Chapter VII

Some Scenes in the Life of a Countess

About the middle of January Harry Clavering went up to London, and settled himself to work at Mr. Beilby’s office.  Mr. Beilby’s office consisted of four or five large chambers, overlooking the river from the bottom of Adam Street in the Adelphi, and here Harry found a table for himself in the same apartment with three other pupils.  It was a fine old room, lofty, and with large windows, ornamented on the ceiling with Italian scroll-work, and a flying goddess in the centre.  In days gone by the house had been the habitation of some great rich man, who had there enjoyed the sweet breezes from the river before London had become the London of the present days, and when no embankment had been needed for the Thames.  Nothing could be nicer than this room, or more pleasant than the table and seat which he was to occupy near a window; but there was something in the tone of the other men toward him which did not quite satisfy him.  They probably did not know that he was a fellow of a college, and treated him almost as they might have done had he come to them direct from King’s College, in the Strand, or from the London University.  Down at Stratton a certain amount of honor had been paid to him.  They had known there who he was, and had felt some deference for him.  They had not slapped him on the back, or poked him in the ribs, or even called him old fellow, before some length of acquaintance justified such appellation.  But up at Mr. Beilby’s, in the Adelphi, one young man, who was certainly his junior in age, and who did not seem as yet to have attained any high position in the science of engineering, manifestly thought that he was acting in a friendly and becoming way by declaring the stranger to be a lad of wax on the second day of his appearance.  Harry Clavering was not disinclined to believe that he was a “lad of wax,” or “a brick,” or “a trump,” or “no small.”  But he desired that such complimentary and endearing appellations should be used to him only by those who had known him long enough to be aware that he deserved them.  Mr. Joseph Walliker certainly was not as yet among this number.

There was a man at Mr. Beilby’s who was entitled to greet him with endearing terms, and to be so greeted himself, although Harry had never seen him till he attended for the first time at the Adelphi.  This was Theodore Burton, his future brother-in-law, who was now the leading man in the London house—­the leading man as regarded business, though he was not as yet a partner.  It was understood that this Mr. Burton was to come in when his father went out; and in the meantime he received a salary of a thousand a year as managing clerk.  A very hard-working, steady, intelligent man was Mr. Theodore Burton, with a bald head, a high forehead, and that look of constant work about him which such men obtain.  Harry Clavering could not bring himself to take a liking to him, because he wore cotton gloves, and had an odious habit of dusting his shoes with his pocket-handkerchief.  Twice Harry saw him do this on the first day of their acquaintance, and he regretted it exceedingly.  The cotton gloves, too, were offensive, as were also the thick shoes which had been dusted; but the dusting was the great sin.