as you and myself, if we 're found here. Listen to those yells, _Morte ai Reali!_ Is it with 'Death to the Royalists!' ringing in our ears we are to linger here?"

"This is as good a spot to die in as another," said Maitland; and he lighted his cigar and sat down on the stone bench beside the door.

"The Twenty-fifth of the Line are in open revolt, and the last words of the King were, 'Give them to Maitland, and let him deal with them.'"

Maitland shrugged his shoulders, and smoked on.

"Genario has hoisted the cross of Savoy over the fort at Baia,"

continued the other, "and no one can determine what is to be done. They all say, 'Ask Maitland.'"

"Imitate him! Do the same over the Royal Palace!" said the other, mockingly.

"There, there! Listen to that cry! The mob are pouring down the Chiaja.

Come away."

"Let us look at the scoundrels," said Maitland, taking his friend's arm, and moving into the street Caffarelli pushed and half lifted him into the carriage, and they drove off at speed.

CHAPTER LIV. SKEFF DAMER TESTED

When the Lyles returned from their drive, it was to find that Alice was too ill to come down to dinner. She had, she said, a severe headache, and wished to be left perfectly quiet and alone. This was a sore disappointment to Bella, brimful of all she had seen and heard, and burning with impatience to impart how Skeffy had been sent for by the King, and what he said to his Majesty, and how the royal plans had been modified by his sage words; and, in fact, that the fate of the Neapolitan kingdom was at that moment in the hands of that "gifted creature."

It was such she called him; and I beg my kind reader not to think the less of her that she so magnified her idol. The happiest days of our lives are the least real, just as the evils which never befall us are the greatest.