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The Professor

by Charlotte Brontë · English · Gutenberg #1028 · 520,330 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Professor

Author: Charlotte Brontë


        
Release date: August 1, 1997 [eBook #1028]
                Most recently updated: October 29, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1028

Credits: An Anonymous Volunteer and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PROFESSOR ***




THE PROFESSOR

by (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell





CONTENTS



PREFACE.



T H E   P R O F E S S O R

CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY.

CHAPTER II.

CHAPTER III.

CHAPTER IV.

CHAPTER V.

CHAPTER VI.

CHAPTER VII.

CHAPTER VIII.

CHAPTER IX.

CHAPTER X.

CHAPTER XI.

CHAPTER XII.

CHAPTER XIII.

CHAPTER XIV.

CHAPTER XV.

CHAPTER XVI.

CHAPTER XVII.

CHAPTER XVIII.

CHAPTER XIX.

CHAPTER XX.

CHAPTER XXI.

CHAPTER XXII

CHAPTER XXIII

CHAPTER XXIV.

CHAPTER XXV.








PREFACE.

This little book was written before either “Jane Eyre” or “Shirley,”
 and yet no indulgence can be solicited for it on the plea of a first
attempt. A first attempt it certainly was not, as the pen which wrote it
had been previously worn a good deal in a practice of some years. I had
not indeed published anything before I commenced “The Professor,” but
in many a crude effort, destroyed almost as soon as composed, I had
got over any such taste as I might once have had for ornamented and
redundant composition, and come to prefer what was plain and homely.
At the same time I had adopted a set of principles on the subject of
incident, &c., such as would be generally approved in theory, but the
result of which, when carried out into practice, often procures for an
author more surprise than pleasure.

I said to myself that my hero should work his way through life as I had
seen real living men work theirs--that he should never get a shilling
he had not earned--that no sudden turns should lift him in a moment to
wealth and high station; that whatever small competency he might gain,
should be won by the sweat of his brow; that, before he could find so
much as an arbour to sit down in, he should master at least half the
ascent of “the Hill of Difficulty;” that he should not even marry a
beautiful girl or a lady of rank. As Adam’s son he should share Adam’s
doom, and drain throughout life a mixed and moderate cup of enjoyment.

In the sequel, however, I find that publishers in general scarcely
approved of this system, but would have liked something more imaginative
and poetical--something more consonant with a highly wrought fancy, with
a taste for pathos, with sentiments more tender, elevated, unworldly.
Indeed, until an author has tried to dispose of a manuscript of this
kind, he can never know what stores of romance and sensibility lie
hidden in breasts he would not have suspected of casketing such
treasures. Men in business are usually thought to prefer the real; on
trial the idea will be often found fallacious: a passionate preference
for the wild, wonderful, and thrilling--the strange, startling, and
harrowing--agitates divers souls that show a calm and sober surface.

Such being the case, the reader will comprehend that to have reached
him in the form of a printed book, this brief narrative must have gone
through some struggles--which indeed it has. And after all, its
worst struggle and strongest ordeal is yet to come but it takes
comfort--subdues fear--leans on the staff of a moderate expectation--and
mutters under its breath, while lifting its eye to that of the public,

“He that is low need fear no fall.”

CURRER BELL.

The foregoing preface was written by my wife with a view to the
publication of “The Professor,” shortly after the appearance of
“Shirley.” Being dissuaded from her intention, the authoress made some
use of the materials in a subsequent work--“Villette.” As, however,
these two stories are in most respects unlike, it has been represented
to me that I ought not to withhold “The Professor” from the public. I
have therefore consented to its publication.

A. B. NICHOLLS

Haworth Parsonage,

September 22nd, 1856.






T H E    P R O F E S S O R




CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY.

THE other day, in looking over my papers, I found in my desk the
following copy of a letter, sent by me a year since to an old school
acquaintance:--

“DEAR CHARLES,

“I think when you and I were at Eton together, we were neither of
us what could be called popular characters: you were a sarcastic,
observant, shrewd, cold-blooded creature; my own portrait I will
not attempt to draw, but I cannot recollect that it was a strikingly
attractive one--can you? What animal magnetism drew thee and me together
I know not; certainly I never experienced anything of the Pylades and
Orestes sentiment for you, and I have reason to believe that you, on
your part, were equally free from all romantic regard to me. Still,
out of school hours we walked and talked continually together; when the
theme of conversation was our companions or our masters we understood
each other, and when I recurred to some sentiment of affection, some
vague love of an excellent or beautiful object, whether in animate or
inanimate nature, your sardonic coldness did not move me. I felt myself
superior to that check THEN as I do NOW.

“It is a long time since I wrote to you, and a still longer time since
I saw you. Chancing to take up a newspaper of your county the other day,
my eye fell upon your name. I began to think of old times; to run over
the events which have transpired since we separated; and I sat down
and commenced this letter. What you have been doing I know not; but you
shall hear, if you choose to listen, how the world has wagged with me.

“First, after leaving Eton, I had an interview with my maternal uncles,
Lord Tynedale and the Hon. John Seacombe. They asked me if I would enter
the Church, and my uncle the nobleman offered me the living of Seacombe,
which is in his gift, if I would; then my other uncle, Mr. Seacombe,
hinted that when I became rector of Seacombe-cum-Scaife, I might perhaps
be allowed to take, as mistress of my house and head of my parish, one
of my six cousins, his daughters, all of whom I greatly dislike.

“I declined both the Church and matrimony. A good clergyman is a good
thing, but I should have made a very bad one. As to the wife--oh how
like a night-mare is the thought of being bound for life to one of
my cousins! No doubt they are accomplished and pretty; but not an
accomplishment, not a charm of theirs, touches a chord in my bosom.
To think of passing the winter evenings by the parlour fire-side of
Seacombe Rectory alone with one of them--for instance, the large and
well-modelled statue, Sarah--no; I should be a bad husband, under such
circumstances, as well as a bad clergyman.

“When I had declined my uncles’ offers they asked me ‘what I intended
to do?’ I said I should reflect. They reminded me that I had no fortune,
and no expectation of any, and, after a considerable pause, Lord
Tynedale demanded sternly, ‘Whether I had thoughts of following my
father’s steps and engaging in trade?’ Now, I had had no thoughts of the
sort. I do not think that my turn of mind qualifies me to make a good
tradesman; my taste, my ambition does not lie in that way; but such was
the scorn expressed in Lord Tynedale’s countenance as he pronounced
the word TRADE--such the contemptuous sarcasm of his tone--that I was
instantly decided. My father was but a name to me, yet that name I did
not like to hear mentioned with a sneer to my very face. I answered
then, with haste and warmth, ‘I cannot do better than follow in
my father’s steps; yes, I will be a tradesman.’ My uncles did not
remonstrate; they and I parted with mutual disgust. In reviewing this
transaction, I find that I was quite right to shake off the burden of
Tynedale’s patronage, but a fool to offer my shoulders instantly for the
reception of another burden--one which might be more intolerable, and
which certainly was yet untried.

“I wrote instantly to Edward--you know Edward--my only brother, ten
years my senior, married to a rich mill-owner’s daughter, and now
possessor of the mill and business which was my father’s before he
failed. You are aware that my father--once reckoned a Croesus of
wealth--became bankrupt a short time previous to his death, and that my
mother lived in destitution for some six months after him, unhelped by
her aristocratical brothers, whom she had mortally offended by her union
with Crimsworth, the----shire manufacturer. At the end of the six months
she brought me into the world, and then herself left it without, I
should think, much regret, as it contained little hope or comfort for
her.

“My father’s relations took charge of Edward, as they did of me, till I
was nine years old. At that period it chanced that the representation of
an important borough in our county fell vacant; Mr. Seacombe stood for
it. My uncle Crimsworth, an astute mercantile man, took the opportunity
of writing a fierce letter to the candidate, stating that if he and Lord
Tynedale did not consent to do something towards the support of their
sister’s orphan children, he would expose their relentless and malignant
conduct towards that sister, and do his best to turn the circumstances
against Mr. Seacombe’s election. That gentleman and Lord T. knew well
enough that the Crimsworths were an unscrupulous and determined race;
they knew also that they had influence in the borough of X----; and,
making a virtue of necessity, they consented to defray the expenses of
my education. I was sent to Eton, where I remained ten years, during
which space of time Edward and I never met. He, when he grew up, entered
into trade, and pursued his calling with such diligence, ability, and
success, that now, in his thirtieth year, he was fast making a fortune.
Of this I was apprised by the occasional short letters I received from
him, some three or four times a year; which said letters never concluded
without some expression of determined enmity against the house of
Seacombe, and some reproach to me for living, as he said, on the bounty
of that house. At first, while still in boyhood, I could not understand
why, as I had no parents, I should not be indebted to my uncles Tynedale
and Seacombe for my education; but as I grew up, and heard by degrees of
the persevering hostility, the hatred till death evinced by them against
my father--of the sufferings of my mother--of all the wrongs, in short,
of our house--then did I conceive shame of the dependence in which I
lived, and form a resolution no more to take bread from hands which had
refused to minister to the necessities of my dying mother. It was by
these feelings I was influenced when I refused the Rectory of Seacombe,
and the union with one of my patrician cousins.

“An irreparable breach thus being effected between my uncles and myself,
I wrote to Edward; told him what had occurred, and informed him of my
intention to follow his steps and be a tradesman. I asked, moreover, if
he could give me employment. His answer expressed no approbation of my
conduct, but he said I might come down to ----shire, if I liked, and he
would ‘see what could be done in the way of furnishing me with work.’
I repressed all--even mental comment on his note--packed my trunk and
carpet-bag, and started for the North directly.

“After two days’ travelling (railroads were not then in existence) I
arrived, one wet October afternoon, in the town of X----. I had always
understood that Edward lived in this town, but on inquiry I found that
it was only Mr. Crimsworth’s mill and warehouse which were situated in
the smoky atmosphere of Bigben Close; his RESIDENCE lay four miles out,
in the country.

“It was late in the evening when I alighted at the gates of the
habitation designated to me as my brother’s. As I advanced up the
avenue, I could see through the shades of twilight, and the dark gloomy
mists which deepened those shades, that the house was large, and the
grounds surrounding it sufficiently spacious. I paused a moment on the
lawn in front, and leaning my back against a tall tree which rose in the
centre, I gazed with interest on the exterior of Crimsworth Hall.

“Edward is rich,” thought I to myself. ‘I believed him to be doing
well--but I did not know he was master of a mansion like this.’ Cutting
short all marvelling; speculation, conjecture, &c., I advanced to the
front door and rang. A man-servant opened it--I announced myself--he
relieved me of my wet cloak and carpet-bag, and ushered me into a
room furnished as a library, where there was a bright fire and candles
burning on the table; he informed me that his master was not yet
returned from X----market, but that he would certainly be at home in the
course of half an hour.

“Being left to myself, I took the stuffed easy chair, covered with red
morocco, which stood by the fireside, and while my eyes watched the
flames dart from the glowing coals, and the cinders fall at intervals on
the hearth, my mind busied itself in conjectures concerning the meeting
about to take place. Amidst much that was doubtful in the subject of
these conjectures, there was one thing tolerably certain--I was in no
danger of encountering severe disappointment; from this, the moderation
of my expectations guaranteed me. I anticipated no overflowings of
fraternal tenderness; Edward’s letters had always been such as to
prevent the engendering or harbouring of delusions of this sort. Still,
as I sat awaiting his arrival, I felt eager--very eager--I cannot tell
you why; my hand, so utterly a stranger to the grasp of a kindred hand,
clenched itself to repress the tremor with which impatience would fain
have shaken it.

“I thought of my uncles; and as I was engaged in wondering whether
Edward’s indifference would equal the cold disdain I had always
experienced from them, I heard the avenue gates open: wheels approached
the house; Mr. Crimsworth was arrived; and after the lapse of some
minutes, and a brief dialogue between himself and his servant in the
hall, his tread drew near the library door--that tread alone announced
the master of the house.

“I still retained some confused recollection of Edward as he was ten
years ago--a tall, wiry, raw youth; NOW, as I rose from my seat and
turned towards the library door, I saw a fine-looking and powerful man,
light-complexioned, well-made, and of athletic proportions; the first
glance made me aware of an air of promptitude and sharpness, shown
as well in his movements as in his port, his eye, and the general
expression of his face. He greeted me with brevity, and, in the moment
of shaking hands, scanned me from head to foot; he took his seat in the
morocco covered arm-chair, and motioned me to another seat.

“‘I expected you would have called at the counting-house in the Close,’
said he; and his voice, I noticed, had an abrupt accent, probably
habitual to him; he spoke also with a guttural northern tone, which
sounded harsh in my ears, accustomed to the silvery utterance of the
South.

“‘The landlord of the inn, where the coach stopped, directed me here,’
said I. ‘I doubted at first the accuracy of his information, not being
aware that you had such a residence as this.’

“‘Oh, it is all right!’ he replied, ‘only I was kept half an hour behind
time, waiting for you--that is all. I thought you must be coming by the
eight o’clock coach.’

“I expressed regret that he had had to wait; he made no answer, but
stirred the fire, as if to cover a movement of impatience; then he
scanned me again.

“I felt an inward satisfaction that I had not, in the first moment of
meeting, betrayed any warmth, any enthusiasm; that I had saluted this
man with a quiet and steady phlegm.

“‘Have you quite broken with Tynedale and Seacombe?’ he asked hastily.

“‘I do not think I shall have any further communication with them; my
refusal of their proposals will, I fancy, operate as a barrier against
all future intercourse.’

“‘Why,’ said he, ‘I may as well remind you at the very outset of our
connection, that “no man can serve two masters.” Acquaintance with Lord
Tynedale will be incompatible with assistance from me.’ There was a kind
of gratuitous menace in his eye as he looked at me in finishing this
observation.

“Feeling no disposition to reply to him, I contented myself with an
inward speculation on the differences which exist in the constitution
of men’s minds. I do not know what inference Mr. Crimsworth drew from
my silence--whether he considered it a symptom of contumacity or an
evidence of my being cowed by his peremptory manner. After a long and
hard stare at me, he rose sharply from his seat.

“‘To-morrow,’ said he, ‘I shall call your attention to some other
points; but now it is supper time, and Mrs. Crimsworth is probably
waiting; will you come?’

“He strode from the room, and I followed. In crossing the hall, I
wondered what Mrs. Crimsworth might be. ‘Is she,’ thought I, ‘as alien
to what I like as Tynedale, Seacombe, the Misses Seacombe--as the
affectionate relative now striding before me? or is she better than
these? Shall I, in conversing with her, feel free to show something of
my real nature; or--’ Further conjectures were arrested by my entrance
into the dining-room.

“A lamp, burning under a shade of ground-glass, showed a handsome
apartment, wainscoted with oak; supper was laid on the table; by the
fire-place, standing as if waiting our entrance, appeared a lady;
she was young, tall, and well shaped; her dress was handsome and
fashionable: so much my first glance sufficed to ascertain. A gay
salutation passed between her and Mr. Crimsworth; she chid him, half
playfully, half poutingly, for being late; her voice (I always take
voices into the account in judging of character) was lively--it
indicated, I thought, good animal spirits. Mr. Crimsworth soon checked
her animated scolding with a kiss--a kiss that still told of the
bridegroom (they had not yet been married a year); she took her seat
at the supper-table in first-rate spirits. Perceiving me, she begged
my pardon for not noticing me before, and then shook hands with me, as
ladies do when a flow of good-humour disposes them to be cheerful to
all, even the most indifferent of their acquaintance. It was now further
obvious to me that she had a good complexion, and features sufficiently
marked but agreeable; her hair was red--quite red. She and Edward
talked much, always in a vein of playful contention; she was vexed, or
pretended to be vexed, that he had that day driven a vicious horse in
the gig, and he made light of her fears. Sometimes she appealed to me.

“‘Now, Mr. William, isn’t it absurd in Edward to talk so? He says he
will drive Jack, and no other horse, and the brute has thrown him twice
already.

“She spoke with a kind of lisp, not disagreeable, but childish. I
soon saw also that there was more than girlish--a somewhat infantine
expression in her by no means small features; this lisp and expression
were, I have no doubt, a charm in Edward’s eyes, and would be so to
those of most men, but they were not to mine. I sought her eye, desirous
to read there the intelligence which I could not discern in her face
or hear in her conversation; it was merry, rather small; by turns I saw
vivacity, vanity, coquetry, look out through its irid, but I watched in
vain for a glimpse of soul. I am no Oriental; white necks, carmine lips
and cheeks, clusters of bright curls, do not suffice for me without that
Promethean spark which will live after the roses and lilies are faded,
the burnished hair grown grey. In sunshine, in prosperity, the flowers
are very well; but how many wet days are there in life--November seasons
of disaster, when a man’s hearth and home would be cold indeed, without
the clear, cheering gleam of intellect.

“Having perused the fair page of Mrs. Crimsworth’s face, a deep,
involuntary sigh announced my disappointment; she took it as a homage to
her beauty, and Edward, who was evidently proud of his rich and handsome
young wife, threw on me a glance--half ridicule, half ire.

“I turned from them both, and gazing wearily round the room, I saw two
pictures set in the oak panelling--one on each side the mantel-piece.
Ceasing to take part in the bantering conversation that flowed on
between Mr. and Mrs. Crimsworth, I bent my thoughts to the examination
of these pictures. They were portraits--a lady and a gentleman, both
costumed in the fashion of twenty years ago. The gentleman was in the
shade. I could not see him well. The lady had the benefit of a full beam
from the softly shaded lamp. I presently recognised her; I had seen this
picture before in childhood; it was my mother; that and the companion
picture being the only heir-looms saved out of the sale of my father’s
property.

“The face, I remembered, had pleased me as a boy, but then I did not
understand it; now I knew how rare that class of face is in the world,
and I appreciated keenly its thoughtful, yet gentle expression. The
serious grey eye possessed for me a strong charm, as did certain lines
in the features indicative of most true and tender feeling. I was sorry
it was only a picture.

“I soon left Mr. and Mrs. Crimsworth to themselves; a servant
conducted me to my bed-room; in closing my chamber-door, I shut out all
intruders--you, Charles, as well as the rest.

“Good-bye for the present,

“WILLIAM CRIMSWORTH.”

To this letter I never got an answer; before my old friend received it,
he had accepted a Government appointment in one of the colonies, and was
already on his way to the scene of his official labours. What has become
of him since, I know not.

The leisure time I have at command, and which I intended to employ
for his private benefit, I shall now dedicate to that of the public at
large. My narrative is not exciting, and above all, not marvellous;
but it may interest some individuals, who, having toiled in the same
vocation as myself, will find in my experience frequent reflections
of their own. The above letter will serve as an introduction. I now
proceed.






CHAPTER II.

A FINE October morning succeeded to the foggy evening that had witnessed
my first introduction to Crimsworth Hall. I was early up and walking in
the large park-like meadow surrounding the house. The autumn sun, rising
over the ----shire hills, disclosed a pleasant country; woods brown and
mellow varied the fields from which the harvest had been lately carried;
a river, gliding between the woods, caught on its surface the somewhat
cold gleam of the October sun and sky; at frequent intervals along the
banks of the river, tall, cylindrical chimneys, almost like slender
round towers, indicated the factories which the trees half concealed;
here and there mansions, similar to Crimsworth Hall, occupied agreeable
sites on the hill-side; the country wore, on the whole, a cheerful,
active, fertile look. Steam, trade, machinery had long banished from
it all romance and seclusion. At a distance of five miles, a valley,
opening between the low hills, held in its cups the great town of X----.
A dense, permanent vapour brooded over this locality--there lay Edward’s
“Concern.”

I forced my eye to scrutinize this prospect, I forced my mind to dwell
on it for a time, and when I found that it communicated no pleasurable
emotion to my heart--that it stirred in me none of the hopes a man ought
to feel, when he sees laid before him the scene of his life’s career--I
said to myself, “William, you are a rebel against circumstances; you are
a fool, and know not what you want; you have chosen trade and you shall
be a tradesman. Look!” I continued mentally--“Look at the sooty smoke in
that hollow, and know that there is your post! There you cannot dream,
you cannot speculate and theorize--there you shall out and work!”

Thus self-schooled, I returned to the house. My brother was in the
breakfast-room. I met him collectedly--I could not meet him cheerfully;
he was standing on the rug, his back to the fire--how much did I read in
the expression of his eye as my glance encountered his, when I advanced
to bid him good morning; how much that was contradictory to my nature!
He said “Good morning” abruptly and nodded, and then he snatched, rather
than took, a newspaper from the table, and began to read it with the air
of a master who seizes a pretext to escape the bore of conversing with
an underling. It was well I had taken a resolution to endure for a time,
or his manner would have gone far to render insupportable the disgust
I had just been endeavouring to subdue. I looked at him: I measured his
robust frame and powerful proportions; I saw my own reflection in the
mirror over the mantel-piece; I amused myself with comparing the two
pictures. In face I resembled him, though I was not so handsome; my
features were less regular; I had a darker eye, and a broader brow--in
form I was greatly inferior--thinner, slighter, not so tall. As an
animal, Edward excelled me far; should he prove as paramount in mind
as in person I must be a slave--for I must expect from him no lion-like
generosity to one weaker than himself; his cold, avaricious eye, his
stern, forbidding manner told me he would not spare. Had I then force of
mind to cope with him? I did not know; I had never been tried.

Mrs. Crimsworth’s entrance diverted my thoughts for a moment. She looked
well, dressed in white, her face and her attire shining in morning
and bridal freshness. I addressed her with the degree of ease her last
night’s careless gaiety seemed to warrant, but she replied with coolness
and restraint: her husband had tutored her; she was not to be too
familiar with his clerk.

As soon as breakfast was over Mr. Crimsworth intimated to me that they
were bringing the gig round to the door, and that in five minutes he
should expect me to be ready to go down with him to X----. I did not
keep him waiting; we were soon dashing at a rapid rate along the
road. The horse he drove was the same vicious animal about which Mrs.
Crimsworth had expressed her fears the night before. Once or twice
Jack seemed disposed to turn restive, but a vigorous and determined
application of the whip from the ruthless hand of his master soon
compelled him to submission, and Edward’s dilated nostril expressed his
triumph in the result of the contest; he scarcely spoke to me during the
whole of the brief drive, only opening his lips at intervals to damn his
horse.

X---- was all stir and bustle when we entered it; we left the clean
streets where there were dwelling-houses and shops, churches, and public
buildings; we left all these, and turned down to a region of mills and
warehouses; thence we passed through two massive gates into a great
paved yard, and we were in Bigben Close, and the mill was before us,
vomiting soot from its long chimney, and quivering through its thick
brick walls with the commotion of its iron bowels. Workpeople were
passing to and fro; a waggon was being laden with pieces. Mr. Crimsworth
looked from side to side, and seemed at one glance to comprehend all
that was going on; he alighted, and leaving his horse and gig to the
care of a man who hastened to take the reins from his hand, he bid me
follow him to the counting-house. We entered it; a very different place
from the parlours of Crimsworth Hall--a place for business, with a bare,
planked floor, a safe, two high desks and stools, and some chairs. A
person was seated at one of the desks, who took off his square cap when
Mr. Crimsworth entered, and in an instant was again absorbed in his
occupation of writing or calculating--I know not which.

Mr. Crimsworth, having removed his mackintosh, sat down by the fire. I
remained standing near the hearth; he said presently--

“Steighton, you may leave the room; I have some business to transact
with this gentleman. Come back when you hear the bell.”

The individual at the desk rose and departed, closing the door as he
went out. Mr. Crimsworth stirred the fire, then folded his arms, and sat
a moment thinking, his lips compressed, his brow knit. I had nothing to
do but to watch him--how well his features were cut! what a handsome man
he was! Whence, then, came that air of contraction--that narrow and hard
aspect on his forehead, in all his lineaments?

Turning to me he began abruptly:

“You are come down to ----shire to learn to be a tradesman?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Have you made up your mind on the point? Let me know that at once.”

“Yes.”

“Well, I am not bound to help you, but I have a place here vacant, if
you are qualified for it. I will take you on trial. What can you do? Do
you know anything besides that useless trash of college learning--Greek,
Latin, and so forth?”

“I have studied mathematics.”

“Stuff! I dare say you have.”

“I can read and write French and German.”

“Hum!” He reflected a moment, then opening a drawer in a desk near him
took out a letter, and gave it to me.

“Can you read that?” he asked.

It was a German commercial letter; I translated it; I could not tell
whether he was gratified or not--his countenance remained fixed.

“It is well,” he said, after a pause, “that you are acquainted with
something useful, something that may enable you to earn your board and
lodging: since you know French and German, I will take you as second
clerk to manage the foreign correspondence of the house. I shall give
you a good salary--90l. a year--and now,” he continued, raising his
voice, “hear once for all what I have to say about our relationship, and
all that sort of humbug! I must have no nonsense on that point; it
would never suit me. I shall excuse you nothing on the plea of being my
brother; if I find you stupid, negligent, dissipated, idle, or possessed
of any faults detrimental to the interests of the house, I shall dismiss
you as I would any other clerk. Ninety pounds a year are good wages, and
I expect to have the full value of my money out of you; remember,
too, that things are on a practical footing in my
establishment--business-like habits, feelings, and ideas, suit me best.
Do you understand?”

“Partly,” I replied. “I suppose you mean that I am to do my work for my
wages; not to expect favour from you, and not to depend on you for any
help but what I earn; that suits me exactly, and on these terms I will
consent to be your clerk.”

I turned on my heel, and walked to the window; this time I did not
consult his face to learn his opinion: what it was I do not know, nor
did I then care. After a silence of some minutes he recommenced:--

“You perhaps expect to be accommodated with apartments at Crimsworth
Hall, and to go and come with me in the gig. I wish you, however, to be
aware that such an arrangement would be quite inconvenient to me. I
like to have the seat in my gig at liberty for any gentleman whom for
business reasons I may wish to take down to the hall for a night or so.
You will seek out lodgings in X----.”

Quitting the window, I walked back to the hearth.

“Of course I shall seek out lodgings in X----,” I answered. “It would
not suit me either to lodge at Crimsworth Hall.”

My tone was quiet. I always speak quietly. Yet Mr. Crimsworth’s blue eye
became incensed; he took his revenge rather oddly. Turning to me he said
bluntly--

“You are poor enough, I suppose; how do you expect to live till your
quarter’s salary becomes due?”

“I shall get on,” said I.

“How do you expect to live?” he repeated in a louder voice.

“As I can, Mr. Crimsworth.”

“Get into debt at your peril! that’s all,” he answered. “For aught I
know you may have extravagant aristocratic habits: if you have, drop
them; I tolerate nothing of the sort here, and I will never give you a
shilling extra, whatever liabilities you may incur--mind that.”

“Yes, Mr. Crimsworth, you will find I have a good memory.”

I said no more. I did not think the time was come for much parley. I
had an instinctive feeling that it would be folly to let one’s temper
effervesce often with such a man as Edward. I said to myself, “I will
place my cup under this continual dropping; it shall stand there still
and steady; when full, it will run over of itself--meantime patience.
Two things are certain. I am capable of performing the work Mr.
Crimsworth has set me; I can earn my wages conscientiously, and those
wages are sufficient to enable me to live. As to the fact of my brother
assuming towards me the bearing of a proud, harsh master, the fault is
his, not mine; and shall his injustice, his bad feeling, turn me at once
aside from the path I have chosen? No; at least, ere I deviate, I will
advance far enough to see whither my career tends. As yet I am only
pressing in at the entrance--a strait gate enough; it ought to have a
good terminus.” While I thus reasoned, Mr. Crimsworth rang a bell; his
first clerk, the individual dismissed previously to our conference,
re-entered.

“Mr. Steighton,” said he, “show Mr. William the letters from Voss,
Brothers, and give him English copies of the answers; he will translate
them.”

Mr. Steighton, a man of about thirty-five, with a face at once sly and
heavy, hastened to execute this order; he laid the letters on the
desk, and I was soon seated at it, and engaged in rendering the English
answers into German. A sentiment of keen pleasure accompanied this first
effort to earn my own living--a sentiment neither poisoned nor weakened
by the presence of the taskmaster, who stood and watched me for some
time as I wrote. I thought he was trying to read my character, but I
felt as secure against his scrutiny as if I had had on a casque with the
visor down--or rather I showed him my countenance with the confidence
that one would show an unlearned man a letter written in Greek; he might
see lines, and trace characters, but he could make nothing of them; my
nature was not his nature, and its signs were to him like the words of
an unknown tongue. Ere long he turned away abruptly, as if baffled, and
left the counting-house; he returned to it but twice in the course of
that day; each time he mixed and swallowed a glass of brandy-and-water,
the materials for making which he extracted from a cupboard on one side
of the fireplace; having glanced at my translations--he could read both
French and German--he went out again in silence.






CHAPTER III.

I SERVED Edward as his second clerk faithfully, punctually, diligently.
What was given me to do I had the power and the determination to do
well. Mr. Crimsworth watched sharply for defects, but found none; he set
Timothy Steighton, his favourite and head man, to watch also. Tim was
baffled; I was as exact as himself, and quicker. Mr. Crimsworth made
inquiries as to how I lived, whether I got into debt--no, my accounts
with my landlady were always straight. I had hired small lodgings, which
I contrived to pay for out of a slender fund--the accumulated savings of
my Eton pocket-money; for as it had ever been abhorrent to my nature to
ask pecuniary assistance, I had early acquired habits of self-denying
economy; husbanding my monthly allowance with anxious care, in order to
obviate the danger of being forced, in some moment of future exigency,
to beg additional aid. I remember many called me miser at the time,
and I used to couple the reproach with this consolation--better to be
misunderstood now than repulsed hereafter. At this day I had my reward;
I had had it before, when on parting with my irritated uncles one of
them threw down on the table before me a 5l. note, which I was able to
leave there, saying that my travelling expenses were already provided
for. Mr. Crimsworth employed Tim to find out whether my landlady had
any complaint to make on the score of my morals; she answered that she
believed I was a very religious man, and asked Tim, in her turn, if he
thought I had any intention of going into the Church some day; for, she
said, she had had young curates to lodge in her house who were nothing
equal to me for steadiness and quietness. Tim was “a religious man”
 himself; indeed, he was “a joined Methodist,” which did not (be it
understood) prevent him from being at the same time an engrained rascal,
and he came away much posed at hearing this account of my piety. Having
imparted it to Mr. Crimsworth, that gentleman, who himself frequented
no place of worship, and owned no God but Mammon, turned the information
into a weapon of attack against the equability of my temper. He
commenced a series of covert sneers, of which I did not at first
perceive the drift, till my landlady happened to relate the conversation
she had had with Mr. Steighton; this enlightened me; afterwards I came
to the counting-house prepared, and managed to receive the millowner’s
blasphemous sarcasms, when next levelled at me, on a buckler of
impenetrable indifference. Ere long he tired of wasting his ammunition
on a statue, but he did not throw away the shafts--he only kept them
quiet in his quiver.

Once during my clerkship I had an invitation to Crimsworth Hall; it
was on the occasion of a large party given in honour of the master’s
birthday; he had always been accustomed to invite his clerks on similar
anniversaries, and could not well pass me over; I was, however, kept
strictly in the background. Mrs. Crimsworth, elegantly dressed in satin
and lace, blooming in youth and health, vouchsafed me no more notice
than was expressed by a distant move; Crimsworth, of course, never
spoke to me; I was introduced to none of the band of young ladies, who,
enveloped in silvery clouds of white gauze and muslin, sat in array
against me on the opposite side of a long and large room; in fact, I was
fairly isolated, and could but contemplate the shining ones from afar,
and when weary of such a dazzling scene, turn for a change to the
consideration of the carpet pattern. Mr. Crimsworth, standing on the
rug, his elbow supported by the marble mantelpiece, and about him
a group of very pretty girls, with whom he conversed gaily--Mr.
Crimsworth, thus placed, glanced at me; I looked weary, solitary, kept
down like some desolate tutor or governess; he was satisfied.

Dancing began; I should have liked well enough to be introduced to some
pleasing and intelligent girl, and to have freedom and opportunity
to show that I could both feel and communicate the pleasure of social
intercourse--that I was not, in short, a block, or a piece of furniture,
but an acting, thinking, sentient man. Many smiling faces and graceful
figures glided past me, but the smiles were lavished on other eyes, the
figures sustained by other hands than mine. I turned away tantalized,
left the dancers, and wandered into the oak-panelled dining-room. No
fibre of sympathy united me to any living thing in this house; I looked
for and found my mother’s picture. I took a wax taper from a stand,
and held it up. I gazed long, earnestly; my heart grew to the image.
My mother, I perceived, had bequeathed to me much of her features and
countenance--her forehead, her eyes, her complexion. No regular beauty
pleases egotistical human beings so much as a softened and refined
likeness of themselves; for this reason, fathers regard with complacency
the lineaments of their daughters’ faces, where frequently their own
similitude is found flatteringly associated with softness of hue and
delicacy of outline. I was just wondering how that picture, to me so
interesting, would strike an impartial spectator, when a voice close
behind me pronounced the words--

“Humph! there’s some sense in that face.”

I turned; at my elbow stood a tall man, young, though probably five or
six years older than I--in other respects of an appearance the opposite
to common place; though just now, as I am not disposed to paint his
portrait in detail, the reader must be content with the silhouette I
have just thrown off; it was all I myself saw of him for the moment: I
did not investigate the colour of his eyebrows, nor of his eyes either;
I saw his stature, and the outline of his shape; I saw, too, his
fastidious-looking RETROUSSE nose; these observations, few in number,
and general in character (the last excepted), sufficed, for they enabled
me to recognize him.

“Good evening, Mr. Hunsden,” muttered I with a bow, and then, like a
shy noodle as I was, I began moving away--and why? Simply because Mr.
Hunsden was a manufacturer and a millowner, and I was only a clerk, and
my instinct propelled me from my superior. I had frequently seen Hunsden
in Bigben Close, where he came almost weekly to transact business with
Mr. Crimsworth, but I had never spoken to him, nor he to me, and I owed
him a sort of involuntary grudge, because he had more than once been the
tacit witness of insults offered by Edward to me. I had the conviction
that he could only regard me as a poor-spirited slave, wherefore I now
went about to shun his presence and eschew his conversation.

“Where are you going?” asked he, as I edged off sideways. I had already
noticed that Mr. Hunsden indulged in abrupt forms of speech, and I
perversely said to myself--

“He thinks he may speak as he likes to a poor clerk; but my mood is not,
perhaps, so supple as he deems it, and his rough freedom pleases me not
at all.”

I made some slight reply, rather indifferent than courteous, and
continued to move away. He coolly planted himself in my path.

“Stay here awhile,” said he: “it is so hot in the dancing-room; besides,
you don’t dance; you have not had a partner to-night.”

He was right, and as he spoke neither his look, tone, nor manner
displeased me; my AMOUR-PROPRE was propitiated; he had not addressed
me out of condescension, but because, having repaired to the cool
dining-room for refreshment, he now wanted some one to talk to, by way
of temporary amusement. I hate to be condescended to, but I like well
enough to oblige; I stayed.

“That is a good picture,” he continued, recurring to the portrait.

“Do you consider the face pretty?” I asked.

“Pretty! no--how can it be pretty, with sunk eyes and hollow cheeks?
but it is peculiar; it seems to think. You could have a talk with that
woman, if she were alive, on other subjects than dress, visiting, and
compliments.”

I agreed with him, but did not say so. He went on.

“Not that I admire a head of that sort; it wants character and force;
there’s too much of the sen-si-tive (so he articulated it, curling
his lip at the same time) in that mouth; besides, there is Aristocrat
written on the brow and defined in the figure; I hate your aristocrats.”

“You think, then, Mr. Hunsden, that patrician descent may be read in a
distinctive cast of form and features?”

“Patrician descent be hanged! Who doubts that your lordlings may have
their ‘distinctive cast of form and features’ as much as we----shire
tradesmen have ours? But which is the best? Not theirs assuredly. As
to their women, it is a little different: they cultivate beauty from
childhood upwards, and may by care and training attain to a certain
degree of excellence in that point, just like the oriental odalisques.
Yet even this superiority is doubtful. Compare the figure in that frame
with Mrs. Edward Crimsworth--which is the finer animal?”

I replied quietly: “Compare yourself and Mr. Edward Crimsworth, Mr
Hunsden.”

“Oh, Crimsworth is better filled up than I am, I know besides he has a
straight nose, arched eyebrows, and all that; but these advantages--if
they are advantages--he did not inherit from his mother, the patrician,
but from his father, old Crimsworth, who, MY father says, was as
veritable a ----shire blue-dyer as ever put indigo in a vat yet withal
the handsomest man in the three Ridings. It is you, William, who are
the aristocrat of your family, and you are not as fine a fellow as your
plebeian brother by long chalk.”

There was something in Mr. Hunsden’s point-blank mode of speech which
rather pleased me than otherwise because it set me at my ease. I
continued the conversation with a degree of interest.

“How do you happen to know that I am Mr. Crimsworth’s brother? I thought
you and everybody else looked upon me only in the light of a poor
clerk.”

“Well, and so we do; and what are you but a poor clerk? You do
Crimsworth’s work, and he gives you wages--shabby wages they are, too.”

I was silent. Hunsden’s language now bordered on the impertinent, still
his manner did not offend me in the least--it only piqued my curiosity;
I wanted him to go on, which he did in a little while.

“This world is an absurd one,” said he.

“Why so, Mr. Hunsden?”

“I wonder you should ask: you are yourself a strong proof of the
absurdity I allude to.”

I was determined he should explain himself of his own accord, without my
pressing him so to do--so I resumed my silence.

“Is it your intention to become a tradesman?” he inquired presently.

“It was my serious intention three months ago.”

“Humph! the more fool you--you look like a tradesman! What a practical
business-like face you have!”

“My face is as the Lord made it, Mr. Hunsden.”

“The Lord never made either your face or head for X---- What good can
your bumps of ideality, comparison, self-esteem, conscientiousness,
do you here? But if you like Bigben Close, stay there; it’s your own
affair, not mine.”

“Perhaps I have no choice.”

“Well, I care nought about it--it will make little difference to me what
you do or where you go; but I’m cool now--I want to dance again; and
I see such a fine girl sitting in the corner of the sofa there by
her mamma; see if I don’t get her for a partner in a jiffy! There’s
Waddy--Sam Waddy making up to her; won’t I cut him out?”

And Mr. Hunsden strode away. I watched him through the open
folding-doors; he outstripped Waddy, applied for the hand of the
fine girl, and led her off triumphant. She was a tall, well-made,
full-formed, dashingly-dressed young woman, much in the style of Mrs. E.
Crimsworth; Hunsden whirled her through the waltz with spirit; he kept
at her side during the remainder of the evening, and I read in her
animated and gratified countenance that he succeeded in making himself
perfectly agreeable. The mamma too (a stout person in a turban--Mrs.
Lupton by name) looked well pleased; prophetic visions probably
flattered her inward eye. The Hunsdens were of an old stem; and scornful
as Yorke (such was my late interlocutor’s name) professed to be of
the advantages of birth, in his secret heart he well knew and fully
appreciated the distinction his ancient, if not high lineage conferred
on him in a mushroom-place like X----, concerning whose inhabitants
it was proverbially said, that not one in a thousand knew his own
grandfather. Moreover the Hunsdens, once rich, were still independent;
and report affirmed that Yorke bade fair, by his success in business,
to restore to pristine prosperity the partially decayed fortunes of his
house. These circumstances considered, Mrs. Lupton’s broad face might
well wear a smile of complacency as she contemplated the heir of Hunsden
Wood occupied in paying assiduous court to her darling Sarah Martha. I,
however, whose observations being less anxious, were likely to be more
accurate, soon saw that the grounds for maternal self-congratulation
were slight indeed; the gentleman appeared to me much more desirous of
making, than susceptible of receiving an impression. I know not what it
was in Mr. Hunsden that, as I watched him (I had nothing better to do),
suggested to me, every now and then, the idea of a foreigner. In form
and features he might be pronounced English, though even there one
caught a dash of something Gallic; but he had no English shyness: he had
learnt somewhere, somehow, the art of setting himself quite at his ease,
and of allowing no insular timidity to intervene as a barrier between
him and his convenience or pleasure. Refinement he did not affect, yet
vulgar he could not be called; he was not odd--no quiz--yet he resembled
no one else I had ever seen before; his general bearing intimated
complete, sovereign satisfaction with himself; yet, at times, an
indescribable shade passed like an eclipse over his countenance, and
seemed to me like the sign of a sudden and strong inward doubt of
himself, his words and actions an energetic discontent at his life or
his social position, his future prospects or his mental attainments--I
know not which; perhaps after all it might only be a bilious caprice.






CHAPTER IV.

No man likes to acknowledge that he has made a mistake in the choice of
his profession, and every man, worthy of the name, will row long against
wind and tide before he allows himself to cry out, “I am baffled!” and
submits to be floated passively back to land. From the first week of my
residence in X---- I felt my occupation irksome. The thing itself--the
work of copying and translating business-letters--was a dry and tedious
task enough, but had that been all, I should long have borne with the
nuisance; I am not of an impatient nature, and influenced by the double
desire of getting my living and justifying to myself and others the
resolution I had taken to become a tradesman, I should have endured
in silence the rust and cramp of my best faculties; I should not have
whispered, even inwardly, that I longed for liberty; I should have pent
in every sigh by which my heart might have ventured to intimate its
distress under the closeness, smoke, monotony and joyless tumult of
Bigben Close, and its panting desire for freer and fresher scenes; I
should have set up the image of Duty, the fetish of Perseverance, in my
small bedroom at Mrs. King’s lodgings, and they two should have been
my household gods, from which my darling, my cherished-in-secret,
Imagination, the tender and the mighty, should never, either by softness
or strength, have severed me. But this was not all; the antipathy which
had sprung up between myself and my employer striking deeper root and
spreading denser shade daily, excluded me from every glimpse of the
sunshine of life; and I began to feel like a plant growing in humid
darkness out of the slimy walls of a well.

Antipathy is the only word which can express the feeling Edward
Crimsworth had for me--a feeling, in a great measure, involuntary, and
which was liable to be excited by every, the most trifling movement,
look, or word of mine. My southern accent annoyed him; the degree
of education evinced in my language irritated him; my punctuality,
industry, and accuracy, fixed his dislike, and gave it the high flavour
and poignant relish of envy; he feared that I too should one day make a
successful tradesman. Had I been in anything inferior to him, he would
not have hated me so thoroughly, but I knew all that he knew, and, what
was worse, he suspected that I kept the padlock of silence on mental
wealth in which he was no sharer. If he could have once placed me in a
ridiculous or mortifying position, he would have forgiven me much, but I
was guarded by three faculties--Caution, Tact, Observation; and
prowling and prying as was Edward’s malignity, it could never baffle
the lynx-eyes of these, my natural sentinels. Day by day did his malice
watch my tact, hoping it would sleep, and prepared to steal snake-like
on its slumber; but tact, if it be genuine, never sleeps.

I had received my first quarter’s wages, and was returning to my
lodgings, possessed heart and soul with the pleasant feeling that
the master who had paid me grudged every penny of that hard-earned
pittance--(I had long ceased to regard Mr. Crimsworth as my brother--he
was a hard, grinding master; he wished to be an inexorable tyrant: that
was all). Thoughts, not varied but strong, occupied my mind; two voices
spoke within me; again and again they uttered the same monotonous
phrases. One said: “William, your life is intolerable.” The other: “What
can you do to alter it?” I walked fast, for it was a cold, frosty night
in January; as I approached my lodgings, I turned from a general view of
my affairs to the particular speculation as to whether my fire would be
out; looking towards the window of my sitting-room, I saw no cheering
red gleam.

“That slut of a servant has neglected it as usual,” said I, “and I shall
see nothing but pale ashes if I go in; it is a fine starlight night--I
will walk a little farther.”

It WAS a fine night, and the streets were dry and even clean for X----;
there was a crescent curve of moonlight to be seen by the parish church
tower, and hundreds of stars shone keenly bright in all quarters of the
sky.

Unconsciously I steered my course towards the country; I had got into
Grove-street, and began to feel the pleasure of seeing dim trees at the
extremity, round a suburban house, when a person leaning over the iron
gate of one of the small gardens which front the neat dwelling-houses in
this street, addressed me as I was hurrying with quick stride past.

“What the deuce is the hurry? Just so must Lot have left Sodom, when he
expected fire to pour down upon it, out of burning brass clouds.”

I stopped short, and looked towards the speaker. I smelt the fragrance,
and saw the red spark of a cigar; the dusk outline of a man, too, bent
towards me over the wicket.

“You see I am meditating in the field at eventide,” continued this
shade. “God knows it’s cool work! especially as instead of Rebecca on
a camel’s hump, with bracelets on her arms and a ring in her nose, Fate
sends me only a counting-house clerk, in a grey tweed wrapper.” The
voice was familiar to me--its second utterance enabled me to seize the
speaker’s identity.

“Mr. Hunsden! good evening.”

“Good evening, indeed! yes, but you would have passed me without
recognition if I had not been so civil as to speak first.”

“I did not know you.”

“A famous excuse! You ought to have known me; I knew you, though you
were going ahead like a steam-engine. Are the police after you?”

“It wouldn’t be worth their while; I’m not of consequence enough to
attract them.”

“Alas, poor shepherd! Alack and well-a-day! What a theme for regret, and
how down in the mouth you must be, judging from the sound of your voice!
But since you’re not running from the police, from whom are you running?
the devil?”

“On the contrary, I am going post to him.”

“That is well--you’re just in luck: this is Tuesday evening; there are
scores of market gigs and carts returning to Dinneford to-night; and he,
or some of his, have a seat in all regularly; so, if you’ll step in
and sit half-an-hour in my bachelor’s parlour, you may catch him as he
passes without much trouble. I think though you’d better let him alone
to-night, he’ll have so many customers to serve; Tuesday is his busy day
in X---- and Dinneford; come in at all events.”

He swung the wicket open as he spoke.

“Do you really wish me to go in?” I asked.

“As you please--I’m alone; your company for an hour or two would be
agreeable to me; but, if you don’t choose to favour me so far, I’ll not
press the point. I hate to bore any one.”

It suited me to accept the invitation as it suited Hunsden to give it.
I passed through the gate, and followed him to the front door, which he
opened; thence we traversed a passage, and entered his parlour; the door
being shut, he pointed me to an arm-chair by the hearth; I sat down, and
glanced round me.

It was a comfortable room, at once snug and handsome; the bright grate
was filled with a genuine ----shire fire, red, clear, and generous, no
penurious South-of-England embers heaped in the corner of a grate. On
the table a shaded lamp diffused around a soft, pleasant, and equal
light; the furniture was almost luxurious for a young bachelor,
comprising a couch and two very easy chairs; bookshelves filled the
recesses on each side of the mantelpiece; they were well-furnished, and
arranged with perfect order. The neatness of the room suited my taste;
I hate irregular and slovenly habits. From what I saw I concluded that
Hunsden’s ideas on that point corresponded with my own. While he removed
from the centre-table to the side-board a few pamphlets and periodicals,
I ran my eye along the shelves of the book-case nearest me. French and
German works predominated, the old French dramatists, sundry modern
authors, Thiers, Villemain, Paul de Kock, George Sand, Eugene Sue; in
German--Goethe, Schiller, Zschokke, Jean Paul Richter; in English there
were works on Political Economy. I examined no further, for Mr. Hunsden
himself recalled my attention.

“You shall have something,” said he, “for you ought to feel disposed for
refreshment after walking nobody knows how far on such a Canadian night
as this; but it shall not be brandy-and-water, and it shall not be
a bottle of port, nor ditto of sherry. I keep no such poison. I have
Rhein-wein for my own drinking, and you may choose between that and
coffee.”

Here again Hunsden suited me: if there was one generally received
practice I abhorred more than another, it was the habitual imbibing of
spirits and strong wines. I had, however, no fancy for his acid German
nectar, but I liked coffee, so I responded--

“Give me some coffee, Mr. Hunsden.”

I perceived my answer pleased him; he had doubtless expected to see a
chilling effect produced by his steady announcement that he would give
me neither wine nor spirits; he just shot one searching glance at my
face to ascertain whether my cordiality was genuine or a mere feint
of politeness. I smiled, because I quite understood him; and, while I
honoured his conscientious firmness, I was amused at his mistrust; he
seemed satisfied, rang the bell, and ordered coffee, which was presently
brought; for himself, a bunch of grapes and half a pint of something
sour sufficed. My coffee was excellent; I told him so, and expressed the
shuddering pity with which his anchorite fare inspired me. He did not
answer, and I scarcely think heard my remark. At that moment one of
those momentary eclipses I before alluded to had come over his face,
extinguishing his smile, and replacing, by an abstracted and alienated
look, the customarily shrewd, bantering glance of his eye. I employed
the interval of silence in a rapid scrutiny of his physiognomy. I had
never observed him closely before; and, as my sight is very short, I had
gathered only a vague, general idea of his appearance; I was surprised
now, on examination, to perceive how small, and even feminine, were his
lineaments; his tall figure, long and dark locks, his voice and general
bearing, had impressed me with the notion of something powerful and
massive; not at all:--my own features were cast in a harsher and squarer
mould than his. I discerned that there would be contrasts between his
inward and outward man; contentions, too; for I suspected his soul
had more of will and ambition than his body had of fibre and muscle.
Perhaps, in these incompatibilities of the “physique” with the “morale,”
 lay the secret of that fitful gloom; he WOULD but COULD not, and the
athletic mind scowled scorn on its more fragile companion. As to his
good looks, I should have liked to have a woman’s opinion on that
subject; it seemed to me that his face might produce the same effect
on a lady that a very piquant and interesting, though scarcely pretty,
female face would on a man. I have mentioned his dark locks--they were
brushed sideways above a white and sufficiently expansive forehead; his
cheek had a rather hectic freshness; his features might have done well
on canvas, but indifferently in marble: they were plastic; character
had set a stamp upon each; expression re-cast them at her pleasure, and
strange metamorphoses she wrought, giving him now the mien of a morose
bull, and anon that of an arch and mischievous girl; more frequently,
the two semblances were blent, and a queer, composite countenance they
made.

Starting from his silent fit, he began:--

“William! what a fool you are to live in those dismal lodgings of Mrs.
King’s, when you might take rooms here in Grove Street, and have a
garden like me!”

“I should be too far from the mill.”

“What of that? It would do you good to walk there and back two or three
times a day; besides, are you such a fossil that you never wish to see a
flower or a green leaf?”

“I am no fossil.”

“What are you then? You sit at that desk in Crimsworth’s counting-house
day by day and week by week, scraping with a pen on paper, just like an
automaton; you never get up; you never say you are tired; you never ask
for a holiday; you never take change or relaxation; you give way to
no excess of an evening; you neither keep wild company, nor indulge in
strong drink.”

“Do you, Mr. Hunsden?”

“Don’t think to pose me with short questions; your case and mine
are diametrically different, and it is nonsense attempting to draw a
parallel. I say, that when a man endures patiently what ought to be
unendurable, he is a fossil.”

“Whence do you acquire the knowledge of my patience?”

“Why, man, do you suppose you are a mystery? The other night you seemed
surprised at my knowing to what family you belonged; now you find
subject for wonderment in my calling you patient. What do you think I do
with my eyes and ears? I’ve been in your counting-house more than once
when Crimsworth has treated you like a dog; called for a book, for
instance, and when you gave him the wrong one, or what he chose to
consider the wrong one, flung it back almost in your face; desired you
to shut or open the door as if you had been his flunkey; to say nothing
of your position at the party about a month ago, where you had neither
place nor partner, but hovered about like a poor, shabby hanger-on; and
how patient you were under each and all of these circumstances!”

“Well, Mr. Hunsden, what then?”

“I can hardly tell you what then; the conclusion to be drawn as to
your character depends upon the nature of the motives which guide
your conduct; if you are patient because you expect to make something
eventually out of Crimsworth, notwithstanding his tyranny, or perhaps by
means of it, you are what the world calls an interested and mercenary,
but may be a very wise fellow; if you are patient because you think it a
duty to meet insult with submission, you are an essential sap, and in
no shape the man for my money; if you are patient because your nature is
phlegmatic, flat, inexcitable, and that you cannot get up to the pitch
of resistance, why, God made you to be crushed; and lie down by all
means, and lie flat, and let Juggernaut ride well over you.”

Mr. Hunsden’s eloquence was not, it will be perceived, of the smooth and
oily order. As he spoke, he pleased me ill. I seem to recognize in him
one of those characters who, sensitive enough themselves, are selfishly
relentless towards the sensitiveness of others. Moreover, though he
was neither like Crimsworth nor Lord Tynedale, yet he was acrid, and, I
suspected, overbearing in his way: there was a tone of despotism in
the urgency of the very reproaches by which he aimed at goading the
oppressed into rebellion against the oppressor. Looking at him still
more fixedly than I had yet done, I saw written in his eye and mien a
resolution to arrogate to himself a freedom so unlimited that it might
often trench on the just liberty of his neighbours. I rapidly ran over
these thoughts, and then I laughed a low and involuntary laugh, moved
thereto by a slight inward revelation of the inconsistency of man.
It was as I thought: Hunsden had expected me to take with calm his
incorrect and offensive surmises, his bitter and haughty taunts; and
himself was chafed by a laugh, scarce louder than a whisper.

His brow darkened, his thin nostril dilated a little.

“Yes,” he began, “I told you that you were an aristocrat, and who but
an aristocrat would laugh such a laugh as that, and look such a look?
A laugh frigidly jeering; a look lazily mutinous; gentlemanlike irony,
patrician resentment. What a nobleman you would have made, William
Crimsworth! You are cut out for one; pity Fortune has baulked Nature!
Look at the features, figure, even to the hands--distinction all
over--ugly distinction! Now, if you’d only an estate and a mansion,
and a park, and a title, how you could play the exclusive, maintain the
rights of your class, train your tenantry in habits of respect to the
peerage, oppose at every step the advancing power of the people, support
your rotten order, and be ready for its sake to wade knee-deep in
churls’ blood; as it is, you’ve no power; you can do nothing; you’re
wrecked and stranded on the shores of commerce; forced into collision
with practical men, with whom you cannot cope, for YOU’LL NEVER BE A
TRADESMAN.”

The first part of Hunsden’s speech moved me not at all, or, if it did,
it was only to wonder at the perversion into which prejudice had twisted
his judgment of my character; the concluding sentence, however, not only
moved, but shook me; the blow it gave was a severe one, because Truth
wielded the weapon. If I smiled now, it, was only in disdain of myself.

Hunsden saw his advantage; he followed it up.

“You’ll make nothing by trade,” continued he; “nothing more than the
crust of dry bread and the draught of fair water on which you now live;
your only chance of getting a competency lies in marrying a rich widow,
or running away with an heiress.”

“I leave such shifts to be put in practice by those who devise them,”
 said I, rising.

“And even that is hopeless,” he went on coolly. “What widow would have
you? Much less, what heiress? You’re not bold and venturesome enough for
the one, nor handsome and fascinating enough for the other. You think
perhaps you look intelligent and polished; carry your intellect and
refinement to market, and tell me in a private note what price is bid
for them.”

Mr. Hunsden had taken his tone for the night; the string he struck was
out of tune, he would finger no other. Averse to discord, of which I had
enough every day and all day long, I concluded, at last, that silence
and solitude were preferable to jarring converse; I bade him good-night.

“What! Are you going, lad? Well, good-night: you’ll find the door.” And
he sat still in front of the fire, while I left the room and the house.
I had got a good way on my return to my lodgings before I found out that
I was walking very fast, and breathing very hard, and that my nails were
almost stuck into the palms of my clenched hands, and that my teeth were
set fast; on making this discovery, I relaxed both my pace, fists, and
jaws, but I could not so soon cause the regrets rushing rapidly through
my mind to slacken their tide. Why did I make myself a tradesman? Why
did I enter Hunsden’s house this evening? Why, at dawn to-morrow, must
I repair to Crimsworth’s mill? All that night did I ask myself these
questions, and all that night fiercely demanded of my soul an answer. I
got no sleep; my head burned, my feet froze; at last the factory bells
rang, and I sprang from my bed with other slaves.






CHAPTER V.

THERE is a climax to everything, to every state of feeling as well as to
every position in life. I turned this truism over in my mind as, in the
frosty dawn of a January morning, I hurried down the steep and now
icy street which descended from Mrs. King’s to the Close. The factory
workpeople had preceded me by nearly an hour, and the mill was all
lighted up and in full operation when I reached it. I repaired to my
post in the counting-house as usual; the fire there, but just lit, as
yet only smoked; Steighton had not yet arrived. I shut the door and sat
down at the desk; my hands, recently washed in half-frozen water, were
still numb; I could not write till they had regained vitality, so I
went on thinking, and still the theme of my thoughts was the “climax.”
 Self-dissatisfaction troubled exceedingly the current of my meditations.

“Come, William Crimsworth,” said my conscience, or whatever it is that
within ourselves takes ourselves to task--“come, get a clear notion of
what you would have, or what you would not have. You talk of a climax;
pray has your endurance reached its climax? It is not four months old.
What a fine resolute fellow you imagined yourself to be when you told
Tynedale you would tread in your father’s steps, and a pretty treading
you are likely to make of it! How well you like X----! Just at this
moment how redolent of pleasant associations are its streets, its shops,
its warehouses, its factories! How the prospect of this day cheers
you! Letter-copying till noon, solitary dinner at your lodgings,
letter-copying till evening, solitude; for you neither find pleasure
in Brown’s, nor Smith’s, nor Nicholl’s, nor Eccle’s company; and as
to Hunsden, you fancied there was pleasure to be derived from his
society--he! he! how did you like the taste you had of him last night?
was it sweet? Yet he is a talented, an original-minded man, and even
he does not like you; your self-respect defies you to like him; he has
always seen you to disadvantage; he always will see you to disadvantage;
your positions are unequal, and were they on the same level your
minds could not assimilate; never hope, then, to gather the honey of
friendship out of that thorn-guarded plant. Hello, Crimsworth! where are
your thoughts tending? You leave the recollection of Hunsden as a bee
would a rock, as a bird a desert; and your aspirations spread eager
wings towards a land of visions where, now in advancing daylight--in
X---- daylight--you dare to dream of congeniality, repose, union. Those
three you will never meet in this world; they are angels. The souls of
just men made perfect may encounter them in heaven, but your soul will
never be made perfect. Eight o’clock strikes! your hands are thawed, get
to work!”

“Work? why should I work?” said I sullenly: “I cannot please though I
toil like a slave.” “Work, work!” reiterated the inward voice. “I may
work, it will do no good,” I growled; but nevertheless I drew out a
packet of letters and commenced my task--task thankless and bitter as
that of the Israelite crawling over the sun-baked fields of Egypt in
search of straw and stubble wherewith to accomplish his tale of bricks.

About ten o’clock I heard Mr. Crimsworth’s gig turn into the yard, and
in a minute or two he entered the counting-house. It was his custom to
glance his eye at Steighton and myself, to hang up his mackintosh, stand
a minute with his back to the fire, and then walk out. Today he did
not deviate from his usual habits; the only difference was that when
he looked at me, his brow, instead of being merely hard, was surly; his
eye, instead of being cold, was fierce. He studied me a minute or two
longer than usual, but went out in silence.

Twelve o’clock arrived; the bell rang for a suspension of labour; the
workpeople went off to their dinners; Steighton, too, departed, desiring
me to lock the counting-house door, and take the key with me. I
was tying up a bundle of papers, and putting them in their place,
preparatory to closing my desk, when Crimsworth reappeared at the door,
and entering closed it behind him.

“You’ll stay here a minute,” said he, in a deep, brutal voice, while his
nostrils distended and his eye shot a spark of sinister fire.

Alone with Edward I remembered our relationship, and remembering that
forgot the difference of position; I put away deference and careful
forms of speech; I answered with simple brevity.

“It is time to go home,” I said, turning the key in my desk.

“You’ll stay here!” he reiterated. “And take your hand off that key!
leave it in the lock!”

“Why?” asked I. “What cause is there for changing my usual plans?”

“Do as I order,” was the answer, “and no questions! You are my servant,
obey me! What have you been about--?” He was going on in the same
breath, when an abrupt pause announced that rage had for the moment got
the better of articulation.

“You may look, if you wish to know,” I replied. “There is the open desk,
there are the papers.”

“Confound your insolence! What have you been about?”

“Your work, and have done it well.”

“Hypocrite and twaddler! Smooth-faced, snivelling greasehorn!” (This
last term is, I believe, purely ----shire, and alludes to the horn of
black, rancid whale-oil, usually to be seen suspended to cart-wheels,
and employed for greasing the same.)

“Come, Edward Crimsworth, enough of this. It is time you and I wound up
accounts. I have now given your service three months’ trial, and I find
it the most nauseous slavery under the sun. Seek another clerk. I stay
no longer.”

“What! do you dare to give me notice? Stop at least for your wages.” He
took down the heavy gig whip hanging beside his mackintosh.

I permitted myself to laugh with a degree of scorn I took no pains to
temper or hide. His fury boiled up, and when he had sworn half-a-dozen
vulgar, impious oaths, without, however, venturing to lift the whip, he
continued:

“I’ve found you out and know you thoroughly, you mean, whining
lickspittle! What have you been saying all over X---- about me? answer
me that!”

“You? I have neither inclination nor temptation to talk about you.”

“You lie! It is your practice to talk about me; it is your constant
habit to make public complaint of the treatment you receive at my hands.
You have gone and told it far and near that I give you low wages and
knock you about like a dog. I wish you were a dog! I’d set-to this
minute, and never stir from the spot till I’d cut every strip of flesh
from your bones with this whip.”

He flourished his tool. The end of the lash just touched my forehead.
A warm excited thrill ran through my veins, my blood seemed to give a
bound, and then raced fast and hot along its channels. I got up nimbly,
came round to where he stood, and faced him.

“Down with your whip!” said I, “and explain this instant what you mean.”

“Sirrah! to whom are you speaking?”

“To you. There is no one else present, I think. You say I have been
calumniating you--complaining of your low wages and bad treatment. Give
your grounds for these assertions.”

Crimsworth had no dignity, and when I sternly demanded an explanation,
he gave one in a loud, scolding voice.

“Grounds! you shall have them; and turn to the light that I may see your
brazen face blush black, when you hear yourself proved to be a liar and
a hypocrite. At a public meeting in the Town-hall yesterday, I had the
pleasure of hearing myself insulted by the speaker opposed to me in the
question under discussion, by allusions to my private affairs; by cant
about monsters without natural affection, family despots, and such
trash; and when I rose to answer, I was met by a shout from the filthy
mob, where the mention of your name enabled me at once to detect the
quarter in which this base attack had originated. When I looked round, I
saw that treacherous villain, Hunsden acting as fugleman. I detected you
in close conversation with Hunsden at my house a month ago, and I know
that you were at Hunsden’s rooms last night. Deny it if you dare.”

“Oh, I shall not deny it! And if Hunsden hounded on the people to hiss
you, he did quite right. You deserve popular execration; for a worse
man, a harder master, a more brutal brother than you are has seldom
existed.”

“Sirrah! sirrah!” reiterated Crimsworth; and to complete his apostrophe,
he cracked the whip straight over my head.

A minute sufficed to wrest it from him, break it in two pieces, and
throw it under the grate. He made a headlong rush at me, which I evaded,
and said--

“Touch me, and I’ll have you up before the nearest magistrate.”

Men like Crimsworth, if firmly and calmly resisted, always abate
something of their exorbitant insolence; he had no mind to be brought
before a magistrate, and I suppose he saw I meant what I said. After
an odd and long stare at me, at once bull-like and amazed, he seemed
to bethink himself that, after all, his money gave him sufficient
superiority over a beggar like me, and that he had in his hands a surer
and more dignified mode of revenge than the somewhat hazardous one of
personal chastisement.

“Take your hat,” said he. “Take what belongs to you, and go out at
that door; get away to your parish, you pauper: beg, steal, starve, get
transported, do what you like; but at your peril venture again into
my sight! If ever I hear of your setting foot on an inch of ground
belonging to me, I’ll hire a man to cane you.”

“It is not likely you’ll have the chance; once off your premises, what
temptation can I have to return to them? I leave a prison, I leave a
tyrant; I leave what is worse than the worst that can lie before me, so
no fear of my coming back.”

“Go, or I’ll make you!” exclaimed Crimsworth.

I walked deliberately to my desk, took out such of its contents as were
my own property, put them in my pocket, locked the desk, and placed the
key on the top.

“What are you abstracting from that desk?” demanded the millowner.
“Leave all behind in its place, or I’ll send for a policeman to search
you.”

“Look sharp about it, then,” said I, and I took down my hat, drew on my
gloves, and walked leisurely out of the counting-house--walked out of it
to enter it no more.

I recollect that when the mill-bell rang the dinner hour, before Mr.
Crimsworth entered, and the scene above related took place, I had had
rather a sharp appetite, and had been waiting somewhat impatiently to
hear the signal of feeding time. I forgot it now, however; the images
of potatoes and roast mutton were effaced from my mind by the stir and
tumult which the transaction of the last half-hour had there excited. I
only thought of walking, that the action of my muscles might harmonize
with the action of my nerves; and walk I did, fast and far. How could
I do otherwise? A load was lifted off my heart; I felt light and
liberated. I had got away from Bigben Close without a breach of
resolution; without injury to my self-respect. I had not forced
circumstances; circumstances had freed me. Life was again open to me;
no longer was its horizon limited by the high black wall surrounding
Crimsworth’s mill. Two hours had elapsed before my sensations had so far
subsided as to leave me calm enough to remark for what wider and clearer
boundaries I had exchanged that sooty girdle. When I did look up, lo!
straight before me lay Grovetown, a village of villas about five miles
out of X----. The short winter day, as I perceived from the far-declined
sun, was already approaching its close; a chill frost-mist was rising
from the river on which X---- stands, and along whose banks the road I
had taken lay; it dimmed the earth, but did not obscure the clear icy
blue of the January sky. There was a great stillness near and far; the
time of the day favoured tranquillity, as the people were all employed
within-doors, the hour of evening release from the factories not being
yet arrived; a sound of full-flowing water alone pervaded the air, for
the river was deep and abundant, swelled by the melting of a late snow.
I stood awhile, leaning over a wall; and looking down at the current:
I watched the rapid rush of its waves. I desired memory to take a clear
and permanent impression of the scene, and treasure it for future years.
Grovetown church clock struck four; looking up, I beheld the last of
that day’s sun, glinting red through the leafless boughs of some
very old oak trees surrounding the church--its light coloured and
characterized the picture as I wished. I paused yet a moment, till the
sweet, slow sound of the bell had quite died out of the air; then ear,
eye and feeling satisfied, I quitted the wall and once more turned my
face towards X----.






CHAPTER VI.

I RE-ENTERED the town a hungry man; the dinner I had forgotten recurred
seductively to my recollection; and it was with a quick step and sharp
appetite I ascended the narrow street leading to my lodgings. It was
dark when I opened the front door and walked into the house. I wondered
how my fire would be; the night was cold, and I shuddered at the
prospect of a grate full of sparkless cinders. To my joyful surprise,
I found, on entering my sitting-room, a good fire and a clean hearth.
I had hardly noticed this phenomenon, when I became aware of another
subject for wonderment; the chair I usually occupied near the hearth was
already filled; a person sat there with his arms folded on his chest,
and his legs stretched out on the rug. Short-sighted as I am, doubtful
as was the gleam of the firelight, a moment’s examination enabled me to
recognize in this person my acquaintance, Mr. Hunsden. I could not of
course be much pleased to see him, considering the manner in which I had
parted from him the night before, and as I walked to the hearth, stirred
the fire, and said coolly, “Good evening,” my demeanour evinced as
little cordiality as I felt; yet I wondered in my own mind what had
brought him there; and I wondered, also, what motives had induced him to
interfere so actively between me and Edward; it was to him, it appeared,
that I owed my welcome dismissal; still I could not bring myself to
ask him questions, to show any eagerness of curiosity; if he chose to
explain, he might, but the explanation should be a perfectly voluntary
one on his part; I thought he was entering upon it.

“You owe me a debt of gratitude,” were his first words.

“Do I?” said I; “I hope it is not a large one, for I am much too poor to
charge myself with heavy liabilities of any kind.”

“Then declare yourself bankrupt at once, for this liability is a ton
weight at least. When I came in I found your fire out, and I had it lit
again, and made that sulky drab of a servant stay and blow at it with
the bellows till it had burnt up properly; now, say ‘Thank you!’”

“Not till I have had something to eat; I can thank nobody while I am so
famished.”

I rang the bell and ordered tea and some cold meat.

“Cold meat!” exclaimed Hunsden, as the servant closed the door, “what a
glutton you are; man! Meat with tea! you’ll die of eating too much.”

“No, Mr. Hunsden, I shall not.” I felt a necessity for contradicting
him; I was irritated with hunger, and irritated at seeing him there, and
irritated at the continued roughness of his manner.

“It is over-eating that makes you so ill-tempered,” said he.

“How do you know?” I demanded. “It is like you to give a pragmatical
opinion without being acquainted with any of the circumstances of the
case; I have had no dinner.”

What I said was petulant and snappish enough, and Hunsden only replied
by looking in my face and laughing.

“Poor thing!” he whined, after a pause. “It has had no dinner, has it?
What! I suppose its master would not let it come home. Did Crimsworth
order you to fast by way of punishment, William!”

“No, Mr. Hunsden.” Fortunately at this sulky juncture, tea, was brought
in, and I fell to upon some bread and butter and cold beef directly.
Having cleared a plateful, I became so far humanized as to intimate to
Mr. Hunsden that he need not sit there staring, but might come to the
table and do as I did, if he liked.

“But I don’t like in the least,” said he, and therewith he summoned the
servant by a fresh pull of the bell-rope, and intimated a desire to
have a glass of toast-and-water. “And some more coal,” he added; “Mr.
Crimsworth shall keep a good fire while I stay.”

His orders being executed, he wheeled his chair round to the table, so
as to be opposite me.

“Well,” he proceeded. “You are out of work, I suppose.”

“Yes,” said I; and not disposed to show the satisfaction I felt on this
point, I, yielding to the whim of the moment, took up the subject as
though I considered myself aggrieved rather than benefited by what had
been done. “Yes--thanks to you, I am. Crimsworth turned me off at
a minute’s notice, owing to some interference of yours at a public
meeting, I understand.”

“Ah! what! he mentioned that? He observed me signalling the lads, did
he? What had he to say about his friend Hunsden--anything sweet?”

“He called you a treacherous villain.”

“Oh, he hardly knows me yet! I’m one of those shy people who don’t come
out all at once, and he is only just beginning to make my acquaintance,
but he’ll find I’ve some good qualities--excellent ones! The Hunsdens
were always unrivalled at tracking a rascal; a downright, dishonourable
villain is their natural prey--they could not keep off him wherever
they met him; you used the word pragmatical just now--that word is the
property of our family; it has been applied to us from generation to
generation; we have fine noses for abuses; we scent a scoundrel a mile
off; we are reformers born, radical reformers; and it was impossible for
me to live in the same town with Crimsworth, to come into weekly contact
with him, to witness some of his conduct to you (for whom personally
I care nothing; I only consider the brutal injustice with which he
violated your natural claim to equality)--I say it was impossible for
me to be thus situated and not feel the angel or the demon of my race
at work within me. I followed my instinct, opposed a tyrant, and broke a
chain.”

Now this speech interested me much, both because it brought out
Hunsden’s character, and because it explained his motives; it interested
me so much that I forgot to reply to it, and sat silent, pondering over
a throng of ideas it had suggested.

“Are you grateful to me?” he asked, presently.

In fact I was grateful, or almost so, and I believe I half liked him at
the moment, notwithstanding his proviso that what he had done was not
out of regard for me. But human nature is perverse. Impossible to answer
his blunt question in the affirmative, so I disclaimed all tendency
to gratitude, and advised him if he expected any reward for his
championship, to look for it in a better world, as he was not likely
to meet with it here. In reply he termed me “a dry-hearted aristocratic
scamp,” whereupon I again charged him with having taken the bread out of
my mouth.

“Your bread was dirty, man!” cried Hunsden--“dirty and unwholesome!
It came through the hands of a tyrant, for I tell you Crimsworth is a
tyrant,--a tyrant to his workpeople, a tyrant to his clerks, and will
some day be a tyrant to his wife.”

“Nonsense! bread is bread, and a salary is a salary. I’ve lost mine, and
through your means.”

“There’s sense in what you say, after all,” rejoined Hunsden. “I must
say I am rather agreeably surprised to hear you make so practical
an observation as that last. I had imagined now, from my previous
observation of your character, that the sentimental delight you would
have taken in your newly regained liberty would, for a while at least,
have effaced all ideas of forethought and prudence. I think better of
you for looking steadily to the needful.”

“Looking steadily to the needful! How can I do otherwise? I must live,
and to live I must have what you call ‘the needful,’ which I can only
get by working. I repeat it, you have taken my work from me.”

“What do you mean to do?” pursued Hunsden coolly. “You have influential
relations; I suppose they’ll soon provide you with another place.”

“Influential relations? Who? I should like to know their names.”

“The Seacombes.”

“Stuff! I have cut them.”

Hunsden looked at me incredulously.

“I have,” said I, “and that definitively.”

“You must mean they have cut you, William.”

“As you please. They offered me their patronage on condition of my
entering the Church; I declined both the terms and the recompence; I
withdrew from my cold uncles, and preferred throwing myself into my
elder brother’s arms, from whose affectionate embrace I am now torn by
the cruel intermeddling of a stranger--of yourself, in short.”

I could not repress a half-smile as I said this; a similar
demi-manifestation of feeling appeared at the same moment on Hunsden’s
lips.

“Oh, I see!” said he, looking into my eyes, and it was evident he did
see right down into my heart. Having sat a minute or two with his chin
resting on his hand, diligently occupied in the continued perusal of my
countenance, he went on:

“Seriously, have you then nothing to expect from the Seacombes?”

“Yes, rejection and repulsion. Why do you ask me twice? How can hands
stained with the ink of a counting-house, soiled with the grease of
a wool-warehouse, ever again be permitted to come into contact with
aristocratic palms?”

“There would be a difficulty, no doubt; still you are such a complete
Seacombe in appearance, feature, language, almost manner, I wonder they
should disown you.”

“They have disowned me; so talk no more about it.”

“Do you regret it, William?”

“No.”

“Why not, lad?”

“Because they are not people with whom I could ever have had any
sympathy.”

“I say you are one of them.”

“That merely proves that you know nothing at all about it; I am my
mother’s son, but not my uncles’ nephew.”

“Still--one of your uncles is a lord, though rather an obscure and not a
very wealthy one, and the other a right honourable: you should consider
worldly interest.”

“Nonsense, Mr. Hunsden. You know or may know that even had I desired to
be submissive to my uncles, I could not have stooped with a good enough
grace ever to have won their favour. I should have sacrificed my own
comfort and not have gained their patronage in return.”

“Very likely--so you calculated your wisest plan was to follow your own
devices at once?”

“Exactly. I must follow my own devices--I must, till the day of my
death; because I can neither comprehend, adopt, nor work out those of
other people.”

Hunsden yawned. “Well,” said he, “in all this, I see but one thing
clearly-that is, that the whole affair is no business of mine.” He
stretched himself and again yawned. “I wonder what time it is,” he went
on: “I have an appointment for seven o’clock.”

“Three quarters past six by my watch.”

“Well, then I’ll go.” He got up. “You’ll not meddle with trade again?”
 said he, leaning his elbow on the mantelpiece.

“No; I think not.”

“You would be a fool if you did. Probably, after all, you’ll think
better of your uncles’ proposal and go into the Church.”

“A singular regeneration must take place in my whole inner and outer man
before I do that. A good clergyman is one of the best of men.”

“Indeed! Do you think so?” interrupted Hunsden, scoffingly.

“I do, and no mistake. But I have not the peculiar points which go to
make a good clergyman; and rather than adopt a profession for which I
have no vocation, I would endure extremities of hardship from poverty.”

“You’re a mighty difficult customer to suit. You won’t be a tradesman
or a parson; you can’t be a lawyer, or a doctor, or a gentleman, because
you’ve no money. I’d recommend you to travel.”

“What! without money?”

“You must travel in search of money, man. You can speak French--with
a vile English accent, no doubt--still, you can speak it. Go on to the
Continent, and see what will turn up for you there.”

“God knows I should like to go!” exclaimed I with involuntary ardour.

“Go: what the deuce hinders you? You may get to Brussels, for instance,
for five or six pounds, if you know how to manage with economy.”

“Necessity would teach me if I didn’t.”

“Go, then, and let your wits make a way for you when you get there. I
know Brussels almost as well as I know X----, and I am sure it would
suit such a one as you better than London.”

“But occupation, Mr. Hunsden! I must go where occupation is to be had;
and how could I get recommendation, or introduction, or employment at
Brussels?”

“There speaks the organ of caution. You hate to advance a step before
you know every inch of the way. You haven’t a sheet of paper and a
pen-and-ink?”

“I hope so,” and I produced writing materials with alacrity; for I
guessed what he was going to do. He sat down, wrote a few lines, folded,
sealed, and addressed a letter, and held it out to me.

“There, Prudence, there’s a pioneer to hew down the first rough
difficulties of your path. I know well enough, lad, you are not one of
those who will run their neck into a noose without seeing how they
are to get it out again, and you’re right there. A reckless man is
my aversion, and nothing should ever persuade me to meddle with the
concerns of such a one. Those who are reckless for themselves are
generally ten times more so for their friends.”

“This is a letter of introduction, I suppose?” said I, taking the
epistle.

“Yes. With that in your pocket you will run no risk of finding yourself
in a state of absolute destitution, which, I know, you will regard as a
degradation--so should I, for that matter. The person to whom you will
present it generally has two or three respectable places depending upon
his recommendation.”

“That will just suit me,” said I.

“Well, and where’s your gratitude?” demanded Mr. Hunsden; “don’t you
know how to say ‘Thank you?’”

“I’ve fifteen pounds and a watch, which my godmother, whom I never saw,
gave me eighteen years ago,” was my rather irrelevant answer; and I
further avowed myself a happy man, and professed that I did not envy any
being in Christendom.

“But your gratitude?”

“I shall be off presently, Mr. Hunsden--to-morrow, if all be well: I’ll
not stay a day longer in X---- than I’m obliged.”

“Very good--but it will be decent to make due acknowledgment for the
assistance you have received; be quick! It is just going to strike
seven: I’m waiting to be thanked.”

“Just stand out of the way, will you, Mr. Hunsden: I want a key there is
on the corner of the mantelpiece. I’ll pack my portmanteau before I go
to bed.”

The house clock struck seven.

“The lad is a heathen,” said Hunsden, and taking his hat from a
sideboard, he left the room, laughing to himself. I had half an
inclination to follow him: I really intended to leave X---- the next
morning, and should certainly not have another opportunity of bidding
him good-bye. The front door banged to.

“Let him go,” said I, “we shall meet again some day.”






CHAPTER VII.

READER, perhaps you were never in Belgium? Haply you don’t know the
physiognomy of the country? You have not its lineaments defined upon
your memory, as I have them on mine?

Three--nay four--pictures line the four-walled cell where are stored for
me the records of the past. First, Eton. All in that picture is in far
perspective, receding, diminutive; but freshly coloured, green, dewy,
with a spring sky, piled with glittering yet showery clouds; for my
childhood was not all sunshine--it had its overcast, its cold, its
stormy hours. Second, X----, huge, dingy; the canvas cracked and smoked;
a yellow sky, sooty clouds; no sun, no azure; the verdure of the suburbs
blighted and sullied--a very dreary scene.

Third, Belgium; and I will pause before this landscape. As to the
fourth, a curtain covers it, which I may hereafter withdraw, or may not,
as suits my convenience and capacity. At any rate, for the present it
must hang undisturbed. Belgium! name unromantic and unpoetic, yet name
that whenever uttered has in my ear a sound, in my heart an echo, such
as no other assemblage of syllables, however sweet or classic, can
produce. Belgium! I repeat the word, now as I sit alone near midnight.
It stirs my world of the past like a summons to resurrection; the graves
unclose, the dead are raised; thoughts, feelings, memories that slept,
are seen by me ascending from the clouds--haloed most of them--but while
I gaze on their vapoury forms, and strive to ascertain definitely their
outline, the sound which wakened them dies, and they sink, each and all,
like a light wreath of mist, absorbed in the mould, recalled to urns,
resealed in monuments. Farewell, luminous phantoms!

This is Belgium, reader. Look! don’t call the picture a flat or a dull
one--it was neither flat nor dull to me when I first beheld it. When I
left Ostend on a mild February morning, and found myself on the road
to Brussels, nothing could look vapid to me. My sense of enjoyment
possessed an edge whetted to the finest, untouched, keen, exquisite.
I was young; I had good health; pleasure and I had never met; no
indulgence of hers had enervated or sated one faculty of my nature.
Liberty I clasped in my arms for the first time, and the influence of
her smile and embrace revived my life like the sun and the west wind.
Yes, at that epoch I felt like a morning traveller who doubts not that
from the hill he is ascending he shall behold a glorious sunrise; what
if the track be strait, steep, and stony? he sees it not; his eyes are
fixed on that summit, flushed already, flushed and gilded, and having
gained it he is certain of the scene beyond. He knows that the sun will
face him, that his chariot is even now coming over the eastern horizon,
and that the herald breeze he feels on his cheek is opening for the
god’s career a clear, vast path of azure, amidst clouds soft as pearl
and warm as flame. Difficulty and toil were to be my lot, but sustained
by energy, drawn on by hopes as bright as vague, I deemed such a lot
no hardship. I mounted now the hill in shade; there were pebbles,
inequalities, briars in my path, but my eyes were fixed on the crimson
peak above; my imagination was with the refulgent firmament beyond, and
I thought nothing of the stones turning under my feet, or of the thorns
scratching my face and hands.

I gazed often, and always with delight, from the window of the diligence
(these, be it remembered, were not the days of trains and railroads).
Well! and what did I see? I will tell you faithfully. Green, reedy
swamps; fields fertile but flat, cultivated in patches that made them
look like magnified kitchen-gardens; belts of cut trees, formal as
pollard willows, skirting the horizon; narrow canals, gliding slow by
the road-side; painted Flemish farmhouses; some very dirty hovels; a
gray, dead sky; wet road, wet fields, wet house-tops: not a beautiful,
scarcely a picturesque object met my eye along the whole route; yet to
me, all was beautiful, all was more than picturesque. It continued fair
so long as daylight lasted, though the moisture of many preceding damp
days had sodden the whole country; as it grew dark, however, the rain
recommenced, and it was through streaming and starless darkness my eye
caught the first gleam of the lights of Brussels. I saw little of the
city but its lights that night. Having alighted from the diligence, a
fiacre conveyed me to the Hotel de ----, where I had been advised by a
fellow-traveller to put up; having eaten a traveller’s supper, I retired
to bed, and slept a traveller’s sleep.

Next morning I awoke from prolonged and sound repose with the impression
that I was yet in X----, and perceiving it to be broad daylight I
started up, imagining that I had overslept myself and should be behind
time at the counting-house. The momentary and painful sense of restraint
vanished before the revived and reviving consciousness of freedom, as,
throwing back the white curtains of my bed, I looked forth into a wide,
lofty foreign chamber; how different from the small and dingy, though
not uncomfortable, apartment I had occupied for a night or two at a
respectable inn in London while waiting for the sailing of the packet!
Yet far be it from me to profane the memory of that little dingy room!
It, too, is dear to my soul; for there, as I lay in quiet and darkness,
I first heard the great bell of St. Paul’s telling London it was
midnight, and well do I recall the deep, deliberate tones, so full
charged with colossal phlegm and force. From the small, narrow window
of that room, I first saw THE dome, looming through a London mist. I
suppose the sensations, stirred by those first sounds, first sights, are
felt but once; treasure them, Memory; seal them in urns, and keep them
in safe niches! Well--I rose. Travellers talk of the apartments in
foreign dwellings being bare and uncomfortable; I thought my chamber
looked stately and cheerful. It had such large windows--CROISEES that
opened like doors, with such broad, clear panes of glass; such a great
looking-glass stood on my dressing-table--such a fine mirror glittered
over the mantelpiece--the painted floor looked so clean and glossy;
when I had dressed and was descending the stairs, the broad marble steps
almost awed me, and so did the lofty hall into which they conducted.
On the first landing I met a Flemish housemaid: she had wooden shoes, a
short red petticoat, a printed cotton bedgown, her face was broad,
her physiognomy eminently stupid; when I spoke to her in French, she
answered me in Flemish, with an air the reverse of civil; yet I thought
her charming; if she was not pretty or polite, she was, I conceived,
very picturesque; she reminded me of the female figures in certain Dutch
paintings I had seen in other years at Seacombe Hall.

I repaired to the public room; that, too, was very large and very lofty,
and warmed by a stove; the floor was black, and the stove was black, and
most of the furniture was black: yet I never experienced a freer
sense of exhilaration than when I sat down at a very long, black table
(covered, however, in part by a white cloth), and, having ordered
breakfast, began to pour out my coffee from a little black coffee-pot.
The stove might be dismal-looking to some eyes, not to mine, but it
was indisputably very warm, and there were two gentlemen seated by
it talking in French; impossible to follow their rapid utterance, or
comprehend much of the purport of what they said--yet French, in the
mouths of Frenchmen, or Belgians (I was not then sensible of the horrors
of the Belgian accent) was as music to my ears. One of these gentlemen
presently discerned me to be an Englishman--no doubt from the fashion in
which I addressed the waiter; for I would persist in speaking French in
my execrable South-of-England style, though the man understood English.
The gentleman, after looking towards me once or twice, politely accosted
me in very good English; I remember I wished to God that I could speak
French as well; his fluency and correct pronunciation impressed me for
the first time with a due notion of the cosmopolitan character of the
capital I was in; it was my first experience of that skill in living
languages I afterwards found to be so general in Brussels.

I lingered over my breakfast as long as I could; while it was there
on the table, and while that stranger continued talking to me, I was a
free, independent traveller; but at last the things were removed, the
two gentlemen left the room; suddenly the illusion ceased, reality and
business came back. I, a bondsman just released from the yoke, freed for
one week from twenty-one years of constraint, must, of necessity, resume
the fetters of dependency. Hardly had I tasted the delight of being
without a master when duty issued her stern mandate: “Go forth and seek
another service.” I never linger over a painful and necessary task; I
never take pleasure before business, it is not in my nature to do so;
impossible to enjoy a leisurely walk over the city, though I perceived
the morning was very fine, until I had first presented Mr. Hunsden’s
letter of introduction, and got fairly on to the track of a new
situation. Wrenching my mind from liberty and delight, I seized my hat,
and forced my reluctant body out of the Hotel de ---- into the foreign
street.

It was a fine day, but I would not look at the blue sky or at the
stately houses round me; my mind was bent on one thing, finding out “Mr.
Brown, Numero --, Rue Royale,” for so my letter was addressed. By dint
of inquiry I succeeded; I stood at last at the desired door, knocked,
asked for Mr. Brown, and was admitted.

Being shown into a small breakfast-room, I found myself in the
presence of an elderly gentleman--very grave, business-like, and
respectable-looking. I presented Mr. Hunsden’s letter; he received me
very civilly. After a little desultory conversation he asked me if there
was anything in which his advice or experience could be of use. I said,
“Yes,” and then proceeded to tell him that I was not a gentleman of
fortune, travelling for pleasure, but an ex-counting-house clerk, who
wanted employment of some kind, and that immediately too. He replied
that as a friend of Mr. Hunsden’s he would be willing to assist me as
well as he could. After some meditation he named a place in a mercantile
house at Liege, and another in a bookseller’s shop at Louvain.

“Clerk and shopman!” murmured I to myself. “No.” I shook my head. I
had tried the high stool; I hated it; I believed there were other
occupations that would suit me better; besides I did not wish to leave
Brussels.

“I know of no place in Brussels,” answered Mr. Brown, “unless indeed you
were disposed to turn your attention to teaching. I am acquainted with
the director of a large establishment who is in want of a professor of
English and Latin.”

I thought two minutes, then I seized the idea eagerly.

“The very thing, sir!” said I.

“But,” asked he, “do you understand French well enough to teach Belgian
boys English?”

Fortunately I could answer this question in the affirmative;
having studied French under a Frenchman, I could speak the language
intelligibly though not fluently. I could also read it well, and write
it decently.

“Then,” pursued Mr. Brown, “I think I can promise you the place, for
Monsieur Pelet will not refuse a professor recommended by me; but come
here again at five o’clock this afternoon, and I will introduce you to
him.”

The word “professor” struck me. “I am not a professor,” said I.

“Oh,” returned Mr. Brown, “professor, here in Belgium, means a teacher,
that is all.”

My conscience thus quieted, I thanked Mr. Brown, and, for the present,
withdrew. This time I stepped out into the street with a relieved heart;
the task I had imposed on myself for that day was executed. I might now
take some hours of holiday. I felt free to look up. For the first time
I remarked the sparkling clearness of the air, the deep blue of the sky,
the gay clean aspect of the white-washed or painted houses; I saw what
a fine street was the Rue Royale, and, walking leisurely along its broad
pavement, I continued to survey its stately hotels, till the palisades,
the gates, and trees of the park appearing in sight, offered to my eye a
new attraction. I remember, before entering the park, I stood awhile to
contemplate the statue of General Belliard, and then I advanced to the
top of the great staircase just beyond, and I looked down into a narrow
back street, which I afterwards learnt was called the Rue d’Isabelle.
I well recollect that my eye rested on the green door of a rather large
house opposite, where, on a brass plate, was inscribed, “Pensionnat de
Demoiselles.” Pensionnat! The word excited an uneasy sensation in
my mind; it seemed to speak of restraint. Some of the demoiselles,
externats no doubt, were at that moment issuing from the door--I looked
for a pretty face amongst them, but their close, little French bonnets
hid their features; in a moment they were gone.

I had traversed a good deal of Brussels before five o’clock arrived,
but punctually as that hour struck I was again in the Rue Royale.
Re-admitted to Mr. Brown’s breakfast-room, I found him, as before,
seated at the table, and he was not alone--a gentleman stood by the
hearth. Two words of introduction designated him as my future master.
“M. Pelet, Mr. Crimsworth; Mr. Crimsworth, M. Pelet,” a bow on each
side finished the ceremony. I don’t know what sort of a bow I made; an
ordinary one, I suppose, for I was in a tranquil, commonplace frame of
mind; I felt none of the agitation which had troubled my first interview
with Edward Crimsworth. M. Pelet’s bow was extremely polite, yet not
theatrical, scarcely French; he and I were presently seated opposite to
each other. In a pleasing voice, low, and, out of consideration to my
foreign ears, very distinct and deliberate, M. Pelet intimated that he
had just been receiving from “le respectable M. Brown,” an account of my
attainments and character, which relieved him from all scruple as to
the propriety of engaging me as professor of English and Latin in
his establishment; nevertheless, for form’s sake, he would put a few
questions to test my powers. He did, and expressed in flattering terms
his satisfaction at my answers. The subject of salary next came on; it
was fixed at one thousand francs per annum, besides board and lodging.
“And in addition,” suggested M. Pelet, “as there will be some hours
in each day during which your services will not be required in my
establishment, you may, in time, obtain employment in other seminaries,
and thus turn your vacant moments to profitable account.”

I thought this very kind, and indeed I found afterwards that the terms
on which M. Pelet had engaged me were really liberal for Brussels;
instruction being extremely cheap there on account of the number of
teachers. It was further arranged that I should be installed in my new
post the very next day, after which M. Pelet and I parted.

Well, and what was he like? and what were my impressions concerning him?
He was a man of about forty years of age, of middle size, and rather
emaciated figure; his face was pale, his cheeks were sunk, and his eyes
hollow; his features were pleasing and regular, they had a French
turn (for M. Pelet was no Fleming, but a Frenchman both by birth
and parentage), yet the degree of harshness inseparable from Gallic
lineaments was, in his case, softened by a mild blue eye, and a
melancholy, almost suffering, expression of countenance; his physiognomy
was “fine et spirituelle.” I use two French words because they define
better than any English terms the species of intelligence with which his
features were imbued. He was altogether an interesting and prepossessing
personage. I wondered only at the utter absence of all the ordinary
characteristics of his profession, and almost feared he could not be
stern and resolute enough for a schoolmaster. Externally at least
M. Pelet presented an absolute contrast to my late master, Edward
Crimsworth.

Influenced by the impression I had received of his gentleness, I was a
good deal surprised when, on arriving the next day at my new employer’s
house, and being admitted to a first view of what was to be the
sphere of my future labours, namely the large, lofty, and well-lighted
schoolrooms, I beheld a numerous assemblage of pupils, boys of course,
whose collective appearance showed all the signs of a full, flourishing,
and well-disciplined seminary. As I traversed the classes in company
with M. Pelet, a profound silence reigned on all sides, and if by chance
a murmur or a whisper arose, one glance from the pensive eye of this
most gentle pedagogue stilled it instantly. It was astonishing, I
thought, how so mild a check could prove so effectual. When I had
perambulated the length and breadth of the classes, M. Pelet turned and
said to me--

“Would you object to taking the boys as they are, and testing their
proficiency in English?”

The proposal was unexpected. I had thought I should have been allowed at
least three days to prepare; but it is a bad omen to commence any career
by hesitation, so I just stepped to the professor’s desk near which we
stood, and faced the circle of my pupils. I took a moment to collect
my thoughts, and likewise to frame in French the sentence by which I
proposed to open business. I made it as short as possible:--

“Messieurs, prenez vos livres de lecture.”

“Anglais ou Francais, monsieur?” demanded a thickset, moon-faced young
Flamand in a blouse. The answer was fortunately easy:--

“Anglais.”

I determined to give myself as little trouble as possible in this
lesson; it would not do yet to trust my unpractised tongue with the
delivery of explanations; my accent and idiom would be too open to the
criticisms of the young gentlemen before me, relative to whom I felt
already it would be necessary at once to take up an advantageous
position, and I proceeded to employ means accordingly.

“Commencez!” cried I, when they had all produced their books. The
moon-faced youth (by name Jules Vanderkelkov, as I afterwards learnt)
took the first sentence. The “livre de lecture” was the “Vicar of
Wakefield,” much used in foreign schools because it is supposed to
contain prime samples of conversational English; it might, however,
have been a Runic scroll for any resemblance the words, as enunciated by
Jules, bore to the language in ordinary use amongst the natives of Great
Britain. My God! how he did snuffle, snort, and wheeze! All he said was
said in his throat and nose, for it is thus the Flamands speak, but
I heard him to the end of his paragraph without proffering a word of
correction, whereat he looked vastly self-complacent, convinced,
no doubt, that he had acquitted himself like a real born and bred
“Anglais.” In the same unmoved silence I listened to a dozen in
rotation, and when the twelfth had concluded with splutter, hiss, and
mumble, I solemnly laid down the book.

“Arretez!” said I. There was a pause, during which I regarded them all
with a steady and somewhat stern gaze; a dog, if stared at hard enough
and long enough, will show symptoms of embarrassment, and so at length
did my bench of Belgians. Perceiving that some of the faces before me
were beginning to look sullen, and others ashamed, I slowly joined my
hands, and ejaculated in a deep “voix de poitrine”--

“Comme c’est affreux!”

They looked at each other, pouted, coloured, swung their heels; they
were not pleased, I saw, but they were impressed, and in the way
I wished them to be. Having thus taken them down a peg in their
self-conceit, the next step was to raise myself in their estimation; not
a very easy thing, considering that I hardly dared to speak for fear of
betraying my own deficiencies.

“Ecoutez, messieurs!” said I, and I endeavoured to throw into my
accents the compassionate tone of a superior being, who, touched by the
extremity of the helplessness, which at first only excited his scorn,
deigns at length to bestow aid. I then began at the very beginning of
the “Vicar of Wakefield,” and read, in a slow, distinct voice, some
twenty pages, they all the while sitting mute and listening with fixed
attention; by the time I had done nearly an hour had elapsed. I then
rose and said:--

“C’est assez pour aujourd’hui, messieurs; demain nous recommencerons, et
j’espere que tout ira bien.”

With this oracular sentence I bowed, and in company with M. Pelet
quitted the school-room.

“C’est bien! c’est tres bien!” said my principal as we entered his
parlour. “Je vois que monsieur a de l’adresse; cela, me plait, car, dans
l’instruction, l’adresse fait tout autant que le savoir.”

From the parlour M. Pelet conducted me to my apartment, my “chambre,”
 as Monsieur said with a certain air of complacency. It was a very small
room, with an excessively small bed, but M. Pelet gave me to understand
that I was to occupy it quite alone, which was of course a great
comfort. Yet, though so limited in dimensions, it had two windows. Light
not being taxed in Belgium, the people never grudge its admission into
their houses; just here, however, this observation is not very APROPOS,
for one of these windows was boarded up; the open windows looked into
the boys’ playground. I glanced at the other, as wondering what aspect
it would present if disencumbered of the boards. M. Pelet read, I
suppose, the expression of my eye; he explained:--

“La fenetre fermee donne sur un jardin appartenant a un pensionnat
de demoiselles,” said he, “et les convenances exigent--enfin, vous
comprenez--n’est-ce pas, monsieur?”

“Oui, oui,” was my reply, and I looked of course quite satisfied; but
when M. Pelet had retired and closed the door after him, the first thing
I did was to scrutinize closely the nailed boards, hoping to find
some chink or crevice which I might enlarge, and so get a peep at the
consecrated ground. My researches were vain, for the boards were well
joined and strongly nailed. It is astonishing how disappointed I felt. I
thought it would have been so pleasant to have looked out upon a
garden planted with flowers and trees, so amusing to have watched the
demoiselles at their play; to have studied female character in a variety
of phases, myself the while sheltered from view by a modest muslin
curtain, whereas, owing doubtless to the absurd scruples of some old
duenna of a directress, I had now only the option of looking at a bare
gravelled court, with an enormous “pas de geant” in the middle, and the
monotonous walls and windows of a boys’ school-house round. Not only
then, but many a time after, especially in moments of weariness and
low spirits, did I look with dissatisfied eyes on that most tantalizing
board, longing to tear it away and get a glimpse of the green region
which I imagined to lie beyond. I knew a tree grew close up to the
window, for though there were as yet no leaves to rustle, I often heard
at night the tapping of branches against the panes. In the daytime,
when I listened attentively, I could hear, even through the boards, the
voices of the demoiselles in their hours of recreation, and, to speak
the honest truth, my sentimental reflections were occasionally a trifle
disarranged by the not quite silvery, in fact the too often brazen
sounds, which, rising from the unseen paradise below, penetrated
clamorously into my solitude. Not to mince matters, it really seemed to
me a doubtful case whether the lungs of Mdlle. Reuter’s girls or those
of M. Pelet’s boys were the strongest, and when it came to shrieking
the girls indisputably beat the boys hollow. I forgot to say, by-the-by,
that Reuter was the name of the old lady who had had my window bearded
up. I say old, for such I, of course, concluded her to be, judging from
her cautious, chaperon-like proceedings; besides, nobody ever spoke of
her as young. I remember I was very much amused when I first heard her
Christian name; it was Zoraide--Mademoiselle Zoraide Reuter. But the
continental nations do allow themselves vagaries in the choice of names,
such as we sober English never run into. I think, indeed, we have too
limited a list to choose from.

Meantime my path was gradually growing smooth before me. I, in a
few weeks, conquered the teasing difficulties inseparable from the
commencement of almost every career. Ere long I had acquired as much
facility in speaking French as set me at my ease with my pupils; and
as I had encountered them on a right footing at the very beginning, and
continued tenaciously to retain the advantage I had early gained, they
never attempted mutiny, which circumstance, all who are in any degree
acquainted with the ongoings of Belgian schools, and who know the
relation in which professors and pupils too frequently stand towards
each other in those establishments, will consider an important and
uncommon one. Before concluding this chapter I will say a word on the
system I pursued with regard to my classes: my experience may possibly
be of use to others.

It did not require very keen observation to detect the character of the
youth of Brabant, but it needed a certain degree of tact to adopt one’s
measures to their capacity. Their intellectual faculties were generally
weak, their animal propensities strong; thus there was at once an
impotence and a kind of inert force in their natures; they were dull,
but they were also singularly stubborn, heavy as lead and, like lead,
most difficult to move. Such being the case, it would have been truly
absurd to exact from them much in the way of mental exertion; having
short memories, dense intelligence, feeble reflective powers, they
recoiled with repugnance from any occupation that demanded close study
or deep thought. Had the abhorred effort been extorted from them by
injudicious and arbitrary measures on the part of the Professor, they
would have resisted as obstinately, as clamorously, as desperate swine;
and though not brave singly, they were relentless acting EN MASSE.

I understood that before my arrival in M. Pelet’s establishment, the
combined insubordination of the pupils had effected the dismissal of
more than one English master. It was necessary then to exact only the
most moderate application from natures so little qualified to apply--to
assist, in every practicable way, understandings so opaque and
contracted--to be ever gentle, considerate, yielding even, to a certain
point, with dispositions so irrationally perverse; but, having reached
that culminating point of indulgence, you must fix your foot, plant it,
root it in rock--become immutable as the towers of Ste. Gudule; for a
step--but half a step farther, and you would plunge headlong into the
gulf of imbecility; there lodged, you would speedily receive proofs
of Flemish gratitude and magnanimity in showers of Brabant saliva and
handfuls of Low Country mud. You might smooth to the utmost the path of
learning, remove every pebble from the track; but then you must finally
insist with decision on the pupil taking your arm and allowing himself
to be led quietly along the prepared road. When I had brought down my
lesson to the lowest level of my dullest pupil’s capacity--when I
had shown myself the mildest, the most tolerant of masters--a word of
impertinence, a movement of disobedience, changed me at once into
a despot. I offered then but one alternative--submission and
acknowledgment of error, or ignominious expulsion. This system answered,
and my influence, by degrees, became established on a firm basis. “The
boy is father to the man,” it is said; and so I often thought when
looked at my boys and remembered the political history of their
ancestors. Pelet’s school was merely an epitome of the Belgian nation.






CHAPTER VIII.

AND Pelet himself? How did I continue to like him? Oh, extremely well!
Nothing could be more smooth, gentlemanlike, and even friendly, than
his demeanour to me. I had to endure from him neither cold neglect,
irritating interference, nor pretentious assumption of superiority. I
fear, however, two poor, hard-worked Belgian ushers in the establishment
could not have said as much; to them the director’s manner was
invariably dry, stern, and cool. I believe he perceived once or twice
that I was a little shocked at the difference he made between them and
me, and accounted for it by saying, with a quiet sarcastic smile--

“Ce ne sont que des Flamands--allez!”

And then he took his cigar gently from his lips and spat on the painted
floor of the room in which we were sitting. Flamands certainly they
were, and both had the true Flamand physiognomy, where intellectual
inferiority is marked in lines none can mistake; still they were men,
and, in the main, honest men; and I could not see why their being
aboriginals of the flat, dull soil should serve as a pretext for
treating them with perpetual severity and contempt. This idea, of
injustice somewhat poisoned the pleasure I might otherwise have derived
from Pelet’s soft affable manner to myself. Certainly it was agreeable,
when the day’s work was over, to find one’s employer an intelligent
and cheerful companion; and if he was sometimes a little sarcastic
and sometimes a little too insinuating, and if I did discover that
his mildness was more a matter of appearance than of reality--if I did
occasionally suspect the existence of flint or steel under an external
covering of velvet--still we are none of us perfect; and weary as I was
of the atmosphere of brutality and insolence in which I had constantly
lived at X----, I had no inclination now, on casting anchor in calmer
regions, to institute at once a prying search after defects that were
scrupulously withdrawn and carefully veiled from my view. I was willing
to take Pelet for what he seemed--to believe him benevolent and friendly
until some untoward event should prove him otherwise. He was not
married, and I soon perceived he had all a Frenchman’s, all a Parisian’s
notions about matrimony and women. I suspected a degree of laxity in
his code of morals, there was something so cold and BLASE in his tone
whenever he alluded to what he called “le beau sexe;” but he was too
gentlemanlike to intrude topics I did not invite, and as he was really
intelligent and really fond of intellectual subjects of discourse, he
and I always found enough to talk about, without seeking themes in the
mire. I hated his fashion of mentioning love; I abhorred, from my soul,
mere licentiousness. He felt the difference of our notions, and, by
mutual consent, we kept off ground debateable.

Pelet’s house was kept and his kitchen managed by his mother, a real
old Frenchwoman; she had been handsome--at least she told me so, and I
strove to believe her; she was now ugly, as only continental old women
can be; perhaps, though, her style of dress made her look uglier than
she really was. Indoors she would go about without cap, her grey hair
strangely dishevelled; then, when at home, she seldom wore a gown--only
a shabby cotton camisole; shoes, too, were strangers to her feet, and in
lieu of them she sported roomy slippers, trodden down at the heels. On
the other hand, whenever it was her pleasure to appear abroad, as on
Sundays and fete-days, she would put on some very brilliant-coloured
dress, usually of thin texture, a silk bonnet with a wreath of flowers,
and a very fine shawl. She was not, in the main, an ill-natured old
woman, but an incessant and most indiscreet talker; she kept chiefly
in and about the kitchen, and seemed rather to avoid her son’s august
presence; of him, indeed, she evidently stood in awe. When he reproved
her, his reproofs were bitter and unsparing; but he seldom gave himself
that trouble.

Madame Pelet had her own society, her own circle of chosen visitors,
whom, however, I seldom saw, as she generally entertained them in what
she called her “cabinet,” a small den of a place adjoining the kitchen,
and descending into it by one or two steps. On these steps, by-the-by,
I have not unfrequently seen Madame Pelet seated with a trencher on
her knee, engaged in the threefold employment of eating her dinner,
gossiping with her favourite servant, the housemaid, and scolding her
antagonist, the cook; she never dined, and seldom indeed took any meal
with her son; and as to showing her face at the boys’ table, that was
quite out of the question. These details will sound very odd in English
ears, but Belgium is not England, and its ways are not our ways.

Madame Pelet’s habits of life, then, being taken into consideration,
I was a good deal surprised when, one Thursday evening (Thursday was
always a half-holiday), as I was sitting all alone in my apartment,
correcting a huge pile of English and Latin exercises, a servant
tapped at the door, and, on its being opened, presented Madame Pelet’s
compliments, and she would be happy to see me to take my “gouter” (a
meal which answers to our English “tea”) with her in the dining-room.

“Plait-il?” said I, for I thought I must have misunderstood, the
message and invitation were so unusual; the same words were repeated. I
accepted, of course, and as I descended the stairs, I wondered what
whim had entered the old lady’s brain; her son was out--gone to pass the
evening at the Salle of the Grande Harmonie or some other club of which
he was a member. Just as I laid my hand on the handle of the dining-room
door, a queer idea glanced across my mind.

“Surely she’s not going to make love to me,” said I. “I’ve heard of
old Frenchwomen doing odd things in that line; and the gouter? They
generally begin such affairs with eating and drinking, I believe.”

There was a fearful dismay in this suggestion of my excited imagination,
and if I had allowed myself time to dwell upon it, I should no doubt
have cut there and then, rushed back to my chamber, and bolted myself
in; but whenever a danger or a horror is veiled with uncertainty,
the primary wish of the mind is to ascertain first the naked truth,
reserving the expedient of flight for the moment when its dread
anticipation shall be realized. I turned the door-handle, and in an
instant had crossed the fatal threshold, closed the door behind me, and
stood in the presence of Madame Pelet.

Gracious heavens! The first view of her seemed to confirm my worst
apprehensions. There she sat, dressed out in a light green muslin gown,
on her head a lace cap with flourishing red roses in the frill; her
table was carefully spread; there were fruit, cakes, and coffee, with a
bottle of something--I did not know what. Already the cold sweat started
on my brow, already I glanced back over my shoulder at the closed
door, when, to my unspeakable relief, my eye, wandering mildly in the
direction of the stove, rested upon a second figure, seated in a large
fauteuil beside it. This was a woman, too, and, moreover, an old woman,
and as fat and as rubicund as Madame Pelet was meagre and yellow; her
attire was likewise very fine, and spring flowers of different hues
circled in a bright wreath the crown of her violet-coloured velvet
bonnet.

I had only time to make these general observations when Madame Pelet,
coming forward with what she intended should be a graceful and elastic
step, thus accosted me:

“Monsieur is indeed most obliging to quit his books, his studies, at the
request of an insignificant person like me--will Monsieur complete his
kindness by allowing me to present him to my dear friend Madame Reuter,
who resides in the neighbouring house--the young ladies’ school.”

“Ah!” thought I, “I knew she was old,” and I bowed and took my seat.
Madame Reuter placed herself at the table opposite to me.

“How do you like Belgium, Monsieur?” asked she, in an accent of the
broadest Bruxellois. I could now well distinguish the difference between
the fine and pure Parisian utterance of M. Pelet, for instance, and
the guttural enunciation of the Flamands. I answered politely, and then
wondered how so coarse and clumsy an old woman as the one before me
should be at the head of a ladies’ seminary, which I had always heard
spoken of in terms of high commendation. In truth there was something
to wonder at. Madame Reuter looked more like a joyous, free-living old
Flemish fermiere, or even a maitresse d’auberge, than a staid, grave,
rigid directrice de pensionnat. In general the continental, or at least
the Belgian old women permit themselves a licence of manners, speech,
and aspect, such as our venerable granddames would recoil from as
absolutely disreputable, and Madame Reuter’s jolly face bore evidence
that she was no exception to the rule of her country; there was a
twinkle and leer in her left eye; her right she kept habitually half
shut, which I thought very odd indeed. After several vain attempts to
comprehend the motives of these two droll old creatures for inviting me
to join them at their gouter, I at last fairly gave it up, and resigning
myself to inevitable mystification, I sat and looked first at one, then
at the other, taking care meantime to do justice to the confitures,
cakes, and coffee, with which they amply supplied me. They, too, ate,
and that with no delicate appetite, and having demolished a large
portion of the solids, they proposed a “petit verre.” I declined. Not
so Mesdames Pelet and Reuter; each mixed herself what I thought rather
a stiff tumbler of punch, and placing it on a stand near the stove, they
drew up their chairs to that convenience, and invited me to do the same.
I obeyed; and being seated fairly between them, I was thus addressed
first by Madame Pelet, then by Madame Reuter.

“We will now speak of business,” said Madame Pelet, and she went on to
make an elaborate speech, which, being interpreted, was to the effect
that she had asked for the pleasure of my company that evening in
order to give her friend Madame Reuter an opportunity of broaching an
important proposal, which might turn out greatly to my advantage.

“Pourvu que vous soyez sage,” said Madame Reuter, “et a vrai dire,
vous en avez bien l’air. Take one drop of the punch” (or ponche, as she
pronounced it); “it is an agreeable and wholesome beverage after a full
meal.”

I bowed, but again declined it. She went on:

“I feel,” said she, after a solemn sip--“I feel profoundly the
importance of the commission with which my dear daughter has entrusted
me, for you are aware, Monsieur, that it is my daughter who directs the
establishment in the next house?”

“Ah! I thought it was yourself, madame.” Though, indeed, at that moment
I recollected that it was called Mademoiselle, not Madame Reuter’s
pensionnat.

“I! Oh, no! I manage the house and look after the servants, as my friend
Madame Pelet does for Monsieur her son--nothing more. Ah! you thought I
gave lessons in class--did you?”

And she laughed loud and long, as though the idea tickled her fancy
amazingly.

“Madame is in the wrong to laugh,” I observed; “if she does not give
lessons, I am sure it is not because she cannot;” and I whipped out a
white pocket-handkerchief and wafted it, with a French grace, past my
nose, bowing at the same time.

“Quel charmant jeune homme!” murmured Madame Pelet in a low voice.
Madame Reuter, being less sentimental, as she was Flamand and not
French, only laughed again.

“You are a dangerous person, I fear,” said she; “if you can forge
compliments at that rate, Zoraide will positively be afraid of you; but
if you are good, I will keep your secret, and not tell her how well you
can flatter. Now, listen what sort of a proposal she makes to you. She
has heard that you are an excellent professor, and as she wishes to get
the very best masters for her school (car Zoraide fait tout comme une
reine, c’est une veritable maitresse-femme), she has commissioned me to
step over this afternoon, and sound Madame Pelet as to the possibility
of engaging you. Zoraide is a wary general; she never advances without
first examining well her ground. I don’t think she would be pleased
if she knew I had already disclosed her intentions to you; she did not
order me to go so far, but I thought there would be no harm in letting
you into the secret, and Madame Pelet was of the same opinion. Take
care, however, you don’t betray either of us to Zoraide--to my
daughter, I mean; she is so discreet and circumspect herself, she cannot
understand that one should find a pleasure in gossiping a little--”

“C’est absolument comme mon fils!” cried Madame Pelet.

“All the world is so changed since our girlhood!” rejoined the other:
“young people have such old heads now. But to return, Monsieur. Madame
Pelet will mention the subject of your giving lessons in my daughter’s
establishment to her son, and he will speak to you; and then to-morrow,
you will step over to our house, and ask to see my daughter, and you
will introduce the subject as if the first intimation of it had reached
you from M. Pelet himself, and be sure you never mention my name, for I
would not displease Zoraide on any account.”

“Bien! bien!” interrupted I--for all this chatter and circumlocution
began to bore me very much; “I will consult M. Pelet, and the thing
shall be settled as you desire. Good evening, mesdames--I am infinitely
obliged to you.”

“Comment! vous vous en allez deja?” exclaimed Madame Pelet.

“Prenez encore quelquechose, monsieur; une pomme cuite, des biscuits,
encore une tasse de cafe?”

“Merci, merci, madame--au revoir.” And I backed at last out of the
apartment.

Having regained my own room, I set myself to turn over in my mind
the incident of the evening. It seemed a queer affair altogether, and
queerly managed; the two old women had made quite a little intricate
mess of it; still I found that the uppermost feeling in my mind on the
subject was one of satisfaction. In the first place it would be a change
to give lessons in another seminary, and then to teach young ladies
would be an occupation so interesting--to be admitted at all into a
ladies’ boarding-school would be an incident so new in my life. Besides,
thought I, as I glanced at the boarded window, “I shall now at last see
the mysterious garden: I shall gaze both on the angels and their Eden.”






CHAPTER IX.

M. PELET could not of course object to the proposal made by Mdlle.
Reuter; permission to accept such additional employment, should it
offer, having formed an article of the terms on which he had engaged me.
It was, therefore, arranged in the course of next day that I should
be at liberty to give lessons in Mdlle. Reuter’s establishment four
afternoons in every week.

When evening came I prepared to step over in order to seek a conference
with Mademoiselle herself on the subject; I had not had time to pay the
visit before, having been all day closely occupied in class. I remember
very well that before quitting my chamber, I held a brief debate with
myself as to whether I should change my ordinary attire for something
smarter. At last I concluded it would be a waste of labour. “Doubtless,”
 thought I, “she is some stiff old maid; for though the daughter of
Madame Reuter, she may well number upwards of forty winters; besides, if
it were otherwise, if she be both young and pretty, I am not handsome,
and no dressing can make me so, therefore I’ll go as I am.” And off
I started, cursorily glancing sideways as I passed the toilet-table,
surmounted by a looking-glass: a thin irregular face I saw, with sunk,
dark eyes under a large, square forehead, complexion destitute of bloom
or attraction; something young, but not youthful, no object to win a
lady’s love, no butt for the shafts of Cupid.

I was soon at the entrance of the pensionnat, in a moment I had pulled
the bell; in another moment the door was opened, and within appeared a
passage paved alternately with black and white marble; the walls were
painted in imitation of marble also; and at the far end opened a glass
door, through which I saw shrubs and a grass-plat, looking pleasant in
the sunshine of the mild spring evening--for it was now the middle of
April.

This, then, was my first glimpse of the garden; but I had not time to
look long, the portress, after having answered in the affirmative
my question as to whether her mistress was at home, opened the
folding-doors of a room to the left, and having ushered me in, closed
them behind me. I found myself in a salon with a very well-painted,
highly varnished floor; chairs and sofas covered with white draperies,
a green porcelain stove, walls hung with pictures in gilt frames, a gilt
pendule and other ornaments on the mantelpiece, a large lustre pendent
from the centre of the ceiling, mirrors, consoles, muslin curtains, and
a handsome centre table completed the inventory of furniture. All looked
extremely clean and glittering, but the general effect would have been
somewhat chilling had not a second large pair of folding-doors, standing
wide open, and disclosing another and smaller salon, more snugly
furnished, offered some relief to the eye. This room was carpeted, and
therein was a piano, a couch, a chiffonniere--above all, it contained
a lofty window with a crimson curtain, which, being undrawn, afforded
another glimpse of the garden, through the large, clear panes, round
which some leaves of ivy, some tendrils of vine were trained.

“Monsieur Creemsvort, n’est ce pas?” said a voice behind me; and,
starting involuntarily, I turned. I had been so taken up with the
contemplation of the pretty little salon that I had not noticed the
entrance of a person into the larger room. It was, however, Mdlle.
Reuter who now addressed me, and stood close beside me; and when I had
bowed with instantaneously recovered sang-froid--for I am not easily
embarrassed--I commenced the conversation by remarking on the pleasant
aspect of her little cabinet, and the advantage she had over M. Pelet in
possessing a garden.

“Yes,” she said, “she often thought so;” and added, “it is my garden,
monsieur, which makes me retain this house, otherwise I should probably
have removed to larger and more commodious premises long since; but you
see I could not take my garden with me, and I should scarcely find one
so large and pleasant anywhere else in town.”

I approved her judgment.

“But you have not seen it yet,” said she, rising; “come to the window
and take a better view.” I followed her; she opened the sash, and
leaning out I saw in full the enclosed demesne which had hitherto been
to me an unknown region. It was a long, not very broad strip of cultured
ground, with an alley bordered by enormous old fruit trees down the
middle; there was a sort of lawn, a parterre of rose-trees, some
flower-borders, and, on the far side, a thickly planted copse of lilacs,
laburnums, and acacias. It looked pleasant, to me--very pleasant, so
long a time had elapsed since I had seen a garden of any sort. But it
was not only on Mdlle. Reuter’s garden that my eyes dwelt; when I had
taken a view of her well-trimmed beds and budding shrubberies, I allowed
my glance to come back to herself, nor did I hastily withdraw it.

I had thought to see a tall, meagre, yellow, conventual image in black,
with a close white cap, bandaged under the chin like a nun’s head-gear;
whereas, there stood by me a little and roundly formed woman, who might
indeed be older than I, but was still young; she could not, I thought,
be more than six or seven and twenty; she was as fair as a fair
Englishwoman; she had no cap; her hair was nut-brown, and she wore it
in curls; pretty her features were not, nor very soft, nor very regular,
but neither were they in any degree plain, and I already saw cause
to deem them expressive. What was their predominant cast? Was it
sagacity?--sense? Yes, I thought so; but I could scarcely as yet be
sure. I discovered, however, that there was a certain serenity of eye,
and freshness of complexion, most pleasing to behold. The colour on her
cheek was like the bloom on a good apple, which is as sound at the core
as it is red on the rind.

Mdlle. Reuter and I entered upon business. She said she was not
absolutely certain of the wisdom of the step she was about to take,
because I was so young, and parents might possibly object to a professor
like me for their daughters: “But it is often well to act on one’s own
judgment,” said she, “and to lead parents, rather than be led by them.
The fitness of a professor is not a matter of age; and, from what I have
heard, and from what I observe myself, I would much rather trust you
than M. Ledru, the music-master, who is a married man of near fifty.”

I remarked that I hoped she would find me worthy of her good opinion;
that if I knew myself, I was incapable of betraying any confidence
reposed in me. “Du reste,” said she, “the surveillance will be strictly
attended to.” And then she proceeded to discuss the subject of terms.
She was very cautious, quite on her guard; she did not absolutely
bargain, but she warily sounded me to find out what my expectations
might be; and when she could not get me to name a sum, she reasoned and
reasoned with a fluent yet quiet circumlocution of speech, and at last
nailed me down to five hundred francs per annum--not too much, but I
agreed. Before the negotiation was completed, it began to grow a little
dusk. I did not hasten it, for I liked well enough to sit and hear
her talk; I was amused with the sort of business talent she displayed.
Edward could not have shown himself more practical, though he might have
evinced more coarseness and urgency; and then she had so many reasons,
so many explanations; and, after all, she succeeded in proving herself
quite disinterested and even liberal. At last she concluded, she could
say no more, because, as I acquiesced in all things, there was no
further ground for the exercise of her parts of speech. I was obliged to
rise. I would rather have sat a little longer; what had I to return to
but my small empty room? And my eyes had a pleasure in looking at
Mdlle. Reuter, especially now, when the twilight softened her features a
little, and, in the doubtful dusk, I could fancy her forehead as open
as it was really elevated, her mouth touched with turns of sweetness
as well as defined in lines of sense. When I rose to go, I held out
my hand, on purpose, though I knew it was contrary to the etiquette of
foreign habits; she smiled, and said--

“Ah! c’est comme tous les Anglais,” but gave me her hand very kindly.

“It is the privilege of my country, Mademoiselle,” said I; “and,
remember, I shall always claim it.”

She laughed a little, quite good-naturedly, and with the sort of
tranquillity obvious in all she did--a tranquillity which soothed and
suited me singularly, at least I thought so that evening. Brussels
seemed a very pleasant place to me when I got out again into the street,
and it appeared as if some cheerful, eventful, upward-tending career
were even then opening to me, on that selfsame mild, still April night.
So impressionable a being is man, or at least such a man as I was in
those days.






CHAPTER X.

NEXT day the morning hours seemed to pass very slowly at M. Pelet’s; I
wanted the afternoon to come that I might go again to the neighbouring
pensionnat and give my first lesson within its pleasant precincts; for
pleasant they appeared to me. At noon the hour of recreation arrived; at
one o’clock we had lunch; this got on the time, and at last St. Gudule’s
deep bell, tolling slowly two, marked the moment for which I had been
waiting.

At the foot of the narrow back-stairs that descended from my room, I met
M. Pelet.

“Comme vous avez l’air rayonnant!” said he. “Je ne vous ai jamais vu
aussi gai. Que s’est-il donc passe?”

“Apparemment que j’aime les changements,” replied I.

“Ah! je comprends--c’est cela--soyez sage seulement. Vous etes bien
jeune--trop jeune pour le role que vous allez jouer; il faut prendre
garde--savez-vous?”

“Mais quel danger y a-t-il?”

“Je n’en sais rien--ne vous laissez pas aller a de vives
impressions--voila tout.”

I laughed: a sentiment of exquisite pleasure played over my nerves at
the thought that “vives impressions” were likely to be created; it was
the deadness, the sameness of life’s daily ongoings that had hitherto
been my bane; my blouse-clad “eleves” in the boys’ seminary never
stirred in me any “vives impressions” except it might be occasionally
some of anger. I broke from M. Pelet, and as I strode down the passage
he followed me with one of his laughs--a very French, rakish, mocking
sound.

Again I stood at the neighbouring door, and soon was re-admitted into
the cheerful passage with its clear dove-colour imitation marble walls.
I followed the portress, and descending a step, and making a turn, I
found myself in a sort of corridor; a side-door opened, Mdlle. Reuter’s
little figure, as graceful as it was plump, appeared. I could now see
her dress in full daylight; a neat, simple mousseline-laine gown fitted
her compact round shape to perfection--delicate little collar and
manchettes of lace, trim Parisian brodequins showed her neck, wrists,
and feet, to complete advantage; but how grave was her face as she
came suddenly upon me! Solicitude and business were in her eye--on her
forehead; she looked almost stern. Her “Bon jour, monsieur,” was quite
polite, but so orderly, so commonplace, it spread directly a cool, damp
towel over my “vives impressions.” The servant turned back when her
mistress appeared, and I walked slowly along the corridor, side by side
with Mdlle. Reuter.

“Monsieur will give a lesson in the first class to-day,” said she;
“dictation or reading will perhaps be the best thing to begin with, for
those are the easiest forms of communicating instruction in a foreign
language; and, at the first, a master naturally feels a little
unsettled.”

She was quite right, as I had found from experience; it only remained
for me to acquiesce. We proceeded now in silence. The corridor
terminated in a hall, large, lofty, and square; a glass door on one side
showed within a long narrow refectory, with tables, an armoire, and
two lamps; it was empty; large glass doors, in front, opened on the
playground and garden; a broad staircase ascended spirally on the
opposite side; the remaining wall showed a pair of great folding-doors,
now closed, and admitting, doubtless, to the classes.

Mdlle. Reuter turned her eye laterally on me, to ascertain, probably,
whether I was collected enough to be ushered into her sanctum sanctorum.
I suppose she judged me to be in a tolerable state of self-government,
for she opened the door, and I followed her through. A rustling sound of
uprising greeted our entrance; without looking to the right or left, I
walked straight up the lane between two sets of benches and desks,
and took possession of the empty chair and isolated desk raised on an
estrade, of one step high, so as to command one division; the other
division being under the surveillance of a maitresse similarly elevated.
At the back of the estrade, and attached to a moveable partition
dividing this schoolroom from another beyond, was a large tableau of
wood painted black and varnished; a thick crayon of white chalk lay on
my desk for the convenience of elucidating any grammatical or verbal
obscurity which might occur in my lessons by writing it upon the
tableau; a wet sponge appeared beside the chalk, to enable me to efface
the marks when they had served the purpose intended.

I carefully and deliberately made these observations before allowing
myself to take one glance at the benches before me; having handled the
crayon, looked back at the tableau, fingered the sponge in order to
ascertain that it was in a right state of moisture, I found myself cool
enough to admit of looking calmly up and gazing deliberately round me.

And first I observed that Mdlle. Reuter had already glided away, she
was nowhere visible; a maitresse or teacher, the one who occupied the
corresponding estrade to my own, alone remained to keep guard over me;
she was a little in the shade, and, with my short sight, I could only
see that she was of a thin bony figure and rather tallowy complexion,
and that her attitude, as she sat, partook equally of listlessness and
affectation. More obvious, more prominent, shone on by the full light of
the large window, were the occupants of the benches just before me, of
whom some were girls of fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, some young women
from eighteen (as it appeared to me) up to twenty; the most modest
attire, the simplest fashion of wearing the hair, were apparent in all;
and good features, ruddy, blooming complexions, large and brilliant
eyes, forms full, even to solidity, seemed to abound. I did not bear
the first view like a stoic; I was dazzled, my eyes fell, and in a voice
somewhat too low I murmured--

“Prenez vos cahiers de dictee, mesdemoiselles.”

Not so had I bid the boys at Pelet’s take their reading-books. A
rustle followed, and an opening of desks; behind the lifted lids which
momentarily screened the heads bent down to search for exercise-books, I
heard tittering and whispers.

“Eulalie, je suis prete a pleuer de rire,” observed one.

“Comme il a rougi en parlant!”

“Oui, c’est un veritable blanc-bec.”

“Tais-toi, Hortense--il nous ecoute.”

And now the lids sank and the heads reappeared; I had marked three, the
whisperers, and I did not scruple to take a very steady look at them as
they emerged from their temporary eclipse. It is astonishing what ease
and courage their little phrases of flippancy had given me; the idea by
which I had been awed was that the youthful beings before me, with their
dark nun-like robes and softly braided hair, were a kind of half-angels.
The light titter, the giddy whisper, had already in some measure
relieved my mind of that fond and oppressive fancy.

The three I allude to were just in front, within half a yard of my
estrade, and were among the most womanly-looking present. Their names
I knew afterwards, and may as well mention now; they were Eulalie,
Hortense, Caroline. Eulalie was tall, and very finely shaped: she was
fair, and her features were those of a Low Country Madonna; many a
“figure de Vierge” have I seen in Dutch pictures exactly resembling
hers; there were no angles in her shape or in her face, all was curve
and roundness--neither thought, sentiment, nor passion disturbed by line
or flush the equality of her pale, clear skin; her noble bust heaved
with her regular breathing, her eyes moved a little--by these evidences
of life alone could I have distinguished her from some large handsome
figure moulded in wax. Hortense was of middle size and stout, her
form was ungraceful, her face striking, more alive and brilliant than
Eulalie’s, her hair was dark brown, her complexion richly coloured;
there were frolic and mischief in her eye: consistency and good sense
she might possess, but none of her features betokened those qualities.

Caroline was little, though evidently full grown; raven-black hair,
very dark eyes, absolutely regular features, with a colourless olive
complexion, clear as to the face and sallow about the neck, formed in
her that assemblage of points whose union many persons regard as the
perfection of beauty. How, with the tintless pallor of her skin and the
classic straightness of her lineaments, she managed to look sensual, I
don’t know. I think her lips and eyes contrived the affair between
them, and the result left no uncertainty on the beholder’s mind. She was
sensual now, and in ten years’ time she would be coarse--promise plain
was written in her face of much future folly.

If I looked at these girls with little scruple, they looked at me
with still less. Eulalie raised her unmoved eye to mine, and seemed to
expect, passively but securely, an impromptu tribute to her majestic
charms. Hortense regarded me boldly, and giggled at the same time, while
she said, with an air of impudent freedom--

“Dictez-nous quelquechose de facile pour commencer, monsieur.”

Caroline shook her loose ringlets of abundant but somewhat coarse hair
over her rolling black eyes; parting her lips, as full as those of a
hot-blooded Maroon, she showed her well-set teeth sparkling between
them, and treated me at the same time to a smile “de sa facon.”
 Beautiful as Pauline Borghese, she looked at the moment scarcely purer
than Lucrece de Borgia. Caroline was of noble family. I heard her
lady-mother’s character afterwards, and then I ceased to wonder at the
precocious accomplishments of the daughter. These three, I at once saw,
deemed themselves the queens of the school, and conceived that by their
splendour they threw all the rest into the shade. In less than five
minutes they had thus revealed to me their characters, and in less than
five minutes I had buckled on a breast-plate of steely indifference, and
let down a visor of impassible austerity.

“Take your pens and commence writing,” said I, in as dry and trite a
voice as if I had been addressing only Jules Vanderkelkov and Co.

The dictee now commenced. My three belles interrupted me perpetually
with little silly questions and uncalled-for remarks, to some of which I
made no answer, and to others replied very quietly and briefly. “Comment
dit-on point et virgule en Anglais, monsieur?”

“Semi-colon, mademoiselle.”

“Semi-collong? Ah, comme c’est drole!” (giggle.)

“J’ai une si mauvaise plume--impossible d’ecrire!”

“Mais, monsieur--je ne sais pas suivre--vous allez si vite.”

“Je n’ai rien compris, moi!”

Here a general murmur arose, and the teacher, opening her lips for the
first time, ejaculated--

“Silence, mesdemoiselles!”

No silence followed--on the contrary, the three ladies in front began to
talk more loudly.

“C’est si difficile, l’Anglais!”

“Je deteste la dictee.”

“Quel ennui d’ecrire quelquechose que l’on ne comprend pas!”

Some of those behind laughed: a degree of confusion began to pervade the
class; it was necessary to take prompt measures.

“Donnez-moi votre cahier,” said I to Eulalie in an abrupt tone; and
bending over, I took it before she had time to give it.

“Et vous, mademoiselle--donnez-moi le votre,” continued I, more mildly,
addressing a little pale, plain looking girl who sat in the first row of
the other division, and whom I had remarked as being at once the ugliest
and the most attentive in the room; she rose up, walked over to me, and
delivered her book with a grave, modest curtsey. I glanced over the
two dictations; Eulalie’s was slurred, blotted, and full of silly
mistakes--Sylvie’s (such was the name of the ugly little girl) was
clearly written, it contained no error against sense, and but few
faults of orthography. I coolly read aloud both exercises, marking the
faults--then I looked at Eulalie:

“C’est honteux!” said I, and I deliberately tore her dictation in four
parts, and presented her with the fragments. I returned Sylvie her book
with a smile, saying--

“C’est bien--je suis content de vous.”

Sylvie looked calmly pleased, Eulalie swelled like an incensed turkey,
but the mutiny was quelled: the conceited coquetry and futile flirtation
of the first bench were exchanged for a taciturn sullenness, much more
convenient to me, and the rest of my lesson passed without interruption.

A bell clanging out in the yard announced the moment for the cessation
of school labours. I heard our own bell at the same time, and that of a
certain public college immediately after. Order dissolved instantly; up
started every pupil, I hastened to seize my hat, bow to the maitresse,
and quit the room before the tide of externats should pour from the
inner class, where I knew near a hundred were prisoned, and whose rising
tumult I already heard.

I had scarcely crossed the hall and gained the corridor, when Mdlle.
Reuter came again upon me.

“Step in here a moment,” said she, and she held open the door of
the side room from whence she had issued on my arrival; it was a
SALLE-A-MANGER, as appeared from the beaufet and the armoire vitree,
filled with glass and china, which formed part of its furniture. Ere she
had closed the door on me and herself, the corridor was already filled
with day-pupils, tearing down their cloaks, bonnets, and cabas from
the wooden pegs on which they were suspended; the shrill voice of a
maitresse was heard at intervals vainly endeavouring to enforce some
sort of order; vainly, I say: discipline there was none in these rough
ranks, and yet this was considered one of the best-conducted schools in
Brussels.

“Well, you have given your first lesson,” began Mdlle. Reuter in the
most calm, equable voice, as though quite unconscious of the chaos from
which we were separated only by a single wall.

“Were you satisfied with your pupils, or did any circumstance in their
conduct give you cause for complaint? Conceal nothing from me, repose in
me entire confidence.”

Happily, I felt in myself complete power to manage my pupils without
aid; the enchantment, the golden haze which had dazzled my perspicuity
at first, had been a good deal dissipated. I cannot say I was chagrined
or downcast by the contrast which the reality of a pensionnat de
demoiselles presented to my vague ideal of the same community; I was
only enlightened and amused; consequently, I felt in no disposition to
complain to Mdlle. Reuter, and I received her considerate invitation to
confidence with a smile.

“A thousand thanks, mademoiselle, all has gone very smoothly.”

She looked more than doubtful.

“Et les trois demoiselles du premier banc?” said she.

“Ah! tout va au mieux!” was my answer, and Mdlle. Reuter ceased to
question me; but her eye--not large, not brilliant, not melting, or
kindling, but astute, penetrating, practical, showed she was even with
me; it let out a momentary gleam, which said plainly, “Be as close as
you like, I am not dependent on your candour; what you would conceal I
already know.”

By a transition so quiet as to be scarcely perceptible, the directress’s
manner changed; the anxious business-air passed from her face, and she
began chatting about the weather and the town, and asking in neighbourly
wise after M. and Madame Pelet. I answered all her little questions; she
prolonged her talk, I went on following its many little windings; she
sat so long, said so much, varied so often the topics of discourse,
that it was not difficult to perceive she had a particular aim in thus
detaining me. Her mere words could have afforded no clue to this
aim, but her countenance aided; while her lips uttered only affable
commonplaces, her eyes reverted continually to my face. Her glances were
not given in full, but out of the corners, so quietly, so stealthily,
yet I think I lost not one. I watched her as keenly as she watched me;
I perceived soon that she was feeling after my real character; she was
searching for salient points, and weak points, and eccentric points;
she was applying now this test, now that, hoping in the end to find some
chink, some niche, where she could put in her little firm foot and stand
upon my neck--mistress of my nature. Do not mistake me, reader, it was
no amorous influence she wished to gain--at that time it was only the
power of the politician to which she aspired; I was now installed as a
professor in her establishment, and she wanted to know where her mind
was superior to mine--by what feeling or opinion she could lead me.

I enjoyed the game much, and did not hasten its conclusion; sometimes I
gave her hopes, beginning a sentence rather weakly, when her shrewd eye
would light up--she thought she had me; having led her a little way, I
delighted to turn round and finish with sound, hard sense, whereat her
countenance would fall. At last a servant entered to announce dinner;
the conflict being thus necessarily terminated, we parted without having
gained any advantage on either side: Mdlle. Reuter had not even given
me an opportunity of attacking her with feeling, and I had managed to
baffle her little schemes of craft. It was a regular drawn battle. I
again held out my hand when I left the room, she gave me hers; it was a
small and white hand, but how cool! I met her eye too in full--obliging
her to give me a straightforward look; this last test went against
me: it left her as it found her--moderate, temperate, tranquil; me it
disappointed.

“I am growing wiser,” thought I, as I walked back to M. Pelet’s. “Look
at this little woman; is she like the women of novelists and romancers?
To read of female character as depicted in Poetry and Fiction, one would
think it was made up of sentiment, either for good or bad--here is
a specimen, and a most sensible and respectable specimen, too, whose
staple ingredient is abstract reason. No Talleyrand was ever more
passionless than Zoraide Reuter!” So I thought then; I found
afterwards that blunt susceptibilities are very consistent with strong
propensities.






CHAPTER XI.

I HAD indeed had a very long talk with the crafty little politician, and
on regaining my quarters, I found that dinner was half over. To be late
at meals was against a standing rule of the establishment, and had it
been one of the Flemish ushers who thus entered after the removal of the
soup and the commencement of the first course, M. Pelet would probably
have greeted him with a public rebuke, and would certainly have mulcted
him both of soup and fish; as it was, that polite though partial
gentleman only shook his head, and as I took my place, unrolled my
napkin, and said my heretical grace to myself, he civilly despatched a
servant to the kitchen, to bring me a plate of “puree aux carottes”
 (for this was a maigre-day), and before sending away the first course,
reserved for me a portion of the stock-fish of which it consisted.
Dinner being over, the boys rushed out for their evening play; Kint and
Vandam (the two ushers) of course followed them. Poor fellows! if they
had not looked so very heavy, so very soulless, so very indifferent to
all things in heaven above or in the earth beneath, I could have pitied
them greatly for the obligation they were under to trail after those
rough lads everywhere and at all times; even as it was, I felt disposed
to scout myself as a privileged prig when I turned to ascend to my
chamber, sure to find there, if not enjoyment, at least liberty; but
this evening (as had often happened before) I was to be still farther
distinguished.

“Eh bien, mauvais sujet!” said the voice of M. Pelet behind me, as I
set my foot on the first step of the stair, “ou allez-vous? Venez a la
salle-a-manger, que je vous gronde un peu.”

“I beg pardon, monsieur,” said I, as I followed him to his private
sitting-room, “for having returned so late--it was not my fault.”

“That is just what I want to know,” rejoined M. Pelet, as he ushered me
into the comfortable parlour with a good wood-fire--for the stove had
now been removed for the season. Having rung the bell he ordered “Coffee
for two,” and presently he and I were seated, almost in English comfort,
one on each side of the hearth, a little round table between us, with
a coffee-pot, a sugar-basin, and two large white china cups. While
M. Pelet employed himself in choosing a cigar from a box, my thoughts
reverted to the two outcast ushers, whose voices I could hear even now
crying hoarsely for order in the playground.

“C’est une grande responsabilite, que la surveillance,” observed I.

“Plait-il?” dit M. Pelet.

I remarked that I thought Messieurs Vandam and Kint must sometimes be a
little fatigued with their labours.

“Des betes de somme,--des betes de somme,” murmured scornfully the
director. Meantime I offered him his cup of coffee.

“Servez-vous mon garcon,” said he blandly, when I had put a couple of
huge lumps of continental sugar into his cup. “And now tell me why you
stayed so long at Mdlle. Reuter’s. I know that lessons conclude, in her
establishment as in mine, at four o’clock, and when you returned it was
past five.”

“Mdlle. wished to speak with me, monsieur.”

“Indeed! on what subject? if one may ask.”

“Mademoiselle talked about nothing, monsieur.”

“A fertile topic! and did she discourse thereon in the schoolroom,
before the pupils?”

“No; like you, monsieur, she asked me to walk into her parlour.”

“And Madame Reuter--the old duenna--my mother’s gossip, was there, of
course?”

“No, monsieur; I had the honour of being quite alone with mademoiselle.”

“C’est joli--cela,” observed M. Pelet, and he smiled and looked into the
fire.

“Honi soit qui mal y pense,” murmured I, significantly.

“Je connais un peu ma petite voisine--voyez-vous.”

“In that case, monsieur will be able to aid me in finding out what was
mademoiselle’s reason for making me sit before her sofa one mortal hour,
listening to the most copious and fluent dissertation on the merest
frivolities.”

“She was sounding your character.”

“I thought so, monsieur.”

“Did she find out your weak point?”

“What is my weak point?”

“Why, the sentimental. Any woman sinking her shaft deep enough, will
at last reach a fathomless spring of sensibility in thy breast,
Crimsworth.”

I felt the blood stir about my heart and rise warm to my cheek.

“Some women might, monsieur.”

“Is Mdlle. Reuter of the number? Come, speak frankly, mon fils; elle est
encore jeune, plus agee que toi peut-etre, mais juste assey pour unir
la tendresse d’une petite maman a l’amour d’une epouse devouee; n’est-ce
pas que cela t’irait superieurement?”

“No, monsieur; I should like my wife to be my wife, and not half my
mother.”

“She is then a little too old for you?”

“No, monsieur, not a day too old if she suited me in other things.”

“In what does she not suit you, William? She is personally agreeable, is
she not?”

“Very; her hair and complexion are just what I admire; and her turn of
form, though quite Belgian, is full of grace.”

“Bravo! and her face? her features? How do you like them?”

“A little harsh, especially her mouth.”

“Ah, yes! her mouth,” said M. Pelet, and he chuckled inwardly. “There is
character about her mouth--firmness--but she has a very pleasant smile;
don’t you think so?”

“Rather crafty.”

“True, but that expression of craft is owing to her eyebrows; have you
remarked her eyebrows?”

I answered that I had not.

“You have not seen her looking down then?” said he.

“No.”

“It is a treat, notwithstanding. Observe her when she has some knitting,
or some other woman’s work in hand, and sits the image of peace, calmly
intent on her needles and her silk, some discussion meantime going on
around her, in the course of which peculiarities of character are being
developed, or important interests canvassed; she takes no part in it;
her humble, feminine mind is wholly with her knitting; none of her
features move; she neither presumes to smile approval, nor frown
disapprobation; her little hands assiduously ply their unpretending
task; if she can only get this purse finished, or this bonnet-grec
completed, it is enough for her. If gentlemen approach her chair, a
deeper quiescence, a meeker modesty settles on her features, and clothes
her general mien; observe then her eyebrows, et dites-moi s’il n’y a pas
du chat dans l’un et du renard dans l’autre.”

“I will take careful notice the first opportunity,” said I.

“And then,” continued M. Pelet, “the eyelid will flicker, the
light-coloured lashes be lifted a second, and a blue eye, glancing out
from under the screen, will take its brief, sly, searching survey, and
retreat again.”

I smiled, and so did Pelet, and after a few minutes’ silence, I asked:

“Will she ever marry, do you think?”

“Marry! Will birds pair? Of course it is both her intention and
resolution to marry when she finds a suitable match, and no one is
better aware than herself of the sort of impression she is capable
of producing; no one likes better to captivate in a quiet way. I am
mistaken if she will not yet leave the print of her stealing steps on
thy heart, Crimsworth.”

“Of her steps? Confound it, no! My heart is not a plank to be walked
on.”

“But the soft touch of a patte de velours will do it no harm.”

“She offers me no patte de velours; she is all form and reserve with
me.”

“That to begin with; let respect be the foundation, affection the first
floor, love the superstructure; Mdlle. Reuter is a skilful architect.”

“And interest, M. Pelet--interest. Will not mademoiselle consider that
point?”

“Yes, yes, no doubt; it will be the cement between every stone. And now
we have discussed the directress, what of the pupils? N’y a-t-il pas de
belles etudes parmi ces jeunes tetes?”

“Studies of character? Yes; curious ones, at least, I imagine; but one
cannot divine much from a first interview.”

“Ah, you affect discretion; but tell me now, were you not a little
abashed before these blooming young creatures?”

“At first, yes; but I rallied and got through with all due sang-froid.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“It is true, notwithstanding. At first I thought them angels, but they
did not leave me long under that delusion; three of the eldest and
handsomest undertook the task of setting me right, and they managed
so cleverly that in five minutes I knew them, at least, for what they
were--three arrant coquettes.”

“Je les connais!” exclaimed M. Pelet. “Elles sont toujours au premier
rang a l’eglise et a la promenade; une blonde superbe, une jolie
espiegle, une belle brune.”

“Exactly.”

“Lovely creatures all of them--heads for artists; what a group they
would make, taken together! Eulalie (I know their names), with her
smooth braided hair and calm ivory brow. Hortense, with her rich chesnut
locks so luxuriantly knotted, plaited, twisted, as if she did not know
how to dispose of all their abundance, with her vermilion lips, damask
cheek, and roguish laughing eye. And Caroline de Blemont! Ah, there is
beauty! beauty in perfection. What a cloud of sable curls about the face
of a houri! What fascinating lips! What glorious black eyes! Your Byron
would have worshipped her, and you--you cold, frigid islander!--you
played the austere, the insensible in the presence of an Aphrodite so
exquisite?”

I might have laughed at the director’s enthusiasm had I believed
it real, but there was something in his tone which indicated got-up
raptures. I felt he was only affecting fervour in order to put me off my
guard, to induce me to come out in return, so I scarcely even smiled. He
went on:

“Confess, William, do not the mere good looks of Zoraide Reuter appear
dowdyish and commonplace compared with the splendid charms of some of
her pupils?”

The question discomposed me, but I now felt plainly that my principal
was endeavouring (for reasons best known to himself--at that time I
could not fathom them) to excite ideas and wishes in my mind alien to
what was right and honourable. The iniquity of the instigation proved
its antidote, and when he further added:--

“Each of those three beautiful girls will have a handsome fortune; and
with a little address, a gentlemanlike, intelligent young fellow like
you might make himself master of the hand, heart, and purse of any one
of the trio.”

I replied by a look and an interrogative “Monsieur?” which startled him.

He laughed a forced laugh, affirmed that he had only been joking, and
demanded whether I could possibly have thought him in earnest. Just then
the bell rang; the play-hour was over; it was an evening on which M.
Pelet was accustomed to read passages from the drama and the belles
lettres to his pupils. He did not wait for my answer, but rising, left
the room, humming as he went some gay strain of Beranger’s.






CHAPTER XII.

DAILY, as I continued my attendance at the seminary of Mdlle. Reuter,
did I find fresh occasions to compare the ideal with the real. What
had I known of female character previously to my arrival at Brussels?
Precious little. And what was my notion of it? Something vague, slight,
gauzy, glittering; now when I came in contact with it I found it to be
a palpable substance enough; very hard too sometimes, and often heavy;
there was metal in it, both lead and iron.

Let the idealists, the dreamers about earthly angel and human flowers,
just look here while I open my portfolio and show them a sketch or
two, pencilled after nature. I took these sketches in the second-class
schoolroom of Mdlle. Reuter’s establishment, where about a hundred
specimens of the genus “jeune fille” collected together offered a
fertile variety of subject. A miscellaneous assortment they were,
differing both in caste and country; as I sat on my estrade and glanced
over the long range of desks, I had under my eye French, English,
Belgians, Austrians, and Prussians. The majority belonged to the class
bourgeois; but there were many countesses, there were the daughters of
two generals and of several colonels, captains, and government EMPLOYES;
these ladies sat side by side with young females destined to be
demoiselles de magasins, and with some Flamandes, genuine aborigines of
the country. In dress all were nearly similar, and in manners there was
small difference; exceptions there were to the general rule, but the
majority gave the tone to the establishment, and that tone was rough,
boisterous, masked by a point-blank disregard of all forbearance towards
each other or their teachers; an eager pursuit by each individual of her
own interest and convenience; and a coarse indifference to the interest
and convenience of every one else. Most of them could lie with audacity
when it appeared advantageous to do so. All understood the art of
speaking fair when a point was to be gained, and could with consummate
skill and at a moment’s notice turn the cold shoulder the instant
civility ceased to be profitable. Very little open quarrelling ever took
place amongst them; but backbiting and talebearing were universal. Close
friendships were forbidden by the rules of the school, and no one girl
seemed to cultivate more regard for another than was just necessary to
secure a companion when solitude would have been irksome. They were each
and all supposed to have been reared in utter unconsciousness of vice.
The precautions used to keep them ignorant, if not innocent, were
innumerable. How was it, then, that scarcely one of those girls having
attained the age of fourteen could look a man in the face with modesty
and propriety? An air of bold, impudent flirtation, or a loose, silly
leer, was sure to answer the most ordinary glance from a masculine eye.
I know nothing of the arcana of the Roman Catholic religion, and I
am not a bigot in matters of theology, but I suspect the root of this
precocious impurity, so obvious, so general in Popish countries, is to
be found in the discipline, if not the doctrines of the Church of Rome.
I record what I have seen: these girls belonged to what are called the
respectable ranks of society; they had all been carefully brought up,
yet was the mass of them mentally depraved. So much for the general
view: now for one or two selected specimens.

The first picture is a full length of Aurelia Koslow, a German fraulein,
or rather a half-breed between German and Russian. She is eighteen years
of age, and has been sent to Brussels to finish her education; she is
of middle size, stiffly made, body long, legs short, bust much developed
but not compactly moulded, waist disproportionately compressed by an
inhumanly braced corset, dress carefully arranged, large feet tortured
into small bottines, head small, hair smoothed, braided, oiled, and
gummed to perfection; very low forehead, very diminutive and vindictive
grey eyes, somewhat Tartar features, rather flat nose, rather high-cheek
bones, yet the ensemble not positively ugly; tolerably good complexion.
So much for person. As to mind, deplorably ignorant and ill-informed:
incapable of writing or speaking correctly even German, her native
tongue, a dunce in French, and her attempts at learning English a mere
farce, yet she has been at school twelve years; but as she invariably
gets her exercises, of every description, done by a fellow pupil, and
reads her lessons off a book concealed in her lap, it is not wonderful
that her progress has been so snail-like. I do not know what Aurelia’s
daily habits of life are, because I have not the opportunity of
observing her at all times; but from what I see of the state of her
desk, books, and papers, I should say she is slovenly and even dirty;
her outward dress, as I have said, is well attended to, but in passing
behind her bench, I have remarked that her neck is gray for want of
washing, and her hair, so glossy with gum and grease, is not such as
one feels tempted to pass the hand over, much less to run the fingers
through. Aurelia’s conduct in class, at least when I am present, is
something extraordinary, considered as an index of girlish innocence.
The moment I enter the room, she nudges her next neighbour and indulges
in a half-suppressed laugh. As I take my seat on the estrade, she
fixes her eye on me; she seems resolved to attract, and, if possible,
monopolize my notice: to this end she launches at me all sorts of looks,
languishing, provoking, leering, laughing. As I am found quite proof
against this sort of artillery--for we scorn what, unasked, is lavishly
offered--she has recourse to the expedient of making noises; sometimes
she sighs, sometimes groans, sometimes utters inarticulate sounds, for
which language has no name. If, in walking up the schoolroom, I pass
near her, she puts out her foot that it may touch mine; if I do not
happen to observe the manoeuvre, and my boot comes in contact with her
brodequin, she affects to fall into convulsions of suppressed laughter;
if I notice the snare and avoid it, she expresses her mortification in
sullen muttering, where I hear myself abused in bad French, pronounced
with an intolerable Low German accent.

Not far from Mdlle. Koslow sits another young lady by name Adele
Dronsart: this is a Belgian, rather low of stature, in form heavy,
with broad waist, short neck and limbs, good red and white complexion,
features well chiselled and regular, well-cut eyes of a clear brown
colour, light brown hair, good teeth, age not much above fifteen, but as
full-grown as a stout young Englishwoman of twenty. This portrait gives
the idea of a somewhat dumpy but good-looking damsel, does it not? Well,
when I looked along the row of young heads, my eye generally stopped at
this of Adele’s; her gaze was ever waiting for mine, and it frequently
succeeded in arresting it. She was an unnatural-looking being--so young,
fresh, blooming, yet so Gorgon-like. Suspicion, sullen ill-temper were
on her forehead, vicious propensities in her eye, envy and panther-like
deceit about her mouth. In general she sat very still; her massive shape
looked as if it could not bend much, nor did her large head--so broad
at the base, so narrow towards the top--seem made to turn readily on her
short neck. She had but two varieties of expression; the prevalent one
a forbidding, dissatisfied scowl, varied sometimes by a most pernicious
and perfidious smile. She was shunned by her fellow-pupils, for, bad as
many of them were, few were as bad as she.

Aurelia and Adele were in the first division of the second class; the
second division was headed by a pensionnaire named Juanna Trista. This
girl was of mixed Belgian and Spanish origin; her Flemish mother was
dead, her Catalonian father was a merchant residing in the ---- Isles,
where Juanna had been born and whence she was sent to Europe to be
educated. I wonder that any one, looking at that girl’s head and
countenance, would have received her under their roof. She had precisely
the same shape of skull as Pope Alexander the Sixth; her organs
of benevolence, veneration, conscientiousness, adhesiveness, were
singularly small, those of self-esteem, firmness, destructiveness,
combativeness, preposterously large; her head sloped up in the penthouse
shape, was contracted about the forehead, and prominent behind; she
had rather good, though large and marked features; her temperament was
fibrous and bilious, her complexion pale and dark, hair and eyes black,
form angular and rigid but proportionate, age fifteen.

Juanna was not very thin, but she had a gaunt visage, and her “regard”
 was fierce and hungry; narrow as was her brow, it presented space enough
for the legible graving of two words, Mutiny and Hate; in some one of
her other lineaments I think the eye--cowardice had also its distinct
cipher. Mdlle. Trista thought fit to trouble my first lessons with a
coarse work-day sort of turbulence; she made noises with her mouth like
a horse, she ejected her saliva, she uttered brutal expressions; behind
and below her were seated a band of very vulgar, inferior-looking
Flamandes, including two or three examples of that deformity of person
and imbecility of intellect whose frequency in the Low Countries would
seem to furnish proof that the climate is such as to induce degeneracy
of the human mind and body; these, I soon found, were completely under
her influence, and with their aid she got up and sustained a swinish
tumult, which I was constrained at last to quell by ordering her and two
of her tools to rise from their seats, and, having kept them standing
five minutes, turning them bodily out of the schoolroom: the accomplices
into a large place adjoining called the grands salle; the principal
into a cabinet, of which I closed the door and pocketed the key. This
judgment I executed in the presence of Mdlle. Reuter, who looked much
aghast at beholding so decided a proceeding--the most severe that had
ever been ventured on in her establishment. Her look of affright I
answered with one of composure, and finally with a smile, which perhaps
flattered, and certainly soothed her. Juanna Trista remained in Europe
long enough to repay, by malevolence and ingratitude, all who had ever
done her a good turn; and she then went to join her father in the----
Isles, exulting in the thought that she should there have slaves, whom,
as she said, she could kick and strike at will.

These three pictures are from the life. I possess others, as marked and
as little agreeable, but I will spare my reader the exhibition of them.

Doubtless it will be thought that I ought now, by way of contrast, to
show something charming; some gentle virgin head, circled with a halo,
some sweet personification of innocence, clasping the dove of peace to
her bosom. No: I saw nothing of the sort, and therefore cannot portray
it. The pupil in the school possessing the happiest disposition was
a young girl from the country, Louise Path; she was sufficiently
benevolent and obliging, but not well taught nor well mannered;
moreover, the plague-spot of dissimulation was in her also; honour and
principle were unknown to her, she had scarcely heard their names. The
least exceptionable pupil was the poor little Sylvie I have mentioned
once before. Sylvie was gentle in manners, intelligent in mind; she was
even sincere, as far as her religion would permit her to be so, but her
physical organization was defective; weak health stunted her growth and
chilled her spirits, and then, destined as she was for the cloister,
her whole soul was warped to a conventual bias, and in the tame, trained
subjection of her manner, one read that she had already prepared herself
for her future course of life, by giving up her independence of thought
and action into the hands of some despotic confessor. She permitted
herself no original opinion, no preference of companion or employment;
in everything she was guided by another. With a pale, passive, automaton
air, she went about all day long doing what she was bid; never what she
liked, or what, from innate conviction, she thought it right to do. The
poor little future religieuse had been early taught to make the dictates
of her own reason and conscience quite subordinate to the will of
her spiritual director. She was the model pupil of Mdlle. Reuter’s
establishment; pale, blighted image, where life lingered feebly, but
whence the soul had been conjured by Romish wizard-craft!

A few English pupils there were in this school, and these might be
divided into two classes. 1st. The continental English--the daughters
chiefly of broken adventurers, whom debt or dishonour had driven from
their own country. These poor girls had never known the advantages
of settled homes, decorous example, or honest Protestant education;
resident a few months now in one Catholic school, now in another, as
their parents wandered from land to land--from France to Germany, from
Germany to Belgium--they had picked up some scanty instruction, many bad
habits, losing every notion even of the first elements of religion and
morals, and acquiring an imbecile indifference to every sentiment that
can elevate humanity; they were distinguishable by an habitual look
of sullen dejection, the result of crushed self-respect and constant
browbeating from their Popish fellow-pupils, who hated them as English,
and scorned them as heretics.

The second class were British English. Of these I did not encounter half
a dozen during the whole time of my attendance at the seminary; their
characteristics were clean but careless dress, ill-arranged hair
(compared with the tight and trim foreigners), erect carriage, flexible
figures, white and taper hands, features more irregular, but also more
intellectual than those of the Belgians, grave and modest countenances,
a general air of native propriety and decency; by this last circumstance
alone I could at a glance distinguish the daughter of Albion and
nursling of Protestantism from the foster-child of Rome, the PROTEGEE
of Jesuistry: proud, too, was the aspect of these British girls; at once
envied and ridiculed by their continental associates, they warded off
insult with austere civility, and met hate with mute disdain; they
eschewed company-keeping, and in the midst of numbers seemed to dwell
isolated.

The teachers presiding over this mixed multitude were three in number,
all French--their names Mdlles. Zephyrine, Pelagie, and Suzette; the two
last were commonplace personages enough; their look was ordinary,
their manner was ordinary, their temper was ordinary, their thoughts,
feelings, and views were all ordinary--were I to write a chapter on the
subject I could not elucidate it further. Zephyrine was somewhat more
distinguished in appearance and deportment than Pelagie and Suzette,
but in character genuine Parisian coquette, perfidious, mercenary, and
dry-hearted. A fourth maitresse I sometimes saw who seemed to come daily
to teach needlework, or netting, or lace-mending, or some such flimsy
art; but of her I never had more than a passing glimpse, as she sat in
the CARRE, with her frames and some dozen of the elder pupils about her,
consequently I had no opportunity of studying her character, or even of
observing her person much; the latter, I remarked, had a very English
air for a maitresse, otherwise it was not striking; of character I
should think she possessed but little, as her pupils seemed constantly
“en revolte” against her authority. She did not reside in the house; her
name, I think, was Mdlle. Henri.

Amidst this assemblage of all that was insignificant and defective, much
that was vicious and repulsive (by that last epithet many would have
described the two or three stiff, silent, decently behaved, ill-dressed
British girls), the sensible, sagacious, affable directress shone like a
steady star over a marsh full of Jack-o’-lanthorns; profoundly aware
of her superiority, she derived an inward bliss from that consciousness
which sustained her under all the care and responsibility inseparable
from her position; it kept her temper calm, her brow smooth, her manner
tranquil. She liked--as who would not?--on entering the school-room,
to feel that her sole presence sufficed to diffuse that order and
quiet which all the remonstrances, and even commands, of her underlings
frequently failed to enforce; she liked to stand in comparison, or
rather--contrast, with those who surrounded her, and to know that in
personal as well as mental advantages, she bore away the undisputed
palm of preference--(the three teachers were all plain.) Her pupils she
managed with such indulgence and address, taking always on herself the
office of recompenser and eulogist, and abandoning to her subalterns
every invidious task of blame and punishment, that they all regarded her
with deference, if not with affection; her teachers did not love her,
but they submitted because they were her inferiors in everything; the
various masters who attended her school were each and all in some way
or other under her influence; over one she had acquired power by her
skilful management of his bad temper; over another by little attentions
to his petty caprices; a third she had subdued by flattery; a fourth--a
timid man--she kept in awe by a sort of austere decision of mien; me,
she still watched, still tried by the most ingenious tests--she roved
round me, baffled, yet persevering; I believe she thought I was like
a smooth and bare precipice, which offered neither jutting stone nor
tree-root, nor tuft of grass to aid the climber. Now she flattered
with exquisite tact, now she moralized, now she tried how far I was
accessible to mercenary motives, then she disported on the brink of
affection--knowing that some men are won by weakness--anon, she talked
excellent sense, aware that others have the folly to admire judgment.
I found it at once pleasant and easy to evade all these efforts; it was
sweet, when she thought me nearly won, to turn round and to smile in
her very eyes, half scornfully, and then to witness her scarcely veiled,
though mute mortification. Still she persevered, and at last, I am bound
to confess it, her finger, essaying, proving every atom of the casket,
touched its secret spring, and for a moment the lid sprung open; she
laid her hand on the jewel within; whether she stole and broke it, or
whether the lid shut again with a snap on her fingers, read on, and you
shall know.

It happened that I came one day to give a lesson when I was indisposed;
I had a bad cold and a cough; two hours’ incessant talking left me very
hoarse and tired; as I quitted the schoolroom, and was passing along the
corridor, I met Mdlle. Reuter; she remarked, with an anxious air, that
I looked very pale and tired. “Yes,” I said, “I was fatigued;” and then,
with increased interest, she rejoined, “You shall not go away till you
have had some refreshment.” She persuaded me to step into the parlour,
and was very kind and gentle while I stayed. The next day she was kinder
still; she came herself into the class to see that the windows were
closed, and that there was no draught; she exhorted me with friendly
earnestness not to over-exert myself; when I went away, she gave me
her hand unasked, and I could not but mark, by a respectful and gentle
pressure, that I was sensible of the favour, and grateful for it. My
modest demonstration kindled a little merry smile on her countenance;
I thought her almost charming. During the remainder of the evening, my
mind was full of impatience for the afternoon of the next day to arrive,
that I might see her again.

I was not disappointed, for she sat in the class during the whole of my
subsequent lesson, and often looked at me almost with affection. At four
o’clock she accompanied me out of the schoolroom, asking with solicitude
after my health, then scolding me sweetly because I spoke too loud and
gave myself too much trouble; I stopped at the glass-door which led into
the garden, to hear her lecture to the end; the door was open, it was a
very fine day, and while I listened to the soothing reprimand, I looked
at the sunshine and flowers, and felt very happy. The day-scholars began
to pour from the schoolrooms into the passage.

“Will you go into the garden a minute or two,” asked she, “till they are
gone?”

I descended the steps without answering, but I looked back as much as to
say--

“You will come with me?”

In another minute I and the directress were walking side by side down
the alley bordered with fruit-trees, whose white blossoms were then in
full blow as well as their tender green leaves. The sky was blue, the
air still, the May afternoon was full of brightness and fragrance.
Released from the stifling class, surrounded with flowers and foliage,
with a pleasing, smiling, affable woman at my side--how did I feel? Why,
very enviably. It seemed as if the romantic visions my imagination had
suggested of this garden, while it was yet hidden from me by the jealous
boards, were more than realized; and, when a turn in the alley shut out
the view of the house, and some tall shrubs excluded M. Pelet’s
mansion, and screened us momentarily from the other houses, rising
amphitheatre-like round this green spot, I gave my arm to Mdlle. Reuter,
and led her to a garden-chair, nestled under some lilacs near. She sat
down; I took my place at her side. She went on talking to me with that
ease which communicates ease, and, as I listened, a revelation dawned
in my mind that I was on the brink of falling in love. The dinner-bell
rang, both at her house and M. Pelet’s; we were obliged to part; I
detained her a moment as she was moving away.

“I want something,” said I.

“What?” asked Zoraide naively.

“Only a flower.”

“Gather it then--or two, or twenty, if you like.”

“No--one will do--but you must gather it, and give it to me.”

“What a caprice!” she exclaimed, but she raised herself on her tip-toes,
and, plucking a beautiful branch of lilac, offered it to me with grace.
I took it, and went away, satisfied for the present, and hopeful for the
future.

Certainly that May day was a lovely one, and it closed in moonlight
night of summer warmth and serenity. I remember this well; for, having
sat up late that evening, correcting devoirs, and feeling weary and
a little oppressed with the closeness of my small room, I opened the
often-mentioned boarded window, whose boards, however, I had persuaded
old Madame Pelet to have removed since I had filled the post of
professor in the pensionnat de demoiselles, as, from that time, it
was no longer “inconvenient” for me to overlook my own pupils at their
sports. I sat down in the window-seat, rested my arm on the sill,
and leaned out: above me was the clear-obscure of a cloudless
night sky--splendid moonlight subdued the tremulous sparkle of the
stars--below lay the garden, varied with silvery lustre and deep shade,
and all fresh with dew--a grateful perfume exhaled from the closed
blossoms of the fruit-trees--not a leaf stirred, the night was
breezeless. My window looked directly down upon a certain walk of Mdlle.
Reuter’s garden, called “l’allee defendue,” so named because the pupils
were forbidden to enter it on account of its proximity to the boys’
school. It was here that the lilacs and laburnums grew especially thick;
this was the most sheltered nook in the enclosure, its shrubs screened
the garden-chair where that afternoon I had sat with the young
directress. I need not say that my thoughts were chiefly with her as
I leaned from the lattice, and let my eye roam, now over the walks and
borders of the garden, now along the many-windowed front of the house
which rose white beyond the masses of foliage. I wondered in what part
of the building was situated her apartment; and a single light, shining
through the persiennes of one croisee, seemed to direct me to it.

“She watches late,” thought I, “for it must be now near midnight. She
is a fascinating little woman,” I continued in voiceless soliloquy; “her
image forms a pleasant picture in memory; I know she is not what the
world calls pretty--no matter, there is harmony in her aspect, and I
like it; her brown hair, her blue eye, the freshness of her cheek, the
whiteness of her neck, all suit my taste. Then I respect her talent;
the idea of marrying a doll or a fool was always abhorrent to me: I know
that a pretty doll, a fair fool, might do well enough for the honeymoon;
but when passion cooled, how dreadful to find a lump of wax and wood
laid in my bosom, a half idiot clasped in my arms, and to remember that
I had made of this my equal--nay, my idol--to know that I must pass the
rest of my dreary life with a creature incapable of understanding what
I said, of appreciating what I thought, or of sympathizing with what I
felt! “Now, Zoraide Reuter,” thought I, “has tact, CARACTERE, judgment,
discretion; has she heart? What a good, simple little smile played
about her lips when she gave me the branch of lilacs! I have thought her
crafty, dissembling, interested sometimes, it is true; but may not much
that looks like cunning and dissimulation in her conduct be only
the efforts made by a bland temper to traverse quietly perplexing
difficulties? And as to interest, she wishes to make her way in the
world, no doubt, and who can blame her? Even if she be truly deficient
in sound principle, is it not rather her misfortune than her fault? She
has been brought up a Catholic: had she been born an Englishwoman, and
reared a Protestant, might she not have added straight integrity to
all her other excellences? Supposing she were to marry an English and
Protestant husband, would she not, rational, sensible as she is, quickly
acknowledge the superiority of right over expediency, honesty over
policy? It would be worth a man’s while to try the experiment; to-morrow
I will renew my observations. She knows that I watch her: how calm she
is under scrutiny! it seems rather to gratify than annoy her.” Here a
strain of music stole in upon my monologue, and suspended it; it was
a bugle, very skilfully played, in the neighbourhood of the park, I
thought, or on the Place Royale. So sweet were the tones, so subduing
their effect at that hour, in the midst of silence and under the
quiet reign of moonlight, I ceased to think, that I might listen more
intently. The strain retreated, its sound waxed fainter and was soon
gone; my ear prepared to repose on the absolute hush of midnight once
m

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