The Professor (25 page)

Now, it was precisely about this time that the directress, stung
by my coldness, bewitched by my scorn,and excited by the
preference she suspected me of cherishing for another, had fallen
into a snare of her own laying—was herself caught in the meshes
of the very passion with which she wished to entangle me.
Conscious of the state of things in that quarter, I gathered,
from the condition in which I saw my employer, that his lady-love
had betrayed the alienation of her affections—inclinations,
rather, I would say; affection is a word at once too warm and too
pure for the subject—had let him see that the cavity of her
hollow heart, emptied of his image, was now occupied by that of
his usher. It was not without some surprise that I found myself
obliged to entertain this view of the case; Pelet, with his old
-established school, was so convenient, so profitable a match
—Zoraide was so calculating, so interested a woman—I wondered
mere personal preference could, in her mind, have prevailed for a
moment over worldly advantage: yet, it was evident, from what
Pelet said, that, not only had she repulsed him, but had even let
slip expressions of partiality for me. One of his drunken
exclamations was, "And the jade doats on your youth, you raw
blockhead! and talks of your noble deportment, as she calls your
accursed English formality—and your pure morals, forsooth! des
moeurs de Caton a-t-elle dit—sotte!" Hers, I thought, must be a
curious soul, where in spite of a strong, natural tendency to
estimate unduly advantages of wealth and station, the sardonic
disdain of a fortuneless subordinate had wrought a deeper
impression than could be imprinted by the most flattering
assiduities of a prosperous CHEF D'INSTITUTION. I smiled
inwardly; and strange to say, though my AMOUR PROPRE was excited
not disagreeably by the conquest, my better feelings remained
untouched. Next day, when I saw the directress, and when she
made an excuse to meet me in the corridor, and besought my notice
by a demeanour and look subdued to Helot humility, I could not
love, I could scarcely pity her. To answer briefly and dryly some
interesting inquiry about my health—to pass her by with a stern
bow—was all I could; her presence and manner had then, and for
some time previously and consequently, a singular effect upon me:
they sealed up all that was good elicited all that was noxious in
my nature; sometimes they enervated my senses, but they always
hardened my heart. I was aware of the detriment done, and
quarrelled with myself for the change. I had ever hated a
tyrant; and, behold, the possession of a slave, self-given, went
near to transform me into what I abhorred! There was at once a
sort of low gratification in receiving this luscious incense from
an attractive and still young worshipper; and an irritating sense
of degradation in the very experience of the pleasure. When she
stole about me with the soft step of a slave, I felt at once
barbarous and sensual as a pasha. I endured her homage
sometimes; sometimes I rebuked it. My indifference or harshness
served equally to increase the evil I desired to check.

"Que le dedain lui sied bien!" I once overheard her say to her
mother: "il est beau comme Apollon quand il sourit de son air
hautain."

And the jolly old dame laughed, and said she thought her daughter
was bewitched, for I had no point of a handsome man about me,
except being straight and without deformity. "Pour moi," she
continued, "il me fait tout l'effet d'un chat-huant, avec ses
besicles."

Worthy old girl! I could have gone and kissed her had she not
been a little too old, too fat, and too red-faced; her sensible,
truthful words seemed so wholesome, contrasted with the morbid
illusions of her daughter.

When Pelet awoke on the morning after his frenzy fit, he retained
no recollection of what had happened the previous night, and his
mother fortunately had the discretion to refrain from informing
him that I had been a witness of his degradation. He did not
again have recourse to wine for curing his griefs, but even in
his sober mood he soon showed that the iron of jealousy had
entered into his soul. A thorough Frenchman, the national
characteristic of ferocity had not been omitted by nature in
compounding the ingredients of his character; it had appeared
first in his access of drunken wrath, when some of his
demonstrations of hatred to my person were of a truly fiendish
character, and now it was more covertly betrayed by momentary
contractions of the features, and flashes of fierceness in his
light blue eyes, when their glance chanced to encounter mine. He
absolutely avoided speaking to me; I was now spared even the
falsehood of his politeness. In this state of our mutual
relations, my soul rebelled. sometimes almost ungovernably,
against living in the house and discharging the service of such a
man; but who is free from the constraint of circumstances? At
that time, I was not: I used to rise each morning eager to shake
off his yoke, and go out with my portmanteau under my arm, if a
beggar, at least a freeman; and in the evening, when I came back
from the pensionnat de demoiselles, a certain pleasant voice in
my ear; a certain face, so intelligent, yet so docile, so
reflective, yet so soft, in my eyes; a certain cast of character,
at once proud and pliant, sensitive and sagacious, serious and
ardent, in my head; a certain tone of feeling, fervid and modest,
refined and practical, pure and powerful, delighting and
troubling my memory—visions of new ties I longed to contract, of
new duties I longed to undertake, had taken the rover and the
rebel out of me, and had shown endurance of my hated lot in the
light of a Spartan virtue.

But Pelet's fury subsided; a fortnight sufficed for its rise,
progress, and extinction: in that space of time the dismissal of
the obnoxious teacher had been effected in the neighbouring
house, and in the same interval I had declared my resolution to
follow and find out my pupil, and upon my application for her
address being refused, I had summarily resigned my own post.
This last act seemed at once to restore Mdlle. Reuter to her
senses; her sagacity, her judgment, so long misled by a
fascinating delusion, struck again into the right track the
moment that delusion vanished. By the right track, I do not mean
the steep and difficult path of principle—in that path she never
trod; but the plain highway of common sense, from which she had
of late widely diverged. When there she carefully sought, and
having found, industriously pursued the trail of her old suitor,
M. Pelet. She soon overtook him. What arts she employed to
soothe and blind him I know not, but she succeeded both in
allaying his wrath, and hoodwinking his discernment, as was soon
proved by the alteration in his mien and manner; she must have
managed to convince him that I neither was, nor ever had been, a
rival of his, for the fortnight of fury against me terminated in
a fit of exceeding graciousness and amenity, not unmixed with a
dash of exulting self-complacency, more ludicrous than
irritating. Pelet's bachelor's life had been passed in proper
French style with due disregard to moral restraint, and I thought
his married life promised to be very French also. He often
boasted to me what a terror he had been to certain husbands of
his acquaintance; I perceived it would not now be difficult to
pay him back in his own coin.

The crisis drew on. No sooner had the holidays commenced than
note of preparation for some momentous event sounded all through
the premises of Pelet: painters, polishers, and upholsterers
were immediately set to work, and there was talk of "la chambre
de Madame," "le salon de Madame." Not deeming it probable that
the old duenna at present graced with that title in our house,
had inspired her son with such enthusiasm of filial piety, as to
induce him to fit up apartments expressly for her use, I
concluded, in common with the cook, the two housemaids, and the
kitchen-scullion, that a new and more juvenile Madame was
destined to be the tenant of these gay chambers.

Presently official announcement of the coming event was put
forth. In another week's time M. Francois Pelet, directeur, and
Mdlle. Zoraide Reuter, directrice, were to be joined together in
the bands of matrimony. Monsieur, in person, heralded the fact
to me; terminating his communication by an obliging expression of
his desire that I should continue, as heretofore, his ablest
assistant and most trusted friend; and a proposition to raise my
salary by an additional two hundred francs per annum. I thanked
him, gave no conclusive answer at the time, and, when he had left
me, threw off my blouse, put on my coat, and set out on a long
walk outside the Porte de Flandre, in order, as I thought, to
cool my blood, calm my nerves, and shake my disarranged ideas
into some order. In fact, I had just received what was virtually
my dismissal. I could not conceal, I did not desire to conceal
from myself the conviction that, being now certain that Mdlle.
Reuter was destined to become Madame Pelet it would not do for me
to remain a dependent dweller in the house which was soon to be
hers. Her present demeanour towards me was deficient neither in
dignity nor propriety; but I knew her former feeling was
unchanged. Decorum now repressed, and Policy masked it, but
Opportunity would be too strong for either of these—Temptation
would shiver their restraints.

I was no pope—I could not boast infallibility: in short, if I
stayed, the probability was that, in three months' time, a
practical modern French novel would be in full process of
concoction under the roof of the unsuspecting Pelet. Now, modern
French novels are not to my taste, either practically or
theoretically. Limited as had yet been my experience of life, I
had once had the opportunity of contemplating, near at hand, an
example of the results produced by a course of interesting and
romantic domestic treachery. No golden halo of fiction was about
this example, I saw it bare and real, and it was very loathsome.
I saw a mind degraded by the practice of mean subterfuge, by the
habit of perfidious deception, and a body depraved by the
infectious influence of the vice-polluted soul. I had suffered
much from the forced and prolonged view of this spectacle; those
sufferings I did not now regret, for their simple recollection
acted as a most wholesome antidote to temptation. They had
inscribed on my reason the conviction that unlawful pleasure,
trenching on another's rights, is delusive and envenomed
pleasure—its hollowness disappoints at the time, its poison
cruelly tortures afterwards, its effects deprave for ever.

From all this resulted the conclusion that I must leave Pelet's,
and that instantly; "but," said Prudence, "you know not where to
go, nor how to live;" and then the dream of true love came over
me: Frances Henri seemed to stand at my side; her slender waist
to invite my arm; her hand to court my hand; I felt it was made
to nestle in mine; I could not relinquish my right to it, nor
could I withdraw my eyes for ever from hers, where I saw so much
happiness, such a correspondence of heart with heart; over whose
expression I had such influence; where I could kindle bliss,
infuse awe, stir deep delight, rouse sparkling spirit, and
sometimes waken pleasurable dread. My hopes to will and possess,
my resolutions to merit and rise, rose in array against me; and
here I was about to plunge into the gulf of absolute destitution;
"and all this," suggested an inward voice, "because you fear an
evil which may never happen!" "It will happen; you KNOW it
will," answered that stubborn monitor, Conscience. "Do what you
feel is right; obey me, and even in the sloughs of want I will
plant for you firm footing." And then, as I walked fast along
the road, there rose upon me a strange, inly-felt idea of some
Great Being, unseen, but all present, who in His beneficence
desired only my welfare, and now watched the struggle of good sad
evil in my heart, and waited to see whether I should obey His
voice, heard in the whispers of my conscience, or lend an ear to
the sophisms by which His enemy and mine—the Spirit of Evil
—sought to lead me astray. Rough and steep was the path
indicated by divine suggestion; mossy and declining the green way
along which Temptation strewed flowers; but whereas, methought,
the Deity of Love, the Friend of all that exists, would smile
well-pleased were I to gird up my loins and address myself to the
rude ascent; so, on the other hand, each inclination to the
velvet declivity seemed to kindle a gleam of triumph on the brow
of the man-hating, God-defying demon. Sharp and short I turned
round; fast I retraced my steps; in half an hour I was again at
M. Pelet's: I sought him in his study; brief parley, concise
explanation sufficed; my manner proved that I was resolved; he,
perhaps, at heart approved my decision. After twenty minutes'
conversation, I re-entered my own room, self-deprived of the
means of living, self-sentenced to leave my present home, with
the short notice of a week in which to provide another.

DIRECTLY as I closed the door, I saw laid on the table two
letters; my thought was, that they were notes of invitation from
the friends of some of my pupils; I had received such marks of
attention occasionally, and with me, who had no friends,
correspondence of more interest was out of the question; the
postman's arrival had never yet been an event of interest to me
since I came to Brussels. I laid my hand carelessly on the
documents, and coldly and slowly glancing at them, I prepared to
break the seals; my eye was arrested and my hand too; I saw what
excited me, as if I had found a vivid picture where I expected
only to discover a blank page: on one cover was an English
postmark; on the other, a lady's clear, fine autograph; the last
I opened first:—

"MONSIEUR,
"I FOUND out what you had done the very morning after your visit
to me; you might be sure I should dust the china, every day; and,
as no one but you had been in my room for a week, and as
fairy-money is not current in Brussels, I could not doubt who
left the twenty francs on the chimney-piece. I thought I heard
you stir the vase when I was stooping to look for your glove
under the table, and I wondered you should imagine it had got
into such a little cup. Now, monsieur, the money is not mine,
and I shall not keep it; I will not send it in this note because
it might be lost—besides, it is heavy; but I will restore it to
you the first time I see you, and you must make no difficulties
about taking it; because, in the first place, I am sure,
monsieur, you can understand that one likes to pay one's debts;
that it is satisfactory to owe no man anything; and, in the
second place, I can now very well afford to be honest, as I am
provided with a situation. This last circumstance is, indeed,
the reason of my writing to you, for it is pleasant to
communicate good news; and, in these days, I have only my master
to whom I can tell anything.