Volume Ii Part 60 (2/2)
”No, Sir,” said Thorn, ”I'll attend to nothing ? I'll hear nothing from you. I know you! I'll not hear a word. I'll see to the business! Take your stand.”
”I will not have anything to do with pistols,” said Mr.
Carleton, coolly, laying his out of his hand; ”they make too much noise.”
”Who cares for the noise?” said Thorn. ”It wont hurt you; and the door is locked.”
”But people's ears are not,” said Guy.
Neither tone, nor att.i.tude, nor look, had changed in the least its calm gracefulness. It began to act upon Thorn.
”Well, in the devil's name, have your own way,” said he, throwing down his pistol too, and going back to the cabinets at the lower end of the room ? ”there are rapiers here, if you like them better ? _I_ don't ? the shortest the best for me ?
but here they are ? take your choice.”
Guy examined them carefully for a few minutes, and then laid them both, with a firm hand upon them, on the table.
”I will choose neither, Mr. Thorn, till you have heard me. I came here to see you on the part of others ? I should be a recreant to my charge if I allowed you or myself to draw me into anything that might prevent my fulfilling it. That must be done first.”
Thorn looked with a lowering brow on the indications of his opponent's eye and att.i.tude; they left him plainly but one course to take.
”Well, speak and have done,” he said, as in spite of himself; ”but I know it already.”
”I am here as a friend of Mr. Rossitur.”
”Why don't you say a friend of somebody else, and come nearer the truth?” said Thorn.
There was an intensity of expression in his sneer, but pain was there as well as anger; and it was with even a feeling of pity that Mr. Carleton answered ?
”The truth will be best reached, Sir, if I am allowed to choose my own words.”
There was no haughtiness in the steady gravity of this speech, whatever there was in the quiet silence he permitted to follow. Thorn did not break it.
”I am informed of the particulars concerning this prosecution of Mr. Rossitur ? I am come here to know if no terms can be obtained.”
”No!” said Thorn ? ”no terms ? I wont speak of terms. The matter will be followed up now till the fellow is lodged in jail, where he deserves to be.”
”Are you aware, Sir, that this, if done, will be the cause of very great distress to a family who have not deserved it?”
”That can't be helped,” said Thorn. ”Of course, it must cause distress, but you can't act upon that. Of course, when a man turns rogue, he ruins his family ? that's part of his punishment ? and a just one.”
”The law is just,” said Mr. Carleton, ”but a friend may be merciful.”
”I don't pretend to be a friend,” said Thorn, viciously, ”and I have no cause to be merciful. I like to bring a man to public shame when he has forfeited his t.i.tle to anything else; and I intend that Mr. Rossitur shall become intimately acquainted with the interior of the State's prison.”
”Did it ever occur to you that public shame _might_ fall upon other than Mr. Rossitur, and without the State prison?”
Thorn fixed a somewhat startled look upon the steady powerful eye of his opponent, and did not like its meaning.
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