The Professor (3 page)

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.

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 affar, 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—