The Professor Read Online Free PDF Page B

impatient nature, and influenced by the
double desire of getting my living and justifying to myself and
others the resolution I had taken to become a tradesman, I should
have endured in silence the rust and cramp of my best faculties;
I should not have whispered, even inwardly, that I longed for
liberty; I should have pent in every sigh by which my heart might
have ventured to intimate its distress under the closeness,
smoke, monotony and joyless tumult of Bigben Close, and its
panting desire for freer and fresher scenes; I should have set up
the image of Duty, the fetish of Perseverance, in my small
bedroom at Mrs. King's lodgings, and they two should have been my
household gods, from which my darling, my cherished-in-secret,
Imagination, the tender and the mighty, should never, either by
softness or strength, have severed me. But this was not all; the
antipathy which had sprung up between myself and my employer
striking deeper root and spreading denser shade daily, excluded
me from every glimpse of the sunshine of life; and I began to
feel like a plant growing in humid darkness out of the slimy
walls of a well.
    Antipathy is the only word which can express the feeling Edward
Crimsworth had for me—a feeling, in a great measure,
involuntary, and which was liable to be excited by every, the
most trifling movement, look, or word of mine. My southern
accent annoyed him; the degree of education evinced in my
language irritated him; my punctuality, industry, and accuracy,
fixed his dislike, and gave it the high flavour and poignant
relish of envy; he feared that I too should one day make a
successful tradesman. Had I been in anything inferior to him, he
would not have hated me so thoroughly, but I knew all that he
knew, and, what was worse, he suspected that I kept the padlock
of silence on mental wealth in which he was no sharer. If he
could have once placed me in a ridiculous or mortifying position,
he would have forgiven me much, but I was guarded by three
faculties—Caution, Tact, Observation; and prowling and prying as
was Edward's malignity, it could never baffle the lynx-eyes of
these, my natural sentinels. Day by day did his malice watch my
tact, hoping it would sleep, and prepared to steal snake-like on
its slumber; but tact, if it be genuine, never sleeps.
    I had received my first quarter's wages, and was returning to my
lodgings, possessed heart and soul with the pleasant feeling that
the master who had paid me grudged every penny of that
hard-earned pittance—(I had long ceased to regard Mr. Crimsworth
as my brother—he was a hard, grinding master; he wished to be an
inexorable tyrant: that was all). Thoughts, not varied but
strong, occupied my mind; two voices spoke within me; again and
again they uttered the same monotonous phrases. One said:
"William, your life is intolerable." The other: "What can you
do to alter it?" I walked fast, for it was a cold, frosty night
in January; as I approached my lodgings, I turned from a general
view of my affairs to the particular speculation as to whether my
fire would be out; looking towards the window of my sitting-room,
I saw no cheering red gleam.
    "That slut of a servant has neglected it as usual," said I, "and
I shall see nothing but pale ashes if I go in; it is a fine
starlight night—I will walk a little farther."
    It WAS a fine night, and the streets were dry and even clean for
X—; there was a crescent curve of moonlight to be seen by the
parish church tower, and hundreds of stars shone keenly bright in
all quarters of the sky.
    Unconsciously I steered my course towards the country; I had got
into Grove-street, and began to feel the pleasure of seeing dim
trees at the extremity, round a suburban house, when a person
leaning over the iron gate of one of the small gardens which
front the neat dwelling-houses in this street, addressed me as I
was hurrying with quick stride past.
    "What the deuce is the hurry? Just so must Lot have left Sodom,
when he expected fire to