CHAPTER LXII. SKEFF DAMER’S LAST “PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL”
After some four or five days passed 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 passed 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 ‘godfather,’ 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 noble 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 ‘godfather’ 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 passed 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 gratitude.
“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 congé. 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 assume, – 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 title! 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 godfather.”
“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 passing 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.
“Because, if you had, I’d have asked you to fetch me some fresh flowers. Dolly is coming to dine with us, and she is so fond of seeing flowers on the centre of the table.”
“No; I have nothing to do at the Abbey. I ‘m off towards Portrash.”
“Why not go over to the Burnside and fetch Dolly?” said she, carelessly.
“Perhaps I may, – that is, if I should find myself in that quarter; but I’m first of all bent on a profound piece of thoughtfulness or a good smoke, – pretty much the same thing with me, I believe. So good-bye for a while.”
His mother looked after him with loving eyes till the tears dulled them; but there are tears which fall on the affections as the dew falls on flowers, and these were of that number.
“His own father, – his own father!” muttered she, as she followed the stalwart figure till it was lost in the distance.
CHAPTER LXIII. AT THE COTTAGE BESIDE THE CAUSEWAY
I must use more discretion as to Mrs. Butler’s correspondence than I have employed respecting Skeff Damer’s. What she wrote on that morning is not to be recorded here. It will be enough if I say that her letter was not alone a kind one, but that it thoroughly convinced him who read it that her view was wise and true, and that it would be as useless as ungenerous to press Dolly further, or ask for that love which was not hers to give.
It was a rare event with her to have to write a letter. It was not, either, a very easy task; but if she had not the gift of facile expression, she had another still better for her purpose, – an honest nature steadfastly determined to perform a duty. She knew her subject, too, and treated it with candor, while with delicacy.
While she wrote, Tony strolled along, puffing his cigar or re-lighting it, for it was always going out, and dreaming away in his own misty fashion over things past, present, and future, till really the actual and the ideal became so thoroughly commingled he could not well distinguish one from the other. He thought – he knew, indeed, he ought to be very happy. All his anxieties as to a career and a livelihood ended, he felt that a very enjoyable existence might lie before him; but somehow, – he hoped he was not ungrateful, – but somehow he was not so perfectly happy as he supposed his good fortune should have made him.
“Perhaps it will come later on; perhaps when I am active and employed; perhaps when I shall have learned to interest myself in the things money brings around a man; perhaps, too, when I can forget, – ay, that was the lesson was hardest of all.” All these passing thoughts, a good deal dashed through each other, scarcely contributed to enlighten his faculties; and he rambled on over rocks and yellow strand, up hillsides, and through fern-clad valleys, not in the least mindful of whither he was going.
At last he suddenly halted, and saw he was in the shrubberies of Lyle Abbey, his steps having out of old habit taken the one same path they had followed for many a year. The place was just as he had seen it last. Trees make no marvellous progress in the north of Ireland, and a longer absence than Tony’s would leave them just as they were before. All was neat, orderly, and well kept; and the heaps of dried leaves and brushwood ready to be wheeled away, stood there as he saw them when he last walked that way with Alice. He was poor then, without a career, or almost a hope of one; and yet it was possible, could it be possible, that he was happier then than he now felt? Was it that love sufficed for all, and that the heart so filled had no room for other thoughts than those of her it worshipped? He certainly had loved her greatly. She, – she alone made up that world in which he had lived. Her smile, her step, her laugh, her voice, – ay, there they were, all before him. What a dream it was! Only a dream, after all; for she never cared for him. She had led him on to love her, half in caprice, half in a sort of compassionate interest for a poor boy, – boy she called him, – to whom a passion for one above him was certain to elevate and exalt him in his own esteem. “Very kind, doubtless,” muttered he, “but very cruel too. She might have remembered that this same dream was to have a very rough awaking. I had built nearly every hope upon one, and that one, she well knew, was never to be realized. It might not have been the most gracious way to do it, but I declare it would have been the most merciful, to have treated me as her mother did, who snubbed my pretensions at once. It was all right that I should recognize her superiority over me in a hundred ways; but perhaps she should not have kept it so continually in mind, as a sort of barrier against a warmer feeling for me. I suppose this is the fine-lady view of the matter. This is the theory that young fellows are to be civilized, as they call it, by a passion for a woman who is to amuse herself by their extravagances, and then ask their gratitude for having deceived them.
“I ‘ll be shot if I am grateful,” said he, as he threw his cigar into the pond. “I ‘m astonished – amazed – now that it’s all over” (here his voice shook a little), “that my stupid vanity could ever have led me to think of her, or that I ever mistook that patronizing way she had towards me for more than good-nature. But, I take it, there are scores of fellows who have had the selfsame experiences. Here’s the seat I made for her,” muttered he, as he came in front of a rustic bench. For a moment a savage thought crossed him that he would break it in pieces, and throw the fragments into the lake, – a sort of jealous anger lest some day or other she might sit there with “another;” but he restrained himself, and said, “Better not; better let her see that her civilizing process has done something, and that though I have lost my game I can bear my defeat becomingly.”
He began to wish that she were there at that moment. Not that he might renew his vows of love, or repledge his affection; but to show her how calm and reasonable – ay, reasonable was her favorite word – he could be, how collectedly he could listen to her, and how composedly reply. He strolled up to the entrance door. It was open. The servants were busy in preparing for the arrival of their masters, who were expected within the week. All were delighted to see Master Tony again, and the words somehow rather grated on his ears. It was another reminder of that same “boyhood” he bore such a grudge against “I am going to have a look out of the small drawing-room window, Mrs. Hayles,” said he to the housekeeper, cutting short her congratulations, and hurrying upstairs.
It was true he went up for a view; but not of the coastline to Fairhead, fine as it was. It was of a full-length portrait of Alice, life-size, by Grant. She was standing beside her horse, – the Arab Tony trained for her. A braid of her hair had fallen, and she was in the act of arranging it, while one hand held up her drooping riding-dress. There was that in the air and attitude that bespoke a certain embarrassment with a sense of humorous enjoyment of the dilemma. A sketch from life, in fact, had given the idea of the picture, and the reality of the incident was unquestionable.
Tony blushed a deep crimson as he looked, and muttered, “The very smile she had on when she said good-bye. I wonder I never knew her till now.”
A favorite myrtle of hers stood in the window; he broke off a sprig of it, and placed it in his button-hole, and then slowly passed down the stairs and out into the lawn. With very sombre thoughts and slow steps he retraced his way to the cottage. He went over to himself much of his past life, and saw it, as very young men will often in such retrospects, far less favorably as regarded himself than it really was. He ought to have done – Heaven knows what. He ought to have been – scores of things which he never was, perhaps never could be. At all events, there was one thing he never should have imagined, that Alice Lyle – she was Alice Lyle always to him – in her treatment of him was ever more closely drawn towards him than the others of her family. “It was simply the mingled kindness and caprice of her nature that made, the difference; and if I had n’t been a vain fool, I ‘d have seen it. I see it now, though; I can read it in the very smile she has in her picture. To be sure I have learned a good deal since I was here last; I have outgrown a good many illusions. I once imagined this dwarfed and stinted scrub to be a wood. I fancied the Abbey to be like a royal palace; and in Sicily a whole battalion of us have bivouacked in a hall that led to suites of rooms without number. If a mere glimpse of the world could reveal such astounding truths, what might not come of a more lengthened experience?”
“How tired and weary you look, Tony!” said his mother, as he threw himself into a chair; “have you overwalked yourself?”
“I suppose so,” said he, with a half smile. “In my poorer days I thought nothing of going to the Abbey and back twice – I have done it even thrice – in one day; but perhaps this weight of gold I carry now is too heavy for me.”
“I ‘d like to see you look more grateful for your good for time, Tony,” said she, gravely.
“I’m not ungrateful, mother; but up to this I have not thought much of the matter. I suspect, however, I was never designed for a life of ease and enjoyment Do you remember what Dr. Stewart said one day? – ‘You may put a weed in a garden, and dig round it and water it, and it will only grow to be a big weed after all.’”
“I hope better from Tony, – far better,” said she, sharply. “Have you answered M’Carthy’s letter? Have you arranged where you are to meet the lawyers?”
“I have said in Dublin. They couldn’t come here, mother; we have no room for them in this crib.”
“You must not call it a ‘crib’ for all that. It sheltered your father once, and he carried a very high head, Tony.”
“And for that very reason, dear mother, I’m going to make it our own home henceforth, – without you ‘d rather go and live in that old manor-house on the Nore; they tell me it is beautiful.”
“It was there your father was born, and I long to see it,” said she, with emotion. “Who ‘s that coming in at the gate, Tony?”
“It is Dolly,” said he, rising, and going to the door to meet her.
“My dear Dolly,” cried he, as he embraced her, and kissed her on either cheek; “this brings me back to old times at once.”
If it was nothing else, the total change in Tony’s appearance abashed her; the bronzed and bearded man, looking many years older than he was, seemed little like the Tony she had seen last; and so she half shrank back from his embrace, and, with a flushed cheek and almost constrained manner, muttered some words of recognition.
“How well you are looking,” said he, staring at her, as she took off her bonnet, “and the nice glossy hair has all grown again, and I vow it is brighter and silkier than ever.”
“What’s all this flattery about bright een and silky locks I’m listening to?” said the old lady, coming out laughing into the ball.
“It’s Master Tony displaying his foreign graces at my expense, ma’am,” said Dolly, with a smile.
“Would you have known him again, Dolly? Would you have thought that great hairy creature there was our Tony?”
“I think he is changed, – a good deal changed,” said Dolly, without looking at him.
“I did n’t quite like it at first; but I’m partly getting used to it now; and though the Colonel never wore a beard on his upper lip, Tony’s more like him now than ever.” The old lady continued to ramble on about the points of resemblance between the father and son, and where certain traits of manner and voice were held in common; and though neither Tony nor Dolly gave much heed to her words, they were equally grateful to her for talking.
“And where ‘s the doctor, Dolly? Are we not to see him at dinner?”
“Not to-day, ma’am; he’s gone over to M’Laidlaw’s to make some arrangements about this scheme of ours, – the banishment, he calls it.”
“And is it possible, Dolly, that he can seriously contemplate such a step?” asked Tony, gravely.
“Yes; and very seriously too.”
“And you, Dolly; what do you say to it?”
“I say to it what I have often said to a difficulty, what the old Scotch adage says of ‘the stout heart to the stey brae.’”