‘By Jove!’ cried Tom, ‘if you speak another word to my sister, I’ll pitch you over the cliff!’
Blackmore began to laugh with an exasperating contempt—contempt which exasperated Janet, though Tom too had touched the same note of the intolerable. She sprang up hastily, putting out her arm between them. ‘You are two men,’ she said, ‘but Tom is not much more than a boy, and you are quarrelling about me that wants nothing in the world so much as to get away from both of you. Do you hear me? I would not vex mother,’ Janet cried, ‘for all the men in the world. Oh, can’t you see that you are like two fools wrangling over me?’
‘Let him take himself off, then,’ said Tom.
‘And let him hold his tongue, the confounded young scamp!’ cried the other, ‘that dares to challenge me—when he knows I could lick him within an inch of his life.’
Tom was half mad with disappointment and humiliation. He was very proud in his way, with the mingled pride of the peasant and the nouveau riche, the millionaire and the (Scotch) clown. He had meant, after he had ‘had his fun,’ to have settled down when his time came, and to have married a lady like his mother. Without imagination, or sense, or principle, or restraint of honour, he had pursued his reckless career, too precipitate and eager in pursuit of pleasure to leave time to think, even if he had been able to think. The abominable treachery of which he had intended to be guilty had not touched his conscience, not having appeared to his obtuse understanding as anything worse than many ‘dodges’ which other fellows adopted to get what they wanted. And it was with a rage and humiliation unspeakable that he found himself—he, the son of the man who had married Lady Caroline Lindores, married in his turn to a girl from a little Oxford shop, a little shopgirl, a common little flirt, less than nobody, not so good by ever so many grades as his mother’s maid. To find that he had married her when he meant only to deceive her, and made her mistress of the Towers, which was as Windsor Castle to Tom, and put her in the place of Lady Car, was gall and bitterness to him. His conscience had given him little trouble, but his wounded pride, his mortification, his humiliation were torture to him. He had come out raging with these furious pangs, eager to find something, anything, with which he could fight and assuage his burning wrath. To pitch Charlie Blackmore over the cliffs, even to be pitched over them himself, and roll down the sharp rocks and plunge in the cold sea beneath, he felt as though it would be a relief from the gnawing and the rage within.
‘Come on, then!’ he cried, furious; ‘I’ll take no licking from any man, if he were Goliath. Come on!’
‘Mr. Charlie,’ cried Janet, putting out her hands, ‘if it’s true, you may do one thing for me. One thing I ask you to do as if you were the best gentleman in the world, and I will think you so if you will do it: leave me to him and him to me. And good-bye; and neither say you like us nor hate us, but just go—oh go! Do you hear me?’ she said, stamping her foot. ‘I ask you as a gentleman.’ She had caught her brother by the arm and held him while she waved the other away.
‘That’s a strong argument,’ said Blackmore. He was moved by what she said, and also by common sense which told him his suit was folly. ‘If we’re fools, you’re none, Miss Janet Torrance,’ he said with a laugh, ‘which is more than I thought. What! am I to turn my back upon a man that’s clenching his neives at me? Well, maybe you’re right! There’s none in the county will think Charlie Blackmore stands in fear of Tom Torrance. Yes, missie, you shall have your will. I’m going—good-bye to both him and you.’
‘Do you think I’ll let the fellow go like that?’ cried Tom, making a step after him, but perhaps his fury fell at the sight of the might and strength of the retiring champion—perhaps it was only the wretchedness in his mind that fell from the burning to the freezing point. He sat down gloomily, after having watched him disappear, on the bench from which Charlie Blackmore had risen.
‘I don’t care what becomes of me, Jan,’ he said. ‘I’m done. Nothing that ever happens will be any good to me now. I’ve choked that fellow off, that’s one thing, and he’ll never dare speak to you again. But as for me, I’m done, and I’ll never lift my head any more.’