CHAPTER LIX.
I do defy him, and I spit at him, Call him a slanderous coward and avillain--Which to maintain I will allow him odds.--Shakspeare.
I found Glanville walking before the door with a rapid and uneven step.
"Thank Heaven!" he said, when he saw me--"I have been twice to Mivart'sto find you. The second time, I saw your servant, who told me where youwere gone. I knew you well enough to be sure of your kindness."
Glanville broke off aburptly: and after a short pause, said, with aquick, low, hurried tone--"The office I wish you to take upon yourselfis this:--go immediately to Sir John Tyrrell, with a challenge fromme. Ever since I last saw you, I have been hunting out that man, andin vain. He had then left town. He returned this evening, and quits itto-morrow: you have no time to lose."
"My dear Glanville," said I, "I have no wish to learn any secretyou would conceal from me; but forgive me if I ask for some furtherinstructions than those you have afforded me. Upon what plea am I tocall out Sir John Tyrrell? and what answer am I to give to any excuseshe may create?"
"I have anticipated your reply," said Glanville, with ill-subduedimpatience; "you have only to give this paper: it will prevent alldiscussion. Read it if you will; I have left it unsealed for thatpurpose."
I cast my eyes over the lines Glanville thrust into my hand; they ranthus:--
"The time has at length come for me to demand the atonement so longdelayed. The bearer of this, who is, probably, known to you, willarrange with any person you may appoint, the hour and place of ourmeeting. He is unacquainted with the grounds of my complaint againstyou, but he is satisfied of my honour: your second will, I presume,be the same with respect to yours. It is for me only to question thelatter, and to declare you solemnly to be void alike of principle andcourage, a villain, and a poltroon.
"Reginald Glanville."
"You are my earliest friend," said I, when I had read this soothingepistle; "and I will not flinch from the place you assign me: but I tellyou fairly and frankly, that I would sooner cut off my right hand thansuffer it to give this note to Sir John Tyrrell."
Glanville made no answer; we walked on till he stopped suddenly,and said, "My carriage is at the corner of the street; you must goinstantly; Tyrrell lodges at the Clarendon; you will find me at home onyour return."
I pressed his hand, and hurried on my mission. It was, I own, onepeculiarly unwelcome and displeasing. In the first place, I did notlove to be made a party in a business of the nature of which I was soprofoundly ignorant. Besides, Glanville was more dear to me thanany one, judging only of my external character, would suppose; andconstitutionally indifferent as I am to danger for myself, I trembledlike a woman at the peril I was instrumental in bringing upon him. Butwhat weighed upon me far more than either of these reflections, was therecollection of Ellen. Should her brother fall in an engagement in whichI was his supposed adviser, with what success could I hope for thosefeelings from her, which, at present, constituted the tenderest andthe brightest of my hopes? In the midst of these disagreeable ideas thecarriage stopped at the door of Tyrrel's Hotel.
The waiter said Sir John was in the coffee-room; thither I immediatelymarched. Seated in the box nearest the fire sat Tyrrell, and two men, ofthat old-fashioned roue set, whose members indulged in debauchery, as ifit were an attribute of manliness, and esteemed it, as long as it werehearty and English, rather a virtue to boast of, than a vice to disown.Tyrrel nodded to me familiarly as I approached him; and I saw, bythe half-emptied bottles before him, and the flush of his sallowcountenance, that he had not been sparing of his libations. I whisperedthat I wished to speak to him on a subject of great importance; he rosewith much reluctance, and, after swallowing a large tumbler-full of portwine to fortify him for the task, he led the way to a small room, wherehe seated himself, and asked me, with his usual mixture of bluntnessand good-breeding, the nature of my business. I made him no reply: Icontented myself with placing Glanville's billet doux in his hand.The room was dimly lighted with a single candle, and the small andcapricious fire, near which the gambler was seated, threw its upwardlight, by starts and intervals, over the strong features and deep linesof his countenance. It would have been a study worthy of Rembrandt.
I drew my chair near him, and half shading my eyes with my hand, satdown in silence to mark the effect the letter would produce. Tyrrel (Iimagine) was a man originally of hardy nerves, and had been thrown muchin the various situations of life where the disguise of all outwardemotion is easily and insensibly taught; but whether his frame had beenshattered by his excesses, or that the insulting language of the notetouched him to the quick, he seemed perfectly unable to govern hisfeelings; the lines were written hastily, and the light, as I saidbefore, was faint and imperfect, and he was forced to pause over eachword as he proceeded, so that "the iron had full time to enter into hissoul."
Passion, however, developed itself differently in him than in Glanville:in the latter, it was a rapid transition of powerful feelings, one angrywave dashing over another; it was the passion of a strong and keenlysusceptible mind, to which every sting was a dagger, and which used theforce of a giant to dash away the insect which attacked it. In Tyrrell,it was passion acting on a callous mind but a broken frame--his handtrembled violently--his voice faltered--he could scarcely command themuscles which enabled him to speak; but there was no fiery start--noindignant burst--no flashing forth of the soul; in him, it was thebody overcoming and paralyzing the mind. In Glanville it was the mindgoverning and convulsing the body.
"Mr. Pelham," he said at last, after a few preliminary efforts to clearhis voice, "this note requires some consideration. I know not at presentwhom to appoint as my second--will you call upon me early to-morrow?"
"I am sorry," said I, "that my sole instructions were to get animmediate answer from you. Surely either of the gentlemen I saw with youwould officiate as your second?"
Tyrrell made no reply for some moments. He was endeavouring to composehimself, and in some measure he succeeded. He raised his head with ahaughty air of defiance, and tearing the paper deliberately, thoughstill with uncertain and trembling fingers, he stamped his foot upon theatoms.
"Tell your principal," said he, "that I retort upon him the fouland false words he has uttered against me; that I trample upon hisassertions with the same scorn I feel towards himself; and that beforethis hour to-morrow, I will confront him to death as through life. Forthe rest, Mr. Pelham, I cannot name my second till the morning; leave meyour address, and you shall hear from me before you are stirring. Haveyou any thing farther with me?"
"Nothing," said I, laying my card on the table, "I have fulfilled themost ungrateful charge ever entrusted to me. I wish you good night."
I re-entered the carriage, and drove to Glanville's. I broke into theroom rather abruptly; Glanville was leaning on the table, and gazingintently on a small miniature. A pistol-case lay beside him: one of thepistols in order for use, and the other still unarranged; the room was,as usual, covered with books and papers, and on the costly cushions ofthe ottoman, lay the large, black dog, which I remembered well as hiscompanion of yore, and which he kept with him constantly, as the onlything in the world whose society he could at all times bear: the animallay curled up, with its quick, black eye fixed watchfully upon itsmaster, and directly I entered, it uttered, though without moving, alow, warning growl.
Glanville looked up, and in some confusion thrust the picture into adrawer of the table, and asked me my news. I told him word for word whathad passed. Glanville set his teeth, and clenched his hand firmly; andthen, as if his anger was at once appeased, he suddenly changed thesubject and tone of our conversation. He spoke with great cheerfulnessand humour, on the various topics of the day; touched upon politics;laughed at Lord Guloseton, and seemed as indifferent and unconscious ofthe event of the morrow as my peculiar constitution would have renderedmyself.
When I rose to depart, for I had too great an interest in him to feelmuch for the subjects he conversed on, he s
aid, "I shall write one lineto my mother, and another to my poor sister; you will deliver them if Ifall, for I have sworn that one of us shall not quit the ground alive. Ishall be all impatience to know the hour you will arrange with Tyrrell'ssecond. God bless you, and farewell for the present."