Tony Butler

“Too well for me and my hopes!” said he, despondingly. “You are able, however, to impose hard conditions.”

“I impose none, sir. Do not mistake me.”

“You leave none others open to me, at least, and I accept them. To give me even that faint chance of success, however, I must leave this to-day. Is it not better I should?”

“I really cannot advise,” said she, with a well-assumed coldness.

“Even contingently, Mrs. Trafford will not involve herself in my fortunes,” said he, half haughtily. “Well, my journey to Ireland, amongst other benefits, has taught me a lesson that all my wanderings never imparted. I have at last learned something of humility. Good-bye.”

“Good-bye, Mr. Maitland,” said she, with calm, but evidently not without effort.

He stooped and kissed her hand, held it for a moment or two in his own, and with a very faint “Good-bye,” turned away and left her. He turned suddenly around after a few paces, and came back. “May I ask one question, Alice, before I go?”

“I don’t know whether I shall answer it,” said she, with a faint smile.

“I cannot afford to add jealousy to my other torments. Tell me, then – ”

“Take care, sir, take care; your question may cost you more than you think of.”

“Good-bye, – good-bye,” said he, sadly, and departed. “Are the horses ready, Fenton?” asked he, as his servant came to meet him.

“Yes, sir; and Captain Lyle has been looking for you all over the garden.”

“He’s going, – he ‘s off, Bella,” said Alice, as she sat down beside her sister’s bed, throwing her bonnet carelessly down at her feet.

“Who is going? – who is off?” asked Bella, eagerly.

“Of course,” continued Alice, following up her own thoughts, “to say ‘Stay’ means more than I like to be pledged to, – I couldn’t do it.”

“Poor Tony! – give him my love, Alice, and tell him I shall often think of him, – as often as ever I think of bygone days and all their happiness.”

“And why must it be Tony that I spoke of?” said Alice, rising, while a deep crimson flush covered her face and brow. “I think Master Tony has shown us latterly that he has forgotten the long ago, and has no wish to connect us with thoughts of the future.”

CHAPTER XXX. CONSPIRATORS

In one of those low-ceilinged apartments of a Parisian hôtel which modern luxury seems peculiarly to affect, decorating the walls with the richest hangings, and gathering together promiscuously objects of art and virtù, along with what can minister to voluptuous ease, Maitland and Caffarelli were now seated. They had dined, and their coffee stood before them on a table spread with a costly dessert and several bottles, whose length of neck and color indicated choice liquor.

They lounged in the easiest of chairs in the easiest of attitudes, and, as they puffed their havannahs, did not ill-represent in tableau the luxurious self-indulgence of the age we live in. For let us talk as we will of progress and mental activity, be as boastful as we may about the march of science and discovery, in what are we so really conspicuous as in the inventions that multiply ease, and bring the means of indulgence within the reach of even moderate fortune?

As the wood fire crackled and flared on the ample hearth, a heavy plash of hail struck the window, and threatened almost to smash it.

“What a night!” said Maitland, drawing closer to the blaze. “I say, Carlo mio, it’s somewhat cosier to sit in this fashion than be toddling over the Mont Cenis in a shabby old sledge, and listening to the discussion whether you are to spend the night in the ‘Refuge No. One, or No. Two.’”

“Yes,” said Caffarelli, “it must have been a great relief to you to have got my telegram in Dublin, and to know that you need not cross the Alps.”

“If I could only have been certain that I understood it aright, I ‘d have gone straight back to the north from whence I came; but there was a word that puzzled me, – the word calamità. Now we have not yet arrived at the excellence of accenting foreign words in our telegraph offices; and as your most amiable and philosophical of all nations has but the same combination of letters to express an attraction and an affliction, I was sorely puzzled to make out whether you wrote with or without an accent on the last syllable. It made all the difference in the world whether you say events are a ‘loadstone’ or a ‘misfortune.’ I gave half an hour to the study of the passage, and then came on.”

“Per Bacco! I never thought of that; but what, under any circumstances, would have induced you to go back again?”

“I fell in love!”

Caffarelli pushed the lamp aside to have a better view of his friend, and then laughed long and heartily. “Maso Arretini used often to say, ‘Maitland will die a monk;’ and I begin now to believe it is quite possible.”

“Maso was a fool for his prediction. Had I meant to be a monk, I ‘d have taken to the cowl when I had youth and vigor and dash in me, the qualities a man ought to bring to a new career. Ha! what is there so strange in the fact that I should fall in love?”

“Don’t ask as if you were offended with me, and I ‘ll try and tell you.”

“I am calm; go on.”

“First of all, Maitland, no easy conquest would satisfy your vanity, and you’d never have patience to pursue a difficult one. Again, the objects that really have an attraction for you – such as Ambition and Power – have the same fascination for you that high play has for a gambler. You do not admit nor understand any other; and, last of all, – one is nothing if not frank in these cases, – you ‘d never believe any woman was lovely enough, clever enough, or graceful enough to be worthy of Norman Maitland.”

“The candor has been perfect. I ‘ll try and imitate it,” said Maitland, filling his glass slowly, and slightly wetting his lips. “All you have just said, Carlo, would be unimpeachable if all women were your countrywomen, and if love were what it is understood to be in an Italian city; but there are such things in this dreary land of fog and snow-drift as women who do not believe intrigue to be the chief object of human existence, who have fully as much self-respect as they have coquetry, and who would regard no addresses so offensive as those that would reduce them to the level of a class with which they would not admit companionship.”

“Bastions of virtue that I never ask to lay siege to!” broke out the other, laughing.

“Don’t believe it, Carlo. You’d like the campaign well, if you only knew how to conduct it. Why, it’s not more than a week ago I quitted a country-house where there were more really pretty women than you could number in the crowd of one of your ball-rooms on either Arno or Tiber.”

“And, in the name of Heaven, why didn’t you bring over one of them at least, to strike us with wonderment and devotion?”

“Because I would not bring envy, malice, and jealousy to all south of the Alps; because I would not turn all your heads, or torment your hearts; and lastly, because – she would n’t come. No, Carlo, she would n’t come.”

“And you really asked her?”

“Yes. At first I made the lamentable blunder of addressing her as I should one of your own dark-skinned damsels, but the repulse I met taught me better. I next tried the serious line, but I failed there also; not hopelessly, however, – at least, not so hopelessly as to deter me from another attempt. Yes, yes; I understand your smile, and I know your theory, – there never was a bunch of grapes yet that was worth going on tiptoe to gather.”

“Not that, but there are scores within reach quite as good as one cares for,” said Caffarelli, laughing. “What are you thinking of?” asked he, after a pause.

“I was thinking what possible hope there was for a nation of twenty millions of men, with temperament like yours, – fellows so ingrained in indolence that the first element they weigh in every enterprise was, how little trouble it was to cost them.”

“I declare,” said the Italian, with more show of energy, “I ‘d hold life as cheaply as yourself if I had to live in your country, – breathe only fogs, and inhale nothing pleasanter than coal-smoke.”

“It is true,” said Maitland, gravely, “the English have not got climate, – they have only weather; but who is to say if out of the vicissitudes of our skies we do not derive that rare activity which makes us profit by every favorable emergency?”

“To do every conceivable thing but one.”

“And what is that one?”

“Enjoy yourselves! Oh, caro amico, you do with regard to your pleasures what you do with your music, – you steal a little from the Continent, and always spoil it in the adaptation.”

Maitland sipped his wine in half-sullen silence for some minutes, and then said, “You think then, really, we ought to be at Naples?”

“I am sure of it. Baretti, – do you forget Baretti? he had the wine-shop at the end of the Contrada St. Lucia.”

“I remember him as a Caraorrista.”

“The same; he is here now. He tells me that the Court is so completely in the hands of the Queen that they will not hear of any danger; that they laugh every time Cavour is mentioned; and now that both France and England have withdrawn their envoys, the King says openly, ‘It is a pleasure to drive out on the Chiaja when one knows they ‘ll not meet a French gendarme or an English detective.’”

“And what does Baretti say of popular feeling?”

“He says the people would like to do something, though nobody seems to know what it ought to be. They thought that Milano’s attempt t ‘other day was clever, and they think it might n’t be bad to blow up the Emperor, or perhaps the Pope, or both; but he also says that the Camorra are open to reason, and that Victor Emmanuel and Cavour are as legitimate food for an explosive shell as the others; and, in fact, any convulsion that will smash the shutters and lead to pillage must be good.”

“You think Baretti can be depended on?”

“I know he can. He has been Capo Camorrista eight years in one of the vilest quarters of Naples; and if there were a suspicion of him, he’d have been stabbed long ago.”

“And what is he doing here?”

“He came here to see whether anything could be done about assassinating the Emperor.”

“I’d not have seen him, Carlo. It was most unwise to have spoken with him.”

“What would you have?” said the other, with a shrug of his shoulders. “He came to set this clock to rights, – it plays some half-dozen airs from Mercadante and Verdi, – and he knows how to arrange them. He goes every morning to the Tuileries, to Moquard, the Emperor’s secretary: he, too, has an Italian musical clock, and he likes to chat with Baretti.”

“I distrust these fellows greatly.”

“That is so English!” said Caffarelli; “but we Italians have a finer instinct for knavery, just as we have a finer ear for music; and as we detect a false note, so we smell a treachery, where you John Bulls would neither suspect one or the other. Baretti sees the Prince Napoleon, too, almost every day, and with Pietri he is like a brother.”

“But we can have no dealings with a fellow that harbors such designs.”

“Caro amico, don’t you know by this time that no Italian of the class of this fellow ever imagines any other disentanglement in a political question than by the stiletto? It is you, or I, or somebody else, must, as they phrase it, ‘pay with his skin.’ Fortunately for the world, there is more talk than action in all this; but if you were to oppose it, and say, ‘None of this,’ you ‘d only be the first victim. We put the knife in politics just as the Spanish put garlic in cookery: we don’t know any other seasoning, and it has always agreed with our digestion.”

“Can Giacomo come in to wind up the clock, Eccellenza?” said Caffarelli’s servant, entering at the moment; and as the Count nodded an assent, a fat, large, bright-eyed man of about forty entered, with a mellow frank countenance, and an air of happy joyous contentment that might have sat admirably on a well-to-do farmer.

“Come over and have a glass of wine, Giacomo,” said the Count, filling a large glass to the brim with Burgundy; and the Italian bowed with an air of easy politeness first to the Count and next to Maitland, and then, after slightly tasting the liquor, retired a little distance from the table, glass in hand.

“My friend here,” said the Count, with a motion of his hand towards Maitland, “is one of ourselves, Giacomo, and you may speak freely before him.”

“I have seen the noble signor before,” said Giacomo, bowing respectfully, “at Naples, with His Royal Highness the Count of Syracuse.”

“The fellow never forgets a face; nobody escapes him,” muttered Caffarelli; while he added, aloud, “Well, there are few honester patriots in Italy than the Count of Syracuse.”

Giacomo smiled, and showed a range of white teeth, with a pleasant air of acquiescence.

“And what is stirring? – what news have you for us, Giacomo?” asked Caffarelli.

“Nothing, Eccellenza, – positively nothing. The French seem rather to be growing tired of us Italians, and begin to ask, ‘What, in the name of wonder, do we really want?’ and even his Majesty the Emperor t’ other day said to one of ours, ‘Don’t be importunate.’”

“And will you tell me that the Emperor would admit to his presence and speak with fellows banded in a plot against his life?” asked Maitland, contemptuously.

“Does the noble signor know that the Emperor was a Carbonaro once, and that he never forgets it? Does the noble signor know that there has not been one plot against his life – not one – of which he has not been duly apprised and warned?”

“If I understand you aright, Master Giacomo, then, it is that these alleged schemes of assassination are simply plots to deliver up to the Emperor the two or three amongst you who may be sincere in their blood thirstiness. Is that so?”

Far from seeming offended at the tone or the tenor of this speech, Giacomo smiled good-naturedly, and said, “I perceive that the noble signor is not well informed either as to our objects or our organization; nor does he appear to know, as your Excellency knows, that all secret societies have a certain common brotherhood.”

“What! does he mean when opposed to each other?”

“He does, and he is right, Maitland. As bankers have their changing-houses, these fellows have their appointed places of meeting; and you might see a Jesuit in talk with a Garibaldian, and a wild revolutionist with one of the Pope’s household.”

“The real pressure of these fellows,” whispered the Count, still lower, “is menace! Menace it was brought about the war with Austria, and it remains to be seen if menace cannot undo its consequences. Killing a king is trying an unknown remedy; threatening to kill him is coercing his policy. And what are you about just now, Giacomo?” added he, louder.

“Little jobs here and there, signor, as I get them; but this morning, as I was mending a small organ at the Duc de Broglie’s, an agent of the police called to say I had better leave Paris.”

“And when?”

“To-night, sir. I leave by the midnight mail for Lyons, and shall be in Turin by Saturday.”

“And will the authorities take his word, and suffer him to go his road without surveillance?” whispered Maitland.

“Si, signor!” interposed Giacomo, whose quick Italian ear had caught the question. “I won’t say that they’ll not telegraph down the whole line, and that at every station a due report will not be made of me; but I am prepared for that, and I take good care not even to ask a light for my cigar from any one who does not wear a French uniform.”

“If I had authority here, Master Giacomo,” said Maitland, “it’s not you, nor fellows like you, I ‘d set at liberty.”

“And the noble signor would make a great mistake, that’s all.”

“Why so?”

“It would be like destroying the telegraph wires because one received an unpleasant despatch,” said Giacomo, with a grin.

“The fellow avows, then, that he is a spy, and betrays his fellows,” whispered Maitland.

“I ‘d be very sorry to tell him so, or hear you tell him so,” whispered the Count, with a laugh.

“Well, Giacomo,” added he, aloud, “I ‘ll not detain you longer. We shall probably be on t’ other side of the Alps ourselves in a few days, and shall meet again. A pleasant journey and a safe one to you!” He adroitly slipped some napoleons into the man’s hand as he spoke. “Tanti saluti to all our friends, Giacomo,” said he, waving his hand in adieu; and Giacomo seized it and kissed it twice with an almost rapturous devotion, and withdrew.

“Well,” cried Maitland, with an irritable vibration in his tone, “this is clear and clean beyond me. What can you or I have in common with a fellow of this stamp; or supposing that we could have anything, how should we trust him?”

“Do you imagine that the nobles will ever sustain the monarchy, my dear Maitland; or in what country have you ever found that the highest in class were freest of their blood? It is Giacomo, and the men like him, who defend kings to-day that they may menace them to-morrow. These fellows know well that with what is called a constitutional government and a parliament the king’s life signifies next to nothing, and their own trade is worthless. They might as well shoot a President of the Court of Cassation! Besides, if we do not treat with these men, the others will. Take my word for it, our king is wiser than either of us, and he never despised the Caraorra. But I know what you ‘re afraid of, Maitland,” said he, laughing, – “what you and all your countrymen tremble before, – that precious thing you call public opinion, and your ‘Times’ newspaper! There’s the whole of it. To be arraigned as a regicide, and called the companion of this, that, or t’ other creature, who was or ought to have been guillotined, is too great a shock for your Anglican respectability; and really I had fancied you were Italian enough to take a different view of this.”

Maitland leaned his head on his hand, and seemed to muse for some minutes. “Do you know, Carlo,” said he, at last, “I don’t think I ‘m made for this sort of thing. This fraternizing with scoundrels – for scoundrels they are – is a rude lesson. This waiting for the mot d’ordre from a set of fellows who work in the dark is not to my humor. I had hoped for a fair stand-up fight, where the best man should win; and what do we see before us? Not the cause of a throne defended by the men who are loyal to their king, but a vast lottery, out of which any adventurer is to draw the prize. So far as I can see it, we are to go into a revolution to secure a monarchy.”

Caffarelli leaned across the table and filled Maitland’s glass to the brim, and then replenished his own.

“Caro mio,” said he, coaxingly, “don’t brood and despond in this fashion, but tell me about this charming Irish beauty. Is she a brunette?”

“No; fair as a lily, but not like the blond damsels you have so often seen, with a certain timidity of look that tells of weak and uncertain purpose. She might by her air and beauty be a queen.”

“And her name?”

“Alice – Alicia, some call it.”

“Alice is better. And how came she to be a widow so very young? What is her story?”

“I know nothing of it; how should I? I could tell nothing of my own,” said Maitland, sternly.

“Rich as well as beautiful, – what a prize, Maitland! I can scarcely imagine why you hesitate about securing it.”

Maitland gave a scornful laugh, and with a voice of bitterness said: “Certainly my pretensions are great. I have fortune – station – family – name – and rank to offer her. Can you not remind me, Carlo, of some other of my immense advantages?”

“I know this much,” said the other, doggedly, “that I never saw you fail in anything you ever attempted.”

“I had the trick of success once,” said Maitland, sorrowfully, “but I seem to have lost it. But, after all, what would success do for me here, but stamp me as an adventurer?”

“You did not argue in that fashion two years ago, when you were going to marry a Spanish princess, and the half-sister of a queen.”

“Well, I have never regretted that I broke off the match. It estranged me, of course, from him; and indeed he has never forgiven me.”

“He might, however, now, if he saw that you could establish your fortunes so favorably, – don’t you think so?”

“No, Carlo. It is all for rank and title, not for money, that he cares! His whole game in life was played for the Peerage. He wanted to be ‘My Lord;’ and though repeatedly led to believe he was to have the title, the Minister put off, and put off, and at last fell from power without keeping his pledge. Now in this Spanish business he bargained that I was to be a Duke, – a Grandee of Spain. The Queen declared it impossible. Mufios himself was refused. The dukedom, however, I could have. With the glitter of that ducal coronet before his eyes, he paid three hundred thousand francs I lost at the Jockey Club in Paris, and he merely said, ‘Your luck in love has been somewhat costly, – don’t play such high stakes again.’”

“He is très grand seigneur!” said the Italian, with a voice of intense admiration and respect.

“Yes,” said Maitland; “in every case where mere money enters, he is princely. I never met a man who thought less of his gold. The strange thing is, that it is his ambition which exhibits him so small!”

“Adagio, adagio, caro mio!” cried Caffarelli, laughing. “I see where you are bound for now. You are going to tell me, as you have some score of times, that to all English estimation our foreign titles are sheer nonsense; that our pauper counts and beggarly dukes are laughing matter for even your Manchester folk; and that in your police code baron and blackleg are synonyms. Now spare me all this, caro Maitland, for I know it by heart.”

“If one must say such impertinences, it is well to say them to a cardinal’s nephew.”

The slight flush of temper in the Italian’s cheek gave way at once, and he asked good-humoredly, as he said, “Better say them to me, certainly, than to my uncle. But, to be practical, if he does attach so much importance to rank and title, why do you not take that countship of Amalfi the King offered you six months ago, and which, to this day, he is in doubt whether you have accepted or refused?”

“How do you know that?” asked Maitland, eagerly.

“I know it in this wise; that when his Majesty mentioned your name t’ other day to Filangieri, he said, ‘The Chevalier Maitland or Count of Amalfi, – I don’t know by which name he likes to call himself.’”

“Are you sure of this?”

“I heard it; I was present when he said it.”

“If I did not accept when it was offered, the reason was this: I thought that the first time I wrote myself Count of Amalfi, old Santarelli would summon me before him to show birth and parentage, and fifty other particulars which I could have no wish to see inquired after; and as the title of Amalfi was one once borne by a cadet of the royal family, he ‘d have been all the more exacting in his perquisitions before inscribing my name in that precious volume he calls the ‘Libro d’Oro.’ If, however, you tell me that the King considers that I have accepted the rank, it gives the matter another aspect.”

“I suspect poor old Santarelli has very little heart for heraldry just now. He has got a notion that the first man the Revolutionists will hang will be himself, representing, as he does, all the privileges of feudalism.”

“There is one way to do it if it could be managed,” said Maitland, pondering. “Three lines in the King’s hand, addressing me ‘The Chevalier Maitland, Count of Amalfi!’ With these I ‘d defy all the heralds that ever carried a painted coat in a procession.”

“If that be all, I ‘ll promise you it. I am writing to Filangieri to-morrow. Let me have some details of what men you have recruited and what services you have rendered, briefly, not formally; and I’ll say, ‘If our master would vouchsafe in his own hand a line, a word even, to the Count of Amalfi, it would be a recompense he would not exchange for millions.’ I ‘ll say ‘that the letter could be sent to Ludolf at Turin, where we shall probably be in a week or two. ‘”

“And do you think the King will accede?”

“Of course he will. We are not asking for a pension, or leave to shoot at Caserta. The thing is the same as done. Kings like a cheap road out of their indebtedness as well as humbler people. If not, they would never have invented crosses and grand cordons.”