Pelham — Complete

CHAPTER XXV.

Falstaff. What money is in my purse?
Page. Seven groats and two-pence.
—Second Part of Henry IV.

En iterum Crispinus.

The next day a note was brought me, which had been sent to my former lodgings in the Hotel de Paris: it was from Thornton.

“My dear Sir,” (it began)

“I am very sorry that particular business will prevent me the pleasure of seeing you at my rooms on Sunday. I hope to be more fortunate some other day. I should like much to introduce you, the first opportunity, to my friends in the Rue Gretry, for I like obliging my countrymen. I am sure, if you were to go there, you would cut and come again—one shoulder of mutton drives down another.

“I beg you to accept my repeated excuses, and remain,

“Dear Sir,

“Your very obedient servant,

“Thomas Thornton.

“Rue St. Dominique,

“Friday Morning.”

This letter produced in me many and manifold cogitations. What could possibly have induced Mr. Tom Thornton, rogue as he was, to postpone thus of his own accord, the plucking of a pigeon, which he had such good reason to believe he had entrapped? There was evidently no longer the same avidity to cultivate my acquaintance as before; in putting off our appointment with so little ceremony, he did not even fix a day for another. What had altered his original designs towards me? for if Vincent’s account was true, it was natural to suppose that he wished to profit by any acquaintance he might form with me, and therefore such an acquaintance his own interests would induce him to continue and confirm.

Either, then, he no longer had the same necessity for a dupe, or he no longer imagined I should become one. Yet neither of these suppositions was probable. It was not likely that he should grow suddenly honest, or suddenly rich: nor had I, on the other hand, given him any reason to suppose I was a jot more wary than any other individual he might have imposed upon. On the contrary, I had appeared to seek his acquaintance with an eagerness which said but little for my knowledge of the world. The more I reflected, the more I should have been puzzled, had I not connected his present backwardness with his acquaintance with the stranger, whom he termed Warburton. It is true, that I had no reason to suppose so: it was a conjecture wholly unsupported, and, indeed, against my better sense; yet, from some unanalysed associations, I could not divest myself of the supposition.

“I will soon see,” thought I; and wrapping myself in my cloak, for the day was bitterly cold, I bent my way to Thornton’s lodgings. I could not explain to myself the deep interest I took in whatever was connected with (the so-called) Warburton, or whatever promised to discover more clearly any particulars respecting him. His behaviour in the gambling house; his conversation with the woman in the Jardin des Plantes; and the singular circumstance, that a man of so very aristocratic an appearance, should be connected with Thornton, and only seen in such low scenes, and with such low society, would not have been sufficient so strongly to occupy my mind, had it not been for certain dim recollections, and undefinable associations, that his appearance when present, and my thoughts of him when absent, perpetually recalled.

As, engrossed with meditations of this nature, I was passing over the Pont Neuf, I perceived the man Warburton had so earnestly watched in the gambling house, and whom I identified with the “Tyrrell,” who had formed the subject of conversation in the Jardin des Plantes, pass slowly before me. There was an appearance of great exhaustion in his swarthy and strongly marked countenance. He walked carelessly on, neither looking to the right nor the left, with that air of thought and abstraction which I have remarked as common to all men in the habit of indulging any engrossing and exciting passion.

We were just on the other side of the Seine, when I perceived the woman of the Jardin des Plantes approach. Tyrrell (for that, I afterwards discovered, was really his name) started as she came near, and asked her, in a tone of some asperity, where she had been? As I was but a few paces behind, I had a clear, full view of the woman’s countenance. She was about twenty-eight or thirty years of age. Her features were decidedly handsome, though somewhat too sharp and aquiline for my individual taste. Her eyes were light and rather sunken; and her complexion bespoke somewhat of the paleness and languor of ill-health. On the whole, the expression of her face, though decided, was not unpleasing, and when she returned Tyrrell’s rather rude salutation, it was with a smile, which made her, for the moment, absolutely beautiful.

“Where have I been to?” she said, in answer to his interrogatory. “Why, I went to look at the New Church, which they told me was so superbe.”

“Methinks,” replied the man, “that ours are not precisely the circumstances in which such spectacles are amusing.”

“Nay, Tyrrell,” said the woman, as taking his arm they walked on together a few paces before me, “nay, we are quite rich now to what we have been; and, if you do play again, our two hundred pounds may swell into a fortune. Your losses have brought you skill, and you may now turn them into actual advantages.”

Tyrrell did not reply exactly to these remarks, but appeared as if debating with himself. “Two hundred pounds—twenty already gone!—in a few months all will have melted away. What is it then now but a respite from starvation?—but with luck it may become a competence.”

“And why not have luck? many a fortune has been made with a worse beginning,” said the woman.

“True, Margaret,” pursued the gambler, “and even without luck, our fate can only commence a month or two sooner—better a short doom than a lingering torture.”

“What think you of trying some new game where you have more experience, or where the chances are greater than in that of rouge et noir?” asked the woman. “Could you not make something out of that tall, handsome man, who Thornton says is so rich?”

“Ah, if one could!” sighed Tyrrell, wistfully. “Thornton tells me, that he has won thousands from him, and that they are mere drops in his income. Thornton is a good, easy, careless fellow, and might let me into a share of the booty: but then, in what games can I engage him?”

Here I passed this well-suited pair, and lost the remainder of their conversation. “Well,” thought I, “if this precious personage does starve at last, he will most richly deserve it, partly for his designs on the stranger, principally for his opinion of Thornton. If he was a knave only, one might pity him; but a knave and fool both, are a combination of evil, for which there is no intermediate purgatory of opinion—nothing short of utter damnation.”

I soon arrived at Mr. Thornton’s abode. The same old woman, poring over the same novel of Crebillon, made me the same reply as before; and accordingly again I ascended the obscure and rugged stairs, which seemed to indicate, that the road to vice is not so easy as one generally supposes. I knocked at the door, and receiving no answering acknowledgment, opened it at once. The first thing I saw was the dark, rough coat of Warburton—that person’s back was turned to me, and he was talking with some energy to Thornton (who lounged idly in his chair, with one ungartered leg thrown over the elbow.)

“Ah, Mr. Pelham,” exclaimed the latter, starting from his not very graceful position, “it gives me great pleasure to see you—Mr. Warburton, Mr. Pelham—Mr. Pelham, Mr. Warburton.” My new-made and mysterious acquaintance drew himself up to his full height, and bowed very slightly to my own acknowledgment of the introduction. A low person would have thought him rude. I only supposed him ignorant of the world. No real gentleman is uncivil. He turned round after this stiff condescension de sa part, and sunk down on the sofa, with his back towards me.

“I was mistaken,” thought I, “when I believed him to be above such associates as Thornton—they are well matched.”

“My dear Sir,” said Thornton, “I am very sorry I could not see you to breakfast—a particular engagement prevented me—verbum sap. Mr. Pelham, you take me, I suppose—black eyes white skin, and such an ancle;” and the fellow rubbed his great hands and chuckled.

“Well,” said I, “I cannot blame you, whatever may be my loss—a dark eye and a straight ancle are powerful excuses. What says Mr. Warburton to them?” and I turned to the object of my interrogatory.

“Really,” he answered drily, and without moving from his uncourteous position, “Mr. Thornton only can judge of the niceties of his peculiar tastes, or the justice of his general excuses.”

Mr. Warburton said this in a sarcastic, bitter tone. Thornton bit his lip, more, I should think, at the manner than the words, and his small grey eyes sparkled with a malignant and stern expression, which suited the character of his face far better than the careless levity and enjouement which his glances usually denoted.

“They are no such great friends after all,” thought I; “and now let me change my attack. Pray,” I asked, “among all your numerous acquaintances at Paris, did you ever meet with a Mr. Tyrrell?”

Warburton started from his chair, and as instantly re-seated himself. Thornton eyed me with one of those peculiar looks which so strongly reminded me of a dog, in deliberation whether to bite or run away.

“I do know a Mr. Tyrrell!” he said, after a short pause.

“What sort of a person is he?” I asked with an indifferent air—“a great gamester, is he not?”

“He does slap it down on the colours now and then,” replied Thornton. “I hope you don’t know him, Mr. Pelham!”

“Why?” said I, evading the question. “His character is not affected by a propensity so common, unless, indeed, you suppose him to be more a gambler than a gamester, viz. more acute than unlucky.”

“God forbid that I should say any such thing,” replied Thornton; “you won’t catch an old lawyer in such imprudence.”

“The greater the truth, the greater the libel,” said Warburton, with a sneer.

“No,” resumed Thornton, “I know nothing against Mr. Tyrrell—nothing! He may be a very good man, and I believe he is; but as a friend, Mr. Pelham, (and Mr. Thornton grew quite affectionate), I advise you to have as little as possible to do with that sort of people.”

“Truly,” said I, “you have now excited my curiosity. Nothing, you know, is half so inviting as mystery.”

Thornton looked as if he had expected a very different reply; and Warburton said, in an abrupt tone—“Whoever enters an unknown road in a fog may easily lose himself.”

“True,” said I; “but that very chance is more agreeable than a road where one knows every tree! Danger and novelty are more to my taste than safety and sameness. Besides, as I never gamble myself, I can lose nothing by an acquaintance with those who do.”

Another pause ensued—and, finding I had got all from Mr. Thornton and his uncourteous guest that I was likely to do, I took my hat and my departure.

“I do not know,” thought I, “whether I have profited much by this visit. Let me consider. In the first place, I have not ascertained why I was put off by Mr. Thornton—for as to his excuse, it could only have availed one day, and had he been anxious for my acquaintance, he would have named another. I have, however, discovered, first, that he does not wish me to form any connection with Tyrrell; secondly, from Warburton’s sarcasm, and his glance of reply, that there is but little friendship between those two, whatever be the intimacy; and, thirdly, that Warburton, from his dorsal positions, so studiously preserved, either wished to be uncivil or unnoticed.” The latter, after all, was the most probable; and, upon the whole, I felt more than ever convinced that he was the person I suspected him to be.