The attraction of gazing at, of gloating upon, such a
phenomenon was great. He had been a hectoring kind of man, walking very
noisily among his fellows, taking to himself a great deal of room. Such an
one gives offence frequently if unconsciously. There was none who saw
William Day standing up for his sentence in the dock that day who bore a
grudge, or remembered.
With some there he had assumed an insolent superiority, with other few,
whose position entitled them to choose their acquaintance, he had been
unwarrantably familiar. For the minute he held his place after sentence
was pronounced his eyes travelled slowly but with a dreadful look of
appeal over the familiar faces. Over faces of tradespeople, with whom he
had dealt; of clients for whom he had done business; of people with whom
he had dined and whom he had entertained in return; of men who had driven
him in cabs, blacked his boots, carried his portmanteaux. The slowly
travelling gaze had in it something of a sick despair, something of a wild
appeal. The men over whom it passed, bore it in absolute, breathless
silence, but they never forgot it.
The great cheeks that had seemed ready to burst with good-living, hung
loose and flabby now, the hands that had been prompt with the grasp of
friendship, that had waved greetings from window or pavement, that had
ever been generous in giving, clung to the rail of the dock, the knuckles
whitened with the tension.
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