The Woman in White

Chapter 3

Pesca's face and manner, on the evening when we confronted each

other at my mother's gate, were more than sufficient to inform me

that something extraordinary had happened. It was quite useless,

however, to ask him for an immediate explanation. I could only

conjecture, while he was dragging me in by both hands, that

(knowing my habits) he had come to the cottage to make sure of

meeting me that night, and that he had some news to tell of an

unusually agreeable kind.

We both bounced into the parlour in a highly abrupt and

undignified manner. My mother sat by the open window laughing and

fanning herself. Pesca was one of her especial favourites and his

wildest eccentricities were always pardonable in her eyes. Poor

dear soul! from the first moment when she found out that the

little Professor was deeply and gratefully attached to her son,

she opened her heart to him unreservedly, and took all his

puzzling foreign peculiarities for granted, without so much as

attempting to understand any one of them.

My sister Sarah, with all the advantages of youth, was, strangely

enough, less pliable. She did full justice to Pesca's excellent

qualities of heart; but she could not accept him implicitly, as my

mother accepted him, for my sake. Her insular notions of

propriety rose in perpetual revolt against Pesca's constitutional

contempt for appearances; and she was always more or less

undisguisedly astonished at her mother's familiarity with the

eccentric little foreigner. I have observed, not only in my

sister's case, but in the instances of others, that we of the

young generation are nothing like so hearty and so impulsive as

some of our elders. I constantly see old people flushed and

excited by the prospect of some anticipated pleasure which

altogether fails to ruffle the tranquillity of their serene

grandchildren. Are we, I wonder, quite such genuine boys and

girls now as our seniors were in their time? Has the great advance

in education taken rather too long a stride; and are we in these

modern days, just the least trifle in the world too well brought

up?

Without attempting to answer those questions decisively, I may at

least record that I never saw my mother and my sister together in

Pesca's society, without finding my mother much the younger woman

of the two. On this occasion, for example, while the old lady was

laughing heartily over the boyish manner in which we tumbled into

the parlour, Sarah was perturbedly picking up the broken pieces of

a teacup, which the Professor had knocked off the table in his

precipitate advance to meet me at the door.

"I don't know what would have happened, Walter," said my mother,

"if you had delayed much longer. Pesca has been half mad with

impatience, and I have been half mad with curiosity. The

Professor has brought some wonderful news with him, in which he

says you are concerned; and he has cruelly refused to give us the

smallest hint of it till his friend Walter appeared."

"Very provoking: it spoils the Set," murmured Sarah to herself,

mournfully absorbed over the ruins of the broken cup.

While these words were being spoken, Pesca, happily and fussily

unconscious of the irreparable wrong which the crockery had

suffered at his hands, was dragging a large arm-chair to the

opposite end of the room, so as to command us all three, in the

character of a public speaker addressing an audience. Having

turned the chair with its back towards us, he jumped into it on

his knees, and excitedly addressed his small congregation of three

from an impromptu pulpit.

"Now, my good dears," began Pesca (who always said "good dears"

when he meant "worthy friends"), "listen to me. The time has

come--I recite my good news--I speak at last."

"Hear, hear!" said my mother, humouring the joke.

"The next thing he will break, mamma," whispered Sarah, "will be

the back of the best arm-chair."

"I go back into my life, and I address myself to the noblest of

created beings," continued Pesca, vehemently apostrophising my

unworthy self over the top rail of the chair. "Who found me dead

at the bottom of the sea (through Cramp); and who pulled me up to

the top; and what did I say when I got into my own life and my own

clothes again?"

"Much more than was at all necessary," I answered as doggedly as

possible; for the least encouragement in connection with this

subject invariably let loose the Professor's emotions in a flood

of tears.

"I said," persisted Pesca, "that my life belonged to my dear

friend, Walter, for the rest of my days--and so it does. I said

that I should never be happy again till I had found the

opportunity of doing a good Something for Walter--and I have never

been contented with myself till this most blessed day. Now,"

cried the enthusiastic little man at the top of his voice, "the

overflowing happiness bursts out of me at every pore of my skin,

like a perspiration; for on my faith, and soul, and honour, the

something is done at last, and the only word to say now is--Right-

all-right!"

It may be necessary to explain here that Pesca prided himself on

being a perfect Englishman in his language, as well as in his

dress, manners, and amusements. Having picked up a few of our

most familiar colloquial expressions, he scattered them about over

his conversation whenever they happened to occur to him, turning

them, in his high relish for their sound and his general ignorance

of their sense, into compound words and repetitions of his own,

and always running them into each other, as if they consisted of

one long syllable.

"Among the fine London Houses where I teach the language of my

native country," said the Professor, rushing into his long-

deferred explanation without another word of preface, "there is

one, mighty fine, in the big place called Portland. You all know

where that is? Yes, yes--course-of-course. The fine house, my

good dears, has got inside it a fine family. A Mamma, fair and

fat; three young Misses, fair and fat; two young Misters, fair and

fat; and a Papa, the fairest and the fattest of all, who is a

mighty merchant, up to his eyes in gold--a fine man once, but

seeing that he has got a naked head and two chins, fine no longer

at the present time. Now mind! I teach the sublime Dante to the

young Misses, and ah!--my-soul-bless-my-soul!--it is not in human

language to say how the sublime Dante puzzles the pretty heads of

all three! No matter--all in good time--and the more lessons the

better for me. Now mind! Imagine to yourselves that I am teaching

the young Misses to-day, as usual. We are all four of us down

together in the Hell of Dante. At the Seventh Circle--but no

matter for that: all the Circles are alike to the three young

Misses, fair and fat,--at the Seventh Circle, nevertheless, my

pupils are sticking fast; and I, to set them going again, recite,

explain, and blow myself up red-hot with useless enthusiasm, when--

a creak of boots in the passage outside, and in comes the golden

Papa, the mighty merchant with the naked head and the two chins.--

Ha! my good dears, I am closer than you think for to the business,

now. Have you been patient so far? or have you said to yourselves,

'Deuce-what-the-deuce! Pesca is long-winded to-night?'"

We declared that we were deeply interested. The Professor went

on:

"In his hand, the golden Papa has a letter; and after he has made

his excuse for disturbing us in our Infernal Region with the

common mortal Business of the house, he addresses himself to the

three young Misses, and begins, as you English begin everything in

this blessed world that you have to say, with a great O. 'O, my

dears,' says the mighty merchant, 'I have got here a letter from

my friend, Mr.----'(the name has slipped out of my mind; but no

matter; we shall come back to that; yes, yes--right-all-right).

So the Papa says, 'I have got a letter from my friend, the Mister;

and he wants a recommend from me, of a drawing-master, to go down

to his house in the country.' My-soul-bless-my-soul! when I heard

the golden Papa say those words, if I had been big enough to reach

up to him, I should have put my arms round his neck, and pressed

him to my bosom in a long and grateful hug! As it was, I only

bounced upon my chair. My seat was on thorns, and my soul was on

fire to speak but I held my tongue, and let Papa go on. 'Perhaps

you know,' says this good man of money, twiddling his friend's

letter this way and that, in his golden fingers and thumbs,

'perhaps you know, my dears, of a drawing-master that I can

recommend?' The three young Misses all look at each other, and

then say (with the indispensable great O to begin) "O, dear no,

Papa! But here is Mr. Pesca' At the mention of myself I can hold

no longer--the thought of you, my good dears, mounts like blood to

my head--I start from my seat, as if a spike had grown up from the

ground through the bottom of my chair--I address myself to the

mighty merchant, and I say (English phrase) 'Dear sir, I have the

man! The first and foremost drawing-master of the world! Recommend

him by the post to-night, and send him off, bag and baggage

(English phrase again--ha!), send him off, bag and baggage, by the

train to-morrow!' 'Stop, stop,' says Papa; 'is he a foreigner, or

an Englishman?' 'English to the bone of his back,' I answer.

'Respectable?' says Papa. 'Sir,' I say (for this last question of

his outrages me, and I have done being familiar with him--) 'Sir!

the immortal fire of genius burns in this Englishman's bosom, and,

what is more, his father had it before him!' 'Never mind,' says

the golden barbarian of a Papa, 'never mind about his genius, Mr.

Pesca. We don't want genius in this country, unless it is

accompanied by respectability--and then we are very glad to have

it, very glad indeed. Can your friend produce testimonials--

letters that speak to his character?' I wave my hand negligently.

'Letters?' I say. 'Ha! my-soul-bless-my-soul! I should think so,

indeed! Volumes of letters and portfolios of testimonials, if you

like!' 'One or two will do,' says this man of phlegm and money.

'Let him send them to me, with his name and address. And--stop,

stop, Mr. Pesca--before you go to your friend, you had better take

a note.' 'Bank-note!' I say, indignantly. 'No bank-note, if you

please, till my brave Englishman has earned it first.' 'Bank-

note!' says Papa, in a great surprise, 'who talked of bank-note? I

mean a note of the terms--a memorandum of what he is expected to

do. Go on with your lesson, Mr. Pesca, and I will give you the

necessary extract from my friend's letter.' Down sits the man of

merchandise and money to his pen, ink, and paper; and down I go

once again into the Hell of Dante, with my three young Misses

after me. In ten minutes' time the note is written, and the boots

of Papa are creaking themselves away in the passage outside. From

that moment, on my faith, and soul, and honour, I know nothing

more! The glorious thought that I have caught my opportunity at

last, and that my grateful service for my dearest friend in the

world is as good as done already, flies up into my head and makes

me drunk. How I pull my young Misses and myself out of our

Infernal Region again, how my other business is done afterwards,

how my little bit of dinner slides itself down my throat, I know

no more than a man in the moon. Enough for me, that here I am,

with the mighty merchant's note in my hand, as large as life, as

hot as fire, and as happy as a king! Ha! ha! ha! right-right-

right-all-right!" Here the Professor waved the memorandum of terms

over his head, and ended his long and voluble narrative with his

shrill Italian parody on an English cheer.

My mother rose the moment he had done, with flushed cheeks and

brightened eyes. She caught the little man warmly by both hands.

"My dear, good Pesca," she said, "I never doubted your true

affection for Walter--but I am more than ever persuaded of it

now!"

"I am sure we are very much obliged to Professor Pesca, for

Walter's sake," added Sarah. She half rose, while she spoke, as

if to approach the armchair, in her turn; but, observing that

Pesca was rapturously kissing my mother's hands, looked serious,

and resumed her seat. "If the familiar little man treats my

mother in that way, how will he treat ME?" Faces sometimes tell

truth; and that was unquestionably the thought in Sarah's mind, as

she sat down again.

Although I myself was gratefully sensible of the kindness of

Pesca's motives, my spirits were hardly so much elevated as they

ought to have been by the prospect of future employment now placed

before me. When the Professor had quite done with my mother's

hand, and when I had warmly thanked him for his interference on my

behalf, I asked to be allowed to look at the note of terms which

his respectable patron had drawn up for my inspection.

Pesca handed me the paper, with a triumphant flourish of the hand.

"Read!" said the little man majestically. "I promise you my

friend, the writing of the golden Papa speaks with a tongue of

trumpets for itself."

The note of terms was plain, straightforward, and comprehensive,

at any rate. It informed me,

First, That Frederick Fairlie, Esquire, of Limmeridge House.

Cumberland, wanted to engage the services of a thoroughly

competent drawing-master, for a period of four months certain.

Secondly, That the duties which the master was expected to perform

would be of a twofold kind. He was to superintend the instruction

of two young ladies in the art of painting in water-colours; and

he was to devote his leisure time, afterwards, to the business of

repairing and mounting a valuable collection of drawings, which

had been suffered to fall into a condition of total neglect.

Thirdly, That the terms offered to the person who should undertake

and properly perform these duties were four guineas a week; that

he was to reside at Limmeridge House; and that he was to be

treated there on the footing of a gentleman.

Fourthly, and lastly, That no person need think of applying for

this situation unless he could furnish the most unexceptionable

references to character and abilities. The references were to be

sent to Mr. Fairlie's friend in London, who was empowered to

conclude all necessary arrangements. These instructions were

followed by the name and address of Pesca's employer in Portland

Place--and there the note, or memorandum, ended.

The prospect which this offer of an engagement held out was

certainly an attractive one. The employment was likely to be both

easy and agreeable; it was proposed to me at the autumn time of

the year when I was least occupied; and the terms, judging by my

personal experience in my profession, were surprisingly liberal.

I knew this; I knew that I ought to consider myself very fortunate

if I succeeded in securing the offered employment--and yet, no

sooner had I read the memorandum than I felt an inexplicable

unwillingness within me to stir in the matter. I had never in the

whole of my previous experience found my duty and my inclination

so painfully and so unaccountably at variance as I found them now.

"Oh, Walter, your father never had such a chance as this!" said my

mother, when she had read the note of terms and had handed it back

to me.

"Such distinguished people to know," remarked Sarah, straightening

herself in the chair; "and on such gratifying terms of equality

too!"

"Yes, yes; the terms, in every sense, are tempting enough," I

replied impatiently. "But before I send in my testimonials, I

should like a little time to consider----"

"Consider!" exclaimed my mother. "Why, Walter, what is the matter

with you?"

"Consider!" echoed my sister. "What a very extraordinary thing to

say, under the circumstances!"

"Consider!" chimed in the Professor. "What is there to consider

about? Answer me this! Have you not been complaining of your

health, and have you not been longing for what you call a smack of

the country breeze? Well! there in your hand is the paper that

offers you perpetual choking mouthfuls of country breeze for four

months' time. Is it not so? Ha! Again--you want money. Well! Is

four golden guineas a week nothing? My-soul-bless-my-soul! only

give it to me--and my boots shall creak like the golden Papa's,

with a sense of the overpowering richness of the man who walks in

them! Four guineas a week, and, more than that, the charming

society of two young misses! and, more than that, your bed, your

breakfast, your dinner, your gorging English teas and lunches and

drinks of foaming beer, all for nothing--why, Walter, my dear good

friend--deuce-what-the-deuce!--for the first time in my life I

have not eyes enough in my head to look, and wonder at you!"

Neither my mother's evident astonishment at my behaviour, nor

Pesca's fervid enumeration of the advantages offered to me by the

new employment, had any effect in shaking my unreasonable

disinclination to go to Limmeridge House. After starting all the

petty objections that I could think of to going to Cumberland, and

after hearing them answered, one after another, to my own complete

discomfiture, I tried to set up a last obstacle by asking what was

to become of my pupils in London while I was teaching Mr.

Fairlie's young ladies to sketch from nature. The obvious answer

to this was, that the greater part of them would be away on their

autumn travels, and that the few who remained at home might be

confided to the care of one of my brother drawing-masters, whose

pupils I had once taken off his hands under similar circumstances.

My sister reminded me that this gentleman had expressly placed his

services at my disposal, during the present season, in case I

wished to leave town; my mother seriously appealed to me not to

let an idle caprice stand in the way of my own interests and my

own health; and Pesca piteously entreated that I would not wound

him to the heart by rejecting the first grateful offer of service

that he had been able to make to the friend who had saved his

life.

The evident sincerity and affection which inspired these

remonstrances would have influenced any man with an atom of good

feeling in his composition. Though I could not conquer my own

unaccountable perversity, I had at least virtue enough to be

heartily ashamed of it, and to end the discussion pleasantly by

giving way, and promising to do all that was wanted of me.

The rest of the evening passed merrily enough in humorous

anticipations of my coming life with the two young ladies in

Cumberland. Pesca, inspired by our national grog, which appeared

to get into his head, in the most marvellous manner, five minutes

after it had gone down his throat, asserted his claims to be

considered a complete Englishman by making a series of speeches in

rapid succession, proposing my mother's health, my sister's

health, my health, and the healths, in mass, of Mr. Fairlie and

the two young Misses, pathetically returning thanks himself,

immediately afterwards, for the whole party. "A secret, Walter,"

said my little friend confidentially, as we walked home together.

"I am flushed by the recollection of my own eloquence. My soul

bursts itself with ambition. One of these days I go into your

noble Parliament. It is the dream of my whole life to be

Honourable Pesca, M.P.!"

The next morning I sent my testimonials to the Professor's

employer in Portland Place. Three days passed, and I concluded,

with secret satisfaction, that my papers had not been found

sufficiently explicit. On the fourth day, however, an answer

came. It announced that Mr. Fairlie accepted my services, and

requested me to start for Cumberland immediately. All the

necessary instructions for my journey were carefully and clearly

added in a postscript.

I made my arrangements, unwillingly enough, for leaving London

early the next day. Towards evening Pesca looked in, on his way

to a dinner-party, to bid me good-bye.

"I shall dry my tears in your absence," said the Professor gaily,

"with this glorious thought. It is my auspicious hand that has

given the first push to your fortune in the world. Go, my friend!

When your sun shines in Cumberland (English proverb), in the name

of heaven make your hay. Marry one of the two young Misses;

become Honourable Hartright, M.P.; and when you are on the top of

the ladder remember that Pesca, at the bottom, has done it all!"

I tried to laugh with my little friend over his parting jest, but

my spirits were not to be commanded. Something jarred in me

almost painfully while he was speaking his light farewell words.

When I was left alone again nothing remained to be done but to

walk to the Hampstead cottage and bid my mother and Sarah good-

bye.