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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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1101 wreaking your bad passions upon him: what if we tell you that, sinking under your persecution, sir, and the misery and ill-usage of a life short in years but long in suffering, this poor creature has gone to tell his sad tale where, for your part in it, you must surely answer?’ ‘If you tell me,’ said Ralph; ‘if you tell me that he is dead, I forgive you all else. If you tell me that he is dead, I am in your debt and bound to you for life. He is! I see it in your faces. Who triumphs now? Is this your dreadful news; this your terrible intelligence? You see how it moves me. You did well to send. I would have travelled a hundred miles afoot, through mud, mire, and darkness, to hear this news just at this time.’ Even then, moved as he was by this savage joy, Ralph could see in the faces of the two brothers, mingling with their look of disgust and horror, something of that indefinable compassion for himself which he had noticed before. ‘And he brought you the intelligence, did he?’ said Ralph, pointing with his finger towards the recess already mentioned; ‘and sat there, no doubt, to see me prostrated and overwhelmed by it! Ha, ha, ha! But I tell him that I’ll be a sharp thorn in his side for many a long day to come; and I tell you two, again, that you don’t know him yet; and that you’ll rue the day you took compassion on the vagabond.’ ‘You take me for your nephew,’ said a hollow voice; ‘it would be better for you, and for me too, if I were he indeed.’ The figure that he had seen so dimly, rose, and came slowly down. He started back, for he found that he confronted--not Nicholas, as he had supposed, but Brooker. Ralph had no reason, that he knew, to fear this man; he had |
