The Professor (26 page)

"A week ago, monsieur, I was sent for by a Mrs. Wharton, an
English lady; her eldest daughter was going to be married, and
some rich relation having made her a present of a veil and dress
in costly old lace, as precious, they said, almost as jewels, but
a little damaged by time, I was commissioned to put them in
repair. I had to do it at the house; they gave me, besides, some
embroidery to complete, and nearly a week elapsed before I had
finished everything. While I worked, Miss Wharton often came
into the room and sat with me, and so did Mrs. Wharton; they made
me talk English; asked how I had learned to speak it so well;
then they inquired what I knew besides—what books I had read;
soon they seemed to make a sort of wonder of me, considering me
no doubt as a learned grisette. One afternoon, Mrs. Wharton
brought in a Parisian lady to test the accuracy of my knowledge
of French; the result of it: was that, owing probably in a great
degree to the mother's and daughter's good humour about the
marriage, which inclined them to do beneficent deeds, and partly,
I think, because they are naturally benevolent people, they
decided that the wish I had expressed to do something more than
mend lace was a very legitimate one; and the same day they took
me in their carriage to Mrs. D.'s, who is the directress of the
first English school at Brussels. It seems she happened to be in
want of a French lady to give lessons in geography, history,
grammar, and composition, in the French language. Mrs. Wharton
recommended me very warmly; and, as two of her younger daughters
are pupils in the house, her patronage availed to get me the
place. It was settled that I am to attend six hours daily (for,
happily, it was not required that I should live in the house; I
should have been sorry to leave my lodgings), and, for this, Mrs.
D. will give me twelve hundred francs per annum.

"You see, therefore, monsieur, that I am now rich; richer almost
than I ever hoped to be: I feel thankful for it, especially as
my sight was beginning to be injured by constant working at fine
lace; and I was getting, too, very weary of sitting up late at
nights, and yet not being able to find time for reading or study.
I began to fear that I should fall ill, and be unable to pay my
way; this fear is now, in a great measure, removed; and, in
truth, monsieur, I am very grateful to God for the relief; and I
feel it necessary, almost, to speak of my happiness to some one
who is kind-hearted enough to derive joy from seeing others
joyful. I could not, therefore, resist the temptation of writing
to you; I argued with myself it is very pleasant for me to write,
and it will not be exactly painful, though it may be tiresome to
monsieur to read. Do not be too angry with my circumlocution and
inelegancies of expression, and, believe me

"Your attached pupil,
"F. E. HENRI."

Having read this letter, I mused on its contents for a few
moments—whether with sentiments pleasurable or otherwise I will
hereafter note—and then took up the other. It was directed in a
hand to me unknown—small, and rather neat; neither masculine nor
exactly feminine; the seal bore a coat of arms, concerning which
I could only decipher that it was not that of the Seacombe
family, consequently the epistle could be from none of my almost
forgotten, and certainly quite forgetting patrician relations.
>From whom, then, was it? I removed the envelope; the note folded
within ran as follows: -

"I have no doubt in the world that you are doing well in that
greasy Flanders; living probably on the fat of the unctuous land;
sitting like a black-haired, tawny-skinned, long-nosed Israelite
by the flesh-pots of Egypt; or like a rascally son of Levi near
the brass cauldrons of the sanctuary, and every now and then
plunging in a consecrated hook, and drawing out of the sea, of
broth the fattest of heave-shoulders and the fleshiest of
wave-breasts. I know this, because you never write to any one in
England. Thankless dog that you are! I, by the sovereign
efficacy of my recommendation, got you the place where you are
now living in clover, and yet not a word of gratitude, or even
acknowledgment, have you ever offered in return; but I am coming
to see you, and small conception can you, with your addled
aristocratic brains, form of the sort of moral kicking I have,
ready packed in my carpet-bag, destined to be presented to you
immediately on my arrival.

"Meantime I know all about your affairs, and have just got
information, by Brown's last letter, that you are said to be on
the point of forming an advantageous match with a pursy, little
Belgian schoolmistress—a Mdlle. Zenobie, or some such name.
Won't I have a look at her when I come over! And this you may
rely on: if she pleases my taste, or if I think it worth while
in a pecuniary point of view, I'll pounce on your prize and bear
her away triumphant in spite of your teeth. Yet I don't like
dumpies either, and Brown says she is little and stout—the
better fitted for a wiry, starved-looking chap like you.
"Be on the look-out, for you know neither the day nor hour when
your — (I don't wish to blaspheme, so I'll leave a blank)
—cometh.

"Yours truly,
"HUNSDEN YORKE HUNSDEN."

"Humph!" said I; and ere I laid the letter down, I again glanced
at the small, neat handwriting, not a bit like that of a
mercantile man, nor, indeed, of any man except Hunsden himself.
They talk of affinities between the autograph and the character:
what affinity was there here? I recalled the writer's peculiar
face and certain traits I suspected, rather than knew, to
appertain to his nature, and I answered, "A great deal."

Hunsden, then, was coming to Brussels, and coming I knew not
when; coming charged with the expectation of finding me on the
summit of prosperity, about to be married, to step into a warm
nest, to lie comfortably down by the side of a snug, well-fed
little mate.

"I wish him joy of the fidelity of the picture he has painted,"
thought I. "What will he say when, instead of a pair of plump
turtle doves, billing and cooing in a bower of roses, he finds a
single lean cormorant, standing mateless and shelterless on
poverty's bleak cliff? Oh, confound him! Let him come, and let
him laugh at the contrast between rumour and fact. Were he the
devil himself, instead of being merely very like him, I'd not
condescend to get out of his way, or to forge a smile or a
cheerful word wherewith to avert his sarcasm."

Then I recurred to the other letter: that struck a chord whose
sound I could not deaden by thrusting my fingers into my ears,
for it vibrated within; and though its swell might be exquisite
music, its cadence was a groan.

That Frances was relieved from the pressure of want, that the
curse of excessive labour was taken off her, filled me with
happiness; that her first thought in prosperity should be to
augment her joy by sharing it with me, met and satisfied the wish
of my heart. Two results of her letter were then pleasant, sweet
as two draughts of nectar; but applying my lips for the third
time to the cup, and they were excoriated as with vinegar and
gall.

Two persons whose desires are moderate may live well enough in
Brussels on an income which would scarcely afford a respectable
maintenance for one in London: and that, not because the
necessaries of life are so much dearer in the latter capital, or
taxes so much higher than in the former, but because the English
surpass in folly all the nations on God's earth, and are more
abject slaves to custom, to opinion, to the desire to keep up a
certain appearance, than the Italians are to priestcraft, the
French to vain-glory, the Russians to their Czar, or the Germans
to black beer. I have seen a degree of sense in the modest
arrangement of one homely Belgian household, that might put to
shame the elegance, the superfluities, the luxuries, the strained
refinements of a hundred genteel English mansions. In Belgium,
provided you can make money, you may save it; this is scarcely
possible in England; ostentation there lavishes in a month what
industry has earned in a year. More shame to all classes in that
most bountiful and beggarly country for their servile following
of Fashion; I could write a chapter or two on this subject, but
must forbear, at least for the present. Had I retained my 60l.
per annum I could, now that Frances was in possession of 50l.,
have gone straight to her this very evening, and spoken out the
words which, repressed, kept fretting my heart with fever; our
united income would, as we should have managed it, have sufficed
well for our mutual support; since we lived in a country where
economy was not confounded with meanness, where frugality in
dress, food, and furniture, was not synonymous with vulgarity in
these various points. But the placeless usher, bare of resource,
and unsupported by connections, must not think of this; such a
sentiment as love, such a word as marriage, were misplaced in his
heart, and on his lips. Now for the first time did I truly feel
what it was to be poor; now did the sacrifice I had made in
casting from me the means of living put on a new aspect; instead
of a correct, just, honourable act, it seemed a deed at once
light and fanatical; I took several turns in my room, under the
goading influence of most poignant remorse; I walked a quarter of
an hour from the wall to the window; and at the window,
self-reproach seemed to face me; at the wall, self-disdain: all
at once out spoke Conscience:—

"Down, stupid tormenters!" cried she; "the man has done his
duty; you shall not bait him thus by thoughts of what might have
been; he relinquished a temporary and contingent good to avoid a
permanent and certain evil he did well. Let him reflect now, and
when your blinding dust and deafening hum subside, he will
discover a path."

I sat down; I propped my forehead on both my hands; I thought and
thought an hour-two hours; vainly. I seemed like one sealed in a
subterranean vault, who gazes at utter blackness; at blackness
ensured by yard-thick stone walls around, and by piles of
building above, expecting light to penetrate through granite, and
through cement firm as granite. But there are chinks, or there
may be chinks, in the best adjusted masonry; there was a chink in
my cavernous cell; for, eventually, I saw, or seemed to see, a
ray—pallid, indeed, and cold, and doubtful, but still a ray, for
it showed that narrow path which conscience had promised after
two, three hours' torturing research in brain and memory, I
disinterred certain remains of circumstances, and conceived a
hope that by putting them together an expedient might be framed,
and a resource discovered. The circumstances were briefly these
:—

Some three months ago M. Pelet had, on the occasion of his fete,
given the boys a treat, which treat consisted in a party of
pleasure to a certain place of public resort in the outskirts of
Brussels, of which I do not at this moment remember the name, but
near it were several of those lakelets called etangs; and there
was one etang, larger than the rest, where on holidays people
were accustomed to amuse themselves by rowing round it in little
boats. The boys having eaten an unlimited quantity of "gaufres,"
and drank several bottles of Louvain beer, amid the shades of a
garden made and provided for such crams, petitioned the director
for leave to take a row on the etang. Half a dozen of the eldest
succeeded in obtaining leave, and I was commissioned to accompany
them as surveillant. Among the half dozen happened to be a
certain Jean Baptiste Vandenhuten, a most ponderous young
Flamand, not tall, but even now, at the early age of sixteen,
possessing a breadth and depth of personal development truly
national. It chanced that Jean was the first lad to step into the
boat; he stumbled, rolled to one side, the boat revolted at his
weight and capsized. Vandenhuten sank like lead, rose, sank
again. My coat and waistcoat were off in an instant; I had not
been brought up at Eton and boated and bathed and swam there ten
long years for nothing; it was a natural and easy act for me to
leap to the rescue. The lads and the boatmen yelled; they
thought there would be two deaths by drowning instead of one; but
as Jean rose the third time, I clutched him by one leg and the
collar, and in three minutes more both he and I were safe landed.
To speak heaven's truth, my merit in the action was small indeed,
for I had run no risk, and subsequently did not even catch cold
from the wetting; but when M. and Madame Vandenhuten, of whom
Jean Baptiste was the sole hope, came to hear of the exploit,
they seemed to think I had evinced a bravery and devotion which
no thanks could sufficiently repay. Madame, in particular, was
"certain I must have dearly loved their sweet son, or I would not
thus have hazarded my own life to save his." Monsieur, an
honest-looking, though phlegmatic man, said very little, but he
would not suffer me to leave the room, till I had promised that
in case I ever stood in need of help I would, by applying to him,
give him a chance of discharging the obligation under which he
affirmed I had laid him. These words, then, were my glimmer of
light; it was here I found my sole outlet; and in truth, though
the cold light roused, it did not cheer me; nor did the outlet
seem such as I should like to pass through. Right I had none to
M. Vandenhuten's good offices; it was not on the ground of merit
I could apply to him; no, I must stand on that of necessity: I
had no work; I wanted work; my best chance of obtaining it lay in
securing his recommendation. This I knew could be had by asking
for it; not to ask, because the request revolted my pride and
contradicted my habits, would, I felt, be an indulgence of false
and indolent fastidiousness. I might repent the omission all my
life; I would not then be guilty of it.