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.
