You must challenge him
There’s no avoiding; one or both must drop.
BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.
“Ha! ha! ha! bravo, Linden!” cried Lord St. George, from the head of his
splendid board, in approbation of some witticism of Clarence’s; and ha!
ha! ha! or he! he! he! according to the cachinnatory intonations of the
guests rang around.
“Your lordship seems unwell,” said Lord Aspeden to Borodaile; “allow me
to take wine with you.”
Lord Borodaile bowed his assent.
“Pray,” said Mr. St. George to Clarence, “have you seen my friend Talbot
lately?”
“This very morning,” replied Linden: “indeed, I generally visit him
three or four times a week; he often asks after you.”
“Indeed!” said Mr. St. George, rather flattered; “he does me much
honour; but he is a distant connection of mine, and I suppose I must
attribute his recollection of me to that cause. He is a near relation of
yours, too, I think: is he not?”
“I am related to him,” answered Clarence, colouring.
Lord Borodaile leaned forward, and his lip curled. Though, in some
respects, a very unamiable man, he had, as we have said, his good
points. He hated a lie as much as Achilles did; and he believed in his
heart of hearts that Clarence had just uttered one.
“Why,” observed Lord Aspeden, “why, Lord Borodaile, the Talbots of
Scarsdale are branches of your genealogical tree; therefore your
lordship must be related to Linden; ‘you are two cherries on one
stalk’!”
“We are by no means related,” said Lord Borodaile, with a distinct and
clear voice, intended expressly for Clarence; “that is an honour which I
must beg leave most positively to disclaim.”
There was a dead silence; the eyes of all who heard a remark so
intentionally rude were turned immediately towards Clarence. His cheek
burned like fire; he hesitated a moment, and then said, in the same key,
though with a little trembling in his intonation,--
“Lord Borodaile cannot be more anxious to disclaim it than I am.”
“And yet,” returned the viscount, stung to the soul, “they who advance
false pretensions ought at least to support them!”
“I do not understand you, my lord,” said Clarence.
“Possibly not,” answered Borodaile, carelessly: “there is a maxim which
says that people not accustomed to speak truth cannot comprehend it in
others.”
Unlike the generality of modern heroes, who are always in a passion,--
off-hand, dashing fellows, in whom irascibility is a virtue,--Clarence
was peculiarly sweet-tempered by nature, and had, by habit, acquired a
command over all his passions to a degree very uncommon in so young a
man. He made no reply to the inexcusable affront he had received. His
lip quivered a little, and the flush of his countenance was succeeded
by an extreme paleness; this was all: he did not even leave the room
immediately, but waited till the silence was broken by some well-bred
member of the party; and then, pleading an early engagement as an excuse
for his retiring so soon, he rose and departed.
There was throughout the room a universal feeling of sympathy with the
affront and indignation against the offender; for, to say nothing of
Clarence’s popularity and the extreme dislike in which Lord Borodaile
was held, there could be no doubt as to the wantonness of the outrage or
the moderation of the aggrieved party. Lord Borodaile already felt
the punishment of his offence: his very pride, while it rendered him
indifferent to the spirit, had hitherto kept him scrupulous as to the
formalities of social politeness; and he could not but see the grossness
with which he had suffered himself to violate them and the light in
which his conduct was regarded. However, this internal discomfort only
rendered him the more embittered against Clarence and the more
confirmed in his revenge. Resuming, by a strong effort, all the external
indifference habitual to his manner, he attempted to enter into a
conversation with those of the party who were next to him but his
remarks produced answers brief and cold; even Lord Aspeden forgot his
diplomacy and his smile; Lord St. George replied to his observations by
a monosyllable; and the Duke of Haverfield, for the first time in his
life, asserted the prerogative which his rank gave him of setting the
example,--his grace did not reply to Lord Borodaile at all. In truth,
every one present was seriously displeased. All civilized societies
have a paramount interest in repressing the rude. Nevertheless, Lord
Borodaile bore the brunt of his unpopularity with a steadiness and
unembarrassed composure worthy of a better cause; and finding, at last,
a companion disposed to be loquacious in the person of Sir Christopher
Findlater (whose good heart, though its first impulse resented more
violently than that of any heart present the discourtesy of the
viscount, yet soon warmed to the desagremens of his situation, and
hastened to adopt its favourite maxim of forgive and forget), Lord
Borodaile sat the meeting out; and if he did not leave the latest, he
was at least not the first to follow Clarence: “L’orgueil ou donne le
courage, ou il y supplee.” [“Pride either gives courage or supplies the
place of it.”]
Meanwhile Linden had returned to his solitary home. He hastened to
his room, locked the door, flung himself on his sofa, and burst into a
violent and almost feminine paroxysm of tears. This fit lasted for
more than an hour; and when Clarence at length stilled the indignant
swellings of his heart, and rose from his supine position, he started,
as his eye fell upon the opposite mirror, so haggard and exhausted
seemed the forced and fearful calmness of his countenance. With a
hurried step; with arms now folded on his bosom, now wildly tossed from
him; and the hand so firmly clenched that the very bones seemed working
through the skin; with a brow now fierce, now only dejected; and a
complexion which one while burnt as with the crimson flush of a fever,
and at another was wan and colourless, like his whose cheek a spectre
has blanched,--Clarence paced his apartment, the victim not only of
shame,--the bitterest of tortures to a young and high mind,--but of
other contending feelings, which alternately exasperated and palsied his
wrath, and gave to his resolves at one moment an almost savage ferocity
and at the next an almost cowardly vacillation.
The clock had just struck the hour of twelve when a knock at the door
announced a visitor. Steps were heard on the stairs and presently a
tap at Clarence’s room-door. He unlocked it and the Duke of Haverfield
entered. “I am charmed to find you at home,” cried the duke, with his
usual half kind, half careless address. “I was determined to call upon
you, and be the first to offer my services in this unpleasant affair.”
Clarence pressed the duke’s hand, but made no answer.
“Nothing could be so unhandsome as Lord Borodaile’s conduct,” continued
the duke. “I hope you both fence and shoot well. I shall never forgive
you, if you do not put an end to that piece of rigidity.”
Clarence continued to walk about the room in great agitation; the duke
looked at him with some surprise. At last Linden paused by the window,
and said, half unconsciously, “It must be so: I cannot avoid fighting!”
“Avoid fighting!” cried his grace, in undisguised astonishment. “No,
indeed: but that is the least part of the matter; you must kill as well
as fight him.”
“Kill him!” cried Clarence, wildly, “whom?” and then sinking into a
chair, he covered his face with his hands for a few moments, and seemed
to struggle with his emotions.
“Well,” thought the duke, “I never was more mistaken in my life. I could
have bet my black horse against Trevanion’s Julia, which is certainly
the most worthless thing I know, that Linden had been a brave fellow:
but these English heroes almost go into fits at a duel; one manages such
things, as Sterne says, better in France.”
Clarence now rose, calm and collected. He sat down; wrote a brief note
to Borodaile, demanding the fullest apology, or the earliest meeting;
put it into the duke’s hands, and said with a faint smile, “My dear
duke, dare I ask you to be a second to a man who has been so grievously
affronted and whose genealogy has been so disputed?”
“My dear Linden,” said the duke, warmly, “I have always been grateful
to my station in life for this advantage,--the freedom with which it has
enabled me to select my own acquaintance and to follow my own pursuits.
I am now more grateful to it than ever, because it has given me a better
opportunity than I should otherwise have had of serving one whom I have
always esteemed. In entering into your quarrel I shall at least show
the world that there are some men not inferior in pretensions to Lord
Borodaile who despise arrogance and resent overbearance even to others.
Your cause I consider the common cause of society; but I shall take it
up, if you will allow me, with the distinguishing zeal of a friend.”
Clarence, who was much affected by the kindness of this speech, replied
in a similar vein; and the duke, having read and approved the letter,
rose. “There is, in my opinion,” said he, “no time to be lost. I will
go to Borodaile this very evening: adieu, mon cher! you shall kill the
Argus, and then carry off the Io. I feel in a double passion with that
ambulating poker, who is only malleable when he is red-hot, when I
think how honourably scrupulous you were with La Meronville last night,
notwithstanding all her advances; but I go to bury Caesar, not to scold
him. Au revoir.”