The Professor (24 page)

Released, and set at ease, up she rose, got her book, and
accepted at once the chair I placed for her at my side. She had
selected "Paradise Lost" from her shelf of classics, thinking, I
suppose, the religious character of the book best adapted it to
Sunday; I told her to begin at the beginning, and while she read
Milton's invocation to that heavenly muse, who on the "secret top
of Oreb or Sinai" had taught the Hebrew shepherd how in the womb
of chaos, the conception of a world had originated and ripened, I
enjoyed, undisturbed, the treble pleasure of having her near me,
hearing the sound of her voice—a sound sweet and satisfying in
my ear—and looking, by intervals, at her face: of this last
privilege, I chiefly availed myself when I found fault with an
intonation, a pause, or an emphasis; as long as I dogmatized, I
might also gaze, without exciting too warm a flush.

"Enough," said I, when she had gone through some half dozen pages
(a work of time with her, for she read slowly and paused often to
ask and receive information)—"enough; and now the rain is
ceasing, and I must soon go." For indeed, at that moment,
looking towards the window, I saw it all blue; the thunder-clouds
were broken and scattered, and the setting August sun sent a
gleam like the reflection of rubies through the lattice. I got
up; I drew on my gloves.

"You have not yet found another situation to supply the place of
that from which you were dismissed by Mdlle. Reuter?"

"No, monsieur; I have made inquiries everywhere, but they all ask
me for references; and to speak truth, I do not like to apply to
the directress, because I consider she acted neither justly nor
honourably towards me; she used underhand means to set my pupils
against me, and thereby render me unhappy while I held my place
in her establishment, and she eventually deprived me of it by a
masked and hypocritical manoeuvre, pretending that she was acting
for my good, but really snatching from me my chief means of
subsistence, at a crisis when not only my own life, but that of
another, depended on my exertions: of her I will never more ask
a favour."

"How, then, do you propose to get on? How do you live now?"

"I have still my lace-mending trade; with care it will keep me
from starvation, and I doubt not by dint of exertion to get
better employment yet; it is only a fortnight since I began to
try; my courage or hopes are by no means worn out yet."

"And if you get what you wish, what then? what are? your ultimate
views?"

"To save enough to cross the Channel: I always look to England
as my Canaan."

"Well, well—ere long I shall pay you another visit; good evening
now," and I left her rather abruptly; I had much ado to resist a
strong inward impulse, urging me to take a warmer, more
expressive leave: what so natural as to fold her for a moment in
a close embrace, to imprint one kiss on her cheek or forehead? I
was not unreasonable—that was all I wanted; satisfied in that
point, I could go away content; and Reason denied me even this;
she ordered me to turn my eyes from her face, and my steps from
her apartment—to quit her as dryly and coldly as I would have
quitted old Madame Pelet. I obeyed, but I swore rancorously to
be avenged one day. "I'll earn a right to do as I please in this
matter, or I'll die in the contest. I have one object before me
now—to get that Genevese girl for my wife; and my wife she shall
be—that is, provided she has as much, or half as much regard for
her master as he has for her. And would she be so docile, so
smiling, so happy under my instructions if she had not? would she
sit at my side when I dictate or correct, with such a still,
contented, halcyon mien?" for I had ever remarked, that however
sad or harassed her countenance might be when I entered a room,
yet after I had been near her, spoken to her a few words, given
her some directions, uttered perhaps some reproofs, she would,
all at once, nestle into a nook of happiness, and look up serene
and revived. The reproofs suited her best of all: while I
scolded she would chip away with her pen-knife at a pencil or a
pen; fidgetting a little, pouting a little, defending herself by
monosyllables, and when I deprived her of the pen or pencil,
fearing it would be all cut away, and when I interdicted even the
monosyllabic defence, for the purpose of working up the subdued
excitement a little higher, she would at last raise her eyes and
give me a certain glance, sweetened with gaiety, and pointed with
defiance, which, to speak truth, thrilled me as nothing had ever
done, and made me, in a fashion (though happily she did not know
it), her subject, if not her slave. After such little scenes her
spirits would maintain their flow, often for some hours, and, as
I remarked before, her health therefrom took a sustenance and
vigour which, previously to the event of her aunt's death and her
dismissal, had almost recreated her whole frame.

It has taken me several minutes to write these last sentences;
but I had thought all their purport during the brief interval of
descending the stairs from Frances' room. Just as I was opening
the outer door, I remembered the twenty francs which I had not
restored; I paused: impossible to carry them away with me;
difficult to force them back on their original owner; I had now
seen her in her own humble abode, witnessed the dignity of her
poverty, the pride of order, the fastidious care of conservatism,
obvious in the arrangement and economy of her little home; I was
sure she would not suffer herself to be excused paying her debts;
I was certain the favour of indemnity would be accepted from no
hand, perhaps least of all from mine: yet these four five-franc
pieces were a burden to my self-respect, and I must get rid of
them. An expedient—a clumsy one no doubt, but the best I could
devise-suggested itself to me. I darted up the stairs, knocked,
re-entered the room as if in haste:—

"Mademoiselle, I have forgotten one of my gloves; I must have
left it here."

She instantly rose to seek it; as she turned her back, I—being
now at the hearth—noiselessly lifted a little vase, one of a set
of china ornaments, as old-fashioned as the tea-cups—slipped the
money under it, then saying—"Oh here is my glove! I had dropped
it within the fender; good evening, mademoiselle," I made my
second exit.

Brief as my impromptu return had been, it had afforded me time
to pick up a heart-ache; I remarked that Frances had already
removed the red embers of her cheerful little fire from the
grate: forced to calculate every item, to save in every detail,
she had instantly on my departure retrenched a luxury too
expensive to be enjoyed alone.

"I am glad it is not yet winter," thought I; "but in two months
more come the winds and rains of November; would to God that
before then I could earn the right, and the power, to shovel
coals into that grate AD LIBITUM!"

Already the pavement was drying; a balmy and fresh breeze stirred
the air, purified by lightning; I felt the West behind me, where
spread a sky like opal; azure immingled with crimson: the
enlarged sun, glorious in Tyrian tints, dipped his brim already;
stepping, as I was, eastward, I faced a vast bank of clouds, but
also I had before me the arch of an evening rainbow; a perfect
rainbow—high, wide, vivid. I looked long; my eye drank in the
scene, and I suppose my brain must have absorbed it; for that
night, after lying awake in pleasant fever a long time, watching
the silent sheet-lightning, which still played among the
retreating clouds, and flashed silvery over the stars, I at last
fell asleep; and then in a dream were reproduced the setting sun,
the bank of clouds, the mighty rainbow. I stood, methought, on a
terrace; I leaned over a parapeted wall; there was space below
me, depth I could not fathom, but hearing an endless dash of
waves, I believed it to be the sea; sea spread to the horizon;
sea of changeful green and intense blue: all was soft in the
distance; all vapour-veiled. A spark of gold glistened on the
line between water and air, floated up, approached, enlarged,
changed; the object hung midway between heaven and earth, under
the arch of the rainbow; the soft but dusk clouds diffused
behind. It hovered as on wings; pearly, fleecy, gleaming air
streamed like raiment round it; light, tinted with carnation,
coloured what seemed face and limbs; A large star shone with
still lustre on an angel's forehead; an upraised arm and hand,
glancing like a ray, pointed to the bow overhead, and a voice in
my heart whispered—

"Hope smiles on Effort!"

A COMPETENCY was what I wanted; a competency it was now my aim
and resolve to secure; but never had I been farther from the
mark. With August the school-year (l'annee scolaire) closed, the
examinations concluded, the prizes were adjudged, the schools
dispersed, the gates of all colleges, the doors of all
pensionnats shut, not to be reopened till the beginning or middle
of October. The last day of August was at hand, and what was my
position? Had I advanced a step since the commencement of the
past quarter? On the contrary, I had receded one. By renouncing
my engagement as English master in Mdlle. Reuter's establishment,
I had voluntarily cut off 20l. from my yearly income; I had
diminished my 60l. per annum to 40l., and even that sum I now
held by a very precarious tenure.

It is some time since I made any reference to M. Pelet. The
moonlight walk is, I think, the last incident recorded in this
narrative where that gentleman cuts any conspicuous figure: the
fact is, since that event, a change had come over the spirit of
our intercourse. He, indeed, ignorant that the still hour, a
cloudless moon, and an open lattice, had revealed to me the
secret of his selfish love and false friendship, would have
continued smooth and complaisant as ever; but I grew spiny as a
porcupine, and inflexible as a blackthorn cudgel; I never had a
smile for his raillery, never a moment for his society; his
invitations to take coffee with him in his parlour were
invariably rejected, and very stiffly and sternly rejected too;
his jesting allusions to the directress (which he still
continued) were heard with a grim calm very different from the
petulant pleasure they were formerly wont to excite. For a long
time Pelet bore with my frigid demeanour very patiently; he even
increased his attentions; but finding that even a cringing
politeness failed to thaw or move me, he at last altered too; in
his turn he cooled; his invitations ceased; his countenance
became suspicious and overcast, and I read in the perplexed yet
brooding aspect of his brow, a constant examination and
comparison of premises, and an anxious endeavour to draw thence
some explanatory inference. Ere long, I fancy, he succeeded, for
he was not without penetration; perhaps, too, Mdlle. Zoraide
might have aided him in the solution of the enigma; at any rate I
soon found that the uncertainty of doubt had vanished from his
manner; renouncing all pretence of friendship and cordiality, he
adopted a reserved, formal, but still scrupulously polite
deportment. This was the point to which I had wished to bring
him, and I was now again comparatively at my ease. I did not, it
is true, like my position in his house; but being freed from the
annoyance of false professions and double-dealing I could endure
it, especially as no heroic sentiment of hatred or jealousy of
the director distracted my philosophical soul; he had not, I
found, wounded me in a very tender point, the wound was so soon
and so radically healed, leaving only a sense of contempt for the
treacherous fashion in which it had been inflicted, and a lasting
mistrust of the hand which I had detected attempting to stab in
the dark.

This state of things continued till about the middle of July, and
then there was a little change; Pelet came home one night, an
hour after his usual time, in a state of unequivocal
intoxication, a thing anomalous with him; for if he had some of
the worst faults of his countrymen, he had also one at least of
their virtues, i.e. sobriety. So drunk, however, was he upon
this occasion, that after having roused the whole establishment
(except the pupils, whose dormitory being over the classes in a
building apart from the dwelling-house, was consequently out of
the reach of disturbance) by violently ringing the hall-bell and
ordering lunch to be brought in immediately, for he imagined it
was noon, whereas the city bells had just tolled midnight; after
having furiously rated the servants for their want of
punctuality, and gone near to chastise his poor old mother, who
advised him to go to bed, he began raving dreadfully about "le
maudit Anglais, Creemsvort." I had not yet retired; some German
books I had got hold of had kept me up late; I heard the uproar
below, and could distinguish the director's voice exalted in a
manner as appalling as it was unusual. Opening my door a little,
I became aware of a demand on his part for "Creemsvort" to be
brought down to him that he might cut his throat on the
hall-table and wash his honour, which he affirmed to be in a
dirty condition, in infernal British blood. "He is either mad or
drunk," thought I, "and in either case the old woman and the
servants will be the better of a man's assistance," so I
descended straight to the hall. I found him staggering about,
his eyes in a fine frenzy rolling—a pretty sight he was, a just
medium between the fool and the lunatic.

"Come, M. Pelet," said I, "you had better go to bed," and I took
hold of his arm. His excitement, of course, increased greatly at
sight and touch of the individual for whose blood he had been
making application: he struggled and struck with fury—but a
drunken man is no match for a sober one; and, even in his normal
state, Pelet's worn out frame could not have stood against my
sound one. I got him up-stairs, and, in process of time, to bed.
During the operation he did not fail to utter comminations which,
though broken, had a sense in them; while stigmatizing me as the
treacherous spawn of a perfidious country, he, in the same
breath, anathematized Zoraide Reuter; he termed her "femme sotte
et vicieuse," who, in a fit of lewd caprice, had thrown herself
away on an unprincipled adventurer; directing the point of the
last appellation by a furious blow, obliquely aimed at me. I
left him in the act of bounding elastically out of the bed into
which I had tucked him; but, as I took the precaution of turning
the key in the door behind me, I retired to my own room, assured
of his safe custody till the morning, and free to draw
undisturbed conclusions from the scene I had just witnessed.