The Professor (32 page)

That inscrutable Hunsden heard this remark and felt it rather
acutely, too, somewhere; for he coloured—a thing not unusual
with him, when hit unawares on a tender point. A sort of trouble
momentarily darkened his eye, and I believe he filled up the
transient pause succeeding his antagonist's home-thrust, by a
wish that some one did love him as he would like to be loved
—some one whose love he could unreservedly return.

The lady pursued her temporary advantage.

"If your world is a world without associations, Mr. Hunsden, I no
longer wonder that you hate England so. I don't clearly know
what Paradise is, and what angels are; yet taking it to be the
most glorious region I can conceive, and angels the most elevated
existences—if one of them—if Abdiel the Faithful himself" (she
was thinking of Milton) "were suddenly stripped of the faculty of
association, I think he would soon rush forth from 'the
ever-during gates,' leave heaven, and seek what he had lost in
hell. Yes, in the very hell from which he turned 'with retorted
scorn.'"

Frances' tone in saying this was as marked as her language, and
it was when the word "hell" twanged off from her lips, with a
somewhat startling emphasis, that Hunsden deigned to bestow one
slight glance of admiration. He liked something strong, whether
in man or woman; he liked whatever dared to clear conventional
limits. He had never before heard a lady say "hell" with that
uncompromising sort of accent, and the sound pleased him from a
lady's lips; he would fain have had Frances to strike the string
again, but it was not in her way. The display of eccentric
vigour never gave her pleasure, and it only sounded in her voice
or flashed in her countenance when extraordinary circumstances
—and those generally painful—forced it out of the depths where
it burned latent. To me, once or twice, she had in intimate
conversation, uttered venturous thoughts in nervous language; but
when the hour of such manifestation was past, I could not recall
it; it came of itself and of itself departed. Hunsden's
excitations she put by soon with a smile, and recurring to the
theme of disputation, said—

"Since England is nothing, why do the continental nations respect
her so?"

"I should have thought no child would have asked that question,"
replied Hunsden, who never at any time gave information without
reproving for stupidity those who asked it of him. "If you had
been my pupil, as I suppose you once had the misfortune to be
that of a deplorable character not a hundred miles off, I would
have put you in the corner for such a confession of ignorance.
Why, mademoiselle, can't you see that it is our GOLD which buys
us French politeness, German good-will, and Swiss servility?"
And he sneered diabolically.

"Swiss?" said Frances, catching the word "servility." "Do you
call my countrymen servile?" and she started up. I could not
suppress a low laugh; there was ire in her glance and defiance in
her attitude. "Do you abuse Switzerland to me, Mr. Hunsden? Do
you think I have no associations? Do you calculate that I am
prepared to dwell only on what vice and degradation may be found
in Alpine villages, and to leave quite out of my heart the social
greatness of my countrymen, and our blood-earned freedom, and the
natural glories of our mountains? You're mistaken—you're
mistaken."

"Social greatness? Call it what you will, your countrymen are
sensible fellows; they make a marketable article of what to you
is an abstract idea; they have, ere this, sold their social
greatness and also their blood-earned freedom to be the servants
of foreign kings."

"You never were in Switzerland?"

"Yes—I have been there twice."

"You know nothing of it."

"I do."

"And you say the Swiss are mercenary, as a parrot says 'Poor
Poll,' or as the Belgians here say the English are not brave, or
as the French accuse them of being perfidious: there is no
justice in your dictums."

"There is truth."

"I tell you, Mr. Hunsden, you are a more unpractical man than I
am an unpractical woman, for you don't acknowledge what really
exists; you want to annihilate individual patriotism and national
greatness as an atheist would annihilate God and his own soul, by
denying their existence."

"Where are you flying to? You are off at a tangent—I thought we
were talking about the mercenary nature of the Swiss."

"We were—and if you proved to me that the Swiss are mercenary
to-morrow (which you cannot do) I should love Switzerland still."

"You would be mad, then—mad as a March hare—to indulge in a
passion for millions of shiploads of soil, timber, snow, and
ice."

"Not so mad as you who love nothing."

"There's a method in my madness; there's none in yours."

"Your method is to squeeze the sap out of creation and make
manure of the refuse, by way of turning it to what you call use."

"You cannot reason at all," said Hunsden; "there is no logic in
you."

"Better to be without logic than without feeling," retorted
Frances, who was now passing backwards and forwards from her
cupboard to the table, intent, if not on hospitable thoughts, at
least on hospitable deeds, for she was laying the cloth, and
putting plates, knives and forks thereon.

"Is that a hit at me, mademoiselle? Do you suppose I am without
feeling? "

"I suppose you are always interfering with your own feelings,and
those of other people, and dogmatizing about the irrationality of
this, that, and the other sentiment, and then ordering it to be
suppressed because you imagine it to be inconsistent with logic."

"I do right."

Frances had stepped out of sight into a sort of little pantry;
she soon reappeared.

"You do right? Indeed, no! You are much mistaken if you think
so. Just be so good as to let me get to the fire, Mr. Hunsden; I
have something to cook." (An interval occupied in settling a
casserole on the fire; then, while she stirred its contents:)
"Right! as if it were right to crush any pleasurable sentiment
that God has given to man, especially any sentiment that, like
patriotism, spreads man's selfishness in wider circles" (fire
stirred, dish put down before it).

"Were you born in Switzerland?"

"I should think so, or else why should I call it my country?"

"And where did you get your English features and figure?"

"I am English, too; half the blood in my veins is English; thus I
have a right to a double power of patriotism, possessing an
interest in two noble, free, and fortunate countries."

"You had an English mother?"

"Yes, yes; and you, I suppose, had a mother from the moon or from
Utopia, since not a nation in Europe has a claim on your
interest?"

"On the contrary, I'm a universal patriot, if you could
understand me rightly: my country is the world."

"Sympathies so widely diffused must be very shallow: will you
have the goodness to come to table. Monsieur" (to me who
appeared to be now absorbed in reading by moonlight)—"Monsieur,
supper is served."

This was said in quite a different voice to that in which she had
been bandying phrases with Mr. Hunsden—not so short, graver and
softer.

"Frances, what do you mean by preparing, supper? we had no
intention of staying."

"Ah, monsieur, but you have stayed, and supper is prepared; you
have only the alternative of eating it."

The meal was a foreign one, of course; it consisted in two small
but tasty dishes of meat prepared with skill and served with
nicety; a salad and "fromage francais," completed it. The
business of eating interposed a brief truce between the
belligerents, but no sooner was supper disposed of than they were
at it again. The fresh subject of dispute ran on the spirit of
religious intolerance which Mr. Hunsden affirmed to exist
strongly in Switzerland, notwithstanding the professed attachment
of the Swiss to freedom. Here Frances had greatly the worst of
it, not only because she was unskilled to argue, but because her
own real opinions on the point in question happened to coincide
pretty nearly with Mr. Hunsden's, and she only contradicted him
out of opposition. At last she gave in, confessing that she
thought as he thought, but bidding him take notice that she did
not consider herself beaten.

"No more did the French at Waterloo," said Hunsden.

"There is no comparison between the cases," rejoined Frances; "
mine was a sham fight."

"Sham or real, it's up with you."

"No; though I have neither logic nor wealth of words, yet in a
case where my opinion really differed from yours, I would adhere
to it when I had not another word to say in its defence; you
should be baffled by dumb determination. You speak of Waterloo;
your Wellington ought to have been conquered there, according to
Napoleon; but he persevered in spite of the laws of war, and was
victorious in defiance of military tactics. I would do as he
did."

"I'll be bound for it you would; probably you have some of the
same sort of stubborn stuff in you.

"I should be sorry if I had not; he and Tell were brothers, and
I'd scorn the Swiss, man or woman, who had none of the
much-enduring nature of our heroic William in his soul."

"If Tell was like Wellington, he was an ass."

"Does not ASS mean BAUDET?" asked Frances, turning to me.

"No, no," replied I, "it means an ESPRIT-FORT; and now," I
continued, as I saw that fresh occasion of strife was brewing
between these two, "it is high time to go."

Hunsden rose. "Good bye," said he to Frances; "I shall be off
for this glorious England to-morrow, and it may be twelve months
or more before I come to Brussels again; whenever I do come I'll
seek you out, and you shall see if I don't find means to make you
fiercer than a dragon. You've done pretty well this evening, but
next interview you shall challenge me outright. Meantime you're
doomed to become Mrs. William Crimsworth, I suppose; poor young
lady? but you have a spark of spirit; cherish it, and give the
Professor the full benefit thereof."

"Are you married. Mr. Hunsden?" asked Frances, suddenly.

"No. I should have thought you might have guessed I was a
Benedict by my look."

"Well, whenever you marry don't take a wife out of Switzerland;
for if you begin blaspheming Helvetia, and cursing the cantons
—above all, if you mention the word ASS in the same breath with
the name Tell (for ass IS baudet, I know; though Monsieur is
pleased to translate it ESPRIT-FORT) your mountain maid will some
night smother her Breton-bretonnant, even as your own
Shakspeare's Othello smothered Desdemona."

"I am warned," said Hunsden; "and so are you, lad," (nodding to
me). "I hope yet to hear of a travesty of the Moor and his
gentle lady, in which the parts shall be reversed according to
the plan just sketched—you, however, being in my nightcap.
Farewell, mademoiselle!" He bowed on her hand, absolutely like
Sir Charles Grandison on that of Harriet Byron; adding—"Death
from such fingers would not be without charms."

"Mon Dieu!" murmured Frances, opening her large eyes and lifting
her distinctly arched brows; "c'est qu'il fait des compliments!
je ne m'y suis pas attendu." She smiled, half in ire, half in
mirth, curtsied with foreign grace, and so they parted.

No sooner had we got into the street than Hunsden collared me.

"And that is your lace-mender?" said he; "and you reckon you have
done a fine, magnanimous thing in offering to marry her? You, a
scion of Seacombe, have proved your disdain of social
distinctions by taking up with an ouvriere! And I pitied the
fellow, thinking his feelings had misled him, and that he had
hurt himself by contracting a low match!"

"Just let go my collar, Hunsden."

"On the contrary, he swayed me to and fro; so I grappled him
round the waist. It was dark; the street lonely and lampless.
We had then a tug for it; and after we had both rolled on the
pavement, and with difficulty picked ourselves up, we agreed to
walk on more soberly.

"Yes, that's my lace-mender," said I; "and she is to be mine for
life—God willing."

"God is not willing—you can't suppose it; what business have you
to be suited so well with a partner? And she treats you with a
sort of respect, too, and says, 'Monsieur' and modulates her tone
in addressing you, actually, as if you were something superior!
She could not evince more deference to such a one as I, were she
favoured by fortune to the supreme extent of being my choice
instead of yours."

"Hunsden, you're a puppy. But you've only seen the title-page of
my happiness; you don't know the tale that follows; you cannot
conceive the interest and sweet variety and thrilling excitement
of the narrative."

Hunsden—speaking low and deep, for we had now entered a busier
street—desired me to hold my peace, threatening to do something
dreadful if I stimulated his wrath further by boasting. I
laughed till my sides ached. We soon reached his hotel; before he
entered it, he said—

"Don't be vainglorious. Your lace-mender is too good for you,
but not good enough for me; neither physically nor morally does
she come up to my ideal of a woman. No; I dream of something far
beyond that pale-faced, excitable little Helvetian (by-the-by she
has infinitely more of the nervous, mobile Parisienne in her than
of the the robust 'jungfrau'). Your Mdlle. Henri is in person
"chetive", in mind "sans caractere", compared with the queen of
my visions. You, indeed, may put up with that "minois chiffone";
but when I marry I must have straighter and more harmonious
features, to say nothing of a nobler and better developed shape
than that perverse, ill-thriven child can boast."

"Bribe a seraph to fetch you a coal of fire from heaven, if you
will," said I, "and with it kindle life in the tallest, fattest,
most boneless, fullest-blooded of Ruben's painted women—leave me
only my Alpine peri, and I'll not envy you."