poured over Mr. Hardlines'
head and shoulders with the view of alleviating the misery which such
a communication would be sure to inflict, was very great. But,
nevertheless, Mr. Hardlines came out from the Board a crestfallen and
unhappy man. 'The service,' he said, 'would go to the dogs, and might
do for anything he cared, and he did not mind how soon. If the Board
chose to make the Weights and Measures a hospital for idiots, it might
do so. He had done what little lay in his power to make the office
respectable; and now, because mammas complained when their cubs of
sons were not allowed to come in there and rob the public and destroy
the office books, he was to be thwarted and reprimanded! He had been,'
he said, 'eight-and-twenty years in office, and was still in his prime--but
he should,' he thought, 'take advantage of the advice of his medical
friends, and retire. He would never remain there to see the Weights and
Measures become a hospital for incurables!'
It was thus that Mr. Hardlines, the chief clerk, expressed himself. He
did not, however, send in a medical certificate, nor apply for a pension;
and the first apparent effect of the little lecture which he had received
from the Chairman, was the admission into the service of Alaric Tudor.
Mr. Hardlines was soon forced to admit that the appointment was not a
bad one, as before his second year was over, young Tudor had
produced a very smart paper on the merits--or demerits--of the strike
bushel.
Alaric Tudor when he entered the office was by no means so handsome
a youth as Harry Norman; but yet there was that in his face which was
more expressive, and perhaps more attractive. He was a much slighter
man, though equally tall. He could boast no adventitious capillary
graces, whereas young Norman had a pair of black curling whiskers,
which almost surrounded his face, and had been the delight and wonder
of the maidservants in his mother's house, when he returned home for
his first official holiday. Tudor wore no whiskers, and his light-brown
hair was usually cut so short as to give him something of the
appearance of a clean Puritan. But in manners he was no Puritan; nor
yet in his mode of life. He was fond of society, and at an early period of
his age strove hard to shine in it. He was ambitious; and lived with the
steady aim of making the most of such advantages as fate and fortune
had put in his way. Tudor was perhaps not superior to Norman in point
of intellect; but he was infinitely his superior in having early acquired a
knowledge how best to use such intellect as he had.
His education had been very miscellaneous, and disturbed by many
causes, but yet not ineffective or deficient. His father had been an
officer in a cavalry regiment, with a fair fortune, which he had nearly
squandered in early life. He had taken Alaric when little more than an
infant, and a daughter, his only other child, to reside in Brussels. Mrs.
Tudor was then dead, and the remainder of the household had consisted
of a French governess, a bonne, and a man-cook. Here Alaric remained
till he had perfectly acquired the French pronunciation, and very nearly
as perfectly forgotten the English. He was then sent to a private school
in England, where he remained till he was sixteen, returning home to
Brussels but once during those years, when he was invited to be present
at his sister's marriage with a Belgian banker. At the age of sixteen he
lost his father, who, on dying, did not leave behind him enough of the
world's wealth to pay for his own burial. His half-pay of course died
with him, and young Tudor was literally destitute.
His brother-in-law, the banker, paid for his half-year's schooling in
England, and then removed him to a German academy, at which it was
bargained that he should teach English without remuneration, and learn
German without expense. Whether he taught much English may be
doubtful, but he did learn German thoroughly; and in that, as in most
other transactions of his early life, certainly got the best of the bargain
which had been made for him.
At the age of twenty he was taken to the Brussels bank as a clerk; but
here he soon gave visible signs of disliking the drudgery which was
exacted from him. Not that he disliked banking. He would gladly have
been a partner with ever so small a share, and would have trusted to
himself to increase his stake. But there is a limit to the good nature of
brothers-in-law, even in Belgium; and Alaric was quite aware that no
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