第16章

“You lie! It is your practice to talk about me; it is your constant habit to make public complaint of the treatment you receive at my hands.You have gone and told it far and near that I give you low wages and knock you about like a dog.I wish you were a dog! I’d set-to this minute, and never stir from the spot till I’d cut every strip of flesh from your bones with this whip.

He flourished his tool.The end of the lash just touched myforehead.A warm excited thrill ran through my veins, my blood seemed to give abound, and then raced fast and hot along its channels.I got up nimbly, came round to where he stood, and faced him.

“Down with your whip!” said I, “and explain this instant what you mean.”

“Sirrah! to whom are you speaking?”

“To you.There is no one else present, I think.You say I have been calumniating you—complaining of your low wages and bad treatment.Give your grounds for these assertions.”

Crimsworth had no dignity, and when I sternly demanded an explanation, he gave one in a loud, scolding voice.

“Grounds I you shall have them; and turn to the light that I maysee your brazen face blush black, when you hear yourself proved to be a liar and a hypocrite.At a public meeting in the Town-hall yesterday, I had the pleasure of hearing myself insulted by the speaker opposed to me in the question under discussion, by allusions to my private affairs; by cant about monsters without natural affection, family despots, and such trash; and when I rose to answer, I was met by a shout from the filthy mob, where the mention of your name enabled me at once to detect the quarter in which this base attack had originated.When I looked round, I saw that treacherous villain, Hunsden acting as fugleman.I detected you in close conversation with Hunsden at my house a month ago, and I know that you were at Hunsden’s rooms last night.Deny it if you dare.”

“Oh, I shall not deny it! And if Hunsden hounded on the people to hiss you, he did quite right.You deserve popular execration; for a worse man, a harder master, a more brutal brother than you arehas seldom existed.”

“Sirrah! sirrah!” reiterated Crimsworth; and to complete his apostrophe, he cracked the whip straight over my head.

A minute sufficed to wrest it from him, break it in two pieces,and throw it under the grate.He made a headlong rush at me, which I evaded, and said—“Touch me, and I’ll have you up before the nearest magistrate.”

Men like Crimsworth, if firmly and calmly resisted, always abate something of their exorbitant insolence; he had no mind to be brought before a magistrate, and I suppose he saw I meant what I said.After an odd and long stare at me, at once bull-like and amazed, he seemed to bethink himself that, after all, his money gave him sufficient superiority over a beggar like me, and that he had in his hands a surer and more dignified mode of revenge than the somewhat hazardous one of personal chastisement.