“You shall have it!” he repeated, moistening his parched lips.
To Mr. Roylston’s fascinated gaze, the boy seemed transformed; a soul, misshaped, distorted, hitherto utterly abased, had risen in that despised body, and was leaping forth from the boy’s eyes to grapple with his own soul. He had a sickening sense that he was about to pass through an unseemly scene, the most unseemly and disagreeable scene of his life, and that he was powerless to avert it.
“You shall have it,” repeated Finch again. “I have cheated—cheated—cheated—day after day—day after day. And I’ll tell you why. Because, slave as I would, work as I could for you, I never got one mark of credit, one word of praise, one syllable of recognition from your cold hateful mouth. I tried like a dog to do my best for you—it was poor, but it was my best! but it was no use. From the day I got to this place you have hated and despised me. Oh, I have seen it, and knew it, and cursed you, cursed you for it. You wouldn’t let yourself be fair. Do you know, I’ve lived in hell in this school. And at last, I determined to cheat you, to pay you back in the only dirty way I knew how. But to-day, something—I don’t know what—it wasn’t fear of you—something made me honest. The paper you took from me I had written out from memory after I got into the room.”
“Stick to facts,” said the master.
“I am sticking to facts. Believe it or not—it’s true. That’s true, though I who tell it am a cheat and a liar and a sneak. I have been all that—not because I was made that way or wanted to be, I don’t think, but because I couldn’t get a chance to be myself, couldn’t get a show. And you—you kept me from being decent as much as anybody else, as much as the biggest bully in the school. You want me to stick to facts. All right, I’ll stick to ‘em. I have hated you. I have hated you so that many a time I’ve wanted to kill you. And because I couldn’t think of any way to fight you in the open, I have been low and vile, and fought you in the dark. You thought Kit Wilson rough-housed your rooms last year, didn’t you? That’s the way you suspect people without evidence, and act on your suspicions and can’t hide ‘em when you don’t dare to act. I hate Wilson too, so I was glad when you thought he was the guilty one. But I did it, I tell you. I rough-housed your rooms and hid your papers and messed up your desk drawers and books. I couldn’t stand it. I can’t stand it any longer. You’ll have me fired, I know that—and I don’t care. But for once in your life you are hearing what is thought of you. You’re hated, hated, hated!”
The boy paused for a moment, out of breath, still clutching the table desperately. Mr. Roylston tried but could not speak. A thousand emotions stung him to the quick; and deep within, there was a sense, outrageous as was this attack, that he was at the bar of an avenging justice, paying with bitter humiliation for the lack of charity of which the boy’s wild words convicted him. At last he found his voice, but he was still under the spell of the strange situation.
“I will tolerate this extraordinary conversation a moment longer. Why have you so viciously hated me?”
“Why—because you are cruel,” cried Finch, recovering himself, “because you are pitiless, because you do wicked, unkind things in the name of justice. Yes, yes, you shall have it all. You have never given me one chance, and you were glad—glad to-day when you thought you had caught me at last. You are always suspecting, suspecting evil—until at last your suspicions find it or create it. You have scared me, hurt me, hounded me—I don’t know how you do it, but you do do it—and, thank God, you’ll never do it again. Of course, you’ll have me fired now, I know that, and I don’t care. And I deserve to be. I ain’t fit to be here. But it’s you as much as anyone else that’s kept me from being fit. I am just full of hate and malice. Don’t I know it? Don’t I suffer from it?”
“Aside from my severity—or my cruelty, as you are pleased to call it,—for what else do you blame me?”