“A man who has committed a forgery, may very well be suspected of theft,” returned Heathcote, who, having recovered his presence of mind, answered with his usual brutality of manner.
“And what may you not be accused of, then?” demanded Green, scarcely able to restrain himself from flying like a tiger-cat at his master: “for what have you not committed?”
“By heaven, Mr. Green, this shall last no longer!” ejaculated Heathcote, starting from his seat: “you are drunk, sir—you have been drinking, I tell you. Come—be reasonable,” he continued, almost in a coaxing tone: “go home quietly—and be here early in the morning to make an apology for your present bad conduct. I promise to forgive you.”
“Forgive me!” repeated Green:—“forgive me!” he exclaimed again, with a chuckling laugh which did Mr. Heathcote harm to hear it: “I have done nothing, sir, that needs forgiveness—and if I was to kick you thrice round this room where you have tyrannised over me for twelve years, it would only be paying back a minute portion of all I owe you.”
“Mr. Green, you will provoke me to do something desperate,” retorted Heathcote, in a low, thick tone, as he approached his head clerk to read in that individual’s countenance the solution of his present enigmatical conduct: “you will provoke me, I say—and then you will be sorry for your rashness. Consider—reflect—in another month’s time the thousand pounds must positively be forthcoming——”
“Will you replace it for me?” demanded Green, abruptly.
“You know what I have always said——”
“Yes—and I now know likewise what you have always meant,” interrupted Green, darting a look full of malignant hate and savage spite at the lawyer. “For twelve long years, sir, I have been your slave—your vile and abject slave. I was a criminal, it is true, when I first came to you—for I had committed that forgery which you detected, and which placed me in your power. But I had still the feelings of a man—whereas you soon imbued me with such ideas and reduced me to such a miserable state of servitude, that I have wept bitter, bitter tears at the thought of my own deep degradation. I could have lied for you—I could have committed perjury for you—I could have performed all the meannesses and condescended to do all the vile and low trickery which form part and parcel of your business:—but when I found myself used as a mere tool and instrument and treated like a spaniel, without ever having a single kind word uttered to cheer me beneath a yoke of crushing despotism——”
“You have had two guineas a week, paid with scrupulous regularity,” interposed Heathcote, who, from the tenour of the observations which Green had just made, began to fancy that he was only excited by liquor to make vague and general complaints, but that he was still as much in his power as ever.
“Two guineas a-week!” repeated the man, indignantly: “you are always dinning that fact in my ears. But heaven knows that were my salary six times as much, it would not repay me for all the cruelty I have endured at your hands—nor for all that one is obliged to see and go through while in your employment. I had some tender feelings once: but they have long ago been stifled by the horrible spectacles of woe and misery which have been forced upon my sight, and which have sprung from your detestable covetousness. I have seen children starving—mothers weeping over their dying babes—while the fathers and husbands have been languishing in gaol,—yes, in the debtor’s gaol where you have thrown them, and where some of them have died, cursing the name of James Heathcote! Yes, sir—I have seen all this: and what is more—aye, and worse, too—far worse—I have been an involuntary instrument, as your clerk, in causing much of that awful misery, the mere thought of which almost drives me mad. Talk of the black turpitude of murdering with a dagger or a pistol!—why, it is a mercy to the slow—lingering—piece-meal murders which you and men of your stamp are constantly perpetrating. For as true as there is a God in heaven, there are more slow and cold-blooded murders committed in one year by a certain class of attorneys, than are recorded in the annals of Newgate for a whole century!”