Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. Samuel Warren
as soon as you're well enough! Do—kick me—anything you choose! I won't hinder you!" cried Titmouse, sinking on his knees, and clasping his hands together, as he perceived Huckaback rapidly reviving.
"Why, what is the matter?" repeated that gentleman, with a wondering air, raising his hand to his nose, from which the blood was still trickling. The fact is, that he had lost his senses, probably from the suddenness, rather than the violence of the injuries which he had received.
"I did it all—yes, I did!" continued Titmouse, gazing on him with a look of agony and remorse.
"Why, I can't be awake—I can't!" said Huckaback, rubbing his eyes, and then staring at his wet and blood-stained shirt-front and hands.
"Oh yes, you are—you are!" groaned Titmouse; "and I'm going mad as fast as I can! Do what you like to me! Kick me if you please! Call in a constable! Send me to jail! Say I came to rob you—anything—blow me if I care what becomes of me!"
"Why, what does all this jabber mean, Titmouse?" inquired Huckaback, sternly, and apparently meditating reprisals.
"Oh, yes, I see! Now you are going to give it me! but I won't stir. So hit away, Hucky."
"Why—are you mad?" inquired Huckaback, grasping him by the collar rather roughly.
"Yes, quite! Mad!—ruined!—gone to the devil all at once!"
"And what if you are? What did it matter to me? What brought you here?" continued Huckaback, in a tone of increasing vehemence. "What have I done to offend you? How dare you come here? And at this time of night, too? Eh?"
"What, indeed! Oh lud, oh lud, oh lud! Kick me, I say—strike me! You'll do me good, and bring me to my senses. Me to do all this to you! And we've been such precious good friends always. I'm a brute, Hucky—I've been mad, stark mad, Hucky—and that's all I can say!"
Huckaback stared at him more and more; and began at length to suspect how matters stood—namely, that the Sunday's incident had turned Titmouse's head—he having also, no doubt, heard some desperate bad news during the day, smashing all his hopes. A mixture of emotions kept Huckaback silent. Astonishment—apprehension—doubt—pride—pique—resentment. He had been struck—his blood had been drawn—by the man there before him on his knees, formerly his friend; now, he supposed, a madman.
"Why, curse me, Titmouse, if I can make up my mind what to do to you!" he exclaimed, "I—I suppose you are going mad, or gone mad, and I must forgive you. But get away with you—out with you, or—or—I'll call in"–
"Forgive me—forgive me, dear Hucky! Don't send me away—I shall go and drown myself if you do."
"What the d—l do I care if you do? You'd much better have gone and done it before you came here. Nay, be off and do it now, instead of blubbering here in this way."
"Go on! go on!—it's doing me good—the worse the better!" sobbed Titmouse.
"Come, come," said Huckaback, roughly, "none of this noise here. I'm tired of it!"
"But, pray, don't send me away from you. I shall go straight to the devil if you do! I've no friend but you, Hucky. Yet I've been such a villain to you!—But it quite put the devil into me, when all of a sudden I found it was you."
"Me!—Why, what are you after?" interrupted Huckaback, with an air of angry wonder.
"Oh dear, dear!" groaned Titmouse; "if I've been a brute to you, which is quite true, you've been the ruin of me, clean! I'm clean done for, Huck. Cleaned out! You've done my business for me; knocked it all on the head!—I sha'n't never hear any more of it—they've said as much in their letter—they say you called to-day"–
Huckaback now began to have a glimmering notion of his having been, in some considerable degree, connected with the mischief of the day—an unconscious agent in it. He audibly drew in his breath, as it were, as he more and more distinctly recollected his visit to Messrs. Quirk, Gammon, and Snap; and adverted more particularly to his threats, uttered, too, in Titmouse's name, and as if by his authority. Whew! here was a kettle of fish.
Now, strange and unaccountable as, at first thought, it may appear, the very circumstance which one should have thought calculated to assuage his resentment against Titmouse—namely, that he had really injured Titmouse most seriously, (if not indeed irreparably,) and so provoked the drubbing which had just been administered to him—had quite the contrary effect. Paradoxical as it may seem, matter of clear mitigation was at once converted into matter of aggravation. Were the feelings which Huckaback then experienced, akin to that which often produces hatred of a person whom one has injured? May it be thus accounted for? That there is a secret satisfaction in the mere consciousness of being a sufferer—a martyr—and that, too, in the presence of a person whom one perceives to be aware that he has wantonly injured one; that one's bruised spirit is soothed by the sight of his remorse—by the consciousness that he is punishing himself infinitely more severely than we could punish him; and of the claim one has obtained to the sympathy of everybody who sees, or may hear of one's sufferings, (that rich and grateful balm to injured feeling.) But when, as in the case of Huckaback, feelings of this description (in a coarse and small way, to be sure, according to his kind) were suddenly encountered by a consciousness of his having deserved his sufferings; when the martyr felt himself quickly sinking into the culprit and offender; when, I say, Huckaback felt an involuntary consciousness that the gross indignities which Titmouse had just inflicted on him, had been justified by the provocation—nay, had been far less than his mischievous and impudent interference had deserved;—and when feelings of this sort, moreover, were sharpened by a certain tingling sense of physical pain from the blows which he had received—the result was, that the sleeping lion of Huckaback's courage was very nearly awakening.
"I've half a mind, Titmouse"—said Huckaback, knitting his brows, fixing his eyes, and appearing inclined to raise his arm. There was an ominous pause for a moment or two, during which Titmouse's feelings also underwent a slight alteration. His allusion to Huckaback's ruinous insult to Messrs. Quirk, Gammon, and Snap, unconsciously converted his remorse into rage, which it rather, perhaps, resuscitated. Titmouse rose from his knees. "Ah!" said he, in quite an altered tone, "you may look fierce! you may!—you'd better strike me, Huckaback—do! Finish the mischief you've begun this day! Hit away—you're quite safe"—and he secretly prepared himself for the mischief which—did not come. "You have ruined me! you have, Huckaback!" he continued with increasing vehemence; "and I shall be cutting my throat—nay," striking his fist on the table, "I will!"
"You don't say so!" exclaimed Huckaback, apprehensively. "No, Titmouse, don't—don't think of it; it will all come right yet, depend on't; you see if it don't!"
"Oh, no, it's all done for—it's all up with me!"
"But what's been done?—let us hear," said Huckaback, as he passed a wet towel to and fro over his ensanguined features. It was by this time clear that the storm which had for some time given out only a few faint fitful flashes or flickerings in the distance, had passed away. Titmouse, with many grievous sighs, took out the letter which had produced the paroxysms I have been describing, and read it aloud. "And only see how they've spelled your name, Huckaback—look!" he added, handing his friend the letter.
"How partic'lar vulgar!" exclaimed Huckaback, with a contemptuous air, which, overspreading his features, half-closed as was his left eye, and swollen as were his cheek and nose, would have made him a queer object to one who had leisure to observe such matters. "And so this is all they say of me," he continued. "How do you come to know that I've been doing you mischief? All I did was just to look in, as respectful as possible, to ask how you was, and they very civilly told me you was very well, and we parted"–
"Nay, now, that's a lie, Huckaback, and you know it!" interrupted Titmouse.
"It's true, so help me–!" vehemently asseverated Huckaback.
"Why, perhaps you'll deny that you wrote and told me all you said," interrupted Titmouse, indignantly, feeling in his pocket for Huckaback's letter, which that worthy had at the moment quite forgotten having sent,