This time he laughed that harsh, bitter, metallic laugh which is one of the signs of nervous passion. He had such a superiority over his assailant as nothing else could have given him. And as for Spears, shame, and wonder, and distress, struck him dumb. He gasped for breath.
“My God!” he said; “and I to fall upon you for what had never happened, and taunt you with wealth when you were poor. Poor! are you actually poor, Paul?”
“What is the use of searching into it? the facts are as I have told you. I shan’t starve,” said the young man, holding his head high.
Spears looked at him with a mixture of grief and satisfaction, and held out a large hand.
“Never mind,” he said, his face melting and working, and a smile of a very different character gleaming over it, “you would have been out of place with us if you had been Sir Paul; but come now, my lad, come now! It’s not money we want, but men. Come with us, you’ll be as welcome as the sunshine, though you have not a penny. For a rich man, I could see myself the incongruity; but for a poor man, what could be better than a new country and a fair field. Come! don’t bear malice for a few hasty words that were repented of as soon as they were said. I would have scorned to pay a word had you been kept back by your new grandeur. But now that you’re disinherited—why, Paul, come—Australia is the place for such as you. Young and strong with a good heart, and all the world before you! Why, there’s a new country for you to get hold of, to govern, if you like. Come! I’ll not oppose any dignity you may gain out there; and I tell you, you’ll have the ball at your foot, and the whole world before you! Come with us, I ask this time as a favour, Paul.”
He had held out his hand with some wavering and doubt, though with enthusiasm. But gradually a curious expression of wonder came to his face; his hand dropped at his side. Paul made no motion towards taking it; the demagogue thought it was resentment. A flush of vivid colour came over him. “Come, this is a little too much for old friends,” he said, getting up hastily from his chair, with a thrill of wounded feeling in his voice.
“Don’t wrong him, Spears,” said Fairfax. “He has had a great deal to bother him, and his foot is bad. You can meet another time and settle that. At present, let us get him out of this place. If he is angry, he has a right to be; but never mind that now. Let us get him out of here.”
Spears did not say another word. He stalked away into the house to which this room belonged, and the “hall” beyond it. It was a little tavern of the lower class in which he was living. By and by the woman came to say there was a cab at the door. And Paul limped out, leaning on Fairfax.
All was quiet outside, the meeting dispersed; only one or two men sitting in the room down stairs, who cast a curious look upon the two young men, but took no further notice. As for Spears, he did not appear at all. He was lurking behind, his heart wrung with various feelings, but too much wounded, too much disappointed, too sore and sad to show himself. If Paul had seemed to require help, the rejected prophet was lingering in the hope of offering it; but nothing of the kind seemed the case. He limped out holding Fairfax’s arm. He did not even look round him as the other did, or show any signs of a wish to see his former friend. Spears had not got through the world up to this time without mortification; but he had never suffered so acutely as now.
“Poor Spears,” Fairfax contrived to say, as they jolted along, leaving the mean and monotonous streets behind them. “I think you might have taken his hand.”