The Woman in White
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 arm-chair, 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,