Charles Lever - Tony Butler

“If he be like most of his order, Miss Becky, he ‘d only smile at your appeal,” said Maitland, coldly.

“Well, I ‘d not let it be laughing matter with him, I can tell you; stupid wills are broken every day of the week, and I don’t think the Jesuits are in such favor in England that a jury would decide for them against an English youth of the kith and kin of the testator.”

“You speak cleverly, Miss Graham, and you show that you know all the value that attaches to popular sympathy in the age we live in.”

“And don’t you agree with me?”

“Ah, there’s a deal to be said on either side.”

“Then, for Heaven’s sake, don’t say it. There – no – more to the left – there, where you see the blue smoke rising over the rocks – there stands the widow’s cottage. I don’t know how she endures the loneliness of it. Could you face such a life?”

“A double solitude – what the French call an egoisme à deux – is not so insupportable. In fact, it all depends upon ‘the partner with whom we share our isolation.’” He threw a tone of half tenderness into the words that made them very significant, and Rebecca gave him one of her quick sudden glances with which she often read a secret motive. This time, however, she failed. There was nothing in that sallow but handsome face that revealed a clew to anything.

“I ‘ll have to ask Mrs. Butler’s leave before I present you,” said she, suddenly.

“Of course, I ‘ll await her permission.”

“The chances are she’ll say no; indeed, it is all but certain she will.”

“Then I must resign myself to patience and a cigar till you come out again,” said he, calmly.

“Shall I say that there’s any reason for your visit? Do you know any Butlers, or have you any relationship, real or pretended, with the family, that would make a pretext for coming to see her?”

Had Miss Graham only glanced as keenly at Maitland’s features now as she had a few moments back, she might have seen a faint, a very faint, flush cross his cheek, and then give way to a deep paleness. “No,” said he, coldly, “I cannot pretend the shadow of a claim to her acquaintance, and I can scarcely presume to ask you to present me as a friend of your own, except in the common acceptation given to the word.”

“Oh, I’ll do that readily enough. Bless your heart, if there was anything to be gained by it, I ‘d call you my cousin, and address you as Norman all the time of the visit.”

“If you but knew how the familiarity would flatter me, particularly were I to return it!”

“And call me Becky, – I hope! Well, you are a cool hand!”

“My friends are in the habit of amusing themselves with my diffidence and my timidity.”

“They must be very ill off for a pastime, then. I used to think Mark Lyle bad enough, but his is a blushing bash-fulness compared to yours.”

“You only see me in my struggle to overcome a natural defect. Miss Graham, – just as a coward assumes the bully to conceal his poltroonery; you regard in me the mock audacity that strives to shroud a most painful modesty.”

She looked full at him for an instant, and then burst into a loud and joyful fit of laughter, in which he joined without the faintest show of displeasure. “Well, I believe you are good-tempered,” said she, frankly.

“The best in the world; I am very seldom angry; I never bear malice.”

“Have you any other good qualities?” asked she, with a slight mockery in her voice.

“Yes, – many; I am trustful to the verge of credulity; I am generous to the limits of extravagance; I am unswerving in my friendships, and without the taint of a selfishness in all my nature.”

“How nice that is, or how nice it must be!”

“I could grow eloquent over my gifts, if it were not that my bashfulness might embarrass me.”

“Have you any faults?”

“I don’t think so; at least I can’t recall any.”

“Nor failings?”

“Failings! perhaps,” said he, dubiously; “but they are, after all, mere weaknesses, – such as a liking for splendor, a love of luxury generally, a taste for profusion, a sort of regal profusion in daily life, which occasionally jars with my circumstances, making me – not irritable, I am never irritable – but low-spirited and depressed.”

“Then, from what you have told me, I think I’d better say to Mrs. Butler that there ‘s an angel waiting outside who is most anxious to make her acquaintance.”

“Do so; and add that he ‘ll fold his wings, and sit on this stone till you come to fetch him.”

“ Au revoir , Gabriel, then,” said she, passing in at the wicket, and taking her way through the little garden.

Maitland sat discussing in his own mind the problem how far Alcibiades was right or wrong in endeavoring to divert the world from any criticism of himself by a certain alteration in his dog’s tail, rather opining that, in our day at least, the wiser course would have been to avoid all comment whatsoever, – the imputation of an eccentricity being only second to the accusation of a crime. With the Greeks of that day the false scent was probably a success; with the English of ours, the real wisdom is not to be hunted. “Oh, if it were all to be done again, how very differently I should do it!”

“Indeed, and in what respect?” said a voice behind his shoulder. He looked up, and saw Beck Graham gazing on him with something of interest in her expression. “How so?” cried she, again. Not in the slightest degree discomposed or flurried, he lay lazily back on the sward, and drawing his hand over his eyes to shade them from the sun, said, in a half-languid, weary tone, “If it were to do again, I ‘d go in for happiness.”

“What do you mean by happiness?”

“What we all mean by it: an organized selfishness, that draws a close cordon round our home, and takes care to keep out, so far as possible, duns, bores, fevers, and fashionable acquaintances. By the way, is your visit ended, or will she see me?”

“Not to-day. She hopes to-morrow to be able. She asks if you are of the Maitlands of Gillie – Gillie – not ‘crankie,’ but a sound like it, – and if your mother’s name was Janet.”

“And I trust, from the little you know of me, you assured her it could not be,” said he, calmly.

“Well, I said that I knew no more of your family than all the rest of us up at the Abbey, who have been sifting all the Maitlands in the three kingdoms in the hope of finding you.”

“How flattering! and at the same time how vain a labor! The name came to me with some fortune. I took it as I ‘d have taken a more ill-sounding one for money! Who wouldn’t be baptized in bank stock? I hope it’s not on the plea of my mother being Janet, that she consents to receive me?”

“She hopes you are Lady Janet’s son, and that you have the Maitland eyes, which it seems are dark, and a something in their manner which she assures me was especially captivating.”

“And for which, I trust, you vouched?”

“Yes. I said you were a clever sort of person, that could do a number of things well, and that I for one did n’t quarrel with your vanity or conceit, but thought them rather good fun.”

“So they are! and we ‘ll laugh at them together,” said he, rising, and preparing to set out “What a blessing to find one that really understands me! I wish to heaven that you were not engaged!”

“And who says I am?” cried she, almost fiercely.

“Did I dream it? Who knows? The fact is, my dear Miss Becky, we do talk with such a rare freedom to each other, it is pardonable to mix up one’s reveries with his actual information. How do you call that ruin yonder?”

“Dunluce.”