From that moment until the end of the interview, the two men alternately were standing there distinctly before the audience upon the platform.
“Doubledick! do you know where you are going to?”
“To the devil, sir!”
“Yes, and very fast.”
Thereupon one did not hear the words simply, one saw it done precisely as it is described in the original narrative: “Private Richard Doubledick turned the straw of the Black Hole in his mouth and made a miserable salute of acquiescence.” Captain Taunton then remonstrates with him thus earnestly: “Doubledick, since I entered his Majesty's service, a boy of seventeen, I have been pained to see many men of promise going that road; but I have never been so pained to see a man determined to make the shameful journey, as I have been, ever since you joined the regiment, to see you.” At this point in the printed story, as it was originally penned, one reads that “Private Richard Doubledick began to find a film stealing over the floor at which he looked; also to find the legs of the Captain's breakfast-table turning crooked as if he saw them through water.” Although those words are erased in the reading copy, and were not uttered, pretty nearly the effect of them was visible when, after a momentary pause, the disheartened utterance was faltered out—
“I am only a common soldier, sir. It signifies very little what such a poor brute comes to.”
In answer to the next remonstrance from his officer, Doubledick's words are blurted out yet more despairingly—
“I hope to get shot soon, sir, and then the regiment, and the world together, will be rid of me!”
What are the descriptive words immediately following this in the printed narrative? They also were visibly expressed upon the platform. “Looking up he met the eyes that had so strong an influence over him. He put his hand before his own eyes, and the breast of his disgrace-jacket swelled as if it would fly asunder.” His observant adviser thereupon quietly but very earnestly remarks, that he “would rather see this in him (Doubledick) than he would see five thousand guineas counted out upon the table between them for a gift to his (the Captain's) good mother,” adding suddenly, “Have you a mother?” Doubledick is thankful to say she is dead. Reminded by the Captain that if his praises were sounded from mouth to mouth through the whole regiment, through the whole army, through the whole country, he would wish she had lived to say with pride and joy, “He is my son!” Doubledick cries out, “Spare me, sir! She would never have heard any good of me. She would never have had any pride or joy in owning herself my mother. Love and compassion she might have had, and would always have had, I know; but not—spare me, sir! I am a broken wretch quite at your mercy.” By this time, according to the words of the writing, according only to the eloquent action of the Reading, “He had turned his face to the wall and stretched out his imploring hand.” How eloquently that “imploring hand” spoke in the agonised, dumb supplication of its movement, coupled as it was with the shaken frame and the averted countenance, those who witnessed this Reading will readily recall to their recollection. As also the emotion expressed in the next broken utterances exchanged by the interlocutors:—
“My friend———”