The Professor (34 page)

My afternoons were spent also in college, with the exception of
an hour that my wife daily exacted of me for her establishment,
and with which she would not dispense. She said that I must spend
that time amongst her pupils to learn their characters, to be AU
COURANT with everything that was passing in the house, to become
interested in what interested her, to be able to give her my
opinion on knotty points when she required it, and this she did
constantly, never allowing my interest in the pupils to fall
asleep, and never making any change of importance without my
cognizance and consent. She delighted to sit by me when I gave
my lessons (lessons in literature), her hands folded on her knee,
the most fixedly attentive of any present. She rarely addressed
me in class; when she did it was with an air of marked deference;
it was her pleasure, her joy to make me still the master in all
things.

At six o'clock P.M. my daily labours ceased. I then came home,
for my home was my heaven; ever at that hour, as I entered our
private sitting-room, the lady-directress vanished from before my
eyes, and Frances Henri, my own little lace-mender, was magically
restored to my arms; much disappointed she would have been if her
master had not been as constant to the tryste as herself, and if
his truthfull kiss had not been prompt to answer her soft, "Bon
soir, monsieur."

Talk French to me she would, and many a punishment she has had
for her wilfulness. I fear the choice of chastisement must have
been injudicious, for instead of correcting the fault, it seemed
to encourage its renewal. Our evenings were our own; that
recreation was necessary to refresh our strength for the due
discharge of our duties; sometimes we spent them all in
conversation, and my young Genevese, now that she was thoroughly
accustomed to her English professor, now that she loved him too
absolutely to fear him much, reposed in him a confidence so
unlimited that topics of conversation could no more be wanting
with him than subjects for communion with her own heart. In
those moments, happy as a bird with its mate, she would show me
what she had of vivacity, of mirth, of originality in her
well-dowered nature. She would show, too, some stores of
raillery, of "malice," and would vex, tease, pique me sometimes
about what she called my "bizarreries anglaises," my "caprices
insulaires," with a wild and witty wickedness that made a perfect
white demon of her while it lasted. This was rare, however, and
the elfish freak was always short: sometimes when driven a
little hard in the war of words—for her tongue did ample justice
to the pith, the point, the delicacy of her native French, in
which language she always attacked me—I used to turn upon her
with my old decision, and arrest bodily the sprite that teased
me. Vain idea! no sooner had I grasped hand or arm than the elf
was gone; the provocative smile quenched in the expressive brown
eyes, and a ray of gentle homage shone under the lids in its
place. I had seized a mere vexing fairy, and found a submissive
and supplicating little mortal woman in my arms. Then I made her
get a book, and read English to me for an hour by way of penance.
I frequently dosed her with Wordsworth in this way, and
Wordsworth steadied her soon; she had a difficulty in
comprehending his deep, serene, and sober mind; his language,
too, was not facile to her; she had to ask questions, to sue for
explanations, to be like a child and a novice, and to acknowledge
me as her senior and director. Her instinct instantly penetrated
and possessed the meaning of more ardent and imaginative writers.
Byron excited her; Scott she loved; Wordsworth only she puzzled
at, wondered over, and hesitated to pronounce an opinion upon.

But whether she read to me, or talked with me; whether she teased
me in French, or entreated me in English; whether she jested with
wit, or inquired with deference; narrated with interest, or
listened with attention; whether she smiled at me or on me,
always at nine o'clock I was left abandoned. She would extricate
herself from my arms, quit my side, take her lamp, and be gone.
Her mission was upstairs; I have followed her sometimes and
watched her. First she opened the door of the dortoir (the
pupils' chamber), noiselessly she glided up the long room between
the two rows of white beds, surveyed all the sleepers; if any
were wakeful, especially if any were sad, spoke to them and
soothed them; stood some minutes to ascertain that all was safe
and tranquil; trimmed the watch-light which burned in the
apartment all night, then withdrew, closing the door behind her
without sound. Thence she glided to our own chamber; it had a
little cabinet within; this she sought; there, too, appeared a
bed, but one, and that a very small one; her face (the night I
followed and observed her) changed as she approached this tiny
couch; from grave it warmed to earnest; she shaded with one hand
the lamp she held in the other; she bent above the pillow and
hung over a child asleep; its slumber (that evening at least, and
usually, I believe) was sound and calm; no tear wet its dark
eyelashes; no fever heated its round cheek; no ill dream
discomposed its budding features. Frances gazed, she did not
smile, and yet the deepest delight filled, flushed her face;
feeling pleasurable, powerful, worked in her whole frame, which
still was motionless. I saw, indeed, her heart heave, her lips
were a little apart, her breathing grew somewhat hurried; the
child smiled; then at last the mother smiled too, and said in low
soliloquy, "God bless my little son!" She stooped closer over
him, breathed the softest of kisses on his brow, covered his
minute hand with hers, and at last started up and came away. I
regained the parlour before her. Entering it two minutes later
she said quietly as she put down her extinguished lamp—

"Victor rests well: he smiled in his sleep; he has your smile,
monsieur."

The said Victor was of course her own boy, born in the third year
of our marriage: his Christian name had been given him in honour
of M. Vandenhuten, who continued always our trusty and
well-beloved friend.

Frances was then a good and dear wife to me, because I was to her
a good, just, and faithful husband. What she would have been had
she married a harsh, envious, careless man—a profligate, a
prodigal, a drunkard, or a tyrant—is another question, and one
which I once propounded to her. Her answer, given after some
reflection, was—

"I should have tried to endure the evil or cure it for awhile;
and when I found it intolerable and incurable, I should have left
my torturer suddenly and silently."

"And if law or might had forced you back again?"

"What, to a drunkard, a profligate, a selfish spendthrift, an
unjust fool?"

"Yes."

"I would have gone back; again assured myself whether or not his
vice and my misery were capable of remedy; and if not, have left
him again."

"And if again forced to return, and compelled to abide?"

"I don't know," she said, hastily. "Why do you ask me,
monsieur?"

I would have an answer, because I saw a strange kind of spirit in
her eye, whose voice I determined to waken.

"Monsieur, if a wife's nature loathes that of the man she is
wedded to, marriage must be slavery. Against slavery all right
thinkers revolt, and though torture be the price of resistance,
torture must be dared: though the only road to freedom lie
through the gates of death, those gates must be passed; for
freedom is indispensable. Then, monsieur, I would resist as far
as my strength permitted; when that strength failed I should be
sure of a refuge. Death would certainly screen me both from bad
laws and their consequences."

"Voluntary death, Frances?"

"No, monsieur. I'd have courage to live out every throe of
anguish fate assigned me, and principle to contend for justice
and liberty to the last."

"I see you would have made no patient Grizzle. And now,
supposing fate had merely assigned you the lot of an old maid,
what then? How would you have liked celibacy?"

"Not much, certainly. An old maid's life must doubtless be void
and vapid—her heart strained and empty. Had I been an old maid I
should have spent existence in efforts to fill the void and ease
the aching. I should have probably failed, and died weary and
disappointed, despised and of no account, like other single
women. But I'm not an old maid," she added quickly. "I should
have been, though, but for my master. I should never have suited
any man but Professor Crimsworth—no other gentleman, French,
English, or Belgian, would have thought me amiable or handsome;
and I doubt whether I should have cared for the approbation of
many others, if I could have obtained it. Now, I have been
Professor Crimsworth's wife eight years, and what is he in my
eyes? Is he honourable, beloved—?" She stopped, her voice was
cut off, her eyes suddenly suffused. She and I were standing
side by side; she threw her arms round me, and strained me to her
heart with passionate earnestness: the energy of her whole being
glowed in her dark and then dilated eye, and crimsoned her
animated cheek; her look and movement were like inspiration; in
one there was such a flash, in the other such a power. Half an
hour afterwards, when she had become calm, I asked where all that
wild vigour was gone which had transformed her ere-while and made
her glance so thrilling and ardent—her action so rapid and
strong. She looked down, smiling softly and passively:—

"I cannot tell where it is gone, monsieur," said she, "but I know
that, whenever it is wanted, it will come back again."

Behold us now at the close of the ten years, and we have realized
an independency. The rapidity with which we attained this end
had its origin in three reasons:— Firstly, we worked so hard for
it; secondly, we had no incumbrances to delay success; thirdly,
as soon as we had capital to invest, two well-skilled
counsellors, one in Belgium, one in England, viz. Vandenhuten
and Hunsden, gave us each a word of advice as to the sort of
investment to be chosen. The suggestion made was judicious; and,
being promptly acted on, the result proved gainful—I need not
say how gainful; I communicated details to Messrs. Vandenhuten
and Hunsden; nobody else can be interested in hearing them.

Accounts being wound up, and our professional connection disposed
of, we both agreed that, as mammon was not our master, nor his
service that in which we desired to spend our lives; as our
desires were temperate, and our habits unostentatious, we had now
abundance to live on—abundance to leave our boy; and should
besides always have a balance on hand, which, properly managed by
right sympathy and unselfish activity, might help philanthropy in
her enterprises, and put solace into the hand of charity.

To England we now resolved to take wing; we arrived there safely;
Frances realized the dream of her lifetime. me spent a whole
summer and autumn in travelling from end to end of the British
islands, and afterwards passed a winter in London. Then we
thought it high time to fix our residence. My heart yearned
towards my native county of —shire; and it is in —shire I
now live; it is in the library of my own home I am now writing.
That home lies amid a sequestered and rather hilly region, thirty
miles removed from X—; a region whose verdure the smoke of
mills has not yet sullied, whose waters still run pure, whose
swells of moorland preserve in some ferny glens that lie between
them the very primal wildness of nature, her moss, her bracken,
her blue-bells, her scents of reed and heather, her free and
fresh breezes. My house is a picturesque and not too spacious
dwelling, with low and long windows, a trellised and leaf-veiled
porch over the front door, just now, on this summer evening,
looking like an arch of roses and ivy. The garden is chiefly
laid out in lawn, formed of the sod of the hills, with herbage
short and soft as moss, full of its own peculiar flowers, tiny
and starlike, imbedded in the minute embroidery of their fine
foliage. At the bottom of the sloping garden there is a wicket,
which opens upon a lane as green as the lawn, very long, shady,
and little frequented; on the turf of this lane generally appear
the first daisies of spring—whence its name—Daisy Lane; serving
also as a distinction to the house.

It terminates (the lane I mean) in a valley full of wood; which
wood—chiefly oak and beech—spreads shadowy about the vicinage
of a very old mansion, one of the Elizabethan structures, much
larger, as well as more antique than Daisy Lane, the property and
residence of an individual familiar both to me and to the reader.
Yes, in Hunsden Wood—for so are those glades and that grey
building, with many gables and more chimneys, named—abides Yorke
Hunsden, still unmarried; never, I suppose, having yet found his
ideal, though I know at least a score of young ladies within a
circuit of forty miles, who would be willing to assist him in the
search.

The estate fell to him by the death of his father, five years
since; he has given up trade, after having made by it sufficient
to pay off some incumbrances by which the family heritage was
burdened. I say he abides here, but I do not think he is
resident above five months out of the twelve; he wanders from
land to land, and spends some part of each winter in town: he
frequently brings visitors with him when he comes to —shire,
and these visitors are often foreigners; sometimes he has a
German metaphysician, sometimes a French savant; he had once a
dissatisfied and savage-looking Italian, who neither sang nor
played, and of whom Frances affirmed that he had "tout l'air d'un
conspirateur."

What English guests Hunsden invites, are all either men of
Birmingham or Manchester—hard men, seemingly knit up in one
thought, whose talk is of free trade. The foreign visitors, too,
are politicians; they take a wider theme—European progress—the
spread of liberal sentiments over the Continent; on their mental
tablets, the names of Russia, Austria, and the Pope, are
inscribed in red ink. I have heard some of them talk vigorous
sense—yea, I have been present at polyglot discussions in the
old, oak-lined dining-room at Hunsden Wood, where a singular
insight was given of the sentiments entertained by resolute minds
respecting old northern despotisms, and old southern
superstitions: also, I have heard much twaddle, enounced chiefly
in French and Deutsch, but let that pass. Hunsden himself
tolerated the drivelling theorists; with the practical men he
seemed leagued hand and heart.