'And Mr Lightwood,' added the boy, with a burning face, under the flaming aggravation of getting no sort of answer or attention, 'Ihope you'll take notice of what I have said to your friend, and of what your friend has heard me say, word by word, whatever he pretends to the contrary. You are bound to take notice of it, Mr Lightwood, for, as I have already mentioned, you first brought your friend into my sister's company, and but for you we never should have seen him. Lord knows none of us ever wanted him, any more than any of us will ever miss him. Now Mr Headstone, as Mr Eugene Wrayburn has been obliged to hear what I had to say, and couldn't help himself, and as I have said it out to the last word, we have done all we wanted to do, and may go.'
'Go down-stairs, and leave me a moment, Hexam,' he returned.
The boy complying with an indignant look and as much noise as he could make, swung out of the room; and Lightwood went to the window, and leaned there, looking out.
'You think me of no more value than the dirt under your feet,' said Bradley to Eugene, speaking in a carefully weighed and measured tone, or he could not have spoken at all.
'I assure you, Schoolmaster,' replied Eugene, 'I don't think about you.'
'That's not true,' returned the other; 'you know better.'
'That's coarse,' Eugene retorted; 'but you DON'T know better.'
'Mr Wrayburn, at least I know very well that it would be idle to set myself against you in insolent words or overbearing manners.
That lad who has just gone out could put you to shame in half-a-dozen branches of knowledge in half an hour, but you can throw him aside like an inferior. You can do as much by me, I have no doubt, beforehand.'
'Possibly,' remarked Eugene.
'But I am more than a lad,' said Bradley, with his clutching hand, 'and I WILL be heard, sir.'
'As a schoolmaster,' said Eugene, 'you are always being heard.
That ought to content you.'
'But it does not content me,' replied the other, white with passion.
'Do you suppose that a man, in forming himself for the duties Idischarge, and in watching and repressing himself daily to discharge them well, dismisses a man's nature?'
'I suppose you,' said Eugene, 'judging from what I see as I look at you, to be rather too passionate for a good schoolmaster.' As he spoke, he tossed away the end of his cigar.
'Passionate with you, sir, I admit I am. Passionate with you, sir, Irespect myself for being. But I have not Devils for my pupils.'
'For your Teachers, I should rather say,' replied Eugene.
'Mr Wrayburn.'
'Schoolmaster.'
'Sir, my name is Bradley Headstone.'
'As you justly said, my good sir, your name cannot concern me.
Now, what more?'
'This more. Oh, what a misfortune is mine,' cried Bradley, breaking off to wipe the starting perspiration from his face as he shook from head to foot, 'that I cannot so control myself as to appear a stronger creature than this, when a man who has not felt in all his life what I have felt in a day can so command himself!'
He said it in a very agony, and even followed it with an errant motion of his hands as if he could have torn himself.
Eugene Wrayburn looked on at him, as if he found him beginning to be rather an entertaining study.
'Mr Wrayburn, I desire to say something to you on my own part.'
'Come, come, Schoolmaster,' returned Eugene, with a languid approach to impatience as the other again struggled with himself;'say what you have to say. And let me remind you that the door is standing open, and your young friend waiting for you on the stairs.'
'When I accompanied that youth here, sir, I did so with the purpose of adding, as a man whom you should not be permitted to put aside, in case you put him aside as a boy, that his instinct is correct and right.' Thus Bradley Headstone, with great effort and difficulty.
'Is that all?' asked Eugene.
'No, sir,' said the other, flushed and fierce. 'I strongly support him in his disapproval of your visits to his sister, and in his objection to your officiousness--and worse--in what you have taken upon yourself to do for her.'
'Is THAT all?' asked Eugene.
'No, sir. I determined to tell you that you are not justified in these proceedings, and that they are injurious to his sister.'
'Are you her schoolmaster as well as her brother's?--Or perhaps you would like to be?' said Eugene.
It was a stab that the blood followed, in its rush to Bradley Headstone's face, as swiftly as if it had been dealt with a dagger.
'What do you mean by that?' was as much as he could utter.
'A natural ambition enough,' said Eugene, coolly. Far be it from me to say otherwise. The sister who is something too much upon your lips, perhaps--is so very different from all the associations to which she had been used, and from all the low obscure people about her, that it is a very natural ambition.'
'Do you throw my obscurity in my teeth, Mr Wrayburn?'
'That can hardly be, for I know nothing concerning it, Schoolmaster, and seek to know nothing.'
'You reproach me with my origin,' said Bradley Headstone; 'you cast insinuations at my bringing-up. But I tell you, sir, I have worked my way onward, out of both and in spite of both, and have a right to be considered a better man than you, with better reasons for being proud.'