| 224 | 225 | 226 | 227 | 228 |
| 1 | 74 | 149 | 223 | 297 |
|
"
Hello!" he said, at the sight of his facial disarray. "Who's been
hitting you?"
"That's my affair," said Denton.
"Not if it spiles your work, it ain't," said the man in yellow. "You
mind that."
Denton made no answer. He was a rough--a labourer. He wore the blue
canvas. The laws of assault and battery, he knew, were not for the
likes of him. He went to his press.
He could feel the skin of his brow and chin and head lifting themselves
to noble bruises, felt the throb and pain of each aspiring contusion.
His nervous system slid down to lethargy; at each movement in his press
adjustment he felt he lifted a weight. And as for his honour--that too
throbbed and puffed. How did he stand? What precisely had happened in
the last ten minutes? What would happen next? He knew that here was
enormous matter for thought, and he could not think save in disordered
snatches.
His mood was a sort of stagnant astonishment. All his conceptions were
overthrown. He had regarded his security from physical violence as
inherent, as one of the conditions of life. So, indeed, it had been
while he wore his middle-class costume, had his middle-class property to
serve for his defence. But who would interfere among Labour roughs
226
Page
Quick Jump
|