"No, nor in less time than it took to build Rome in, I doubt," quoth I, pretty rueful. "But tell me how came yourself to be so proficient in that study of cyphering?" For indeed the thought had puzzled me not a little.
"By the good offices of one I purpose shall now assist you," said Idonia; and told me that it was a certain scrivener named Enos Procter that had lived a great while in Genoa, where they greatly affect the putting of their negotiations into ledger-books and have well-nigh perfected that invention.
"This Procter returning home after many years," she proceeded, "suffered shipwreck, and was cast away upon the coast of Spain, whence he was fortunate to escape half dead, and with the loss of all his goods, saving only that monstrous ledger-book, which he would by no means relinquish. He then coming to land here, at the Galley Quay, besought us to harbour him and give him food and dry clothing, for which he offered to pay us out of his wages when he was able. This we did, and he, being a man of his word, repaid all that he owed, and more, for he taught me something of his reckoning in cypher, and of the distributing of every item of receipt or payment, this side and that of an accompt, according to the practice of the great merchants of Genoa."
And thus it came about that the day following Idonia did as she had promised, and wrought so with Mr. Enos Procter that I was immediately taken into his employment upon my faithful promise to serve the lawful occasions of the Governor and Merchants of the Turkey Company, and (implicitly) those of Mr. Enos Procter, their principal clerk and accountant.
With this worthy gentleman I spent, as was natural, the greatest part of my time, and under his dark sidelong eye I managed my untrained quill. He was a spare small man of an indomitable quick-silver nature, that by long sojourning in the South, had become half Italian. When he worked (which was always) he had a habit of warping his face into the most diabolical grin, while he rolled upon his stool, back and forward, with the motion of one rowing in a boat, muttering of a thousand foreign curses with which was oddly mingled the recital of the particular matter he had in hand. Thus, "Corpo di Baccho," would he cry, "these bills mature not until the fifteenth day of June, and there is scarce ... a million devils! Master Cleeve, had I formed my sevens that gait in Genoa I had been sent to the galleys for a felon.... Of Cartagena, say you? There be none but knaves there, and none but fools to trust them. 'Tis an overdue reckoning, with thirty-five, forty, forty-five thousand ducats, eh! forty-six thousand, Signor, Don Cherubin of Cartagena, whom the Devil disport!"
But whatever the frailties of Mr. Procter, he was a kind and forbearing tutor, and even succeeded in imparting to me also some portion of his own extravagant affection for his great leather-bound books of account; for he loved them so, as no man ever perceived more delicate beauties in his mistress than this fever-hot scrivener did in the nice adjustment of Debit to Credit; with all the entries, cross entries, postings and balancings (to use his own crabbed language) that went to it. He was, in sooth, a very Clerk-Errant, that ran up and down a paper world, detecting errors, righting wrongs, spitting some miscreant discount on his lance of goose-quill, or tearing the cloak from some dubious monster of exchange. I could not but admire him, and the way in which he regarded all things as mere matter for bookkeeping.
"They talk of their philosophies," he would say, "but what do they come to more than this, and what ethick goes beyond this: that every right hath a duty corresponding, and every fault its due reward? Ay, is it so? and what do we poor scribes, but set down each accident of our trading first on the left side and after on the right side, the one to countervail the other, and all at the end to appear justly suspended in the balance? We have no preferences, we accountants, we neither applaud nor condemn, but evenly, and with a cold impartiality, set down our good and bad, our profits and losses, our receipts and disbursements, first as they affect ourselves and our honourable Company, and after as they affect our neighbour. For consider," he would proceed, leaping about on his stool, with the excitement that a defence of his art always engendered, "consider this very item of the silk bales, upon which my pen chances at this moment to rest—you have it here to the credit of Mr. Andrea of Naples, seventy-nine pounds in his tale of goods sold to this house. But is the matter so disposed of? I trow not. For turn me to the accompt of goods purchased during this year of our Redemption, and what have you? Seventy-nine pounds upon the debtor. Philosophy, boy! There is nought beyond that, I say, nor, for conciseness of statement, aught to equal it. Mr. Andrea's rights become, transposed, our duties; and for the silk bales you wot of, they be a load of debt to us, to account for to our masters, and likewise a strengthening of the credit of this honest Neapolitan as any man may read.
"Notwithstanding, there be some," said he in conclusion, with a sigh, "and they divines of the Church, that call in question the avarice and hard-dealing of us that live by barter and the negotiation of merchandize! Yet where will you find (to ask but this one question, Mr. Denis), where do you find written more clearly than in these ledger-books of ours, that oft-disguised truth that what we own we do also and necessarily owe?"
In such mingling of high discourse and plain work, then, I continued with Mr. Procter a great while, in the dusty and ill-lighted counting-house in Chequer Lane; earning my small wages, and upon the whole not ill content with the changed life I now led, for all 'twas so far removed from the course I had planned, now many months past, but had already half forgotten. Sometimes my duties would take me to the wharves where a great barque or brigantine would be lying, about to leave upon our Company's business for Turkey or Barbary; or else some other vessel would be returning thence to London Pool, whither I repaired to the captain and supercargo to receive their schedules and sealed papers. It was this last employment I especially delighted in, and indeed I can scarce conceive any pleasure greater than I found going very early in the morning to one of the quays upon the River or as far as to Wapping Stairs, where I would watch the great ship slowly coming up upon the tide, between the misted grey banks and dim roofs of Limehouse and Rotherhithe; and could hear the rattle of the chains, and the joyful cries of the mariners that were now, after their perilous and long voyage, safely arrived at home. Then would I take boat and row out into the stream, hailing the master in the Company's name, who presently would let down a ladder by which I climbed aloft upon the deck, where the crew would gather round to hear news and to tell it; which telling of theirs I chiefly delighted in: the thousand adventures they had had, and the accounts of strange lands and mysterious rich cities beyond the seas. Thereafter, when the ship was berthed and our business settled, I would bear off the master and the other officers to Mr. Osborne, to be made welcome, when all was told o'er again, though with more observance paid to such matters as affected profit and loss than formerly I had heard the tale. The black little accountant was had in too, at such times, into Mr. Osborne's privy room, where we all sat round a great table, with Mr. Osborne at one end of it, very handsome and stately in his starched ruff and suit of guarded velvet; and the other principal persons of the Company about him on either side, to listen to what the shipmen related, as I have said.
Then, if the adventure had been profitably concluded (as sometimes it had not, though generally there was a fair sum cleared), oftentimes would the Governor invite us to supper with him, and me with the rest, I know not wherefore, save it were that Master Procter had praised me to him for my diligence in his service. And so we passed many a merry evening.