"Yes: but I will be revenged. I will do something—yes—something that shall tell all Australia how I have been wronged; the colony of Victoria shall ring with my story. It shall sap their loyalty; they shall grow discontented; they will import more Irishmen; there shall be separation. Yes: my friends shall demand reparation in revenge for my treatment."
"It is Christian to forgive, Mr. Fagg."
"I will forgive when I have had my revenge. No one shall say I am vindictive. Ah!"—he heaved a profound sigh. "They gave me a dinner before I came away; they drank my health; they all told me of the reception I should get, and the glory that awaited me. Look at me now. Not one penny in my pocket. Not one man who believes in the Discovery. Therefore I may truly say that it is better to be born without a brain."
"This is your subscription-book, I believe." She took and turned over its pages.
"Come, Mr. Fagg, you have come to the fifty-first copy of the book. Fifty-one copies ordered beforehand does not look like disbelief. May I add my name? That will make fifty-two. Twelve shillings and sixpence, I see. Oh, I shall look forward with the greatest interest to the appearance of the book, I assure you. Yet you must not expect of a dressmaker much knowledge of Hebrew, Mr. Fagg. You great scholars must be contented with the simple admiration of ignorant work-girls." He was too far gone in misery to be easily soothed, but he began to wish he had not said that cruel thing about possible desertion by her lover.
"Admiration!" he echoed with a hollow groan. "And yesterday nothing to eat further than threepence, and the day before the same, and the day before that. In Australia, when I was in the shoemaking line, there was always plenty to eat. Starvation, I suppose, goes to the brain. And is the cause of suicide, too. I know a beautiful place in the London Docks, where the water's green with minerals. I shall go there." He pushed his hands deeper into his pockets, while his bushy eyebrows frowned so horribly that two children who were playing in the walk screamed with terror and fled without stopping. "That water poisons a man directly."
"Come, Mr. Fagg," said Angela, "we allow something for the superior activity of great minds. But we must not talk of despair, when there should be nothing beyond a little despondency."
He shook his head.
"Too much reading has probably disordered your digestion, Mr. Fagg. You want rest and society, with sympathy—a woman's sympathy. Scholars, perhaps, are sometimes jealous."
"Reading has emptied my purse," he said. "Sympathy won't fill it."