Tony Butler

"Perfectly true."

"Then how are we to trace him? His name is Colonel Moore Chamberlayne, aide-de-camp to the Lord High Commissioner, Corfu."

Skeffy bit his lip, and by a great effort succeeded in repressing the rising temptation to another scream of laughter, and, taking down a bulky red-covered volume from a shelf, began to turn over its pages.

"There," said he at last,--"there is the Whole staff at Corfu: Hailes, Winchester, Corbett, and Ainslie. No Chamberlayne amongst them."

Tony stared at the page in hopeless bewilderment. "What do you know of him? Who introduced you to each other? Where did you meet?" asked Skeffy.

"We met at the foot of the Mont Cenis, where, seeing that I had despatches, and no means to get forward, he offered me a seat in his caleche. I accepted gladly, and we got on capitally; he was immense fun; he knew everybody, and had been everywhere; and when he told me that he was your G.o.dfather--"

"Stop, stop! for the love of Heaven, will you stop, or you 'll kill me!"

cried Skeffy; and, throwing himself on his back on the sofa, he flung his legs into the air, and yelled aloud with laughter.

"Do you know, Master Darner, I'm sorely tempted to pitch you neck and crop out of the window?" said Tony, savagely.

"Do so, do so, by all means, if you like; only let me have my laugh out, or I shall burst a blood-vessel."

Tony made no reply, but walked up and down the room with his brow bent and his arms folded.

"And then?" cried Skeff,--"and then? What came next?"

"It is your opinion, then," said Tony, sternly, "that this fellow was a swindler, and not on the Staff at all?"

"No more than he was my G.o.dfather!" cried Darner, wiping his eyes.

"And that the whole was a planned scheme to get hold of the despatches?"

"Of course. Filangieri knows well that we are waiting for important instructions here. There is not a man calls here who is not duly reported to him by his secret police."

"And why did n't Sir Joseph think of that when I told him what had happened? All he said was, 'Be of good cheer, Butler; the world will go round even after the loss of a despatch-bag.'"

"So like him," said Skeffy; "the levity of that man is the ruin of him.

They all say so at the Office."

"I don't know what they say at the Office; but I can declare that so perfect a gentleman and so fine a fellow I never met before."

Skeffy turned to the gla.s.s over the chimney, smoothed his moustaches, and pointed their tips most artistically, smiling gracefully at himself, and seeming to say, "You and I, if we were not too modest, could tell of some one fully his equal."

"And what's to be done,--what's to come of this?" asked Tony, after a short silence.

"I 'll have to report you, Master Tony. I 'll have to write home: 'My Lord,--The messenger Butler arrived here this morning to say that he confided your Lords.h.i.+p's despatches and private instructions to a most agreeable gentleman, whose acquaintance he made at St. Jean de Maurienne; and that the fascinating stranger, having apparently not mastered their contents up to the present--'"

"Go to the------"

"No, Tony, I shall not; but I think it not at all improbable that such will be the destination his Lords.h.i.+p will a.s.sign a.s.sistant-messenger Butler. The fact is, my boy, your career in our department is ended."

"With all my heart! Except for that fine fellow I saw at Turin, I think I never met such a set of narrow-minded sn.o.bs."

"Tony, Tony," said the other, "when Moses, in the 'Vicar of Wakefield,'--and I take it he is more familiar

"Confound the department! I wish I had never heard of it. You say it's all up with me, and of course I suppose it is; and, to tell you the truth, Skeffy, I don't think it signifies a great deal just now, except for that poor mother of mine." Here he turned away, and wiped his eyes hurriedly. "I take it that all mothers make the same sort of blunder, and never will believe that they can have a blockhead for a son till the world has set its seal on him."

"Take a weed, and listen to me," said Skeffy, dictatorially, and he threw his cigar-case across the table, as he spoke. "You have contrived to make as bad a _debut_ in your career as is well possible to conceive."

"What's the use of telling me that? In your confounded pa.s.sion for hearing yourself talk, you forget that it is not so pleasant for me to listen."

"Prisoner at the bar," continued Skeffy, "you have been convicted--you stand, indeed, self-convicted--of an act which, as we regard it, is one of gross ignorance, of incredible folly, or of inconceivable stupidity,--places you in a position to excite the pity of compa.s.sionate men, the scorn of those severer moralists who accept not the extenuating circ.u.mstances of youth, unacquaintance with life, and a credulity that approaches childlike--"

"You 're a confounded fool, Skeffy, to go on in this fas.h.i.+on when a fellow is in such a fix as I am, not to speak of other things that are harder to bear. It's a mere toss-up whether he laughs at your nonsense or pitches you over the banisters. I've been within an ace of one and the other three times in the last five minutes; and now all my leaning is towards the last of the two."

"Don't yield to it, then, Tony. Don't, I warn you."

"And why?"

"Because you 'd never forgive yourself, not alone for having injured a true and faithful friend, but for the far higher and more irreparable loss in having cut short the career of a man destined to be a light to Europe. I say it in no vanity,--no boastfuluess. No, on my honor! if I could--if the choice were fairly given to me, I 'd rather not be a man of mark and eminence. I 'd rather be a commonplace, tenth-rate sort of dog like yourself."

The unaffected honesty with which he said this did for Tony what no cajolery nor flattery could have accomplished, and set him off into a roar of laughter that conquered all his spleen and ill-humor.

"Your laugh, like the laugh of the foolish, is ill-timed. You cannot see that you were introduced, not to be stigmatized, but to point a moral.

You fancy yourself a creature,--you are a category; you imagine you are an individuality,--you are not; you are a fragment rent from a primeval rock."

"I believe I ought to be as insensible as a stone to stand you. But stop all this, I say, and listen to me. I 'm not much up to writing,--but you 'll help me, I know; and what I want said is simply this: 'I have been tricked out of one of the bags by a rascal that if ever I lay hands on I 'll bring bodily before the Office at home, and make him confess the whole scheme; and I 'll either break his neck afterwards, or leave him to the law, as the Secretary of State may desire.'"

Now, poor Tony delivered this with a tone and manner that implied he thought he was dictating a very telling and able despatch. "I suppose,"

added he, "I am to say that I now resign my post, and I wish the devil had me when I accepted it."

"Not civil, certainly, to the man who gave you the appointment, Tony.

Besides, when a man resigns, he has to wait for the acceptance of his resignation."

"Oh, as for that, there need be no ceremony. They'll be even better pleased to get rid of me than I to go. They got a bad bargain; and, to do them justice, they seemed to have guessed as much from the first."

"And then, Tony?"

"I 'll go to sea,--I 'll go before the mast; there must be many a vessel here wants a hand, and in a few weeks' practice I'll master the whole thing; my old yachting experiences have done that for me."

"My poor Tony," said Skeffy, rising and throwing his arms round him, "I'll not listen to it. What! when you have a home here with me, are you to go off and brave hards.h.i.+p and misery and degradation?"

"There's not one of the three,--I deny it. Coa.r.s.e food and hard work are no misery; and I 'll be hanged if there's any degradation in earning one's bread with his hands when his head is not equal to it."

"I tell you I 'll not suffer it. If you drive me to it, I 'll prevent it by force. I am her Majesty's Charge d'Affaires. I 'll order the consul to enroll you at his peril,--I 'll imprison the captain that takes you,--I 'll detain the s.h.i.+p, and put the crew in irons."

"Before you do half of it, let me have some dinner," said Tony, laughing, "for I came on sh.o.r.e very hungry, and have eaten nothing since."

"I'll take you to my favorite restaurant, and you shall have a regular Neapolitan banquet, washed down by some old Capri. There, spell out that newspaper till I dress and if any one rings in the mean while, say his Excellency has just been sent for to Caserta by the King, and will not be back before to-morrow." As he reached the door he put his head in again, and said, "Unless, perchance, it should be my G.o.dfather, when, of course, you 'll keep him for dinner."

CHAPTER XLVI. "THE BAG NO. 18"