Tony Butler Part 69

"Arrived at M----- on the 6th at sunset. Ruined old rookery.

Open at land side, and sea defences all carried away; never could have been strong against artillery. Found Mrs. M'C. in the style of waiting-woman to a Countess Butler, formerly Nini Brancaleone. A warm interview; difficult to persuade her that I was not in pursuit of herself,--a feminine delusion I tried to dissipate. She"--henceforth it is thus he always designates Mrs. M'Caskey--"she avers that she knows nothing of the Count d' Amalfi, nor has ever seen him. Went into a long story about Sir Omerod Butler, of whom I know more myself. She pretends that Nini is married to him--legally married; don't believe a word of it Have my own suspicions that the t.i.tle of Amalfi has been conferred on B.

himself, for he lives estranged from England and Englishmen. Will learn all, however, before I leave.

"Roast pigeons, with tomato, a strange fish, and omelette, with Capri to wash it down; a meagre supper, but they say it shall be better to-morrow.

"_7th, Wednesday_.--Slept soundly and had a swim; took a sea view of the place, but could see no one about. Capital breakfast--'_Frutti di mare_'

boiled in Rhine wine; fellow who waited said a favorite dish of his Excellency's, meaning Sir. O. B. Best chocolate I ever tasted out of Paris. Found the _menu_ for dinner on the table all right; the wine is _au choix_, and I begin with La Rose and La Veuve Cliquot. A note from her referring to something said last night; she is ill and cannot see me, but encloses an order on Parodi of Genoa, in favor of the n.o.bile Signor il Maggiore M'Caskey, for three thousand seven hundred and forty-eight francs, and a small tortoise-sh.e.l.l box, containing eighty-six double ducats in gold, so that it would seem I have fallen into a '_vrai Californie_' here. Reflected, and replied with a refusal; a M'Caskey cannot stoop to this. Reproved her for ignoring the character to whom she addressed such a proposal, and reiterated my remark of last night, that she never rose to the level at which she could rightly take in the native chivalry of my nature.

"Inquired if my presence had been announced to Sir O., and learned it had. Orders given to treat me with distinguished consideration, but nothing said of an audience.

"Pigeons again for supper, with apology; quails had been sent for to Messina, and expected to-morrow. Shot at a champagne-flask in the sea, and smoked. Sir O.'s tobacco exquisite, and the supply so ample, I am making a _pet.i.te provision_ for the future.

"Full moon. Shot at the camellias out of my window. Knocked off seventeen, when I heard a sharp cry,--a stray shot, I suppose. Shut the cas.e.m.e.nt and went to bed.

"_Thursday_.--Gardener's boy--flesh wound in the calf of the leg; hope Sir O. may hear of it and send for me.

"A glorious capon for dinner, stuffed with oysters,--veritable oysters.

Drank Mrs. M'C.'s health in the impression that this was a polite attention on her part. No message from Sir O.

"_Friday_.--A general fast; a lentil soup and a fish; good but meagre; took it out in wine and tobacco. Had the gardener's boy up, and introduced him to sherry-cobbler. The effect miraculous; danced Tarantella till the bandage came off and he fainted.

"_Sat.u.r.day_.--Rain and wind; macaroni much smoked; cook lays it on the chimney, that won't draw with a Levant wind. Read over my instructions again, and understand them as little as before: 'You will hold yourself at the orders of the Count d'Amalfi till further instructions from this department.' Vague enough all this; and for anything I see, or am likely to see, of this Count, I may pa.s.s the autumn here. Tried to attract Sir O.'s attention by knocking off the oranges at top of his wall, and received intimation to fire in some other direction.

"_Sunday_.--Don Luigi something has come to say ma.s.s. Asked him to dinner, but find him engaged to the Countess. A dry old cove, who evidently knows everything but will tell nothing; has promised to lend me a guitar and a book or two, in return for which I have sent down three bottles of our host's champagne to his reverence.

"_Monday_.--Lobsters.

"_Tuesday_.--Somebody ill apparently; much ringing of bells and disorder. My dinner an hour late. Another appeal from Mrs. M'C, repeating her former proposal with greater energy; this feminine insistence provokes me. I might tell her that of the three women who have borne my name none but herself would have so far presumed, but I forbear. Pity has ever been the weakness of my nature; I feel its workings even as I write this. It may not carry me to the length of forgiveness, but I can compa.s.sionate; I will send her this note:--

"'Madam,--Your prayers have succeeded; I yield. It would not be generous in me to say what the sacrifice has cost me. When a M'Caskey bends, it is an oak of the forest snaps in two. I make but one condition; I will have no grat.i.tude. Keep the tears that you would shed at my feet for the hours of your solitary sorrow. You will, see, therefore, that we are to meet no more.

"'One of the ducats is clipped on the edge, and another discolored as by an acid; I am above requiring that they be exchanged. Nothing in this last act of our intercourse shall prevent you remembering me as "Semper M'Caskey."'

"'Your check should have specified Parodi & Co., not Parodi alone. To a man less known the omission might give inconvenience; this too, however, I pardon. Farewell.'"

It was evident that the Major felt he had completed this task with befitting dignity, for he stood up before a large gla.s.s, and, placing one hand within his waistcoat, he gazed at himself in a sort of rapturous veneration. "Yes," said he, thoughtfully, "George Seymour and D'Orsay and myself, we were men! When shall the world look upon our like again? Each in his own style, too, perfectly distinct, perfectly dissimilar,--neither of them, however, had this,--neither had this,"

cried he, as he darted a look of catlike fierceness from his fiery gray eyes. "The Princess Metternich fainted when I gave her that glance. She had the temerity to say, 'Qui est ce Monsieur M'Caskey?' Why not ask who is Soult? Who is Wellington? Who is everybody? Such is the ignorance of a woman! Madame la princesse," added he, in a graver tone, "if it be your fortune to turn your footsteps to Montpellier, walk into the churchyard there, and see the tomb of Jules de Besancon, late major of the 8th Cuira.s.siers, and whose inscription is in these few words,--'Tue par M'Caskey.' I put up the monument myself, for he was a brave soldier, and deserved his immortality."

Though self-admiration was an attractive pastime, it palled on him at last, and he sat down and piled up the gold double ducats in two tall columns, and speculated on the various pleasures they might procure, and then he read over the draft on Parodi, and pictured to his mind some more enjoyments, all of which were justly his due, "for," as he said to himself aloud, "I have dealt generously by that woman."

At last he arose, and went out on the terrace. It was a bright starlit night, one of those truly Italian nights when the planets streak the calm sea with long lines of light, and the very air seems weary with its burden of perfume. Of the voluptuous enervation that comes of such an hour he neither knew nor asked to know. Stillness and calm to him savored only of death; he wanted movement, activity, excitement, life, in fact,--life as he had always known and always liked it. Once or twice the suspicion had crossed his mind that he had been sent on this distant expedition to get rid of him when something of moment was being done elsewhere. His inordinate vanity could readily supply the reasons for such a course. He was one of those men that in times of trouble become at once famous. "They call us dangerous," said he, "just as Cromwell was dangerous, Luther was dangerous, Napoleon was dangerous. But if we are dangerous, it is because we are driven to it. Admit the superiority that you cannot oppose, yield to the inherent greatness that you can only struggle against, and you will find that we are not dangerous,--we are salutary."

"Is it possible," cried he, aloud, "that this has been a plot,--that while I am here living this life of inglorious idleness the great stake is on the table,--the game is begun, and the King's crown being played for?" M'Caskey knew that whether royalty conquered or was vanquished,--however the struggle ended,--there was to be a grand scene of pillage. The n.o.bles or the merchants--it mattered very little which to him--were to pay for the coming convulsion. Often and often, as he walked the streets of Naples, had he stood before a magnificent palace or a great counting-house, and speculated on the time when it should be his prerogative to smash in that stout door, and proclaim all within it his own. "_Spolia di_ M'Caskey," was the inscription that he felt would defy the cupidity of the boldest. "I will stand on the balcony," said he, "and declare, with a wave of my hand, These are mine: pa.s.s on to other pillage."

The horrible suspicion that he might be actually a prisoner all this time gained on him more and more, and he ransacked his mind to think of some great name in history whose fate resembled his own. "Could I only a.s.sure myself of this," said he, pa.s.sionately, "it is not these old walls would long confine me; I 'd scale the highest of them in half an hour; or I 'd take to the sea, and swim round that point yonder,--it 's not two miles off; and I remember there's a village quite close to it."

Though thus the prospect of escape presented itself so palpably before him, he was deterred from it by the thought that if no intention of forcible detention had ever existed, the fact of his having feared it would be an indelible stain upon his courage. "What an indignity,"

thought he, "for a M'Caskey to have yielded to a causeless dread!"

As he thus thought, he saw, or thought he saw, a dark object at some short distance off on the sea. He strained his eyes, and, though long in doubt, at last a.s.sured himself it was a boat that had drifted from her moorings, for the rope that had fastened her still hung over the stern, and trailed in the sea. By the slightly moving flow of the tide towards sh.o.r.e she came gradually nearer, till at last he was able to reach her with the crook of his riding-whip, and draw her up to the steps.

Her light paddle-like oars were on board; and M'Caskey stepped in, determined to make a patient and careful study of the place on its sea-front, and see, if he could, whether it were more of chateau or jail.

With noiseless motion he stole smoothly along, till he pa.s.sed a little ruined bastion on a rocky point, and saw himself at the entrance of a small bay, at the extremity of which a blaze of light poured forth, and illuminated the sea for some distance. As he got nearer, he saw that the light came from three large windows that opened on a terrace, thickly studded with orange-trees, under the cover of which he could steal on unseen, and take an observation of all within; for that the room was inhabited was plain enough, one figure continuing to cross and recross the windows as M'Caskey drew nigh.

Stilly and softly, without a ripple behind him, he glided on till the light skiff stole under the overhanging boughs of a large acacia, over a branch of which he pa.s.sed his rope to steady the boat, and then standing up he looked into the room, now so close as almost to startle him.

CHAPTER XLI. EAVESDROPPING

If M'Caskey was actually startled by the vicinity in which he suddenly found himself to the persons within the room, he was even more struck by the tone of the voice which now met his ear. It was Norman Maitland who spoke, and he recognized him at once. Pacing the large room in its length, he pa.s.sed before the windows quite close to where M'Caskey stood,--so close, indeed, that he could mark the agitation on his features, and note the convulsive twitchings that shook his cheek.

The other occupant of the room was a lady; but M'Caskey could only see the heavy folds of her dark velvet dress as she sat apart, and so distant that he could not hear her voice.

"So, then, it comes to this!" said Maitland, stopping in his walk and facing where she sat: "I have made this wearisome journey for nothing!

Would it not have been as easy to say he would not see me? It was no pleasure to me to travel some hundred miles and be told at the end of it I had come for nothing."

She murmured something inaudible to M'Caskey, but to which Maitland quickly answered: "I know all that; but why not let _me_ hear this from his own lips, and let _him_ hear what I can reply to it? He will tell _me_ of the vast sums I have squandered and the heavy debts I have contracted; and I would tell _him_ that in following his rash counsels I have dissipated years that would have won me distinction in any land of Europe."

Again she spoke; but before she uttered many words he broke suddenly in with, "No, no, no! ten thousand times no! I knew the monarchy was rotten--rotten to the very core; but I said, Better to die in the street _a cheval_ than behind the arras on one's knees. Have it out with the scoundrels, and let the best man win,--that was the advice _I_ gave.

Ask Caraffa, ask Filangieri, ask Acton, if I did not always say, 'If the king is not ready to do as much for his crown as the humblest peasant would for his cabin, let him abdicate at once.'"

She murmured something, and he interrupted her with: "Because I never did--never would--and never will trust to priestcraft. All the intrigues of the Jesuits, all the craft of the whole College of Cardinals, will not bring back confidence in the monarchy. But why do I talk of these things to you? Go back and ask him to see me. Say that I have many things to tell him; say"--and here the mockery of his voice became conspicuous--"that I would wish much to have his advice on certain points.--And why not?" cried he aloud to something she said; "has my new n.o.bility no charm for him? Well, then, I am ready to strike a bargain with him. I owe Caffarelli two hundred and eighty thousand francs, which I mean to pay, if I take to the highway to do it. Hus.h.!.+ don't interrupt me. I am not asking he should pay this for me,--all I want is that he will enable me to sell that villa which he gave me some years ago beyond Caserta. Yes, the Torricelia; I know all that,--it was a royal present.

It never had the more value in my eyes for that; and perhaps the day is not far distant when the right to it may be disputed. Let him make out my t.i.tle, such as it is, so that I can sell it. There are Jews who will surely take it at one-half its worth. Get him to consent to this, and I am ready to pledge my word that he has seen the last of me."

"He gave it to you as a wedding-present, Norman," said she, haughtily; and now her deep-toned voice rung out clear and strong; "and it will be an unpardonable offence to ask him this."

"Have I not told you that I shall not need forgiveness,--that with this act all ends between us?"

"I will be no party to this," said she, haughtily; and she arose and walked out upon the terrace. As she pa.s.sed, the lamplight flared strongly on her features, and M'Caskey saw a face he had once known well; but what a change was there! The beautiful Nini Brancaleone, the dark-haired Norma, the belle that Byron used to toast with an enthusiasm of admiration, was a tall woman advanced in years, and with two ma.s.ses of snow-white hair on either side of a pale face. The dark eyes, indeed, flashed brightly still, and the eyebrows were dark as of yore; but the beautifully formed mouth was hard and thin-lipped, and the fair brow marked with many a strong line of pain.

"You forget, perhaps," said she, after a short pause,--"you forget that it is from this villa I take my t.i.tle. I am Brancaleone della Torricella, and I forfeit the name when it leaves our hands."

"And do you hold to this, mother?" asked he, in a voice of sorrow, through which something of scorn was detectable.

"Do I hold to it? Of course I hold to it! You know well the value it has in his eyes. Without it he never would have consented--" She stopped suddenly, and seemed to catch herself in time to prevent the utterance of some rash avowal. "As it is," added she, "he told me so late as yesterday that he has no rest nor peace, thinking over his brother's son, and the great wrong he has done him."

"Let him think of the greater wrong he has done me!--of my youth that he has wasted, and my manhood lost and s.h.i.+pwrecked. But for him and his weak ambition, I had belonged to a party who would have prized my ability and rewarded my courage. I would not find myself at thirty brigaded with a set of low-hearted priests and seminarists, who have no other weapons than treachery, nor any strategy but lies. If I have squandered his fortune, he has beggared me in reputation. He does not seem to remember these things. As to him whom he would prefer to me and make his heir, I have seen him."

"You have seen him, Norman! When?--where?--how?" cried she, in wild impatience.

"Yes, I even had a plan to let the uncle meet his promising nephew.

I speculated on bringing together two people more made for mutual detestation than any other two in Europe."

"It would have been a rash venture," said she, fiercely; "If you mean for _me_, that was the very reason I thought of it. What other game than the rash one is open to a mau like _me?_"

"Who ever had the safer road to fortune if he could have walked with the commonest prudence?" said she, bitterly.

"How can you say that? Talk of prudence to the man who has no fortune, no family, not even a name,--no!" cried he, fiercely; "for by the first Maitland I met I might be challenged to say from what stock I came. He could have saved me from all this. Nothing was ever easier. You yourself asked,--ay, begged this. You told me you begged it on your knees; and I own, if I never forgave him for refusing, I have never forgiven you for the entreaty."