Pelham — Complete

CHAPTER LXXVII.

A thousand crowns, or else lay down your head.—2nd Part of Henry VI.

From Ellen, I hastened to the house of Sir Reginald. The hall was in all the confusion of approaching departure. I sprang over the paraphernalia of books and boxes which obstructed my way, and bounded up the stairs. Glanville was, as usual, alone: his countenance was less pale than it had been lately, and when I saw it brighten as I approached, I hoped, in the new happiness of my heart, that he might baffle both his enemy and his disease.

I told him all that had just occurred between Ellen and myself. “And now,” said I, as I clasped his hand, “I have a proposal to make, to which you must accede: let me accompany you abroad; I will go with you to whatever corner of the world you may select. We will plan together every possible method of concealing our retreat. Upon the past I will never speak to you. In your hours of solitude I will never disturb you by an unwelcome and ill-timed sympathy. I will tend upon you, watch over you, bear with you, with more than the love and tenderness of a brother. You shall see me only when you wish it. Your loneliness shall never be invaded. When you get better, as I presage you will, I will leave you to come back to England, and provide for the worst, by ensuring your sister a protector. I will then return to you alone, that your seclusion may not be endangered by the knowledge, even of Ellen, and you shall have me by your side till—till—”

“The last!” interrupted Glanville. “Too—too generous Pelham, I feel—these tears (the first I have shed for a long, long time) tell you, that I feel to the heart—your friendship and disinterested attachment; but the moment your love for Ellen has become successful, I will not tear you from its enjoyment. Believe me, all that I could derive from your society, could not afford me half the happiness I should have in knowing that you and Ellen were blest in each other. No—no, my solitude will, at that reflection, be deprived of its sting. You shall hear from me once again; my letter shall contain a request, and your executing that last favour must console and satisfy the kindness of your heart. For myself, I shall die as I have lived—alone. All fellowship with my griefs would seem to me strange and unwelcome.”

I would not suffer Glanville to proceed. I interrupted him with fresh arguments and entreaties, to which he seemed at last to submit, and I was in the firm hope of having conquered his determination, when we were startled by a sudden and violent noise in the hall.

“It is Thornton,” said Glanville, calmly. “I told them not to admit him, and he is forcing his way.”

Scarcely had Sir Reginald said this, before Thornton burst abruptly into the room.

Although it was scarcely noon, he was more than half intoxicated, and his eyes swam in his head with a maudlin expression of triumph and insolence, as he rolled towards us.

“Oh, oh! Sir Reginald,” he said, “thought of giving me the slip, eh? Your d—d servants said you were out; but I soon silenced them. ‘Egad I made them as nimble as cows in a cage—I have not learnt the use of my fists for nothing. So, you’re going abroad to-morrow; without my leave, too—pretty good joke that, indeed. Come, come, my brave fellow, you need not scowl at me in that way. Why, you look as surly as a butcher’s dog with a broken head.”

Glanville, who was lived with ill-suppressed rage, rose haughtily.

“Mr. Thornton,” he said, in a calm voice, although he was trembling in his extreme passion, from head to foot, “I am not now prepared to submit to your insolence and intrusion. You will leave this room instantly. If you have any further demands upon me, I will hear them to-night at any hour you please to appoint.”

“No, no, my fine fellow,” said Thornton, with a coarse chuckle; “you have as much wit as three folks, two fools, and a madman; but you won’t do me, for all that. The instant my back is turned, your’s will be turned too; and by the time I call again, your honour will be half way to Calais. But—bless my stars, Mr. Pelham, is that you? I really did not see you before; I suppose you are not in the secret?”

“I have no secrets from Mr. Pelham,” said Glanville; “nor do I care if you discuss the whole of your nefarious transactions with me in his presence. Since you doubt my word, it is beneath my dignity to vindicate it, and your business can as well be dispatched now, as hereafter. You have heard rightly, that I intend leaving England to-morrow; and now, Sir, what is your will?”

“By G—d, Sir Reginald Glanville!” exclaimed Thornton, who seemed stung to the quick by Glanville’s contemptuous coldness, “you shall not leave England without my leave. Ay, you may frown, but I say you shall not; nay, you shall not budge a foot from this very room unless I cry, ‘Be it so!’”

Glanville could no longer restrain himself. He would have sprung towards Thornton, but I seized and arrested him. I read, in the malignant and incensed countenance of his persecutor, all the danger to which a single imprudence would have exposed him, and I trembled for his safety.

I whispered, as I forced him again to his seat, “Leave me alone to settle with this man, and I will endeavour to free you from him.” I did not tarry for his answer; but turning to Thornton, said to him coolly but civilly: “Sir Reginald Glanville has acquainted me with the nature of your very extraordinary demands upon him. Did he adopt my advice, he would immediately place the affair in the hands of his legal advisers. His ill health, however, his anxiety to leave England, and his wish to sacrifice almost every thing to quiet, induce him, rather than take this alternative, to silence your importunities, by acceding to claims, however illegal and unjust. If, therefore, you now favour Sir Reginald with your visit, for the purpose of making a demand previous to his quitting England, and which, consequently, will be the last to which he will concede, you will have the goodness to name the amount of your claim, and should it be reasonable, I think Sir Reginald will authorize me to say, that it shall be granted.”

“Well, now!” cried Thornton, “that’s what I call talking like a sensible man; and though I am not fond of speaking to a third person, when the principal is present, yet as you have always been very civil to me, I have no objection to treating with you. Please to give Sir Reginald this paper: if he will but take the trouble to sign it, he may go to the Falls of Niagara for me! I won’t interrupt him—so he had better put pen to paper, and get rid of me at once, for I know I am as welcome as snow in harvest.”

I took the paper, which was folded up, and gave it to Glanville, who leant back on his chair, half-exhausted by his rage. He glanced his eye over it, and then tore it into a thousand pieces, and trampled it beneath his feet: “Go!” exclaimed he, “go, rascal, and do your worst! I will not make myself a beggar to enrich you. My whole fortune would but answer this demand.”

“Do as you please, Sir Reginald,” answered Thornton, grinning, “do as you please. It’s not a long walk from hence to Bow-street, nor a long swing from Newgate to the gallows; do as you please, Sir Reginald, do as you please!” and the villain flung himself at full length on the costly ottoman, and eyed Glanville’s countenance with an easy and malicious effrontery, which seemed to say, “I know you will struggle, but you cannot help yourself.”

I took Glanville aside: “My dear friend,” said I, “believe me, that I share your indignation to the utmost; but we must do any thing rather than incense this wretch: what is his demand?”

“I speak literally,” replied Glanville, “when I say, that it covers nearly the whole of my fortune; for my habits of extravagance have very much curtailed my means: it is the exact sum I had set apart, for a marriage gift to my sister, in addition to her own fortune.”

“Then,” said I, “you shall give it him; your sister has no longer any necessity for a portion: her marriage with me prevents that—and with regard to yourself, your wants are not many—such as it is, you can share my fortune.”

“No—no—no!” cried Glanville; and his generous nature lashing him into fresh rage, he broke from my grasp, and moved menacingly to Thornton. That person still lay on the ottoman, regarding us with an air half contemptuous, half exulting.

“Leave the room instantly,” said Glanville, “or you will repent it!”

“What! another murder, Sir Reginald!” said Thornton. “No, I am not a sparrow, to have my neck wrenched by a woman’s hand like your’s. Give me my demand—sign the paper, and I will leave you for ever and a day.”

“I will commit no such folly,” answered Glanville. “If you will accept five thousand pounds, you shall have that sum; but were the rope on my neck, you should not wring from me a farthing more!”

“Five thousand!” repeated Thornton; “a mere drop—a child’s toy—why, you are playing with me, Sir Reginald—nay, I am a reasonable man, and will abate a trifle or so of my just claims, but you must not take advantage of my good nature. Make me snug and easy for life—let me keep a brace of hunters—a cosey box—a bit of land to it, and a girl after my own heart, and I’ll say quits with you. Now, Mr. Pelham, who is a long-headed gentleman, and does not spit on his own blanket, knows well enough that one can’t do all this for five thousand pounds; make it a thousand a year—that is, give me a cool twenty thousand—and I won’t exact another sous. Egad, this drinking makes one deuced thirsty—Mr. Pelham, just reach me that glass of water—I hear bees in my head!”

Seeing that I did not stir, Thornton rose, with an oath against pride; and swaggering towards the table, took up a tumbler of water, which happened accidentally to be there: close by it was the picture of the ill-fated Gertrude. The gambler, who was evidently so intoxicated as to be scarcely conscious of his motions or words (otherwise, in all probability, he would, to borrow from himself a proverb illustrative of his profession, have played his cards better) took up the portrait.

Glanville saw the action, and was by his side in an instant. “Touch it not with your accursed hands!” he cried, in an ungovernable fury. “Leave your hold this instant, or I will dash you to pieces!”

Thornton kept a firm gripe of the picture. “Here’s a to-do!” said he tauntingly: “was there ever such work about a poor—(using a word too coarse for repetition) before?”

The word had scarcely passed his lips, when he was stretched at his full length upon the ground. Nor did Glanville stop there. With all the strength of his nervous and Herculean frame, fully requited for the debility of disease by the fury of the moment, he seized the gamester as if he had been an infant, and dragged him to the door: the next moment I heard his heavy frame rolling down the stairs with no decorous slowness of descent.

Glanville re-appeared. “Good God!” I cried, “what have you done?” But he was too lost in his still unappeased rage to heed me. He leaned, panting and breathless, against the wall, with clenched teeth, and a flashing eye, rendered more terribly bright by the feverish lustre natural to his disease.

Presently I heard Thornton re-ascend the stairs: he opened the door, and entered but one pace. Never did human face wear a more fiendish expression of malevolence and wrath. “Sir Reginald Glanville,” he said, “I thank you heartily. He must have iron nails who scratches a bear. You have sent me a challenge, and the hangman shall bring you my answer. Good day, Sir Reginald—good day, Mr. Pelham;” and so saying, he shut the door, and rapidly descending the stairs, was out of the house in an instant.

“There is no time to be lost,” said I, “order post horses to your carriage, and be gone instantly.”

“You are wrong,” replied Glanville, slowly recovering himself. “I must not fly; it would be worse than useless; it would seem the strongest argument against me. Remember that if Thornton has really gone to inform against me, the officers of justice would arrest me long before I reached Calais; or even if I did elude their pursuit so far, I should be as much in their power in France as in England: but to tell you the truth, I do not think Thornton will inform. Money, to a temper like his, is a stronger temptation than revenge; and, before he has been three minutes in the air, he will perceive the folly of losing the golden harvest he may yet make of me for the sake of a momentary passion. No—my best plan will be to wait here till to-morrow, as I originally intended. In the meanwhile he will, in all probability, pay me another visit, and I will make a compromise with his demands.”

Despite of my fears, I could not but see the justice of these observations, the more especially as a still stronger argument than any urged by Glanville, forced itself on my mind; this was my internal conviction, that Thornton himself was guilty of the murder of Tyrrell, and that, therefore, he would, for his own sake, avoid the new and particularizing scrutiny into that dreadful event, which his accusation of Glanville would necessarily occasion.

Both of us were wrong. Villains have passions as well as honest men; and they will, therefore, forfeit their own interest in obedience to those passions, while the calculations of prudence invariably suppose, that that interest is their only rule. [Note: I mean “interest” in the general, not the utilitarian, signification of the word.]

Glanville was so enfeebled by his late excitation, that he besought me once more to leave him to himself. I did so, under a promise, that he would admit me again in the evening; for notwithstanding my persuasion that Thornton would not put his threats into execution, I could not conquer a latent foreboding of dread and evil.