The Monctons Volume I Part 3

I found him all smiles and affability. "Geoffrey," said he, holding out his hand, as I entered, "I trust you have received a useful lesson. You will be wise to lay it to heart. Mr. Jones tells me that you write a good bold hand. Give me a specimen of it. Sit down at the table, and direct that letter to Messieurs Hanbury and Company, Liverpool."

I did as I was commanded, but my hand trembled with excitement: I found some difficulty in steadying the pen. He took the letter and looked at it carefully, muttering as he did so--

"How like my father's hand. Ay, and how like in obstinacy of purpose; more like him in every respect than his own sons." Then turning to me, who was lost in wonder at this sudden change in his manner towards me, he said, "This is well; you write a fair, legible hand for a boy. I want a lad in my office to copy writs and other law papers. I think you will just do for that purpose. If you are diligent and industrious, after two years trial, I will article you to myself. How old are you?"

"Thirteen, next August."

"It is young; but you are tall and manly for your age. You and Theophilus are never likely to agree; it is best for you to be apart.

You have no fortune of your own. I will give you a profession, and make an independent man of you, if you will try for the future to be a docile and obedient boy."

I promised to do my best. He then bade me follow him, and leading the way through a narrow arched pa.s.sage, he introduced me into the public office, where the large business in which he was engaged was carried on. Though I had been four years in the house, I had never seen the inside of this office before. It was a s.p.a.cious, dark, dirty, apartment, lighted by high, narrow windows of ground gla.s.s; so that no time could be wasted by the junior clerks in looking out into the street. Several pale, melancholy men were seated at desks, hard at work. You heard nothing but the rapid scratching of their pens against the parchment and paper on which they were employed. When Mr. Moncton entered the office, a short, stout, middle-aged man swung himself round on his high stool and fronted us; but the moment he recognized his superior, he rose respectfully to receive him.

Mr. Moncton took him apart, and they entered into a deep and earnest conversation: of which, I am certain, from the significant glances which, from time to time, they directed towards me, I formed the princ.i.p.al topic.

At length the conference was over, and my uncle left the office without giving me a parting word or glance. When he was fairly out of hearing, all the clerks gathered round me.

"Who is he?"

"Mr. Moncton's nephew," was the short man's reply to the eager questioners.

"Is he sent here to be a spy?"

"To learn the profession."

"_That babe!_ Is the man mad. It will kill the child to chain _him_ to the desk all day."

"Poor fellow; he is the orphan son of his brother," said another. "I have seen him at church with Mrs. Moncton."

"Well, Robert Moncton is a hard man," said a third.

"Hush! gentlemen," interposed Mr. Ba.s.sett, the senior clerk. "It is not right to make such remarks in the lad's hearing. Mr. Moncton doubtless does for the best. Come, my little fellow, you and I must be good friends. Your uncle has placed you under my charge, to initiate you into all the mysteries of the law. I have no doubt we shall get on famously together. But you must be diligent and work hard. Your uncle hates idlers; he is a strict master, but one of the ablest lawyers in London. Let me tell you, that to be articled to him is a fortune in itself."

A far-off, indistinct hope of freedom through this channel, presented itself to my bewildered mind. I thanked Mr. Ba.s.sett warmly for his proffered aid, and told him that I would do my best to deserve his good opinion.

From that day, I became an office drudge, condemned to copy the same unintelligible, uninteresting law forms, from early morning until late at night. Mr. Ba.s.sett, a quiet, methodical, business man, was kind in his own peculiar way. He had a large family, and perhaps felt a paternal sympathy in my early introduction to the labours and cares of life. He often commended my diligence, and mentioned me in very handsome terms to Mr. Moncton; but from that gentleman I never received a word of praise--weeks and months often pa.s.sed without his speaking to me. I was even debarred from spending with my dear aunt that blessed twilight-hour, which had proved the chief solace of my weary life.

Constant confinement to that close office preyed upon my health and spirits. I became fretful and irritable, the colour left my cheeks, and my eyes looked dull and heavy. The clerks, generally kind to me, all pitied me, though they dared not openly show their regard. They brought me presents of fruit and sweet-meats, and one who lived in the suburbs used to delight my heart, every now and then, with a rich bouquet of flowers. Their beauty and perfume brought back a glimpse of the old times--dim visions of lawns and gardens, of singing-birds and humming-bees; of a fair smiling creature who led me by the hand through those bowers of enchantment, and called me her Geoffrey--her darling boy.

When such thoughts came over me, my hand trembled, and I could not see the parchment I was copying through my tears; but for all that, the sight of the flowers was always inexpressibly dear, and I prized them beyond every other gift.

I had been about eighteen months in the office, when my good Aunt Rebecca died--an event sudden and unexpected by all. I was allowed to see her in her last moments; to sob out my full heart by her death-bed.

Her last words were an earnest request to her husband to be kind to poor Geoffrey, for her sake: she died--and I felt myself alone and friendless in the world.

CHAPTER VI.

THE SORROWS OF DEPENDENCE.

My heart sickens over this dreary portion of my life. I have heard childhood called the happiest season of life. To me it had few joys. It was a gloomy period of mental suffering and bodily fatigue; of unnatural restraint and painful probation.

The cold, authoritative manner of my uncle, at all times irksome and repelling, after the death of his good wife became almost insupportable; while the insolence and presumption of his artful son, goaded a free and irascible spirit like mine almost to madness. The moral force of his mother's character, though unappreciated by him, had been some restraint upon his unamiable, tyrannical temper. That restraint was now removed, and Theophilus considered that my dependent situation gave him a lawful right to my services, and had I been a workhouse apprentice in his father's house, he could not have given his commands with an air of more pointed insolence. My obstinate resistance to his authority, and my desperate struggles to emanc.i.p.ate myself from his control, produced a constant war of words between us; and if I appealed to my uncle, I was sure to get the worst of it. He did not exactly encourage his son in this ungenerous line of conduct, but his great maxim was to _divide and rule_; to exact from all who were dependent upon him, the most uncompromising obedience to his arbitrary will; and he laughed at my remonstrances, and turned my indignation into ridicule.

I was daily reminded, particularly before strangers, of the domestic calamities which had made me dependent upon his cold, extorted charity; while I was reproached with my want of grat.i.tude to a cruel master.

Pa.s.sion and wounded pride drew from me burning tears. I felt that I was growing fierce and hard like my persecutors, and my conscience, yet tender, deplored the lamentable change. My heart, crushed beneath the sense of injustice and unmerited neglect, was closed against the best feelings of humanity, and I regarded my fellow men with aversion and mistrust.

These bitter and desponding feelings deprived my nights of rest--my days, of hope. When the morning came and I took my stand at the accursed desk, I wished the day gone; and when night released me from the abhorrent task, and I sought my humble garret, I sat for hours at the open window, brooding over my wrongs.

The moonbeams glittered in the tears that anguish wrung from my upturned eyes. The stars seemed to look down upon me with compa.s.sionate earnestness. Sometimes my young spirit, carried away by the intense love I felt for those beautiful eyes of heaven, forgot for awhile the sorrows and cares of life and soared far, far away to seek for sympathy and affection in those unknown regions of light and purity.

I had few opportunities of religious instruction in this truly G.o.dless household. My uncle never attended church when he could avoid the obligation, and then, only to keep up appearances--a religion of the world; in which the heart had no part. There was always a Bible in the office, but it was never used but in the way of business to administer oaths. Whenever I had a moment's leisure I had turned over the pages with eager and mysterious curiosity, but the knowledge that should have brought peace and comfort, and reconciled me to my dreary lot, not being sought for in the right spirit, added to my present despondency, the dread of future punishment.

Oh, that awful fear of h.e.l.l. How it darkened with its unholy shadow, all that was bright and beautiful in the lower world. I had yet to learn, that perfect love casteth out fear, that the great Father punishes but to reform, and is ever more willing to save than to condemn. I dared not seek Him, lest I should hear the terrible denunciation thundered against the wicked: "Depart from me, ye cursed!"

A firm trust in His protecting care would have been a balm for every wound which festered and rankled at my heart's core. Had the Christian's hope been mine, I should no longer have pined under that dreary sense of utter loneliness, which for many years paralyzed all mental exertions, or nurtured in my breast the stern unforgiving temper which made me regard my persecutors with feelings of determined hate.

Residing in the centre of the busy metropolis, and at an age when the heart sighs for social communion with its fellows, and imagines, with the fond sincerity of inexperienced youth, a friend in every agreeable companion, I was immured among old parchments and dusty records, and seldom permitted to mingle with the guests who frequented my uncle's house, unless my presence was required to sign some official doc.u.ment.

Few persons suspected that the shabbily-dressed silent youth who obeyed Mr. Moncton's imperious mandates was his nephew--the only son of an elder brother; consequently I was treated as n.o.body by his male visitors, and never noticed at all by the ladies.

This was mortifying enough to a tall lad of eighteen, who already fancied himself a man: who, though meanly dressed, and sufficiently awkward, had enough of vanity in his composition to imagine that his person would create an interest in his behalf and atone for all other deficiencies, at least in the eyes of the gentler s.e.x--those angels, who seen at a distance, were daily becoming objects of admiration and worship.

Alas! Poor Geoffrey. Thou didst not know in that thy young day the things pertaining to thy peace. Thou didst not suspect in thy innocence how the black brand of poverty can deform the finest face, and dim the brightest intellect in the eyes of the world.

Among all my petty trials there were none which I felt more keenly than having to wear the cast-off clothes of my cousin. He was some years older, but his frame was slighter and shorter than mine, and his garments did not fit me in any way. The coat sleeves were short and tight, and the trowsers came half-way up my legs. The figure I cut in these unsuitable garments was so ludicrous that it was a standing joke among the clerks in the office.

"When you step into your cousin's shoes, Geoffrey, we hope they will suit you better than his clothes."

I could have been happy in the coa.r.s.est fustian or corderoy garment which I knew was my own. I believe Robert Moncton felt a malicious pleasure in humbling me in the eyes of his people.

My uncle had fulfilled his promise, and I had been articled to him when I completed my fourteenth year; and I now eagerly looked forward to my majority, when I should be free to quit his employ, and seek a living in the world.

My time had been so completely engaged in copying law papers, that I had not been able to pay much attention to the higher branches of the profession; and when night came, and I was at length released from the desk, I was so over-powered by fatigue that I felt no inclination to curtail the blessed hours of sleep by reading dull law books. Yet, upon this all-important knowledge, which I was neglecting, rested my chance of independence.

My cousin Theophilus was pursuing his studies at Oxford, and rarely visited home, but spent his vacations with some wealthy relatives in Yorkshire. This was a happy time for me; for of all my many trials his presence was the greatest. Even Mr. Moncton was more civil to me in the absence of his hopeful heir.

Thus time glided on until I was twenty years of age, and full six feet in height, and I could no longer wear the cast-off suits of my cousin.

Mr. Moncton, in common decency, was at length obliged to order my clothes of his tailor; but he took good care that they should be of the coa.r.s.est description, and of the most unfashionable cut. The first suit which was made expressly for me, ridiculous as it must appear to my readers, gave me infinite satisfaction. I felt proud and happy of the acquisition.

The afternoon of that memorable day, my uncle sent for me into the drawing-room to witness the transfer of some law papers. His clients were two ladies, young and agreeable. While I was writing from Mr.

Moncton's dictation, I perceived, with no small degree of trepidation, that the younger was regarding me with earnest attention; and in spite of myself my cheeks flushed and my hand trembled. After my part of the business was concluded Mr. Moncton told me to withdraw. As I left the room, I heard Miss Mary Beaumont say, in a low voice to her sister--my uncle having stepped into the adjoining apartment:

"What a handsome young man! Who is he?"

"Oh, the clerk, of course."