What could he, odd man in a country printing office, hope to offer? Even George Street, that up to this time had appeared a right and proper kind of thoroughfare for a country town, now looked mean and squalid, and Windsor itself a grave for youth and energy. He could not stand it. He felt sure he could not stand it. Better far to starve in a city than vegetate amidst the Hawkesbury flats, animate and inanimate.
And joined with this thought was a passionate resolve to see Bertha Summerhayes again, to strive for her, to fight for her if need be, but to possess her at any cost.
* * * * *
On Pitt Town Common, the following morning, Alexander Booth was having an inward experience, not unlike that of his chum, Huey. He had been twice to the lecture, and though not mesmerized by the Professor, he was affected in a most strange manner by his fair assistant.
He had not spoken to her, he had only seen her as one of a small audience, yet she already filled his thoughts in a way that was engrossing and irresistible, almost painful. It was as though his mind had been a clean slate and she the first to write on it, not in part, but over the whole surface.
So it came about that the logs would not split that day; they might have been tough or fuzzy, or crossed in the grain. He had never found his judgment so mistaken as to how a tree would run. Then he took to cursing the logs, the wedges, and the maul, then by progression to damn the common, the life he was leading, and himself for a fool for following it. He who was used to whistle at his work, like a magpie on a stump, never piped a note, and though the sun glared down through the shadeless forest of box and ironbark on the brown grass and dusty track, it seemed to him a dark cloud was in the sky.
Going into Windsor at last, he flogged the horse in a way unusual to him, and seeing Huey in George Street, hailed him with a sense of relief.
“I’m full up, Huey.”
“Full of what?”
“Full of this dog’s life, of slogging all day for a mere nothing. I’m going to give it best and clear.”