Charles Lever - The Fortunes Of Glencore

“I suspect you are right,” said Glencore, “and that our old system of school education, wherein all was rough, rugged, and difficult, turned out better men than the present-day habit of everything-made-easy and everybody-made-any-thing. Flippancy is the characteristic of our age, and we owe it to our teaching.”

“By the way, what do you mean to do with Charley?” said Upton. “Do you intend him for Eton?”

“I scarcely know, – I make plans only to abandon them,” said Glencore, gloomily.

“I’m greatly struck with him. He is one of those fellows, however, who require the nicest management, and who either rise superior to all around them, or drop down into an indolent, dreamy existence, conscious of power, but too bashful or too lazy to exert it.”

“You have hit him off, Upton, with all your own subtlety; and it was to speak of that boy I have been so eager to see you.”

Glencore paused as he said these words, and passed his hand over his brow, as though to prepare himself for the task before him.

“Upton,” said he, at last, in a voice of deep and solemn meaning, “the resolution I am about to impart to you is not unlikely to meet your strenuous opposition; you will be disposed to show me strong reasons against it on every ground; you may refuse me that amount of assistance I shall ask of you to carry out my purpose; but if your arguments were all unanswerable, and if your denial to aid me was to sever the old friendship between us, I ‘d still persist in my determination. For more than two years the project has been before my mind. The long hours of the day, the longer ones of the night, have found me deep in the consideration of it. I have repeated over to myself everything that my ingenuity could suggest against it; I have said to my own heart all that my worst enemy could utter, were he to read the scheme and detect my plan; I have done more, – I have struggled with myself to abandon it; but in vain. My heart is linked to it; it forms the one sole tie that attaches me to life. Without it, the apathy that I feel stealing over me would be complete, and my existence become a mournful dream. In a word, Upton, all is passionless within me, save one sentiment; and I drag on life merely for a ‘ Vendetta .’”

Upton shook his head mournfully, as the other paused here, and said, —

“This is disease, Glencore!”

“Be it so; the malady is beyond cure,” said he, sternly.

“Trust me it is not so,” said Upton, gently; “you listened to my persuasions on a more – ”

“Ay, that I did!” cried Glencore, interrupting; “and have I ever ceased to rue the day I did so? But for your arguments, and I had not lived this life of bitter, self-reproaching misery; but for you, and my vengeance had been sated ere this!”

“Remember, Glencore,” said the other, “that you had obtained all the world has decreed as satisfaction. He met you and received your fire; you shot him through the chest, – not mortally, it is true, but to carry to his grave a painful, lingering disease. To have insisted on his again meeting you would have been little less than murder. No man could have stood your friend in such a quarrel. I told you so then, I repeat it now, he could not fire at you; what, then, was it possible for you to do?”

“Shoot him, – shoot him like a dog!” cried Glencore, while his eyes gleamed like the glittering eyes of an enraged beast. “You talk of his lingering life of pain: think of mine ; have some sympathy for what I suffer! Would all the agony of his whole existence equal one hour of the torment he has bequeathed to me, its shame and ignominy?”

“These are things which passion can never treat of, my dear Glencore.”

“Passion alone can feel them,” said the other, sternly. “Keep subtleties for those who use like weapons. As for me, no casuistry is needed to tell me I am dishonored, and just as little to tell me I must be avenged! If you think differently, it were better not to discuss this question further between us; but I did think I could have reckoned upon you, for I felt you had barred my first chance of a vengeance.”

“Now, then, for your plan, Glencore,” said Upton, who, with all the dexterity of his calling, preferred opening a new channel in the discussion, to aggravating difficulties by a further opposition.

“I must rid myself of her! There’s my plan!” cried Glencore, savagely. “You have it all in that resolution. Of no avail is it that I have separated my fortune from hers, so long as she bears my name, and renders it infamous in every city of Europe. Is it to you , who live in the world, – who mix with men of every country, – that I need tell this? If a man cannot throw off such a shame, he must sink under it.”

“But you told me you had an unconquerable aversion to the notion of seeking a divorce.”

“So I had; so I have! The indelicate, the ignominious course of a trial at law, with all its shocking exposure, would be worse than a thousand deaths! To survive the suffering of all the licensed ribaldry of some gowned coward aspersing one’s honor, calumniating, inventing, and, when invention failed, suggesting motives, the very thought of which in secret had driven a man to madness! To endure this – to read it – to know it went published over the wide globe, till one’s shame became the gossip of millions – and then – with a verdict extorted from pity, damages awarded to repair a broken heart and a sullied name – to carry this disgrace before one’s equals, to be again discussed, sifted, and cavilled at! No, Upton; this poor shattered brain would give way under such a trial; to compass it in mere fancy is already nigh to madness! It must be by other means than these that I attain my object!”

The terrible energy with which he spoke actually frightened Upton, who fancied that his reason had already begun to show signs of decline.

“The world has decreed,” resumed Glencore, “that in these conflicts all the shame shall be the husband’s; but it shall not be so here! She shall have her share, ay, and, by Heaven, not the smaller share either!”

“Why, what would you do?” asked Upton, eagerly.

“Deny my marriage; call her my mistress!” cried Glencore, in a voice shaken with passion and excitement.

“But your boy, – your son, Glencore!”

“He shall be a bastard! You may hold up your hands in horror, and look with all your best got-up disgust at such a scheme; but if you wish to see me swear to accomplish it, I’ll do so now before you, ay, on my knees before you! When we eloped from her father’s house at Castellamare, we were married by a priest at Capri; of the marriage no trace exists. The more legal ceremony was performed before you, as Chargé d’Affaires at Naples, – of that I have the registry here; nor, except my courier, Sanson, is there a living witness. If you determine to assert it, you will do so without a fragment of proof, since every document that could substantiate it is in my keeping. You shall see them for yourself. She is, therefore, in my power; and will any man dare to tell me how I should temper that power?”

“But your boy, Glencore, your boy!”

“Is my boy’s station in the world a prouder one by being the son of the notorious Lady Glencore, or as the offspring of a nameless mistress? What avail to him that he should have a title stained by her shame? Where is he to go? In what land is he to live, where her infamy has not reached? Is it not a thousand times better that he enter life ignoble and unknown, – to start in the world’s race with what he may of strength and power, – than drag on an unhonored existence, shunned by his equals, and only welcome where it is disgrace to find companionship?”