"With your leave, Master, I would be excused," said Brother Warboise.
"Oh, no, you won't," Brother Copas assured him. "For unless you come too, I promise to leave out all the discreditable part of the story and paint you with a halo.… It began, sir, in this way," he took up the tale as they reached the wider path, "when the man Weekes fell under a paralytic stroke, Warboise took occasion to call on him. Perhaps, Brother, you will tell us why."
"I saw in his seizure the visitation of God's wrath," said Warboise. "The man had done me a notorious wrong. He had been a swindler, and my business was destroyed through him."
"Mrs. Weekes said that even the sight of the wretch's affliction did not hinder our Brother from denouncing him. He sat down in a chair facing the paralytic, and talked of the debt: 'which now,' said he, 'you will never be able to pay.'… Nay, Master, there is better to come. When Brother Warboise got up to take his leave, the man's lips moved, and he tried to say something. His wife listened for some time, and then reported, 'He wants you to come again.' Brother Warboise wondered at this; but he called again next day. Whereupon the pleasure in the man's face so irritated him, that he sat down again and began to talk of the debt and God's judgment, in words more opprobrious than before.… His own affairs, just then, were going from bad to worse: and, in short, he found so much relief in bullying the author of his misfortunes, who could not answer back, that the call became a daily one. As for the woman, she endured it, seeing that in some mysterious way it did her husband good."
"There was nothing mysterious about it," objected Brother Warboise. "He knew himself a sinner, and desired to pay some of his penance before meeting his God."
"I don't believe it," said Copas. "But whether you're right or wrong, it doesn't affect the story much.… At length some friends extricated our Brother from his stationery business, and got him admitted to the Blanchminster Charity. The first afternoon he paid a visit in his black gown, the sick man's face so lit up at the sight that Warboise flew into a passion—did you not, Brother?"
"Did the child tell you all this?"
"Aye: from the woman's lips."
"I was annoyed, because all of a sudden it struck me that, in revenge for my straight talk, Weekes had been wanting me to call day by day that he might watch me going downhill; and that now he was gloating to see me reduced to a Blanchminster gown. So I said, 'You blackguard, you may look your fill, and carry the recollection of it to the Throne of Judgment, where I hope it may help you. But this is your last sight of me.'"
"Quite correct," nodded Copas. "Mrs. Weekes corroborates.… Well, Master, our Brother trudged back to St. Hospital with this resolve, and for a week paid no more visits to the sick. By the end of that time he had discovered, to his surprise, that he could not do without them—that somehow Weekes had become as necessary to him as he to Weekes."