“And if the—the man who did it, was the grandson of the man who had ruined your own mother, lied before God in the church to her, and then left her to go to the workhouse, with you his outcast bastard—while he rolled in gold, and laughed at her—what would you do then, Jupp?”
“By the God that made me, Iʼd have my revenge, if I went to hell for it.”
“I have said enough. Do exactly as you please. Me you cannot help or harm. Death is all I long for—only for my children.”
Still he looked at Issachar, but now without a thought of him; only as a man looks out upon the sea or sky, expecting no return. And Issachar Jupp, so dense and pig–headed—surly and burly, and weasel–eyed—in a word, retrospectively British—gazing at Bull Garnet then, got some inkling of an anguish such as he who lives to feel—far better were it for that man that he had never been born.
CHAPTER VIII.
To bar the entail of crime. A bitter and abortive task; at least, in this vindictive world, where Christians dwell more on Mount Sinai than on the mount that did not quake and burn with fire.
And yet for this, and little else, still clung to fair fame and life the man who rather would have lain beneath the quick–lime of Newgate. It was not for the empty part, the reputation, the position, the respect of those who prove the etymon of the word by truly looking backward—not for these alone, nor mainly, did Bull Garnet bear the anguish now from month to month more bitter, deeper, less concealable. He strove with himself, and checked himself, and bit his tongue, and jerked back his heart, and nursed that shattered lie, his life, if so might be that Pearl and Bob should start anew in another land, with a fair career before them. Not that he cared, more than he could help, whether they might be rich or poor; only that he would like them to have the chance of choosing.