I do defy him, and I spit at him, Call him a slanderous coward and a
villain--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’s
to find you. The second time, I saw your servant, who told me where you
were gone. I knew you well enough to be sure of your kindness.”
Glanville broke off aburptly: and after a short pause, said, with a
quick, low, hurried tone--“The office I wish you to take upon yourself
is this:--go immediately to Sir John Tyrrell, with a challenge from
me. Ever since I last saw you, I have been hunting out that man, and
in vain. He had then left town. He returned this evening, and quits it
to-morrow: you have no time to lose.”
“My dear Glanville,” said I, “I have no wish to learn any secret
you would conceal from me; but forgive me if I ask for some further
instructions than those you have afforded me. Upon what plea am I to
call out Sir John Tyrrell? and what answer am I to give to any excuses
he may create?”
“I have anticipated your reply,” said Glanville, with ill-subdued
impatience; “you have only to give this paper: it will prevent all
discussion. Read it if you will; I have left it unsealed for that
purpose.”
I cast my eyes over the lines Glanville thrust into my hand; they ran
thus:--
“The time has at length come for me to demand the atonement so long
delayed. The bearer of this, who is, probably, known to you, will
arrange with any person you may appoint, the hour and place of our
meeting. He is unacquainted with the grounds of my complaint against
you, 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 the
latter, and to declare you solemnly to be void alike of principle and
courage, a villain, and a poltroon.
“Reginald Glanville.”
“You are my earliest friend,” said I, when I had read this soothing
epistle; “and I will not flinch from the place you assign me: but I tell
you fairly and frankly, that I would sooner cut off my right hand than
suffer 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 go
instantly; Tyrrell lodges at the Clarendon; you will find me at home on
your return.”
I pressed his hand, and hurried on my mission. It was, I own, one
peculiarly unwelcome and displeasing. In the first place, I did not
love to be made a party in a business of the nature of which I was so
profoundly ignorant. Besides, Glanville was more dear to me than
any one, judging only of my external character, would suppose; and
constitutionally indifferent as I am to danger for myself, I trembled
like a woman at the peril I was instrumental in bringing upon him. But
what weighed upon me far more than either of these reflections, was the
recollection of Ellen. Should her brother fall in an engagement in which
I was his supposed adviser, with what success could I hope for those
feelings from her, which, at present, constituted the tenderest and
the brightest of my hopes? In the midst of these disagreeable ideas the
carriage stopped at the door of Tyrrel’s Hotel.
The waiter said Sir John was in the coffee-room; thither I immediately
marched. Seated in the box nearest the fire sat Tyrrell, and two men, of
that old-fashioned roue set, whose members indulged in debauchery, as if
it were an attribute of manliness, and esteemed it, as long as it were
hearty 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, by
the half-emptied bottles before him, and the flush of his sallow
countenance, that he had not been sparing of his libations. I whispered
that I wished to speak to him on a subject of great importance; he rose
with much reluctance, and, after swallowing a large tumbler-full of port
wine to fortify him for the task, he led the way to a small room, where
he seated himself, and asked me, with his usual mixture of bluntness
and good-breeding, the nature of my business. I made him no reply: I
contented myself with placing Glanville’s billet doux in his hand.
The room was dimly lighted with a single candle, and the small and
capricious fire, near which the gambler was seated, threw its upward
light, by starts and intervals, over the strong features and deep lines
of 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, sat
down in silence to mark the effect the letter would produce. Tyrrel (I
imagine) was a man originally of hardy nerves, and had been thrown much
in the various situations of life where the disguise of all outward
emotion is easily and insensibly taught; but whether his frame had been
shattered by his excesses, or that the insulting language of the note
touched him to the quick, he seemed perfectly unable to govern his
feelings; the lines were written hastily, and the light, as I said
before, was faint and imperfect, and he was forced to pause over each
word as he proceeded, so that “the iron had full time to enter into his
soul.”
Passion, however, developed itself differently in him than in Glanville:
in the latter, it was a rapid transition of powerful feelings, one angry
wave dashing over another; it was the passion of a strong and keenly
susceptible mind, to which every sting was a dagger, and which used the
force 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 hand
trembled violently--his voice faltered--he could scarcely command the
muscles which enabled him to speak; but there was no fiery start--no
indignant burst--no flashing forth of the soul; in him, it was the
body overcoming and paralyzing the mind. In Glanville it was the mind
governing and convulsing the body.
“Mr. Pelham,” he said at last, after a few preliminary efforts to clear
his voice, “this note requires some consideration. I know not at present
whom 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 an
immediate answer from you. Surely either of the gentlemen I saw with you
would officiate as your second?”
Tyrrell made no reply for some moments. He was endeavouring to compose
himself, and in some measure he succeeded. He raised his head with a
haughty air of defiance, and tearing the paper deliberately, though
still with uncertain and trembling fingers, he stamped his foot upon the
atoms.
“Tell your principal,” said he, “that I retort upon him the foul
and false words he has uttered against me; that I trample upon his
assertions with the same scorn I feel towards himself; and that before
this hour to-morrow, I will confront him to death as through life. For
the rest, Mr. Pelham, I cannot name my second till the morning; leave me
your address, and you shall hear from me before you are stirring. Have
you any thing farther with me?”
“Nothing,” said I, laying my card on the table, “I have fulfilled the
most ungrateful charge ever entrusted to me. I wish you good night.”
I re-entered the carriage, and drove to Glanville’s. I broke into the
room rather abruptly; Glanville was leaning on the table, and gazing
intently on a small miniature. A pistol-case lay beside him: one of the
pistols in order for use, and the other still unarranged; the room was,
as usual, covered with books and papers, and on the costly cushions of
the ottoman, lay the large, black dog, which I remembered well as his
companion of yore, and which he kept with him constantly, as the only
thing in the world whose society he could at all times bear: the animal
lay curled up, with its quick, black eye fixed watchfully upon its
master, and directly I entered, it uttered, though without moving, a
low, warning growl.
Glanville looked up, and in some confusion thrust the picture into a
drawer of the table, and asked me my news. I told him word for word what
had passed. Glanville set his teeth, and clenched his hand firmly; and
then, as if his anger was at once appeased, he suddenly changed the
subject and tone of our conversation. He spoke with great cheerfulness
and humour, on the various topics of the day; touched upon politics;
laughed at Lord Guloseton, and seemed as indifferent and unconscious of
the event of the morrow as my peculiar constitution would have rendered
myself.
When I rose to depart, for I had too great an interest in him to feel
much for the subjects he conversed on, he said, “I shall write one line
to my mother, and another to my poor sister; you will deliver them if I
fall, for I have sworn that one of us shall not quit the ground alive. I
shall be all impatience to know the hour you will arrange with Tyrrell’s
second. God bless you, and farewell for the present.”