A Dark Night's Work by Elizabeth Gaskell Read Free Book Online

associates had their duties to
do, and did them with a heart and a will, in the hours when he was not in
their company. Yes! I call them duties, though some of them might be
self-imposed and purely social; they were engagements they had entered
into, either tacitly or with words, and that they fulfilled. From Mr.
Hetherington, the Master of the Hounds, who was up at—no one knows what
hour, to go down to the kennel and see that the men did their work well
and thoroughly, to stern old Sir Lionel Playfair, the upright magistrate,
the thoughtful, conscientious landlord—they did their work according to
their lights; there were few laggards among those with whom Mr. Wilkins
associated in the field or at the dinner-table. Mr. Ness—though as a
clergyman he was not so active as he might have been—yet even Mr. Ness
fagged away with his pupils and his new edition of one of the classics.
Only Mr. Wilkins, dissatisfied with his position, neglected to fulfil the
duties thereof. He imitated the pleasures, and longed for the fancied
leisure of those about him; leisure that he imagined would be so much
more valuable in the hands of a man like himself, full of intellectual
tastes and accomplishments, than frittered away by dull boors of
untravelled, uncultivated squires—whose company, however, be it said by
the way, he never refused.
    And yet daily Mr. Wilkins was sinking from the intellectually to the
sensually self-indulgent man. He lay late in bed, and hated Mr. Dunster
for his significant glance at the office-clock when he announced to his
master that such and such a client had been waiting more than an hour to
keep an appointment. "Why didn't you see him yourself, Dunster? I'm
sure you would have done quite as well as me," Mr. Wilkins sometimes
replied, partly with a view of saying something pleasant to the man whom
he disliked and feared. Mr. Dunster always replied, in a meek matter-of-
fact tone, "Oh, sir, they wouldn't like to talk over their affairs with a
subordinate."
    And every time he said this, or some speech of the same kind, the idea
came more and more clearly into Mr. Wilkins's head, of how pleasant it
would be to himself to take Dunster into partnership, and thus throw all
the responsibility of the real work and drudgery upon his clerk's
shoulders. Importunate clients, who would make appointments at
unseasonable hours and would keep to them, might confide in the partner,
though they would not in the clerk. The great objections to this course
were, first and foremost, Mr. Wilkins's strong dislike to Mr. Dunster—his
repugnance to his company, his dress, his voice, his ways—all of which
irritated his employer, till his state of feeling towards Dunster might
be called antipathy; next, Mr. Wilkins was fully aware of the fact that
all Mr. Dunster's actions and words were carefully and thoughtfully pre-
arranged to further the great unspoken desire of his life—that of being
made a partner where he now was only a servant. Mr. Wilkins took a
malicious pleasure in tantalizing Mr. Dunster by such speeches as the one
I have just mentioned, which always seemed like an opening to the desired
end, but still for a long time never led any further. Yet all the while
that end was becoming more and more certain, and at last it was reached.
    Mr. Dunster always suspected that the final push was given by some
circumstance from without; some reprimand for neglect—some threat of
withdrawal of business which his employer had received; but of this he
could not be certain; all he knew was, that Mr. Wilkins proposed the
partnership to him in about as ungracious a way as such an offer could be
made; an ungraciousness which, after all, had so little effect on the
real matter in hand, that Mr. Dunster could pass over it with a private
sneer, while taking all possible advantage of the tangible benefit it was
now in his power to accept.
    Mr. Corbet's attachment to Ellinor had been formally disclosed to her
just before this time. He had left