DANIEL FAGG.
What would have happened if certain things had not happened? This is a
question which is seldom set on examination papers, on account of the
great scope it offers to the imaginative faculty, and we all know how
dangerous a thing it is to develop this side of the human mind. Many a
severe historian has been spoiled by developing his imagination. But for
this, Scott might have been another Alison and Thackeray a Mill. In this
Stepney business the appearance of Angela certainly worked changes at
once remarkable and impossible to be dissociated from her name. Thus,
but for her, the unfortunate claimants must have been driven back to
their own country like baffled invaders "rolling sullenly over the
frontier." Nelly would have spent her whole life in the sadness of short
rations and long hours, with hopeless prayers for days of fatness.
Rebekah and the improvers and the dressmakers and the apprentices would
have endured the like hardness. Harry would have left the joyless city
to its joylessness, and returned to the regions whose skies are all
sunshine--to the young and fortunate--and its pavements all of gold. And
there would have been no Palace of Delight. And what would have become
of Daniel Fagg, one hardly likes to think. The unlucky Daniel had,
indeed, fallen upon very evil days. There seemed to be no longer a
single man left whom he could ask for a subscription to his book. He had
used them all up. He had sent begging letters to every Fellow of every
scientific society; he had levied contributions upon every secretary; he
had attacked in person every official at the museums of Great Russell
Street and South Kensington; he had tried all the publishers; he had
written to every bishop, nobleman, clergyman, and philanthropist of whom
he could hear, pressing upon them the claims of his great Discovery. Now
he could do no more. The subscriptions he had received for publishing
his book were spent in necessary food and lodgings: nobody at the Museum
would even see him; he got no more answers to his letters: starvation
stared him in the face.
For three days he had lived upon ninepence. Threepence a day for food.
Think of that, ye who are fed regularly, and fed well. Threepence, to
satisfy all the cravings of an excellent appetite! There was now no more
money left. And in two days more the week's rent would be due.
On the morning when he came forth, hungry and miserable, without even
the penny for a loaf, it happened that Angela was standing at her upper
window, on the other side of the Green, and, fortunately for the unlucky
scholar that she saw him. His strange behavior made her watch him. First
he looked up and down the street in uncertainty; then, as if he had
business which could not be delayed a moment, he turned to the right and
marched straight away toward the Mile End Road. This was because he
thought he would go to the Head of the Egyptian Department at the
British Museum and borrow five shillings. Then he stopped suddenly: this
was because he remembered that he would have to send in his name, and
that the chief would certainly refuse to see him. Then he turned slowly
and walked, dragging his limbs and hanging his head in the opposite
direction--because he was resolved to make for the London Docks, and
drop accidentally into the sluggish green water, the first drop of which
kills almost as certainly as a glass of Bourbon whiskey. Then he thought
that there would be some luxury in sitting down for a few moments to
think comfortably over his approaching demise, and of the noise it would
make in the learned world, and how remorseful and ashamed the
scholars--especially he of the Egyptian Department--would feel for the
short balance of their sin-laden days, and he took a seat on a bench in
the green-garden with this view. As he thought he leaned forward,
staring into vacancy, and in his face there grew so dark an expression
of despair and terror that Angela shuddered and ran for her hat,
recollecting that she had heard of his poverty and disappointments.
"I am afraid you are not well, Mr. Fagg."
He started and looked up. In imagination he was already lying dead at
the bottom of the green-water, and before his troubled mind there were
floating confused images of his former life, now past and dead and gone.
He saw himself in his Australian cottage arriving at his grand
discovery; he was lecturing about it on a platform; he was standing on
the deck of a ship, drinking farewell nobblers with an enthusiastic
crowd; and he was wandering hungry, neglected, despised, about the stony
streets of London.
"Well? No: I am not well," he replied presently, understanding things a
little.
"Is it distress of mind or of body, Mr. Fagg?"
"Yesterday it was both; to-night it will be both; just now it is only
one."
"Which one?"
"Mind," he replied fiercely, refusing to acknowledge that he was
starving. He threw his hat back, dashed his subscription book to the
ground, and banged the unoffending bench with his fists.
"As for mind," he went on, "it's a pity I was born with any. I wish I'd
had no more mind than my neighbors. It's mind, and nothing else, that
has brought me to this."
"What is this, Mr. Fagg?"
"Nothing to you. Go your ways; you are young; you have yet your hopes,
which may come to nothing, same as mine; even though they are not, like
mine, hopes of glory and learning. There's Mr. Goslett in love with you;
what is mind to you? Nothing. And you in love with him. Very likely
he'll go off with another woman, and then you'll find out what it is to
be disappointed. What is mind to anybody? Nothing. Do they care for it
in the Museum? No. Does the head of the Egyptian Department care for it?
Not he; not a bit. It's a cruel and a selfish country."
"O Mr. Fagg!" She disregarded his allusion to herself, though it was
sufficiently downright.
"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."
"I do not know--sympathy is a wonderful medicine sometimes; it works
miracles. I think, Mr. Fagg, you had better let me pay my subscription
in advance--you can give me the change when you please."
She placed a sovereign in his hand. His fingers clutched it greedily.
Then his conscience smote him--her kind words, her flattery, touched his
heart.
"I cannot take it," he said. "Mr. Goslett warned me not to take your
money. Besides (he gasped, and pointed to the subscription
list)--fifty-one names! They've all paid their money for printing the
book. I've eaten up all the money, and I shall eat up yours as well.
Take the sovereign back--I can starve. When I am dead I would rather be
remembered for my discovery than for a shameful devourer of subscription
money."
She took him by the arm, and led him unresisting to the establishment.
"We must look after you, Mr. Fagg," she said. "Now I have got a
beautiful room, where no one sits all day long except sometimes a
crippled girl, and sometimes myself. In the evening the girls have it.
You may bring your books there, if you like, and sit there to work when
you please. And by the way"--she added this as if it were a matter of
the very least consequence, hardly worth mentioning--"if you would like
to join us any day at dinner (we take our simple meals at one), the
girls, no doubt, will all think it a great honor to have so
distinguished a scholar at table with them."
Mr. Fagg blushed with pleasure. Why--if the British Museum treated him
with contumely; if nobody would subscribe to his book; if he was weary
of asking and being refused--here was a haven of refuge, where he would
receive some of the honor due to a scholar.
"And now that you are here, Mr. Fagg"--said Angela, when she had broken
bread and given thanks--"you shall tell me all about your discovery.
Because, you see, we are so ignorant, we girls of the working classes,
that I do not exactly know what is your discovery."
He sat down and asked for a piece of paper. With this assistance he
began his exposition.
"I was drawn to my investigation," he said solemnly, "by a little old
book about the wisdom of the ancients; that is now five years ago, and I
was then fifty-five years of age. No time to be lost (says I to myself)
if anything is to be done. The more I read and the more I thought--I was
in the shoemaking trade and I'm not ashamed to own it; for it's a fine
business for such as are born with a head for thinking--the more I
thought, I say, the more I was puzzled. For there seemed to me no way
possible of reconciling what the scholars said."
"You have not told me the subject of your research yet."
"Antiquity," he replied grandly. "All antiquity was the subject of my
research. First, I read about the Egyptians and the hieroglyphics; then
I got hold of a new book, all about the Assyrians and the cuniform
character."
"I see," said Angela. "You were attracted by the ancient inscriptions?"
"Naturally. Without inscriptions where are you? The scholars said this,
and the scholars said that--they talked of reading the Egyptian language
and the Assyrian and the Median and what not. That wouldn't do for me."
The audacity of the little man excited Angela's curiosity, which had
been languid.
"Pray go on," she said.
"The scholars have the same books to go to as me, yet they don't
go--they've eyes as good, but they won't use them. Now follow me, miss,
and you'll be surprised. When Abraham went down into Egypt, did he
understand their language, or didn't he?"
"Why, I suppose--at least, it is not said that he did not."
"Of course he did. When Joseph went there, did he understand them? Of
course he did. When Jacob and his sons came into the country, did they
talk a strange speech? Not they. When Solomon married an Egyptian
princess, did he understand her talk? Why, of course he did. Now, do you
guess what's coming next?"
"No--not at all."
"None of the scholars could. Listen, then: if they all understood each
other, they must all have talked the same language--mustn't they?"
"Why, it would seem so."
"It's a sound argument, which can't be denied. Nobody can deny it--I
defy them. If they understood each other there must have been a common
language. Where did this common language spread? Over all the countries
thereabout. What was the common language? Hebrew."
"Oh," said Angela, "then they all talked Hebrew?"
"Every man Jack--nothing else known. What next? They wanted to write it.
Now we find what seems to be one character in Egypt, and another in
Syria, and another in Arabia, and another in Phoenicia, and another in
Judæa. Bless you! I know all about these alphabets. What I say is--if a
common language, then a common alphabet to write it with."
"I see. A common alphabet, which you discovered, perhaps?"
"That, young lady, is my discovery--that is the greatest discovery of
the age. I found it myself, once a small shoemaker in a little Victorian
township--I alone found out that common alphabet, and have come over
here to make it known. Not bad, says you, for a shoemaker, who had to
teach himself his own Hebrew."
"And the scholars here----"
"They're jealous--that's what it is; they're jealous. Most of them have
written books to prove other things, and they won't give in and own that
they've been wrong. My word! the scholars----" He paused and shook his
hand before her face. "Some of them have got the Hebrew alphabet, and
try to make out how one letter is a house and another a bull's head. And
so on. And some have got the cuneiforms, and they make out that one
bundle of arrows is an A and another a B. And so on. And some have got
the hieroglyphic, and it's the same game with all. While I--if you
please--with my little plain discovery just show that all the different
alphabets--different to outward seeming--are really one and the same."
"This is very interesting," said Angela. The little man was glowing with
enthusiasm and pride. He was transformed; he walked up and down throwing
about his arms; he stood before her looking almost tall; his eyes
flashed with fire, and his voice was strong. "And can you read
inscriptions by your simple alphabet?"
"There is not," he replied, "a single inscription in the British Museum
that I can't read. I just sit down before it, with my Hebrew dictionary
in my hand--I didn't tell you I learned Hebrew on purpose, did I?--and I
read that inscription, however long it is. Ah!"
"This seems extraordinary. Can you show me your alphabet?"
He sat down and began to make figures.
"What is the simplest figure? A circle; a square; a naught? No. A
triangle. Very good, then. Do you think they were such fools as to copy
a great ugly bull's head when they'd got a triangle ready to their
hands, and easy to draw? Not they: they just made a triangle--so--" [he
drew an equilateral triangle on its base], "and called it the first
letter; and two triangles, one atop the other--so--and called that the
second letter. Then they struck their triangle in another position, and
it was the third letter; and in another, and its fourth----" Angela felt
as if her head was swimming as he manipulated his triangles, and rapidly
produced his primitive alphabet, which really did present some
resemblance to the modern symbols. "There--and there--and there--and
what is that; and this? And so you've got the whole. Now, young lady,
with this in your hand, which is the key to all learning--and the
Hebrew dictionary, there's nothing you can't manage."
"And an account of this is to be given in your book, is it?"
"That is the secret of my book. Now you know what it was I found out;
now you see why my friends paid my passage home, and are now looking for
the glory which they prophesied."
"Don't get gloomy again, Mr. Fagg. It is a long lane, you know, that has
no turning. Let us hope for better luck."
"No one will ever know," he went on, "the inscriptions that I have
found--and read--in the Museum. They don't know what they've got. I've
told nobody yet, but they are all in the book, and I'll tell you
beforehand, Miss Kennedy, because you've been kind to me. Yes, a woman
is best; I ought to have gone to the woman first. I would marry you,
Miss Kennedy--I would indeed; but--I am too old, and besides, I don't
think I could afford a family."
"I thank you, Mr. Fagg, all the same. You do me a great honor. But about
these inscriptions?"
"Mind, it's a secret." He lowered his voice to a whisper. "There's
cuniform inscriptions in the Museum with David and Jonathan on
them--ah!--and Balaam and Balak--Aho!"--he positively chuckled over the
thought of these great finds--"and the whole life of Jezebel--Jezebel!
What do you think of that? And what else do you think they have got,
only they don't know it? The two tables of stone! Nothing short of the
two tables, with the Ten Commandments written out at length!"
Angela gazed with amazement at this admirable man: his faith in himself;
his audacity; the grandeur of his conceptions; the wonderful power of
his imagination overwhelmed her. But, to be sure, she had never before
met a genuine enthusiast.
"I know where they are kept; nobody else knows. It is in a dark corner;
they are each about two feet high, and there's a hole in the corner of
each for Moses' thumb to hold them by. Think of that! I've read them all
through--only," he added with a look of bewilderment, "I think there
must be something wrong with my Hebrew dictionary, because none of the
commandments read quite right. One or two come out quite surprising. Yet
the stones must be right, mustn't they? There can be no question about
that, and the discovery must be right. No question about that. And as
for the dictionaries--who put them together? Tell me that! Yah! the
scholars!"