The Professor (5 page)

"Mr. Hunsden! good evening."

"Good evening, indeed! yes, but you would have passed me without
recognition if I had not been so civil as to speak first."

"I did not know you."

"A famous excuse! You ought to have known me; I knew you, though
you were going ahead like a steam-engine. Are the police after
you?"

"It wouldn't be worth their while; I'm not of consequence enough
to attract them.

"Alas, poor shepherd! Alack and well-a-day! What a theme for
regret, and how down in the mouth you must be, judging from the
sound of your voice! But since you're not running from the
police, from whom are you running? the devil?"

"On the contrary, I am going post to him."

"That is well—you're just in luck: this is Tuesday evening;
there are scores of market gigs and carts returning to Dinneford
to-night; and he, or some of his, have a seat in all regularly;
so, if you'll step in and sit half-an-hour in my bachelor's
parlour, you may catch him as he passes without much trouble. I
think though you'd better let him alone to-night, he'll have so
many customers to serve; Tuesday is his busy day in X— and
Dinneford; come in at all events."

He swung the wicket open as he spoke.

"Do you really wish me to go in?" I asked.

"As you please—I'm alone; your company for an hour or two would
be agreeable to me; but, if you don't choose to favour me so far,
I'll not press the point. I hate to bore any one."

It suited me to accept the invitation as it suited Hunsden to
give it. I passed through the gate, and followed him to the
front door, which he opened; thence we traversed a passage, and
entered his parlour; the door being shut, he pointed me to as
arm-chair by the hearth; I sat down, and glanced round me.

It was a comfortable room, at once snug and handsome; the bright
grate was filled with a genuine —shire fire, red, clear, and
generous, no penurious South-of-England embers heaped in the
corner of a grate. On the table a shaded lamp diffused around a
soft, pleasant, and equal light; the furniture was almost
luxurious for a young bachelor, comprising a couch and two very
easy chairs; bookshelves filled the recesses on each side of the
mantelpiece; they were well-furnished, and arranged with perfect
order. The neatness of the room suited my taste; I hate
irregular and slovenly habits. From what I saw I concluded that
Hunsden's ideas on that point corresponded with my own. While he
removed from the centre-table to the side-board a few pamphlets
and periodicals, I ran my eye along the shelves of the book-case
nearest me. French and German works predominated, the old French
dramatists, sundry modern authors, Thiers, Villemain, Paul de
Kock, George Sand, Eugene Sue; in German—Goethe, Schiller,
Zschokke, Jean Paul Richter; in English there were works on
Political Economy. I examined no further, for Mr. Hunsden
himself recalled my attention.

"You shall have something," said he, "for you ought to feel
disposed for refreshment after walking nobody knows how far on
such a Canadian night as this; but it shall not be
brandy-and-water, and it shall not be a bottle of port, nor ditto
of sherry. I keep no such poison. I have Rhein-wein for my own
drinking, and you may choose between that and coffee."

Here again Hunsden suited me: if there was one generally
received practice I abhorred more than another, it was the
habitual imbibing of spirits and strong wines. I had, however,
no fancy for his acid German nectar, but I liked coffee, so I
responded—

"Give me some coffee, Mr. Hunsden."

I perceived my answer pleased him; he had doubtless expected to
see a chilling effect produced by his steady announcement that he
would give me neither wine nor spirits; he just shot one
searching glance at my face to ascertain whether my cordiality
was genuine or a mere feint of politeness. I smiled, because I
quite understood him; and, while I honoured his conscientious
firmness, I was amused at his mistrust; he seemed satisfied, rang
the bell, and ordered coffee, which was presently brought; for
himself, a bunch of grapes and half a pint of something sour
sufficed. My coffee was excellent; I told him so, and expressed
the shuddering pity with which his anchorite fare inspired me.
He did not answer, and I scarcely think heard my remark. At
that moment one of those momentary eclipses I before alluded to
had come over his face, extinguishing his smile, and replacing,
by an abstracted and alienated look, the customarily shrewd,
bantering glance of his eye. I employed the interval of silence
in a rapid scrutiny of his physiognomy. I had never observed him
closely before; and, as my sight is very short, I had gathered
only a vague, general idea of his appearance; I was surprised
now, on examination, to perceive how small, and even feminine,
were his lineaments; his tall figure, long and dark locks, his
voice and general bearing, had impressed me with the notion of
something powerful and massive; not at all:—my own features were
cast in a harsher and squarer mould than his. I discerned that
there would be contrasts between his inward and outward man;
contentions, too; for I suspected his soul had more of will and
ambition than his body had of fibre and muscle. Perhaps, in these
incompatibilities of the "physique" with the "morale," lay the
secret of that fitful gloom; he WOULD but COULD not, and the
athletic mind scowled scorn on its more fragile companion. As to
his good looks, I should have liked to have a woman's opinion on
that subject; it seemed to me that his face might produce the
same effect on a lady that a very piquant and interesting, though
scarcely pretty, female face would on a man. I have mentioned
his dark locks—they were brushed sideways above a white and
sufficiently expansive forehead; his cheek had a rather hectic
freshness; his features might have done well on canvas, but
indifferently in marble: they were plastic; character had set a
stamp upon each; expression re-cast them at her pleasure, and
strange metamorphoses she wrought, giving him now the mien of a
morose bull, and anon that of an arch and mischievous girl; more
frequently, the two semblances were blent, and a queer, composite
countenance they made.

Starting from his silent fit, he began:—

"William! what a fool you are to live in those dismal lodgings
of Mrs. King's, when you might take rooms here in Grove Street,
and have a garden like me!"

"I should be too far from the mill."

"What of that? It would do you good to walk there and back two
or three times a day; besides, are you such a fossil that you
never wish to see a flower or a green leaf?"

"I am no fossil."

What are you then? You sit at that desk in Crimsworth's
counting-house day by day and week by week, scraping with a pen
on paper, just like an automaton; you never get up; you never say
you are tired; you never ask for a holiday; you never take change
or relaxation; you give way to no excess of an evening; you
neither keep wild company, nor indulge in strong drink."

"Do you, Mr. Hunsden?"

"Don't think to pose me with short questions; your case and mine
are diametrically different, and it is nonsense attempting to
draw a parallel. I say, that when a man endures patiently what
ought to be unendurable, he is a fossil."

"Whence do you acquire the knowledge of my patience?"

"Why, man, do you suppose you are a mystery? The other night you
seemed surprised at my knowing to what family you belonged; now
you find subject for wonderment in my calling you patient. What
do you think I do with my eyes and ears? I've been in your
counting-house more than once when Crimsworth has treated you
like a dog; called for a book, for instance, and when you gave
him the wrong one, or what he chose to consider the wrong one,
flung it back almost in your face; desired you to shut or open
the door as if you had been his flunkey; to say nothing of your
position at the party about a month ago, where you had neither
place nor partner, but hovered about like a poor, shabby
hanger-on; and how patient you were under each and all of these
circumstances!"

"Well, Mr. Hunsden, what then?"

"I can hardly tell you what then; the conclusion to be drawn as
to your character depends upon the nature of the motives which
guide your conduct; if you are patient because you expect to make
something eventually out of Crimsworth, notwithstanding his
tyranny, or perhaps by means of it, you are what the world calls
an interested and mercenary, but may be a very wise fellow; if
you are patient because you think it a duty to meet insult with
submission, you are an essential sap, and in no shape the man for
my money; if you are patient because your nature is phlegmatic,
flat, inexcitable, and that you cannot get up to the pitch of
resistance, why, God made you to be crushed; and lie down by all
means, and lie flat, and let Juggernaut ride well over you."

Mr. Hunsden's eloquence was not, it will be perceived, of the
smooth and oily order. As he spoke, he pleased me ill. I seem
to recognize in him one of those characters who, sensitive enough
themselves, are selfishly relentless towards the sensitiveness of
others. Moreover, though he was neither like Crimsworth nor Lord
Tynedale, yet he was acrid, and, I suspected, overbearing in his
way: there was a tone of despotism in the urgency of the very
reproaches by which, he aimed at goading the oppressed into
rebellion against the oppressor. Looking at him still more
fixedly than I had yet done, I saw written in his eye and mien a
resolution to arrogate to himself a freedom so unlimited that it
might often trench on the just liberty of his neighbours. I
rapidly ran over these thoughts, and then I laughed a low and
involuntary laugh, moved thereto by a slight inward revelation of
the inconsistency of man. It was as I thought: Hunsden had
expected me to take with calm his incorrect and offensive
surmises, his bitter and haughty taunts; and himself was chafed
by a laugh, scarce louder than a whisper.

His brow darkened, his thin nostril dilated a little.

"Yes," he began, "I told you that you were an aristocrat, and who
but an aristocrat would laugh such a laugh as that, and look such
a look? A laugh frigidly jeering; a look lazily mutinous;
gentlemanlike irony, patrician resentment. What a nobleman you
would have made, William Crimsworth! You are cut out for one;
pity Fortune has baulked Nature! Look at the features, figure,
even to the hands—distinction all over—ugly distinction!
Now, if you'd only an estate and a mansion, and a park, and a
title, how you could play the exclusive, maintain the rights of
your class, train your tenantry in habits of respect to the
peerage, oppose at every step the advancing power of the people,
support your rotten order, and be ready for its sake to wade
knee-deep in churls' blood; as it is, you've no power; you can
do nothing; you're wrecked and stranded on the shores of
commerce; forced into collision with practical men, with whom
you cannot cope, for YOU'LL NEVER BE A TRADESMAN."

The first part of Hunsden's speech moved me not at all, or, if it
did, it was only to wonder at the perversion into which prejudice
had twisted his judgment of my character; the concluding
sentence, however, not only moved, but shook me; the blow it gave
was a severe one, because Truth wielded the weapon. If I smiled
now, it, was only in disdain of myself.

Hunsden saw his advantage; he followed it up.

"You'll make nothing by trade," continued he; "nothing more than
the crust of dry bread and the draught of fair water on which you
now live; your only chance of getting a competency lies in
marrying a rich widow, or running away with an heiress."

"I leave such shifts to be put in practice by those who devise
them," said I, rising.

"And even that is hopeless," he went on coolly. "What widow
would have you? Much less, what heiress? You're not bold and
venturesome enough for the one, nor handsome and fascinating
enough for the other. You think perhaps you look intelligent and
polished; carry your intellect and refinement to market, and tell
me in a private note what price is bid for them."

Mr. Hunsden had taken his tone for the night; the string he
struck was out of tune, he would finger no other. Averse to
discord, of which I had enough every day and all day long, I
concluded, at last, that silence and solitude were preferable to
jarring converse; I bade him good-night.

"What! Are you going, lad? Well, good-night: you'll find the
door." And he sat still in front of the fire, while I left the
room and the house. I had got a good way on my return to my
lodgings before I found out that I was walking very fast, and
breathing very hard, and that my nails were almost stuck into the
palms of my clenched hands, and that my teeth were set fast; on
making this discovery, I relaxed both my pace, fists, and jaws,
but I could not so soon cause the regrets rushing rapidly through
my mind to slacken their tide. Why did I make myself a
tradesman? Why did I enter Hunsden's house this evening? Why,
at dawn to-morrow, must I repair to Crimsworth's mill? All that
night did I ask myself these questions, and all that night
fiercely demanded of my soul an answer. I got no sleep; my head
burned, my feet froze; at last the factory bells rang, and I
sprang from my bed with other slaves.

THERE is a climax to everything, to every state of feeling as
well as to every position in life. I turned this truism over in
my mind as, in the frosty dawn of a January morning, I hurried
down the steep and now icy street which descended from Mrs.
King's to the Close. The factory workpeople had preceded me by
nearly an hour, and the mill was all lighted up and in full
operation when I reached it. I repaired to my post in the
counting-house as usual; the fire there, but just lit, as yet
only smoked; Steighton had not yet arrived. I shut the door and
sat down at the desk; my hands, recently washed in half-frozen
water, were still numb; I could not write till they had regained
vitality, so I went on thinking, and still the theme of my
thoughts was the "climax." Self-dissatisfaction troubled
exceedingly the current of my meditations.