Mr. Spivey's Clerk/Chapter 3

The house to which Tom Christmas conducted me was one of many similar mansions in Canonbury Square, big, gloomy, and in no wise conducive to good spirits. The square itself looked fairly pleasant in the evening light, for the trees in its midst had just put on a new coat of green, and the meagre flower-beds were gay with the glory of crocus and snowdrop. But in the windows of the houses, which might have been equally bright with flowers, there was nothing more attractive than dingy blinds and doubtful lace curtains. I had come from a part of the country where the inhabitants are very particular about their windows, and the dinginess ​of the London windows made itself very apparent to me.

The Christmas mansion, however, which was in the furthest corner of the square, and almost under the shadow of Canonbury Tower, which is famous for something or other—I have forgotten what now, but I believe there is something about Oliver Cromwell or Oliver Goldsmith or both in it—was conspicuous from its neighbours by reason of very white blinds, bright door-knob, and clean doorstep. One glance at it was enough to show you that some one lived there who was scrupulously clean and neat. I felt it almost an act of sacrilege to step on the white threshold, and nearly shuddered as Tom Christmas laid hold of the highly-polished brass knocker. Admitted by a very small servant-maid, who was so clean that you could see yourself reflected on her well-soaped forehead, and who wore a large white apron and a huge white mob-cap, we found ourselves in a fairly wide hall, smelling ​much more sweetly and soap-and-waterish than most metropolitan halls do. Tom ushered me into a room on the right, and left me to amuse myself there while he went to find his mother and sister and inform them of my presence.

The room, a large, square apartment with a window commanding a view of the square, was just as neat as the outside of the house. Every chair seemed to be in its place, and each had a white antimacassar on its back; a mahogany table in the middle of the floor was arranged in stiff, formal fashion with books in ornamental bindings; a mahogany bookcase fitted the wall opposite the window; a few oil-paintings hung here and there, relieved at intervals by heavilyframed steel-plates; a group of wax-flowers under a glass shade stood on the mantelpiece, flanked on each side by two heavy bronze candlesticks. I looked in vain for anything bright.

The bookcase naturally attracted my attention first. It had glass doors, which are abominable ​things, and one had to hold one's head very much on one side in endeavouring to look round the divisions at the titles. When the titles of the books were seen they were not reassuring. Theological, all of them, and of that dismal type which was so prevalent a hundred years ago: "Sermons," by the Rev. Timothy Stamper, A.M.; "Discourses," by the Rev. Prudence Wellbeloved, B.D.; "A Voice from the Pit," by Master Barnabas Tinkler, Minister of the Gospel, at Little Bullocksmithy in Hampshire; "Experience of Humphrey Cartwright, the Converted Play-actor," by himself, and so on. I turned from the bookcase with a dreary feeling.

The books lying on the table were somewhat more attractive in appearance, and I went over and looked at them. Alas, they were all of the same class as their less showy brethren, their superior binding evidently arising from the fact that they were presentation copies or éditions de luxe. "Memorials of a Consecrated ​Life: being the Autobiography of Emma Jane Piper;" "Ease in Zion: Discourses for the King's Children;" "Sammy Smith, the Village Class Leader: or, Holiness in Homespun;" "Father Vincent: the Story of a Pervert," by the late Emma Jane Piper; "Consecrated Learning: Memorials of the late Zephaniah Adolphus Spiffinwell, A.M.," by his father, Dr. Benjamin Spiffinwell, editor of the "Anti-Jesuit and True Gospel Monthly." I looked in vain for novel or poem; everything was sad, gloomy, foolish. Stay, in one corner of the table lay Young's "Night Thoughts," with an inscription on the blank fly-leaf: "Julia Christmas, from her Christian friend, Emma Jane Piper. Remember when you retire each night that you may be dead ere morning!"

I put the book down in disgust. I was young then and not over careful about anything; but the cold, dreary, gloomy spirit of these books oppressed me and made me feel rebellious. ​Looking back now, and that with more experience and riper knowledge, I do not wonder that Miss Julia Christmas's books did repel me. God forbid that I should ever sneer at religion, or shock the pious feelings of good people! But cant is not religion and hypocrisy is damnable anywhere, and the eyes of the Great Master, which looked kindly and mercifully on the harlot, were filled with scorn and anger as they fell on the smooth brow of the Pharisee.

The pictures on the walls were not much behind the books in the race for gloom and dreariness. They seemed chiefly to consist of portraits of ecclesiastics. Just where the light could fall full upon it hung a steel engraving of the Last Judgment, full of gruesome details and writhing bodies.

I was standing in front of this production when Tom Christmas came back. He blushed slightly as he saw how I was engaged.

"I am afraid you have thought me long?" ​he said, "and I fear there is little in this room to attract you."

I hastened to assure him that I was quite comfortable. I wasn't; but what of that?

"I don't often come into this room," he said, in a low voice, as if he had no wish that any one else should hear him. "The books and things here are not quite in my line, you know. I have a little place upstairs which I will show you after tea. Will you come, Tempest?"

He led me through the hall to a smaller and less funereal-looking room where a tea-table was spread. On the threshold he stopped me and whispered in my ear.

"My sister," he said, "is rather strict and Puritanical. Please bear with her, to oblige me."

I nodded in the same confidential manner. I would have borne with all the Puritans that ever lived to oblige him, whom I had only known for two days, and had already learned to love and esteem.

​We entered. The room, smaller, brighter than the other, was occupied by two ladies, both of whom rose at my entrance. The elder, who had been sitting in an easy-chair by the fireside, was a tall, gray-haired woman of sixty or sixty-five, with a huge cap, a prominent nose, and very long thin fingers which she was always clasping and unclasping. Her attire was somewhat juvenile, and she had a full set of very white false teeth which she constantly displayed in conversation. The younger lady, standing by the tea-table, was a rather tall female of thirty-five. Her dark hair, drawn tightly back from her forehead after the fashion of children's dolls, was gathered up in a severe-looking knot at the back of her head. Her mouth was straight, thin-lipped, and rigid. She wore pince-nez, and had a habit of looking over them at any one which was sometimes very disconcerting. Her gown was cut in the plainest fashion and a semi-clerical looking collar was all that relieved its sombre ​blackness. Somehow I felt that Miss Julia Christmas was one to be reckoned with.

I shook hands with both ladies and we sat down to the little table, Miss Christmas presiding at the tray while her mother folded her silk-mittened hands beneath the table.

"Sugar and milk?" asked Miss Christmas, in a voice so deep and magisterial that it would have well-befitted any one forced to ask for poison or dagger.

I hastened to inform her that I had a deep-rooted antipathy to sugar, and never by any possible chance took it in anything.

"Ah!" said Mrs. Christmas, smiling expansively on all of us. "That reminds me of the Larkinses. You remember the Larkinses, Julia? Sophonisba Larkins and you were great friends, and it was old Squire Larkins who gave your papa his first living. At least it was the old Squire who went up to see the Prime Minister or the Queen or the Archbishop, because ​he told us so himself when he came back, and brought Miss Larkins a silver-gray moire-antique with the loveliest trimming that you could possibly imagine, though indeed I don't think it was quite so nice as some trimming that my great-aunt Slummins had from Fillimers at Exeter—that shop, you know, Julia, on the right hand side of the way as you go down from the little church on the———"

"Thomas," said Miss Christmas, "grace!"

Why she addressed her brother in particular I don't know, but she immediately bent her head and recited a long grace with much unction. Keeping one eye open, I noticed that Mrs. Christmas had screwed her eyes up tightly and dutifully, and that Tom was steadily staring at a picture on the opposite wall. I concluded then that Thomas and Julia Christmas did not think alike. I had barely got through my first cup of tea, when Miss Christmas opened the subject of my going to reside there. Tom had ​evidently broached the matter to his family circle while I waited in the front room.

"My brother tells me that you wish to find a lodging, Mr. Tempest," she said, with a keen glance at me. "We have a very good room here which we have sometimes let; but we are very particular about those to whom we let it."

I bowed, and said nothing, being, indeed, at a loss for words wherewith to reply.

"We like our lodger to be steady, sober, and a joined believer, Mr. Tempest. I hope you are a joined believer?"

I looked across at Tom Christmas. A joined believer! What was a joined believer?

"I mean," said Miss Christmas, before Tom could speak, "that I hope you are a member of the Church."

"I go to church," I said, "and I think I can satisfy you on the grounds of sobriety and steadiness."

​"We could not possibly take any one who was not a member of the Church," she said. "Full Christian privileges are to be had in this house, Mr. Tempest."

"My dear Julia," said Tom, "Mr. Tempest may not feel that interest in these matters which you feel."

She took no notice of his remark, and continued addressing herself to me.

"I suppose you will attend church regularly," she said. "I should strongly advise you to sit under the Rev. Mr. Dumbury, a most excellent man, and so very faithful."

I thanked her, and said that I would remember her advice when I next went to church.

"What church have you previously attended?" she asked next.

"The little village church of which my father was vicar," I answered.

"What were your father's views? Was he faithful? I hope he was faithful."

​"I should imagine he was," I said, "every one loved him."

"Was he Evangelical?"

"I don't know," I answered. "But he had a very nice service. There were candles and flowers on the altar, and incense sometimes, and———"

I stopped, for Miss Christmas sat bolt upright with a horror-stricken air, and gazed at me as if I had strayed from the pit of Tophet.

"A Jesuit in disguise!" she exclaimed. "Oh, my dear young friend, I hope you are not infatuated by the rags of Popery. Alas, how dreadfully this plague is spreading in England. And the poor man, your father, is dead?"

"He died ten years ago, ma'am."

"Ah, then he could not have had much opportunity of instilling those poisonous doctrines into your mind. I will lend you my dear friend Emma Jane Piper's 'Remarks on Ritualism.' ​They will convince you of your error. Dear me! Did your father use to worship images in a dark room?"

"I don't think so."

"You would be almost too young to know. And did he hear confessions, and wear a hair shirt?"

"I don't know, ma'am. He used to give away a great deal of money to the poor, and helped everybody who needed help."

"Ah, those are but works. Works are unprofitable. It is only faith which saves. Well, Mr. Tempest, I hope you will learn much. You shall read my deceased friend Emma Jane Piper's 'Snatched from the Fire,' a story of how a young man was converted from Popery to the truth, and became a faithful minister of the Jedediah Bungleton Society."

"Will you come upstairs to my room, Tempest?" said Tom Christmas, breaking in upon this highly interesting conversation. "I dare say ​my sister will see us later, so that we can arrange about your coming here."

I was only too glad to follow him. To tell the truth I was getting afraid of Miss Christmas. She seemed so terribly in earnest, and spoke so fiercely, that I almost imagined her to be some terrible Inquisitor, bent on getting all my secrets out of my breast.

Tom Christmas led the way upstairs, proceeding right to the top of the house and finally opening the door of what was, I suppose, an attic. He ushered me in, and, closing the door behind us, glanced at me in rather a shame-faced manner.

"I'm awfully sorry," he said. And then we both looked at each other and laughed, and understood things so clearly that there was no need of further explanation.

"You see," he said, pointing me to a chair, "Julia is quite an—well, let us say enthusiast—on these matters, and I am not. I believe I ​could put my creed in a nutshell; but Julia's is a long and dismal one. I don't know exactly where she got it, for my father, Calvinist though he was, was a good, kindly man as ever lived. I think it must be Dumbury's influence. A most awful fellow, that Dumbury. Sighs and groans over me every time we meet, as though I were some awful profligate. However, Julia is a good girl when you come to know her, and one of the best housekeepers living. Do you smoke, Tempest?"

I had just commenced smoking at that time, so we lighted our pipes and puffed away contentedly.

Tom's attic—for it was an attic, and looked out upon the roof—was rather a nice place, in spite of its lofty position. It contained a desk, and two chairs, and some book-shelves, the contents of which were vastly different to those books in the heavy glass-fronted abomination downstairs.

​"I think we could make you comfortable here, Tempest," said Tom Christmas, after a pause. "I should be very glad, too, of your company. This house is too large for us, and we have generally let one bedroom—the one underneath us—to somebody. Generally the somebody has been a parson—of the 'faithful' type, of course. I am rather tired of parsons. Once a very reverend and grave gentleman came and took the room, and stayed with us two months, chiming in with Julia in everything, and quite winning her admiration. Lord! you should have seen him going to church with her on Sundays, or have heard him and Dumbury and Julia talking after service! And oh! how he could read family prayers, and pray, too, out of his own head. Dumbury said, one day, that he had never known a man who enjoyed so much 'liberty in prayer' as this fellow did. And, Tempest, when he left he took a most affecting farewell of all of us, and, at the very door, begged my ​poor sister to accept a free pass to the Royal Pumpadelphian Music Hall, where he was a well-known comic singer. Oh! if you could but have seen her face!"

"Of course she didn't accept the pass?"

"I don't remember about that; but I met the fellow a few weeks after and blew him up for his imposition. 'Dear boy,' said he, 'that's all right. Don't you remember the apostolic injunction to be all things to all men? I saw what your worthy sister was and I humoured her. Gad! it was amusing, too, to hear her and the parson going on about the wickedness of the stage, and me sitting by all the time.' Poor Julia! she means well, Tempest."

"I am sure of it," I said, warmly. And then we began to talk about Spivey's and my own prospects.

"I have been at Spivey's six years," said Tom Christmas, "six years last February. Dear me! how time flies. I don't seem much better off than ​I was then, either. It's hard work getting on at Spivey's, Tempest; but, then, it's hard work getting on anywhere, and I'm thankful I've got a permanency."

"How did you get to Spivey's place?" I asked him.

"How? I'll tell you, though it's a poor story, I'm afraid. You see, Tempest, my father died when I was just twenty, and left us with nothing but this house. He had only a poor living, and had saved nothing. It was necessary that I should do something, for my mother and sister depended upon me. I was at Oxford then."

He stopped, and looked round dreamily, and following his eyes I saw them rest at last on a cricket bat, reposing in one corner of his attic beneath a faded dark-blue cap and jacket.

"Yes," he said, seeing me look at these objects, "I was in the Eleven at Oxford, and the 'Varsity Match was the last one I ever played ​in, for my father died the next day, suddenly, and I had no more time for cricket."

He pulled down an old Cricket Annual from the topmost shelf, and showed me the score of the match in question with much pride.

"It is hard work, Tempest, finding some occupation that will put even bread and cheese in your mouth. I was literally obliged to find work quickly, for we had nothing to live upon. I wished to sell this house, but my mother and sister thought it would be a wiser plan to come here and live in it. It would have sold for a good price; but we have lived here rent free, and sometimes, you know, it would have been very difficult for me to raise the rent. It has been all that I could do, so far, to keep things going."

"But I suppose your sister is engaged in some work?" I said.

"Oh, Julia works very hard indeed. She sees to the housekeeping, and she assists Mr. ​Dumbury in his parish; but, of course, that does not bring anything in."

"Of course not."

"We were here six months, Tempest, before I found any work. My mother had a little money, and we managed to subsist on it until I secured a post. I tried nearly everything. I tried agencies and agents, answered and inserted advertisements, and tramped many a weary mile. And yet nothing ever turned up, and I used to go home every evening sick at heart and weary. At length I determined to take any post that would put a pound a week into my empty pockets. The house was our own, and nothing could turn us out of it; but we must have something to eat. I went down to the City again, and began to call on the publishers, trusting that one or other of them would think me likely to be useful. At last I came to Mr. Spivey. It was at the end of a dreary day in February, and I had called at ​so many places and received so many rebuffs, that I was well-nigh worn out. You know Spivey, Tempest, you know his quick, abrupt manner, his way of going straight to the point. He heard my story, looked me over at a glance, and seemed to finish his calculations respecting me in a second. 'You're an Oxford man,' said he; 'you haven't a degree; you're poor; you want work. Well, you'll find it very hard to get any.' I assured him that I was so well aware of that fact, that I could not possibly hope to add to my knowledge of it. 'Well,' says he, in that pertinent fashion of his, 'what can you do? What about languages? Latin and Greek? All very well for lawyers, doctors, and parsons, but little use in my trade. French? That's better. German? Better still. Come, now, here's a French letter and here a German one. Just translate them, will you?' I wrote out a hurried translation for him, and then added that I could also write short-hand pretty well. ​'That's the best thing I've heard yet,' he said. Then he asked me what salary I wanted. I said I must leave that in his hands. 'Come here at nine o'clock to-morrow morning,' he said, 'and I'll tell you what I'll do then.' The next morning I went, and Mr. Spivey engaged me as his principal clerk—up to that time he had only had an office-boy—at the magnificent salary of one guinea per week."

"A guinea?"

"A guinea, Tempest. Lord, man, I have been there six years and my salary now is but fifty shillings a week! When I first went to Spivey he was doing hardly any business; now, he has a good business. I have seen it rise tremendously, and Spivey has made money. He ought to pay me five pounds a week at least; but he won't, and I'm too much afraid of being without a situation to throw it up."

We went downstairs after that, and there had a short conversation with Miss Christmas, the ​result of which was that I settled to come and live with them from the next day forward.

I then rose to say good-night; but Miss Christmas, who was holding a large quarto of "Devotions" in her hand, remarked that it was time for the evening exercises, and she would be glad if I would join them. I was so completely under her power that I should have consented, had not Tom Christmas reminded his sister that the tram passed through the Square in three minutes and hurried me off, Miss Christmas observing pointedly that a time would come when we should all have to find leisure for death. With which very pleasant truism ringing in my ears I said good-night and went away, the warm grasp of Tom's hand dwelling with me until I got back to my hotel.