“Stop, Hugh,” said Julian sullenly; “I horse-whipped him first.”
“You!” said Lillyston.
“Yes,” answered Brogten slowly, while his voice shook with passion; “yes, he did horse-whip me, and I took it. Note that, you Lillyston, and don’t think I’m afraid of you. And as for you, Home, listen to me. I came here solely to tell you that though I screwed you in, I never dreamt that such results would follow. I never dreamt—so help me, God!—of doing more than causing you ten minutes’ annoyance; and now, when I was told how it had hindered you in the examination, I was heartily sorry and ashamed of what I had done, and,”—he began to speak lower and faster, as the remembrance of a better mood came over him—“and I came here, Home, to ask your forgiveness. Yes; I to beg pardon of you, and humbly and honestly too. And now you see how you have received me. Yes,” he continued fiercely; “no word between us from henceforth. You have horse-whipped me, sir, and I, who never took a blow from man yet without returning it, have taken your horse-whipping. Take your whip,” he said, flinging it to the end of the room; “and after that never dare to say that all accounts are not squared between us.”
Lillyston made room for him to pass. With a lowering countenance he turned from them, and they continued silent till they had heard his last heavy footfall as he went down the echoing stairs.
Lillyston sat on the sofa, and Julian kept his eyes fixed on the floor. There seemed nothing to talk about, so Lillyston merely said, “Good-night, Julian. I came to advise you to go to bed early, and so get a good night’s rest, that you may be yourself to-morrow. You have not been yourself to-day. Good-night.”
But a worse evil had happened to Julian that day than hindrance in his career of ambition and hope. He had lost a golden opportunity for an act of Christian forgiveness which might have had the noblest influence on the life of an erring human soul. He had lost a golden opportunity of doing lasting good, and that, too, to one who hated him. Alas, it is too seldom that we have power in life to raise up them that fall! Julian felt bitterly, he felt even with poignancy, Brogten’s closing words; but it was too late now to offer the forgiveness which would have been invaluable to his persecutor, and would have had a healing effect on his own troubled thoughts so short a time before. All this gave deeper vexation to Julian’s heart as he went moodily to bed.
And Brogten? He sat sullenly over his fire till the last spark died from its ashes, and his lamp flickered out, and he shivered with cold. “It is of no use to conquer myself,” he thought; “it is of no use to do better or be better if this comes of it. Horse-whipped, and by him!” But, as he had said, he no longer grieved over Julian’s injury. That was wiped off by the horse-whipping, and he had now made himself understand that his inward respect for Home was deeper than the long superficial quarrel that had existed between them. It was against Kennedy that the current of his anger now swept this ever-growing temptation for revenge. His craving, often yielded to, became terrible in its virulence, and from this day forward there was in Brogten’s character a marked change for the worse. He ever watched for his opportunity, certain that it would come in time; and this encouragement of one bad passion opened the floodgates for a hundred more. And so on this evening he went on selling himself more and more completely to the devil, till the anger within him burned with a red heat, and as he went to bed the last words he muttered to himself were, “That fellow Kennedy shall rue it; curse him, he shall rue it to his dying day.”