Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0063/00639.txt

Text File | 1993-07-27 | 12KB | 269 lines

$Unique_ID{bob00639}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Anthology Of Shorter Works
Part II}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Dickens, Charles}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{sampson
friend
myself
am
slinkton
business
known
life
meltham
thought}
$Date{}
$Log{}
Title:       Anthology Of Shorter Works
Book:        Hunted Down
Author:      Dickens, Charles

Part II

     The partition which separated my own office from our general outer
office in the City was of thick plate-glass.  I could see through it what
passed in the outer office, without hearing a word.  I had it put up, in
place of a wall that had been there for years, - ever since the house was
built.  It was no matter whether I did or did not make the change in order
that I might derive my first impression of strangers, who came to us on
business, from their faces alone, without being influenced by anything they
said.  Enough to mention that I turned my glass partition to that account,
and that a Life Assurance Office is at all times exposed to be practised upon
by the most crafty and cruel of the human race.

     It was through my glass partition that I first saw the gentleman whose
story I am going to tell.

     He had come in without my observing it, and had put his hat and umbrella
on the broad counter, and was bending over it to take some papers from one
of the clerks.  He was about forty or so, exceedingly well dressed in black,
- being in mourning, - and the hand he extended with a polite air had a
particularly well-fitting, black kid glove upon it.  His hair, which was
elaborately brushed and oiled, was parted straight up the middle; and he
presented this parting to the clerk, exactly (to my thinking) as if he had
said, in so many words: "You must take me, if you please, my friend, just
as I show myself.  Come straight up here; follow the gravel path; keep off
the grass; I allow no trespassing."

     I conceived a very great aversion to that man the moment I thus saw him.

     He had asked for some of our printed forms, and the clerk was giving
them to him and explaining them.  An obliged and agreeable smile was on his
face, and his eyes met those of the clerk with a sprightly look.  (I have
known a vast quantity of nonsense talked about bad men not looking you in the
face.  Don't trust that conventional idea.  Dishonesty will stare honesty out
of countenance, any day in the week, if there is anything to be got by it.)

     I saw, in the corner of his eyelash, that he became aware of my looking
at him.  Immediately he turned the parting in his hair toward the glass
partition, as if he said to me with a sweet smile, "Straight up here, if you
please.  Off the grass!"

     In a few moments he had put on his hat and taken up his umbrella, and
was gone.

     I beckoned the clerk into my room, and asked, "Who was that?"

     He had the gentleman's card in his hand.  "Mr. Julius Slinkton, Middle
Temple."

     "A barrister, Mr. Adams?"

     "I think not, sir."

     "I should have thought him a clergyman, but for his having no Reverend
here," said I.

     "Probably, from his appearance," Mr. Adams replied, "he is reading for
orders."

     I should mention that he wore a dainty white cravat, and dainty linen
together.

     "What did he want, Mr. Adams?"

     "Merely a form of proposal, sir, and form of reference."

     "Recommended here?  Did he say?"

     "Yes, he said he was recommended here by a friend of yours.  He noticed
you, but said that as he had not the pleasure of your personal acquaintance
he would not trouble you."

     "Did he know my name?"

     "O yes, sir!  He said, 'There is Mr. Sampson, I see!"

     "A well-spoken gentleman, apparently?"

     "Remarkably so, sir."

     "Insinuating manners, apparently?"

     "Very much so, indeed, sir."

     "Hah!" said I.  "I want nothing at present, Mr. Adams."

     Within a fortnight of that day I went to dine with a friend of mine, a
merchant, a man of taste who buys pictures and books; and the first man I saw
among the company was Mr. Julius Slinkton.  There he was, standing before the
fire, with good large eyes and an open expression of face; but still (I
thought) requiring everybody to come at him by the prepared way he offered,
and by no other.

     I noticed him ask my friend to introduce him to Mr. Sampson, and my
friend did so.  Mr. Slinkton was very happy to see me.  Not too happy; there
was no overdoing of the matter; happy in a thoroughly well-bred, perfectly
unmeaning way.

     "I thought you had met," our host observed.

     "No," said Mr. Slinkton.  "I did look in at Mr. Sampson's office, on
your recommendation; but I really did not feel justified in troubling Mr.
Sampson himself, on a point in the every-day routine of an ordinary clerk."

     I said I should have been glad to show him any attention on our friend's
introduction.

     "I am sure of that," said he, "and am much obliged.  At another time,
perhaps, I may be less delicate.  Only, however, if I have real business; for
I know, Mr. Sampson, how precious business time is, and what a vast number
of impertinent people there are in the world."

     I acknowledged his consideration with a slight bow.  "You were thinking,"
said I, "of effecting a policy on your life."

     "O dear, no!  I am afraid I am not so prudent as you pay me the
compliment of supposing me to be, Mr. Sampson.  I merely inquired for a
friend.  But you know what friends are in such matters.  Nothing may ever come
of it.  I have the greatest reluctance to trouble men of business with
inquiries for friends, knowing the probabilities to be a thousand to one that
the friends will never follow them up.  People are so fickle, so selfish, so
inconsiderate.  Don't you, in your business, find them so every day, Mr.
Sampson?"

     I was going to give a qualified answer; but he turned his smooth, white
parting on me with its "Straight up here, if you please!" and I answered,
"Yes."

     "I hear, Mr. Sampson," he resumed, presently, for our friend had a new
cook, and dinner was not so punctual as usual, "that your profession has
recently suffered a great loss."

     "In money!" said I.

     He laughed at my ready association of loss with money, and replied, "No,
in talent and vigour."

     Not at once following out his allusions, I considered for a moment.
"Has it sustained a loss of that kind?" said I.  "I was not aware of it."

     "Understand me, Mr. Sampson.  I don't imagine that you have retired.
It is not so bad as that.  But Mr. Meltham - "

     "O, to be sure!" said I.  "Yes!  Mr. Meltham, the young actuary of the
'Inestimable.'"

     "Just so," he returned, in a consoling way.

     "He is a great loss.  He was at once the most profound, the most
original, and the most energetic man I have ever known connected with Life
Assurance."

     I spoke strongly; for I had a high esteem and admiration for Meltham,
and my gentleman had indefinitely conveyed to me some suspicion that he
wanted to sneer at him.  He recalled me to my guard by presenting that trim
pathway up his head, with its infernal "Not on the grass, if you please, -
the gravel."

     "You knew him, Mr. Slinkton."

     "Only by reputation.  To have known him as an acquaintance, or as a
friend, is an honour I should have sought if he had remained in society,
though I might never have had the good fortune to attain it, being a man of
far inferior mark.  He was scarcely above thirty, I suppose?"

     "About thirty."

     "Ah!" He sighed in his former consoling way.  "What creatures we are!
To break up, Mr. Sampson, and become incapable of business at that time of
life! - Any reason assigned for the melancholy fact?"

     ("Humph!" thought I, as I looked at him.  "But I won't go up the track,
and I will go on the grass.")

     "What reason have you heard assigned, Mr. Slinkton?" I asked point blank.

     "Most likely a false one.  You know what Rumour is, Mr. Sampson.  I never
repeat what I hear; it is the only way of paring the nails and shaving the
head of Rumour.  But, when you ask me what reason I have heard assigned for
Mr. Meltham's passing away from among men, it is another thing.  I am not
gratifying idle gossip then.  I was told, Mr. Sampson, that Mr. Meltham had
relinquished all his avocations and all prospects, because he was, in fact,
broken-hearted.  A disappointed attachment I heard, - though it hardly seems
probable, in the case of a man so distinguished and so attractive."

     "Attractions and distinctions are no armour against death," said I.

     "Oh!  she died?  Pray pardon me.  I did not hear that.  That, indeed,
makes it very sad.  Poor Mr. Meltham!  She died?  Ah, dear me!  Lamentable,
lamentable!"

     I still thought his pity was not quite genuine, and I still suspected
an unaccountable sneer under all this, until he said as we were parted, like
the other knots of talkers, by the announcement of dinner,

     "Mr. Sampson, you are surprised to see me so moved on behalf of a man
whom I have never known.  I am not so disinterested as you may suppose.  I
have suffered, and recently too, from death myself.  I have lost one of two
charming nieces, who were my constant companions.  She died young, - barely
three-and-twenty, - and even her remaining sister is far from strong.  The
world is a grave!"

     He said this with deep feeling, and I felt reproached for the coldness
of my manner.  Coldness and distrust had been engendered in me, I knew, by
my bad experiences; they were not natural to me; and I often thought how much
I had lost in life, losing trustfulness, and how little I had gained, gaining
hard caution.  This state of mind being habitual to me, I troubled myself
more about this conversation than I might have troubled myself about a
greater matter.  I listened to his talk at dinner, and observed how readily
other men responded to it, and with what a graceful instinct he adapted his
subjects to the knowledge and habits of those he talked with.  As, in talking
with me, he had easily started the subject I might be supposed to understand
best, and to be the most interested in, so, in talking with others, he guided
himself by the same rule.  The company was of varied character; but he was
not at fault, that I could discover, with any member of it.  He knew just as
much of each man's pursuit as made him agreeable to that man in reference to
it, and just as little as made it natural in him to seek modestly for
information when the theme was broached.

     As he talked and talked, - but really not too much, for the rest of us
seemed to force it upon him, - I became quite angry with myself.  I took his
face to pieces in my mind, like a watch, and examined it in detail.  I could
not say much against any of his features separately; I could say even less
against them when they were put together.  "Then is it not monstrous," I
asked myself, "that because a man happens to part his hair straight up the
middle of his head, I should permit myself to suspect, and even to detest
him?"

     (I may stop to remark that this was no proof of my sense.  An observer
of men who finds himself steadily repelled by some apparently trifling thing
in a stranger is right to give it great weight.  It may be the clue to the
whole mystery.  A hair or two will show where a lion is hidden.  A very
little key will open a very heavy door.)

     I took my part in the conversation with him after a time, and we got on
remarkably well.  In the drawing-room I asked the host how long he had known
Mr. Slinkton?  He answered, not many months; he had met him at the house of
a celebrated painter then present, who had known him well when he was
travelling with his nieces in Italy for their health.  His plans in life
being broken by the death of one of them, he was reading with the intention
of going back to college as a matter of form, taking his degree, and going
into orders.  I could not but argue with myself that here was the true
explanation of his interest in poor Meltham, and that I had been almost
brutal in my distrust on that simple head.