Bradley toiled on, chained heavily to the idea of his hatred and his vengeance, and thinking how he might have satiated both in many better ways than the way he had taken. The instrument might have been better, the spot and the hour might have been better chosen. To batter a man down from behind in the dark, on the brink of a river, was well enough, but he ought to have been instantly disabled, whereas he had turned and seized his assailant; and so, to end it before chance-help came, and to be rid of him, he had been hurriedly thrown backward into the river before the life was fully beaten out of him. Now if it could be done again, it must not be so done. Supposing his head had been held down under water for a while. Supposing the first blow had been truer. Supposing he had been shot. Supposing he had been strangled. Suppose this way, that way, the other way. Suppose anything but getting unchained from the one idea, for that was inexorably impossible.
The school reopened next day. The scholars saw little or no change in their master’s face, for it always wore its slowly labouring expression. But, as he heard his classes, he was always doing the deed and doing it better. As he paused with his piece of chalk at the black board before writing on it, he was thinking of the spot, and whether the water was not deeper and the fall straighter, a little higher up, or a little lower down. He had half a mind to draw a line or two upon the board, and show himself what he meant. He was doing it again and improving on the manner, at prayers, in his mental arithmetic, all through his questioning, all through the day.
Charley Hexam was a master now, in another school, under another head. It was evening, and Bradley was walking in his garden observed from behind a blind by gentle little Miss Peecher, who contemplated offering him a loan of her smelling salts for headache, when Mary Anne, in faithful attendance, held up her arm.
“Yes, Mary Anne?”
“Young Mr. Hexam, if you please, ma’am, coming to see Mr. Headstone.”
“Very good, Mary Anne.”
Again Mary Anne held up her arm.
“You may speak, Mary Anne?”
“Mr. Headstone has beckoned young Mr. Hexam into his house, ma’am, and he has gone in himself without waiting for young Mr. Hexam to come up, and now he has gone in too, ma’am, and has shut the door.”
“With all my heart, Mary Anne.”
Again Mary Anne’s telegraphic arm worked.
“What more, Mary Anne?”
“They must find it rather dull and dark, Miss Peecher, for the parlour blind’s down, and neither of them pulls it up.”
“There is no accounting,” said good Miss Peecher with a little sad sigh which she repressed by laying her hand on her neat methodical boddice, “there is no accounting for tastes, Mary Anne.”
Charley, entering the dark room, stopped short when he saw his old friend in its yellow shade.
“Come in, Hexam, come in.”
Charley advanced to take the hand that was held out to him; but stopped again, short of it. The heavy, bloodshot eyes of the schoolmaster, rising to his face with an effort, met his look of scrutiny.
“Mr. Headstone, what’s the matter?”
“Matter? Where?”
“Mr. Headstone, have you heard the news? This news about the fellow, Mr. Eugene Wrayburn? That he is killed?”
“He is dead, then!” exclaimed Bradley.
Young Hexam standing looking at him, he moistened his lips with his tongue, looked about the room, glanced at his former pupil, and looked down. “I heard of the outrage,” said Bradley, trying to constrain his working mouth, “but I had not heard the end of it.”
“Where were you,” said the boy, advancing a step as he lowered his voice, “when it was done? Stop! I don’t ask that. Don’t tell me. If you force your confidence upon me, Mr. Headstone, I’ll give up every word of it. Mind! Take notice. I’ll give up it, and I’ll give up you. I will!”
The wretched creature seemed to suffer acutely under this renunciation. A desolate air of utter and complete loneliness fell upon him, like a visible shade.
“It’s for me to speak, not you,” said the boy. “If you do, you’ll do it at your peril. I am going to put your selfishness before you, Mr. Headstone—your passionate, violent, and ungovernable selfishness—to show you why I can, and why I will, have nothing more to do with you.”
He looked at young Hexam as if he were waiting for a scholar to go on with a lesson that he knew by heart and was deadly tired of. But he had said his last word to him.
“If you had any part—I don’t say what—in this attack,” pursued the boy; “or if you know anything about it—I don’t say how much—or if you know who did it—I go no closer—you did an injury to me that’s never to be forgiven. You know that I took you with me to his chambers in the Temple when I told him my opinion of him, and made myself responsible for my opinion of you. You know that I took you with me when I was watching him
