II

It was the last day of July. The long hot summer was drawing to

a close; and we, the weary pilgrims of the London pavement, were

beginning to think of the cloud-shadows on the corn-fields, and the

autumn breezes on the sea-shore.

For my own poor part, the fading summer left me out of health, out

of spirits, and, if the truth must be told, out of money as well.

During the past year I had not managed my professional resources as

carefully as usual; and my extravagance now limited me to the prospect

of spending the autumn economically between my mother’s cottage at

Hampstead and my own chambers in town.

The evening, I remember, was still and cloudy; the London air was

at its heaviest; the distant hum of the street-traffic was at its

faintest; the small pulse of the life within me, and the great heart of

the city around me, seemed to be sinking in unison, languidly and more

languidly, with the sinking sun. I roused myself from the book which I

was dreaming over rather than reading, and left my chambers to meet the

cool night air in the suburbs. It was one of the two evenings in every

week which I was accustomed to spend with my mother and my sister. So I

turned my steps northward in the direction of Hampstead.

Events which I have yet to relate make it necessary to mention in this

place that my father had been dead some years at the period of which I

am now writing; and that my sister Sarah and I were the sole survivors

of a family of five children. My father was a drawing-master before

me. His exertions had made him highly successful in his profession;

and his affectionate anxiety to provide for the future of those who

were dependent on his labours had impelled him, from the time of his

marriage, to devote to the insuring of his life a much larger portion

of his income than most men consider it necessary to set aside for that

purpose. Thanks to his admirable prudence and self-denial my mother and

sister were left, after his death, as independent of the world as they

had been during his lifetime. I succeeded to his connection, and had

every reason to feel grateful for the prospect that awaited me at my

starting in life.

The quiet twilight was still trembling on the topmost ridges of the

heath; and the view of London below me had sunk into a black gulf in

the shadow of the cloudy night, when I stood before the gate of my

mother’s cottage. I had hardly rung the bell before the house door was

opened violently; my worthy Italian friend, Professor Pesca, appeared

in the servant’s place; and darted out joyously to receive me, with a

shrill foreign parody on an English cheer.

On his own account, and, I must be allowed to add, on mine also, the

Professor merits the honour of a formal introduction. Accident has made

him the starting-point of the strange family story which it is the

purpose of these pages to unfold.

I had first become acquainted with my Italian friend by meeting him

at certain great houses where he taught his own language and I taught

drawing. All I then knew of the history of his life was, that he had

once held a situation in the University of Padua; that he had left

Italy for political reasons (the nature of which he uniformly declined

to mention to any one); and that he had been for many years respectably

established in London as a teacher of languages.

Without being actually a dwarf—for he was perfectly well proportioned

from head to foot—Pesca was, I think, the smallest human being I

ever saw out of a show-room. Remarkable anywhere, by his personal

appearance, he was still further distinguished among the rank and

file of mankind by the harmless eccentricity of his character. The

ruling idea of his life appeared to be, that he was bound to show his

gratitude to the country which had afforded him an asylum and a means

of subsistence by doing his utmost to turn himself into an Englishman.

Not content with paying the nation in general the compliment of

invariably carrying an umbrella, and invariably wearing gaiters and a

white hat, the Professor further aspired to become an Englishman in his

habits and amusements, as well as in his personal appearance. Finding

us distinguished, as a nation, by our love of athletic exercises, the

little man, in the innocence of his heart, devoted himself impromptu

to all our English sports and pastimes whenever he had the opportunity

of joining them; firmly persuaded that he could adopt our national

amusements of the field by an effort of will precisely as he had

adopted our national gaiters and our national white hat.

I had seen him risk his limbs blindly at a fox-hunt and in a

cricket-field; and soon afterwards I saw him risk his life, just as

blindly, in the sea at Brighton.

We had met there accidentally, and were bathing together. If we had

been engaged in any exercise peculiar to my own nation I should, of

course, have looked after Pesca carefully; but as foreigners are

generally quite as well able to take care of themselves in the water

as Englishmen, it never occurred to me that the art of swimming might

merely add one more to the list of manly exercises which the Professor

believed that he could learn impromptu. Soon after we had both struck

out from shore, I stopped, finding my friend did not gain on me, and

turned round to look for him. To my horror and amazement, I saw nothing

between me and the beach but two little white arms which struggled

for an instant above the surface of the water, and then disappeared

from view. When I dived for him, the poor little man was lying quietly

coiled up at the bottom, in a hollow of shingle, looking by many

degrees smaller than I had ever seen him look before. During the few

minutes that elapsed while I was taking him in, the air revived him,

and he ascended the steps of the machine with my assistance. With the

partial recovery of his animation came the return of his wonderful

delusion on the subject of swimming. As soon as his chattering teeth

would let him speak, he smiled vacantly, and said he thought it must

have been the Cramp.

When he had thoroughly recovered himself, and had joined me on the

beach, his warm Southern nature broke through all artificial English

restraints in a moment. He overwhelmed me with the wildest expressions

of affection—exclaimed passionately, in his exaggerated Italian way,

that he would hold his life henceforth at my disposal—and declared

that he should never be happy again until he had found an opportunity

of proving his gratitude by rendering me some service which I might

remember, on my side, to the end of my days.

I did my best to stop the torrent of his tears and protestations by

persisting in treating the whole adventure as a good subject for a

joke; and succeeded at last, as I imagined, in lessening Pesca’s

overwhelming sense of obligation to me. Little did I think then—little

did I think afterwards when our pleasant holiday had drawn to an

end—that the opportunity of serving me for which my grateful companion

so ardently longed was soon to come; that he was eagerly to seize it on

the instant; and that by so doing he was to turn the whole current of

my existence into a new channel, and to alter me to myself almost past

recognition.

Yet so it was. If I had not dived for Professor Pesca when he lay under

water on his shingle bed, I should in all human probability never have

been connected with the story which these pages will relate—I should

never, perhaps, have heard even the name of the woman who has lived in

all my thoughts, who has possessed herself of all my energies, who has

become the one guiding influence that now directs the purpose of my

life.