“I look upon this as one of the fortunate days of your life. It ends an epoch and begins one. Hitherto the life-blood has been gradually chilling in your veins, as you sat aloof within your circle of gentility, while the rest of the world was fighting out its battle with one kind of necessity or another. Henceforth you will at least have the sense of natural and healthy effort for a purpose, and of lending your strength—be it great or small—to the united struggle of mankind.”

The House of the Seven Gables.

For the rest of the week I was every day at Grove End. I took long walks with Conny and her mamma, drove with them, wandered about the grounds, which were tolerably extensive and well wooded, smoked incessantly, listened to Conny playing the piano, read the papers, wrote to my father and to Lord Towers, whose reply I was anxious that my relations should see, and was, altogether, so perfectly contented, that I should have viewed my return to Longueville as a calamity.

But where is the ointment without a fly in it? Where is the feast without a death’s head? I confess I regarded the prospect of mounting the high stool I had seen in the bank, and becoming the friend and colleague of Mr. Spratling, of the big head, and of Mr. Curling, of the cockneyfied forefinger, with little satisfaction. I felt myself much too fine a fellow to do the work that Curling and Spratling did. I had sometimes a hope that my aunt would snatch me from my fate, point out to her husband that my elegance might be damaged by a collision with coarse business details, and urge him either to adopt me, or to invent some graceful scheme for supplying me with money. However, it was out of my power to hint at such a measure; which I then considered a very great misfortune.

I accompanied the family to church on Sunday. It was enough that I should be a stranger to get stared at. The congregation was almost entirely composed of old men and women—I don’t think I saw one young man. I must except Mr. Curling, who looked down upon us from the gallery: and, perhaps I may have indulged in a secret chuckle, when I thought if he were really in love with Conny, how mad he would be to see her and me bending over the hymn-book together, and praying side by side. I didn’t catch Conny looking at him once, which put me into a very good temper.

The rector dined with us that day: a sober-faced, square-bodied man, who spoke in measured accents, and wore a beard. He professed to know Paris well, and asked me, in French, if I had ever dined at Philippe’s, in so vile an accent, that I could scarcely answer him for fear of bursting into a laugh. I observed by my aunt’s and uncle’s treatment of him, that they thought him a very considerable person; by which they paid me no compliment; for of what worth is the admiration that can fasten itself upon a being who has nothing in the wide world to recommend him, “but his calling?” Set a thief to catch a thief! In a very short time I found out that he was a boaster, and one egregious slip put him completely at my mercy. But I spared him: my idea being that every gentleman is bound to consider clergymen and women as being under his particular protection.

I awoke next morning thoroughly out of conceit with myself. My uncle had asked me to be at the bank at half-past nine; and, whilst I shaved, I reflected, with much bitterness, upon the indignity to which necessity obliged me to submit. Had anybody asked me which I would rather be, a groom or a banker’s clerk, I should have answered, a groom. Distressed noblemen had driven coaches, and hungry baronets had, before now, curried horses for hire. But a banker’s clerk—faugh! Lady Cliffeton would cut me dead were she to be told of it, I thought: and, in imagination, I could hear Lord Towers in the finical, mincing accent I had so often fruitlessly attempted to get, denying that he had ever known me.

However, in spite of my distress, I was punctual, and got to the bank before my uncle. Mr. Curling stretched his hand across for me to shake, and asked me to step round. I eyed the counter with abhorrence, walked haughtily around it, and having gained the other side, felt that I had raised between me and society an obstacle which nothing short of a change of name would enable me to surmount. Mr. Spratling, bowing his head over his big ledger, scribbled furiously, and took no notice of me. I asked Mr. Curling if smoking was allowed on the premises. He replied, with much diffidence, “I think not.”

“What is my work to be?” I enquired.

“From what Mr. Hargrave said,” he replied, “I don’t think you will be required to do anything. However, I presume you are here to learn the business; and if I can be of any use to you, I shall be only too glad.”

I thanked him, and replied that it was my wish to learn the business, and to do my share of the work. I couldn’t say less.

“There is very little to be done,” he answered. “Our customers are a very quiet set. Most of our accounts are deposits; and our discount business is by no means large. Market days are our heaviest time. The farmers then pay in.”

“What do you call deposit accounts?”“Accounts that are left in our hands not to be drawn upon without notice. We allow interest on them.”

“And what is interest?”

Here Mr. Spratling uttered a faint groan of laughter. Mr. Curling looked fiercely in his direction, and said, “Interest is a sum of money allowed by us for the use of the moneys left in our hands. The rate is regulated by the Bank of England. But all these things are very simple matters: and I don’t doubt that you will have them at your finger ends in a very short time.”

I must confess that he spoke very nicely; and I felt that if he would only pull that atrocious ring off his forefinger, I might not find him so objectionable as I had feared. Nor was he so plain, now that I examined him closely. He certainly had good eyes and teeth, and there was a delicacy in his hands which even his ring could not deform. But his dress was very clerkly, consisting of a long frock coat, which he wore open, and a waistcoat buttoned up to his throat, scarcely showing a spotted cotton cravat, ornamented with a pin. The back of his head, moreover, was a convexity of black friz. On the other hand, his voice was pleasing, and his manners sufficiently easy.

Before long my uncle bustled into the bank, and on catching sight of me called out in his cheery way, “There you are, Charlie! How are you?” and came behind the counter and shook hands.

“Now,” said he, taking me aside, “what I want to impress upon you is this: master the details of banking as quickly as you can, and try and like your work. Before long I shall hope to be able to convince you that it will be well worth your while to apply yourself. In reality there is very little to learn. The mere clerkly portion of the business is nothing; any ploughboy could be taught it in a week. The banker’s real needs are, a good address, thorough amiability, a high sense of honour, and a good knowledge of human nature. You understand?”

“Perfectly; and I may hope that I am not deficient in some of the qualifications you speak of.”

“Indeed you are not. Where you are at present wanting, is in what I must call practicality. You will have to fight against some difficult prejudices which you have brought with you out of your life in Longueville. But,” he continued, clapping me on the shoulders, “in spite of some little weaknesses, there is enough in you to persuade me that you will do very well.” He then went into his private room.

I almost forget how that day passed. I had a seat on a high stool near Mr. Curling’s desk, and I remember that from time to time he would turn to explain something in connexion with the business, which, he told me, was important to know. He went about his work diligently and steadily, and particularly amazed me by the extraordinary capacity he manifested of counting any amount of money in an incredibly short space of time. Threepenny and fourpenny-bits, half-sovereigns and half-crowns, shillings and two-shilling-pieces, discharged out of the queer old bags in which the customers brought their hoards, fled like lightning, under his nimble fingers, up into a corner where they arranged themselves in piles. Nor was his perception of a bad or doubtful coin less remarkable. Now and then he would stay his miraculous counting to examine a piece of money, give it a sharp ring, fling it aside, and proceed in his work like a machine.

“If I were to live a thousand years,” I thought, “and were I to devote twelve hours of the day to counting money, I should never be able to do what that fellow does.”

I expressed my surprise, and he asked me to try my hand on two pounds of silver. It took me five minutes to tell twenty pieces. “Pshaw!” said I, turning away, when he showed me that I made eighteen shillings represent a pound, “this is somebody else’s work, for it certainly isn’t mine.” And then I began to talk of the superiority of the French over the English money.

Mr. Spratling worked like an automaton. I thought his zeal contemptible, and wondered that any human being should be gifted with so little tact as not to know how to qualify the vulgarity of labour with an occasional dash of the gentility of indolence. But speaking of him when he had gone out at one o’clock to get his dinner, my opinion of the youth was greatly improved, by Mr. Curling telling me that he got eighty pounds a year, on which he supported his blind mother, who had no other resources but her child’s salary.“By George!” I exclaimed, “he is a worthy young man; and if I have any influence with my uncle, I’ll get his salary raised to a hundred pounds.”

I don’t know how it came about, but I have a clear recollection of leaving the bank at four o’clock, in a much more subdued mood than I had entered it. I was under an engagement to my aunt to dine at Grove End, but I felt so tired, after my long and unaccustomed confinement to one room, that I begged my uncle to excuse me to her. Why was I subdued? Perhaps because I was tired. Does physical weariness take the conceit out of one? if so, here you have a reason for the change in me. I am willing to look a little deeper, and attribute it to a feeling of, perhaps, the only wholesome pride that had ever stirred me; the pride of having been honestly occupied.

I left Mr. Curling still busy with his accounts, but he had told me there was no need for me to stay. I walked home to my lodgings and dined off a chop and half a pint of sherry, and then putting a pipe in my mouth, strolled out in the direction of the green lanes.

I was not much of a moralist in those days, but my mood happening to be a pliant one, certain thoughts seized the opportunity to intrude themselves and beget sundry reflections. I asked myself if I was not carrying my notions of gentility a little too far; if I was not making a very grave blunder in conveying the impression that I considered myself too good and fine to engage in work in which hundreds of men, in every sense my equals, and in many senses my betters, were employed? I enquired of my common sense whether it were possible for a gentleman—I don’t say a real gentleman, for I am aware of only one kind—to lose caste by adopting any pursuit in which he could preserve his honour and possess his proper dignity securely? Was not an assumed ignorance of the essential, if commonplace, interests of life a very impertinent coxcombry? Should I not be asserting myself as a very despicable kind of fop if I professed to look with contempt on a vocation of which I had not pride enough to restrain me from pocketing the profits?

I don’t pretend to say that I answered these questions in a manner such as a severe moralist would approve. My self-conceit was too tenacious of life to be killed by a single blow, and my prejudices were of too old a growth to be tamed by a single wise reflection. I merely wish to exhibit myself as having been capable of sometimes thinking correctly, however long it may have taken me to bend my character into a conformity with my better thoughts.

I so thoroughly enjoyed the fresh air and the exquisite serenity of that May evening, that, though you may conceive I thought a good deal about Conny, I don’t remember once regretting that I had not gone to Grove End. It is good for man to be sometimes alone. I am pretty certain that my solitary walk was more beneficial to me than a long evening’s coquetting with my sweet cousin would have been. Besides, I felt it only right that I should not avail myself too persistently of my kind relations’ hospitality.

As I entered a lane rich with evening shadows, and cool with the fairy foliage of high and stately trees, I saw in advance of me a young man supporting on his arm an elderly woman, whose hesitating step persuaded me that she was blind. I could not help taking notice of the peculiar and loving care with which her companion directed her; and I was speculating on his aspect, which struck me as familiar, when he looked round and disclosed the features of Mr. Spratling. I waved my hand to him and he nodded; and, not choosing to pass them, I halted, and pretended to examine the country through the trees. I watched them covertly, with increasing respect and admiration for the obvious tenderness and love of the young fellow for his helpless mother, until they were out of sight, and then leisurely retraced my steps, made pensive by regret that ever I should have thought this young man, who possessed in his rugged and stunted form a deeper and lovelier humanity than ever I could have dreamt of, unfit to be a fellow-labourer of mine.